During dinner, Zheng Man came over again and looked at Li Tai with a resentful look in his eyes while eating, which made Li Tai a little embarrassed.
The matter has reached this point, no matter how much you worry, it will not help. The only remedy at the moment is to develop the handicraft industry with all your strength, so as to make up for this huge debt hole. It is no longer possible to rely on farming alone.
"Zheng Zheng came here and I would like to ask the county government whether they will accept the twine? If so, I can buy it at a price that is 20% lower than the current price."
Li Tai put on a kind and honest smile, looked at Zheng Man and said.
"Tianxian, what does the county want with this miscellaneous material? Mr. Lang, do you want to use hemp thread to offset the loss? This is impossible!"
After hearing this, Zheng Man shook his head repeatedly: "The county has its own textile manufacturing industry, so there is no need for the private sector to import miscellaneous materials."
"If you don't accept it, is there any hemp stocked in the county? If the hemp material is stored for a long time and the tendons break, it becomes waste. If there is some left in the store, can it be loaned out on credit?"
Li Tai's smile became more honest and he asked again.
Zheng Man directly put down his bowl and chopsticks, looked straight at Li Tai and said in a deep voice: "Mr. Lang, what on earth do you want to do? Do you want to spin linen and weave cloth and buy grain to make up for the loss? Ten thousand shi of grain, at least.
Fifty thousand pieces of cloth, how many artificial materials are needed, has Lang Jun calculated it? How could the county..."
"It is true that it consumes a lot of materials and labor, but it depends on the human effort. You have to give it a try."
Li Tai also felt that his request was a bit excessive. No matter how much he strangled the county government, it was impossible for him to provide him with hundreds of thousands of kilograms of hemp spinning raw materials.
Before, he had imagined everything too simply, thinking that as long as he had a big spinning wheel to improve the efficiency of spinning linen, he could weave and print money.
But now, the efficiency of spinning linen has been improved, but the labor of raw materials and weaving is stuck.
Although weaving is only a basic industry, it also has several links. Improving the efficiency of one link will still not greatly improve the entire industrial process. In the final analysis, land and population are the constraints on industrial development.
"Well, I'll go back to the city tomorrow and give it a try. Linen is a cheap material, and weaving is cumbersome. There is indeed a lot of surplus in the county warehouse. The county minister has an important matter to do now, so he should take care of it."
Zheng Man had already guessed that the manor's properties alone would not be able to satisfy the huge debt, but now that he was on the same boat as Li Tai, he still sincerely hoped that this matter could go smoothly.
"That's great. You don't need to take out a loan. I'll buy the linen materials at the current price and make the cloth as it comes. I'll be honest with you!"
The current situation of the textile factory is that the raw materials cannot meet the production capacity of the spinning wheel, and the weavers cannot consume the twine spun. The two short legs are no longer pulling the balls, but rubbing them painfully.
Li Tai's plan was to solve the supply problem of raw materials through Zheng Man, and then recruit a group of weaver women from the countryside to work through Zhou Changming, so as to expand the output of cloth as much as possible. Even if it still could not satisfy the huge debt after the autumn, at least it would be enough.
First increase your cash flow.
Although running away was an option, Li Tai just thought about it. If he really wanted to run away, he would not have invested a lot of labor in the civil construction of the manor in the early stages of starting his business.
Early the next morning, Zheng Man rode back to the city, while Li Tai took two hangings of dried meat to Shangyang in the south to garrison.
On the flat square in front of the fort, Zhou Changming was leading more than two hundred rural soldiers to practice. The folk customs in Guanzhong were pragmatic and tough. After the summer, the rural soldiers spent half the day hoeing wasteland and the other half drilling, and they did not waste their time at all.
After a drill was completed, Zhou Changming invited Li Tai into the garrison. After everyone sat down, when he heard Li Tai explain his purpose, Zhou Changming frowned and said, "But the villagers also have their own farming and weaving work to do.
, I’m afraid I won’t have much free time…”
"After summer, most of the work in the fields involves hoeing. Men only need to do it. Women also have to do weaving. I invited them to work in the village. It was just a change of place. They didn't need to spin, just weave. Of course, the work was not
How about making it for nothing, breakfast and dinner, ten days and a piece of cloth?"
Li Tai explained with a smile that the villagers were weaving at home, which required retting, drying and combing the flax before finally weaving it into cloth, which was very inefficient. It often took several months to weave the cloth needed for the whole year.
Li Tai's price of ten ten days per piece of cloth is not a high reward, but it does not require the villagers to pay for their own linen materials, and it can also save one person's rations. This is also a very cost-effective price for the villagers.
Highly affordable option.
"If this is the case, I can try to persuade the villagers. But please make sure that the weavers are safe when they come in and out!"
Zhou Changming was also greatly moved when he heard the conditions offered by Li Tai.
"Of course, there is a three-point insurance when leaving the house. The weaver girls in the village work together in a separate courtyard. There will be no harassment by scoundrels. I will send someone to guide them when they come in and out. There will definitely be no stray injuries."
There are scoundrels running rampant in the cities of Huazhou, and there is no absolute safety in the countryside. Moreover, the folk customs in Guanzhong are relatively conservative, and there must be higher etiquette requirements for women who go out to work. In these aspects, Li Tai also considered and
arrange.
"Country soldiers can do the work for ushering people in and out. However, if they are not harassed while working, they must be controlled by their husbands. If this can be ensured, I would also like to see country women working instead of farming."
