The reason why Jimin Commercial Bank was able to purchase 800,000 quintals of cotton was mainly because of direct purchase, in the past, cotton farmers needed to remove the cotton seeds before selling cotton, so the "Merchant Regulations" said: "When buying cloth, don't be busy with farming, you must know that you are late and fast." ”

For cotton farmers, planting cotton is a very laborious work, not only to plant it, but also to peel off the cotton seeds one by one, if the manpower is not enough, it will cause the phenomenon of not being able to sell, and also limit the cotton planting area of cotton farmers.

Jimin Commercial Bank does not play cards according to common sense, and when the cotton is ripe, it has been killed in the cotton-producing area, whether it is the first cotton or the second cotton, it will be harvested as soon as it is produced, and the cottonseed does not need to be processed by cotton farmers.

Naturally, those cotton farmers were extremely happy, and although the price would be lower, the actual profit was higher, so they were willing to sell cotton to the commercial banks.

Last year, the cloth merchants were caught off guard, and when they arrived at the cotton-producing areas, there was very little cotton.

Among them, the cotton in the three major cotton-producing areas of Luxi was almost swept away, and when the cloth merchants in the south came, they did not buy any cotton.

However, in places that many commercial banks in the south could not reach, those cloth merchants bought a lot of cotton, after all, Zhao Yan had limited funds in his hands, and it was impossible to buy all the cotton.

Zhao Yan didn't know the specific appearance of the cotton tie machine, but with the concerted efforts, it only took ten days for the Science and Technology Institute to manufacture the cotton tie machine.

The gin consists mainly of two rollers: one drum is covered with iron spikes that grip the cotton and separate it from the seed. The other roller is covered with short, stiff hairs that brush the cotton off the first roller.

Zhao Yan was overjoyed, and hurriedly asked people to test the cotton binding machine, and the test results showed that with this kind of machine, a person can roll 80 kilograms of cotton in one day, and the work efficiency is increased by 80 times.

The work efficiency of one person is equivalent to eighty people, and the processing cost of one load of cotton is almost equal to its own acquisition cost, but the efficiency of the mule machine has increased by hundreds of times, the efficiency of the hydraulic loom has increased by four times, and the efficiency of the cotton binding machine has increased by eighty times, and the overall average increase has increased by 61.333333...... times more efficient.

This efficiency can also be improved, the textile machinery research group is improving the mule machine and the hydraulic loom, the transformation of the mule machine is relatively simple, more spindles on the line, can be installed two or three hundred spindles.

As long as the hydraulic loom is carefully improved according to the principle used by Zhao Yan, the efficiency can also be improved again, and the principle of the loom comes from a chess playing mechanism that can move the chess pieces.

The cotton cloth produced by the textile mills along the Sand River has begun to be shipped to those big cities for sale, and the selling price is about the same as that of the same grade of cotton cloth on the market, only a little lower.

After all, cotton cloth is not unsellable, there is no need for any price war, and the actual profit of a load of cotton is as high as five taels of silver.

The profits calculated before were mainly calculated in those low-grade markets, but the scale of the textile mills in Zhao Yan's hands was not large, and there was no need to sell cotton to those low-grade markets.

The so-called resistance to the market, is those self-sufficient areas, this kind of area is almost rarely patronized by cloth merchants, most of the local small cloth merchants are operating, after all, the sales price of cotton cloth in that place is too low, there is no profit, the main problem is transportation.

As long as the transportation is convenient, cotton can be sold, and it can be sold at a good price, cotton can be sold at a good price, and the price of cotton cloth in the local area will naturally go up, because the division of labor in agricultural production has been realized, and there are not so many self-sufficient people.

Although Zhao Yan has a backlog of 800,000 quintals of cotton, at most he will enter the mid-range market, and it will take a few years for those who resist the market to patronize.

In order to return the funds before the autumn cotton matures, craftsmen are working hard to manufacture textile machinery at night, and dense spinning and weaving workshops have been built along the Shahe River.

