After Zhao Dagui returned to Shanghai, he first learned about the situation in Shanghai during this period, and found that his own commercial bank was developing steadily, buying land, building houses, buying and selling foreign goods, and conducting trade, everything was done in an orderly manner, and even there was an extra 50,000 yuan in cash on the books, but it was the income of his own time in the south.

During this period, Shanghai's trade market was subdivided into material trade business and cash delivery business, of which the trade in opium and foreign cloth accounted for the majority, and the cash delivery business accounted for a small share, but the total amount was not small.

Taking advantage of the fact that other commercial banks were indulging in the trade of goods, Dagui Commercial Bank did cash delivery business with all its heart, relying on the convenience of its own commercial bank to monopolize the land in the entire concession area, and placed billboards everywhere, even on the lighthouse of Wusongjiang, so as to continuously improve the influence and popularity of the commercial bank.

Using this influence, Dagui Commercial Bank has a staggering 80% share of the cash settlement business, and although the total amount is not as large as before, it can still earn stable cash profits.

The stable development of its own business bank is not the same for the entire business community in Shanghai.

During this period, the retail sales of foreign cloth gradually slowed down, and each company had a lot of inventory in their hands, which made the Chinese merchants who acted for foreign cloth a little nervous, which fed back to the foreign companies and compradors, that is, they began to hesitate about the prospect of Shanghai's foreign cloth trade.

Some people even talked about Zhao Dagui, saying that Zhao Dagui cleared the inventory earlier, because he saw that the foreign cloth trade could not last long, so he withdrew in advance.

However, after all, there are only a few businessmen who have such worries, and most of them are sharpening their heads and squeezing into the foreign cloth business; even the merchants who are worried about the future of foreign cloth only think that foreign cloth may not sell as fast as before, and they are not worried that there will be a collapse that they cannot cope with, and they are still increasing their foreign cloth inventory little by little, but the increase is not as fast as before.

"Drunk and dreaming of death!" Zhao Dagui sneered and ignored it.

Sooner or later, one day the situation of Mount Tai will be formed, drowning all those who have no time to escape, and then it will be time to take action and easily monopolize all foreign business.

For Zhao Dagui, these are just small things, and the important thing is to take stock and digest the benefits obtained from going south.

It can be said that it is this southward trip that has laid the foundation for the Dagui department to call for wind and rain in the next few decades, which can be mainly divided into talents, scientific and technological books, equipment, land and contacts.

This time to the south, the biggest harvest is the harvest of talents, invited more than 100 scholars from the Western School in Guangdong, plus the original scholars from Jiangsu and Zhejiang, Oriental Garden now has about 200 scholars, of which more than 20 have a mathematical foundation in primary school or above, and the level of the most outstanding five or six people even exceeds Zhao Dagui;

There were 200 Chinese workers from the Western-style shipyards obtained from Macao (more than 10 shipyard engineers were recruited but could not come due to temporary accidents); more than 100 employees of the Chinese-style shipyards were hired in Dinghai; and more than 200 blacksmiths, coppersmiths, silversmiths, and gunpowder craftsmen were employed in Foshan, totaling about 500 workers of all kinds;

Coupled with the fact that Dagui Commercial Bank originally had a total of about 100 shopkeepers and associates, in this way, Zhao Dagui currently has a total of 800 regular employees.

Maybe you can add dozens of students from the Oriental Academy who are between the ages of ten and fifteen, but these students may be of great use in the future, and for the time being, they are only training and educating.

Another important harvest is the acquisition of a large number of Western science and technology books, the most important of which is the 12,000 books and models brought by Gu Sheng, plus the books that Zhao Dagui intends to order from major foreign banks during this time, the library of the Oriental Academy now has 13,500 Western science and technology books, which is richer than the libraries of many Western universities.

With these books, Zhao Dagui will be able to raise Shanghai's industrial level for decades or even hundreds of years--- if there are enough people to help.

In terms of machinery and equipment, there is an iron-hulled propeller steamship of more than 1,000 tons, a wooden-hulled paddle steamer of more than 500 tons, a Western merchant ship of more than 1,000 tons, and a number of Chinese and Western-style ships obtained from Dinghai and Macao, but the tonnage is relatively small;

The various machine tools, steam engines and shipbuilding equipment obtained from the six shipyards in Macao, some of the machine tools and instruments purchased from the Hong Kong foreign company, and the Chinese-style shipbuilding equipment obtained from Dinghai are all sufficient, at least in the short term.

In addition, Zhao Dagui has more than 3,000 acres of land in Shanghai (the amount of land is still growing), Dinghai has more than 3,000 acres of land, Hong Kong has nearly 2,000 acres of land, Guangzhou has 500 acres of land, and Macao has 500 acres of land (originally belonging to the shipyard), a total of about 10,000 acres of land, many of which are high-quality resources that can build wharves and warehouses near the port.

