"I'm sorry, Mr. Sirigu, but you can't enter the workshop." Sitting at the table in the tavern on the pier of Port Rocha, Sirigu, a textile expert from Genoa, stared at the French brandy in his glass, and his heart was still resentful.

Once again this morning he failed to enter the textile factory under construction (on the outskirts of Fort Corps in Port Rocha), and the East Bank Ministry of Internal Affairs police, who were guarding the factory gates, told him bluntly that if he wandered around the neighborhood and tried to enter the factory again, they would take coercive measures against the distinguished Genoese guests. As soon as this sentence came out, Sirigu was immediately frightened and broke off the idea of peeping into this new textile factory.

The third textile enterprise in the East Coast, named the Rocha United Textile Mill, is precisely the factory with a quarter of the investment of the Doria family from Genoa. This factory is mainly for the traditional customers of the Genoese, such as Spain, Portugal, Italy, South Germany, Spanish America, etc., focusing on the production of various fancy textiles for different customer groups, and will also produce some silk fabrics, silk, cotton, silk and linen blends with the technical assistance of the Genoese (Genoese people provide the process, the East Coast people design the machine), and the profit margin will be much higher than that of the other two textile factories in China: Ping'an Weaving Factory and Dayuhe Machine Qì Textile Factory.

At present, the site of the factory has been selected, and it is located on the outskirts of the Bingtuan Fort in Luoqia County. There is a large cotton field near the Bingtuan Fort, with an area of about 20,000 mu, and the cotton planting area in the neighboring cotton farmer township of Dongfang County is even more extensive, reaching more than 40,000 mu. These two cotton planting bases, which were established as early as ten years ago, are now relatively stable in cotton production, but unfortunately the quality is poor, not as good as cotton in the West Indies, Brazil, Florida, Georgia and other places. It can only be used to make do with some low-grade white cotton cloth. To produce dyed cloth, calico and other high-end products. It still needs to be imported from the Caribbean. At the very least, it has to be imported from Brazil, otherwise the quality cannot be guaranteed.

At the beginning of this month (November), after the site was selected and the land was leveled, some large machines were installed before the construction of the plant - because many machines were difficult to enter and exit or install after the plant was built - including many boilers, steam engines and complex transmission systems. All of these machines are designed and produced by the First Machinery Factory (responsible for production equipment) and the Second Machinery Factory (responsible for power and transmission equipment), and the workers are also drawn from the Ping An Manufacturing Factory wholly-owned by the General Administration of Textile Industry and the Dayuhe Machinery Textile Factory with national shares.

Nowadays, the textile industry on the east coast is indeed becoming more and more developed, and there are more and more related technical talents. There is a technical section under the Machinery Institute of the Academy of Natural Sciences that specializes in the study and improvement of various textile machinery. The department has a halfway monk as a research and development supervisor, including five high school students, eight Bingtuanbao related professional graduates of the strong technical force, perennial tracking of two textile enterprises, the production process of various problems at any time to study, analysis, in order to continuously improve the production equipment and production process.

The most important improvement in recent years was the invention of the "cotton collector" in 1645. This invention makes it easier and faster for people to remove the loose wool from the carding machine, saves a lot of manual jointers, reduces costs, improves production efficiency, and is an extremely important improvement in the rapid production of textile mechanization.

In addition, the First Machine-Building did not stand still during these years. Through continuous design, practice and improvement, they have designed a spinning machine with more spindles; And the spinning machine has advanced. The supporting loom has also undergone a lot of technical improvements, such as better transmission efficiency and higher lubrication technology. The First Machine-Building succeeded in making it possible to increase the productivity of the looms as well.

The newly established Luoqia United Textile Factory, which uses the latest equipment, is almost the most cutting-edge technology collection in the East Coast textile industry today, and it is also the most efficient and lowest-cost textile production line in the world at this time. How could the Genoese allow the Genoese to enter and watch such an extremely advanced factory, even if they owned a quarter of the factory. Therefore, it is not incomprehensible that Sirigu, who only nominally served as a technical adviser to the plant, was turned away.

"Damn the East Coasters, they're going to regret it sooner or later for the rudeness they showed me." Sirigu took a hard sip of brandy, and was about to continue cursing a few words, when he heard a "bang", and a huge wooden basin was slammed in front of Sirigus.

"You want whale meat!" A black waitress who was chewing something in his mouth said lazily, and after speaking, he wiped his oily hand on his dirty apron, and then turned around and left.