Zhou Changming still believed in Li Tai's character, and after making plans with each other, he prepared to visit the countryside. Li Tai was worried that the villagers might still be hesitant, so he followed him and gave a more detailed explanation.
There are quite a few villages near Shangyuan, with hundreds of large households and dozens of small households. Although the number of households in Wuxiang County is only over a thousand, those are the average land households that have been granted land, and those outside the average land households
There are more private households, mainly because there are not many acres of land that can be granted in the county, and large areas of land are divided up by powerful nobles.
These households that have not been granted land are either tenant farmers, shady households, or rural military households. There are thousands of households in Shangyuan Township alone, not counting those who live, eat, drink, and work on large estates.
The Taxi Story.
The group visited several villages. Most of the villagers were hesitant when they heard about this. It was only when Zhou Changming, a well-known garrison leader in the village, patted his chest as a guarantee that he agreed.
When Li Tai saw this scene, he couldn't help but sigh that he was lucky that he didn't have any enemies with Zhou Changming, the chief minister of the village. If he were to do it on his own, even if the commission was doubled, the villagers might not be willing to pay attention to him, and they wouldn't be able to give away money even if they wanted to.
"What is this doing?"
After visiting several villages, Li Tai found that in the courtyards of many villagers, there were two square beams squeezed together horizontally, with some cake-like things sandwiched between them, with stones pressed on them, and they smelled quite oily.
"That's pressing oil, stir-frying flax and other various seed materials, steaming them, making them into cakes, and squeezing out the oil."
Zhou Changming explained with a smile.
"Isn't there an oil mill in the countryside? The pressure is so high but not much oil is produced! There is still a lot of oil and water in these cakes."
Li Tai knew about the traditional method of pressing oil, but he had never heard of such a traditional method.
"There is an oil mill at the foot of Luoshui River, but the rent is too high. The villagers have three to five buckets of seed material, but it is not worth going to the oil mill to get it. With such squeezing, there is no delay in working, making cakes in the morning and collecting oil in the evening.
.The remaining meal can be used for cooking and cooking, so it is not a waste."
Zhou Changming explained casually, but Li Tai listened carefully.
The weaving of linen is too popular, so the profits are very transparent. Even if a large spinning wheel is used to improve the efficiency of spinning, the scale of production still needs to be expanded to maintain considerable profits.
But oil extraction is not the case. Oil is not only a munition for maintaining ordnance, fire siege and city defense, but also a daily necessities for daily diet seasoning, lighting and anti-corrosion. The market is large and the profit is high. There is an essential difference between the efficiency of small-scale production and centralized operation. It should be very
There is a head start.
A few kilograms of linen and a piece of cloth are all approximate quantities. But the amount of oil produced by a bucket of seed material makes a huge difference!
Although this idea came to mind, Li Tai also learned from the previous experience of spinning hemp and planned to carefully observe the upstream and downstream supporting facilities before deciding whether to start it. Especially the supply of raw materials, only relying on
If a small household harvests randomly, no matter how advanced the oil extraction technology is, the output will not be able to increase.
He followed Zhou Changming around the countryside for an afternoon, and initially persuaded nearly a hundred villagers to agree to do the work later. With such a result, Li Tai was quite satisfied. It was normal for the villagers to hesitate at the moment. He would wait until the industry was ready before starting work.
Recruiting workers and expanding production will be much more convenient now that we have a mass base.
When Li Tai returned to the manor, Zheng Man also came back from the city, looking a little unhappy: "Originally, the county magistrate has been persuaded, but today it is Shi County Lieutenant who is on duty to close the warehouse, but there is no need to indiscriminately use raw hemp materials in the countryside."
, in the end, we only got two thousand kilograms of raw hemp materials. There is no need to buy these materials, they have already been marked as consumption in the book."
Li Tai liked the collusion between officials and people in the Western Wei Dynasty, but when he heard that there was only more than two thousand kilograms, he couldn't help but feel a little worried. After two thousand kilograms of raw sesame, cooked and degummed, it was hard to say whether there would be one thousand kilograms of clinker left.
It is not enough to run five large spinning wheels for two days.
Li Tai was not very angry when County Lieutenant Shi was causing trouble. The old boy had offended him a long time ago. He kept an account and settled two accounts. He would always call him daddy when he got the chance.
I visited the villagers today. If they came to work, the hemp stored at home would be of no use. They could collect it again, but it would only be a few thousand kilograms at most.
"The Shixian Lieutenant asked Mr. Lang why he was searching for so much hemp material. I didn't tell him the truth, but he also said that there were tens of thousands of kilograms of hemp stored in the house. If Mr. Lang was in urgent need, he could go and negotiate the price, but he only needed
Delivery of spot goods.”
Hearing what Zheng Man said, Li Tai sneered again, but he couldn't help but sigh that these big families in the countryside were really well-off, even storing so much of raw hemp, a material that was of low value and took up a lot of storage space.
However, Li Tai doesn't intend to send him to his door to be a fat sheep. Who doesn't have two wealthy friends?
"Prepare some local fresh produce for me. I'll go back to the city tonight."
After thinking for a while, Li Tai ordered again.
The biggest landowners in Huazhou City today are not the powerful villagers who have lived and worked here for generations, but outsiders like the Beizhen Wuren. Even if they have to pay a high price for the raw materials of raw hemp, it is better to buy them cheaply for those local tycoons who don't like him.