[Happy April Fool's Day, ask for tickets]

The so-called furnace household is the common name for the workers in iron smelting at this time.

Whether it is the iron factory of the Ming Dynasty or the local investment contractor of the civil metallurgy, there are the wealthy people of the hometown and the capital as the head of the furnace, the number of people in a furnace has a quota, there are only dozens of people, the patrol and patrol of the government will also inquire from time to time, if there are many furnace households and furnace Ding De must be punished, the head of the furnace is the general armor, and the implementation of the law is still the set of armor protection law, so the government attaches so much importance to it, or because the miners are love to rebel.

Just now Wang Xingping saw that Wang Ge was strong and had dark skin, such a figure and appearance were more common in Yanding in Shu, but Wang Ge had a lot of old burn scars on his body, so that his identity was more clear, the scald scars were concentrated on his hands, which was neither a tattoo nor a punishment, so Wang Xingping admitted it when he asked.

"The villain is indeed a fugitive hearth."

Just thinking about smelting iron, he sent a furnace to the front, which is also funny.

"I guess your accent is from Qijiang, right?"

Wang Xiaoliu, who was on the side, finally found an opportunity to interject and said, "Brother Wang is indeed from Qijiang, yes. ”

It seems that after a short time together, Xiao Liu has already figured out the details of this one, and that Sun Miaozhu didn't know where he was sent by Xiao Liu.

Sitting on the ferry boat on the return trip, a few snacks were placed at random, and the distance between each other was shortened a lot, and it was better to ask questions when watching Wang Ge eat and drink Wang Xingping.

"How is the iron smelting in Qijiang?"

"There is a lot of private smelting, but the iron production is not much, only 10,000 catties a year."

"It's all private?"

"It's all private smelting, from Dongxi to Qianshui Town, the mountains on both sides of the river are charcoal, not to mention there are 100 iron smelters."

The so-called private metallurgy is not the same as the official metallurgy and the private metallurgy, either the local mountain owners are recruited, or the local wealthy people see that there is a mine in the empty mountain and entangle themselves, occupy a mine to take the nearest material to burn charcoal and smelt iron, and then resell the iron material for a profit. This kind of capitalless business was originally strictly forbidden by the government, and there was no license issued by the local government and county, and it was not a small sin to find out, but there were still people who took risks, not to mention that Qijiang County was close to Banzhou, and it was also a place where Han and Yi were mixed, so the control was not as strict as imagined.

"Is all the iron produced for Kawanaka?"

"Most of the privately cast utensils are sold on the spot, but toast from Yongning and other places will also come to buy them."

Wang Xingping thought about it carefully, Yongning Xuanfu Division is indeed not far from Qijiang, Tusi lacks iron, if it is a good deal to sell iron tools to Tusi, and it can also avoid the iron class of the government.

"Then the local furnace household should be okay?"

Seeing that Wang Ge's face was full of affection, he said: "At first, the head of the furnace was also a large local family, and in the early years, he had a good terrain on the west bank mountain. ”

"But in recent years, the imperial court has sent more and more mine supervisors to various places, and the local investigations have been tightened, and gradually the business in the mountains has not been good."

"After the Dragon Boat Festival this year, the county inspectors leveled a lot of private metallurgy, and the furnace players had nowhere to go, so they fled more."

Wang Xingping listened and said curiously: "Then why don't you go back to your hometown to farm?" ”

"Those who still have land at home have all gone back, and landless households like me have been fighting in iron smelting since they were children, and they can't make land, let alone rent land for planting."

"Why?"

"It's funny, the big families in that county are afraid that I will wait for the furnace to make trouble, so they would rather give the land to the old and weak."

Wang Xing said calmly, I heard that in addition to the few people who rioted in the local area, there were mostly miners and furnace households, and it was understandable that the big households were afraid.

"There is still an official iron smelting in Zunyi, right? Why not apply? ”

"Where can I go, the government's livelihood has always been like servitude, and where is it like self-cultivation."

This is not bad, although the private smelting furnace is just a profit-seeking recruitment, and the taxes and routines of the majority of the above are all obtained by the mountain owners, mine owners, and even the general armor and land ghosts, but they have nothing to do with coming and going. The government-run iron smelting was mostly apportioned, and the furnace masters at the bottom were even more insecure, and even less easy than the tenant farmers who worked in the fields.

After hearing this, Wang Xingping said: "Then why did you come to Chongqing again?" ”

Wang Ge asked and sighed: "Originally, my mother's family had a relative in Chongqing Prefecture, and I didn't know where I went when I didn't want to run here, and there was nowhere to settle in the city, and the inventory was tight at night. ”

Wuchang Fu Xingguoye's iron mountain annual output of nearly three million catties of official iron, the output of this family alone is worth several times more than Sichuan, Sichuan here in addition to the local production, the use of Huguang iron, this is not news.

There was a pair of people in the boat who asked, this Wang Ge was also honest, and he didn't hide anything from what he knew.

In fact, Wang Xingping has also been thinking about it for a long time, and the money-making business is almost not easy for him to get involved, although the grain transaction involved in the Jian family is still large, but his own family is also doing grain trade, and the problems are naturally clear. Although grain merchants also have the advantage of hoarding, in Wang Xingping's view, there is no industrial support, and when a little change occurs, it will spin up and down. It is not realistic to rely on the imperial examination to become an official in a short period of time, so he is more eager to find some regular business students to do.

