Since the rise of stockings, the consumption of raw silk in Western countries is more and more, especially the consumption of raw silk in the emerging United States is enough to feed a new industrial country, in the twentieth century in the original time and space, Japan has replaced China as the world's largest producer of raw silk, and at that time, Japan's exports to the United States of goods, silk products accounted for more than half, and these raw silk, either ready-made stockings, or raw silk directly exported to the United States, and after arriving in the United States, Most of this raw silk is still produced as stockings.

Historically, after the Meiji Restoration, how did Japan establish an industrial system and create a large naval fleet?

It is to rely on the export of raw silk, and then exchange it for machinery and equipment, and then produce various industrial products, and silk stockings are the most important raw silk products in the late nineteenth century and even after the twentieth century.

Therefore, to a certain extent, the invention and best-selling of stockings is an important driving force for the modern Japanese to become a great power, and the combined fleet of the Japanese itself can actually be called by another name, that is: the stockings fleet!

The export of raw silk in the original time and space is extremely important to China, and the Japanese in this era is still in the chaos of the civil war, while the development of China's raw silk is increasingly new, through this decade of industrial production, China's silk reeling factory produced factory silk, its quality is the top in the world, well, at the same time, the quantity is also the largest.

At the same time, due to the promotion of rich commercial interests, those large domestic raw silk manufacturers have also begun to guide silkworm farmers to improve silkworm seeds, the most typical example is the largest domestic raw silk manufacturer, Shanghai Textile Company. Internally, a special research institute has been set up to improve silkworm seeds. mulberry trees to improve the quality of silkworm cocoons. This in turn improves the quality of raw silk.

The same is raw silk, inferior and high-grade, the price is very different, after all, foreigners are not stupid, naturally like to buy good things, although cheap too, but the price will definitely be much lower.

As the leading industry of the empire, the raw silk industry plays an irreplaceable role in the industrial economy of the empire, and Lin Zhe naturally keeps an eye on it at all times.

And even a lot of the time. For example, as early as a few years ago, he continued to guide the Ministry of Finance to increase the tax rate of domestic raw silk consumption, and strive for more expensive taxes for domestic sales of raw silk products, on the one hand, to increase taxes, on the other hand, it will also change the direction to increase the overall price of domestic raw silk, curb domestic consumption of raw silk, and then increase the amount of raw silk available for export.

To know the current international market. The demand for Chinese raw silk is very huge, and the annual export volume of Chinese raw silk is unable to meet the demand of the international market, which can be described as in short supply.

In such a situation, the empire naturally wants to squeeze out more raw silk for export. In order to create more foreign exchange, with more foreign exchange, we can purchase more machinery and equipment. Carry out industrial upgrading.

And this Lin Zhe felt that it was not enough, in order to further stimulate foreigners' desire for raw silk. Lin Zhe pondered whether to contribute to the promotion of stockings.

Although stockings appeared very early and can be seen in the upper class of the West. But after all, it failed to become a product that made the whole people carnival, and it was not until the twentieth century that stockings became a must-have for mass women, and now, Lin Zhe is thinking about promoting this trend in advance.

The most obvious example of this is the East India Company's promotion of tea in England, and the British did not drink tea at first, and it was not until the East India Company promoted tea from China for many years that the British, a Western country, developed the habit of drinking tea, so that there was a nondescript word called 'afternoon tea'.

And now, Lin Zhe wants to do this kind of thing again, but the protagonist has changed from tea to stockings!

Of course, this kind of thing is mainly promoted, because the manufacture of stockings from raw silk has been invented a long time ago, and it has been around since the sixteenth century, and by now, basically many people in the upper class have worn stockings, and what is needed to be done now is to promote this kind of thing from the upper class to the whole people.

For this reason, Lin Zhe called the person in charge of the Textile Department of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce!

"The current application scope of raw silk products is still smaller, raw silk is our fist export commodity, you must also actively expand the market of raw silk!"

"Raw silk can not only be made into silk clothes, but also into stockings and other silk fabrics, which should be further promoted in Western countries!"

Lin Zhe didn't play too many riddles with these subordinates, and directly pointed out the key to it, that is, stockings will be the next important growth point of raw silk products.

As for how the officials of the Textile Division below operate after Lin Zhe's instructions, it is their business, but since this is Lin Zhe's special instructions, the people below still attach great importance to it.

Although those officials from traditional backgrounds are limited by traditional concepts and have some rejection of raw silk to show the sexy beauty of women, personal rejection is exclusion, but this does not mean that they do not do it.

