In addition to sea trade, another income in Daishan is the canning factory. The canneries now have a large www.biquge.info of the Pen, Fun and Pavilion canneries, employing more than 1,000 women, and 100 craftsmen who make clay pots, buying tens of thousands of catties of sea fish every day and producing more than 10,000 cans of canned food every day.

It is said that with such a large scale, the income should be very considerable. But the actual situation, hehe. In addition to finding a job for the women of Daishan Island and a way for the fishermen of the islands to sell fish, the cannery makes too little money for the Daishan Inspection Division.

The reason for this is that the price of canned food is too low. Because the price of buying marine fish from fishermen is very low, basically one penny per catty, so the sales price of canned food set by Ren Siqi at the beginning is also low, and the price of wholesale is ten cents per can.

But if you put away the money from buying marine fish, the cost of making cans, and the income of cannery workers, you can only earn less than five cents per can. In this way, even if you sell 10,000 cans of food every day, you will earn 50,000 yuan, which is equivalent to 250 taels of silver, and more than 1,000 taels a month.

Thousands of people worked hard for a month, and they earned more than 1,000 taels of silver, which cannot be said to be less, but the problem is that the majority of the profits are earned by those sellers.

According to Ren Siqi's understanding, in Hangzhou, a can of canned food was sold for 50 wen, and merchants took canned food from Daishan at the price of 10 wen a can, and sold it for 50 wen. The vast majority of the profits are made by these merchants, who are the biggest winners in the canning business.

"The price of wholesale canned food must be raised!" Ren Siqi said to Chen Zhong, who was in charge of the canned food business. After Ren Siqi was appointed as a coastal defense guerrilla, his subordinates were also promoted one by one, and Ren Siqi originally planned to give Chen Zhong a position of 100 households, but Chen Zhong was born as a scholar and did not want to be a military household, so Ren Siqi had no choice but to appoint him as a scribe of the Daishan Inspection Department to take charge of the canning factory business.

"It's going to go up." Chen Zhong nodded and said, he was actually quite satisfied with the profit of canned food, earning more than 1,000 taels of silver a month, which was already very good in his opinion, but he didn't expect Ren Siqi to be dissatisfied.

"My lord, how much do you say is better?" Chen Zhong asked.

"Let's go up to 30 yuan a can." Now the market price is 50 wen a can, and I have raised the wholesale price to 30 wen, leaving the seller with a profit of 20 wen.

"But the merchants who sell canned food won't agree, they won't accept the price." Chen Zhong is embarrassed.

"If you don't accept them, they don't have to do this business, we have canned food in hand, are we afraid that we won't be able to find a buyer?" Ren Siqi said disapprerovingly.

"Alas!" Chen Zhong sighed and went, he was born as a businessman and knew the temperament of those merchants. If the price of canned food was 30 wen at the beginning, there is nothing to say, but now it has suddenly changed from 10 to 30 wen, and the money they make is suddenly less than half, how can they agree?

Although Ren Siqi said it easily, if they don't want to do it, there will naturally be others to do it, but these businessmen are all local snakes, they canned food they can't sell and they will definitely not allow others to interfere!

Sure enough, when the news of the price increase of canned food came out, those merchants who came to Daishan Island to wholesale canned food went crazy all of a sudden, from ten to thirty, how could they do this? They protested one after another, unwilling to accept the price, and demanded that it be reduced back to ten cents. Even Liu Defu, a businessman who took refuge in the Daishan Inspection Division, sent someone to find Ren Siqi and euphemistically expressed his dissatisfaction with the price, but was pushed back by Ren Siqi.

"Let's not buy it, see who he sells canned food to?" Outside the canning yard of Gaoting Port Wharf, a businessman surnamed Lin from Ningbo shouted very arrogantly.

"I'm afraid that if we don't buy it, there are other people who want to rush to do this canned business, after all, it is not a small amount to earn twenty yuan per can." Another businessman from Shaoxing was a little worried.

"As long as we form an alliance and boycott canned food, who dares to go against us!" The businessman surnamed Lin said disapprovingly.

"Yes, that's it, we don't buy it, in less than a month, their cans will pile up, and as soon as the capital chain is broken, they will have to stop working!" Other businessmen responded.

......

"Don't even you want to accept this price?" In the inspection hall, Ren Siqi coldly said to Liu Defu who was sent to be responsible for the purchase of canned food.

"Lord Inspector, it's not that we don't accept it, it's that we don't dare to accept it." The person sent by Liu Defu said aggrievedly. Although the relationship between the two parties has always been good, he does not want to offend other businessmen for the small business of canned food. The so-called integration of government and business, every businessman has a gentry behind him, although Liu Defu is a talented person and a celebrity in Yinxian County, he does not dare to offend everyone else.

"Okay, I see, you go!" Ren Siqi coldly drove him out, and the anger in his heart became more and more intense.

These greedy profiteers, these hateful Ming gentry, they are all bloodsuckers attached to the people! In the Ming Dynasty, the gentry were arguably the biggest cancer. It is said that hundreds of thousands of clans are parasites of the Ming Dynasty, but compared with the gentry, the harm caused by the clan is nothing.

There were very few clans in the Ming Dynasty in the Jiangnan area, but there were many gentry. In Zhejiang, for example, the gentry occupied almost ninety percent of the land, but never paid taxes to the imperial court. In addition to the fields, shops, silk estates, and almost all the business were under the control of the gentry.

Ordinary businessmen can't cope with the gentry's scheming and plundering at all, take Chen Zhong as an example, their family is a merchant, but his father was ruined because of the gentry's plunder.

The gentry occupied ninety percent of the land, but they did not have to pay taxes, and the commercial taxes were even less. And the burden of the huge Ming Dynasty government was completely borne by the people who occupied a lot of land. This caused the gap between the rich and the poor in the Ming Dynasty to become wider and wider, and the poor had no place to stand.

The consequence was an uprising of the northern exiles who overthrew the rule of the Ming dynasty. Fortunately, because of the development of commerce and trade, the people lost their fields and could still work in factories and workshops, and there were no uprisings of the common people.

However, the life of ordinary people in Jiangnan is also very miserable, working in the factory, working hard all day, earning only enough money to make a living, children in their teens have entered the workshop to work, and the phenomenon of being exhausted and tortured to death has often occurred.

The situation in Jiangnan is that the upper class people are extremely wealthy, and the bottom people live very miserable, which is also the reason why Daishan canned food can sell well. The gentry were certainly reluctant to eat canned food, and the taste of the fish in the canned food was not comparable to the delicacies prepared by the chefs in their homes.

It is the people at the bottom who really like to eat canned food. Two catties of canned fish are only sold for 50 Wen, you must know that the price of rice in Ningbo this year is sold to 5 taels and 1 stone, and a catty of rice will cost 50 Wen, and the price of a catty of canned fish is only half of that of rice!

The wholesale price he originally set was 15 wen per can, and the retail price was 30 wen, just to be able to quickly open the market and benefit the people. But these profiteers saw that the cans were selling well, and raised the price to 50 wen per can. sucking blood on ordinary people and eating away at the profits that should belong to them. Now they want to raise the wholesale price of canned food, and they have joined forces to obstruct and boycott it!

The hateful profiteer, the hateful gentry, Ren Siqi slapped the deputy in the seat heavily, he would rather not be in the canning business, and would never allow these people to suck blood on himself!

For these gentry, something must be done! Ren Siqi said secretly. (To be continued.) )