1 cent.

This price is equivalent to 1/500 of the monthly income of a skilled Daming lumberjack.

At present, the monthly salary of a lumberjack in Daming is actually only 5 or 6 US dollars, and the annual income is less than 100 US dollars.

This income is significantly lower than the current average salary of white Americans of $300.

However, the average salary of whites has been raised by the economically developed and densely populated areas of the East, especially New York and Boston.

Purely looking at the northwest of the mainland, the wages of Ming workers are close to average.

Considering the lower cost of food, clothing, housing and transportation within the Ming Dynasty (at present, the Ming Dynasty basically gave up agriculture and relied on the system to buy cheap food for future generations, first industry and then agriculture, and the future will develop), the living standard of Ming workers has exceeded that of the red necks in the Midwest of the United States.

This state of life is almost unimaginable for the Chinese workers and Yin people who have just climbed out of the abyss of hell.

This makes this small city-state of grass show a strong centripetal force.

That's right, the current Da Ming can really only be regarded as a small city-state that has not even built a good city.

Not even half of Plato's ideal number of citizens of 5,040 has not yet been reached.

However, today's Ming Dynasty is in ruins, and everyone is full of hope.

This can be seen from the enthusiastic contributions received by the "Daming Times".

Thanks to the continuous learning and rice exchange activities, as well as the promotion of pinyin and some simplified characters, the literacy rate in Daming has increased to 22%.

More than half of the contributions to the "Daming Times" came from these people who had just gotten rid of illiteracy.

Although these manuscripts are full of white words, and even the punctuation marks are not written correctly, Zhu Fugui can feel the feelings of supporting His Majesty the Emperor and supporting the Great Ming Dynasty between the lines.

Ordinary people don't have to worry about food and clothing, and as for the soldiers of the Royal Army, the treatment is even better.

Not to mention food, clothing, and use, the royal family is all inclusive.

Even if you talk about the annual income, a big soldier has reached 150 US dollars.

This is equivalent to the annual legal income of a total of six products and thousands of people in the Manchu Dynasty.

Of course, this is not necessarily that the Ming soldiers were too rich, it may just be that the Manchu beggars were too poor.

The Ming Royal Army cannot be said to be an advanced people's army in essence.

It's almost the same to say that it was the emperor's personal arm.

To be more precise, this is a special army established with advanced organizational relations to preserve the feudal ideas of loyalty to the monarch and patriotism and defense of the Son of Heaven.

Therefore, Zhu Fugui must grasp the ideological building of the troops with one hand and ensure the living standards and social status of the soldiers with the other, so as to ensure the absolute loyalty of the troops.

But then a new problem arises.

That is, military spending and workers' wages will waste the foreign exchange reserves in Zhu Fugui's hands.

Although the US dollar is not an international currency in this era, it is definitely the most liquid currency on the North American continent.

Even the Indians, who had long been accustomed to bartering, had long accepted the dollar.

Zhu Fugui wants to buy production lines and arms, and the most convenient way is to buy them directly using US dollars.

There are three main sources of dollars in Zhu Fugui's hands now.

The first is to sell some agricultural and sideline products to the Lapushi mining area in exchange for US dollars. The amount of this part is very small, probably a few tens of dollars per month.

The second is Zhu Fugui's manuscript fee. It's not a lot, it's about one or two hundred dollars a month.

The third is the big one, which is Zhu Fugui's quilt business with Britain and the Southern Confederacy, in exchange for dollars.

More than 100,000 sets of school uniforms for junior high school students can be exchanged for $500,000.

According to the current 550 military personnel, an average of $150 per person per year;

With an average of $1,200 for 1,200 workers, Zhu Fugui spent $200,000 a year on internal wages.

Moreover, two months later, a second batch of Chinese laborers with a larger number will arrive, and Zhu Fugui will pay more wages at that time.

It sounds like the increase in population has instead become a burden on the Ming Empire.

This is not the case.

Regardless of the soldiers, the profits generated by each worker for Zhu Fugui far exceeded the resources he consumed.

The reason for the current dollar crisis is that foreign currencies are used as domestic currencies in the final analysis.

Unless it is a highly export-oriented economy that holds the Ming firmly tied to the financial wagon of the Citi federal government, this model simply cannot be sustained.

This requires that Zhu Fugui must realize monetary autonomy as soon as possible and partially decouple from the US dollar.

