I want to be emperor

Chapter 788

The Spring Festival of Chengshun's 31st year was Song Erniu's sixth Spring Festival after leaving his hometown, and it was also the first Spring Festival he celebrated in North America, an overseas territory.

But to be honest, Song Erniu didn't feel much of the Spring Festival atmosphere in Shuanghe County.

Even if it was the sound of firecrackers outside, every household posted Spring Festival couplets, and many people were full of smiles, saying Happy New Year to others.

But none of this has anything to do with Song Erniu!
Because he has no relatives in North America!

The Spring Festival was supposed to be a time to reunite with family members, but Song Erniu couldn't find any relatives or even friends to reunite with.

On the evening of New Year’s Eve, Song Erniu pasted couplets in a small wooden house he temporarily rented, set off firecrackers, and cooked dumplings for himself in the room alone for the New Year’s Eve dinner. Eating under the dim oil lamp of oil.

While eating, tears flowed down involuntarily.

----

This Spring Festival, Song Erniu didn't take even a day off. The miners all took a rest, but he didn't. Even on the morning of the New Year's Eve, he was still busy.

On the first day of the new year, he continued to be busy. He walked out of the house with a smile on his face, nodding and saying hello to some neighbors who he had met but not familiar with, and said a happy new year.

Although the days of fighting outside are hard and lonely, tears are useless in the adult world.

After the Spring Festival, he still has a lot of things to do.

Before the Spring Festival, he set up a small workshop to produce canvas tooling, and he is taking advantage of the Spring Festival to expand the production scale to occupy more markets.

In the winter of last year, Song Erniu, who had just arrived in Shuanghe County, discovered by chance that miners' trousers and jackets could be made of canvas, and this kind of wear-resistant and cheap clothes were very popular among miners.

At the beginning, he just bought a little canvas tentatively, and asked a few peasant women to help him sew the clothes, but he didn't expect to sell them soon. Although the money he made was not too much, it was more than panning for gold. And stable.

In this way, Song Erniu simply put his focus on the canvas clothes. He bought some canvases in succession, asked the peasant women from nearby neighbors to help them sew them, and then took them to the gold mining area in the suburbs. peddling.

After a month, he also made a lot of money.

With the money, he thought about expanding his canvas overalls business.

I always ask a few peasant women to help me sew by hand in their free time, but the efficiency is too slow and the output is too low, which is far from meeting the needs of the market.

According to what Song Erniu has inquired over the past month or so, there are at least 2 gold diggers in this area of ​​Shuanghe County.

And these gold diggers will have a strong demand for this kind of canvas tooling.

At the same time, these people also have enough purchasing power. After all, these gold diggers pan for gold every day. Although most of them are earning hard money, only a small number of them explode overnight.

But really counting, even those who earn hard money and these gold diggers have a monthly income of at least ten yuan, and if they are lucky, it will even be more, reaching tens of yuan.

The reason why most of them have become poor... is because the various expenses in the mining area are very large, the rent of housing is not cheap, the food is not cheap, and the wine they drink is even more expensive.

At the same time, most of these gold diggers, like Song Erniu, were young people who came from China to make a fortune, and most of them were single.

Many people eat enough for one person and the whole family is not hungry, and the money earned from the gold mining is also spent lavishly.

Therefore, there are many gold diggers who come here, but there are very few gold diggers who really make a fortune and even save enough money.

However, such a group of gold diggers has also brought enough consumption power to the local area. Shuanghe County can leap from a small town with less than a few hundred people to a county with thousands of people, and All kinds of shops have sprung up like mushrooms, because of these gold diggers.

Song Erniu's canvas tooling business also benefited from this situation.

Seeing that the hand-sewn production is insufficient and the market demand is very large, Song Erniu naturally wants to expand the scale of his canvas tooling.

He also made some money before, although not much, but there was some, so he rented a small warehouse, and then bought three pedal sewing machines, and asked a few women to use the sewing machines to sew, and then he pulled the sewing machine himself. Go to the mine to set up a street stall to sell, and embarked on the road of workshop-style production and sales.

