After coming out of the arsenal, Xu Shiyang visited the Qingzhou Iron and Steel Factory and the Textile Factory in succession.

In his previous life, he was a bookworm who liked to read online texts very much, and he knew very well the three major technology trees that the so-called traverser must order:

Steel, glass, guns.

After actually crossing over, he found that the best thing to do was actually guns.

There is no problem with the technology of casting Dading in the Shang Dynasty, but if it doesn't work, you can also find a big tree to dig out and make do with the nest.

The musket is nothing more than an iron pipe, and only the development of the flintlock pistol is considered a bit technical, but it is not beyond the technical limits of the current one.

On the contrary, blast furnace steelmaking has only just begun experiments, and the first small blast furnace has just started construction.

At present, one of the main sources of steel used in Qingzhou is Jiangnan, and the local production is completely re-made by the old-fashioned method, and the output is very low.

Of course, Qingzhou's current consumption itself is not large, and combined with imports, it can barely meet the demand.

As for the glass ......, although the factory has been built for a long time, the output has been unsatisfactory, and the only few finished products are all waste products full of bubbles, even if you don't understand the technology, you can see at a glance that they can't be used at all.

This factory, not only can it not bring in a lot of money, but it has to continue to invest money and manpower, which is completely a loss-making business.

Although Xu Shiyang always admonished himself to be patient, to give full respect to the technicians, and to give them time to improve, he was still a little resentful when he saw that the precious money and food were invested in it, but he couldn't get any results, so this time he simply bypassed the glass factory and turned to the textile factory.

When Xu Shiyang entered the textile factory with his own soldiers, military training was underway here, and the female workers lined up in a neat formation, carrying cut wooden guns, shouting slogans and running in circles in the open space in front of the factory.

Nowadays, there is no bulk import of textile raw materials in Qi Province, and the so-called textile factory is actually a garment factory that mainly uses female workers to cut and sew the finished Tianzhu homespun cloth into finished products.

The factory can provide the new army with uniform uniforms, cloth shoes, leggings and tents, but now they have no textile capacity, and Xu Shiyang's light industry is still lame and has not yet formed a real industrial chain.

"Maybe cotton planting should be promoted in the future?"

The first industrial revolution often began with the textile industry, and usually this light industry was also the most profitable industry in primitive accumulation, and there was no one.

Xu Shiyang very much hopes to improve his textile industry chain as soon as possible, of course, it can't be done now, after all, it is not long to unify Qingzhou, the foundation is not solid, and there is a little field to try to grow food.

Cash crops will have to wait for the expansion to a certain extent in the future before they can be promoted.

Even so, the textile factory in Qingzhou has brought Xu Shiyang a lot of surprises: it includes nearly 3,000 young industrial workers, and it can be expanded to 5,000 at any time.

After working and training in the factory, these women appear to be well-dressed, quick to act, and disciplined, and because they have their own disposable labor income, they are more confident, and they have a healthy beauty peculiar to working women.

In front of them, these women have begun to break away from the oppression of women by the feudal moral system and gradually move closer to the industrial society.

Well, at least inside the factory, there is indeed a bit of the original plane from the 50s of the 20th century to the 90s, the demeanor of female workers in the Chinese industry.

Although it is only a few points, for Xu Shiyang, it is already a great thing worth blooming.

In fact, Xu Shiyang suspects that if these female workers are given a rifle and trained for another three months, the female workers in the textile factory will also be excellent soldiers.

Of course, this kind of life won't last long.

'Enjoy this last happy hour.' ’

Xu Shiyang looked at the queue of female workers in the textile factory, and was actually a little ashamed in his heart.

Qingzhou's textile industry chain has not yet been established, and the work in the factory depends on raw materials, in fact, the start time is not long.

Therefore, compared with the hellish flesh and blood factory in the early stage of capitalist accumulation in later generations, this side seems to be a bit idyllic and beautiful.

But this beauty will not last forever, Xu Shiyang is secretly trying to release the giant beast of capitalism out of the cage, once it succeeds, let this giant beast taste blood, it will definitely do everything possible to squeeze profits.

At that time, even if Xu Shiyang tried his best to interfere, limited by cost and technical conditions, the factory would become a real flesh mill, which was not something that could be described by pediatrics like 996.

Like in the Victorian era, it was possible to change a batch of workers in half a year!

The state will indeed prosper as a result, but the workers who are devoured ......

Alas......

Of course, Xu Shiyang would try to help them and them, but he himself was not sure how far he could limit that giant beast.

Leaving the textile factory, the last stop is the salt factory by the Rizhao Sea.

This is a salt drying plant.

Before Xu Shiyang opened this factory, the production of salt mainly relied on boiling salt or frying salt, both of which required a lot of manpower and material resources - firewood and grass, manual labor for collecting firewood and brine, and even the common salt boiling method in Qi Province also required a large amount of iron pots.

These consumptions, in the past when the imperial court could still maintain basic credit and social quiet, abundant products, and a large population, were able to support, at that time, whether private salt or official salt, it was an industry with amazing profits, and the people by the sea finally did not lack salt to eat (the quality is another matter).

But now, in a place like Qi Province, there are not enough people to even collect firewood and grass, let alone consume iron pots to cook salt, which is simply a loss-making business that outweighs the losses.

The Li family in Rizhao will send people to cook a batch of sea salt every year, but the cost is so high that it can't be sold, and it's not even as cheap as the smuggled salt directly from Jiangnan.

This is also the main reason why the Xu family used to send ships to Jiangnan every year - the sunshine by the sea is this virtue, and you still expect inland states and counties that are not near the sea to eat cheap salt? It's better to import from Jiangnan honestly.

After roughly completing the unification of Qingzhou, Qingzhou Jiedu made Xu Muhe pay the most attention to two things: the first was grain production, and the second was to immediately start trying to restore salt production.

Although salt is important, Xu Shiyang can't tolerate spending unnecessary manpower to prepare firewood, grass, brine and iron pots, so after his father decided to restore the salt industry, Xu Shiyang decided to try the salt drying method.

In the early stage of the salt drying method, it was true that a lot of labor was required to prepare the salt pans and prepare the brine, but after entering the production stage, the salt industry required a lot fewer workers than the salt boiling method.

In addition to saving manpower, the output has also increased by several times, because there is no need for iron pots and firewood, and the unit cost of salt will be reduced to a few tenths of the original.

The biggest disadvantage for the government is that the salt drying method does not require collective labor, and it is difficult to control salt production by controlling stove households.

Xu Shiyang felt that he had no choice but to use the most efficient salt drying method, and that the loss of "state-owned profits" caused by the flood of private salt was not within his consideration.

After all, the increase in salt production can at least allow the family to reduce a hard currency to set aside a large item, and when needed, it can also be used to trade with other dock owners in Jiangbei.

So far, there are about 1,000 workers in the salt factory in Qingzhou, and the salt drying method can produce about 70 to 80 days a year, and the output of each household is about 200 catties per day.

Under normal circumstances, the annual salt output of Qingzhou can reach 14 million catties, and the output value is 200,000 guan at the price of one catty and ten wen of private salt.

The salt factory actually became the third largest source of financial revenue in Qingzhou after foreign aid and land sailors!