Soon, the officials of the Textile Department held a raw silk conference in Shanghai, inviting some major raw silk manufacturers to participate, not only with the Shanghai Textile Company, which is a domestic raw silk manufacturer, but also involved in the raw silk trade, such as Dexin Foreign Company, Jardine Matheson and so on.

The meeting held by this official is naturally some false and empty things, but through these false words, it can be known that the Ministry of Industry and Commerce will increase its efforts to promote raw silk products in the near future, and is preparing to hold a raw silk products exhibition in London, England.

The main purpose of this meeting is to hope that these large manufacturers in the raw silk industry will participate, after all, this kind of exhibition can not be done only by the official, the official is often just a guide, promote the role, the actual affairs have to rely on these enterprises to do.

Although I have not experienced this before, everyone knows that it is beneficial, and if it is famous in London, it will be of great benefit to future sales.

In addition, why is the raw silk exhibition not held in Shanghai or other parts of the country, but in London, England?

No way, this year is the boss who has money, this Chinese raw silk wants to make money from foreigners, you have to cater to their preferences, at present, China's exports of raw silk, a large part of it is sold to the United Kingdom, and the United States, the largest consumer of raw silk in later generations, has not yet risen.

In addition, continental European countries represented by France are also China's main markets.

And China's raw silk has always been aimed at the high-end market in the local area, no way, raw silk is originally a luxury jewelry, and the basic people who can buy raw silk products are some upper-class people, and then the middle class.

These people are mainly concentrated in London, Paris, etc.

They're not going to come to Shanghai just fine!

With the leadership of the Textile Division, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is also very cooperative, undertaking the affairs of London, England, and soon, a large number of domestic entrepreneurs will bring their carefully prepared raw silk products to London.

These raw silk products have semi-finished raw silk, as well as domestic woven fine silk, and even some finished silk clothes, of course, most of these clothes are Western-style clothes.

At the same time, there are also stockings specially prepared by Shanghai Textile Company for this time!

Shanghai Textile Company was not long before the exhibition received the task of producing a batch of stockings samples, because this task was personally issued by the Textile Section of the Royal Asset Management Office, as a subordinate royal enterprise, Shanghai Textile Company naturally has no reason to refuse, so it soon was the elite backbone, but also specially modified a number of machines, just to weave exquisite stockings.

When these people boarded the ship from Shanghai with their goods, and then went to London, the wharf in Shanghai also ushered in a ship that was not the same as the surrounding ships, the displacement of this ship was not large, only four or five hundred tons, it seemed to be an ordinary passenger ship, but there was a yellow background color on the mast, there was a big black Ning character in the middle, and the upper left corner was a flag with a red dragon pattern.

This is the banner of the Ning Dynasty in Shangma, Lin Chengting has always been a person who likes to learn, and he especially likes to learn from Lin Zhe, when he formed the new army, he was like this, and later he established the Daning Kingdom, the setting of the central and local institutions, basically copying the empire.

Even specially learned the empire and made a national flag, you must know that the traditional dynasties of the Central Plains do not have official national flags.

However, unlike the empire's red background golden dragon spitting blue pearl flag, Lin Chengting in order to avoid any diplomatic conflicts with the Chinese Empire, this golden dragon is not needed, but even if Lin Chengting is not an emperor, not the Son of Heaven, but he is also a king, a little higher than the status of the ancient princes, and Lin Chengting is still a Chinese, so naturally it is also marked by the dragon.

So I chose the Red Dragon, but it was different from the Empire's Golden Dragon in appearance.

Although this ship is flying the flag of the Ning Dynasty, it is actually not a ship of the Ning Dynasty, why? Because the Ning Dynasty didn't even have an outlet to the sea.

However, if the Ning Dynasty wanted to come to Nanjing, the capital of the empire, it was too far to travel by land, and the road was very difficult, so when they came to China, they generally went to Burma via Burma, and then took a boat in Yangon to Shanghai by sea.

This ship is still a merchant ship rented by the Ning Dynasty, and many of the people on board are officials and merchants of the Ning Dynasty, but among these people, there is a young man, although he is wearing an ordinary suit, but this material is a high-grade product at a glance.

Lin Chengting's Ning Dynasty was much more thorough than the empire in terms of Westernization, Lin Chengting himself took the lead in shaving his hair and changing clothes, and this dress not only abandoned the clothes of the Manchus, but even the traditional Han costumes were abandoned together, and directly changed into Western-style suits.

When the ship arrived at the wharf, it quickly made contact with the local customs, and it was not long before several carriages arrived at the wharf, which had the peony badge on it, which was the national emblem of the empire, which meant that these carriages were official vehicles of the state. (To be continued.) )