Xu is very handy and has made a lot of clothes for her family. She is familiar with the details of each step of making clothes. As soon as the shopkeeper of Cloth Village told her, she immediately understood the benefits and was impressed by Li Zhi's skills.
After thinking for a while, she asked: "Shopkeeper, how much does this piece of broadcloth cost?"
"This Li family cotton cloth is twice as wide as ordinary cloth. One long piece of cloth must be folded into two pieces and sold. After the conversion, the price is the same as other pieces of cloth, one tael of silver per piece."
“Can it be cheaper?”
"This is a new product, so it can't get any cheaper. Anyway, since you really want to buy it, I'll sell it to you for nine cents and eight cents a piece for two cents less."
"Okay, I'll buy one foot by one foot!"
After buying Li's cotton cloth, Mrs. Xu returned home, picked up scissors and needlework and started making new clothes for her daughter who was getting married. Sure enough, wide cloth gave her more room to plan clothes when cutting, which saved Mrs. Xu a lot.
Scraps. Moreover, the wide cloth can be cut directly to cut out the front and back of the clothes in one piece, which saves a seam.
After making new clothes, Mrs. Xu went to her daughter's mother-in-law's house to shop for the dowry a few days later. The Lin family is middle-class, so the dowry was not rich, but it was not shabby either. It included necklaces, pots and buckets, bedding, boxes and clothes.
Both. If you make more dowry, your daughter's life in her husband's family will be easier in the future. Mrs. Xu is not very thrifty.
The other items were all ordinary things, but Xu's clothes made of Li family cotton attracted the attention of her daughter's in-laws.
Holding up the pleated skirt and looking at it repeatedly, her daughter's aunt smiled and said, "This pleated skirt is so strange. Why is it not sewn together at the front and back? There is only a seam in the middle of the back. It looks so beautiful."
Seeing her future aunt praising her dowry, Xu's daughter felt happy and looked at her mother.
Mrs. Xu walked up to her aunt and said quickly: "This is made from the Li family's wide cloth. The front and back parts are connected together when they are cut. Naturally, there is no need to sew any more!"
"Is there such a kind of cloth? Then from now on, when making clothes, we no longer need to sew two lines of stitches, but just sew one line on the back?"
"yes!"
"This Li's wide cloth is really a good thing. Where did you buy it, mother-in-law?"
"I bought it at Dongjia Cloth Store."
"I'm going to buy some clothes to make clothes in a few days."
Li Zhi's broadcloth has many advantages and is very popular in the market. Dong Zhiyi, who collects cotton cloth, is also happy to buy Li Zhi's cotton cloth. Li Zhi's broadcloth has no worries about sales. After all, the weaving workshop can weave seven products a month.
Fifteen hundred pieces of broad cloth, which is equivalent to fifteen thousand pieces of ordinary cloth. Li Zhi sold these pieces of cloth to the Dong family at a price of nine cents per piece. After deducting the cost of cotton yarn and labor expenses, the weaving workshop can produce enough cloth for Li Zhi in one month.
A profit of more than 1,400 taels.
Although the weaving workshop is not as profitable as soap, it has become an important part of Li Zhi's finances.
In addition to the profit of 3,000 taels a month from the soap business, Li Zhi can now earn more than 4,400 taels a month. Even in Tianjin Wei, where wealthy businessmen gather, Li Zhi is considered a big industrialist.
If you have money, you must also have the power to protect it, otherwise just having money is really a bad thing. In order to frighten the villains who covet his property, Li Zhi recruited 60 more people and sent them to his servant team. In addition,
From the dozen people he originally recruited, Li Zhi already has more than seventy servants.
Li Zhi divided these servants into groups of ten, and selected those with better martial arts skills from the first batch of ten servants to serve as team leaders. There were seven groups of servants, two of which were stationed in the soap workshop and led by Zhong Feng. One group was stationed in the
Li Zhi's family is directly managed by Li Zhi to protect Li Zhi's family property. The other four groups are stationed in Zhifang, led by Li Laosi.
Li Zhi had observed over the past few months and found that although Li Laosi had a poor background, he was very loyal and reliable. Martial arts can be trained, but loyalty is rare. Moreover, Li Zhi plans to arm his servants with firearms in the future. For soldiers who use muskets and cannons,
For me, personal force is not very important. Li Zhi handed over forty servants to Li Laosi and felt relieved.
As Li Laosi and Zhong Feng serve as captains, their monthly salary will naturally increase. Li Zhi gives them five taels and three taels a month respectively.
After receiving such a high monthly salary, Li Laosi was even more grateful to Li Zhi and worked more attentively, fearing that he had omitted some of Li Zhi's monthly salary. Zhong Feng joined Li Zhi's team not long ago and has not made any meritorious service, so it is not appropriate to give him too high a monthly salary.
, temporarily receiving a monthly salary of three taels of silver to serve as captain.
These servants took turns patrolling the weaving mill, and practiced formation fighting in their free time. Li Zhi provided enough meat to the servants. The servants did not lack protein, and their bodies became stronger with practice. After a month of training, the servants were stabbing wooden balls.
Basically, I can hit five out of ten in all the projects.
When he was not charging out, Li Zhi asked his servants to practice formation and form a Spanish phalanx. The Spanish phalanx was a war-tested formation method of this era, and of course Li Zhi would use it. He asked his servants to follow the Spanish phalanx.
They formed two rows, with the first row going to the right to stab the enemy, and the second row to stab the enemy directly on the opposite side.
Li Zhi was very strict and required his servants to practice until dozens of people were as strong as one person, and they were able to use long sticks or spears to complete offense and defense.
Li Laosi and Zhong Feng are both diligent and take the lead in training. Coupled with the high salary and benefits, these servants train very hard. It is estimated that after a few more months of training, these servants will become outstanding array warriors.
After finishing the expansion of his servant team, Li Zhi began to manufacture Jenny spinning machines.
In later history, with the emergence of the flying shuttle loom, the weaving efficiency was greatly improved, and the supply of cotton yarn was somewhat in short supply. Under such circumstances, the British James Hargreaves invented the invention in 1764
A new type of spinning machine was invented. Different from the original spinning machine, this spinning machine arranged the spindles vertically and drove them with a spinning wheel, which greatly improved the efficiency of spinning. Hargreaves used
This new machine was named after her daughter, and it became the world-famous Spinning Jenny.
There were also multi-spindle spinning machines in the late Ming Dynasty, but these machines still had the spindles horizontally arranged, and could only arrange five spindles at most. In fact, the five-spindle spinning machines in the late Ming Dynasty were not popular, and more spinning machines on the market were
Four spindles.
As an industrial designer, Li Zhi certainly understood the structural principles of spinning machines. He could also make the Jenny Spinning Machine. He used a wing of his home as a laboratory and hired several blacksmiths and carpenters to build each component separately.
, I took Li Xing to assemble the various parts. It took two days to make a twenty-spindle Jenny spinning machine.
This kind of Jenny spinning machine has a simple structure, but the design is very clever. When spinning, as long as the operator turns the big wheel of the spinning machine to drive the rotating shaft, the rotating shaft will rotate the spindle bar through the rope sleeve. After completing this step, the small
Turn the small wheel upside down and then turn the big wheel forward to take off the yarn from the spindle bar hook. Finally, put down the spindle pressure plate to rotate the spindle and the spindle bar coaxially, and wind the yarn onto the spindle to complete the whole process.
