Chen Mo's influence in the West began to expand on a large scale again.
In fact, the 10,000 times that James told Zachary Taylor was a conservative estimate. It might not be 100,000 times, but it was at least tens of thousands of times. Chen Mo basically occupied all the good places in the West. Coupled with the expansion of the Southwest area ceded by Mexico, it was only a matter of time before he expanded 100,000 times.
Nowadays, the capitalists in the North focused all their attention on the "high-end" fields such as industry, real estate, and finance. The slave owners in the South guarded their plantations and slaves closely. Chen Mo took advantage of this gap to swallow up all the land in the West. In just two years, he quickly grew into the largest rancher and landowner in the United States.
A large number of people who originally lived here and immigrants from other places flocked to Chen Mo after finding out that it was much better to work for him than to dig for food in the soil.
The people who came to the West at this time were the bottom poor who were hardworking. As long as they had food and clothing, and their lives were secure, they would cherish this job very much. Whether they were cowboys, farmers, or miners, they all worked diligently and conscientiously. Chen Mo was not stingy in giving them the generous rewards they deserved.
Chen Mo did not just enclose the land for the sake of enclosing it. He had a deeper purpose, and more than one.
These barren lands in the western part of the United States were vast but sparsely populated. They were undeveloped and desolate areas. Although they belonged to the United States, they were not added to the United States as a federal state. Instead, they were simply divided into several regions. Each of these regions was the size of several other states, but the population was not as large as the population of a city in the central and eastern regions.
Although these regions in the West were now desolate and backward, they would be established as more than a dozen independent states in the future. From regions to states, there were strict requirements.
When these regions were established, the United States government issued a written federal law that stipulated the conditions for the establishment of states in these regions.
At first, they divided these regions into several independent special regions. First, the Confederation Congress would appoint a governor and three administrative officials to manage them. As the population of these regions increased, three to five more quasi-states could be added.
When the population of any Quasi-State is increased to sixty thousand, it may apply for admission to the Union, and enjoy equal rights with the existing States.
In this barren and sparsely populated land in the west, Chen Mo's ranch occupied more than half of the high-quality land. It was the largest populated area. As the ranch developed, more and more people were recruited. In the future, when these areas truly became federal states, most of the citizens would be Chen Mo's employees.
Chen Mo would become the true controller of these states. The votes of the governors and even the president would be in his hands!
At that time, the entire western part of the United States would become Chen Mo's territory, and Chen Mo would control it from behind the scenes. Chen Mo would become the most influential leader among the major forces in the United States!
The United States itself was a country controlled by capitalists. As a big capitalist, Chen Mo, who controlled a huge amount of wealth and a large number of votes enough to influence the presidential election, was bound to be the target of all parties.
Every party was supported by a large number of capitalists, and these parties represented the interests of these capitalists. The presidential election and the struggle between parties were, in fact, a struggle between capitalists!
However, Chen Mo's large-scale encroachment of land in the west and even in the entire United States was not just to control the votes. The heyday of the fur trade would soon be over. Chen Mo could not only rely on the ranch and land in his hands. Moreover, these alone were not enough to support his ability to influence the political situation.
After all, with the continuous development of the west, his ranch could not occupy the dominion of the west forever. After all, the number of employees the ranch could accommodate was limited. As more and more people came to the west, especially other businessmen and capitalists, more factories, enterprises, and employment opportunities would come. Although Chen Mo had occupied the best land in the west, he could not monopolize it. If he did not let others in, it would be disadvantageous to the development of the west.
Therefore, what Chen Mo needed to do was to strengthen his own strength and firmly occupy the dominant position. No matter how many businessmen and capitalists came, they would not be able to shake his ruling position in the west.
To achieve this, the ranch alone was far from enough.
If all the land Chen Mo bought in the United States were marked on a map and compared with a map of the future world's oil resources in the United States, it would be easy to find that the vast land owned by Chen Mo had covered more than 80% of the oil producing areas in the United States!
As for the rest, they were just some small oil fields with smaller reserves.
In other words, most of the oil resources in the United States were buried in the land he bought!
However, oil had not yet been used on a large scale. The oil extraction and distillation processes were very primitive and backward. There were no modern oil wells and oil refineries.
Moreover, the gasoline engine, which consumed the most oil in the future, had not been invented yet. The mechanical power output in the industry was still the coal-fired steam engine.
Without the internal combustion engine, cars naturally had not been manufactured. Therefore, in this era, the main use of oil was to extract kerosene and use it as lighting.
Chen Mo did not intend to speed up the process of history and let the oil industry and the automobile industry appear in advance. Therefore, his purchase of the oil production areas was just a precautionary measure. He bought them while he was building ranches.
In addition to the oil, which was called black gold, Chen Mo did not forget about the real gold!
Chen Mo had heard about the gold rush in the United States a long time ago. Since it happened to be in this era, Chen Mo would not let it go.
California's San Francisco and Los Angeles had a large amount of gold reserves. When the United States obtained California and other areas from Mexico and sent the governor and administrative officials there, Chen Mo expanded his land enclosure operations. Who knew that under the newly built vast ranches, there was a huge amount of gold buried!
In fact, Chen Mo had always been thinking about a piece of land in his heart, Alaska!
This enclave, which was located in the northwest of Canada and was separated from the United States by the sea, could be said to be a huge treasure.
Today, this huge piece of land was still a colony of Czarist Russia.
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