Chapter 650 - 648: A Bit of a Pitfall
The wooden railroad could greatly alleviate the court’s financial burden, and of course, the emperor wanted to expedite the implementation of this matter as much as possible. If this was delayed until the fifteenth day after the new year when the offices reopened and took a few more days, it might be one or two months.
Court officials tended to work slowly unless they faced the threat of execution or an emergency that required swift attention. It was far more effective to push things forward before the end of the year.
Therefore, the day after the imperial court decided to replace iron tracks with wooden ones, His Majesty the Emperor began to ponder and arrange for trustworthy individuals to start spreading the project before the new year so that the work could continue after the new year without any delay.
The day after the court session, the emperor retained Prince Fu and Minister of Works Wang Xian and summoned them to the Imperial Study Room.
In recent days, Prince Fu had been worrying about how to deal with his stockpile. He was also brainstorming and planning negotiations on how to find and publicize a lapse in the Crown Prince’s conduct to buy himself some time to deal with the hot potato he was holding.
He had absolutely no enthusiasm for the wooden railroad project and had not spent any effort considering it.
When the iron rails were first made, the initial preparation took a long time. The wooden rails, of course, couldn’t be built overnight. He had no interest in managing this unprofitable project, let alone when it could be fully prepared.
Why discard perfectly good iron rails for wooden ones? If the project was delayed, who could be blamed?
But now, being summoned to the Imperial Study Room by the emperor, it seemed there would be no delay. But what if he lacked the enthusiasm to proceed?
Wooden rails weren’t like iron rails; turning stones into iron rails involved a lot more processes and had more opportunities to profit. But what was the worth of wood, even if it was carved with flowers?