When Song Erniu was working in Songjiang Prefecture, he used to work in a garment factory owned by a private owner. The garment factory mainly provided tooling and uniforms for some local factories. The main machinery and equipment used in the factory were pedal sewing machines.

So when he wanted to expand the production of canvas tooling, he immediately wanted this pedal sewing machine.

This pedal sewing machine was developed and produced by Hantian Textile Co., Ltd. It has been used in the domestic garment industry and other industries that require sewing, but the real sales volume is still in the home market.

Because the ready-to-wear industry in the Great Chu Empire has not been developing very well, there are actually very few professional ready-made garment factories, and some of them provide standard clothes for official organizations or enterprises, and few of them are for the ordinary ready-made garment market.

The tradition of the people of the Great Chu Empire is that men farm and women weave... Although the textile industry is developing rapidly now, there are not so many families who spin and weave by themselves, but in fact they still exist widely in rural areas.

As for tailoring and sewing, most of these urban families, even middle- and upper-class families, make their own clothes, and rarely buy ready-made clothes outside. Basically, they buy fabrics and have them sewn by the family members.

This is a matter of traditional habits and costs.

Hantian Textile Company, which cannot sell its ready-made clothes, thinks about it, forget it, if it can’t sell its ready-made clothes, then it can’t be sold. I should sell sewing machines... Not to mention, the two-generation home furnishing machine developed by Hantian Textile Company and brought to the market Sewing machines, hand sewing machines and pedal sewing machines from the very beginning, have sold well, and are very popular among middle- and upper-class housewives.

Even nowadays, when some women from upper-middle-class families in China get married, they will bring a pedal sewing machine produced by Hantian Textile Company in their dowry.

After all, the social ethos of Chu State these days is actually very traditional and conservative. Women, even those in the upper class, are very particular about female celebrity skills.

Therefore, after introducing the sewing machine to middle and upper-class housewives, the sales volume is surprisingly good, because the market demand is too large, its own production is not enough, and the expansion of production is slow. The most important thing is that Hantian Textile Company itself is not a mechanized company. of.

Therefore, we have cooperated with several domestic machinery companies, and expanded the production by adopting technology authorization. This kind of thing gradually spread to the North American colonies.

Song Erniu had seen a tailor using a pedal sewing machine in a tailor shop in the county town before, and after inquiring about it, he found it in the store of a trading company in Shuanghe County town.

However, this thing is also relatively expensive. Although Song Erniu has a little money, he still can't afford to buy multiple pedal sewing machines.

In desperation, he had no choice but to go to the local finance bank to apply for a loan.

Fortunately, the North American authorities still provide relatively strong encouragement and support to the local area, and relatively strong support for immigrants to start businesses.

However, support belongs to support, and other necessary procedures are still indispensable.

In order to obtain a loan, Song Erniu first went to register a company, then rented a small factory building as an office space, and then went to a local machinery trading company to pay a small deposit and sign a contract for the purchase of three sewing machines after the contract.

After going through all kinds of procedures, I went to the finance bank again, and then I got the loan smoothly.

But the loan was transferred directly to another trading company before the loan was received. At the same time, the three sewing machines were also used as collateral for the loan.

After following this set of procedures, Song Erniu not only spent all the money he earned before, but also spent nearly a hundred Chu Yuan that was saved in China and brought to North America with great difficulty.

And I still owe a lot of debt!
However, at this moment, his heart was on fire, because he saw the hope of the future!

After intense preparations during the Spring Festival, Song Erniu recruited more than a dozen full-time sewing girls before the Spring Festival was over, and began to use pedal sewing machines to produce canvas tooling in a small warehouse.

The main raw material, canvas, is also on credit.

A trading company at the scene mainly deals in various types of cloth. When Song Erniu saw a large demand for canvas in a short period of time, he was also happy to see a larger market for his canvas.