Startled, Sirigu was furious, and was about to stand up and say something, when the door was pushed open again, and a middle-aged man with red hair walked in. He was wearing a stained captain's suit, and his shoulders were a little torn, but they were well sewn. Well, it can be seen that the captain's financial situation does not seem to be very good.

"Captain Kuat, it's been a long time since I've seen you." The tavern owner, who had been sitting behind the bar and napping, also woke up, and with a wave of his hand, the black waiter, who had been lazy just a moment ago, respectfully pulled out a chair for Captain Cuette and brought him a cup of yerba mate.

"Yes, I just came from St. Augustine and brought a boatload of cotton." Captain Kuayt threw his hat, which was also faded and very strict, on the table, and then snapped his fingers and said to the black waiter: "Old Xie, bring me the half bottle of Daqu in the river that I have saved, and give me another roast lamb chop, a pickled and smooth fish, and finally an egg fried rice - the egg fried rice can be served later." ”

"There are no more eggs, sir." The black waiter, surnamed Xie, replied faithfully, "We stopped serving eggs here half a month ago. Nowadays, eggs can only be found in the logistics warehouses of the War Department, except for the farmers' chicken coops. They have recently developed a new breed of canned food for the military, and one of the important ingredients is eggs, which they have now scavenged almost all of the eggs on the market. ”

"Then let's have a lamb pilaf." Captain Couay waved his hand weakly, and then continued to talk to the tavernkeeper: "The price of cotton in St. Augustine has plummeted, and it is astonishing that I can buy a ton of fine long-staple cotton there for only ninety-five pesos. I heard that it was the latest order from the mad king of the Spaniards, who forbade all the merchants of the Spanish American colonies to export any goods to the east coast, and cotton was a commodity that was repeatedly forbidden. Thanks to the Spaniards, this boat of cotton can finally make me a lot of money. ”

"The Spaniards banned the export of cotton to the east coast, and neither the English, the Dutch, the Swedes nor the French had the appetite to absorb the huge cotton production capacity in Florida, Georgia and other places, which would inevitably lead to a large backlog of local cotton, which would cause prices to plummet." The tavern keeper sighed and said, "It is the Spanish merchants themselves who are at stake, but it may also give a breath of relief to the cotton textile industry in various countries that have been cornered." After all, the previous cotton price was too crazy, and they couldn't afford such a high cost of raw materials because of their backward technology. However, since the price of cotton exported from the port of St. Augustine has fallen to 95 pesos, then they should be able to make a certain amount of money by importing a large number of them now and then going back to spinning and weaving, especially that French Mazarin, even I know on the east coast that this guy is determined to revitalize the French textile industry, hehe, this time he seized the opportunity. ”

It is said that in the past few years, because the East Coast artificially inflated and manipulated the price of cotton, a number of textile factories established in the Old Continent (England, Sweden, France, and the Netherlands) that followed the example of the East Coast and vigorously developed the textile industry fell into an embarrassing situation. If you want to import cotton for production, the cost is too high, and you will definitely lose money, even if you can sell some cotton cloth by relying on trade protection, it is really not profitable, and it may even be destroyed after competing with cheap smuggled cotton cloth. If you don't import cotton for production, then why do you set up these factories? Watching and playing? Large investments have been smashed, but there are many people in textile factories, which is really not what normal people should do.

But now they can finally breathe a sigh of relief for a while, because in the past few years, because countries have been expanding their textile industries more or less, because of the great demand for raw materials. Then coupled with the influence of some human factors, the price of cotton jumped up like a rocket, and even reached 175 yuan/ton, which is not very profitable for the textile industry on the east coast.

It was only two years after the first wave of textile industry development in the Old World was extinguished by high raw material prices, and cotton prices plummeted, which must have been a great boon for some countries that wanted to revitalize their domestic industries.

"But I've heard a piece of news in Amsterdam, well, maybe not good news for you East Coasters." Captain Kuayt sat down at a table, took a sip of yerba mate, and said in an uncertain tone, "I heard that a carpenter from Zeeland Province won a bounty of 30,000 guilders because he had invented a new weaving machine that could multiply the efficiency of weaving, and they seemed to call it a 'flying shuttle loom.'" ”

"Bad news, sure enough." Before the tavern owner could speak, Sirigu, who was sitting on the side, heard the news, and immediately nervously calculated the benefits and disadvantages in his mind. (To be continued......)