To be precise, the industrial development of the Chinese Empire should have started in 1854 after Lin Zhe established the Shanghai Trade Zone, that year in the Lin family's steam silk reeling factory, set off a wave of raw silk, so that in just a few years there were a large number of steam silk reeling factories in Shanghai, and the output of factory silk is more and more, and the competitiveness is also increasing, so that by the end of 1861, China's main raw silk production has been factory silk occupies an absolute position. Only a few remote areas still retain traditional raw silk workshops.

The rapid development of the raw silk industry has directly led to the development of other industries, and the light industry has successively appeared in the machine processing of timber mills, tea brick factories, match factories, soap factories and so on.

In the field of heavy industry, industries such as steel, coal, machinery manufacturing, and shipbuilding have also developed one after another.

After the raw silk industry, the empire began to fully promote the cotton industry after 1858, and various spinning mills, weaving factories, and dyeing factories sprung up like mushrooms after a rain.

Compared with the raw silk industry, the cotton industry is relatively easier to organize, first of all, it does not have high requirements for geographical location, not to say that it must be close to the production area of silkworm cocoons like the raw silk industry, but also must be close to the export port.

You can set up factories in coastal port cities such as Shanghai, Guangzhou, Tianjin, so that you can easily import cotton directly from India, and you can also set up factories in Wuchang, Nanchang and other places due to the convenience of water transportation.

You can even set up factories in some cotton-producing areas in China and where transportation is more convenient.

If the upstream enterprises such as spinning mills still have greater requirements for geographical location, then the cotton industry belongs to the midstream weaving mills, dyeing factories on the geographical location requirements are very general, as long as they can transport cotton yarn they can produce cotton cloth, with primary color cotton cloth they can dye.

Even weaving mills established in inland provinces can sell directly locally.

In addition, compared with the raw silk industry, the cotton industry requires relatively little capital investment, and you have to set up a steam silk reeling factory. The equipment plant still says everything, but you have to buy silkworm cocoons, and then produce them and then sell them, due to the high price of silkworm cocoons and raw silk, if you want to achieve a certain amount of raw silk production, then the requirements for working capital are very high.

A steam silk reeling factory employing more than 1,000 people. Its annual working capital is at least more than five million, and this is not counting the various equipment investment in the early stage.

But in the cotton industry, the investment in the spinning mill is relatively large, but there are hundreds of thousands of dollars that can set up a small factory, if there is a few million dollars invested in it, it is one of the best, employing at least a few thousand workers.

In addition, cotton cloth production has little requirement for scale effect, which does not mean that it is necessary to invest hundreds of thousands of millions to build a large-scale factory to effectively reduce costs. Get good profits.

Just as in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, a few dozen workers could run a garment factory, and the entry threshold for the textile industry in the mid-nineteenth century was also very low.

The technical requirements are not high, but also to purchase the necessary equipment, hire a few technicians and then be able to start, especially for the weaving factory, printing and dyeing factory or those clothing factories are simpler, and even as long as a large family goes into battle, you can run a small family workshop-style factory.

The technical requirements are not high, the capital investment is low, and there are no requirements for geographical location.

Of course, more critically. In these years, investing in the textile industry is quite profitable!

Although the profit margin of the cotton industry cannot be the same as that of the raw silk industry, which is more than 20 or 30 percent. But if it is done well, there is also a profit margin of more than 10 percent.

Another big reason is that, unlike the raw silk industry, which is heavily dependent on exports, the cotton industry is dominated by domestic sales.

And how many people are there in the whole of China? They have to eat, they have to dress, right?

Even if you send out those rural groups who do not have strong purchasing power, they still maintain male farmers and women weaving, and only count the urban population. That's a big market for tens of millions of people.

In the past, these markets were occupied by traditional homespun cloth, and now under the impact of high quality and low price of woven fabrics, traditional homespun cloth has faded rapidly, and in the cotton cloth market in some big cities, it is basically the world of woven fabrics.

The decline of the traditional homespun industry. This also leads to the transformation of those original cloth practitioners who want to survive, and it is simple for them to transform, just change the previous handicraft workshop production mode to the machine weaving mode.

After all, the so-called traditional homespun cloth, in addition to the kind of homespun cloth produced by rural families for their own use, in fact, the so-called homespun cloth sold on the market is commercially produced, and there are many large or small handicraft workshops to produce.

These traditional handicrafts have been transformed into a new type of textile industry, where they buy cotton yarn from large-scale spinning mills, weave it, dye it, and sell it to all parts of the country, and finally flow into the ordinary city dwellers.

The many characteristics of the cotton cloth industry have made this industry an industry with many employees and a very wide range of regions.

