Back to the end of Ming Dynasty to be a warlord

Chapter 518 Get through a system

The new book "The Rise of Great Powers 1900" is for collection.

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Yang Chao brought a large group of officials from the Ministry of Industry this time, including Bai Lei, the left servant of the Ministry of Industry.

Bai Jiangtou was originally Yang Chao's candidate for the Minister of Industry, but a talent with higher level and practical experience than him appeared in the imperial examination. He thought that the paper was from Bai Lei, but after unpacking it, he found out that the paper was actually from Zhang Guowei.

Zhang Guowei is an expert in water conservancy. Although he was also a civil servant in the past, he pays attention to practicing what he has learned and applying it. He is different from those civil servants who do not work hard. He has been the governor of ten prefectures in Jiangnan for seven or eight years, especially in Suzhou. He has benefited from his political achievements so far. He also compiled the "Wuzhong Water Conservancy Complete Book" to clearly analyze the water system and hydraulic power in the Suzhou area. He also built a large number of water conservancy projects in those days. One person and one horse, that is, one person and one boat, inspect everywhere and participate in person.

Zhang Guowei has rich theoretical knowledge and rich practical experience. Naturally, he has a much broader vision than a guy like Bai Lei. He can use a macro perspective to analyze the layout of water systems, etc., which is better than Bai Lei.

But Yang Chao didn't expect that this guy who used to be Minister of the Ministry of War and entered the cabinet would also be willing to take Yang Chao's imperial examination. Those who have just left the mountain, as representatives of the gentry class, do not let craftsmen hold power.

Yang Chao didn't care about the power struggle of the gentry class, as long as they obtained power reasonably and legally, it was allowed.

Zhang Guowei advocated the Ministry of Industry, which is actually worthy of the name. He presided over the completion of the renovation of the Wusong River.

With Zhang Guowei on his head, Bai Lei was completely reduced to a thug. He was even assigned by Zhang Guowei to go to various places for construction. He didn't have any resistance. As a craftsman, he really had no political means to fight against this kind of bureaucrat.

This time, Yang Chao brought Bai Lei here to cultivate his governance ability.

Standing on the hillside, there is a small river below the hillside, which can be passed by small boats, and can directly enter the canal network of Suzhou, which is only five miles away from Suzhou City.

"Baijiangtou, build a small pier here, and then the raw silk and silk from our silk farm can directly enter Suzhou, and then be transported to Wusong."

Yang Chao pointed to the small river at the foot of the mountain and said, Bai Shilang quickly wrote it down in a notebook.

Yang Chao said to him again: "There is also a row of big houses built along the river. It doesn't need to be very tall, but it must be spacious. The row closest to the river only has skylights for lighting, try to seal it as much as possible, but there must be a secret passage leading to the river. In this way, the room must be very humid and the temperature will not be too high. In the future, it will be used to store mulberry leaves and mulberry branches. The second row of rooms also cannot have large windows, and it is mainly airtight and used to raise silkworms. The third row of houses, Large windows are used for ventilation, and skylights must be opened to allow ventilation and light transmission, which is for raising silkworms.”

Such three rows of large houses have a capacity greater than the combined silkworm rooms of a hundred small silkworm households, but Yang Chao requires that the output must reach the output of a thousand farmers. If there is no ten times the output, it will not attract investment from the landlord class. .

To do this, in addition to the large enough space of these houses, they must be fully utilized. Each silkworm house is basically open, and there are no redundant walls in the middle.And the height must be fully utilized, using tall shelves, stacked layer by layer up to the roof, and each layer is used to raise silkworms. The area of ​​​​sericulture alone is estimated to be no smaller than a thousand farmers.

The most important thing is that these professional buildings can better guarantee the temperature than the houses of farmers. Farmers raise silkworms in their own bedrooms. Large and small silkworms need different environments. Not only are silkworms not well raised, but their lives are also affected.

Professional sericulture.

But it's not just about raising silkworms. If Yang Chao just wanted to develop professional silkworm raising, it wouldn't be so much trouble.

He has had people bring silkworm eggs from all over the world, Guangdong silkworm eggs, Shandong silkworm eggs, and local excellent silkworm eggs in the south of the Yangtze River. After these silkworm eggs are differentiated, their genes must be different. Through hybridization, Yang Chao hopes to breed new ones. Variety to come.

Even Yang Chao has entrusted the Zheng family and the Dutch to import a batch of silkworm eggs from India and Japan, and vigorously breed and cultivate them here, so that the silkworm eggs of the Ming Dynasty must always be ahead of the world.

Silkworm breeding base, this is Yang Chao's ultimate goal.

"Ministry of Industry, your Ministry of Industry is not only responsible for building canals and irrigation. It is also responsible for promoting industry!"

Yang Chao said to Bai Lei.

In the past, the Ministry of Industry basically served agriculture, so its main function was to build roads, palaces, and canals, and it was also engaged in water conservancy projects. The functions of the Ministry are reorganized into industrial services, at least to strengthen the industry.

Bai Lei continued to record that in the past two years as an official, he was physically and mentally exhausted. He was more tired than before when repairing projects. He complained all day at home, but if he was asked to give up this servant, he would not be willing to kill him. Minister, this kind of thing has never happened in thousands of years. He enjoys it very much. For this reason, the family business has been completely taught to his two sons.

