The ruthless emperor in the late Ming Dynasty forced Chongzhen to abdicate at the beginning

Chapter 145 The Power of Royal Capital Has Arrived

Li Xiucai, who tried hundreds of households, saw that everyone understood, so he announced that he wanted to register for the loom.

Everyone clamored to sign up, and almost fought over their heads for a while, and almost didn't fight.

Because there are only [-] looms in the grain drying field, which is obviously not enough for everyone to share.

At this time, the role of Baihu was manifested. He pulled out the knife and shouted loudly, which immediately scared everyone to quiet down.

"Priority is given to those with two women in the family, and they will be decided by lottery. But don't worry if you don't get one. New looms will be brought in after a while. Your Majesty personally ordered that every household can Choose weaving!"

Li Xiucai hurriedly announced again.

The big dog immediately raised his hand and shouted: "Mr. Li, there are two women in my family, besides my wife and younger sister."

"Big dog, your mother-in-law is five months pregnant, can she still weave?"

"Yes."

"Don't make any noise, it doesn't matter if you are pregnant or not, Wu Dagou, right? It counts as one!"

Seeing the scholar's speech, everyone stopped talking, but the big dog's family of three were overjoyed.

Then two more families with two women stood up, and each family began to draw lots.

Because of the two production teams, there are dozens of households, almost every household has women, and bachelors without women have all joined the army, so it is impossible to divide the land.

The Xiaoqi Zongqi who just arrived were bachelors, but the girls in the village were obviously prepared for them. Many of them got engaged as soon as they came, and they only got married as soon as they turned 14.

After the lottery was drawn, the [-] households assigned to the loom cheerfully asked someone to help carry the loom back home, and placed it in the best room.

The next day, Li Xiucai and Baihu took men from thirty families to the Acropolis.

At this time, the Acropolis was already overcrowded, and almost all of them came to pick up the spindles from the hundred household forts.

There is only one imperial store in the city, and although there are more than a dozen staff members, there is only one shopkeeper who can read and write. As a result, it is hard to distribute hundreds of Baihubao after being busy from the afternoon to the next afternoon.

To receive the spindles for the first time, you must obtain a guarantee certificate from both the Baihu and Shibai households where you are located in Baihubao, and then you will be issued a numbered plaque, and you can come to pick up the spindles and hand over the cotton cloth in the future.

The spindles are all packed in small wooden frames. One basket of spindles is just enough to weave a piece of cotton cloth. After repeated calculations, the distribution is thick cotton yarn at the beginning.

If the woven coarse cotton cloth is unqualified, not only will there be no wages, but also a compensation of three hundred cash for the spindle. If it fails three times in a row, the qualification will be disqualified.

And every cotton cloth received by the guard will be marked with the name of the shopkeeper of the imperial shop, so that the person in charge of the shopkeeper who is in charge of inspection can be found at that time.

Similarly, the bonuses for each treasurer and fellows of the imperial shop will also be calculated according to the number of pieces of cloth collected each month.

In the future, apart from selling grain, salt and cotton cloth, collecting grain, distributing spindles, and recycling cotton cloth, the imperial stores will not do any redundant things, nor will they sell redundant commodities.

Even so, the workload of each shopkeeper of the imperial shop is still very huge.

After receiving the spindles and returning to Baihubao, under the guidance of the little girl surnamed Wang, they all began to learn how to weave.

This weaving can't be stopped, except during the daytime, in many families, the man lights a torch at night, and the woman sits in front of the loom and weaves desperately.

And this scene can be seen almost everywhere in the guards around the capital.

With the help of his younger sister, the Dagou family was the first to weave a piece of cloth. It took almost half a month, and then he took the younger sister to the imperial shop in the Acropolis carrying the cloth and baskets on his shoulders.

"Which one is from Baihubao? Have you got the brand?"

"Take it, here..."

Da Gou quickly took off the waist badge and handed it to the female shopkeeper in the shop with a nervous expression on his face.

The female shopkeeper checked the waist badge, put it on the counter, and then told the waiter next to her, "Take the cloth to the yard and unfold it for me to have a look." She said and left the counter.

The two guys immediately unfolded the four-foot-long cotton cloth.

Fortunately, the space in the store is very huge. In fact, it was remodeled from the house of a big family.

The female shopkeeper first measured the length and width with a ruler, and then carefully inspected the cloth surface, and suddenly frowned. It was obvious that the weaving was too rough and she was not satisfied.

The big dog and younger sister on the side were very nervous when they saw the shopkeeper's expression.

If it fails, not only will there be no wages, but three hundred cash will be lost. Thinking of the hard work of his sister and wife for half a month, Big Dog's brow is sweating.

"Next time weave better, this time forget it."

Seeing the expressions of the two, the female shopkeeper thought that this was the first piece of cotton cloth received in the store, and the above also explained that it could be relaxed for the first time, so she finally nodded and asked the waiter to roll up the cotton cloth again .

Both the big dog and the younger sister let out a long breath. Not long after, the brothers and sisters left the imperial shop with a basket of spinning spindles on their backs. When they left the Acropolis, they had almost spent all the four-coin banknotes, so they were obviously worried about the treasures.

After more than half a year of circulation, other merchants near the capital have basically accepted the treasure banknotes, and they will exchange them for Yuanbao after earning five taels of denomination, and of course they will leave some change.

As more and more military households finished weaving cloth, handed it over to the imperial shop, and then transported it to the cloth dyeing workshop outside the capital, those who were interested could not sit still.

With the growing scale of spinning workshops and the increasing number of military households weaving cloth, after the imperial stores in various places began to sell cheap cotton cloth, there was a sensation in the whole north.

The cooperating nobles and gentry also became active, especially the nobles immediately set their sights on the Jiangnan area and Huguang.

Because there are no royal shops in these two areas, it is a good time to sell at a high price and make a fortune.

And more gentry and landlords are crazily hoarding cotton cloth. After all, the price is almost doubled. If they don’t hoard now, when will they wait?
So the first batch of cotton cloth totaled more than 2 bolts, almost all of which were bought by gentry and landlords everywhere.

Zhu Cihong did not restrict this, but ordered the manufacturing supervisor to build looms and spinning machines crazily.

Almost for every spinning machine built, four looms were built.

He wants to let the world see what it means to be truly generous and what it means to concentrate on doing big things.

Under such crazy expansion, by September, the scale of spinning machines had expanded to 30 units and [-] looms, covering almost all military households under the jurisdiction of the Sandu Division near the capital. Every household has a loom.

Hundreds of large and small cloth dyeing workshops opened outside the capital, with a monthly output of 50 million pieces of fine cotton cloth, more than half of which were sold to the south by Xungui.

Under such a huge impact, the entire cotton cloth market in Jiangnan was shaken. Fortunately, the cotton cloth merchants in Jiangnan were rich and powerful, and they immediately ate all the cotton cloth in the north at one go, which stabilized the price of Jiangnan cotton cloth.

But everyone knows that if this continues, all cotton-related workshops in Jiangnan will go bankrupt.

Because they can no longer buy cotton from Shandong.

At this moment, in a manor outside the city of Yangzhou, there are hundreds of non-member gentlemen dressed in Chinese clothes, large and small, gathered. Almost all of these people are related to cotton cloth, and they came from all over the south of the Yangtze River.

(End of this chapter)