Ramie has a relatively strong vitality, and during the Warring States Period... to be precise, it should be planted in every household during most of the ancient times.
In ancient times, it was emphasized that "men farmed and women weaved", wasn't it?
If ramie is not grown, it means that there is no raw material for weaving. Without raw materials, we cannot weave or we have to spend money to buy it.
Ordinary poor families are not willing to spend money to buy raw materials, so they usually plant a small patch of ramie and harvest it regularly for household use. If this is not possible, they will harvest wild ramie.
Ramie can be harvested three times a year. It takes about 80 to 90 days for the first ramie, 50 to 60 days for the second ramie, and 70 to 80 days for the third ramie. Therefore, it only requires a small piece of land and does not require much care to satisfy a family.
clothing needs.
In the early days of the weaving workshop, we harvested the ramie fields left by the original residents in Yunzhong County.
The original residents moved away with Zhao Wangjia, but the ramie grown by every household remained in the same place. It has not been harvested for a long time and is still growing very strong. However, many of them were frozen to death in the low temperature in winter.
But this does not affect its use as a raw material... Ramie fiber is needed for spinning, and frozen plants can still be used as raw materials.
At the same time, the Xiongnu did not spin threads or weave cloth, so they had no interest in the ramie, so they left large tracts of ramie in the fields growing together with weeds.
Textile workshops are currently harvesting these ramies as raw materials.
On the other hand, the land enclosed here in Yunzhong County was replanted with five vegetables and ramie because it missed the agricultural season.
Based on the 80th to 90th day of the first harvest of ramie, the textile workshop only needs to use these "wild" ramies for three months before it can be "regular".
Judging from the situation at this time, Shen Bing does not need to worry about raw material issues at all, because the supply of "wild" and "abandoned" ramie is completely oversupplied.
After these ramies are harvested and entered into the textile workshop, they enter the production cycle of the textile workshop.
In just over ten days, the first batch of cloth was successfully produced. Due to the small initial scale, the daily output was only more than a hundred pieces... However, this speed already made Fusu and others stunned.
As mentioned before, it takes more than a month for human weavers to weave one piece of cloth.
And this is the result of working from dawn to dusk and weaving whenever there is free time:
About 11 to 12 pieces of cloth are woven a year, which is just enough for a family of five to have one set of summer clothes and one set of winter clothes.
Among them, winter clothes require more cloth, while children need less cloth, so the balance difference is not too big.
In addition, by sewing and repairing old clothes and wearing them for a few years, you can save a few pieces of cloth and sell them to supplement the family income. It would be stressful if you need to change more clothes for your son who is serving in the army.
This is the careful calculation of ordinary people's homes.
But now, Shen Bing has established this textile workshop and can easily produce a hundred pieces of cloth per day... This is equivalent to one hundred skilled women weaving for more than a month.
Moreover, after the textile workshop enters the production cycle, it will continuously produce cloth every day.
Fusu made a casual calculation...if this happened in one year, wouldn't this textile workshop be worth the workload of thousands of women?
And this is nothing, because there are currently only more than two hundred hydraulic looms. If we continue to expand the scale of the workshop and add equipment, the gap will become wider and wider.
Shen Bing did not rush to expand the scale because he felt that some reasonable improvements could be made to the water-powered loom before that.
This hydraulic loom actually has a lot of room for improvement.
But just like the previous trebuchets had to slowly upgrade themselves to always maintain their technical advantages, the improvement of hydraulic looms should also be done step by step.
However, some improvements are urgent.
For example, if a waterwheel only drives one loom, there will be problems of water power and water wheel waste. If the main shaft is simply connected in series and the water power is increased, one waterwheel can drive five or more looms.
On the other hand, the quality of cloth also needs to be further inspected after being put into the market, otherwise the losses will be huge if problems are discovered after large-scale mass production.
So ten days later, Shen Bing asked Meng Liang to transport the produced cloth to Yanmen County for sale...
Although Mengliang is not a businessman, with his status and friends everywhere, it is not a big problem where to establish connections or even set up a retail department.
As expected, this batch of cloth was sold out within half a day after it arrived in Yunzhong County: at 45 yuan a piece, the quality was rare and high, so it would be strange if it was not sold out.
Just as planned, after the cloth was sold, it was immediately converted into grain and shipped back to Yunzhong County.
You don’t even need to pay taxes in this process…
During the Warring States Period, taxes on merchants and workers were actually very difficult to collect.
Businessmen are relatively good, for example, they have fixed shops or sell in markets. If the local county government has the means to participate, they can levy the tax.
If it is just a temporary transaction, the place does not have time to participate. For example, like Mengliang, more than a thousand pieces of cloth are shipped and sold out in just half a day... To be precise, they are not concentrated in Yanmen County for sale, but transported all the way to Yanmen County. It is sold along the way.
However, most of the people along the way are poor and have little purchasing power, and they mainly barter... The cloth in Yunzhong County supports the exchange of grain for cloth.
It is difficult for the government to levy taxes on such transactions.
In fact, not to mention ancient times, even in modern times, it is difficult to guard against small businessmen on the streets or tax evasion.
Not to mention employment status. In this place, people who work part-time jobs and get paid can then leave and move to another place. The place doesn’t know at all. It is not sure and cannot keep track of how much money each worker makes and how much tax he has to pay.
Only the taxation of farmers is fixed and easy to implement: it is levied according to the land you own, and it cannot be evaded no matter what.
This is one of the reasons why in ancient times, agriculture was emphasized and business was suppressed, and the status of workers was low.
But of course, in order to prevent others from getting caught, Shen Bing asked Meng Liang to take the initiative to report and pay taxes to the governor of Yanmen County.
Everything went well at first.
Yunzhong County is only 160 kilometers away from Yanmen County.
It took five days to go back and forth, transporting cloth and bringing back carts of grain.
It's just that the volumes of grain and cloth are different, so there is still surplus money.
Meng Liang seemed to enjoy the process very much. When he came back, he said to Shen Bing:
"General, if you go here, you can go sightseeing, get together with drinking friends, and make money by selling cloth."
"If any good things like this happen in the future, I will leave them to my subordinates."
In this regard, Meng Liang actually has a bit of a rebellious mentality.
In fact, he is not short of money, and has had enough food and clothing since he was a child.
But because of this, he is defined as a "dandy" by his surroundings and even his family... This kind of person who has never made any money and only spends the money given by his family will have a new experience once he can make money.
It can even be said that this is not only an "experience", but also a kind of "pride", "confidence" and "pride".
If there is anything that can conquer such a cynical young man, it is probably only the pride that comes from his heart.