1635 Han style rises again

Chapter 714 "Craft Revolution"

March 1655, 3, Hanzhou, Kaiyuan City (now Humpty Doo, northern Australia)
To some extent, the commercial revolution is the premise of the industrial revolution. As Adam Smith said, the expansion of the market will lead to the specialization of production, thereby increasing productivity.

Historically, the industrial revolution triggered by new technologies has changed one of the most basic economic principles - the law of diminishing marginal returns.In the pre-industrial era, the production cost of any commodity would increase as the quantity of the product increased, but with the advent of the industrial age, the production cost of all commodities plummeted as the output increased.

"A shooter will not hit the arrow, and a learner will not be able to cure the arrow; a shooter must have a bridle, and a learner will not be a bridle." The process of human development itself is the history of the division of labor.Before the beginning of the earliest primitive agricultural era, there was a widespread division of labor between men and women, with men engaged in hunting and women engaged in gathering.After entering the farming era, men farmed and women weaved, and the division of labor continued to advance.The first socialized division of labor separated animal husbandry from agriculture, and the second socialized division of labor separated handicrafts from agriculture.

In the era of capital, the pressure of competition and profit forced the handicraft industry to carry out a more detailed specialization of labor again.The division of labor enables complex operations to be broken down into many simple steps, thereby achieving specialization.The division of labor not only improves labor efficiency, but also promotes the invention of machines and the development of productivity; in turn, the invention of machines and the development of productivity promote social division of labor.

The division of labor enables the same laborers to complete much more work than in the past. On the one hand, the laborers' work skills are more professional; on the other hand, the intervention of specialized machines further simplifies and reduces the workload and work intensity, thus Greatly improved efficiency.

If the handicraft division of labor led to the birth of tools, then the industrial division of labor led to the emergence of machines.Because once human labor is simplified, it will be imitated and replaced by machines.The craftsman's skill with files and drills is now increasingly replaced by planer, grooving and drilling machines, and the craftsman's skill in cutting metal is replaced by mechanical lathes.

Compared with the role of machines, the detailed division of labor has an equally great impact on workers.The manufacturing industry decomposes the production process into a series of simple and specialized operations. These human actions gradually approach mechanical operations. Finally, humans are either replaced by machines, or humans become "machines that do not make mistakes."

In simple labor cooperation, there is no substantial change in individual labor skills.However, the production of factories has revolutionized these labor methods and completely overturned the attributes of individual labor.In this process, workers are forced to master some highly specialized operational skills, which distorts their humanity.

In the evening, several bright oil lamps were lit at the entrance of the "Suji" quilt factory located on the west side of Xinhuai'an. Workers in twos and threes walked through the factory gate with tired faces and walked towards the houses on the opposite side.

The hair on Zhang Yongdi's forehead had been condensed into strands by sweat, and her face was also pale.

As an underage woman (the Qi civil law stipulates that a woman is an adult at the age of 16 and can be married), she was introduced by an acquaintance when she was just 13 years old, and entered this quilt factory as a young female worker.

At home, Zhang Yongdi is the second child, with an older brother who is studying at the Naval Academy, and three younger siblings.When the mother was giving birth to her youngest sister, she suffered from dystocia and hemorrhage, and unfortunately passed away.In order to help the hard-working father to meet the needs of the family, he came from the countryside a few miles away to this quilt factory that can accept women to work.

In the factory, after deducting the monthly board and lodging expenses, Zhang Yongdi can get Hanzhou silver dollars one and eight cents. big" income.

I thought that when I came to this quilt factory, I could learn how to cut and make clothes while earning wages.However, more than a year later, she has been repeating the same action - making collars.As for the production process of the front, back, sleeves, and even cuffs, she has never touched it at all.

A variety of cut fabrics are mechanically and quickly sewn into collars every day, or processed whale bones are stuffed into collars.Then, along with the wooden pallets, they are passed to the back one by one, and the master craftsmen in the factory will sew each clothing part one by one, and then pass it to the back, iron it with boiling water iron, and finally pack it into a box.

Zhang Yongdi sighed sadly that maybe when she worked in this factory for several years, she would not be able to learn all the garment-making processes when she returned home, and she would always be just a "little factory girl" who can make excellent collars .