It will be very difficult to achieve this goal in the future generations.

How can a small country that does not even have sovereign credit issue a currency that can be trusted?

Even if there are reserves of precious metals, they can easily be run out.

Unless it is like the Hong Kong dollar, which directly rivets the dollar on the one hand and relies on the support of the mainland on the other, it can become a long-term stable currency.

However, for Zhu Fugui in the 60s of the 19th century and the right to trade between the two worlds, it was much easier to realize an independent currency.

For no other reason, the value of gold has barely fluctuated for 160 years, but the price of silver has taken a big plunge.

As long as a large amount of silver is hoarded and the equivalent silver dollar is used as the national currency, then there will certainly not be much difficulty in the implementation of "Zhu Datou".

As for the production of currency, Zhu Fugui found his old friend: [Genuine Antique Sales Xiao Erhei]

Because he planned to build a Ming Royal Museum in Xinfeng to enhance the cohesion of the people, Zhu Fugui often looked for Xiao Erhei to buy things during this time.

From the skull of Homo erectus in East Asia to the cannon that blew up Nurhachi, Zhu Fugui has almost collected it.

Although none of these cultural relics are real, Zhu Fugui can be sure that they are real.

When the time comes, get a glass cabinet one or two meters wide, and the museum will have the final say on whether it is true or not.

For such a big customer, Xiao Erhei naturally knows everything and says everything.

He recommended to Zhu Fugui a boss Zhou who specialized in making fake silver dollars, and Zhu Fugui happily hired him as a minting consultant for the Ming Dynasty.

In Zhu Fugui's view, as long as "Zhu Datou" has the workmanship of fake silver dollars in later generations, it is enough to pass the world.

wants to make silver dollars, Zhu Fugui said that they are going to build a Ming-themed amusement city.

This silver dollar is a commemorative coin peddled to tourists.

Boss Zhou naturally suggested using tin, lead and other metals to make Daming silver coins, but Zhu Fugui refused.

This is not a one-shot deal, and you have to use enough money.

This scared Boss Zhou a lot.

You know, now that the price of gold is rising, the price of silver is also at an all-time high.

This Boss Zhu is too ruthless, right?

Since the other party is willing to be the wrongdoer, Boss Zhou can't care about it.

However, he still explained that in fact, sterling silver is not practical to make silver coins, it is too soft, and it must be added with some copper to resist wear and tear.

Zhu Fugui accepted this.

[Boss Zhu, you are really an honest businessman! ] Antique amusement cities all over the country, I am the first time to see someone use real silver to make a commemorative coin, the most outrageous I have even seen the use of aluminum as a commemorative coin, that thing is light~]

Looking at the short station sent by Boss Zhou, Zhu Fugui was stunned, and then slapped his forehead.

That's right!

Why did you forget about it?

Aluminum, a metal that in this era is comparable to, or even surpasses, but after 160 years, it is almost as cheap as iron.

In 1854, the French chemist de Ville mixed bauxite, charcoal, and salt, and heated it with chlorine gas to obtain NaCl and AlCl₃ double salt, and then fused this double salt with excess sodium to obtain metal aluminum.

This beautiful, pure, light, non-corrosive and difficult-to-refine metal suddenly became the darling of the times.

In this day and age:

In Europa, Napoleon III not only wore an aluminium crown, but also preferred to use aluminium cups when entertaining guests, while others used gold or silver cups to highlight his status.

In Asia, the King of Thailand favored aluminium bracelets because of the scarcity of aluminium, treating it as the most high-end luxury, and even wanted to decorate their elephants with aluminium but had to use gold because it was too expensive.

At the Paris Exposition of 1885, aluminum was exhibited with the jewels in the crown, and the label read "Silver from Clay".

It wasn't until 1886, when 23-year-old Hall in the United States discovered the method of electrolytic aluminum in his family's firewood laboratory that people realized that this metallic element found everywhere in the earth's crust was worthless.

1886 is still more than 20 years away, even if Zhu Fugui's little butterfly causes the speed of science and technology to accelerate, the high price of aluminum can be maintained for at least ten years.

Ten years, that's enough!

It's just that having a batch of silver in his hand is not enough to arouse the suspicion of outsiders, and it is difficult to say whether it is a blessing or a curse if he rashly reveals that he has a large amount of aluminum.

Zhu Fugui must take a long-term view and take aluminum as one of his hole cards.

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