Dragging his tired body, Feng Baocai returned to a temporary rented house with a small bag of rice.

The house rented by Feng Baocai's family was built by those real estate merchants in the business area to provide for the middle and lower class people, and this kind of house was a very simple brick and wood structure, often built in a row one by one, and rented out to the people who came to the business area to make a living.

The room rented by Feng Baocai's family is only about 50 square meters, there is no kitchen, no bathroom and the like, cooking can only live and cook at the door of the house, and to go to the toilet, you have to go to the public toilet at the end of the alley.

Rao is such a humble house, its weekly rent is as high as a penny and a half silver, and this is due to the fact that the house they rent is not in the core of the business district, but a new development zone that has been newly zoned into the business zone in the past two years, and it is far away from the river.

Due to the remoteness of the area and the lack of large factories in the vicinity, the land price was relatively cheap, and the real estate developers built a large number of simple houses in the area, which were rented out to the middle and lower classes.

And Feng Baocai relies on part-time work, plus his wife gets up early to wash clothes with gangster pulp, and only has three or four cents of silver at most a week, which means that at least half of the income must be used to pay the rent, and the remaining half must be used to provide food for the family.

Speaking of which, it has to be said that most of the relevant income and expenditure to the middle and lower class people in Shanghai are settled on a weekly basis, and the wages paid by factories are paid on a weekly basis, and the relative rent is also collected on a weekly basis. As for some scattered work, it is settled on a daily basis.

The reason why the settlement cycle is so short is because most of these people who have fled to Shanghai from all over the country are poor, and often have food today, but they will not eat tomorrow.

With this in mind, most employers, especially major factories, generally implement a weekly system, and temporary employees are billed on a daily basis.

Generally speaking, those who can earn a monthly salary are high-income people, such as factory management, senior technicians, government employees, etc.

It's a pity, not to mention the monthly salary, even the weekly salary is a luxury for Feng Baocai, after he failed to catch up with the recruitment of Baofeng Silk Reeling Factory today, he could only go to the temporary distribution center of labor as before, and then found a job on the construction site.

Although it was only a temporary job, because Feng Bao was an honest man, he would only work hard and not steal and cheat, so the overseer told him that this batch of work was only three or four days, and he could go to him after this time the work was completed.

I also heard that the three children of Feng Baocai's family were still waiting for his salary to eat, and they also paid him three days' wages in advance with kindness.

With these copper plates, Feng Baocai bought a small bag of coarse grains in the grain store before going home, although he was full of exhaustion, but because his livelihood in the next few days or even half a month had been settled, he was also slightly relieved.

As soon as he entered the house, his wife greeted him first, Feng Baocai handed her the rice bag in his hand, and said: "I went late, the Baofeng factory couldn't get in, but I found a construction site again, and this time it is estimated that I can work for more than half a month!" ”

When his wife heard this, although she showed a hint of relief, she still showed worry in her expression!

Feng Baocai changed out of the smelly and dirty clothes, but he thought in his mind, although he was lucky to find some capable jobs this time, but it didn't last long, and the income from such odd jobs was too small to support this family, so he still had to think of a way to see if he could find a stable job.

When Feng Baocai was thinking about how to find a job with a salary that could support his family and at the same time be stable, he was also in the business district, but it was not a poor kiln in the new development zone, but a place where finance and commerce converged in the business zone: on the Bund Avenue in the former British Concession.

Lin Shenbian sat in the office on the third floor of the headquarters of the Shanghai Textile Company, put down the brush in his hand, sighed and got up and walked out of the window, this time the accident report is not easy to write, I am afraid that I will be affected if I am not careful, and the people in the financial department of the palace department will not lightly let go of the accident that was lost as much as tens of thousands of taels of silver.

Looking out the window with a sad gaze, the street lights on the Bund Avenue outside the window have been lit, illuminating the entire Bund Avenue brightly, and the carriages that have also hit the kerosene lamps have passed from time to time on the main road.

After the establishment of the business district, the government of the business district vigorously promoted municipal construction, in addition to the construction of roads and bridges, some public municipal facilities are also under construction, such as the rest of the Bund Avenue and the erection of street lights.

However, it is worth noting that due to the high price of kerosene lamps, the government of the business district is unwilling to bear huge expenses, and the Bund Avenue is the headquarters of major foreign banks, commercial banks and other enterprises, etc., all of which are not bad for money, so the cost of these street lamps is actually borne by the merchants on the Bund Avenue.

