"There are 100 kilograms of snow salt in total. On average, we can extract 10 kilograms of snow salt in one day. This amount is really too little."
Ten days later, Liu Jin and Zhao Erhu couldn't help but shake their heads after counting the fruits of their labor.
"It's pretty good to refine 100 kilograms of snow salt in 10 days. It's just the two of us and one pot. My dad and I are busy all day long and can only cook about 10 kilograms."
Zhao Erhu looked at the two large baskets of snow salt in front of him and said with great satisfaction.
"It's just 10 kilograms of salt a day. It's fun for you. If you can produce 1,000 kilograms or 10,000 kilograms of salt a day in the future, you will die laughing."
Liu Jin smiled. After all, the output of boiling salt is very small. One person can't boil a few kilograms of salt even if he is busy all day long. What's more, it consumes a lot of wood. After years of boiling salt, the trees around Xiahetun have long been cut down.
It ran out of wood and had to buy wood from outside.
If you really want to make salt on a large scale, it is best to use the method of sun-drying salt, open salt fields on the seaside, use sunlight, wind energy, etc., which not only saves fuel, labor, and costs, but also enables large-scale salt production.
"If you produce thousands or tens of thousands of catties a day, my God, how much will it cost?"
"How can it be possible to produce so much salt in one day?"
Zhao Erhu touched his head and couldn't believe it.
"You will know later."
Liu Jin smiled mysteriously, and then began to think about how to sell salt.
Every time a salt seller comes to Xiahetun to collect salt, it is a big event in the village. Every household will take out the salt they have cooked for half a month and go to an old tree in the middle of the village to wait for the salt seller to collect salt.
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Usually at this time, Tang Laohu would also send people over to collect 'profit money' based on the salt sold. The so-called profit money was used to open up relations with the superiors and make them turn a blind eye to the matter of cooking salt in Xiahetun.
One eye, of course, how much of it was used to honor the county master, and how much of it went into Tang Laohu's mouth, I guess only he knows.
If Liu Jin's 100 kilograms of snow salt were sold to a private salt dealer in front of the public, it would definitely attract everyone's attention immediately. Everyone sells coarse salt, which only costs a few cents per kilogram. What you sell is
But it is snow salt, which costs more than 200 coins per pound. The benefits are very impressive. Where did this snow salt come from? I will never think about peace in the future.
What's more important is that people from Tang LaoHu's family are also at the scene. Not to mention that a large amount of money will be taken away on the spot. Once Tang LaoHu is targeted, it is estimated that Tang LaoHu will bring people over and arrest Liu Jin within an hour.
, be it torture, coercion or inducement, Liu Jin will suffer if he doesn’t tell Xue Yan’s ways.
Even if he spoke out, he would definitely be killed and silenced by Tang Laohu. Naturally, Tang Laohu had to firmly control this way of making money in his own hands. The safest way was to kill and silence him.
For Tang Laohu, who ran rampant in the countryside, bullied men and women, and committed all kinds of evil, killing a scholar was nothing. He had already done so just to annex the Liu Jin family's land last time, let alone Xue Yan, whose interests were more impressive.
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"Now is definitely not the time to expose snow salt. How should I contact the salt dealer?"
Liu Jin frowned. He thought that refining snow salt would be a difficult task, but he didn't expect that selling salt would be even more difficult.
In this era when salt and iron are under control, those who dare to do the salt and iron business are either people with great backgrounds and capable hands and eyes, or they are people who dance on the edge of a knife and are not afraid of anything.
The salt dealer who comes to Xiahe Village to collect salt belongs to the latter, the kind of person who dares to do anything as long as he has money.
Of course, this kind of private salt dealers have always been targeted by the court, and they are also the ones targeted by the big salt merchants. Every time a private salt dealer is checked, the only people found are these private salt dealers who have no backers.
Private salt dealers who have real backers and backgrounds do not need to work hard to collect salt from small villages like Xiahetun. They can go directly to the official salt fields to get salt at extremely low prices.
In a small village like Xiahetun, there is not much salt produced in a year, which cannot satisfy the appetite of the big salt merchants. This also gives some opportunities for those salt merchants who have no backing and no background.
After thinking about this clearly, Liu Jin's eyes lit up.
This kind of private salt dealer who eats with a knife sounds very scary. He relies on the sword to make money. He seems to be the kind of person who kills people and silences them at every turn, and splatters with blood at every move.
But in fact, this kind of private salt dealers are different from the big salt dealers by many levels. The big salt dealers have huge appetites. They take the private salt hidden in the official salt fields and rely on the huge profits of the salt industry.
The money was used to open up the connections from the salt farm warehouse management to the temple chief minister.
If they are said to be private collectors, they can immediately issue a document and immediately become official officials with endorsements. No matter how hard the court cracks down on private collectors, it will never be able to hit them on the head because of their
He has enough eyes and ears, and is wide enough. The protective umbrella and interest chain he has established are so huge that his position is almost impossible to shake.
In the middle and late Ming Dynasty, whether it was the Donglin Party or the Qi, Chu, and Zhejiang Party, they all had the support of big salt merchants, and many of them were even big salt merchants themselves.
As for these small private salt dealers who add blood to the knife edge, they are completely different. Many of them were forced to embark on the road of selling private salt and engaged in the business of beheading.
Naturally, they have no way to get salt from the official salt fields, so they can only come to small seaside villages like Xiahetun to collect salt. The output of coarse salt is limited and the quantity is very small. They often have to be on tenterhooks, fearing when the government will come.
Crack down on illicit salt.
In order to have a stable supply of salt, these private salt dealers are often very honest. Every time they come to Xiahetun to collect salt, they pay all the salt on the spot and never take credit.
The snow salt in Liu Jin's hands is definitely the best quality among all salts, and the profit is even greater than that of ordinary salt. It costs 5 cents to collect a pound of coarse salt from Xiahetun. It is a hard work all the way.
I was worried about transporting it back, and it could be sold for about sixty or seventy yuan per catty.
Deducting the management of checkpoints along the way, contributions from superiors, and own losses, etc., one pound of salt can earn dozens of coins, although the profit is astonishing.
However, because the quantity is small and it is subject to crackdowns from the authorities and major salt merchants, it is not stable and you don’t know where your next meal will be after one meal.
And in ancient times, because transportation was basically carried on the shoulder, and the better ones had horse-drawn carriages to pull goods, the transportation capacity was really worrying, and private salt was sold, so many times they did not dare to take the official road, and had to go over the mountains.
Ling, business is definitely not as easy as imagined.
Therefore, those who sell private salt cannot rely solely on the two knives in their hands. More often, they must be honest and try their best to establish good relations with all parties on their fixed lines. Only in this way can they be able to
Have a stable financial source.
Soon, Liu Jin had an idea, and immediately returned to his room and wrote a note with the calligraphy he had just started practicing recently.
"Huzi, wrap a pound of snow salt in paper, and then wrap this note inside."
"When the salt sellers collect the salt, you can quietly find an opportunity to put this bag of snow salt into the hand of one of them."
Then Liu Jin began to give instructions to Zhao Erhu.
"Okay~"
Zhao Erhu nodded and began to wrap the snow salt in paper, and then tied it with rope to ensure it would not leak out.
"Let's go and watch the salt collection under the old tree."
After Zhao Erhu was busy, Liu Jin took the lead and walked to the middle of the village, preparing to see the salt sellers collecting salt.