Wu Huaiyu and Lao Wu were practicing the eight-step Golden Kung Fu in the morning light.
One move after another, no rush, no slowness,
The longer he practiced, Wu Huaiyu found that Lao Dao's set of exercises became more and more effective, especially when combined with the eight longevity exercises, it became more mysterious. Even Lao Wu practiced it for several years, and the effect was remarkable.
Finished, call it a day.
Lao Wu picked up a big gun eight feet tall and continued practicing.
To stop Nazar, with just a few simple movements, the gun shot out like a dragon, with majestic momentum.
Wu Huaiyu practiced the horse sword, and the black paint-wrapped iron horse sword in his hand had more moves, opening and closing, which was powerful and domineering.
"I have sent the father and brothers of the second concubine Yin and Zhang to Lingnan. The other concubines who were originally arranged to serve their father and brothers in the yamen have also asked them to take off their red clothes and soap clothes, gave them some money, and asked them to do Click to buy or sell,”
"fair enough,"
Wu Huaiyu was quite satisfied with his father's arrangement. His father's concubines were from small families, and some even came from humble backgrounds. Now that they were following Lao Wu, it was only natural for them to want to help the family, and their father and brother were in the same situation before. At the bottom level, now that they suddenly have such a big backer, it is normal for them to do wrong things.
But it cannot continue like this.
"Dalang is in Lingnan and I don't know when he will come back." Lao Wu sighed,
"A four-year term is quite fast. I'll be back after another two years." Huaiyu said with a smile.
Wu Huaiyi served as governor in Shaozhou, and his political achievements were very outstanding. Shaozhou was a newly established state of Zhenguan, just south of Wuling. It was originally a remote and remote place with a sparse population and many Wuling barbarians.
But there was someone in his court.
Not only was his predecessor as governor, his uncle, Samurai Yi, but Wu Huaiyu also advised him. When he took office, he first built the Meiling Road, which directly connected Jiangxi, especially the Meiling Road. It also connected the Ganjiang River that runs through Jiangxi and the Lingnan River. Guangzhou in the center, connected by Beijiang,
A golden business road was formed.
Immediately afterwards, Wu Huaiyu presented to the court the copper-leached iron produced in Danquan water, which made Shaozhou the largest copper-producing area in the Tang Dynasty. Pig iron from Lingnan, Jiangnan and other real estates was continuously transported to Shaozhou, and was refined in the Danchuang Copper Factory. copper,
And in the mint of the newly built large-scale coin minting bureau in Shaozhou, copper coins were minted continuously.
Relying on the iron-copper smelting method, the copper production in the Tang Dynasty increased more than ten times, and the amount of coins minted also increased sharply. It even led the imperial court to increase tax incentives for mining and metallurgy, which boosted the iron ore production in the entire Lingnan region. , coal mines, as well as iron smelting and iron processing industries.
Shaozhou is now the largest copper yard in the country, Guangzhou and Foshan have become the largest iron smelting yards in the country, Xijiang, Beijiang and Ganjiang are extremely busy with waterway freight, even driving the coal mining and shipping industries in Jiaozhou.
Wu Huaiyu led many of his relatives to mine in Shaozhou. In recent years, he has made huge profits, and naturally contributed a lot of political achievements to Huaiyi. He has only been in Shaozhou for two years, and the state's registered population has doubled, and its momentum is even greater than that of Guangzhou in the south. fierce.
In particular, its tax revenue, together with the income from official mines and workshops, ranked first in the list, becoming a dazzling financial pearl for the imperial court.
Shaozhou has been promoted from Xiazhou to Zhongzhou. Wu Huaiyi was awarded the best performance every year. Because he did so well, the emperor even promoted him to the title of Marquis of Qushui County.
Wu Huaiyi has a bright future.
Shaozhou now has a money supervisor, a mint, two silver fields, two lead fields, and a copper field. There is also a gold trade road connecting the north and south of Wuling.
After completing these four years, Wu Huaiyi might be promoted to Governor of Guangzhou.
After the Mid-Autumn Festival comes the white dew, which is a good time to harvest cotton and sweet potatoes.
The cotton planted by the Wu family this year has exploded in the ground one after another, and soft and plump flowers fell on the branches, like clouds growing all over the ground.
