The processing plant is very busy, since the beginning of spring, mackerel, small yellow croaker and hairtail fish have swam from the Yellow Sea to the Bohai Sea, so the fishermen in Qingdao Port catch a lot of fish these days.

In addition, there were some herring and cod, but there were not too many of them, and a few fishermen caught two tuna weighing two or three hundred pounds.

Most of these fish are killed in processing plants, and then salted directly with salt from Laizhou Bay, and then salted and dried. Or it can be smoked.

After it is processed, it can be shipped to other places for sale, and it is also sold in the fish market of Qingdao Port, and those merchants from other places can wholesale in the fish market.

Fish that could not be salted and kept for too long were sold locally at the port to trafficking merchants, some to the major markets in Denglai, and some to Jinan and other places.

After receiving the fish flood from the south, the fishing industry in the Bohai Sea is also ready to open, and the fishing ports in the Bohai Sea are divided into four regions: Dengzhou, Longkou, Yantai and Weihai.

Yantai's sea cucumber has already begun to be produced, which has sparked a rush of traffickers.

As far as the Denglai market is concerned, the most prosperous is undoubtedly Qingdao.

Qingdao not only has salt merchants from other places who come to buy salt, but also Lu merchants and even Hui merchants gather here, in addition to selling salt, they also buy Qingdao's maritime trade products, or transport maritime trade products to Qingdao.

Qingdao is the main port of trade, and in order to speed up the speed of goods being dismantled, Zhao Yan set up a market in Qingdao to sell goods brought back from Qingdao.

Those merchants who came to Qingdao to buy salt had much more choices, and now they could not only buy salt, but also buy Qingdao's seafood and sell it back.

After the beginning of the spring, more and more businessmen came to Qingdao to buy goods, and most of them belonged to Lu merchants, who sent invitations to them to get rid of the backlog of goods as soon as possible.

is still the same as before, please come and have a meal first, and then give a way to make money straight to the point.

These goods are still very popular in Daming, and these goods were mainly controlled by Zheng Zhilong in the past, and people could only buy from Zheng Zhilong.

But now it can be bought in Qingdao, and even more than Zheng Zhilong's.

There are also many Huizhou businessmen who come to Qingdao to do business, Huizhou businessmen have always had the spirit of hardship and hard work, and they can be found almost everywhere, although Zhao Yan unites Shandong businessmen, but he does not exclude Huizhou businessmen.

The relationship between him and the Hui merchants can be said to be both competitive and cooperative.

In terms of competition, it is in the salt industry, and in terms of cooperation, it is in the trade of goods.

When these Hui merchants came to Qingdao, they often transported the goods needed for sea trade from other places, and before Zheng Zhilong controlled the sea trade network, merchants from all over the world wanted to sell goods overseas, and they had to go through Zheng Zhilong's trade network.

Now Zhao Yan is also involved in maritime trade, which is undoubtedly an extra way for the workshop owners who produce goods in various places.

However, in general, there are still not too many merchants who come to Qingdao from other places to sell goods, and the most profitable maritime trade commodities are often out of stock.

Therefore, the main commodities exported to this book are cotton cloth and ironware, within two months, sometimes sweet potato flour has become one of the export commodities, of which 60% of the goods are cotton cloth, the profit is about 250%, the profit algorithm is to deduct the profit of the textile factory, the profit reaches 5 million taels.

Iron and steel products, the profit also reached 4 million taels.

From the first month to February, none of the eight clippers traded with the company eight times, with an average of 7.5 days for a round trip, and the total weight of the goods transported to the company was 15,000 tons, and the goods returned reached 16,600 tons.

These clippers usually act alone, after all, at the speed of the clippers, even if they are loaded with cargo, the speed is surprisingly fast, and it is almost impossible for those pirates to catch up.

With such a high speed, there is no need for any escort.

The six armed merchant ships originally snatched from the Dutch were collectively touched, and the five armed merchant ships were also equipped with rifled guns, which were already more than self-sufficient at sea, but for the sake of safety, they were still collectively touched.