Ask Bai Jiangtou to leave someone to take charge of the construction here, and let the old silkworm farmers give their opinions one by one, and reward ten taels of silver for a reasonable opinion. These women are very active.Later, they put forward useful suggestions such as adding an earthen stove in the small silkworm farm and laying wood slag and gravel on the floor of the large silkworm farm.

"In addition, a large textile factory needs to be built. Brick walls and roof trusses are not needed, but a large enough open space is enough. By the way, have you measured the textile machines? Get a thousand looms. The silk reeling field also needs to be designed in this way. It must meet the needs of various equipment and tools for silk reeling. You can consult those old silkworm farmers. I need to build three houses for such a field. In addition, there is a raw material warehouse for raw silk and a warehouse for silk.”

"In half a year, after half a year, I will see that silk is produced here. After one year, I will see that the benefits here are equivalent to a thousand farm families. And there are not many workers, absolutely no more than two hundred Men and women labor."

Without such efficiency, how to persuade the majority of landlords to invest.

From sericulture to weaving, a one-stop large factory has been formed.

In such a large factory, when the raw materials can be imported in a unified way and the products can be sold in a unified way, if the efficiency is not as good as the efficiency of purchasing raw materials, processing and selling by each household, industrialization is just nonsense.

In the absence of breakthroughs in technical capabilities, management can also double the efficiency. The industrial revolution revolutionized not only technology, but also a revolution in management models.

To build this model silk weaving factory in Suzhou, Yang Chao also needs to build a similar cotton spinning factory in Songjiang Prefecture, employing no less than 1000 workers. It also needs to have outstanding benefits, at least much better than those workshops with lax management.

At this time, Daming, even a factory with a thousand looms, was very amateurish in management.Not to mention the individual weavers, buying silk and yarn in the morning, and selling them in the market after weaving, this kind of efficiency is simply too low.It is a large-scale factory. In the morning, the owner greets the workers in the temple market, tells everyone what type of textiles to weave today, and then recruits workers to produce at his home.

Even the workers are not fixed, they are all so-called short-term workers. Yang Chao recruited long-term workers on a large scale, signed labor contracts, let them work in the factory all year round, and at the same time gave them generous remuneration, and carried out specialized production. Machines can only produce one kind of fabric, and even one workshop can only produce one kind of product.

To introduce this kind of management, someone must supervise and implement it, and Yang Chao chose Wang Xiao.

Although Wang Yihe accepted Yang Chao's suggestion of splitting the shares without dividing the property, he wrote the contract documents when he returned home, and asked the county magistrate to supervise and seal them, Yang Chao also issued a decree to cooperate.

But Wang Xiao was already disheartened, he was unwilling to continue to contribute to the Wang family, and refused to be the treasurer of the Wang family, and directly sold 30% of the shares that his father gave him to a few brothers, and took out [-] taels of cash Out.

Seeing this situation, Yang Chao couldn't waste this talent. Fortunately, he hired him to set up a textile factory.

Among the investments in these textile factories, there was Wang Xiao's 30 taels of silver, and Yang Chao invested 20 taels of silver.

Even though it was a model factory, Yang Chao didn't want to set up a government-run factory. The effect would be very fast, but the sequelae would be too great.

With the cooperation of the best craftsmen in the government, the factory was built in one month, and the silkworms were raised in two months. The first batch of silk was harvested in summer, but the quality was still uneven.

It's not a management problem, but a business failure.

A large number of old silkworm women act as consultants and managers, recruiting a large number of young girls to raise silkworms. Their experience is not rich, and problems inevitably arise.

The situation of autumn silkworms is much better, with a good product rate of [-]%, which is already equal to the efficiency of careful breeding by farmers.

Therefore, there was profit in October. At the same time, the first batch of textiles was produced, and the quality was not bad. It was not as good as that produced by the best weavers, but it could reach the level of popularization.

With the improvement of workers' skills and the normal operation of the factory, it will get better and better. It is not a fantasy to reach ten times the efficiency of ordinary silkworm farmers and weavers in one year.

Invite big landowners and big businessmen who operate the silkworm industry in Suzhou and Huzhou to visit, and publicize it in the newspapers, and make a standardized management manual for sericulture farms and textile farms, and send them to those people. They are welcome to imitate their operations.

At the same time, Wang Xiao was asked to invest all the profits in expanding the business. Yang Chao said that he did not need any dividends within ten years.

However, the selection and breeding of silkworm eggs has not produced obvious good varieties, but the best silkworm farmers are allowed to continuously hybridize silkworm eggs.

Then pick out the ones with the largest size, the most lustrous cocoons, and the most resilient silk, and then continue to breed them, so that several kinds of silkworm eggs with different characteristics can always be cultivated.

This is a long-term job, don't rush.

At the same time, Indian silkworms and Persian silkworms were also introduced through the Dutch, and a batch of silkworm eggs from Japanese silkworms, Vietnamese silkworms, and even Cambodian silkworms were also brought in to raise them for hybridization.

(End of this chapter)