The cost of these workshops is very expensive, each of which costs more than 200 taels, and a large house is built by the river, and the roof is equipped with skylights to let in light. When weaving, water should be sprinkled in the house to increase humidity, so as to avoid the phenomenon of yarn breaking during weaving.

After intensive manufacturing, Shahe has no space to continue to build textile machinery, just when Zhao Yan was considering which river to build another textile base, news suddenly came from Songjiang Mansion.

"Someone infiltrated our weaving workshop and wanted to steal the technology of the hydraulic loom, and they sneaked around in the workshop in the middle of the night to observe, but fortunately they found it in time." Zhao Quan said worriedly: "After all, Songjiang Mansion is too far away from us, and those laborers can only be recruited from nearby, but it is inevitable that some people with bad intentions will be mixed in." Although the machine will not be able to understand for a while, as long as they are asked to work for a month or two, and then find a craftsman who is proficient in hydraulics, maybe the technology will be leaked. ”

"This ......" Zhao Yan groaned, it is indeed a little difficult to do, obviously he can't control the country's taxes, so if you want to make a profit, you must keep the technology secret. But if the state tax revenue can be controlled, there is no big problem in making the technology public.

"Childe, why don't we dismantle all the workshops in Songjiang Mansion and transport all the cotton back to Shandong Textile, and we will secretly get a wharf in Songjiang Mansion as a place for goods to enter and exit." Zhao Quan suggested.

"Is there time to weave the cotton?" Zhao Yan asked.

"There is no need to worry about this, we can build a yarn factory base in Jiaojiang (river), first transport cotton from Songjiang Province to Jiaozhou Bay, and then spin it into yarn in the glue, part of it will be woven by itself, and part of it will be transported back to Songjiang Province, and these yarns will be sold to Songjiang Province." Zhao Quan said, "Our fastest speed is spinning, if such a division of labor, there will generally be no backlog of cotton, and the funds can be returned quickly." ”

"In terms of weaving, it can be concentrated in Yishui, and then from Yishui into the Yellow River, from the Yellow River to Henan, Huguang and other areas, and can also be sold directly south to the south of the Yangtze River."

Zhao Yan thought for a while and felt that this plan was more feasible.

This area of Songjiang Province is mainly engaged in the weaving industry and is in need of a large supply of yarn, while spinning is concentrated in the Jiashan area of Zhejiang.

At this time, there is a proverb that "you can't buy Songjiang cloth, you can't collect Weitang yarn".

The textile industry in the Ming Dynasty was a procedural division of labor, cotton farmers were responsible for planting cotton, peeling seeds, and then middlemen sold it to the spinning area, and the people in the spinning area bought cotton spinning, and then sold it to middlemen, who then trafficked the yarn to Songjiang Province, which was the main area for the development of the weaving industry, and the cottage handicraft workshops engaged in the weaving industry bought the yarn back, and then woven it into cloth, and then sold it to trafficking merchants, who then transported the cotton cloth to various places and sold it to cloth shop owners.

And Zhao Yan took over these divisions of labor and exhausted these processes. While vigorously developing the textile industry, he will inevitably have a drastic impact on the production methods of the cottage workshop, and the consequences can be imagined, a large number of people engaged in the textile industry will lose their jobs.

However, the progress of the times and the progress of the productive forces will inevitably cause severe pain, but after the severe pain, there will be rich benefits. For example, at the end of the Ming Dynasty, there was a shortage of grain, mainly because of the flood of the commodity economy, which led to many people mainly planting cash crops, such as cotton, sugarcane, mulberry, tobacco, and other high-yield crops, and grain production was only an auxiliary.

The profits of grain planting cannot catch up with the profits of those cash crops, which will inevitably lead to a decrease in grain, and after the grain output decreases, grain prices will naturally rise, and then they will remain at an equilibrium point, that is, there are some benefits from growing grain, but the returns are still not as good as those from those cash crops.

