Just as the procession was marching towards King Gui's mansion under the scorching sun, not far from them, a group of workers were sweating in a wide factory building.

There are men and women.

In front of each of them was a frying pan more than half a meter in diameter, which sat on a clay stove, and a large number of silkworm cocoons floated in the warm water inside, and it was divided into two groups, front and back. The first group is constantly beating in the water, and the silk drawn from the cocoon gathers into three strands, and is pulled up in front of several sets of wooden components, and then dried by charcoal underneath, and finally pulled onto a wooden frame like an open mazah. The wooden axis in the middle of this shelf extends to the right side, and is connected to the pedal of the worker's right foot through the wooden connecting rod cradle......

Well, it's reeling.

Tiangong Kaiwu has it, and the official name is Sanxu Pedal Reeling Car.

The stove is not for cocooning.

Instead, it is used to keep the water temperature of the pan with charcoal underneath, but the temperature is still in the 60s.

These workers must step on the pedal at the same time, constantly in the water of more than 60 degrees to sort out the silk head of the cocoon, in order to supplement the previous cocoon, each silk thread is made of several cocoon silk with its own sericin bonding, and the product of this bonding is silk or silk strips.

It is also called raw silk.

At this moment, in this huge through-type factory building dozens of meters long, three rows of hundreds of reeling cars are constantly rotating under the feet of these workers.

And behind them are specially boiled cocoons.

It is impossible to steam cocoon, it is the ancient cauldron boiling water, these people must strictly control the temperature and time of boiling cocoons, although the purpose of boiling cocoons is to remove sericin, so that the silk can be pulled out, but boiling the sericin will affect the strength of the silk strips. Cocoon silk needs these sericin to polymerize into a strand of raw silk, and the raw silk continues to be processed, and finally completely removed sericin is the weak cooked silk. However, the vast majority of the actual silk used is raw silk, and the cooked silk is too high-end, and the strength is greatly reduced. In this way, the cocoon boiling and silk reeling are carried out together, and all the workers in the entire huge factory are sweating, and there are overseers carrying rattan sticks to constantly patrol and reprimand from time to time. In such a hot weather, although the ventilation in the factory is not bad, it still cannot offset the heat of the cocoons, the heat of the silk reeling basin, and even the heat of the charcoal that dries the silk strips, or even the heat gathered by a large number of workers.

Suddenly, a female worker fell.

"Drag it out!"

The foreman sitting at the tuyere shouted.

The two overseers immediately carried her out and walked to a special pavilion, and soon a woman stepped forward and quickly sprayed salt to wake her up and fill it with medicine......

It's not for the sake of healing.

Her treatment is very simple, just go back and find a shady place to sleep.

The purpose of rescuing her is just to let her go back to work quickly, for the owner of the silk reeling factory, any silk reeling machine can not be stopped, if she really can't hold on, she does have to call someone again, but if she is just too hot, it is nothing more than pouring some salt sugar water......

"No matter how hot it is, there is a roof on the head, and it is not for you to go to the ground to hoe grass, why are they all strong laborers? All cheered up, missed the master's business, and deducted your wages this month! ”

The foreman shouted as he banged on the table.

The workers worked silently with their heads bowed.

The slogans of the marchers could be heard faintly in the distance.

"Master Tiger, what's going on?"

An overseer walked up to the foreman, scooped up the cold water from the tank next to him, poured a few sips, and asked curiously.

"It is said that King Gui wants to offer Gaozhou Mansion and Luoding Mansion to the empress to congratulate the prince on his 100th birthday, and I heard our lord say that it was forced by the protector of the country, which caused public anger at this time. The students of several academies in the city took to the streets to petition King Gui to retract his order and submit the matter to the Advisory Council for a vote. Didn't our lord be called to the Advisory Bureau for a meeting, just for this matter, it is said that the protector is too arrogant and domineering, his son actually asked King Gui to offer two mansions in a hundred days, and we Cantonese people are not easy to bully! ”

The tiger master said indignantly.

"Then if we don't give it, will the sailor fight Humen again?"

The overseer said with a look of fear.

"What are you afraid of, what about the more than 300 cannons of the Humen Fort, and dozens of 10,000-pound cannons, can the sailors still fly over? If you really dare to come, Master Hu, I will fight all over the invincible opponents in Guangzhou, let them know what kung fu is! ”

Tiger Master said proudly.

Only then did he realize that all the workers had stopped.

"What are you doing, don't work soon, the one outside is good, if you can move, come back and continue to work!"

He banged on the table with a rattan and shouted.

The workers looked at each other, but at last they bowed their heads and worked, and the female worker was carried back and sat in front of her own reeling cart, working limplessly. But everyone in the entire factory is much slower, and many people are exchanging information with their eyes. These workers work more than 14 hours a day, and even get 18 hours a day, and almost go back to their slum dwellings to sleep, not caring about what is happening outside.