There are more than 2 people in Shuanghe County, most of them are gold diggers, and they are all potential consumers of this kind of canvas tooling.

The market here is huge.

For the subsequent potential big market, they were willing to pay part of the credit to provide Song Erniu with a batch of canvas.

Therefore, while others are still celebrating the Spring Festival, Song Erniu has been busy and completed the expansion of the production of his own canvas tooling.

The efficiency of using a pedal sewing machine to produce garments is countless times faster than manual stitching, which means a huge increase in output.

On the sixth day of the Lunar New Year, when the miners in the gold mines or the gold diggers who simply did their own work began to pan for gold in the mines one after another, Song Erniu was also driving a two-wheeled carriage and pulling hundreds of sails. The equipment was loaded to the mining area.

After arriving at the place where the stall was set up before, Song Erniu arranged his goods on the carriage, and arranged the horses that pulled the cart.

This carriage is not his own, but rented from the owner of a timber workshop next door. Whether it is a carriage or a horse, he must take good care of it, and if there is a problem, he will lose money.

After this settled down, a four-wheeled carriage came next door. The driver was dressed very vigorously, unlike Song Erniu who was wearing a canvas overalls made by himself. This middle-aged man in his thirties was wearing He was dressed in decent woolen business attire and wore a black round hat.

This person, Song Erniu, recognized him. He was Boss Chen who was the first to set up a stall in this mining area. He mainly sold some daily necessities. They seemed to be very small things, but the sales volume was very good, and his income was much higher than that of Song Erniu. .

The four-wheeled carriage and the two Toyoshu horses that pull it are all his own, and he himself said that there is also a grocery store in the county town.

After meeting this person, Song Erniu took the initiative to say hello: "Hello, Boss Chen!"

Boss Chen nodded slightly, glanced at the two-wheeled carriage beside Song Erniu, and immediately said: "Oh, this is the new year, Xiao Song, you have made a fortune, and you have bought all the carriages!"

Song Erniu quickly waved his hand: "No way, this is rented by someone else, how can I buy a carriage!"

In North America, carriages are actually worthless. After all, they are just ordinary carriages for pulling goods, and ordinary carpenters can basically make them.

The most valuable thing is the horse that pulls the cart.

In North America, there are no local horses. The native horses in America have been extinct for a long time, and now the horses in America are basically brought over by outsiders.

The Spaniards were the first to bring some over, but the Spaniards' sphere of influence was mainly concentrated in the southern region of North America, that is, around Mexico, and then a small amount of the east coast of North America.

On the west coast, the Spaniards hadn't set foot before, and naturally there couldn't be any horses there.

The horses used by the Chu people in North America are basically brought directly from the mainland and bred.

Because of the high cost of shipping horses, and the relatively short time to breed and graze horses locally, the Chu people still lack horses in North America, and they still have to purchase a lot of Spanish horses from the Spaniards in the south every year.

However, in North America, especially in the southern region, the climate is good, which is very suitable for grazing and breeding. The number of local horses owned by Chu people is also increasing rapidly, and the price of horses will drop sharply in a few years.

But that's later.

Now, the price of horses is still relatively expensive. Song Erniu's canvas tooling business has just started, and he can afford it with a gritted teeth. leased.

Song Erniu said hello to Boss Chen, and helped Boss Chen unload and resettle him. He didn't ask for anything, he just set up a stall business in this mining area. Naturally, he established a good relationship with the bosses who set up stalls in the surrounding area, and Be nicer.

Make money with peace!
When Song Erniu helped Boss Chen resettle, other people who came to set up stalls also arrived one after another. Some used horse-drawn carts to transport goods, and some simply used carts or carried them on their shoulders.

The things sold are some daily necessities, and there are some food stalls selling food and drink. Basically, they sell whatever the gold diggers in the mining area need, all kinds of things.

Many of them also do gold recycling business by the way.

Among the gold diggers here, only a very small number are full-time employees of mining companies, and most of them are actually gold diggers working alone.