This year is also the first year that the Wu family begins to plant a large amount of cotton.
In Sanyuan County, Wu Huaiyu planted about 10,000 acres of cotton on three plateaus in the north. These dry lands used to be mainly used for growing millet and buckwheat.
Most of the land on the plateau was planted with cotton.
After waiting for more than half a year, it finally bloomed.
For many people who have only known how to grow wheat, millet and buckwheat and sorghum on the plateau for generations, this thing is too strange.
It is even more surprising when the cotton matures and the bolls explode, revealing white flowers inside.
To produce silk, you must first plant mulberries and then raise silkworms, wait for the silkworms to form cocoons and then boil the cocoons and reel them into silk. Planting hemp also requires many processes such as peeling and retting the hemp.
But there are blossoms of cotton growing directly from the ground. You can pull it and turn it into a small fluffy and soft ball. You can pick out the seeds inside and process it to spin it.
Amazing.
The servants in charge of the village, as well as people from nearby villages, were invited by the Wu family to pick cotton.
Picking cotton is actually a backbreaking job, not any easier than picking wheat. You even have to hurry up, otherwise the cotton will be damaged when the rain comes, and the quality will be affected even if it is exposed to the sun for a long time.
Picking cotton requires dexterity and quickness, but it can also easily injure your hands.
The rice is yellow, the sorghum is red,
The Wu family's cotton picking is becoming more and more lively. Most of the people are picking cotton for the first time. Fortunately, the Wu family has a cotton picker.
Everyone had already made arrangements before going to the ground. Everyone put on a straw hat and long-sleeved clothes, and tied a cloth bag on each person.
The cotton must be picked well and not scattered all over the ground.
You have to be patient and pick them one by one.
This work seems to be harvesting clouds.
People standing on the edge of the fields looking at it find it novel and even a bit romantic, but for those working in the fields, it is not easy. The fields are very hot, the cotton buds sting the hands, and the clothes are easy to get torn.
The yield of cotton fields is not very high. The lack of fertilizers and some insect pests have made the yield per mu very low. In later generations, cotton yields of three to five hundred kilograms per mu were common, and some even produced seven or eight hundred kilograms per mu. But the Wu family's cotton,
Although a lot of fertilizer was applied, after the first day of picking, after calculation, the yield per mu was less than 100 kilograms, still seed cotton.
Ten kilograms of seed cotton can produce three kilograms of lint cotton, and a hundred kilograms of seed cotton per mu can actually produce thirty kilograms of lint cotton.
But the stewards were all very excited about the harvest.
Because even if one acre can only produce twenty or thirty kilograms of lint, in their eyes, these are money grown in the ground.
White cloth is now more expensive than silk. Even though the processing is more complicated, the price is still high.
Three pounds of cotton make a piece of cloth,
Nowadays, a foot of fine-ply cloth is worth forty-five cents per square foot for the first-grade cloth, forty-four cents for the second-grade cloth, and forty-three cents for the second-grade cloth. Even the worst, low-grade coarse-ply cloth is worth ten cents per square foot.
A piece of cloth is forty feet long, the best and finest, and is worth one thousand eighty. At the current price of rice, you can buy rice for thirty-six dan. If it is replaced by rice, it is equivalent to fifty dan.
"Alang, our cotton land produces nearly a hundred kilograms of seed cotton per acre, which can produce nearly thirty kilograms of lint. If we weave it into cloth, we can get ten, ten."
Although Zhuangtou has been working in this field for nearly a year and has grown up little by little, his face is still red with joy when he has really gained something.
Ten pieces of cotton cloth, if they are of the highest quality, are worth 18,000 yuan, and even if they are of the worst quality, they are worth 4,000 yuan.
However, the dry land on these plateaus used to grow millet, and the yield was only about one stone per mu. At the current value, it is worth less than 40 yuan.
At least a hundred times the difference.
"Old Liu, your calculation is too simple. What is produced in this land is only seed cotton, not lint, cotton, or cotton cloth. Not to mention that growing cotton requires seeds, fertilizers, and a lot of labor."
The most difficult thing about cotton is processing. Seed removal and weaving are both extremely labor-intensive. Even if the Wu family invested heavily in research and developed machines for seed removal, weaving, and jacquard weaving,
But if cotton is processed and weaved by others, the cost of weaving a piece of cloth is at least nine pounds of cotton.