Of course, there is also a hidden gain of network expansion.

The importance of regular cruises connecting all the treaty ports between Hong Kong and Shanghai led to the fact that Zhao Dagui took the opportunity to establish a good personal relationship with both the likes of Debeki and Qiying, and the benefits of this are self-evident.

Before leaving Shanghai, the highest-ranking officials that Zhao Dagui could contact were Consul Bafur and Shanghai Daotai Gong Mujiu, but in the future, it was these two people who faced Zhao Dagui and had to weigh the reaction of De Pi Shi and Qi Ying.

If it weren't for the cruise project launched by Zhao Dagui that was very important to the British government, he could borrow the influence of the British government, otherwise he would be just the object of arbitrary oppression by Qiying and other feudal officials, don't imagine that he can be left and right between the Governor of Hong Kong and the Governor of Liangguang like now.

After selling the inventory of foreign cloth and Suzhou industry, Zhao Dagui originally had more than 800,000 yuan of silver dollars on hand, but it cost 2.89 million yuan just to buy a ship in Hong Kong (Stark will do business);

In addition, the purchase of land, shipyards and investment in Shanghai cost 140,000 yuan;

In addition, more than 10,000 taels of gold were purchased to replenish the spiritual gold reserves;

Now the amount of cash in Zhao Dagui's hands is only 200,000 yuan, which means that Zhao Dagui spent more than 600,000 yuan in three months, which is really like a flowing money;

Moreover, now that there are more employees and more industries, the expenditure must be much higher than when I was only engaged in trading and trading:

The salaries of the 200 scholars of the Oriental Academy are set very high, and their annual salaries alone are more than 60,000 yuan a year;

Combined with other workers, employees, and the funds needed to keep the factory running, at least $200,000 or more will be spent annually.

In this way, the 200,000 yuan in Zhao Dagui's hands can only maintain the operation for about a year, and if he can't earn a lot of money as soon as possible, it is easy to break the funds.

More importantly, Zhao Dagui hoped to have at least one million yuan in his hands at the end of 1845 in order to be able to fish in troubled waters, so it seems that this year's money-making task is very heavy.

The explosion of employees and the explosion of business projects have brought extremely serious management problems.

First of all, the problem of these scholars, the vast majority of Western scholars are actually not worthy of the name, most of them are only interested in the history and geography of the West and the general situation of the country, and have read Wei Yuan's "Atlas of the Sea Kingdom" and the like, but the basic knowledge of mathematics, physics and chemistry is extremely lacking, and only a few people know English.

In this sense, there are only about 20 scholars who have the level of mathematics above primary school in later generations, such as Li Xinlan, Sheldon, and Yang Weili, and there are almost no people who know physics and chemistry;

Even Wang Tao is more like an amateur, and he is also a liberal arts student, interested in natural sciences, but has not received a systematic education.

In this case, the Western education of the Oriental School of Science can only start with these scholars who should be teachers, and then teach those ordinary students.

Zhao Dagui discussed with Li Xinlan, Mai Dusi, Wang Tao and others, first opened English courses and mathematics courses for scholars, and asked Mai Dusi to invite some English teachers, Li Xinlan and others to teach mathematics, as for physical chemistry, etc., can only be talked about later.

Can read twenty-six English letters and ten Arabic numerals, as well as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and other mathematical symbols, and then can understand physical chemistry books, otherwise it is to translate physical chemistry books into Chinese, people who lack basic knowledge can not understand.

Fortunately, these people are called scholars, at least Chinese is no problem, even countless times stronger than modern students like Zhao Dazhushen, and learning English and mathematics should be much better than illiterate people.

In addition, the college had to organize a group of scholars who knew English to sort out and translate the school's 13,500 books and compile teaching materials.

Zhao Dagui was busy for seven or eight days for the affairs of the college, establishing the structure of the school, selecting the available teaching materials, etc., and then felt that this matter was extremely cumbersome and a bottomless pit, so he entrusted all the management of the school to the board of directors of the college, that is, Li Xinlan, Wang Tao, Mai Dox and others, and he was only responsible for providing the necessary funds, and then took out to manage the affairs of the workers.

Now there are 500 workers recruited to Shanghai, but what these people want to do and how to do it is actually very unclear, even Zhao Dagui himself is not very clear.

Zhao Dagui seconded dozens of scholars from the Oriental College--- most of the scholars found that they had to study from scratch after arriving at the college, and they had nothing to do, and they were very ashamed of consuming rice and grain, so Zhao Dagui asked for help and agreed very happily--- and then registered the 500 workers, that is, the names, origins, types of work, specialties, positions, etc., all made into a form and kept as personnel files.