The end of the Ming Dynasty swept the world

Chapter 599 100 taels so expensive?
Three days later, Ding Yi, Du Ruhai, Song Xiang and others came to the later Zibo area, which is now called Zichuan and Boshan, which belong to the territory of Qingzhou Prefecture, which is next to Laizhou and very close to Laizhou.

In recent years, Ding Yi has been in Dengzhou, a senior official, has set up mining departments successively, and attaches great importance to mining.

In addition to iron ore, copper ore, gold ore and other metal mines, what Ding Yi values ​​most is coal mines.

Song Xiang found a coal mine between Dengzhou and Huangxian, which greatly eased Ding Yi's coal consumption.

But Ding Yi uses a lot of coal and quickly. It has only been a few years of work, and the speed of coal production there can no longer keep up with the speed used by Ding Yi, especially after Changsheng Island built twenty Dajian furnaces. The speed is soaring upwards, so Ding Yi has been asking them to find new coal mines all these years.

Not long after, Song Xiang locked the Boshan Coal Mine.

During the Ming Dynasty, coal began to become more valuable because the utilization rate was higher and higher.

Before the Ming Dynasty, the use of coal was not popular enough, mainly because there were relatively few places where coal was used at that time, and the biggest use of coal was iron smelting.

At that time, firewood was the mainstream used for cooking.

But firewood is cut down less and less. In many allusions, there is no firewood at home, and tables, stools and even beds are chopped down to use as firewood.

After entering the Chenghua period of the Ming Dynasty, more and more coal was used, the utilization rate of coal was high, and its status gradually improved.

But at this time, the entire Ming Dynasty still uses coal for [-]% and firewood for [-]%.

Except for the capital and other places, most cities use a lot of coal, and because of the forests and trees in the countryside, more firewood is used.

Zichuan and Boshan are considered rural at this time, and the price of coal and charcoal here is much different.

At the end of Ming Dynasty, in Boshan area, including Qingzhou area, coal was about [-] cents per [-] catties, charcoal was [-] to [-] cents per [-] catties, and firewood could be sold for [-] cent per [-] catties in Songjiang.

The price of charcoal is several times that of coal.

Then there is a problem. It is much easier to chop a hundred catties of firewood than to dig a hundred catties of coal.

Even burning a hundred catties of charcoal is easier than digging a hundred catties of coal.

Therefore, the common people here like to chop wood for heating, cooking, and selling for money.

Boshan has the most coal near Zichuan. Because firewood is more expensive and easy to cut, the coal mines in Boshan are not very popular.

In fact, Boshan is rich in coal, and all of it is located in the shallow layer of the ground, so it is very easy to mine. The local people will dig a few shovels, or carry it with their backs, or push it with a cart. They either go to the county town to sell it, or keep it at home for heating in winter.

But because this is a rural area, more firewood is used, and firewood is easy to get. This also makes Boshan a lot of coal, and the number of people digging is limited.

At present, some laborers who have no land, lost land or have very little land depend on it for a living.

Local people with fields basically don't know how to do this. They have time to dig coal, so why not go to the mountains to chop some firewood.

Of course, there are also a small number of smart people who, in order to make money, thought of "Zenzijing."

The so-called member well means that several people share the funds (called members) and labor together, and the profits are divided according to the apportionment ratio.This kind of coal well generally requires 8 to 10 laborers to dig a vertical shaft with a diameter of 10 to 1 meters. After digging to about 1 meters, it is dug horizontally to form a tunnel with a height of [-] meter and a width of [-] meter. The miners can crawl to mine coal.

所需材料很简单：辘轳1个、粗绳数条、条筐若干、鹤嘴镐3把、照明灯5盏。每天约出煤50－100筐，每筐按60斤计，约1.5－3吨。

Of course, with the development of society and the improvement of production levels, the coal wells became deeper and deeper, more and more workers were hired, and the coal output also increased. Probably by the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, a large coal well required about 40 people, and the average daily coal production was [-] tons. .

But in the coal mines in the Boshan area, there are very few such wells, only two or three.

The reason why the Gangzijing appeared here was because Ding Yi's people were buying coal in Qingzhou, and some people saw a business opportunity, so they organized it.

At this time, Ding Yi was standing on a coal mine in Boshan, and he saw that there were sinkholes dug out everywhere below. The coal mine here is in the shallow surface layer, which is easy to dig, and coal can be produced by digging down a few meters.

Some people with no land and little land make a living on this, but the biggest buyer is Ding Yi's office in Qingzhou.

"At the beginning we bought in Qingzhou, and found that there were a small number of coal sellers, and then there were more and more. Later, we finally found out that there are coal mines here."

