Tianjin first had streets. It was the Jin Kingdom who set up a military stronghold here, named "Zhigu Village". During the Yuan Dynasty, it developed into Haijin Town and became one of the grain transshipment centers.
After Zhu Di ascended the throne, he built an acropolis here, and from then on the Tianjin Guard was established.
It is an important military town with three major military offices: Tianjin Guard, Tianjin Zuowei, and Tianjin Right Guard. It is also a center for water transportation and salt transportation, not to mention grain transshipment. Changlu Salt Fields in Tianjin was still owned by the Beiyang government until the Republic of China.
economic lifeline.
Military towns, water transportation, salt transportation, and commerce made Tianjin rapidly prosperous in the Ming Dynasty.
To what extent is it prosperous?
A member of the permanent deputy envoy of the Inspectorate, commanding the three guards of Tianjin. He also set up Jinka in Tianjin, and even moved the banknotes from Tongzhou. There are also some county yamen, which also work in Tianjin specifically to manage the people of Tianjin.
, just because it is difficult to arrange civil affairs officers in guard cities.
The hereditary generals of the Three Guards of Tianjin are similar to the civil servants of Guizhou City, with only a few rights left.
Xu Jin is a business spy sent by the Xu family. His first impression when he came to Tianjin was that prices are so damn high! They are higher than Nanjing, Suzhou, and Hangzhou. A medium-sized room in an ordinary hotel costs one night.
The fee is actually five cents of silver, and one tael of silver is needed for a twenty-day stay.
There is no way, Tianjin has heavy taxes.
Not to mention opening a shop, even setting up a stall on the roadside is subject to heavy taxes. If you build warehouses and warehouses in other places, you do not need to pay taxes, and you will also be taxed here. Generally speaking, Tianjin’s store tax is
It is more than five times the national average.
Tianjin Chaoguan collects more commercial taxes every year than all taxes in the entire Guizhou Province. Merchant shipping tolls alone can collect more than 2 million yuan a year. This is only the part handed over to the court. It is difficult to estimate the amount of corruption among officials in private.
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This was the most prosperous trading city in the north of the Ming Dynasty!
Unfortunately, only commerce and trade were developed, but the handicraft industry was particularly bad, and capitalism could not sprout.
Although Hebei and Shandong are rich in cotton, they do not even have large-scale textile workshops. Several northern provinces still need to purchase Jiangnan cotton.
Jiangnan wielded industrial scissors and wildly harvested northern farmers. That is, they bought cotton at low prices in the north, made cotton cloth and sold it back at high prices, forming a business phenomenon of "cotton leads the ark to the south, and cloth leads the ark to the north."
Regardless of whether they are producing cotton cloth or reselling cotton cloth, Jiangnan merchants will not allow textile bases to appear in the north!
Now the prototype of a chamber of commerce has appeared in the south. Once Wang Yuan makes things big, it is likely to give birth to the Jianghuai Textile Guild. Most of the Jianghuai cloth merchants will unite and use the strategy of low-price dumping to kill Wang Yuan's northern textile base.
Why Jianghuai?
Merchants from Jiangnan are responsible for producing cloth, and merchants from Lianghuai are responsible for sales. Merchants from Jiangnan rely on merchants from Lianghuai to purchase and transport cotton. This is a community of interests.
It was already November when Xu Jin arrived in Tianjin, and the weather was freezing cold. He explored the Tianjin Acropolis, then took a boat to the east, and arrived at a river beach in half a day.
A simple dock has been built on the river beach. There are warehouses on the dock, but there is no inn.
There were coolies carrying goods. Xu Jin walked over and asked, "Isn't there a hotel here?"
The coolie couldn't hold his head up while carrying the big bag of cotton, so he kept his head down and said, "The construction site over there is an inn. It may be repaired before the Chinese New Year."
The inn is really not Wang Yuan's property, but a well-informed Tianjin businessman who took the initiative to build a building here and do business. Of course, Wang Yuan needs to be given a land lease fee, because the nearby land has been bought and he decided to spin cloth
After that, Wang Yuan bought hundreds of acres of wasteland.
Xu Jin walked around the pier for a while and suddenly saw many people walking towards the river carrying barrels.
Xu Jin asked: "What are you going to do?"
The man replied: "Fetch water!"
Xu Jin asked in surprise: "Why did you come out to fetch water together?"