In two months, the fleet made two round-trips, transporting 4,000 tons of cargo, and 8,000 tons of round-trip.

Among them, 70% of the goods shipped back were brass from the capital, with a value of 3.605 million taels of silver. After all, Ben is a small country, and it is impossible to gather so many goods at once, so brass has become the main target for transporting back.

The total profit reached 18 million taels, which can be described as crazy to the extreme. But under the rapid trade, extremely acute problems have also been exposed.

That is, there is a serious backlog of goods.

So far, there has been a backlog of nearly 10 million taels of goods. Although the 8 million taels of silver shipped back from Yuben can support it for a while.

At the same time, the profits of the trade began to decline, for example, the profits of cotton cloth had begun to dive, and other commodities were better.

The reason why there was such a crazy profit in the trade was because the trade between the two sides was in a thirsty stage before, and the book had a large amount of silver flowing into the hands of Westerners.

As the silver of the book is getting less and less, the profit will further decline, and after the two sides are balanced, the profit will become to the south of the Ming Dynasty to the north, although there is a profit, but it cannot reach the point of madness.

However, the brass, saltpeter, and sulfur of this book should be able to support for a long time, and there should be no problem in supporting it for decades, and although the profits of cotton cloth began to dive, no matter how low the profits are, they will not be lower than the price sold in Daming, which is a good dumping ground for goods.

Commodities are a means of colonial exploitation.

Of the 10 million taels of goods in the backlog, nearly 4 million taels are brass, which is relatively easy to get rid of, while the remaining 6 million taels of goods need to be trafficked by merchants to various places for sale.

The system of the merchant bank is far from being fully rolled out, and the bank is not yet established and does not have the financial resources to retail these goods, so wholesale these goods to other merchants is undoubtedly the best option.

Soon there will be one more commodity among the dumped goods -- socks, and the Academy of Science and Technology has succeeded in developing a knitting machine after the year, and the efficiency has been increased by more than 50 times.

Zhao Yan ran to check with joy, the socks woven by the knitting machine are not as high in quality as the hand-woven socks, and can only occupy the low-end market with a price advantage, and further improvement is needed.

These socks are obviously very good in export, and Zhao Yan immediately rewarded the member of the Science and Technology Institute who researched the knitting machine, and rewarded him with a full three thousand taels of silver.

However, the funds of the textile machinery research group are issued by the Institute of Science and Technology, and the patent is completely owned by Zhao Yan.

The capital of the textile industry has now reached the point of 5 million taels, and last autumn, 2 million quintals of cotton were collected in various places.

Cotton sold very well the year before last, so the cotton output in various places increased sharply, and the cotton output in Henan began to rebound rapidly without the rampant bandits.

Shandong's cotton planting area has also been significantly stimulated, and cotton was planted almost everywhere in Xisanfu, a traditional cotton-growing area, last year.

Qingzhou and Laizhou also planted cotton last year, and many landlords planted cotton after seeing the profits, and Shandong has produced more than 2 million quintals of cotton.

As a result, the price of cotton plunged a bit in the autumn of last year, and Zhao Yan's textile mill only bought cotton in Shandong, and the price was only more than two taels and one load, provided that cotton farmers did not need to deal with cotton seeds.

The textile industry in the south was hit to a certain extent last year, but the blow was not very big, after all, only 800,000 quintals of quantity were purchased last year, and this cotton cloth did not account for much of the share in Daming.

Hebei's cotton output, immediately filled the demand gap in the southern textile industry, coupled with the beginning of last autumn, the development of the trade in the capital, cotton cloth began to dump in the capital, into the Ming market is not much, so the textile industry in the south began to recover rapidly.

The price of cotton cloth began to dive, and the price fell again and again, and the textile workers of this book already felt that their yarn and cotton cloth were a little difficult to sell.

