In the Southern Song Dynasty, I competed with Mongolia for the world

Chapter 97

"The Ma family is a big family in Yongping Town, and the local is powerful. This person is a child of the Ma family." Qin Dong said immediately.

To the east of the Qianshan Mine is Yongping Town, but not where the Yongping Supervisor is located (the Yongping Supervisor is in Raozhou).

"Chou Lai."

"The end is here."

"Go and call the county magistrate of Shangrao."

"Here."

"Qin Zhuo."

"The grass people are here."

"You send someone to send this letter from my king to Zhang Song, the capital of Raozhou."

"Here."

After Zhao Yurui made the arrangements, he led a group of people into the mine without paying attention to the people with broken legs on the ground.

The mine is open-air, there is not even a wall outside, and the scene inside can be seen from a long distance, but because of the excavation for hundreds of years, the high ground inside is uneven and full of potholes, so people inside cannot be seen from the outside.

Qin Zhuo took him around the mine for a while. The area was relatively large, at least thousands of acres of open air, and many pits went underground.

The quality of this mine is quite good, and it will still be the second largest open-pit mine in the country in later generations. If there are later generations of machinery, mining is very convenient, but in the Southern Song Dynasty, it still had to rely on manpower, so a large number of miners were needed.

This kind of open-pit mine, which was the second largest in the country until later generations, was still abandoned after Shaoxing in the Southern Song Dynasty, which shows the corruption of the system and officials in the Southern Song Dynasty.

Because Qin Zhuo had notified the suspension of production a few days ago, today many miners stood outside and watched them.

The miners were scantily clad, and all of them looked like beggars, but most of them were strong, and if they weren't strong, they wouldn't be able to work.

Before coming here, Zhao Yurui thought there were copper mines here, but after arriving, they realized that it was not.

Qin Zhuo introduced to him that the south of the mine is dominated by iron, the north has a small amount of iron and a large amount of copper, and the east is separated by a low mountain, and then to the east is the lead mine, so the area here is very large and there are many minerals .

Starting from the Sui and Tang dynasties here, the imperial court generally focused on developing the south.

Only then did Zhao and Rui know that the Qianshan Mine mainly produces copper, that is, smelting iron into copper.

Gall copper is a kind of copper alloy obtained by water metallurgy in ancient my country.Because the gallbladder water is used, this method is also called the gallbladder copper method.

There are many ways to smelt copper in ancient times. Until the Northern Song Dynasty, Zhang Qian (1025-1105), a local Shangrao native, invented wet copper smelting and successfully smelted iron into copper. He first prevailed in the Qianshan Mine, and later he presented To the imperial court, the imperial court "received a lot of merit because of the low cost", and spread the method in various ways, and finally spread it to the whole country, which greatly improved the efficiency of copper smelting.

"Song History Shihuo Zhi [-]": "The method of immersing copper: forge thin pieces of pig iron, arrange them in the gall water tank and soak them for several days. Furnace, three smelting into copper. A large rate of two catties of iron is used, and one catty of copper is obtained. Raozhou Xinglichang and Xinzhou Qianshanchang each have their own age quotas, so-called brave copper.”

Qin Zhuo's side is now mainly using iron to smelt copper.

Walking deep into the mine, you can see many iron-making furnaces, but in the Southern Song Dynasty they were called steaming ore furnaces.

These furnaces are generally small and built with refractory stones. The diameter of the furnace is generally 2-3 meters, the height is about 1 meters, the bottom diameter is 2.6 meters, and the inner diameter of the furnace ranges from [-] meter to [-] meters.

"How much pig iron can this furnace produce?" Zhao Yurui asked, pointing to a relatively large furnace.

Qin Zhuo immediately looked at Qin Dong.

Qin Dong immediately said: "About one thousand catties."

Zhao Yurui pondered, the large furnaces of the Ming Dynasty could produce four to five thousand catties, or even tens of thousands of catties in one furnace.

"Can you build a furnace?" he asked.

"Of course, we need a large furnace to increase manpower and increase production in the future."

The furnaces here are small and there are a lot of them. The main reason is that in the past, every household could come in to smelt copper, so the furnaces are relatively small and the number is relatively large. In the future, if Zhao and Rui want to build it themselves, there is no need for so many furnaces. The main reason is to upgrade capacity.

"Should we use coal or charcoal?" Zhao Yurui asked again.

"coal."

At this time, coal is used in the north and charcoal is used in the south. This is basically the case. From the quality of steelmaking, it should be better to use charcoal, but the cost of charcoal is high. In many places, there is not so much wood. If it is used for steelmaking, probably It takes one hundred kilograms of wood to produce one kilogram of steel, which is quite expensive.

Jiangxi is close to the south, but since the Song, Liao, and Jin Dynasties, coal has been abundant in its surrounding areas, such as Gao'an, Pingxiang, Fengcheng, and Yushan in Jiangxi in later generations, all around Xinzhou.

In particular, the Yushan Coal Field is just to the northeast of the Qianshan Mine, and the distance is only a dozen miles away. The coal used in the mine is all local Yushan Coal.

Zhao Yurui wanted to say that it is best to smelt coal into coke and use it to make steel. It is not a good thing to take power, if it really succeeds and leaks out.

Of course, he himself is half-baked, and he learned it from time-travel novels in his previous life. Whether he can succeed or how many times he needs to experiment, he himself is not sure.

