"Father, the child sends men to watch the workshop day and night, and the craftsmen who make the looms are also reliable old men, and they will never divulge secrets. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 info" Zhang Suzi repeatedly distinguished, but even if he racked his brains, he probably wouldn't have thought that it was not the people on his side who leaked the secrets, but the unsuccessful scholar Li Heng who had committed suicide by throwing himself into the river.

After Li Heng created the illusion of committing suicide by throwing himself into the river, he went ashore from an inconspicuous corner with the help of his colleagues in Jinyiwei, then changed his clothes and went to coax another wealthy businessman in Jiangnan with a drawing; With the cooperation of these people, many wealthy businessmen in Jiangnan who owned loom workshops received this drawing, and began to secretly trial production, and then purchased textile raw materials on a large scale, trying to make a lot of money.

As early as the Wanli period of Jiajing, the silk weaving industry, oil extraction industry, mining and metallurgical industry and other handicraft industries in the south of the Yangtze River showed signs of setting up workshops and recruiting hired workers to work; From the record of "Suzhou Mansion Chronicles", it can be seen that in the Ming Dynasty, there were a large number of free laborers in Suzhou City, who were "a group of people", "standing bridges to be called", "satin workers standing flower bridges, yarn workers standing Guanghuasi Bridge, and car makers standing brook bridges", waiting to be hired; According to the records of the "Mingshenzong Records", it is estimated that in Suzhou City, the number of employees is not less than 10,000; In the notes of some missionaries, there is even an exaggerated statement that there are 100,000 weavers, which shows the prosperity of commerce in Jiangnan.

Although these wealthy businessmen failed to sum up the relationship between demand and commodity prices, but the economic law still plays an important role, if it is only Zhang Suzi's family to increase the acquisition of it, although their family background is thick, but compared with the textile raw materials that the whole Jiangnan can provide, it is nothing, but to get the loom drawings ready to make a windfall, re-divide the pattern of the textile industry in the south but do not know how many people, the strength of these people is enough to shake the entire Jiangnan.

At the beginning, they did not care, thinking that although the price has risen, the efficiency of the new loom is twice as high as the original, the labor cost is greatly reduced, and the production efficiency is greatly improved.

At the same time, in order to reduce expenses, they laid off nearly half of the textile workers, anyway, with this new type of loom, half of the remaining manpower is enough to use, so what are these people still for? Master, I started the workshop, but I didn't open a good church, so there is no reason to spend money in vain to support these useless people.

However, the next development of things completely exceeded their expectations, under the scramble of these people, the price of various raw materials rose all the way, and soon rose to the extent that even if they used new looms, they could not guarantee profits, and more importantly, those raw material merchants even began to hoard Juqi, stuck in the raw materials and refused to release them, and the raw materials provided to these textile workshops were far from meeting their needs for expanding their scale and using new looms, are already full of this new type of loom.

This is like a scoop of cold water poured on their heads, breaking their dream of making a windfall, but things have developed to this point and they are no longer allowed to turn back, if they can't get enough raw materials, resulting in not being able to start work at full capacity, then all the money invested in the early stage will be wasted, and their own workshop will be crushed by others, and if they continue to persist and survive others, they may be able to get a blessing in disguise and take their property for themselves.

However, there was soon another bad news, first the imperial court suspended the plan to purchase cloth to prepare military uniforms for the new army, and then Zheng Zhilong reported that his fleet and Hongmaoyi were fighting fiercely in Nanyang, and the trade route to Nanyang was temporarily cut off, and the demand for silk and other goods was greatly reduced this year; With two big customers missing all of a sudden, even if cloth and silk are produced, who can they sell to? Do you just let those high-quality silk cloth stay in the warehouse to grow insects and mold?

At the same time, the laid-off weavers had exhausted their savings, and had tried their best to find work, and they were starving to death; There are many gentry in the south of the Yangtze River, and these people rely on the power of their families to carry out land annexation, driving these people out of the countryside and into the cities; In the past, they could work in the workshops to support themselves and their families by earning a meager salary, but now they have lost their jobs, and they cannot go back to the countryside, and their land and houses have long become someone else's property.

"There hasn't been a workshop recruiting weavers for a whole month, and nothing like this has happened in years." An older weaver muttered that he was now in a gathering place where weavers were looking for work, and that there used to be a constant stream of stewards who had come to select workers, but now that they had not been seen for many days, there were more and more unemployed weavers gathering here.

"If this continues, how can we live!" I don't know who wailed, and then it caused more people to agree.

"If it is the first half of the year, if you really can't survive, you can still go to the yamen to sign up for the pioneer team of Liuqiu, but now that the recruitment has stopped there, even if we want to risk our lives, we won't have this opportunity." I can't go back to my hometown, I lost my job again, my savings have long been spent, and now even the last way out is blocked, and a wave of despair gradually spreads among the crowd.

"If it weren't for the new looms that the owner built, why would we end up in this field?" Despair slowly brewed anger and hatred, but with the knowledge of these people, it was difficult to find out the real culprit of their descent to this point, and they could only vent their anger on the most direct factor that had caused them to lose their jobs—the new looms.

"If you smash those looms, the owner will have to use us people." It didn't take long for someone to react, and in their opinion, it might be a perfect solution, but they didn't realize what the consequences would be if they smashed the owner's machine.

"That's right! Wang Er is right, let's go and smash those looms! "If it were only three or five people, no one would dare to take action even when it came to these topics, but the adventurous nature of the group always exceeded that of the individual individuals, and the thousands of weavers on the scene also emboldened them, and these people tried to act.