Outside the Bund Avenue, there are many wharves, on the left is the private wharf of Xinde Foreign Bank, the old partner of Lin's Commercial Bank, and outside the Shanghai Textile Company, it is naturally the wharf belonging to the Shanghai Textile Company.

Many of the wharves along the Huangpu River are moored with a large number of ships, some sailboats, others steam-powered, and a large number of stevedores are still busy in the night light, unloading goods from ships or loading goods from the wharves onto ships.

Outside the dock, there are still lights drilling, and those are the lights on the boats on the river.

"The development of this business zone is getting bigger and bigger, but the competition is also getting bigger and bigger!" Lin Shen thought about it, because of this accident, the production of the fifth extraordinary may be delayed for a few months, once the expected orders cannot be completed, I am afraid that those partners will have to turn around and find several other silk reeling factories.

Since Lin's firm took the lead in opening the first machine qì silk reeling factory in Shanghai, its huge profits have made the major business houses almost rush to the top like sharks that have asked about the smell of blood.

In just a few years, there are more than 40 large and small machine silk reeling factories in the Shanghai Business Zone, of which there are 13 large factories employing more than 500 people, and the total number of employees in the raw silk industry itself has exceeded 30,000, and at the same time, it has also driven other industries and created at least 20,000 jobs.

Just looking at the employees and the jobs driven, the raw silk industry has undoubtedly become a pillar industry in the business zone.

However, the factory silk produced by many machine reeling factories in the business zone quickly occupied the market share of soil silk with relatively low cost and excellent quality.

Regardless of the domestic market or the export market, the factory silk occupies an absolute advantage.

In the face of the fierce battle of factory silk in the trade zone, the silk industry in Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces was quickly crushed, such as Huzhou in northern Zhejiang, which was originally the largest production of life and death, and the best quality at the same time, during a certain period of the Qing Dynasty, the imperial court once restricted the export of lake silk.

However, in the face of the quality and cost advantages of the factory silk in the trade zone, many raw silk handicraft workshops in Huzhou quickly closed down, either unable to turn over, or, like other raw silk firms, simply went to the trade zone to set up a machine qì silk reeling factory.

Similarly, there is Nantong in the north of the Yangtze River, which is also the main production area of local silk, but it is also subject to the strong competition of factory silk in the trade area across the river, so that in just a few years, many handicraft workshops have closed down, and workers have lost their jobs.

In the first half of this year, of the nearly 80,000 bales of raw silk exported from Shanghai, 60,000 bales were factory silk produced in the trade zone, and only 20,000 bales were local silk re-exported to Shanghai from the rest of the country.

Including raw silk and native silk, it is expected that the total export volume of raw silk in Shanghai this year will be as high as 60 million taels, and according to the 5% export tariff, it will directly bring more than 3 million taels of export tax to the customs.

At the same time, the government of the business district will also collect business tax directly from the silk reeling factories, and this tax is expected to be as high as more than five or six million taels of silver.

In other words, the raw silk industry alone can contribute tens of millions of taxes to the Chinese Empire every year!

The reason why there are so many taxes is mainly because of the formalization of the tax system, and the commercial and trade zones are not other areas under the rule of the Qing court, and the commercial tax is not valued or despised by it.

According to the taxation system currently implemented in the Chinese Empire, in order not to affect the lives of the general public, especially ordinary peasants, the amount of taxes for peasants refers to the pre-Qing era, that is to say, the land tax is similar to that of the pre-Qing era, and there is little change.

However, the system was further developed, and finally it was subdivided into many types of taxes, the most important of which is business tax, whether it is retail, service or production, all need to pay business tax of different amounts.

In fact, this tax system has been implemented in the business zone for a long time, and the enterprises in the business zone need to pay taxes according to the proportion of turnover, and the heavy industry supported by the government has a relatively large preferential effect, and the tax rate is only between 1 percent and 5 percent.

For example, the Linde Machinery Qì Factory, which is heavily supported by the military and the government, has only 1 percent of the tax amount.

However, the light industry, especially the raw silk industry, has a relatively high tax rate because of its very high profits.

The raw silk produced by the manufacturer is directly taxed at 10% of the value of the goods according to the export price, that is to say, if the export price of a package of raw silk is 350 taels, then the silk reeling factory will be directly taxed at 10%, that is, 35 taels.

This is not the end, after these goods are purchased by foreign businessmen, the export link will be levied 5% export tariff. (To be continued.) )