"Are these miners working the way they used to?"

"Yes."

"Let them recruit again, sign a contract, and recruit servants to smelt copper for us."

"What I want is a servant worker." (obedient worker)
The previous method was that the common people went to the mine to do it themselves, and agreed with the owner of the mine that [-]% of the copper smelted would go to the court, [-]% to the boss, and the rest would be their own.

Usually the owner of the mine doesn't have to worry about anything, and sits on [-]% of the profit, so during the peak period, there are more than [-] people smelting copper here, and the boss sits back and enjoys the profits, and the food is full.

Now Zhao Yurui can't do this, he is not doing it for making money, but to make the miners obedient and use him, and to get a lot of copper and iron, even at a loss.

But if you want to recruit people, you must have enough benefits and benefits, that is, to make others feel that you can make money here.

In order to maintain the operation of the mine, Qin Zhuo operated at a loss at the beginning, and lost thousands of dollars every year.

Now that the system of recruiting servants, I am afraid that they will lose even more.

"If you get two salaries per month, can you recruit people in the form of a contract?"

Zhao Yurui recruited servants and maids in the capital, and it cost only a few hundred cash a month, but including room and board, the cost was actually more than two pennies.

"So much?" Qin Dong was also unbelievable, his eyes widened, obviously the price was already relatively high.

After all, an official in the Song Dynasty only had about two rounds of income, and many sergeants only had a consistent income.

"Is food included?" Qin Zhuo asked: "If you are employed, you don't need to include food, but if you are a contract servant, do you have to include food?"

"Food included." Zhao Yurui nodded heavily.

"It's definitely okay to include food. If you don't include food, the miners will consume a lot of waste and need to be full. If you are willing to work, you may not agree to the contract."

In the past, I was always willing to do it because I didn't sell my body. Now I contract to sell my body, and you don't pay for it, so you have to think about it.

"If you want [-] strong miners, how much will it cost?" Zhao Yurui asked.

Qin Zhuo immediately figured it out: "One per person per month, plus food (you can basically ignore it if you live in it, you can live in the mine, there are simple houses on the side, and the villagers are all nearby), each person per month Spend at least two guan.” (Because people in the mine cannot eat two meals, they must eat three meals to have strength, and they must always have meat.)
120 per month, [-] million per year.

"It's so expensive." Zhao Yurui's expression changed slightly, and the corners of his mouth twitched.

After thinking for a while, he asked again: "I'm afraid it's a bit difficult to recruit only the strong."

Qin Zhuo nodded and said: "The miners here used to be with the whole family, old and young. If King Yi didn't just want everyone to be strong, it would be easier to recruit workers, and the elderly, young and women could pay less."

Zhao Yurui had always wanted [-] elites, presumably because they wanted to train soldiers, and Qin Zhuo also had some ideas, but [-] elites were too conspicuous, and they might not be able to recruit them. After all, the whole family used to go out together, and you only recruited one, so others might not be willing.

Of course Zhao Yurui could understand. After pondering for a while, he asked again: "If each family recruits, how much will it cost?"

"If we provide food, the elderly and women can spend about one or two hundred cash, and the able-bodied teenagers can spend about the same amount. Women and teenagers can only eat less meat, but the food expenses are not low."

"For the same 150 households, the annual expenditure is estimated to be about [-] million guan. (The average household is about [-] guan)"

Of course, if each household has one jingzhuang, it also has [-] jingzhuang.If each household has two jingzhuang, it is equivalent to having [-] jingzhuang, but the high wages of jingzhuang will inevitably cost a lot.

"How much can we earn a year?" Zhao Yurui asked again.

How much money can be earned can only be estimated based on previous data.

In the reign of Emperor Huizong of Song Dynasty, the mine produced more than 500 million catties of copper annually, but the imperial court only forged more than 100 million copper coins.

Of course, it was also the peak period of the Yanshan Copper Field.

One of the problems involved is that the imperial court bought almost all the copper, but the Yongpingjian made more than 100 million copper coins, about 1 million copper coins, so a lot of copper was useless or used elsewhere.

Qin Zhuo was still calculating, Zhao Yurui said: "It doesn't need to be so complicated, just keep it simple."

"The purchase price of the imperial court was 250 Wen per catty, and the output was 550 million catties."

"Three of them were sold to the imperial court, two were sold to mine owners, and [-]% were miners."

"The mine owner should get 110 million jin, which is 27 guan."

"The 70 miners were divided into about 250 guan." The average monthly price was only about [-] yuan, but the price was low at that time. A family of three worked in the mine together, and their monthly income could reach [-] guan, plus the accompanying iron ore. , lead ore, etc. can be sold, and the common people are willing to do it, so as the price rises later, the price of collecting copper materials is still [-] renminbi, and naturally no one is willing to do it.

In fact, to compare the price, the direct point is to look at the price of rice. During the peak period of the Qianshan mine, the price of grain in the Song Dynasty was more than 600 yuan per stone during the Yuanfeng period. When the mine closed down, the price of grain was six pennies per stone, a difference of ten times. No wonder no one did it.

Now the price of food remains at two times a stone, which is more than three times that of that year.

Qin Zhuo smiled openly: "It's okay for King Yi to do this."

But the mine owner still has to pay taxes. The tax back then was not [-] guan like Qin Zhuo's now, but [-] guan back then.

(End of this chapter)