But at this moment, the news is like thunder.

The vast majority of these workers were landless peasants.

Because Guangdong's maritime trade continued to develop, the export of silk, cotton cloth, sugar and other products was booming, and the income from the cultivation of mulberry, cotton, and sugar cane far exceeded that of grain, and the landlords began to reclaim a large amount of land, and then hired laborers to build plantations. In particular, sugarcane plantations are so common in the hilly outer areas of the Pearl River Delta that tenants are forced to plant them, even if they do not reclaim the land. But it is also the landlords or powerful businessmen who buy these things, and they cannot give the peasants enough prices to feed their families, and the same people who sell grain to the peasants, they will not give the peasants a low price. Harvesting cash crops and selling grain is a method that drains the peasants' blood and sweat, and is even more cruel than collecting grain rent, with the result that more and more people in the countryside are starving and have to go out to survive.

And these factories in Guangzhou are their main destination.

In addition, there is an iron ore mine in northern Guangdong.

The situation is similar to that of Shanghai in the Republic of China, where the surrounding countryside could not accommodate the population was all attracted by a large city, and then had to enter the factories in order to survive, where they were sucked dry by the beautiful name of industrialization.

There are many people from Gaozhou and Luoding in this factory.

But what if it was under the rule of the imperial court?

The factory will not have a bottom line of squeezing, because Huangzhuang is also collecting people, the factory's wages are too low to go to Huangzhuang, and Huangzhuang will not have a bottom line of all cash crops, in fact, what Huangzhuang grows is limited by the superior according to the situation. It is not possible to grow cash crops on all the land without regard for food security, and even most imperial villages are only allowed to grow grain, but the imperial court will give subsidies in other ways. This is currently the case in Huangzhuang around Nandu, where even rape has begun to be restricted and the consumption of North Korean-produced cooking oil is subsidized.

The latter was also a plantation for Ming merchants.

Yang Kyung had been encouraging merchants to go to North Korea three years earlier, using serf estates to buy land abandoned by the war in various parts of the country, mainly to grow rape and sweet potatoes.

Of course, for the sweatworkers of these factories, they don't know anything else.

They only know a little.

Huangzhuang will divide the land, Huangzhuang does not pay taxes, the highest rent of Huangzhuang is only forty percent, in fact, the vast majority are two to three percent, and Huangzhuang provides compulsory primary education, and in Huangzhuang can also get ahead by being a soldier in the war, rather than dying of exhaustion in a factory.

However, the Council will not agree!

Even these workers understood that this was a self-directed play, and the Advisory Council waited for the petition and then rejected it.

So how?

The workers were exchanging glances.

The sound of slogans outside still came from time to time, mixed with the chirping of cicadas outside and the heat of summer, which gave birth to a kind of madness in the hearts of all the workers at this moment.

Suddenly, a young man who was boiling a cocoon stood up violently......

"What for?"

Tiger Master shouted.

"I'm gone!"

The young man yelled.

The tiger master was stunned for a moment, then came to his senses, and then picked up the rattan on the table.

"Do you want to rebel,?"

He scolded.

The two overseers immediately walked over to the young worker.

"Let's go, let's still suffer like this here, go back and tell the villagers, get ready to meet the army of the imperial court!"

The young man ignored them, but shouted to the other workers.

"Dare to incite others!"

The tiger master was furious, and rushed straight over with a rattan shirtless.

The young man was clearly out of control, and did not pay attention to anything else, still greeting a few other workers from the same village, and two of them also stood up. Obviously, for them, instead of continuing to be cattle and horses here, it is better to go back and publicize the news, so that those villagers who have also been unbearable for a long time, and have even run to the area controlled by the imperial court, will not do anything, and take advantage of the fact that the imperial court has already wanted to deal with these two, so they will simply make trouble first.

The tiger master went straight at the young man, raised the rattan and pulled it, the young man was caught off guard, and was suddenly pumped on his body.

His screams rang out immediately.

The tiger master then lifted the rattan again.

Suddenly, a worker next to him stood up and grabbed his wrist......

"We are not your slaves, we can do this work if we want to, and if we don't want to do it, we will quit and leave, why do you beat people?"

The worker questioned.

The tiger master turned his head to look at him in disbelief.

"It's the other way around, it's the other way around!"

He said angrily.

Then he raised his foot and kicked at the worker, who immediately flashed to the side, and the tiger master's foot was on the reeling cart next to him, and he kicked into the wire rack from between the two bundles of silk, and kicked into the charcoal box used for drying underneath......

He was barefoot.

"Ah, come on, the workers are revolting!"

His screams rang out suddenly......