The man explained: "The well water here has a smell and cannot be eaten by humans and animals. The river water cannot be eaten randomly. There are only two and a half hours a day, and the river water drawn during this period can be eaten."
The more Xu Jin listened, the more confused he became. The man couldn't explain clearly. He only knew that he could get water by ringing the bell in the factory.
In fact, the river water is mixed with sea water, so you can't drink it at low tide or calm times. Only when the tide rises, the salty sea water lifts up the fresh water, and during this time can you get drinkable river water.
At first, the factory managers and the refugees were not clear about it, and they almost died from drinking it. Only after asking local villagers for advice did they learn the secret, and a group of water collectors were specially arranged for this purpose.
Xu Jin left the dock and continued to move forward, and soon saw a row of fences surrounding the entire factory area.
Outside the factory area, white alkali can be seen everywhere, and it is as white as snow. The salinization here is so severe that it has not been controlled since ancient times!
"stop!"
Just as Xu Jin wanted to enter the factory, he was stopped by the factory guard.
Xu Jin smiled and said: "I am a merchant who is here to buy cotton cloth, and I want to discuss business with your shopkeeper."
The guard said: "If you want to discuss business, go to the warehouse. There is an office over there at the dock. No idlers are allowed to enter the factory."
Xu Jin took out two broken pieces of silver, quietly put them into the hands of the two guards, and said with a smile: "Brother, it's convenient."
These factory guards are all male refugees. They were still planting crops six months ago. They cannot be as obedient as the soldiers trained by Wang Yuan.
If Xu Jin dares to give money, the guards dare to accept it.
It's a pity that they took it in but didn't do anything. A guard said with a smile: "I really can't let you in. Once the factory finds out, my whole family will be driven away. Life is good here, and I don't want to change places. You have Just ask whatever you want to ask, there are many people like you here these days."
Another guard warned: "Don't even think about climbing over the fence and sneaking in. This is the cotton spinning factory owned by Wang Xueshi of the Hanlin Academy. There are also guards patrolling the factory area. If they catch you, they will be beaten to death!"
Xu Jin was startled. He really wanted to sneak in. At this moment, he could only ask: "How many weavers are there in your workshop?"
The guard corrected him with a proud tone: "It's not a workshop, it's a factory! A factory like an armor factory or a fodder factory in the capital, you just call it a workshop because of your small work."
"Yes, yes, it's a factory. It's all my fault for being ignorant," Xu Jin said with a smile, "How many weavers are there in your factory?"
"There are more than 300 male workers and more than 400 female workers in the factory," the guard said, patting his chest. "Even though I am guarding the door, I am also a male worker in the factory. Those handling coolies on the dock are also workers in the factory. male workers, they earn more every day.”
Xu Jin asked: "Can male workers also weave?"
The guard smiled and said: "Some men can weave, but most of them are female workers."
Xu Jin asked again: "How many looms do you have in your factory?"
The guard replied: "There are more than 300 spinning wheels. Now the cotton is almost running out, and only a hundred or so spinning wheels are still in operation. The rest are looms, and there are more than 300. They are very busy every day. Scholar Wang is fighting in the war He is neat and good at running a factory. He personally made a lot of rules and made the factory look like a military camp. People urinate and spit everywhere and their wages will be deducted. But we are all happy with it. The money is a lot. The weavers also have a basic salary plus commission. , as long as you are quick and make no mistakes, you can earn two taels of silver a month!"
Xu Jin laughed in his heart, only to realize that the man in front of him was a bumpkin.
Over in the south of the Yangtze River, the most powerful skilled weavers can even earn three taels of silver per month. What is two taels of silver?
Xu Jin asked again: "How much cloth can you produce per month?"
The guard shook his head and said, "I don't know about that. Anyway, a lot of it is shipped out. Moreover, the cotton cloth in our factory is cheaper than Jiangnan cotton cloth. Many merchants place orders every month."
Xu Jin couldn't ask for more details, so he could only go back to the dock and wander around.
He stayed for several days in a row, spending all his food and accommodation on the boat. Unfortunately, the female worker never left the factory, and there was no chance to ask for the inside story. It wasn't until he decided to leave that someone came to him.
"Which company sent you as a spy?" the man asked.
"No," Xu Jin denied flatly, "I am a merchant who is here to purchase goods!"
The man smiled and said, "Since I'm not a spy, I won't bother you. I originally wanted to sell you information."
"Wait!"
Xu Jin looked around and whispered: "Take a step to speak."