"Suji" quilt factory accepts orders for various styles of clothes, including various uniforms of the army, work shirts for coolies, and daily clothes of Westerners and Nanyang natives, but their production is more local in Hanzhou The "work clothes" that are most in demand in China and overseas territories - cardigan work clothes made of denim (denim).Every year, newly arrived immigrants, regardless of gender, will be given two sets of these labor uniforms as their transitional clothing for the coming year.

Occasionally, the "Suji" quilt factory will also make some beautiful women's clothing for the wealthy wives and young ladies in China, or export it to the Tubang Kingdom in the Nanyang region for use by noble women.Colorful patterns, fine and delicate Weihai muslin, brightly decorated tortoiseshell, and even some precious fine-grained pearls, coupled with novel styles, make every woman fall in love with it.

As a woman, although she is very envious of these beautiful clothes, Zhang Yongdi does not think that she is qualified to obtain such expensive clothes.An ordinary peasant, maybe she saved a year's wages, can't buy its two sleeves.Unless, like the beautiful Chen Amei in the factory, she married a handsome and promising military officer, maybe she could wear a beautiful wedding dress when she got married.

When it comes to the appearance that women care about most, Zhang Yongdi feels very inferior.Because of her mother, she has a completely different appearance from the average Daming-looking woman.Her mother is a Persian woman who was bought by Qi State more than ten years ago and distributed to her father.

When I was very young, my mother kept kissing her cheek and eyes every time she held her, saying that she was the most beautiful little princess in the world.However, as she grew up, she found that she looked very different from some other Han Chinese girls.In the village, there are several girls with Persian faces like her, and they are all the objects of ridicule and ridicule by other children when they are playing and reading.

"Second Rotor", "Little Bastard", "Yi Pozi" and other titles have been with her for a long time. In order to stop others from ridiculing her appearance, her elder brother and younger brother fought countless times with other children .Whenever she was wronged like this, Zhang Yongdi would throw herself into her mother's arms and cry for a long time.

And her Persian mother silently stroked her hair, sang Persian nursery rhymes she could not understand, and comforted her softly, saying that she was the most beautiful girl in the world.Her father didn't care about this, he just scolded her for ignoring other people's abuse and ridicule, but there was an indescribable look on her face.

Later, I studied books and learned knowledge in the school, and heard from the gentlemen that no matter what we look like, in this great country, we are all one nation, and everyone is an indispensable part of Qi. We must contribute our meager strength to the development and strength of this country.We speak the same words, write the same words, and live in a common country. No one should discriminate against or attack each other just because they look different.

However, Zhang Yongdi still looks enviously at those women with obvious Han characteristics.In counties and towns, women with Han faces are obviously more popular with men, and the dowry will be higher.Women with faces of different races like Zhang Yongdi, in the countryside, can marry men in the same village or nearby villages at will, but in the city, any family with a certain status tends to marry a woman with obvious Han blood for wife.

However, when some Yi people from Batavia saw women with exotic faces like Zhang Yongdi, they praised them very exaggeratedly, thinking that they all had angelic faces and were among the most beautiful women in Hanzhou. one.

Zhang Yongdi is very disdainful of the praise of these barbarians.In the school, the gentlemen had told them that these barbarians from Europe were all thugs, hooligans, and rascals, a group of scum through and through.They were extremely vicious, burning, killing and looting everywhere, trying to turn all the natives of Nanyang into their slaves.The two Han-Dutch wars were because they wanted to covet the wealth of Hanzhou, and even tried to enslave us Qi people to become their humble slaves, suppressing our Qi country for a long time.

As for the praise, it must be for an ulterior purpose, to deceive and seduce us Qi women, and to do something wrong.Furthermore, Qi State prohibits its women from marrying barbarians and natives (the number of bachelors in this country remains high, so it is natural to strictly prohibit the outflow of fat and water).

Su Shaoping, the owner of the "Suji" quilt factory, would not pay attention to the weird thoughts of little girls like Zhang Yongdi. What he cares about is the change in the price level of cotton cloth and the expansion of Qi's overseas market. question.Although, at present, the acceptance of ready-made garments in the entire Nanyang region is still very low, but he believes that the market capacity is large enough.