But this balance is very fragile, especially in the late Ming Dynasty, such a frequent disaster, water conservancy disrepair environment, if this is okay, at least can be restored, but the human factor of constant war has entered a vicious cycle, and the imperial court financial crisis, can only play soy sauce on the side, there is no means to change this crisis.

Those people engaged in the production of commodity economy have been robbed of their jobs, and they will naturally switch to other industries, as for whether they can survive or not, this is not in Zhao Yan's consideration, but he can provide them with opportunities for agricultural production.

"Then let's deal with it!" Zhao Yan nodded and agreed to this plan, and originally opened a textile base in Songjiang Prefecture, mainly for the convenience of transportation.

However, this convenience now seems to do more harm than good, and it is good to move back to Shandong, after all, Shandong is his own territory, and it is more convenient to control.

Most of the cotton needed in Songjiang Mansion is purchased from Henan and Shandong Luxi, and Zhao Yan has bought all the cotton in Shandong, and there will inevitably be a huge supply gap in Songjiang Prefecture, and selling it to Songjiang Mansion is just to meet the market demand.

Nowadays, when there is not much capital, it is possible to divide the labor. In addition, the textile industry under Zhao Yan still provides the main profit from yarn, because yarn improves the efficiency the most, and although there is profit in weaving, it is obviously less.

The loom developed by Zhao Yan, if compared with the Western weaving method, the efficiency is actually 16 times, but it is only 4 times in Daming.

"If we sell the yarn to Songjiang Mansion, our capital return speed can be at least ten times higher, and at the same time, we can buy cotton with stripped cotton seeds on the market for spinning, so that this year's income can be at least ...... The old slave will find it and calculate it later. Zhao Quan paused as he spoke, obviously unable to come up with the forecast data for a while.

"Hmmm! In this way, we will have a better time next year. Zhao Yan said that this year's textile industry funds still need to be accumulated, and it is estimated that it will be able to be called next year, and then the military expenditure will not have to be so bothered.

With the determination of the new textile industry distribution plan, Zhao Yan is going to start enclosing the land again, the first thing to circle is naturally Jiaozhou Bay, and now as the chief soldier of Denglai Zhao Yan, is the military governor of Denglai area, and it is much easier to enclose the land, but there is still a Shandong governor on his head, and Sun Yaoguang, the prefect of Laizhou, does not seem to be on the right path with him.

――――Explain the quantity of silver taels in the Ming Dynasty.

The use of silver as currency was the Ming and Qing dynasties.

The widespread use of silver is also a striking example of the development of the commodity economy in the Ming Dynasty. At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, silver was also banned, and due to the development of the commodity economy, the Ming political axe had to be "relaxed to use the ban on silver" in orthodoxy. Following the gold and silver, when Chenghua, the salaries of officials were also partially converted into silver. After the middle of the Ming Dynasty, "the government and the opposition rate all use silver", and the large and small transactions in the market are calculated in silver. Due to the development of foreign trade, the import of silver increased dramatically. It is estimated that in the Jiajia and Long dynasties, the annual customs duties and foreign land lease taxes collected by the Guangdong City Bosi alone amounted to 2 million silver dollars. Since Wanli, the Mexican Eagle silver coin from Spain has been used in Fujian and Guangzhou.

There is not much restriction on the circulation of money, and even in Lou County, Jiangnan, cotton farmers can pay one tael of silver according to the original rent of rice, and directly pay the land rent with silver.

As for some people's belief that silver only began to flow in large quantities in the early Qing Dynasty, and that there was no silver inflow in the Ming Dynasty, this is actually a big misunderstanding.

Production in the early Qing Dynasty was destroyed, and the sea ban was so strict, where how much silver flowed in. But there is indeed more silver in the market, because the Manchus spent the silver they had looted, and there was naturally more silver in the market.

As for how much silver the Manchus robbed, it is needless to say that the Manchus slaughtered the most in the south.

(To be continued)