When the two came to the secret place, the man said, "My news is very valuable. I need three taels of silver."
Xu Jin shook his head and said, "What if it's not valuable?"
The man spread his hands and said: "First give me a certain amount of money. If you don't give it after hearing the news, I will have someone arrest you and beat you to death!"
Xu Jin thought carefully, gritted his teeth and gave him a tael of silver: "Just tell me."
The man smiled and said: "The spinning wheel in our factory can spin five spindles of cotton yarn at the same time, and each spindle of cotton yarn is very regular. The loom is even more powerful. The cotton cloth spun is so wide that one person can weave three people's cloth."
!”
"Why is this so?" Xu Jin asked.
The man said: "The gauze spun from the machine improved by Bachelor Wang is called bachelor's yarn or bachelor's cloth."
Xu Jin asked: "How to improve it?"
The man spread his hands: "This news requires additional money. At least ten taels!"
Xu Jin didn't bring much money, so he gritted his teeth and gave enough money, and couldn't wait to say: "Speak quickly."
The man grinned happily, put away the money and said: "A wooden stake was made under the tread of the spinning wheel. In this way, there is no need to consider the strength when spinning, and novices can learn it quickly..."
"Zhang Lequan, it is you who betrayed the factory!"
Suddenly someone shouted, but the factory guard came after him.
"Run!"
Xu Jin was so frightened that he ran frantically towards the dock, climbed onto the boat and said, "Hurry up and sail back to Tianjin!"
The secret of the spinning wheel has been spread, because it is too simple to improve, just add a small wooden stake. At first, only a few people who came to inquire about the news knew about it, but gradually the news became more and more widespread, and it became popular in Jiangnan in just a few months.
The loom is even more troublesome. The worker who betrayed the secret only talked about the pulley and then used the rope to pull the shuttle.
The major cotton spinners were so confused that they didn’t even know what the windlass was used for. Isn’t this thing only used for lifting water in the well? And what the hell is a flying shuttle? Is it possible to let the shuttle fly to weave?
cloth?
Smarter merchants began to hire people to study physics because they heard that Bachelor Wang used physics to transform looms.
"Mathematics", "Geometry", and "Physics" gradually spread to the south of the Yangtze River, and later became known as the "Three Volumes of Gongshu". When they went to storytellers, they became the "Three Volumes of Divine Books".
The Jianghuai businessmen wanted to sell at low prices and united to force Wang Yuan's factory to death.
The result was speechless. "Bachelor's cloth" was so cheap that they couldn't find it in the northern market. If not for the increased cost of long-distance transportation and insufficient factory output, Wang Yuan might have dumped it in the southern market.
This spring, "bachelor cloth" suddenly became popular in Hebei, Shandong and Henan.
The impact on the market is not small, but it is not too big. After all, the output is there and it only eats up a small piece of the market. The price of cloth does not fluctuate much. The fact that "bachelor cloth" sells cheap is only relative, because cotton has been sold for two consecutive years.
Due to large-scale production cuts, the price of cotton this year is actually higher than in previous years!
Only the Jianghuai cloth merchants who were doing business in the north were made as uncomfortable as eating flies by Wang Yuan. This was the case in the first year. If they continue to develop and the number of looms continues to increase, won't they swallow up all their market share?
As a result, some Lianghuai businessmen took the initiative to abandon their Jiangnan partners and signed long-term underwriting contracts with Wang Yuan's factory.
We’re all doing business anyway, so why can’t we switch camps?
Buying and selling cloth in Wang Yuan's factory can save countless transportation costs as long as it faces the northern market, and they will only earn more than before!
Technology is productivity. The efficiency of Wang Yuan's looms has increased several times. The cost advantage is overwhelming for Jiangnan merchants. It should not be too easy to seize market share.
In just one winter, Wang Yuan not only recovered the cost of building the factory (including land purchase), but also made a net profit of more than 2,000 taels.
The net profit of more than two thousand taels does not seem to be much compared to selling telescopes. But it is only a quarter's profit, and the income is far more stable in the long term than selling telescopes.
The factory management is also very motivated. Although they have no shares, they can receive dividends every year. The more the factory earns, the more they will get. It is a hundred times more rewarding than working as an official in the Ministry of Household Affairs and the Ministry of Works before!
In addition, Wang Yuan sent people to check the accounts once every three months. If they wanted to be greedy, they could only get a small kickback.
Everything is going very smoothly, and Wang Yuan is heading towards the road of becoming a capitalist.