…… In order to adapt to commercial development, in early March, a silver ticket that made Zhao Yan more satisfied was produced.

This silver ticket is made of special paper and has an original watermark.

The front and back sides are printed with two poems, the Orchid Pavilion Preface and the Drunkard Pavilion Record, and the stereotypes of these two poems are carved by master-level characters, but it is very difficult for others to copy them.

If the merchant wants to remit money to another city, he will first store it in the bank, open a silver ticket, write the amount on it, and then divide it in half, and the separated part will be sent to the destination quickly, and the customer will take the other half to the designated destination to pick it up.

This is a more urgent, and there is a specific destination of the remittance service, if not urgent, you can exchange it at the bank in various places.

As in the Song Dynasty, each bank set up a currency inspector to identify the authenticity of the silver bills. There are five denominations: fifty taels, one hundred taels, one thousand taels, ten thousand, and one hundred thousand taels.

There is a 1% fee for silver tickets.

The other is the deposit business, which is the fund-raising function of the bank, and it is also the most important function of the bank. The depositor deposits in the local bank, the bank will issue a passbook, and the customer will set a password, if it is more strict, the customer can specify the identity of the withdrawer, and the password is correct or the identity is correct to withdraw the money. At the same time, for a certain period of time, withdrawals can only be made at local and surrounding (prefecture, provincial) banks, and after one year, withdrawals can be made at Denlai banks nationwide.

Deposits can get interest, the interest level is determined by the specified deposit time, no fixed deposit, every two silver interest month 5%, that is, 5 copper plates, depositors a year, every two silver can produce more than 6 cents of silver additional income.

The interest will be increased to 6% for 1 year, 7% for 3 years, and 8% for 5 years. Depositors can also withdraw early, but the interest rate will be reduced to 5%.

For example, if one thousand taels of silver are stored in the bank for five years, there will be a profit of 100.3453176823001652153010831849 taels when the first year is settled.

The profits were very considerable, and both princes and nobles and common people could make a profit from them, and the silver they stored in the bank would be used for loans.

The loan interest rate is 10% for half a year, 12% for one year, 14% for two years and 16% for three years. There are two types of loans: credit loans and mortgage loans.

This interest rate is much lower than that of usury.

Lines of credit are generally not open to the public, and any loans needed need to be secured by property. Only the departments under Zhao Yan can make credit loans.

The reading power of each department is calculated, so even if it is the various departments under Zhao Yan, if they want to take out a loan, they have to pay interest.

The network system of the bank is at the provincial, government and county levels, and the county-level banks submit the storage information to the provincial-level banks every month, the government-level banks summarize and store the information to the provincial-level banks every three months, and the provincial-level banks summarize the information to the head office at the end of each year.

That is to say, depositors can withdraw their deposits at prefecture-level banks one month after depositing in county-level banks, three months after they can withdraw their deposits at provincial-level banks, and one year later they can withdraw their deposits at Denglai banks in Daming all over the country.

"If these banks lay out a network in various parts of Daming, our various departments can mobilize much more funds, and then we can spend tens of millions of taels a year to build ships and tens of millions of taels to develop the textile industry." Zhao Quan could already think of the situation when the silver was sufficient.

Even if last year's fiscal revenue was good, if we want to develop comprehensively with this amount of funds, we still can't fully improve the efficiency of expansion.

"It's still early days, we still lack manpower and experience, and we have to try it out for a few years to train enough people before we expand nationwide." Zhao Yan shook his head and said.

"Then we will set up a few in Denglai and Jinan now."

"Banks are the top priority, the rules must be strict, and the personnel must be strictly trained. We first set up a head office in Zhaojiabao, set up banks at all levels in Huangxian, Qingdao, Dengzhou, Laizhou, Yantai, Weihai and other places, and opened one in Jinan and Shanghai, so as not to expand outward for the time being. Zhao Yan decided, "After all, our main purpose now is to raise funds, and the business of remitting money from bank bills is also dispensable." ”

(To be continued)