Accept your fate?

When Zhang Tianyou heard this, an unknown fire suddenly rose in his heart.

If I accept my fate, I should still be the prince!

Why should I accept my fate? He, Zhu Chongba, is just a beggar and no more noble than a merchant!

Zhang Tianyou has always been unwilling and full of resentment. But he also knows that these people in front of him are not people who can help him achieve great things, and they only deserve to be used by him.

Therefore, he suppressed the anger in his heart and pretended to be calm and asked.

"Then what are your plans?"

"Are you going to pay a high price to steal people from Zhu Yunxi?"

Everyone fell silent again after hearing Zhang Tianyou's words. They were absolutely unwilling to pay high prices. Once they fell into the quagmire of raising prices, how much less would they earn every year?

But now it seems like you can’t recruit people without raising the price, right?

"I dare to ask Mr. Zhang, is there any better way?"

Zhang Tianyou sneered.

"You are also people who have been dealing with textile workshops for many years. Let me ask you something. When you purchased a textile workshop, how much did it cost and how long did it take to purchase the loom?"

When everyone heard this, it was like waking up from a dream.

It is not possible to set up a textile workshop with money. First, you must have enough looms.

However, the structure of the loom is complex, and each one requires at least two months to build and debug.

Moreover, this thing often breaks down and needs constant maintenance...

Therefore, small households cannot afford to buy looms at all. Those who can buy looms are in Suzhou and even Ming Dynasty, which are already well-off families.

This is why so many weavers would rather weave for a workshop than weave at home.

Because they don't have the means of production like looms.

"Young master Zhang, you mean that the emperor's grandson doesn't have enough looms?"

Zhang Tianyou glared at everyone in displeasure upon hearing this.

"What do you think?"

"The first batch of workers recruited by Zhu Yunxi are still working in the Suzhou Weaving Bureau for free wages."

"Now these two groups of people will most likely do the same."

"Once the emperor's grandson cannot afford to support them, there will definitely be riots in Suzhou City. Then if you want to hire people, not only will you not have to spend more money, but you can take the opportunity to lower the price..."

When everyone heard this, their eyes suddenly lit up.

"High!"

"Young Master Zhang's uncanny calculations, we really admire him!"

"I just don't know how long the emperor's grandson can delay?"

"It is said that the Emperor Taisun is not short of money. Many of his properties are making money every day..."

"If it takes us a year and a half, then we will delay the construction period!"

This is also what Zhang Tianyou is worried about, that is, he doesn't know how well Zhu Yunxi can handle it and how long he can handle it.

But he felt that Zhu Yunxi could not carry it for too long, because he was not a fool and had no reason to use money to support others.

"It depends on how you choose."

"If you raise the price to recruit people now, it will solve the problem for Zhu Yunxi and the court, but it will be difficult for you to lower the price in the future."

"If you can make Zhu Yunxi retreat in spite of the difficulties and realize that the textile industry is not something he can get involved in, then Suzhou will still be your world from now on!"

"this……"

After hearing this, everyone hesitated again. After a while, Sun Kaishan hesitated and said.

"How about we observe it for a month?"

Everyone nodded when they heard this.

"Brother Sun is right. Let's stay stable for a month and see what the Emperor Taisun does. We are thinking about how to deal with it..."

After that day, the whole city of Suzhou suddenly became quiet, and no one gathered at the prefect's Yamen to cause trouble anymore.

Occasionally, there would be a few scoundrels who wanted to stir up trouble, but they would be captured on the spot by the prefect's officers, thrown into a prison and locked up.

But everyone knows that this is just the calm before the storm.

Once the day comes for wages to be paid, and the emperor's grandson cannot pay, the tranquility in front of him will turn into a violent storm, sweeping across the entire city of Suzhou.

However, can the emperor's grandson send out this money?

One month or two months, one year or two years?

Ninety thousand looms, even if all the craftsmen in the capital were to work together, it would not be completed within two or three months, right?

Then the emperor's grandson kept these workers in vain?

While a group of merchants were leisurely waiting to watch the excitement, dozens of cargo ships suddenly arrived at Suzhou Pier.

On each cargo ship, there are several guards wearing flying fish uniforms standing there. One look at the cargo loaded on the ship is extraordinary.

Zhang Qinglai, the prefect of Suzhou, came to the dock early in the morning with hundreds of government officials and waited here in person, preparing to receive the first batch of looms sent by the emperor's grandson.

However, when the cargo ship arrived at the port, Zhang Qinglai saw the bundled wooden strips and other scraps of wood, and the joy on his face disappeared instantly.

He grabbed the leading Jin Yiwei and questioned him.

"Xu Qianhu, where is the loom that we agreed on, why did you send us a pile of rotten wood?"

"Master Zhang, this is the loom!"

"Is this a loom?"

Zhang Qinglai looked at the broken wood on the boat again, but he couldn't connect these things with the loom.

"No, how do you weave this thing?"

Xu Liuzi shook his head when he heard this.

"We don't understand this. We are only responsible for guaranteeing the goods. The actual assembly must be done by the craftsmen on the ship!"

"Assembly?"

"yes!"

"What else?"

"Although the cargo ship is large, it can't hold a few looms. How can we transport them without taking them apart?"

Zhang Qinglai looked suddenly enlightened when he heard this.

"I see!"

"The Crown Prince is wise, but the lower officials are dull."

"Come on, come on, hurry up and move the goods to the workshop, assemble a few first and take a look!"

Under Zhang Qinglai's urging, the goods from a ship were quickly unloaded and successfully transported to the Suzhou textile workshop by horse-drawn carriage.

Zhang Qinglai kept watching the craftsmen assembling them, fearing that he would miss every detail. The weavers who had been raised by Zhu Yunxi for a while also gathered around and pointed at the parts on the ground.

"This loom looks a bit strange. It seems different from what we are used to..."

"Yeah, I saw there are a lot of iron parts, they should be stronger than the ones we used before."

Amid everyone's whispers, the craftsman quickly assembled a loom.

Zhang Qinglai looked at the loom in front of him and called a skilled weaver to demonstrate on the spot.

Chen Jiu sat next to the loom, stepping on the pedals of the loom, weaving silk creakingly.

After knitting for a while, Chen Jiu gave a thumbs up to the craftsman on the side.

"Master, this loom is amazing. It is smoother than all the looms we have used before, and it saves effort. What's even more rare is that the warp and weft are clearly defined and the width is consistent without any errors!"

"May I ask, Master, are you an experienced craftsman who builds looms?"

The craftsman laughed loudly after hearing this.

"What!"

"We have never finished this thing. We just used the lathe to turn it out one by one according to the drawings given by the emperor's grandson."

"To put it bluntly, we only learned how to assemble it for a few days before coming here, otherwise we wouldn't even know how to assemble it, hahaha!"

"ah?"

This time it was Chen Jiu and others' turn to be surprised. Even Zhang Qinglai, who was watching the excitement, had a face full of surprise.

He is the prefect of Suzhou, so he must know something about Suzhou's pillar industries.

Now I heard the craftsman say that he didn't know anything about looms, but he was able to assemble a loom in a moment, which surprised him.
To be continued...