Zheng Hui looked at Zhao Laosan's excited face and said, "My lord, you can make these farmers very excited. Pen %Fun %Pavilion www.biquge.info"

Li Zhi smiled and said to Zheng Hui: "The farmers who crossed the ocean and came to Taiwan with us to develop new fields, naturally we want to give them some sweetness. When the first batch of peasants benefited, the peasants who followed them would follow in an endless stream. After that, it was settled. If you can catch up with the early rice planters, you will receive 60% of the land rent. If you can't catch up with the early rice, you can only plant one season of late rice, and you will only receive 50% of the land rent. ”

Zheng Hui arched his hand and said: "The governor of the capital is benevolent, and his subordinates admire it." ”

Li Zhi nodded, stopped inspecting the field, and rode back on his horse.

Zheng Hui calculated along the way, and said to Li Zhi: "My lord, there are more than 60,000 acres of paddy fields that have begun to be cultivated now, and it is expected that 90,000 stones of rice will be harvested by the end of this year. The governor of the capital collected fifty percent of the rent, which was forty-five thousand stones. Taiwan's paddy fields do not need to pay tuntian grains, so the land rent of these 60,000 mu of paddy fields for half a year is more than the rent of 200,000 mu of Tianjin dry fields for one year. ”

When Li Zhi heard this, he nodded.

I heard Gao Ligong say that the income of Taiwan's paddy fields is several times that of Tianjin's dry fields, but this is just a concept. I really opened the field, and I actually felt that the result here was twice the result with half the effort. For most of the year, the income is 45,000 stones, which is equivalent to 90,000 taels of silver, and in eight months, it is equivalent to more than 10,000 taels of silver per month.

And that's just the beginning. With the expansion of the fleet, Taiwan's subsequent expansion will be faster and faster.

This development of Taiwan is really lucrative. The follow-up development is promising.

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In mid-May, Li Zhi returned to Tianjin with the fleet.

Now the city wall of Fanjiazhuang New Town has been repaired, and the area of Fanjiazhuang has doubled. The city wall between the two cities, the original southern wall of Fanjiazhuang, was demolished. The new city and the old city are connected.

However, as soon as the new city was built, it was occupied by the new army barracks and the expansion of textile factories. The textile factory, in particular, was expanding every month - now that Li Zhi had a Japanese market and could dump his cheap fine cloth, Li Zhi was ready to expand the textile factory to 15,000 people.

The factory with 15,000 employees will bring huge profits to Li Zhi, and it is estimated that there will be tens of thousands of taels of silver every month, which can support Li Zhi's other businesses.

However, the expansion of the textile factory could not be achieved overnight, and the expansion required not only the construction of machines, the construction of factories, but also the construction of villas for the workers to live in. Almost all of the masons near Fanjiazhuang were hired by Li Zhi, and they kept moving building materials, driving piles and laying bricks, pasting mud and painting whitewash, turning the south of Fanjiazhuang into a large construction site.

The textile factories that have been expanding their production have produced a lot of Li Jiajing cloth in recent months, all of which are piled up in the warehouse, almost filling the warehouse.

Fortunately, since the end of May, Li Zhi's fleet has begun to run the Hirado route. Li Zhi did not buy Cha Yunke and the six seagoing boats of the Zhangjia family in Tianjin—those small boats also needed a set of boatmen, and the efficiency was really low. But Li Zhi hired all the skilled boatmen of the six small boats and let them go to sea on his newly built ships.

In early May, the shipbuilders of Dengzhou and Laizhou built five more pointed ships, and after installing steam engines, the five new ships began to run the Japanese route in late May. In this way, Li Zhi has fifteen large ships running Japanese routes. These steam-engine ships did not have to wait for the monsoon, and the volume of traffic between China and Japan was astonishing.

In addition to Li Jiajing's cloth, Li Zhi also shipped all the raw silk, porcelain, ironware, textiles, sugar, etc., which had a price difference between China and Japan, to Japan, and the price difference between the two countries was lowered and lowered.

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At the end of May, Li Zhi went to the armor forging workshop to have a look.

After a year of development, this armor workshop has grown to a considerable scale. The armor workshop used a steam engine to drive a hammer to forge steel armor, which was quite efficient. Although Li Zhi was only going to equip thirty steam engines at first, in the end, as the demand for armor increased, Li Zhi increased the number of steam engines to sixty.

Today, there are more than 100 craftsmen in the armor workshop, two people operate a hammer, and 60 miscellaneous servants manage the steam engine.

The armor workshop now produces more than 10,000 sets of armor a year.

Of course, the expansion of the armor workshop has increased the demand for crucible steel. At the same time, Li Zhi tripled the size of the steelmaking workshop, increasing steel output to 60,000 catties per month.

Li Zhi's requirement for armor was to be able to prevent direct fire from bows and arrows at thirty paces, so the steel armor forged by the craftsmen was quite thick. The frontal cuirass was three millimeters thick. And a set of armor had not only a cuirass, but also skirt armor, leg guards, shoulder pads and arm guards. The frontal protection is very perfect, and it can be regarded as a full-body armor.

However, this armor only has frontal protection, and there are no steel plates on the sides and rear. Li Zhi's troops generally faced the enemy head-on, and the protection of the flanks and rear was handed over to his comrades.

Li Zhi believed that if the soldiers wore such a set of plate armor, the Tartar archers would not be able to shoot through it at all. Even if the soldiers were hit by a dozen arrows, it was probably only a small wound with a little skin. In this way, the old method of relying on horse archery has no way for the Tartars to take the tiger master at all.

However, this kind of armor is relatively heavy, and it weighs more than thirty catties. In peacetime, marching could not be worn and had to be carried by a convoy of baggage. This increases the requirements for the baggage team. Fortunately, Li Zhi captured a lot of mules and horses in previous battles, and there were enough carriages, which was not a big problem.

In the armor workshop, Li Zhi hung a newly made full-body armor a hundred meters away and shot it with a flintlock pistol without rifling.

Li Zhi often plays with a rifle when he is not happy, and he is also very proficient in loading and loading. It took him more than a dozen seconds to load the bullets and gunpowder, and aimed the smoothbore gun at the armor of his body.

A "snap" of a gunshot rang out, and a round lead bullet hit the left side of the cuirass, making a dent in the steel armor. However, the depression is not large, only a few millimeters deep, and it does not cause much damage to the wearer.

Li Zhi thought about it, shortened the shooting distance to seventy meters, and reloaded the shot.

Another gunshot rang out, and the bullet hit the right side of the steel armor. The bullet still did not penetrate the steel armor, making a one-centimeter-deep depression in the steel armor. However, the steel armor is not worn closely, and there is a certain distance from the skin, and it is expected that a one-centimeter depression will not seriously injure the wearer.

Li Zhi walked twenty meters further and fired at the steel armor at a distance of fifty meters.

Only a loud "bang" was heard, and the lead projectile pierced through the steel armor. The steel armor hanging from the wooden shelf shook violently, fell off, and fell to the ground with a clatter.

Li Zhi took the steel armor and inspected it, and found that the lead bullet had made a hole in the steel armor.

It seems that at a distance of fifty meters, an ordinary smoothbore gun can also penetrate steel armor three millimeters thick. In the future, if you encounter the red hair, you should not let the red hair get close to 50 meters to shoot. Once the enemy is allowed to shoot at the Tiger Division within fifty meters, even if it is equipped with such a well-equipped steel armor, it will cause a lot of casualties.