109: Chapter 109 Revolution on the Assembly Line

In the decade or so from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century, Lin Tian's rogue tactics truly disgusted the various European countries.

Every transoceanic telegram was charged strictly by the word, and there were never any discounts or promotional offers.

"Take it or leave it, and if you don't like it, get lost!"

Even the low-level operators at the European branch of the Lin Telegraph Communications Company were all so arrogant, walking around with their noses in the air.

These girls were paid exorbitantly high wages, and their benefits were enough to make anyone green with envy.

Even the high and mighty noble lords had to be polite when they saw them.

Why? Because if these young ladies were in a bad mood and accidentally sent the wrong key codes, the resulting economic losses could easily bankrupt anyone.

Therefore, in Europe at that time, the influence of a communications company operator was even greater than that of a bank manager!

Of course, that is a story for another time.

For the past few months, Lin Tian's main focus had been entirely on a grand project—spending money recklessly across the USA to build the towering Wardenclyffe Tower.

Following Tesla's signal coverage plan, Lin Tian waved his hand and invested heavily in San Francisco to build the second signal tower, instantly covering the entire vast Pacific region with radio signals.

Immediately after, the third tower rose from the ground, located in Weslaco, Texas, pointing directly at Mexico and easily spreading the signal network to South America.

However, according to Tesla's precise calculations, to truly achieve global, seamless communications coverage, at least eight more such giant towers would need to be forcibly built in extremely perilous locations around the world.

But considering the current world landscape, apart from the USA, Britain, and a few other old-established industrial powers, many countries were still in an uncivilized, barbaric state.

In places like Africa, Australia, and some remote parts of Asia, even if you built the towers, there wouldn't even be anyone to answer the phone; it would be a pure waste of money.

Therefore, Lin Tian made the final decision to slow down the expansion.

Building these three first and firmly holding the communications networks for the Atlantic, Pacific, and South America was already enough to make money hand over fist.

After months of sweeping resource integration, the steel behemoth controlled jointly by Lin Tian and Rockefeller saw its production capacity skyrocket like a rocket after completing a comprehensive equipment upgrade.

The original annual production scale of 1.5 million tons was forcibly raised to a terrifying 4 million tons!

The reason production was stuck there wasn't because the blast furnaces weren't powerful enough, but because the upstream Mesabi Iron Range simply couldn't dig out enough ore, and supply seriously couldn't keep up with consumption.

Facing this bottleneck, Lin Tian was not panicked at all.

Relying on his foresight that transcended the era, he directly transferred a group of the most elite geological survey teams from the Lin-Smith United Oil Company and rushed them overnight to the area around Lake Superior.

Because he clearly remembered that in the future USA, this place was the veritable "Steel Heart"!

It contained amazing reserves of high-quality iron ore veins, and at its peak, three-quarters of all iron ore in the USA was mined from here.

It wasn't until the 1950s and 60s that this cornucopia gradually declined due to over-extraction, environmental degradation, and industrial upgrading.

With the massive explosion in the steel industry's production capacity, the final shackle that had been restricting the development of the automobile industry was completely shattered.

Qiao San was a Chinese immigrant who had been struggling at the very bottom of society.

Back in the Qing Dynasty, because his family was too poor to even put food on the table, the twelve or thirteen-year-old Qiao San was sold by his heartless parents to black-hearted human traffickers.

He was stuffed like livestock into the crowded, damp bottom hold of a steamship, drifting for who knows how many days on the dark, sunless sea.

Many fellow Chinese immigrants who couldn't withstand the harsh environment fell seriously ill and were thrown into the sea by the crew like trash.

But Qiao San was lucky and managed to survive.

When he saw the blue sky and white clouds again, he had already set foot on this strange land filled with blond-haired and blue-eyed foreigners.

To survive, he had suffered countless hardships.

At first, he dug coal in dark, sunless mines, and later went to work as a laborer in a slaughterhouse reeking of blood.

Initially, those white foremen didn't treat him like a human being at all; if they were even slightly displeased, they would beat or scold him.

It wasn't until later, when he accidentally joined a Chinese gang called Hongmen, that this inhumane abuse finally stopped.

After getting familiar with them, he realized that Hongmen was famous for protecting its own.

