The spring of the twelfth year of Chongzhen gradually came, and after a winter of preparation and planning, a new cotton textile factory was established in the outer city of the hero. Similar to many new businesses since last year, on the surface, it seems that it was opened and even managed by young people from the Central College and a few newly relocated whistleblowers, and it is a joint-stock unit jointly funded by many shareholders, but people with a little experience and even inside information can see that this newly opened cotton textile factory is essentially an "imperial businessman". In fact, you don't need to look at anything else, just look at those complex hydraulic textile machinery that you have never seen before, and you can understand that such a major breakthrough is by no means something that ordinary merchants can develop and use in the first place.

At first, people didn't pay much attention to it, and the water-powered loom appeared last year, but because the spun yarn was neither strong nor fine, the advantage in labor cost was not very obvious after considering the cost price. Moreover, some similar ones at that time did not have much advantage in terms of price in order to obtain the necessary return on investment in the case of limited market.

"At this scale, I'm afraid it's a month, and I'm afraid that there must be at least 2,000 weavers. Judging from the performance of at least 10 times the skilled weavers and dozens of times the ordinary weavers last year, it is estimated that 780,000 inferior yarns will be sold in a year. In this capital and even in the Jiangdong area, can that kind of quality cloth be easily shot? In a private teahouse in the middle of nowhere, some people from Songjiang Mansion who came to watch and find out the news discussed.

As he spoke, many people's eyes also looked at a military craftsman who had worked at the Central Academy. Although it is not in this line at all, it can be regarded as the person who knows the most about some things in the heavenly family that the people can invite at this time.

"With my understanding of the Heavenly Family, if it was a loss-making transaction, there would definitely not be such a big battle, let alone such a public battle. To do it on such a scale, not in the name of the experimental workshop of the Central College, there must be a considerable certainty in terms of profitability, and perhaps the quality of the cloth will be greatly improved... ”

Hearing such words, many people have some pressure in their hearts, in fact, this pressure is not entirely due to the quality of the cloth, but the identity of the lord. If it is an ordinary merchant with a small background, just comparing the quality or price, then there is nothing to say. However, if the background of this factory is directly under the Heavenly Family, if it is expanded in the future, it will undoubtedly pose a threat to the interests of many people.

But even so, no one plans to do anything out of the ordinary because of this, and many people sigh: "There's nothing to say, let's see the situation and luck in the future." Fortune and natural disasters are beyond the power of man... ”

Using a "public reservoir" in a flood control depression in the outer city of Heroes, the factory has a total of 50 large hydraulic looms, which can drive more than 40,000 shuttles and sliding frames at the most. In fact, the size of the staff is not 2,000 people as guessed by outsiders, but the scale of about 4,000 people, but the implementation of the two-shift system, at the same time to maintain the scale of about 2,000 weavers on the job, under the shift can effectively realize the day and night rotation, to maximize the efficiency.

In addition to spinning, it was not long before related weaving, printing and dyeing and other related supporting workshops also appeared. This textile group, which seems unprecedented in size, is beginning to show its approximate size: at least 7,000 or so employees. According to the previous experience of the hydrotextile industry, the daily output of cloth should be around 2,000 horses.

Xiao Xuan is certainly not a person who believes in historical experience, although the industrialization of Britain began with the cotton textile industry, but Xiao Xuan has a lot of experience and carefully analyzes the roadmap plan after feeling that this is not the inevitable way of the industrial revolution. From science and education to metallurgy and chemical industry, the internal combustion engine-related system may also be "one step to the sky", that is, shipbuilding, which obviously has a greater role in promoting the real manufacturing industry.

Some people also thought that the steam reeling that had begun to mature in the Central Academy would be more beneficial than the one, but Xiao Xuan temporarily gave up the initiative to carry out large-scale steam reeling activities in the first place. The reason is that even in modern times, the popularization of silk is difficult to accept. In the first few decades of the founding of the People's Republic of China, when the chemical industry was not very developed, even the traditional cotton textile industry was faced with the problem of competing for land with grain. The struggle for cotton land was not yet a very good place, and if it involved the question of changing rice to mulberry, it was too heavy a pressure on the agricultural foundation of the whole East, which was not very consolidated in this era. It may only be possible to consider more comprehensively when the local population is evacuated to the west on a certain scale, the pressure is greatly reduced, and the agricultural landscape of the whole country is fundamentally different.

In contrast, the cotton textile industry may not be the "most useful", but it is the "most profitable" for the central government after the breakthrough of this round of roadmap plan. In the past winter, after achieving a breakthrough in the quality of water-powered spinning, the price that can be sold is estimated to be fundamentally different from the past.

In the past, the average skilled weavers in the Jiangdong area produced about thirty or forty pieces of cloth a year, and this was still the so-called "budding capitalism" style of yarn mills rather than ordinary farmers. Excluding the cost of various raw materials, the average "added value of labor" is about 10 taels per person per year, and the productivity of labor is no different from that of a strong labor force on a medium-sized field. Therefore, the potential meaning of the so-called "male ploughing and female weaving" in the old days is that for a long time, the economic output capacity of textiles is actually not comparable to farming, and it is only in the late Ming Dynasty that with the improvement of some manual textile machinery, the situation seems to have undergone some changes.

However, after the hydraulic machinery made the textile efficiency ten times higher than that of skilled workers, and the quality could reach the middle and upper level, the situation seemed to be fundamentally different. If we don't talk too much about "socialism", but according to the general level of the nineteenth century, the exploitation rate is eighty or ninety, or slightly better, the labor cost is two percent, and the cost of machinery and even plant is one percent, which is not too complicated in this era. The price of land is almost negligible, and if the surplus value exploitation rate is 70%, about 6,000 or 7,000 employees can provide about 500,000 taels of profit per year. If expanded, the textile industry group of about 100,000 yuan can provide about seven or eight million taels of internal financial revenue and benefits a year, and the problem of financial gap in the short term can certainly be alleviated to the greatest extent.

(End of chapter)