Zheng Hui looked at Zhao Laosan's excited face and said, "Sir, you have excited these farmers so much."
Li Zhi smiled and said to Zheng Hui: "The farmers crossed the ocean to come to Taiwan with us to open up new fields. Naturally, we have to give them some benefits. When the first batch of farmers benefit, the farmers behind will follow in an endless stream. From now on, we will continue to follow.
That’s settled. If we can catch up with the early rice planting, we will receive 60% of the land rent. If we can’t catch up with the early rice, we can only grow one season of late rice, and we will only receive 50% of the land rent.”
Zheng Hui cupped his hands and said, "The governor is benevolent and his subordinates admire him."
Li Zhi nodded, stopped inspecting the field, mounted his horse and walked back.
Zheng Hui did the calculations along the way and said to Li Zhi: "Sir, there are more than 60,000 acres of paddy fields that have been cultivated now. It is expected that the rice harvest will be 90,000 shi by the end of this year. The governor will collect 50% of the land rent, which is 45,000 shi.
Shi. Taiwan’s paddy fields do not need to pay grains for farming. Calculated in this way, the half-year rent of these 60,000 acres of paddy fields is more than the annual rent of 200,000 acres of dry fields in Tianjin.”
Li Zhi nodded when he heard this.
I heard Gao Ligong say before that the income from Taiwan's paddy fields is several times that of Tianjin's dry fields. It's just a concept. Only after we actually opened the fields did we feel that we can get twice the result with half the effort here. In most half the year, the income is 45,000 shi, which is equivalent to land rent.
Ninety thousand taels of silver, calculated over eight months, is equivalent to a monthly income of more than 10,000 taels of silver.
And this is just the beginning. As the fleet expands, Taiwan's subsequent expansion will become faster and faster.
Taiwan's development is extremely profitable. There is great potential for subsequent development.
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In mid-May, Li Zhi returned to Tianjin with the fleet.
Now the city wall of Fanjiazhuang New City has been repaired, and the area of Fanjiazhuang City has doubled. The city wall between the two cities, the original south city wall of Fanjiazhuang, has been demolished. The new city and the old city are connected together.
However, as soon as the new city was built, a lot of space was occupied by the new army barracks and expanded textile factories. Especially the textile factories were expanding every month. Now Li Zhi had a Japanese market where he could sell his cheap fine cloth.
Li Zhi planned to expand the textile factory to a scale of 15,000 people.
The factory with 15,000 people will bring huge profits to Li Zhi. It is estimated that there will be tens of thousands of taels of silver every month, which can support Li Zhi's other businesses.
However, the expansion of textile factories cannot be achieved overnight. Expansion of production requires not only the construction of machinery and factory buildings, but also the construction of villas for workers to live in. Almost all the masons near Fanjiazhuang were hired by Li Zhi, and they kept moving building materials and driving piles every day.
Bricks, mud and whitewash turned the southern part of Fanjiazhuang into a large construction site.
The textile factory that has been expanding its production has produced a lot of Lijia fine cloth in the past few months, all of which are piled up in the warehouse, almost filling the warehouse.
Fortunately, starting from the end of May, Li Zhi's fleet began to run the Hirado route. Li Zhi did not buy the six sea-going ships from Chayunke and Tianjin Zhangjia. Those small ships also need a set of boatmen, and the efficiency is really low. But
Li Zhi hired all the skilled boatmen of these six boats and let them go to sea on his newly built ships.
In Dengzhou in early May, the shipbuilders in Laizhou built five more large pointed ships. After installing steam engines, the five new ships began to sail to Japan in late May. In this way, Li Zhi had fifteen large ships running
Japan route. These steam engines and ships do not need to wait for the monsoon. They travel between China and Japan every day, and the transport volume is amazing.
In addition to Li's fine cloth, Li Zhi also shipped all the raw silk, porcelain, ironware, textiles, sugar, etc. that had price differences between China and Japan to Japan, driving down the price difference between the two countries.
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At the end of May, Li Zhi went to the armor forging workshop to have a look.
After a year of development, the armor workshop has reached a considerable scale. The armor workshop uses steam engines to drive forging hammers to forge steel armor, which is very efficient. Although Li Zhi only planned to equip thirty steam engines at the beginning, in the end, as the armor
As demand grew, Li Zhi increased the number of steam engines to sixty.
Today, there are more than a hundred craftsmen in the armor workshop, two people operate a forging hammer, and 60 handymen manage the steam engines.
This armor workshop can now produce more than 10,000 sets of armor a year.
Of course, the expansion of the armor workshop increased the demand for crucible steel. Li Zhi also tripled the scale of the steel-making workshop, increasing steel output to 60,000 kilograms per month.
Li Zhi's requirement for the armor was that it could protect against direct arrows at thirty paces, so the steel armor forged by the craftsmen was quite thick. The front breastplate was three millimeters thick. And a set of armor not only included a breastplate, but also skirt armor and leggings.
Shoulder pads and arm guards. The frontal protection is very complete and can be regarded as full body armor.
However, this armor only has front protection, and there are no steel plates on the sides and rear. Li Zhi's troops generally face the enemy head-on, and the side and rear protection is left to his comrades.
Li Zhi believed that if the soldiers wore such a set of plate armor, the Tatar archers would not be able to shoot through it. Even if the soldiers received more than a dozen arrows, they would probably only be minor skin injuries. In this way, the Tatars relied on
The old method of riding and shooting is completely useless against the Tiger Master.
However, this kind of armor is relatively heavy, weighing more than 30 kilograms. It cannot be worn during normal marches and must be carried by a baggage team. This increases the requirements for the baggage team. Fortunately, Li Zhi captured very many mules and horses in previous battles.
If there are enough carriages, this is not a big problem.
In the armor workshop, Li Zhi hung a newly made full-body armor a hundred meters away and fired it with an unrifled flintlock gun.
Li Zhi often played with rifles when he had nothing to do, and he was very proficient in loading and loading bullets. It took him more than ten seconds to load the bullets and gunpowder, and pointed the musket at his full body armor.
There was a gunshot, and the round lead bullet hit the left side of the breastplate, making a dent in the steel armor. However, the dent was not big, only a few millimeters deep, and it was unlikely to cause major harm to the wearer.
.
Li Zhi thought for a while, shortened the shooting distance to seventy meters, loaded and fired again.
There was another gunshot, and the bullet hit the right side of the steel armor. The bullet still did not penetrate the steel armor, and made a one-centimeter-deep dent in the steel armor. However, the steel armor is not worn next to the body and is inherently in contact with the skin.
Given the distance, it is expected that a one centimeter dent will not cause serious injury to the wearer.
Li Zhi walked another twenty meters and fired at the steel armor from a distance of fifty meters.
There was only a loud "clang" sound, and the lead bullet penetrated the steel armor. The steel armor hanging on the wooden frame was violently shaken, fell down, and fell to the ground with a clang.
Li Zhi took the steel armor for inspection and found that the lead bullet had made a hole in the steel armor.
It seems that at a distance of fifty meters, an ordinary musket can penetrate three millimeter thick steel armor. If you encounter a red hair in the future, you cannot let the red hair get close to fifty meters to shoot. Once the enemy is within fifty meters,
Shooting against the Huben Division, even with such well-equipped steel armor, will cause a large number of casualties. (To be continued.)