There are dozens of Tubang kingdoms in Southeast Asia with a population of millions. Even if only a small number of noble officials and tribal leaders are willing to accept a gorgeous ready-made garment, that is still a big demand for this quilt factory.Don't forget, in the north, there is Ming Dynasty with a population of tens of millions, Japan with a population of tens of millions, and India with gold everywhere in the west.That would be a huge market space with endless demand.

Su Shaoping's father was Kapitan Su Minggang, a former Chinese from Batavia. More than ten years ago, the Su family quickly established close ties with Hanzhou, and even married a woman in the family to the elder brother of the current king of Qi. It also gained sufficient contacts.After the two Han-Dutch wars, the Su family transferred almost all of Batavia's industries and wealth to the mainland of Hanzhou, leaving only a small number of trade windows.

As the youngest son of the family, he did not want to live in the shadow of his elder brother Su Shaonian. Seeing that the Jianye Clothing Factory was limited by insufficient production capacity and gradually unable to meet the needs of domestic clothing production, he established the "Su Ji" in Kaiyuan City. Clothing factory.

At the beginning, the production efficiency of the clothing factory was extremely low. More than [-] workers, on average, produced less than [-] sets of clothing every day, which could only meet the supply of immigrant labor uniforms in several surrounding counties and towns.

Later, after visiting the production of Heishan Machinery Factory, I was inspired to see that because of the division of labor and assembly line operation, those machines and tools with complex crafts were continuously coming off the assembly line at a very fast speed.Immediately, this kind of professional division of labor and assembly line operation was also implemented in the clothing factory.

The prerequisite for the implementation of division of labor and assembly line operation must be the establishment of standardization, such as weight, length, and processing accuracy.

As we all know, due to the small population and labor shortage in Qi State, coupled with the support and encouragement of the government, a wide range of mechanical operations are used in industrial production, ranging from simple lathes, drilling machines, grinding machines, and wire drawing machines to rolling mills. , cranes, and even a two-ton gravity hammer, to complex hydraulic spinning machinery, large looms, etc.

Through more than ten years of continuous strengthening and education, various standard length units, weight units and volume units have been gradually instilled in the minds of many scholars and craftsmen, and the concept of industrial manufacturing standards has initially formed.

In a certain sense, the history of human civilization is actually the history of technological evolution.From hand-made to machine-made, the biggest change is the use of standard common parts for mass production.It can be said that the development of universal parts and interchangeable technology is not only the biggest feature of the machine age, but also the prerequisite for mass production.

Universal components and interchangeable technology began to be widely promoted in the United States in the early 19th century, which was considered to be a symbol of the birth of the American manufacturing system, and it was called a "craft revolution".The emergence of special-purpose machine tools in an endless stream enables factories to mass-produce finished products with complex processes at a lower cost. At the same time, the standardization of parts has also greatly improved the quality of products.

In his "Su Ji" quilt factory, Su Shaoping simply divides the whole set of clothing into several "parts", handing them over to different workers for production, and then using the streamlined operation mode to "assemble" step by step to make standardized pieces. ready-to-wear.Under this production mode, the factory's production efficiency has rapidly increased from less than 260 sets per day to more than [-] sets per day.With the gradual proficiency of the manual movements of the workers, the efficiency has also been continuously improved, and finally stabilized at more than [-] sets per day.The overall efficiency has been increased by as much as six times.

The professional division of labor makes each person only know one kind of process, and must cooperate with other people to complete the whole product, which makes it more and more difficult for individuals to leave society.As time goes by, the professional division of labor in Qi's industrial manufacturing will become more and more detailed, and it will be almost impossible for professional workers (artisans) to communicate with technical personnel of different professions.

Regular time, developed productivity, increasingly abundant commodities, the transcendence of time and space, standardized products, efficient machines, powerful centralized control and collective dependence, these may constitute human civilization in the machine age.This kind of civilization may obliterate the diversity and complexity of human civilization, and regional differences and historical differences may also be wiped out by machines.

However, the civilization of this machine industry will also help a country or a nation to rise rapidly, and will eventually guide or push this country to expand irresistibly and continue to move towards the end of the ocean.

(End of this chapter)