Northern Dynasties

Chapter 30 Short Leg Limp
At dinner, Zheng Man came up again, and while eating, he looked at Li Tai with resentful eyes, which made Li Tai a little embarrassed.

Things have come to this point, no matter how much you worry about it, it won't help.The only remedy right now is to fully develop the handicraft industry, so as to make up for this huge debt hole.It is no longer possible to rely on farming alone.

"Zheng Zheng came here, and I want to ask the county government if hemp thread will be accepted? If I buy it, I can lose it at [-]% lower than the current price."

Li Tai put on a kind and honest smile, looked at Zheng Man and said.

"Twice, what does the county want this miscellaneous material for? Sir, do you want to use twine to pay for losses? This is impossible!"

Zheng Man shook his head again and again after hearing the words: "The county has its own textile manufacturing industry, and there is no need for private collection and transportation of miscellaneous materials."

"No, is there any hemp stock in the county? The hemp material has been stored for a long time, and its tendons are broken, and it becomes waste. If there is a surplus, can you borrow it on credit?"

Li Tai's smile became more honest, and he asked again.

Zheng Man directly put down the bowl and chopsticks, looked straight at Li Tai and said in a deep voice, "What are you going to do, sir? Do you want to spin linen and weave cloth, and buy grain to make up for the return? Ten thousand shi of grain, at least you have to pay for it." How much artificial materials are needed for [-] bolts of cloth, has Mr. Lang calculated it? How can it be possible for the county to..."

"It's true that it consumes a lot of materials and labor, but it depends on man's effort. You have to try it."

Li Tai also felt that his request was a little too much. Even if the county government was choked by him, it was impossible for him to provide him with hundreds of thousands of catties of hemp spinning raw materials.

Before, he thought everything was too simple, thinking that as long as he had a big spinning wheel to improve the efficiency of spinning hemp, he could weave cloth and print money.

But now, the efficiency of spinning hemp has improved, but the labor of raw materials and weaving is stuck.

Although weaving is only a basic industry, it also has several links. Improving the efficiency of one link still does not greatly improve the entire industrial process.In the final analysis, it is land and population that restrict the development of industries.

"Hey, I'll go back to the city tomorrow and try it out. Linen is cheap and weaving is cumbersome. There are indeed a lot of savings in the county warehouse. The county lord has important matters now, and I should look after him."

Zheng Man had already guessed that the huge debt could not be satisfied by the property of the manor alone, but now that he was on the same boat as Li Tai, he still sincerely hoped that this matter could be resolved.

"That's great. You don't need to make credit loans. I will buy hemp materials at current prices, and the fabrics are ready-made. No one is cheating!"

The current situation of the textile factory is that the raw materials cannot meet the production capacity of the spinning wheel, and the weavers cannot consume the spun hemp thread.The two short legs are no longer scratching the balls, but rubbing the balls hurt.

Li Tai's plan is to solve the supply problem of raw materials through Zheng Man, and then recruit a group of weaving women from the countryside to work through Zhou Changming, so as to expand the output of cloth as much as possible. Increase your cash flow first.

Although running away is also an option, Li Tai is just thinking about it.If he really wanted to run away, he would not have invested a lot of labor in the civil construction of the manor in the early days of his business.

Early the next morning, Zheng Man rode back to the city, while Li Tai took two hangers of dried meat to the south to visit Shangyang Shu.

On the flat square in front of the garrison, Zhou Changming was leading more than [-] village soldiers to practice.The people in Guanzhong are pragmatic and tough. After the summer, the soldiers in the village spend half a day clearing the wasteland and practicing half a day, and they don't waste their time at all.

After a drill was over, Zhou Changming invited Li Tai into the garrison. After each sat down, he heard Li Tai explain his intention, Zhou Changming frowned and said: "But the villagers also have their own farming and weaving work that needs to be done. , I'm afraid I won't have much free time..."

"After summer, most of the farm work is hoeing. The men can do it, and the women have to weave as households. I invite them to work in the village, but it's just a change of place. There is no need for spinning, just weaving. Of course, the work is not the same. How about doing it for nothing, two meals in the morning and evening, and a piece of cloth for a ten-day period?"

Li Tai explained with a smile that the villagers weaving at home need to retch the hemp, dry it, comb it, and then weave it into cloth, which is very inefficient.It often takes several months to weave the cloth needed for the whole year.

Li Tai's price for a piece of cloth for ten days is not a high reward, but it does not require the villagers' own cost of hemp materials, and it can save one person's rations, which is also a very cost-effective for the villagers. High affordable option.

"If this is the case, I can try to lobby the villagers. But please ensure that these weavers are safe to come and go!"

Zhou Changming was also very moved when he heard the conditions offered by Li Tai.

"Of course, there is three points of risk when going out of the house. The weavers in the village work in a single courtyard, and there will be no harassment by scoundrels. I will send people to escort them when they go in and out, and they will never be strayed and injured."

There are scoundrels running rampant in the city of Huazhou, and the countryside is not absolutely safe.Moreover, the folk customs in Guanzhong are relatively conservative, and there must be higher requirements for etiquette and precautions for women who go out to work.Li Tai also considered and arranged these aspects.

