In fact, the price of 45 yuan is still too high for Fusu.
Fusu's compassionate heart wanted to send these cloths to people's homes for nothing, and even spread this water-powered weaving method quickly throughout the country to relieve the people of the world from their clothing worries.
But objectively speaking, forty-five dollars is indeed a bit expensive.
Because if the fifty cents for summer clothes are divided, it will probably be ten cents for ramie raw materials, twenty cents for spinning yarn, and twenty cents for weaving.
Shen Bing's water-powered weaving costs almost nothing. If you want to calculate the cost, it costs at most one yuan... One worker can maintain many water-powered looms at the same time. After amortization, it does not cost much. Plus the water truck, land and other expenses, On average, one set of clothes costs enough.
Based on this calculation, a piece of fabric produced in Yunzhong County can be sold for thirty-one cents, which is a huge profit. At this time, selling for forty-five cents is a huge profit.
Of course Fusu would settle the score, so he was still a little dissatisfied.
But Shen Bing explained to Fusu:
"Young master, I don't know. This price is exactly what the people want."
Fusu Qi said:
"How can a price of forty-five cents be considered by the people?"
Shen Bing replied:
"Young master, you should know that there are many people in our country in Qin who specialize in weaving."
“Even if they are not specialized in weaving, there are many ordinary people who do it as well. Ordinary people often need to weave a few more pieces of cloth to sell to supplement their household income.”
"That's why poor people are often the sellers, while wealthy dignitaries are the buyers."
"If we sell cloth at a very low price and of high quality..."
Fusu understood immediately:
"What the general said is true."
"If we do this, ordinary people will not be able to support their families!"
Shen Bing replied:
"It's more than enough to support the family."
"Originally, each piece of cloth can be sold for 50 yuan, but now we sell it for 45 yuan. Who will buy a piece of coarse cloth for 50 yuan?"
"They can only lower the price to 40 yuan."
"As a result, each piece of cloth loses ten yuan, and I am afraid that even the capital cannot be recovered."
"So..."
Fusu nodded and said:
"They can't make ends meet, so they have no choice but to find other ways to make a living."
“The cloth weaved by ordinary people’s hard work was originally expected to supplement their household income, but instead they could only get back the raw material money.”
Shen Bing replied:
"That makes sense."
"If we set the price at 45 yuan, we are actually giving the people time and opportunity to find another way to make a living."
"If the price is set at thirty-one cents at this time, not only will it fail to benefit the people, but it will also disrupt the Daqin cloth market and even the society."
"Therefore, I believe that the price of cloth should be lowered year by year, and we must not be hasty in seeking speed."
“In this way, people can truly benefit.”
Fusu couldn't help but marvel when he heard this, nodded repeatedly and said:
"What the general said is true, Fusu has learned a lesson."
Therefore, many things are not purely about benevolence and righteousness. Just say good intentions. Many times, good intentions lead to bad things.
In the past, Shen Bing could set the price at will for paper, mainly because paper had little to do with ordinary people. Most of the people who needed paper were scholars or dignitaries.
Cloth is different. Most of the people who weave cloth are ordinary people. Once the price drops, it will have a great impact on them. It can be said that it can affect the whole body.
For example, when the water-powered loom was invented in modern times, it directly caused a large number of handicraftsmen to lose their jobs. As a result, violent conflicts and social unrest broke out, and some people even rushed to the factory and smashed the machines.
Now that Shen Bing is lowering the price step by step, he can give the people some preparations to minimize the conflict and turmoil.
But this is only the first step.
With the advent of water-powered looms, water-powered spinning machines are of course also indispensable.
Therefore, we can save a lot of costs. If we really push out all these things at once, then selling a piece of cloth for 20 yuan will be a big profit...
Of course Shen Bing had to proceed step by step at this time. He divided the textile workshop into three major parts:
The first block is the raw material workshop.
The most primitive raw materials are grown, but there is almost no need to worry about planting. The agricultural land in the north and west circle of Yunzhong County is sufficient for planting.
If it doesn't work, just encircle another piece of land around Yunzhong City. Anyway, now the Xiongnu basically dare not provoke the Qin army in the north.
However, the raw materials cannot be used directly after they are grown.
It also requires soaking, peeling, rinsing (sun and night dew) and other treatments.
These need to be completed manually.
The second block is the textile workshop.
There are three main operations here: cutting, forming, and twisting.
These steps can be replaced by a hydraulic spinning machine.
But there are still operations such as combing and sizing that require manual labor.
The third block is the weaving workshop.
Needless to say, this is a hydraulic loom.
In addition, Shen Bing also plans to build a port in the upstream agricultural area and downstream industrial area. The port will then plan several roads to connect industry and agriculture in all directions.
It goes without saying what it is used for...
After harvesting ramie in the upstream agricultural area, it can be transported to the downstream industrial area through the port, which is convenient and fast and saves transportation costs.
So Yunzhong County was actually built into a large-scale textile factory by Shen Bing... From planting to producing finished cloth, not a single step was left behind.
For future development, you can also consider a garment factory.
Every aspect of this requires a lot of manpower.
For example, farmers are needed for planting, boatmen are needed for transportation, and workers are needed for workshops.
In addition, Shen Bing still needs manpower to build roads...
It can be expected that Yunzhong County will become the textile center of Daqin in the near future. A large amount of cloth will be transported out here, and a large amount of ore, grain, etc. will be transported in. Therefore, of course, better and wider roads are needed.
The reason why a large amount of ores and grains are needed is because Yunzhong County is in urgent need of them.
Transportation is a two-way street.
The so-called two-way transportation means that Yunzhong County has a fleet of vehicles. The main task of this fleet is to transport the cloth produced in Yunzhong County to various parts of the Central Plains for sale.
What about shipping to the Central Plains, selling the cloth, and then returning?
Are we going back to Yunzhong County empty?
Of course it's impossible. This would be a huge waste of transportation capacity, so we must bring something that is urgently needed in Yunzhong County and relatively cheap in the Central Plains.
Ore and food are, at least for now, urgently needed.
Especially food...
Yunzhong County is located in the northern part of the country where winters are relatively cold, so the crop characteristic of Yunzhong County is that like Yandi, only spring wheat can be grown once a year.
At this time, the farming season has just been missed, and we can only wait until next year to farm.
The five vegetables are okay, but there is still a rush to plant them now. We have to buy food. In addition to the time it takes to farm until the crops mature next year, we will need to buy food from the Central Plains for at least two years.
If we want to feed the increasing number of people returning home, the food gap will be an extremely huge number.
Needless to say, how to feed these people is just the way of industrialization:
Transform returnees into workers, who produce cloth to create profits, and then use these profits to buy grain from the plains and transport it back to feed the workers...
As this cycle continues and snowballs, Yunzhong County will soon become a large city that combines industry and agriculture.