After three years of development, the cotton cloth industry, although its contribution to the central government is not as good as the raw silk industry, but its impact on the domestic people's livelihood has far exceeded that of the raw silk industry.

The rapid development of the textile industry represented by raw silk and cotton cloth has directly led to the development of other industries!

For example, the production of raw silk and cotton cloth needs the support of shipping and machinery and equipment, and the development of shipping can drive the shipbuilding industry and the steel industry, and at the same time, shipping also needs to consume coal, which will also drive the development of coal.

The development of industry is one after another, and when an industry rises, it often leads to the development of other related industries.

And this is why the empire vigorously supported the textile industry at the beginning, because the current textile industry is the leader of China's industrial development, and its development can greatly drive the development of other industries.

After putting down the industrial development report in his hand, Lin Zhe and Guo Longyun continued to talk for about half an hour, mainly because Lin Zhe was listening and Guo Longyun was talking.

Guo Longyun is mainly talking about the empire's economic development plan for next year!

"Next year is a critical year for the development of heavy industry in the empire, in addition to continuing to maintain continuous investment in the two coastal cities of Guangzhou and Tianjin, in addition to starting next year we will increase support for the industrial development of Hubei, when the Zhuping railway will be completed, and Daye Iron and Steel Plant will also be officially put into operation, the development of coal and steel industry will greatly drive the development of local related industries.

In addition, next year, the Nanjing-Shanghai railway will enter a large-scale construction period, and the Tangshan Luanzhou railway will also start construction, which requires the strong cooperation of the domestic steel industry, otherwise it is likely to face the situation of insufficient rail capacity. ”

Lin Zhe nodded: "The railway is a great weapon to drive the coal and steel industries, but we must also pay attention to the cooperation of the two to avoid the production capacity of the rails not keeping up!" ”

There is no doubt that railways played a leading role in economic development, and for the nineteenth century, their importance was even more important than that of later high-speed railways.

In the future, if there were no high-speed railways, there were various modes of transportation, such as ordinary railways, airplanes, and automobiles, but for this era, railways were almost the only option for large-scale transportation by land.

For some inland provinces without large-scale rivers, there is no railway, and the industrial and commercial links with the outside world are almost cut off, but once the railway is opened, a large number of industrial products and raw materials from other places can enter the area quickly and cheaply.

Some local industrial raw materials, specialties and industrial products can also be shipped cheaply, bringing more income to the local area.

If a continental country wants to carry out the industrial revolution, there is one thing that must be indispensable, and that is the railway!

After Guo Longyun went out, Lin Zhe still couldn't be idle, because Jiang Daoquan, who had been waiting outside for a long time, came in after Guo Longyun.

This time, Jiang Daoquan came to see Lin Zhe, not for education and other affairs, but for some affairs of the former Qing Dynasty.

"Your Majesty, after two years of preliminary work, you have already figured out a context of Qing history, and this is an excerpt from the several volumes that have been completed!"

Saying that, Jiang Daoquan just gave Lin Zhe a thick manuscript, seeing this manuscript that was at least more than 20 centimeters thick, Lin Zhe couldn't help frowning, if you have so much to read, I don't know how much time it will take!

So he just picked it up, then opened the first few pages, glanced at it slightly, and closed it after half a ring: "The previous summary is okay, and the rest of the book will be handed over to the secretariat!" ”

Basically, as long as it is a large number of documents and manuscripts, it is impossible for Lin Zhe to personally look at them one by one, and this work has always been handled by the secretariat with Lin Zhe's assistance, whether it is those thick legal texts or project plans, or today's Qing history, it is impossible for Lin Zhe to read them one by one.

Jiang Daoquan had already expected Lin Zhe's reaction, but he attached great importance to the compilation of Qing history, so he specially brought a part of the manuscript to Lin Zhe today.

After all, it is a great honor for a scholar to edit the history books of the previous dynasty, if it is in the Ming and Qing dynasties, this work is generally responsible for the Hanlin Academy, and only those champions, lists, and tanhua can access the editing of historical books.

However, there was no such institution as the Hanlin Academy in the official system of the empire, and the daily clerical work of the emperor was mainly handled by the secretariat, while some archives and historical books were edited by the archives department under the Ministry of Education of the Cabinet.

As the Minister of Education, Jiang Daoquan should not compete with those juniors for the compilation of Qing history, but as a traditional literati, Jiang Daoquan is still very eager to leave a name in history, and there is nothing that excites literati more than presiding over the compilation of a history book.

When he thought that the Qing history in the future twenty-five histories would be edited by himself, he couldn't help but be excited.

Therefore, he relied on the old and sold the old, and finally snatched the position that originally belonged to those younger civil officials, and sat on the post of supervising the Qing History Editing Committee. (To be continued.) )