Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 1034 Traveling to Yihe River ([-])

April 1654, 6, sunny.

Agnelli once again came to Port Merlin - an inland port city located at the end of the transport channel of the Yi River, and also a distribution center for many goods.

After years of development, one town and four townships in Meilin County, including Meilin Port, have developed rapidly, both in terms of industrial and agricultural output and people's living standards.As soon as Agnelli arrived at the outskirts of the county, he clearly felt the difference here: there were many residential houses or temporary shacks on the side of the road, some farmers were selling vegetables and fruits loudly, and some were obviously fishermen. Vendors were peddling strange fish caught from Lake Mirin (a brackish water lake).

Today seems to be the market time every ten days. Residents from nearby villages come to the outskirts of the city in waves, crowding the not-so-wide road.Agnelli watched carefully, the number of children in the crowd has increased over the years, they crawled around in the crowd, calling for friends, laughing and playing, feeling uncomfortable.The adults stopped at the stalls one by one, and fought wits and courage with the vendors, which has always been a picture of a harmonious and prosperous rural market.

In front are several vendors selling folk homecloth—they say it is homemade cloth, but don’t think it’s of poor quality. In fact, on the east bank, folk self-woven homemade cloth is quite good in terms of quality and style.Gein's various types of cotton, woolen or linen cloth woven by private small family looms are all very distinctive cloth, and of course they are all things that cannot be mass-produced industrially by large state-owned textile factories.

These earthen cloths are novel in style, diverse in variety and strong in specificity, which satisfies the needs of quite a few consumers.Even some wealthy people would go to these small vendors to buy some unique cloth, and then take it to a familiar tailor to make clothes.And Agnelli also heard about a more advanced method this year, that is, some well-known textile households (mostly from Ningbo or Songjiang) will accept orders from customers and weave some special fabrics according to the requirements of the orders. Bulai, the profit is huge.Of course, if they think the cloth is of good style and marketable, they will also send it to a familiar cloth shop for consignment.

All in all, the in-depth development of private commercialization and the increasing economic activity on the east coast can be seen from this.

"The last time I chatted with my fellow villagers, I heard that there are now more than 100 private textile machines in Meilin County. Almost every few days, a ship brings a large number of spindles from the north. The market size created by these private weavers is really huge. It’s not small, and its income can be imagined. But think about it, large textile factories such as Ping’an Factory and Dayuhe Factory, due to various factors, cannot produce all the cloth. Especially those that are not in great demand, but the variety There is a lot of cloth, it is obviously not worth the loss to produce it by them, it is better to hand it over to these folk weavers. In this way, they mainly make the ordinary cloth that is sold, and they also grab the most profitable part, and the rest is soupy. , Naturally, it has been made for the people, and at the same time it has enriched the commodity market, which really kills two birds with one stone." Agnelli thought as she walked and shook her head.

Two policemen in black uniforms walked slowly over on the road, and the residents who were going to the market immediately stepped aside, obviously a little afraid of such "public men".However, these two police officers were not as miserable as the government servants in the Old Continent. They did not have any bad deeds of bullying and dominating the market when they walked on the main road.

Agnelli also quickly walked into a nearby restaurant. Strictly speaking, their rabbit hole flour mill avoided a lot of taxes through some disgraceful means last year, so he subconsciously felt a little guilty.

The restaurant mainly serves all kinds of pasta. Agnelli ordered a bowl of vegetable and egg noodles. After thinking about it, he ordered another piece of smoked deer preserves imported from Yancheng Port, which immediately made the lunch more luxurious.

There was a clanging sound from the opposite side, and Agnelli looked up, only to see that it was a blacksmith shop with a rather large facade.According to the owner of the restaurant, this blacksmith shop has an independent processing workshop, employing ten workers including iron workers, copper workers, blacksmiths, firemen, blacksmiths, fitters, file workers and copper/iron/wood turners. There are many people, and the scale is quite large.They have undertaken the production and maintenance of farm tools and knives in a considerable part of the nearby countryside. In addition, they have recently started to repair machines and process parts for folk weavers. The technical content seems to have improved a lot.