In this land, any foreign power that dared to bully Chinese people without cause would face merciless, bloody retaliation from the Hongmen brothers.

For those Chinese at the bottom of society trying to make a living in the USA, Hongmen was not just a gang, but a life-saving talisman.

And what Qiao San admired most was that the legendary, elusive leader of Hongmen was actually willing to spend money and effort to help the Chinese brothers at the bottom solve all kinds of difficult problems.

A while ago, the gear factory where Qiao San worked went bankrupt due to poor management.

By this time, he had married a sturdy foreign woman and had a cute mixed-race daughter.

As the breadwinner of the family, losing his job was essentially a death sentence for his whole family.

With nowhere else to turn, he bit the bullet and went to the local Hongmen branch for help.

The manager of the branch asked about his expertise, and upon learning that he was skilled at operating machine tools, he didn't say a word, immediately taking out a form for him to fill out.

Just a few days later, Qiao San unexpectedly received a formal offer of employment from Detroit!

When he took the offer letter and followed the directions to the location, he was so shocked that he couldn't speak.

It was a massive, ultra-modern factory covering hundreds of acres!

In the early morning, hundreds of workers wearing neat blue uniforms were lining up and marching into the factory gates.

What made him feel even more at home was that on the back of these uniforms, the words "Lin Automobile Manufacturing Company" were printed in bright red letters.

The workers were both men and women, and besides white people, there were surprisingly many Chinese faces like his.

Qiao San plucked up his courage and handed the employment offer to the armed white security guard at the gate.

After a simple identity verification, he naturally became a proud automobile manufacturing worker.

After entering the workshop, looking at the spacious and bright factory floor, dozens or even hundreds of workers were sitting in neat rows, each responsible only for that one extremely simple action at hand.

In all his life, this was the first time Qiao San had seen such a novel production model.

He was assigned to the wheel hub production line.

An experienced foreign technician was teaching the new recruits one-on-one how to polish the burrs on the parts.

Qiao San listened very carefully.

He calculated in his heart that it would probably only take half a month of getting used to it for him to keep up with the pace of the main group and skillfully assemble car wheel hubs.

"This is the charm of assembly line operations!"

In the spacious second-floor control room, Henry Ford stood in front of the huge floor-to-ceiling windows, looking down at the bustling production workshop below.

Those who made wheels only made wheels, and those who beat the outer shells only beat the outer shells.

A complex Model T car was completely disassembled, broken down into parts, and finally sent to the final assembly line for assembly.

This subversive production model compressed the manufacturing cycle of a single car in a terrifying way.

Lin Tian stood beside him with his hands behind his back, nodded satisfactorily, and praised: "Well done. How many Model T cars can the workshop turn out in a month currently?"

"Report, Boss! Currently, the factory has recruited a total of over 1,300 workers, and the entire assembly line has been split into 26 core processes. Because the vast majority are novices and still need time to get used to it, conservatively estimated, the current monthly production capacity is about 400 vehicles." Henry Ford reported respectfully.

"400 a month, which is 4,800 a year. This number is far from enough to even fill the gaps between our teeth. If you don't have enough manpower, just be bold and keep recruiting!"

Lin Tian frowned slightly and issued the order to expand production without hesitation.

A Model T car had about 5,000 parts in total, and a mere 1,300 workers simply couldn't feed this industrial beast.

Although the Lin Automobile Company had not yet officially started selling to the public, Lin Tian had absolute confidence in the prospects of the Model T.

This was a legendary model that would later create the astonishing myth of 15 million in sales!

Compared to the old jalopies in Europe that ran slower than horse-drawn carriages and broke down at the drop of a hat, the Model T was a comprehensive dimensionality reduction attack in terms of both power technology and streamlined appearance.

If he couldn't sell them with such a trump card in hand, Lin Tian might as well just find a block of tofu and bump his head against it to end it all.

"Understood, Boss! I will immediately arrange for the HR department to continue expanding recruitment!"

Henry Ford nodded repeatedly, excited.

Lin Tian had broken the rules to promote him from an obscure low-level researcher directly to the head of the Lin Automobile Company, and this kindness of recognizing his talent moved him beyond words.

He secretly swore in his heart that even if it cost him his old life, he would manage the boss's automotive empire in an orderly manner!