Ma Lin had actually thought about engaging in the wool spinning industry for a long time, but there was no steam engine before, and there were no rivers with a big gap in Beihai Country, so there were no conditions for hydraulic machinery.

Although Marin in the North Sea Kingdom built an artificial reservoir near the city of Lyle, artificially raised the water level, and then hit the hydraulic hammer, which was used to make weapons and armor.

However, the cost of artificial reservoirs is too high, and Marin gritted his teeth and made one in order to create weapons and armor. This kind of industry, which is related to national security, is worth the investment. However, it is not worth building another artificial reservoir for the wool industry. Mainly, it is not economically cost-effective.

Today, wool spinning is mainly done in Ghent and Bruges in Flanders, as well as in England.

However, it seems that the English woollen industry has a better advantage in this regard. Because, the purchased wool needs to be rinsed and carded. Among them, the rinsing process, in the Flemish region, mainly relies on workers stepping on the feet in the basin, which consumes manpower. The wool spinning centers in England are concentrated near reservoirs and waterfalls in mountainous areas with abundant hydraulic resources, and hydraulic machinery has been realized to replace labor. Therefore, the cost is even lower. Including rinsing after the woolen is woven, it can be replaced by a hydraulic bleaching machine.

It's just that the higher labor wages in the UK have offset a lot of cost advantages. For example, textile workers in Flanders are paid only two or three puffins a day. And the wages of British weavers were as high as four or five pence (pennies and finneys were equivalent), more than 1.5 times that of the Flemish region. This is so because the price of food in the UK is about 1.5 times that of Germany. In those days, the money earned by textile workers was mainly used to buy food. Therefore, wages in various places mainly follow the price of grain.

Of course, British woolen wool is still cheaper, about 66 shillings per horse, and most of them are high-grade wool. Because, British wool is high-grade wool. The woven wool is naturally a high-grade woolen velvet.

The Flemish region is more sad, because for more than a century, England began to implement a policy of imposing high tariffs on wool exports, which encouraged the development of the wool textile industry in England in disguise. As a result, the cost of importing wool from England in the Flemish region is very high. This is because England has raised the tax rate on wool exports to more than one-third. In this era when the pound tax is only one or two pennies, it is definitely an ultra-high tariff, and it belongs to the earliest trade protection-type tariff.

In England, when a buyer buys wool from a noble manor or monastery where sheep are raised, a bag of wool (364 pounds) costs only about £4, or 80 shillings.

But the wool buyer had to pay taxes to the king and, at the same time, to make a sufficiently high profit. Therefore, in the English market, mainly in the port market, the price of a bag of wool is around 8 pounds.

However, after the royal family imposed a high export duty of more than a third of the wool, plus the cost of transporting the ships and the local management tax imposed on the port of Calais, the price was already a whopping £12 or even £13. Its cost accounts for three-quarters of the price of woolen wool in Flanders.

In other words, the profit that can be made by the textile factories in Flanders is very meagre after deducting the wages of textile workers, the depreciation of machinery, and the cost of taxes.

As a result, textile factories in Flanders have now closed down in large numbers. In particular, small textile factories with few looms were forced to close their doors because of low profits. Only large-scale textile factories can barely survive by relying on large volumes.

Fortunately, because of the marriage with Spain, the Habsburgs relied on this relationship to find a new source of wool for the textile mills in the Flemish region, Spanish merino wool!

Spanish merino wool is of better quality, surpassing the quality of British wool. However, the price is also more expensive. Moreover, Florence, Italy's woolen center, is also competing for Spanish merino wool as a raw material. As a result, the price of Spanish merino wool remained high, and, because of the competition in Florence, there were not many quantities that could be obtained.

However, because the quality of merino wool is the best, some textile factories that rely on the quality of merino wool to produce and sell high-grade woolen wool are also very nourishing. These textile factories that can get merino wool are usually owned by Dutch nobles with great energy. The textile factories run by other civilian businessmen are still struggling to survive.

Of course, how difficult these Flemish textile factory owners were had had nothing to do with Marin. Instead, Marin intended to take advantage of the opportunity to poach a group of skilled craftsmen and weavers from Flanders. After all, the Flemish region is a famous woolen center in Europe, and there are still quite a lot of skilled craftsmen, which can be regarded as talents.

This problem is naturally handed over to Kohler to arrange for his subordinates to poach people. At this time, many textile factories in the Flemish region closed down, and naturally there were many skilled craftsmen and skilled weavers in the wool industry who were unemployed at home......

……

Sure enough, when Kohler sent people to Flanders, many woolen craftsmen and weavers who had not been at work for a long time expressed a strong desire to come to the North Sea Country. After all, the most important thing for them is to be able to earn money to support their families!

However, when Kohler's men recruited artisans and skilled weavers in the woollen industry in Ghent, they caught the attention of Prince Philippe, who lived in Ghent, and led to his dissatisfaction.

Then, Prince Philip came to the North Sea Kingdom in a rage and accused Marin of digging his corner......

You know, in these days, craftsmen and textile workers have to pay taxes. Unlike farmers, whether they are craftsmen or textile workers, they have to pay taxes every year.

Therefore, the kings of England preferred to develop the local wool textile industry rather than export wool directly. Because, vigorously developing the wool textile industry can not only solve the livelihood of many unemployed homeless people, but also contribute tax revenue to the country.

Needless to say, unemployed vagrants have the potential to become rioters and are a factor of social instability. The taxes of textile artisans and textile workers were mainly collected by the handicraft guilds that were popular in the Middle Ages.

In England, the Crafts Guild was responsible for taxing all artisans and workers in their trade. All artisans and weavers must also be compulsorily joined by the handicraft guilds.

Generally speaking, the handicraft guilds adopted a tax package system. The king gave the handicraft guilds a tax target, and then the handicraft guilds of each industry were responsible for collecting it.

In addition, the handicraft guilds also had the function of uniformly pricing and distributing raw materials for the products of the industry, and they had great power.

Generally speaking, the trade unions set prices for their products, which set aside profit margins so that those working in the trade could afford to pay taxes.

And the king let the handicraft guilds collect taxes on their behalf, which saved a lot of trouble. Because, in this era, the king did not have so many professional tax talents. It is handed over to the handicraft guild to cover taxes, saving trouble and labor costs.

However, the craft guild can also be a scourge if it is in the hands of wicked people with bad intentions. Moreover, the handicraft guilds were almost not under official control, except for the tax package, and were somewhat like independent community organizations. Crucially, if the leaders of the handicraft guilds were to instigate, the workers of the trade would probably rise up in revolt...... This is a big security risk......

Therefore, Marin did not allow the Beihai Kingdom to establish a handicraft guild in the first place. The seized vassal states also banned the handicraft guilds to avoid becoming a hidden danger to social stability.

However, after banning the old craft guilds, Marin found himself in a little weaker control over the craftsmen.

The area originally controlled by the Beihai Kingdom was okay, and the craftsmen were basically controlled by Marin himself. But after the dissolution of the handicraft guilds of the vassal states that he later captured, Marin found that he could no longer control the artisans......

How to solve this problem? After thinking about it, Ma Lin finally came up with a solution to establish a new handicraft guild, or rather, a new type of handicraft guild similar to the later Chinese trade unions!