Many people from the state of Chu came here from long distances to seek gold and make a fortune overnight, not to work as miners for others.

After the solo gold diggers found the gold sands, it was inconvenient for them to spend the gold sands directly. To exchange them for money, they either went to the bank to exchange them, or simply exchanged them here to some bosses who bought gold.

Song Erniu didn't do this, he bought Jinsha on the spot, and then took it back to the county and sold it to a big gold buyer.

Although there is a large profit range between the gold price in the mining area and the domestic gold retail price, in fact, the gold buyers on site are all small buyers, and they only make a small difference, and the profits are not very large.

If there is too much difference in profit, and the gold diggers are not stupid, they will directly take it to the county town or Jinshan City and sell it directly to those large gold buyers, or simply sell it to the financial bank.

So what kind of gold business is here... In fact, you don't make much money.

But the risks involved in the business of gold are not small... Today's Shuanghe County is not a safe place.

There are a huge number of gold diggers, who not only brought huge consumption, but also brought follow-up agricultural labor resources, but among these people, there are also very few people who are not reconciled to the reality, and then embarked on the illegal road.

It hasn't been long since I came here, but Song Erniu has heard about several robbery and murder cases.

Years ago, a gold digger who had just arrived was lucky. He picked up a piece of dog's head gold the size of two fists within a few days of panning for gold. Before he had time to be happy, he was killed in the tent that night. A piece of dog-headed gold the size of a pair of fists disappeared.

The patrolmen on the mine are still investigating this case, but I heard from some people who have been here for a long time that this kind of thing is basically impossible to find out.

Because most of these gold diggers work alone, at most they have a few relatives and friends, and the turnover of personnel is very high. Many people come from China to seek gold excitedly, but they don't work for long, or they leave after a few months. , Then ran to farm and cultivated land as a small landlord.

The people come and go, the mobility is too high, and many gold diggers don't have any fixed residences, they all set up tents in the wild in the mining area, even because the climate in Shuanghe County is very good, some gold diggers don't even have tents, Directly use the ground as the bed and the sky as the quilt.

Under such circumstances, it is very difficult for the police to identify potential criminals.

In addition, there is no surveillance equipment or other means of criminal investigation these days, so it is actually difficult to detect a murder case in the mining area in time.

These deeds also let Song Erniu understand that money is easy to earn in this place, but it is not easy to keep it, especially if it is related to gold, it is easy to become the target of robbers.

Therefore, Song Erniu would rather do the direct canvas tooling business honestly than contact these gold businesses.

To be honest, his canvas tooling business made no less money than these gold dealers.

On the first day of work after the Spring Festival, he sold dozens of sets of canvas overalls, which is much better than the previous year.

Because after this period of brewing, more gold diggers have known that this kind of canvas tooling is durable and suitable for gold digging work, so many people came to buy it.

In the afternoon, Song Erniu packed his things and prepared to go back to the city in a carriage. In order to be safe on the way back and avoid encountering robbers, Song Erniu chose to hold a group with other businessmen to keep warm and return to the city.

He sold a lot of things today, and he has a lot of cash on him. If he was robbed, he would cry to death.

Boss Chen looked at Song Erniu who looked cautious, and immediately lifted the hem of his clothes slightly, revealing a revolver inside: "Xiao Song, listen to my advice, you have to get a gun license later, buy Put on a gun for self-defense, here is no better than in China, making money is not a skill, but keeping money after making money is the skill!"

Among the dozen or so businessmen around, many of them echoed and said that guns are indispensable when going out to do business.

Some people also say that you don't have to use a gun, but you must have it, and let others know that you have it. Otherwise, when the robbers see that you don't have a gun, they will directly bully you like a persimmon.

Some people, like Boss Chen, took out their own guns, including revolvers, while others had long-barreled shotguns.

Song Erniu was stunned when he saw it... Each of the dozen or so businessmen had a gun, and some even had several guns... Boss Chen had a shotgun and two six-shot revolvers!

Only he himself did not...

This North America is really different from China!

(End of this chapter)