Go back to the Ming Dynasty to be a thousand households

Chapter 131

March 1591, 5 AD.

A place not far from the northeast of Shenchi Fort was crowded with people and bustling.

Here, an iron smelting plant is being built on a huge scale. There are as many as a thousand iron workers.Moreover, the division of labor is meticulous. Among the iron frying workers, there are special divisions of furnace workers, foundry workers, fitters, and hammer workers.

The iron smelting plant under construction was named Shenchibao Iron Works by Huang Laifu.Compared with the Shenchibao Coal Mine, the establishment of the Shenchibao Iron Works went smoothly. Huang Laifu's thunderbolt method in Taipingzhuang deterred a group of local snakes near Shenchibao.Huang Laifu even uprooted the powerful Liu family in their eyes, not to mention them little snakes.Therefore, when Huang Laifu recruited these small iron mine owners, they all seemed very cooperative.Huang Laifu did not treat them badly, and promised to give them some dividends every year in the future.

Through the efforts of everyone, the Shenchibao iron smelting plant was built very quickly. Most of the workers were miners from Wuzhaibao. In addition to the large Shenchibao coal mine, there were more than 1000 miners and their families here.There are also experienced miners invited from all over the world.In addition, there are many miners from the local small iron mines in Shenchibao.Due to the abundance of moon silver, even some soldiers from Shenchi Fort secretly went to work in the iron smelting factory.After statistics, the number of miners working near the Shenchibao Iron Works has exceeded [-] young and strong.

The Shenchibao Iron Works is the center of iron smelting. Around the iron plant, there are many mine furnaces, etc., forming a complete production line from mining, charcoal burning, smelting to transportation.

After the establishment of the Shenchibao Iron Works, as soon as the iron was smelted, various merchants gathered in the Shenchibao area. In addition to the Wuzhaibao merchants who cooperated with Huang Laifu, there were also merchants from various places, such as merchants from Shuozhou and Ningwu. We buy ironware here and sell it everywhere.Some wealthy merchants even had two hundred pack oxen.

In the current Ming Dynasty, due to the increasing demand for ironware in the market, the sales of ironware have been in short supply, which has also stimulated the continuous development of ironware production.As early as the time of Yongle, the iron output of Daming had reached 16 tons, which was comparable to the total output of 2550 tons in Europe at the beginning of the 18th century. Since then, the iron output of Daming had maintained a steady growth until the time of Wanli.Selling ironware has become a very profitable industry, so there are countless folk riches.

"Ah, what a big iron factory, it's even better than Zhang Shouqing and Zunhua Iron Factory in Mount Wutai."

The smoke stove next to the iron factory is constantly emitting thick smoke, which makes the surrounding air look gray and makes it difficult to breathe.However, accompanied by Huang Laifu and Tian Dafu, the defender of Shenchi Castle, Eunuch Ma Jiuying visited the ironworks with great interest, and kept expressing his emotions.

Eunuch Ma was naturally very concerned about Huang Laifu's mining in Shenchi Fort. In the end, he couldn't sit still in Wuzhai Fort, so he came to Shenchi Fort to inspect. Naturally, Huang Laifu accompanied him on the inspection.Due to concern about the mining of Shenchi Fort, Huang Laifu has stayed in Shenchi Fort during this period of time. Some of his affairs in Wuzhai Fort are currently left to his father Huang Sihao to manage.

As for Zhang Shouqing in Wutai Mountain that Eunuch Ma Jiuying mentioned just now, he is a local tycoon who opened a mine in Wutai Mountain. , are larger than Zhang Shouqing.

According to Huang Laifu, in Shenchibao, a large iron factory, the annual output of ironware is set at about [-] tons, which is the first in Ming Dynasty.At that time, the price of pig iron in Daming was about [-] taels of silver per ton, and the annual output of [-] tons of iron was worth more than [-] taels of silver every year. Excluding costs, the profits were very generous.

In view of the importance and nature of this iron factory, this iron factory is officially operated, but Huang Laifu still let the businessmen carry out the usual production and operation of the iron factory, because Huang Laifu knows the disadvantages of government-run enterprises.

In the early Ming Dynasty, the imperial court used the government-run mining and smelting industry to manage the country's ironware. The labor in it generally included civilian craftsmen, civilian husbands, military craftsmen, military husbands, shift craftsmen, and convicts. .These people, except for the military craftsmen, are paid very little, and the management officials are always beating, scolding and insulting. Their status is like slaves, and they have no enthusiasm for work.

However, in the later period of Hongwu, the private iron mining industry was already dominant.By the time of Wanli, the largest government-run mining and metallurgy in Daming—Zunhua government-run iron smelting plant declared bankruptcy and closed down. The government-run mining and metallurgy industry was ignored in Daming. Buy.

The private iron mines in various places usually use the taxation license method to operate with the government's investment promotion contract, and the government imposes one-fifteenth of the iron tax on them.However, there are still few such law-abiding private iron mine owners. In various parts of Daming, there are many tyrants and tycoons like the Liu family in Taipingzhuang, who illegally occupy the mines in various places. They are very rich because of this, but the court can't collect a tael of silver. .

