America's Great Landlord!

Chen Mo's power has once again begun a large-scale expansion in the west.

In fact, James's estimate of 10,000 times to Zachary Taylor was a conservative one. It might be less than 100,000 times, but it would still be tens of thousands of times. Chen Mo has basically occupied all the decent places in the West. In addition, with his current large-scale expansion in the southwestern region ceded by Mexico, 100,000 times is only a matter of time.

Today, Northern capitalists are focusing all their attention on "high-end" sectors such as industry, real estate, and finance, while Southern plantation slave owners are holding onto their plantations and slaves. Taking advantage of this gap, Chen Mo has taken over all the land in the West and has rapidly grown into the largest rancher and landowner in the United States in just two years.

After discovering that joining Chen Mo's forces was far better than struggling to make a living on the land, a large number of people who originally lived here and immigrants from other places flocked to him.

The people who came to the West during this period were all hardworking poor people from the lower class. As long as they had food and clothing and their own and their families' lives were secure, they would cherish this job very much. Whether they were cowboys, farmers, or miners, they all worked diligently and conscientiously, and Chen Mo was not stingy in giving them the generous rewards they deserved.

Chen Mo's land grabbing wasn't just about acquiring land; he had deeper motives, and more than one.

These wild lands in the American West are vast but sparsely populated, and are undeveloped and desolate regions. Although they belong to the United States, they are not incorporated as federal states, but are simply divided into several regions. Each of these regions is the size of several other states, but has a population smaller than that of a single city in the Middle East.

Although these western regions are currently desolate and underdeveloped, they will eventually become more than a dozen independent states. However, there are strict requirements for transitioning from a region to a state.

When these regions were established, the United States. government enacted written federal laws that stipulated the conditions for establishing states in these regions.

Initially, they divided these areas into several independent special districts, each managed by a governor appointed by the Confederate Congress and three administrative officials. As the population of the area increased, three to five more quasi-states could be added.

When the population of any prospective state reaches 60,000, it can apply to join the Union and enjoy equal rights with existing states.

In these barren, sparsely populated lands of the West, Chen Mo's ranch occupies most of the prime land and is itself the largest population center. As the ranch develops, it recruits more and more people. In the future, after these areas truly become federal states, the vast majority of citizens will be Chen Mo's employees.

Chen Mo will become the true controller behind these states, and the votes of governors and even the president will be in his hands!

At that time, the entire American West will become Chen Mo's "territory," controlled by Chen Mo behind the scenes. Chen Mo will become the most important Lord among the major forces in the United States!

The United States is a country controlled by capitalists. As a major capitalist who controls enormous wealth and a large number of votes that can influence presidential elections, Chen Mo will inevitably become a target for various political parties to win over.

Behind every political party is the support of a large number of capitalists. These parties represent these capitalists, and their interests, presidential elections, and partisan struggles are actually a struggle among capitalists!

However, Chen Mo's extensive land acquisition and ranching in the West and even throughout the United States is not solely for controlling votes. The heyday of the fur trade will soon be over, and Chen Mo cannot rely solely on his ranches and land. Moreover, these alone are insufficient to support his power to influence the political situation.

After all, with the continuous development of the West, his ranch cannot occupy the rule of the West forever. The number of employees that the ranch can accommodate is limited. As more and more people come to the West, especially other merchants and capitalists, more factories, enterprises and employment opportunities will be brought. Although Chen Mo has occupied the best land in the West, he cannot monopolize the West and prevent others from coming in. This would also be detrimental to the development of the West.

Therefore, what Chen Mo needs to do is strengthen his own power and always maintain a dominant position. No matter how many merchants and capitalists come, they will not be able to shake his ruling position in the west.

To achieve this, ranches alone are far from enough.

If we mark all the land Chen Mo bought in the United States on a map and compare it with a map of the distribution of oil resources in the United States in the Afterlife, we can easily find that the vast land owned by Chen Mo has covered more than 80 percent of the oil-producing areas in the United States!

The rest are just small oil fields with relatively small reserves.

In other words, the land he bought contains the vast majority of the United States' oil resources!

However, at this time, oil had not yet begun to be used on a large scale, and oil extraction and distillation processes were primitive and backward. Modern oil wells and refineries had not yet appeared.

Moreover, the oil-fired engine, which consumes the most oil in the future, has not yet been invented, and the coal-fired steam engine is still the power source for mechanical output in industry.

Without the internal combustion engine, automobiles had not yet been manufactured. So, in that era, the main use of petroleum was to refine kerosene using rudimentary methods for lighting.

Chen Mo had no intention of accelerating the historical process to bring forward the oil and automobile industries, so his purchase of oil-producing areas was merely a precautionary measure, buying them along with the land he was acquiring to build ranches.

Besides oil, which is known as black gold, Chen Mo has not forgotten about real gold!

Chen Mo had long heard of the United States Gold Rush, and now that he was caught up in that era, how could he possibly let it pass Chen Mo by?

California's San Francisco and Los Angeles, among other places, have vast gold reserves. When the United States acquired California and other regions from Mexico and sent governors and administrative officials, Chen Mo expanded his land grabbing operations there. Who knew that beneath those newly built, expansive ranches lay a huge treasure trove of gold!

In fact, Chen Mo always had a piece of land on his mind: Alaska!

This exclave, located in northwestern Canada and separated from the continental United States by the sea but not bordering it, can be described as a huge treasure.

Today, this vast land is still a colony of Tsarist Russia.

Historically, after the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1853, Russia feared that the Alaska colony would be seized by Britain, so some people proposed to sell Alaska to the United States. Finally, in April 1867, the two sides agreed on a deal for $7.2 million.