Chapter 12o Fifty Years of Industry

Ito Hirobumi thought about it for a while, and still asked, "Sasaki-kun, didn't this Minister Thomson propose any negotiable proposals?" ”

"Ito-kun, I'm sure not!" Goro Sasaki nodded and said.

Ito Hirobumi stood up and came to the window, looking out the window into the distance, this is a huge and vibrant city, the imperial capital of nearly a million people, he has risen to the pinnacle of power in Japan since the age of 31, has planned countless strategies for the country, and has achieved great success, although Japan does not yet have a huge industrial system like the West, but he has found an effective way to replicate the success of the West, that is, to absorb enough wealth from the giant around him!

Obviously, in the previous ten years, this strategy was very successful, and he had also confronted Li Zhongtang, the most powerful man in that country, many times, that was a strong Qing official, but he still had his weaknesses, and even he felt that the huge Qing Empire had a fatal root, and the whole country was actually maintained on the loyalty of those powerful ministers! And not like

However, since a year ago, it seems that there have been some subtle changes, the Qing Empire seems to have regained its vitality, the setback of the textile industry has stretched the surplus of the government, and the recent introduction of British steelmaking technology, which is completely unable to produce qualified products, and was finally forced to close, how to lead the country out of a road to rejuvenation, this is undoubtedly a difficult choice!

"This matter makes me think about it, we must find a way, let the British provide us with technology, complete the transformation of the industry, although the domestic textile industry can still benefit from the British garment industry, but in the end it will die in this emerging industry!" Hirobumi Ito made a categorical conclusion.

In the shop of Chiba Port Smith, Du Ping, a helper from Li Donglai, was discussing the advancement of the garment transaction with Smith, the owner of the foreign bank, while the shopkeeper sent by the He family was checking the accounts of the past month with the account books.

Smith's abacus crackled, according to the contract, if he accounted for 1o% of the shares, it would be a large profit now, but this damn Director Li would not be able to cash out 3o% of the share after a year, and he would be able to redeem all the profits of Huàn after three years, but the salary paid to himself had already made him, a businessman who had broken his production, feel rich enough, and he was asking the shopkeeper Hu who was in charge of the accounts at this time, "Mr. Hu, how much is the profit of our company's books this month?" ”

Shopkeeper Hu raised his eyes and looked at Smith and shook his head, "Mr. Smith, Director Li Donglai has taken care of it, and you can't C the company's finances, which should be very clear in the contract given to you at the beginning!" ”

Smith didn't have any dissatisfaction with Shopkeeper Hu's disdainful tone, and smiled, "I just care about my future income!" This financial matter, you have the final say! ”

"Income! Look at the current shape, it's hard for you to think about it without money," Shopkeeper Hu saw that Smith was also an interesting person, and he spoke a little politely, "The situation here, I have already telegraphed to inform Director Li, and Shanghai has informed us that the materials and profits purchased here are all in luck!" ”

Du Ping was still inspecting the goods inventory account, and turned to ask Smith, "Smith, is there any news behind the British minister?" ”

"The next day, I sent someone to deliver the news, saying that pressure had been put on the Japanese to add a new port, and there was no news for the time being!"

"Oh......" Du Ping pondered, "What's going on with those foreign firms?" The provenance of our products is strictly confidential! ”

"There are four British foreign firms, one German foreign firm, and two American foreign firms have come to negotiate the number of purchases, hoping to double the purchase volume and the demand for high-end ready-to-wear is also very strong. Smith cautiously built yì road.

"Well, this is very good, Smith, you'd better investigate the market research of this mid-range clothing, I will do my best to think that Director Li will bring it up!" Du Ping thought for a while, "There is one more thing, this Japanese finished cotton cloth and cotton yarn, Smith, under your planning, can you let Western businessmen buy and boycott it, if you can squeeze their textile industry, then the profits of our ready-to-wear can be increased a little more!" ”

Hearing this question related to his own interests, Smith was also very interested, and the two sat together and began to discuss the feasibility of this matter carefully! Soon, a preliminary plan was tinkered with by the two! ,

Smith soon recruited a group of Japanese workers and sent them to the raw silk trading and cotton yards near Kyoto to learn about the price of raw silk and cotton.

As a result, the two conspirators were shocked, and the largest industry in Japan now was not the cotton cloth and cotton yarn industry, which had huge production capacity and had been continuously dumping the Qing Dynasty, but the raw silk industry, which had always been exported as raw materials, because this industry had no direct commercial conflict with the raw silk industry of the Qing Dynasty, so it was not noticed and known by the Qing Dynasty.

The Japanese cotton production is very low, it can almost be said that cotton is not produced at all, completely dependent on imports, and the production of raw silk is regarded as a national plan, from the beginning of the Meiji Restoration, it has been carried out, in just ten years, taking advantage of the favorable conditions of Japan's humid climate, coupled with the strong support of the government, Japan's raw silk production has achieved leapfrog growth.

