Okay, now what's this?
Yes, a steel mill. Obviously.
Now in any parallel universe you can imagine could the photos in the previous post be considered to depict the same activity as depicted in the photo above?
Well, they do.
In the parallel universe between Mao Zedong's ears, resident with homicidal longings and cuckoo clocks, was another bound in his Great Leap: the backyard steel furnace.
Mao looked about, he gazed out onto the world, he saw all those things America and England had: cars, lots of cars, and skyscrapers and bridges, and Mao wanted those things too. And then Mao saw Pittsburgh, and Birmingham, and Sheffield, and Mao thought, "Nah. Why do those things have to be so big? Instead of one big steel mill why can't we make steel in thousands of little steel mills in backyards all over China?"
Now I, Benjamin Harris, do not know the answer to that question. But I damn well would have found out before I tried it on a whole country. Mao was more...confident, he was more confident of himself, he was confident that any idea that came into his Marxist head was better than all the ideas that came into all the heads of all the capitalists in Pittsburgh and Birmingham and Sheffield and so, voila backyard steel furnaces came to China.
Now, we are all non-metallurgists here. Is there a metallurgist in the house? No. Okay, so we are all non-metallurgists and we don't know the answer to that question but we damn well would have found out but Mao was different so might we non-metallurgists play this idea out just one or two steps? Could we please play this out one or two steps between conception and execution? When Mao gazed about and saw Pittsburgh and Birmingham and Sheffield he also saw lots of smoke and fire over those cities. Even non-metallurgists know that to make smoke and fire you have to burn something. What? That's step one between conception and execution.
Step two is, we non-metallurgists also know, even though we got a gentleman's "C" in high school chemistry, that steel is not a natural element. Remember--what is it, "Fe,"-- isn't that the symbol for iron? Iron is a natural element. Steel was this great invention because iron was mixed with something, that something increased the strength and flexibility of iron and made it possible to make cars and skyscrapers and bridges.
What was that something? We don't know because we only got a "C" in high school chemistry but we bet you had to get the right something, and we bet you had to get that something and iron mixed just right or else you'd have taffy or peanut brittle come out and you can't make cars and skyscrapers and bridges out of taffy or peanut brittle.
Whether Mao ever played out these one or two steps in his own mind or if it was too crowded in there with homicidal longings and cuckoo clocks, or if he had the advice of a Wizard who convinced him that playing out these steps was reactionary obstructionism, however it was, the Great Leap into the furnace was executed. As were the people if they didn't build the backyard furnaces. And so they were built, thousands and thousands of them.
After they were built the people had to play out steps one and two on their own. They had to burn something so that Mao would see lots of smoke and fire like he saw when he gazed out over Pittsburgh & etc. What did the people burn? In their desperation to make smoke and fire for Mao they burned anything they could get their hands on and when they ran out of trees they burned their own wooden household furniture.
And what about this "smelting" business, step two? How did the people get the iron? Did they mine it? What did they mix it with?
The people were the peasants of China. They had never been to high school much less gotten gentleman's "C's" in chemistry.
No, the peasants didn't mine the ore; they didn't know how to mine, and didn't have the equipment if they had.
The peasants didn't alloy any iron ore with something much less the right something.
The peasants made "steel" for Mao by melting down their household flatware, their forks and knives, their pots and pans; they melted down their farm tools, their hoes and spades.
The peasants of China took the few steel and steel-like objects they had and melted them so that they could remake the same objects.
The new molten metal was utterly worthless, it came out like taffy or peanut brittle and so the peasants of China literally burned themselves out of their homes and huts and destroyed the tools with which to farm and eat and they starved to death, 30,000,000 of them, and that is the Red Legacy in China.