"Village soldiers can do the work for getting in and out. But if you don't have to be harassed when you work, you have to be under the control of your husband. If you can ensure that, I would also like to see that the women in the village can use their work as a substitute for farming."

Zhou Changming still believed in Li Tai's character, and after making plans with each other, he planned to visit the countryside.Li Tai was worried that the villagers might still be hesitant, so he followed him and explained in more detail.

There are quite a few villages in the vicinity of Shangyuan, with a hundred large households and a dozen small ones.Although the registered households in Wuxiang County are only in the early [-]s, those are average households who have been awarded land, and there are more private households other than average households. The main reason is that there are not many acres of grantable land in the county, and large pieces of land are Divided up by the powerful nobles.

These civilian households who have not been granted land are either tenant farmers, shade households, or rural military households. There are as many as a thousand households in Shangyuan Township alone, not including those who eat, live, and work in large manors. The Shiwu trilogy.

The group visited several villages, and most of the villagers were hesitant when they heard about it. They didn't agree until Zhou Changming, the well-known lord of the village, patted his chest as a guarantee.

Seeing this scene, Li Tai couldn't help feeling that it was lucky that he didn't turn against Zhou Changming, the village leader. If he was on his own, even if the commission was doubled, the villagers might not be willing to pay him any attention, even if they wanted to send money.

"What is this doing?"

Wandering through several villages, Li Tai found that many villagers had two square beams pressed together horizontally in their courtyards, with some cake-shaped things sandwiched between them, and stones pressed on top, which smelled quite oily.

"That's pressing oil. Flax and other seeds are fried, steamed, made into cakes, and oil is squeezed out."

Zhou Changming explained with a smile.

"Isn't there an oil mill in the village? Such pressure doesn't produce much oil! These cake ingredients still have a lot of oil and water not coming out."

Li Tai knows the rustic method of oil extraction, but such a rustic method is unheard of.

"There is an oil mill in Luoshuixiaqu, but the rent is too high. It is not worth going to the oil mill to collect the three buckets and five buckets of seeds from the villagers. This kind of squeezing does not waste labor. The cake is served in the morning and the oil is harvested in the evening. .The rest of the meal can be used as food and watermelon, so it’s not a waste.”

Zhou Changming explained casually, but Li Tai listened carefully.

The weaving of linen is too popular, so the profit is also very transparent. Even if there is a large spinning wheel to improve the efficiency of spinning, the scale of production needs to be expanded to maintain considerable profits.

But oil pressing is not the case. Oil is not only a munitions for maintaining ordnance, fire siege defense, but also a daily necessities for daily diet seasoning, lighting and antisepsis. The market is large and the profit is high. There is an essential difference in the efficiency of small-scale production and centralized operation. There is something wrong.

A few catties of linen and a piece of cloth are approximate quantities.But how much oil is produced by a bucket of seed material, the difference can be a lot!
Although such an idea was born in his heart, Li Tai also learned the lesson of spinning hemp before, and planned to carefully observe the upstream and downstream supporting related, and then decide whether to do it or not.Especially the supply of raw materials, if only relying on small households to collect, no matter how advanced the oil extraction technology is, the output will not be able to increase.

After wandering around the village with Zhou Changming all afternoon, he initially persuaded nearly a hundred villagers to agree to come to work.Li Tai is quite satisfied with such a result. It is normal for rural people to hesitate. When the industry is well established, there will be a mass base for recruiting and expanding production, which will be much more convenient.

When Li Tai returned to the manor, Zheng Man also came back from the city, with an unsightly look on his face: "Originally, the county lord has been persuaded, but today he is the county captain who is on duty to collect the warehouse, so there is no need to flood the village with raw hemp materials." , In the end, only two thousand catties of old raw hemp materials were obtained. There is no need to buy these old materials, and they have already been depreciated in the book."

Li Tai liked the atmosphere of collusion between officials and people in the Western Wei Dynasty, but he felt a little worried when he heard that it was only more than two thousand catties.After two thousand catties of raw hemp are retting and degummed, it is hard to say whether there will be one thousand catties of clinker left over. It is not enough for five large spinning wheels to spin for two days.

Li Tai was not very angry that Li Tai was acting as a hindrance, this old boy had offended him a long time ago, and he kept one account and two accounts, and whenever he got the chance, he would always call him father.

I visited those villagers today. If they come to work, it will be useless to store hemp at home. They can be collected again, but at most it will only be a few thousand catties.

"Shi Xianwei asked Mr. Lang why he searched for so much hemp material. I didn't tell him the truth, but he also said that there are tens of thousands of catties of hemp in the household. If Mr. Lang really needs it urgently, he can go to negotiate the price, but as long as Spot delivery."

Hearing what Zheng Man said, Li Tai sneered again, but he couldn't help feeling that these big households in the village are really well-off, and they even store so much raw hemp, which is a low-value material that takes up a lot of storage space.

However, Li Tai doesn't plan to send him to be a fat sheep. Who doesn't have two wealthy friends?

"Prepare some unearthed seasonal delicacies for me, I'll go back to the city tonight."

After thinking about it, Li Tai ordered again.

The biggest landlords in Huazhou City today are not the powerful people from the countryside who have lived and operated here for generations, but the outsiders like the warriors from Beizhen.Even if it is to buy raw hemp raw materials at a high price, it is better to give it to the people you know.

(End of this chapter)