In 1881, the output of silkworm cocoons in Japan has reached more than 20,000 quintals, although more than ten years ago, Japan was prevalent in mechanical silk reeling, and the silk reeling factories in rural Japan have now reached an astonishing hundreds, but because the imported silk reeling machinery was originally very outdated in technology, the previous exports were fresh cocoons and rough processed raw silk, and the quality and neighboring Daqing handmade raw silk compared with the gap is very different, so Japan was only used as a supply base for crude raw materials by the West in the first two years.

In order to change this situation, the year before last, Secretary of the Interior Ito proposed to the French consul to purchase a batch of new two-thread co-twisting silk reeling machines, instead of the traditional outdated machine qì silkworm cocoon silk drawing process, so that the production quality of raw silk has been greatly improved, and finally the quality of raw silk has been qualitatively improved, last year, the high-quality raw silk produced by the Mitsui chaebol factory has been recognized by American merchants.

The big setback of the Mitsui chaebol in cotton cloth also made them realize that the industry that relies on imported cotton and cotton yarn for cotton cloth production has encountered a bottleneck, and the new machine qì silk reeling industry is an emerging industry in the Qing Dynasty and Japan, and the raw silk sold in large quantities in the Qing Dynasty belongs to the traditional craft of hand-reeling "Jili silk", which enjoys a high reputation in the world, and the only way to compete with China's raw silk, which occupies nearly 4 percent of the international raw silk raw material market, is the industrialized silk reeling industry.

Therefore, since last year, Mitsui's domestic textile owners have greatly switched to the production of new machine qì silk reeling industry, which is also an important factor for Mitsui chaebol to survive huge losses, the current main importers of raw silk in the United States and France for production capacity demand has been very strong, and raw silk as a high-grade textile raw material, in the international market is still in short supply.

However, the shortage of supply in the international market does not mean that joining this industry can earn high profits, even the Mitsui chaebol, which has influence in Japan, is just a dumpling in the East for Western businessmen, and the power of pricing and quality evaluation of raw silk is completely controlled by European and American businessmen who monopolize maritime trade.

However, the Japanese government has not yet noticed this, and they are eager to compete with the huge raw silk production of the Qing State in terms of quality and quantity, and Ito Hirobumi even proposed a long-term plan for the daily raw silk industry for 5o years at the internal affairs meeting of the Taizheng Minister, to replace the Qing State within 1o years and become the main supplier of the international raw silk market.

And these news were soon transmitted by telegram to the silk reeling industry, which was still on Qin Kai's side...... Qin Kai was still stunned for a moment after hearing this term, he had been busy with cotton cloth and cotton affairs, but he ignored this file, the silk reeling machine should be able to produce it, this thing is another big industry!

However, the situation in China is very different from that in Japan, the traditional Chinese hand-reeling process has been very good, and because the raw silk trade has been very popular over the years, the Chinese handicraftsmen who are very creative have pushed the hand-reeling technology to the extreme, and the manual process of deep processing of processed raw silk has also been popularized.

For example, the original price of ordinary local raw silk in Shanghai port is 31o taels per bag of silver, and after reprocessing, it is shaken into high-quality raw silk, and the price can immediately reach 5oo taels of silver. Qin Kai learned that the export of raw silk in China in this era had reached an astonishing 80,000 quintals, worth more than 24 million taels of silver.

What makes Qin Kai uncertain now is that in the big industry of this silk reeling factory, if he intervenes quickly, although he can generate no profits, but the interest chain involving all aspects of this is somewhat troublesome, and the most important point is that the price of raw silk is completely monopolized by the compradors on the port. ,

This raw silk industry is the largest export trade of the Qing Dynasty at present, how many officialdom interests are involved, Qin Kai naturally understands very much, the lowest silkworm farmers can only get meager benefits from increasing production, and the silk stack and silk merchants in the middle are also making a run away money, and the final big head is accused of the monopoly of foreign merchants who export it, the most common of which is to suppress the price under the pretext of quality during the period when the price of international raw silk falls, and when the price of international raw silk rises, it is purchased at parity.

Qin Kaifei consulted the industrial information of the raw silk trade in history, it is obvious that this is a very vigorous industrial chain, from this era, the United States began a 5o year of silk industry exhibition, in this 5o years, until the era of World War II, Japan and China are full capacity to transport raw silk raw materials to the United States.

This industry of "raising foreign countries with silkworms" can be said to have injected long-term fresh blood into Japan. Of course, the Americans are naturally not good people, and after a large number of silk products are manufactured, they are sold back to East Asia, which has a great impact on the silk industry of the Qing Dynasty and Japan in East Asia.

Qin Kai immediately came to He Xing to discuss, both of them felt that this industry had to be done, with the convenience of horsetail shipping, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian and Guangdong are all large sericulture provinces, and it is enough to send people to collect fresh cocoons.

However, in the end, the final foothold of this industry did not fall in Fangcheng, Zhang Kui is now anxious, Zhou Ruidong threw over a large number of family members of the Black Flag Army, he is thinking about how to resettle, obviously, this new industry that appeared in time gave him a good choice!

Pang Qing of Hehui County and Wang Tang of Xian'an County have already mobilized idle laborers in the county to build a large number of buildings near the Hehui wharf and build an empty shelf in an industrial zone, but at present there is only one stamping factory operating in this empty industrial zone......