As for Huang Laifu, he operates the iron and coal mines in Shenchibao, and it is estimated that he can make a gross profit of more than 20 taels of silver a year. Except for 10% of the silver, [-]% belongs to Huang Laifu, and another [-]% It belongs to all the partners and merchants.In addition, Wuzhai Fort, Shenchi Fort, and Bajiao Fort pay [-] taels of tax and silver to the Ministry of Households every year.All in all, the interests of all parties are taken into account.

After hearing Huang Laifu's budget, Eunuch Ma Jiuying was very excited. Huang Laifu was able to distribute a bonus of more than 8 taels of silver to Emperor Wanli for a poor place like Shenchibao alone, which is very amazing.Eunuch Ma Jiuying can see the excitement of Emperor Wanli's future, and his ability to handle affairs, and his future status in the emperor's mind.

Thinking of this, Eunuch Ma Jiuying said to Huang Laifu with a smile all over his face: "Master Huang is loyal to the country, the emperor must be very happy. Master Huang just let it go. If there is anything, the emperor will support Master Huang."

As he spoke, he was thinking of going to Emperor Wanli to tell the good news tonight.As for Huang Laifu's affairs in Taipingzhuang, Eunuch Ma Jiuying certainly knew about it. From his point of view, of course he fully supported Huang Laifu.

"That's right, as long as we have the emperor's support, why should we be afraid of Laifu?"

The third brother-in-law Tian Dafu also smiled and said, after receiving Huang Laifu's money, he also thought about it, as long as he has the emperor's support, so what if he offends the general soldier?In this world, only the emperor's thighs are the thickest.

"Thank you, Eunuch." Huang Laifu said with a smile. He felt a sense of accomplishment in his heart at this point.It is impossible to say that Huang Laifu is not proud of the changes that have taken place step by step in the places he manages.

Everyone walked to a blast furnace, where thick smoke was billowing, and a furnace of coke was burning.In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, coke was widely used in ironmaking in various places, far earlier than the coke ironmaking that Britain began to use in 1709.The coking method used in the Ming Dynasty is still used in some places today.And because there are Taipingzhuang Coal Mine and Wenling Coal Mine next to Shenchibao Iron Works, there are a lot of high-quality coal here, so it is very convenient to burn coke, which greatly saves costs.

The coke refining blast furnace in front of everyone is a rectangular coking furnace. The bottom of the furnace is slightly higher than the ground, and it is paved with bricks. It is surrounded by earth walls. The foot of the wall is about one foot deep, three feet high and one foot four thick. Inch.The furnace is eight feet wide and five feet long.The fire gates are built symmetrically, and the distance between the fire gates is about three feet.The shape of the fire door is square on the outside and round on the inside, big on the outside and small on the inside.

There are several coke ovens of this kind around the ironworks.When the coal from the Shenchibao Coal Mine was transported here, it was fired.The coking time is three days, the coke output rate is more than [-]%, and each furnace can coke [-] tons at a time.

With coke, the iron smelting rate has been greatly improved. In front of the iron-making shaft furnace with a height of several meters, the ironworkers pulled a huge wooden bellows pulled by four people, and continuously blasted the iron-making shaft furnace to improve the smelting process. Strength of.

The iron after being baked, if not fried, is pig iron.If iron is fried, it is wrought iron, and when raw and cooked are smelted, it is steel.After the Sui and Tang Dynasties, frying iron was almost the only way to prepare wrought iron from pig iron. In the Ming Dynasty, there were three kinds of iron frying furnaces: ground furnace, reverberatory furnace and raw and cooked ironmaking furnace.Compared with the simple ground stove, the reflective wok iron stove is more advanced.

In Daming, it has been known to use iron-making furnaces and iron-frying furnaces in series to improve production efficiency and reduce energy consumption, and the same is true for Shenchibao Iron Works.Immediately after the pig iron balls came out of the furnace, they were transferred to the frying furnace. At this time, the entire Shenchibao Iron Works was busy, and the fitters and hammermen worked together to make the pig iron into mature iron.

As for steel, in the current Ming Dynasty, it is somewhat difficult to directly train iron into steel, and some technical difficulties must be overcome.In his materials, there are the methods of using the "stirring method" and "rolling method" in later generations.The so-called "stirring method" means that when the pig iron is turned into a semi-fluid state in the furnace, it is stirred to burn off the carbon contained in the pig iron, thereby refining wrought iron.Its invention made it possible to smelt high-quality wrought iron with coke.The so-called "rolling method" refers to rolling wrought iron into steel with a rolling machine instead of a hammer.Its invention made wrought iron 15 times more efficient.

To use these two methods, a large number of technical difficulties need to be overcome, and the most important thing is to have market demand.In Daming right now, if there is wrought iron, it is enough to sell everywhere. The use of steel is rare, and steel is very expensive, and the market for its use is small.

For Huang Laifu, to make some armor and weapons, wrought iron is enough. Anyway, Wuzhaibao can't make guns now, so what's the use of steel?In fact, until the early [-]th century, even the cannons were mostly made of bronze, and steel cannons were rare.

Huang Laifu still said that how far the technology needs to be developed will wait until the market demand is met.

And today, Huang Laifu has also been in Shenchi Fort for a while. To him, the matter of Shenchi Fort has come to an end. Huang Laifu plans to return to Wuzhai Fort in the next few days.But he didn't know that another crisis was quietly approaching Shenchi Castle.

(End of this chapter)