Xu Shiyang hopes to increase the cotton planting area to 300,000 mu in Longdao in two years, and the agricultural company will invest more than 10,000 slave laborers and thousands of civilian laborers for this purpose, and if all goes well, the output of these cotton fields will be enough to supply two factories the size of the Qingzhou textile mill today.

If you add wool and hemp textiles, Qi Province can have more than 30,000 industrial women this year, which is a very good mobilization figure for the sparsely populated Qi Province (it is estimated that industrial women account for 2% of the total population, which is close to the proportion of industrial women who were devils in World War II).

The manager of the Qingzhou textile factory was aware of the importance Xu Shiyang attached to textiles, but he did not quite understand why the young commander cared so much about the factory, which did not seem to have much effect on the war.

Of course, the commander-in-chief's attention is a good thing for him, Qi Province is about to set up six ministries, and the news of clarifying the authority of officials has gradually spread, and there are not so many scholars here to form a civil official group, so it is possible that an official like him who actually knows the situation on the front line will occupy the head of the newly established Ministry of Industry.

In other words, the more Xu Shiyang attaches importance to it, the more likely it is that the textile mill manager will be given more authority.

"Please rest assured that the cotton spinning machine will definitely see results this year."

The manager of the textile mill loudly promised:

"Worker training is also on the right track, with the old to bring the new, three months can bring out a group of skilled female workers."

Now all aspects of Qi Province call Xu Shiyang differently, for example, the military usually calls him commander, and most of the officials call him the young governor as the heir of the metropolitan governor, and the people like to call him the little general, and some familiar relatives call him San Lang and the like, in short, the title is quite confusing.

Xu Shiyang himself doesn't have any special opinions on this, anyway, he can accept any title.

Xu Shiyang encouraged: "It's a good thing that you have this idea, we are now short of officials with a practical level, come on." ”

……

Next is the mint, which is currently only minting gold coins with a face value of ten pounds, silver coins with a face value, and food stamps with a face value of one catty, five catties, and ten catties.

Qi Province did not issue copper coins, gold and silver coins were mainly used for inter-provincial or cross-border bulk trade, and grain stamps were used as auxiliary currencies and were completely circulated internally.

Unlike Jiangnan, Qi Province has always been calculated according to the standard 1,000 yuan, which is 250 yuan higher than the general price of the Great Zhou Dynasty, but the gold and silver coins of Qi Province are beautifully minted, the gold and silver content is balanced, and the reputation is very high, so the merchants from Jiangnan are very fond of this large coin.

At least the Li family in Shuangyu Port is now willing to accept Qi Province gold and silver coins for trade.

The Governor's Office was able to obtain a high seigniorage tax from the issuance of currency every year, which was a considerable amount of revenue, but once the Six Ministries were established, the banks and the issuance of currency would be completely under the management of the Household Department under the Governor's direct jurisdiction, and Xu Shiyang would lose jurisdiction over this aspect.

Of course, he also reserves the right to make suggestions.

After all, currency represents the credibility of a regime, and Xu Shiyang did not want to lose the currency under his control and fluctuate so much that it would erode the authority of the Governor's Office.

Xu Shiyang's first suggestion to the Ministry of Household Affairs was to try to issue iron coins, which were not circulated in Qi Province, but were shipped to Jiangnan or Fusang for shopping, both of which were very scarce.

The reason for this was that there was no unified government in Fuso, and the daimyo did not seem to have much interest in coinage, and their income was mainly based on the grain standard equivalent to rice, and the actual trade was mainly circulated by gold and silver entities and smuggled into the Dazhou system.

Xu Shiyang believes that he should be able to make a good profit by dumping iron money in Fusang to buy gold, silver and sulfur.

The situation of the Great Zhou Dynasty is that the money and private money circulate in parallel, and the imperial court seems to have given up the supervision of coinage, and if the iron money and the money are exchanged for one according to the local exchange rate, the profits on the side of Qi Province will also be very rich.

Since iron money is to be minted, the supply of iron is very important - because iron, unlike copper, it is still the most important raw material for weapons and tools, and you dare not play with it if the production is not high.

Therefore, the next factory that Xu Shiyang focused on inspecting was the steel plant in Laiwu.

After the new iron-making blast furnace is put into operation, the steel output of Qi Province is expected to have a rapid increase in the next two years, and the output of various tools, weapons, machines and other factories downstream of the steel industry will benefit from this.

At present, there are no female workers, not even foreign workers, and the population used by Laiwu Iron and Steel Works is all Han workers, who are most trusted by the Governor's government, and can be described as one of the core industries.

"The iron plant uses coke to make steel, and it is expected to produce 15,000 stone of iron and 1,000 stone of steel this year!"

The manager of the iron plant was very proud of this, although the production of iron was only a little more than 1,100 tons, and the production of steel was less than 100 tons.

This figure is definitely a joke on another plane, I am afraid that it is the size of a village-run enterprise, but in this era, this number is indeed something to be proud of.

Xu Shiyang doesn't know how it compares with the Great Zhou in Jiangnan, but he definitely surpasses the Jurchen Tartars, and it is estimated that he can be ranked among the top in the whole world today.

……

The last factory Xu Shiyang inspected was an arsenal.

At present, there are two arsenals in Qi Province, one factory is in Qingzhou, which mainly uses cold weapons such as cuirass, knives and spears, and also produces magic machine guns.

The second plant was relocated to Dengzhou, mainly producing flintlock guns, various types of field guns and naval guns, and also produced large leaf springs for vehicles for the soon-to-be-established vehicle factory.

In addition, there is a separate gunpowder factory, and the site of the factory is Fulai Mountain, Juzhou - because in the mountains, even if something happens, it will not cause much damage.

The director of the first factory is still the blacksmith Lao Zhang of the original 15 tun, and the actual person in charge is his eldest son, who promised Xu Shiyang that he could provide 1,500 cuirasses every month, and if he needed more, he could increase the output to 3,000 pieces.

Xu Shiyang felt that he could sell some armor to non-Tartar neutral places, but there were many taboos in this regard, and whether it could be realized had to consider the opinion of the Grand Duke.

The director of the second factory is Tang Long, this kid is a good mix, he married the widow who was the head of the house in Fulai Mountain back home, and bought two Tartar mothers-in-law as concubines, and now they are also a group of children, and their lives are happy.

For the Governor's Administration, this former bandit can be regarded as grateful to Dade, so he poured a lot of effort into the Second Arsenal in Dengzhou, making the quantity and quality of the products of the Second Factory far exceed that of the First Factory—which is why Xu Shiyang put the important production of firearms here.

According to Tang Long's report, the Dengzhou No. 2 factory can produce 1,000 guns per month, but the number of craftsmen with sufficient technical level is still small, so it still maintains the level of half flintlock pistol and half arquebus.

However, even with 500 flintlock pistols per month, it seems that a complete rearmament of all the existing musketeers of the Forces nouvelles would be sufficient.