The county government offices of the two places immediately issued a notice to recruit workers, and all the people registered in the two counties, regardless of gender, could sign up for recruitment, and the initial salary for the first period was 8 copper dollars per month, and two meals were outsourced. The aborigines of Hejuni and Xian'an were originally some local aborigines, mostly ethnic minorities, and there were many ethnic groups in the county, and the only income here in the past was grain and seafood, but the coastal land was limited, and the food was only enough to eat, but if you want to earn money, it is very difficult.

The first wave of workers in the stamping plant are slightly higher than this silk factory, but the factory recruits fewer people, and the supervisors inside to pick workers are to be clever and have some brains, this time the salary is about the same, but the requirements are much lower, the two counties recruited nearly a thousand workers at once, which really scared the two county orders, the residents of these two counties are not more than 10,000, this thousand laborers are exaggerated.

After sending someone to cross the river overnight to Fangcheng to ask Zhang Kui, Zhang Kui grinned at this huge group of laborers, and immediately brought a message, "Don't let any of them go, I will send someone over for preliminary training, it will take a while for the machine to be transported, first open a garment factory, and let all female workers work in the garment factory!" ”

During this period of time, the sales network of Japan's garments are obviously from Fangcheng County's three large garment factories, of which Mawei Shipbuilding accounts for seventy percent of the shares, but the specific operation is managed by Fangcheng's business alliance shareholders, originally for the production of zuò Japanese-style clothes, these shareholders have some opinions, and now the sales of ready-to-wear shops transported to various places through Guò Maweihai are still very hot, due to the consideration of minimizing the impact on the domestic industry, the pricing is relatively high, so that the profit margin has become very large, The shareholders are willing to make domestic clothes.

However, since the major shareholders want to make overseas orders, they have nothing to say, anyway, as long as they make money, it doesn't matter if they hurry up or slow down. But in fact, sales in Japan are much higher than in domestic ports, and the garment factories are unable to meet the demands of the orders that are constantly flying, and as a result, the workers are working in three shifts to process the clothes with twice the salary of overtime.

Soon a group of backbone of the garment factory was drawn out and rushed to the next door of Hejuni, Xian'an, and the other group of people who went with the Black Flag Army were willing to settle in Hejuni, for their arrangement, Zhang Kui according to Qin Kai's meaning, to provide them with work opportunities in the garment factory, if appropriate, gradually let them become the grassroots management personnel in the garment factory, which is also a requirement for preferential treatment of the army's families, of course, the premise is to be competent for the job. ,

On the Japanese side, Du Ping and Smith originally planned to toss the cotton cloth industry after careful investigation, and now after this round of garment dumping, the country's cotton cloth industry has basically fallen into a deadlock, production, cotton cloth can only be sold to Southeast Asia, but there will already be competition between British cotton cloth and Qing cotton cloth, if it is not produced, once British merchants no longer import ready-to-wear clothing, the cloth and clothes of the people's livelihood will be scarce, this is already a tasteless jīrib industry

After a large number of ready-to-wear sales, the British foreign firm in Chiba Port hired a large number of Japanese compradors to start buying fresh cocoons in the current season in Japan, the price of this unprocessed fresh cocoon is very cheap, a load of fresh cocoons is only equivalent to the price of 8 stone rice, and after drying, silk reeling, at the cheap price of Japanese fresh cocoons, just selling raw silk raw materials, you can make a profit of more than 1 times, how can such a trade not be operated by the way?

The officials on the side of the Imperial Governor soon saw that the new moves of British businessmen were actually the so-called shadow companies of Smith's subordinates, and those foreign companies apparently quickly made a lot of money in the garment industry, and they began to buy fresh cocoons in Japan at a slightly higher price than the domestic raw materials.

In fact, compared to the huge output of Japanese fresh cocoons in this era, Smith's purchase volume is not huge, but it is obvious that his actions have been excessively expanded, which naturally led to the rise in the price of raw materials in Japan, which has exacerbated the turmoil in Japan's domestic textile industry, but this qiē is still in the embryonic state, and there is no particularly obvious fierce competition.

However, the Mitsui chaebol also felt the huge pressure, after all, now it seems that the British seem to be interested in the Japanese raw silk industry again, but they do not understand the situation is that these British do not buy raw silk, but focus on purchasing cheap fresh cocoons, is the British also preparing to open a silk reeling factory in East Asia?

This information was once again fed back to Ito Hirobumi, who was a little anxious in the summer, but Ito was obviously a seasoned opponent, and after quickly finding out the amount of British purchases, he very calmly told the big shopkeeper of the Mitsui family that the fresh cocoons purchased by British businessmen were only less than 5% of Japan's output, so there was no need to worry about the impact on the domestic raw silk industry.

After this turmoil, the Mitsui family finally found the growth point of the consortium from the raw silk industry again, which made the big shopkeeper Minomura Rizaemon completely relieved, and eliminated several loss-making cotton enterprises and reinvested in the expansion of new industries.