In fact, cotton is not very valuable. A pound of Gaochangguo cotton is only worth seven cents for high-quality cotton, but when processed into fine cotton, it is worth eighteen hundred cents per piece.
In terms of cotton alone, one acre of thirty kilograms of lint cotton is worth more than two hundred yuan, which is still equivalent to seven stones of millet, seven times the output of dry land on the plateau.
Its value for processing textiles is higher.
Three kilograms of cloth is spent to make a piece of cloth. The cost of the cotton is only twenty-one cents, but the finished cloth is worth one thousand and eighty cents?
Gaochangguo cotton cloth has always been a high-end product on the Silk Road. The main reason is that processing is too difficult, which limits the output, so the scarcity is the most valuable thing.
But Lao Liu just stared at the men and women who were busy picking cotton in the fields. There were even some children who went to the fields to help pick. Anyway, the Wu family hired villagers to do part-time work to collect cotton, and the money was calculated on a per-acre basis. The cotton must be collected cleanly and cannot be wasted.
.
"Alang, if you grow one acre of cotton, you can weave ten pieces of cloth." Old Liu emphasized this, and a piece of fine cotton can be sold for 1,800 yuan.
Seeds, fertilizers, labor, seed removal, textiles, etc. will certainly cost a lot, but the problem is that these are mainly produced and processed by the Wu family anyway, and labor is actually very cheap, so how much can be accounted for.
After all the calculations, cotton is grown in the fields, then spun and processed into cotton cloth in the village, and then sent to the Wu family's cloth shop. The Wu family's profits are almost maximized.
Although every link has costs, it also has greater profits.
Lao Liu can't wait to plant more cotton next year.
"Silver is really growing in the ground."
In the fields, adults, the elderly, and their children, and the whole family went to pick cotton. They also knew how valuable the cotton was, so they picked it carefully and did not dare to leave any waste behind.
The Wu family is very kind to the villagers,
At this time, people are hired to pick cotton. Anyway, they are paid per acre. You can get copper coins or grain, whichever is fine. The wages are pretty good.
An adult who is fast can pick an acre a day, and a slow person can pick half an acre. With the wages given by the Wu family, the whole family, young and old, can work hard for a few days and make a small profit.
Moreover, there is usually a lot of work in the cotton fields, and when it is busy, they will be hired.
Of course, the more important thing is that the Wu family has told everyone that when the cotton is harvested, there will be a lot of processing work to be done, such as seed removal, spinning and weaving, even jacquard, printing and dyeing, etc. Of course, some of the difficult work must be done in the Wu family workshop.
But there are also many simpler jobs that can be processed by the villagers, and they can also be used to make money.
"Our family has planted 10,000 acres of cotton in three plateaus in Sanyuan County this year. We can harvest one million jins of seed cotton and 300,000 jins of lint. We can weave 100,000 pieces of cotton cloth," Old Liu became more and more excited as he calculated.
One piece of cotton cloth is always eighty, one hundred thousand pieces is equivalent to 180,000 guan, and the family also grows a lot of cotton in other places, so how much cotton cloth must be weaved and how many thousands of guan must be sold.
Lao Liu forgot that in fact, some land may not even have twenty pounds of lint cotton per mu, not to mention that the cost of deseed spinning and weaving is very high.
It takes nine pounds of cotton to weave one piece of cloth.
What's more, the twenty or thirty kilograms of cotton produced per mu may not all be of high quality. There may also be mid-grade or even low-grade cotton. The woven cloth can also be of high-, medium- or low-grade quality, and the prices vary several times.
But in general, if the Wu family rushes into the cotton planting and textile industry, and immediately mass-produces a product that was once a very niche product, it will indeed immediately affect the entire industry, and may even cause the price of cotton to plummet.
But no matter what, the profit here is, at this stage, much greater than growing mulberry, raising silkworms, and growing hemp for weaving.
Besides the Lu family of Fan Yang and the Li Ji family of Caozhou, who else now grows as much cotton as the Wu family?
"The most profitable things are the white ones, the white sugar, the white salt, and now the white cotton..." Lao Liu sighed with emotion.