At present, although there is a wave of market in the salt market, it is a fluke, and salt has the benefit of a franchise, he is young and has no foundation, and it is absolutely impossible to sell illegal salt, and overseas trade is even more difficult in this inland land. For a while, although he was holding the silver, he was worried about being sleepy, which made people helpless.

Although Guizhou's agriculture is not developed, fortunately, there are still some minerals, and the surrounding provinces also have enough resources and markets. Although most of the mines are owned by the government, iron smelting does have more profit margins than grain trading, provided that the goods are good enough.

Not to mention anything else, Daming's iron pot is well-known at home and abroad, not because it is really delicious to cook with this pot, but because the iron is good.

Wang Xingping has already thought about it, and if the capital in his hand is returned to Guiyang to open an iron factory, it should be enough, and with his knowledge, he should not lose money.

Wang Zunde is now in Guangdong, Wang Xingping also has the heart to ask him to help, Guangzhou is not far from Foshan, at this time Foshan Town in Guangdong is the same name as the North Zhili Zunhua Town of the Ming Dynasty two major iron smelting centers, Foshan Town a day iron production reached six or seven thousand catties, this is the number that was repeatedly mentioned by the Executive Committee at that time before the crossing. Foshan and Zunhua can become two major iron-smelting centers precisely because of the large demand for iron export in the south and the north.

Mongolia in the north, since the founding of Taizu has strictly controlled the border trade, lost the source of iron ore in Shanxi and Liaodong, Mongolia's iron smelting industry has rapidly regressed, to the present situation, I heard that some remote tribes have had to rely on bone clusters to make arrowheads. Every year, the Mongols in the mutual markets along the northern border are most in demand for iron farm tools and iron pots in the interior, because these things are not only used for civilian use, but also used to be remade into weapons.

Coincidentally, the same iron pot in Foshan town is also a good sales product, at this time not only trafficked in Jingchu and Fujian and Zhejiang, but also exported to foreign countries, Nanyang countries also regard it as a sought-after commodity, the world has more 'iron Mo Liang in Guangzhou Railway', even the Europeans praise Chinese iron.

Because of iron smelting, Foshan not only produced blacksmiths, but also various handicrafts were extremely developed, and many craftsmen in the arsenal in Macao were recruited from Guangdong, and the Portuguese were more involved in the design of muskets and cannons. As long as they are willing to pay the price and settle down with money, I believe that the craftsmen there are willing to come to Guizhou to work, and it would be better if he could recruit a few more skilled foreigners, at least Wang Xingping still had great hopes for the Jesuits' missionary enthusiasm in the Far East, even if he was only interested in their skills. I believe that with the official authority of that clan uncle, he can help his nephew find some suitable workers without him personally interrogating.

It is only at this time that Wang Xingping will feel the sense of loss since the time travel, no matter how much knowledge and ability a person has, it seems too small for the era in which he lives, and now he doesn't know where other people are, and he can only think of relying on the skills and craftsmen brought by the missionaries to solve some practical problems. After all, as far as the profession is concerned, I am not excellent, and the memory in my brain is really getting more and more blurred, and it is best to leave professional things to professional people, just like I haven't done anything along the way back to Chongqing, and it is enough to risk the arrow stone once.

During the conversation, Wang Xingping had already learned from Wang Ge about the situation of private smelting in Qijiang, which was the only way to return to Guizhou by land, and now it seems that not only a lot of iron is produced, but also most of it is a private furnace.

Farther away, there are a large number of iron ore produced near Malasi in southern Sichuan [note: near Panzhihua] and Kunming in Yunnan, where it is not easy to transfer across Wumeng Mountain, but it is not difficult to come to the iron near Kunming, and there is no shortage of iron in Yunnan in Guiyang City. As for Xingguoye, although it is in Huguang, the Yangtze River is countercurrent along the way, so I don't think much about it for the time being.

Wang Xingping also carefully calculated that if he really wanted to build an iron factory in Guiyang City, it would be enough for the needs of the people, and the most important thing was that he also wanted to make his own guns and cannons. If this idea is placed in Guangdong or Jiangnan, it is undoubtedly a fool's dream, and the imperial court will not approve it first, but Guizhou is a border area, and there is such a demand in the local area, and with the Wang family's connections in the Weizhong army, he has a lot of confidence in Guiyang Mansion's acquiescence. And now the new Qianfu has the heart to cheer up, and the officers and soldiers have also won several battles in a row in the local area, if it is helpful in casting weapons, I believe that Zhang Fujun will also value it.

Moreover, even if the government really forbade him to imitate new guns, there was no reason to prohibit the manufacture of iron tools for civilian use.

However, Wang Xingping is still a little selfish, although this time although the enemy is all subdued, I believe that a few first evils are indispensable to the autumn queen's knife, but the people of Yongning Division are a heart disease after all, although the matter has been told to Chen Huangsheng, Xu Chengming did not hide it from his father-in-law, but the matter involves local officials will inevitably be troublesome, and in the future, in the southwest, they still need to have more of their own people to rely on.

Looking back and talking about this iron smelting, not to mention Yunnan, there will be no major problems in the logistics channel from Qijiang to Zunyi until it enters Guizhou. As for the eunuchs sent by the emperor to supervise the mining tax in various places, it has nothing to do with him, and the cost will eventually be spread into the iron, as long as the things made are good enough, there is no danger that the business will not be able to do it.

Thinking about the construction of Tieye, he didn't realize that the ship had docked, and Wang Xingping thought that if this person was really reliable, it would be good to let him recruit some useful furnaces on the way back, as long as they were honest men like him, maybe these people would be of greater use in the future.