"How busy I am!" Busy building his happiness on others' suffering, Sheffield spread his hands and said, "For now, there are still countries like Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and Britain to visit. It involves chemical industry, firearms, and many other projects."
"I'll talk to Susan and let Anne go with you. This is all for your benefit," Harry Sheffield snapped his fingers upon hearing this, as if he had discovered a great opportunity. He wasn't interested in where his son was going anyway; he certainly wasn't going.
"Thank you so much!" Sheffield forced a smile and nodded continuously along with the old man's words. "I didn't expect the patent authorization to go so smoothly. Grandmother was right."
"That's mainly due to my father's strategy. When the Franco-Prussian War broke out, my father was already seriously ill, but by trading agricultural products under his personal name, he stabilized the situation in France at that time, thus establishing relationships. It has nothing to do with me." Harry Sheffield shrugged and didn't boast in front of his son.
Learned! Sheffield suddenly realized. The agricultural stick? Industrial issues determine whether you live well or not, but agricultural issues determine whether you can survive. Kissinger said: If you control oil, you control all nations; if you control food, you control all people.
Agricultural hegemony was also the most stable form of hegemony in the later United States. Through low-tariff free trade, American agricultural products shattered the grain markets of most countries.
One of the two major lapdogs of the United States, Haiti, suffered such treatment in later years. After the tariff threshold was lowered, U.S. rice, subsidized by the federal government and priced half as cheap as Haitian rice, quickly captured the Haitian grain market, eventually reaching over eighty percent market share. Large numbers of farmers became unemployed, and the agricultural industry was destroyed.
It should be noted that Haiti's previous self-sufficiency rate for grain was ninety-five percent—it was not a country with an insufficient agricultural foundation. Dealing with populous countries like Japan and South Korea, or even Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which were desert environments, the United States didn't need to deploy troops. Just by moving their fingers through international grain suppliers, they could cause widespread famine.
In the field of agriculture alone, it's not just ordinary countries; even the Republic couldn't compete. Growing the same crop, the price would definitely be lower in the United States. That was already good enough, and it could maintain domestic grain stability. For general countries, the United States wielding the agricultural stick was enough to cause turmoil among its opponents.
However, thinking about the issue of agricultural products, Sheffield slightly frowned and said to the old man, "The current price of domestic agricultural products is rising. If we export at a low price, what if this gets out?"
"To hell with those Yankees! Just do it!" Harry Sheffield showed contempt. "I heard from Rich Martin that the domestic economy is depressed, and panic is spreading. It's their own panic buying that caused the price increase. What does it have to do with us?"
"You have a point!" Sheffield put his hands in his pockets, seemingly convinced.
"So you should take Anne. She has no one around her now, and you can easily win her over," the old man clenched his fists and shamelessly said, "When I came to Paris, marchionesses, countesses, members of parliament, bankers, financiers—all fell under my personal charm within three meetings at most."
"It's money power!" Sheffield endured the flying spittle, leaned back tactically to avoid range, and coldly added, "I've heard this kind of disease is rampant in Paris. As your son, I'll remind you to be careful."
Unable to bear the old man's recurring behavior, Sheffield directly pointed at the ceiling and said, "Time is tight. I'm heading to Belgium soon to discuss patent authorization. Then I'll go to the German Empire to investigate the chemical industry, and finally to London. London is a place Grandmother insisted I must visit."
At this time, the拳头 products the United States could export were pitifully few, and even the ancestral skill of gun manufacturing wasn't as good as Belgium's. However, firearms didn't need high quality; they just needed to not explode and kill people.
Sheffield didn't appreciate overly high-quality products. Wouldn't high product quality disrupt market rules? So quality issues should find a suitable balance point, ensuring large-scale sales while maintaining quality—scale being more important than quality.
Take Standard Oil, for example. Its success in breaking out of America and going global was inseparable from the discovery of the Pennsylvania oil fields, the largest oil field discovered at that time.
As for the Middle East, which would become world-famous in later years, the popular saying at this time was that there couldn't possibly be oil beneath the vast deserts of the Middle East. Standard Oil appeared powerful now because only the Pennsylvania oil fields had large-scale production then, allowing Standard Oil to break out of America and go global.
In reality, no one talked about how powerful Saudi Arabia would be in later years. Just like how the Republic couldn't boast about its rare earth industry, controlling the source for so many years meant being powerful was expected.
The twentieth century, when large-scale commercial use began, marked oil as the lifeblood of industry. But this didn't mean that the value of oil hadn't been demonstrated in the nineteenth century. Kerosene separated from oil made oil an important resource for the first time. But was it more important than coal? Not necessarily.
DuPont seemed powerful within the United States, but in the chemical field, Sheffield still believed in the Germans. As a die-hard German fan, he could remember a series of achievements like sarin and mustard gas completed by IG Farben. Their reputation as number one in the world was thunderous, surely stronger than DuPont.
Harry Sheffield sent his son to the train station and handed him a card, saying, "This is the contact information for Gregor Sieden, the former head of Deutsche Bank's Paris branch. If you encounter any difficulties in Germany, he might be able to help."
"Since you have connections in this area, why don't you come with me?" Sheffield was about to raise his hand but was pulled back by Anne, who was holding his arm.
"No way!" Harry Sheffield solemnly refused; German women weren't to his taste. "I've even considered your living arrangements, even convincing Countess Susan to have Anne take care of you. What if you get lost on your first trip to Europe? You're the family's only heir."
Sheffield boarded the train without looking back. The old man started talking about vulgar topics again. Instead of wasting time on that, he might as well consider how to obtain patent authorization with minimal expenditure.
(End of Chapter)