"Now there are only two sub-wells here, and a small contractor. The government doesn't receive much money every year. There is no one in the large mining area. The local people dig by themselves. I investigated and ran for a long time." Song Xiang smiled. Dao: "The output here is at least [-] times that of our Dengzhou mining area. It can be used for a long time, and it is easier to dig than Dengzhou, and it is in the shallow surface."

Historically, by the end of the Qing Dynasty, there were already more than 230 mines here, the deepest of which was only 100 meters, and it was a huge coal mine at that time.

It is generally 20 meters to 40 meters deep.

In this era without machinery, only digging to 20 meters, and the energy is continuously producing coal, this kind of coal mine is quite excellent.

Because the government doesn't take much care of it, some people use the excuse of contracting a hundred acres of mines and paying a small amount of taxes. When they actually dig, hundreds of thousands of acres are still dug, anyway, no one cares.

Ding Yi was very satisfied: "That's right, the mine here will be ours in the future, have you talked to the Qingzhou government?"

Du Ruhai laughed loudly: "We approached the prefect of Qingzhou and said that we would lease the entire place. We would give the prefect 3000 taels of silver every year. The lease price would be 100 taels per year, and the one-time contract would be for 50 years. Previous leases would not be counted."

"Ni Niang, 100 taels a year, so expensive?" Ding Yi scolded, "It can't be more than 50 taels a year."

Du Ruhai's face was full of dark lines, Boss, do you want to be so dark, such a big coal mine?

"The original miners, those who are willing to stay, will stay, and those who are not willing will not be forced. They build piers here and store fields nearby."

"Let Fang Duo station call 1000 people to guard here."

Ding Yi gave orders one after another.

A few days ago in Dengzhou, he decided that Dengzhou should also increase its troops by [-], [-] infantry battalions, and [-] cavalry.

The cavalry returned to Du Ruhai, and the infantry came to Fang Duotai and Zhou Yougen.

Now let Fang Duotai train troops in Haiyang Station, and Zhou Yougen brings a thousand soldiers to guard the mining area.

At the same time, miners were summoned nearby to provide food and silver.

The wages per person per day are [-] Wen.

At this time, the regular price of hired labor in cities and towns in the Ming Dynasty was [-] Wen per day, and that in rural areas was [-] Wen.

Ding Yi paid [-] yuan, and he worked every day, and there were quite a lot of people who came to work.

Why do you need to work on a daily basis, not on a monthly basis?

Because Zibo has a continental monsoon climate, there is little rainfall in winter and spring, and there is a lot of rain in summer and autumn, which increases the groundwater level. Coal mining is only available for half a year.

Generally, it is from October to April of the second year of the lunar calendar. After May, the rainy season comes, and the underground mines continue to produce water. Without water pumps, it is impossible to mine, and from May to September is the crop harvest season, so many miners will not come.

Like now in August, when Ding Yi came over, there were fewer miners on the scene.

There are more rainy seasons here, and sometimes it rains for more than ten days in a month, and the monthly settlement will be very loss-making. Of course, Ding Yi has to pay by the day.

"Is there a way to draw water out from below?" Du Ruhai asked the accompanying craftsmen at this moment.

As long as the water can be pumped out, the coal digging time will be extended.

Several craftsmen looked at each other in blank dismay. Obviously, the Ming Dynasty did not have such skills, or they did not understand them.

Ding Yi thought about it carefully. The most difficult thing in this era is to make water pipes, which are usually made of bamboo tubes.

Because bamboo tubes were used for mining in the Ming Dynasty, and people at that time knew that there was gas in the coal seam (they called it poisonous gas), so they used a large bamboo tube to get through the middle and inserted it into the upper part of the coal seam. to boot.

Ding Yijue was the first person to think of this method, he must be very smart, and he doesn't know how he judged that gas is lighter than air, how he knew that gas would go up, or at that time, he just wanted to let the poisonous gas go up.

Sure enough, Du Ruhai also thought of the bamboo tubes they used when digging coal: "Can we use bamboo tubes, the same ones that are inserted into the coal seam, with a hole in the middle and connected into pipes for pumping water?"

"How do you use it?" someone asked.

"I just want you to find a way." Du Ruhai smiled wryly. Of course, you have to ask you craftsmen about this kind of matter.

The craftsmen looked embarrassed. According to their current knowledge, it was difficult to think of how to pump water.

In fact, in the Ming Dynasty, there was already a two-layer bamboo tube that used pressure to pump water, just like the needle barrel, but it could only pump water slowly and used it in wells.

This is simply too slow to pump water from the mine to be useful.

"Don't dig in rainy days, safety first." Ding Yi thought for a while and then said: "There is no rush to pump water, you can think about it slowly, first build houses nearby, set up forts, hoard fields, enclose this place, occupy Say it for the sake of it."

The crowd took it for granted.

(End of this chapter)