They worked so hard that the comprehensive workshop of Dayuhe Armory in the south had gradually given up the production of many non-standard metal utensils, and instead devoted their limited manpower to the production of standard hardware utensils, knives, and armor.As for these non-standard parts or small metal utensils with little demand that they think are not very profitable, they should be handed over to the private blacksmith shops that have risen in recent years, and they are doing a good job anyway.

Thanks to the vigorous development of the Peruvian smuggling trade and the outbreak of the Anglo-Dutch War in recent years, the export volume of various commodities on the east coast has been rising steadily, and one of the important components is various metal appliances and mechanical parts.Naturally, these small blacksmiths who were originally based in the country sold all kinds of goods produced by them (with simple processing tools) to thousands of nautical miles away through the fleet of the South China Sea Transportation Company. Outside of Amsterdam, Alkmaar, Gothenburg or Riga, the end is magical.

The large amount of profits gained from exports made the operators of the blacksmith shop determined to expand the store, recruit more craftsmen and apprentices, and purchase some more advanced (and of course more expensive) equipment, intending to bring this business to a new era. Going up to a higher level—in fact, the industrial base of the country and society is accumulated little by little in this way.

"The owner of this blacksmith's shop is a Dutch red hair, uh..." At this point, the restaurant owner from the Ming Dynasty glanced at Agnelli with some embarrassment, and he was relieved when he saw that he had no special expression. He continued: "This Master Demelde's skills are undeniable, he is very superb, and now he has five apprentices, and he has recruited more than ten helpers - of course, many of these helpers have been with him for many years Yes, some of them are simply his apprentices, they didn't know anything when they came, and Master De brought them out one by one after all these years."

"Master De's business is getting bigger and bigger now." The owner of the restaurant said in a slightly sad tone, "I think his facade outside the town was not half the size of mine, but now—oh, let's not talk about it." A few days ago, I saw that Master De went to the city in person and bought a lot of new machines, um, they are all portable machines that can be moved by one or two people. After buying these machines, Master De , started running to the city every three days, and often stayed for many days. I heard that he rented a small processing workshop from the railway machinery processing factory in the city to process some machine parts. make money."

Agnelli nodded when he heard the words, he had also heard the way the boss said.In recent years, the Ministry of Industry and Commerce has been encouraging private workshop owners and small business owners to increase the degree of mechanization in production to reduce costs (on the east coast, labor costs are definitely not low). For this reason, they have also introduced a series of policies .Among these policies, the most important one is undoubtedly to require large-scale domestic factories (often with a complete steam power system) to renovate their production lines, and then rent out the surplus steam power—anyway, their steam power is often suspected of being wasted. It's better to rent it out and make more use of it, and at the same time earn a small amount of rent for them.

Agnelli estimated that the German master rented a small processing workshop in the railway machinery processing factory in the county, and then brought his latest portable (or light machinery) machine over there, and then connected the machine to the central steam On the shafting of the power transmission system, the power of the railway machinery processing plant is used to drive the machines brought by itself to process some mechanical parts quickly and in large quantities.

With the continuous promotion and publicity of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, this method of leasing steam power to process machinery is becoming more and more popular, so that blacksmith shops or small private owners of higher grades are trying to squeeze in. After all, relying on their own It is too difficult for small workshop owners like them with little capital to purchase and maintain a steam power system.

Of course, with the increasing popularity of this method, the domestic industrial and commercial circles on the east coast have also experienced the baptism of steam and mechanization, which has made more and more people realize the benefits of mechanization and industrialization , At the same time, more people are involved in this industry, and a certain number of talents who are familiar with machinery and steam engines have been trained.Under such circumstances, the country's industrial foundation has continued to grow. In such a social atmosphere and environment, can there be any soil for the existence of various anti-industrialization and decadent ideas from the Old World?

"Master De is now producing various parts and components for various factories in the county, and sometimes even finished products. Last week, Master De built a small blast furnace, and the day before yesterday he made a water pump for fish ponds. I heard that he is still producing some parts for the small cranes—the kind used on the river port docks. Oh, it’s really amazing.” The restaurant owner finally bluffed.

Agnelli nodded while eating, but he was thinking in his heart: "The country's determination to promote industrialization is becoming more and more obvious, and our rabbit hole flour mill has to work harder. In this world, if there is no progress, it is equivalent to regressing." , He is really too difficult to mess with!"

(End of this chapter)