The fishermen looked at the sea fish jumping on the deck of the boat, and they were all overjoyed.
There are various kinds of marine fish in the Bohai Sea. The rare ones such as fathead fish can be sold for 200 cents per catty. The common ones such as sea bass and barracuda cost 30 cents per catty when wholesaled in the market. Even if they are sold according to the
Calculating the cheapest fish species, sea bass, two thousand kilograms of sea fish are worth seventy taels of silver.
According to the fishing efficiency of this first trawl net, a 200-ton fishing boat with thirty-three fishermen can catch more than 2,000 kilograms of marine fish in one day. After using preservation technology to process live fish, the fish caught the first day will still be the same the next day.
Live ones can be sold overnight to Tianjin and coastal prefectures and counties in Shandong.
In other words, this means that on average, fishermen can earn more than two taels of silver per person in half a day.
Earning two taels of silver in half a day, what an exaggerated output is this? In one month, wouldn't a fisherman have to earn more than fifty taels of silver? Of course, according to the rules on the ship, 50% of the harvest goes to the boss of the ship, and the remaining 50% goes to the boss.
It belongs to the fishermen. But even so, with this kind of production capacity, everyone can make a lot of money.
The trawl fishing equipment of the Grand Duke's ship is complex and expensive, so the fishermen's share ratio may be much lower than that of ordinary fishing ships. But no matter what, the fishermen will always make more than before.
The fishermen became happy one by one and began to catch fish from the trawl net and tie the fish into "bow fish" to keep them alive. Everyone had an excited smile on their face, as if they saw that the good days of abundant food and clothing were just around the corner.
The boss of the boat was more considerate than these fishermen. He walked up to Li Zhi, bowed respectfully, and said: "My lord, the common people are short-sighted and didn't notice the tyranny of this trawl net just now."
Li Zhi smiled and said nothing.
The boss of the boat said: "The trawl fishing method of the Grand Duke requires that the sailboat be transformed into a steamer to fish. I wonder how much money this steam engine costs, and how much money does it cost to transform a fishing boat?"
Li Zhi said: "A steam engine costs thirty thousand taels of silver. If you buy and sell it in cash, you can't afford it."
The ship boss was shocked by the price quoted by Li Zhi and took a breath.
After a pause, Li Zhi said: "I will allow you to purchase the modified ships and fishing facilities on credit. The fishermen are free to combine and form fishing teams. Each team has twenty to thirty people. Each team reports to me.
Purchase a trawl steam fishing boat on credit. The money owed by the fishing team to me will be recorded in the account and will be repaid once a month for five years."
When the boat boss heard Li Zhi's arrangement, his eyes lit up. Fishermen were very poor these days. Even if he had his own fishing boat, he could not earn more than three taels of silver a month.
And if according to Li Zhi's arrangement, tens of thousands of catties of marine fish can be caught in a month, the harvest of one or two thousand taels of silver a month will not be lost. In this case, in two or three years, the "fishing group" will be
If you can pay off the money to buy steam engines and ships, the next income will be a net profit!
Then don’t the fishermen want the carp to jump over the dragon’s gate and become rich overnight?
Although the ship owner was shrewd, he still did not understand the market well and overestimated the future income of the steam trawler.
Fishermen can definitely make some hard money by fishing in large quantities. But as more and more people enter the fishing industry, there will be fewer and fewer big fish in the ocean, and the output of each fishing vessel will continue to increase.
The weight will not drop down to hundreds of kilograms in one net like now.
At the same time, with the popularization of steam fishing boats, the total fishery catch continues to rise, which will eventually cause the price of fish in the market to fall. Maybe by then, marine fish will not be thirty-five cents per catty, but only fifteen cents per catty. In the end
It will definitely bring the income of fishermen back to the average level of ordinary people in Tianjin.
Of course, with the increase in productivity and the influx of seafood into the market, consumers in Tianjin and Shandong will ultimately benefit. With the development of the marine fishing industry, the protein intake of residents in Tianjin and Shandong will be greatly increased.
Li Zhi smiled and said: "Your life will be much better than now, and your life may be better than that of farmers, but you can't make huge profits."
The boss of the boat was stunned and thought for a long time before he nodded in understanding. However, he was still very happy. He walked up to the fisherman who was handling the live fish and shouted loudly: "Listen up, everyone, the Duke of Guo said, said
Let us buy this steam fishing boat on credit! Everyone will live a good life!"
The fishermen looked at each other for a while, with smiles on their faces, and cheered loudly.
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After getting off the fishing boat, Li Zhi returned to Fanjiazhuang and began to think about how to increase the output of the steam engine.
According to Cui Changwu's statistics, there are more than 10,000 fishermen in Tianjin and Shandong. If these people all used steamship trawls to fish, Li Zhi would have to build more than 100 steam engines, which put new requirements on the output of steam engine workshops.
A steam engine can be sold for 30,000 taels of silver, but the actual cost is only a few hundred taels of silver. If all the fishermen in Tianjin and Shandong use Li Zhi's steam engines, it will be an order for more than 100 steam engines. Li Zhi will be able to increase his income by hundreds of thousands every year.
Two silver coins.
This is a lot of money, and Li Zhi wants to earn it no matter what.
To quickly produce steam engines, it is not possible to make them by hand with masters and apprentices as in the past. Li Zhi wants to implement an assembly line-style division of labor and collaboration, recruit new employees, and hand over all parts of the steam engine to a single person for batch production! The new employees may not understand
How a steam engine works, but they can quickly learn to make individual parts.
However, if assembly line division of labor is used, the size standards of workpieces must be unified, so as to prevent the emergence of a large number of defective parts. Therefore, Li Zhi wants to standardize the weights and measures of the Fanjiazhuang factory.
Li Zhixian got a unit of length based on his height.
By subdividing this unit of length, Li Zhi obtained the lengths of meters, decimeters and centimeters.
Li Zhi knew that in the Ming Dynasty, 597 grams was used as one pound, so he made a weighing weight of one pound to specify the weight of one pound.
After preparing the standard parts, Li Zhi summoned thousands of employees from various workshops such as the steam engine workshop, rifle workshop, and cannon workshop to the school field outside Fanjiazhuang, and said loudly: "Fellow workers, we will unify weights and measures from now on!"
Li Zhi took out a meter ruler and said loudly: "This is one meter long! One meter is one hundred centimeters." He took out a ruler measuring one-third of a meter and said: "Three feet is one meter.
One and a half meters is one step!”
Li Zhi took out the weighing weight and said: "A weighing weight of this weight is one catty!"
While Li Zhi was talking, his second uncle Li Dao took out a ruler from his sleeve and checked it with Li Zhi's ruler.
"My lord, if the sizes are not uniform, there will be many problems. I have already unified the sizes in the rifle and cannon workshops. The one-foot we use is a little shorter than your one-foot."
In the Ming Dynasty, a ruler was about 32 to 34 centimeters, which was not fixed. The ruler used by Li Dao was about 32 centimeters, which was more than one centimeter shorter than the one-third meter specified by Li Zhi.
Li Dao said: "But it doesn't matter, we can use a ruler like yours instead. In this way, we can correspond to the one meter and one step mentioned by the Duke!"
Li Zhi nodded and said: "From now on, you will operate according to my size! We have determined the size and weight units!"
