Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 683 Capital ([-])

The waters near the Port of Blanca in April are fiery.

A large number of fishing boats with a tonnage ranging from 100 to 300 tons carefully shuttle between the many small islands in the Bay of Blanca from time to time, and then send a large number of catches to the pier.On the pier were a large number of newly arrived Ming immigrants. They came from Taixing, Yangzhou and other places in the north of the Yangtze River. At this time, they were all wearing uniform cotton work clothes, and they hoisted buckets of fish from the deck of the ship through two steam booms.The staff of the South China Sea Fishery Company recorded words such as "on a certain day, month, and year, a certain fishing boat brought back a barrel of cod (1000 pieces), of high quality (all large cod)".

Most of these returned fishing boats are self-operated boats of the South China Sea Fishery Company, including 2 squid fishing boats, 12 cod fishing boats, and 2 processing and supply boats.Fishing boats such as squid fishing boats and cod fishing boats, these fishing boats are equipped with twice the number of sailors, send the caught cod, squid, snapper, mackerel, etc. to the processing ship, where the sailors on the processing ship clean and marinate on site, and then distribute them. It is packed into drums and transported back to the Port of Blanca for further processing, or made into canned food, or directly waiting for a passing large cargo ship to be shipped back to the country for sale.

Of course, there are also some private fishing boats among these boats, which is a proof of the gradual growth of domestic private capital.Some wealthy people (mainly returning soldiers) bought a 100-ton modern sail-powered fishing boat in a joint venture, and then either tried to find a way to hire fishermen at a high price, or went fishing by themselves (in the slack season).They can go fishing for about two months throughout the summer and autumn seasons, and even longer in the winter and spring seasons. If they are lucky, they can catch more than ten tons of cod and a small amount of squid in a month. Fish, sea bream, etc., this is already worth more than 1000 yuan.

Of course, this is only the market sales price, and the actual purchase price is often only 50-60% of this, because subsequent cleaning, pickling, transportation, and sales also require costs.However, these fishing boats can still earn about 2000 yuan in the waters around the Port of Blanca in the autumn of the fishing season.Excluding the taxes paid, ship repair costs, marine fuel, fishing nets and other costs, the net profit is about 1200 yuan, and if everyone on board shares it equally, it is almost exactly 80 yuan per person.

It can be seen from this that in the eastern republic where fish products are extremely scarce, getting a boat to fish is definitely a very profitable business.Perhaps the only obstacle is that the price of a 100-ton fishing boat is 5000 yuan, plus taxes, recruitment of manpower, and the cost of buying fishing nets and fishing tackle. It is impossible to get it without an initial investment of 6000 yuan.In today's east coast, in addition to crossing all the powerful investments, even those returning soldiers with deep pockets have to raise funds and form joint stock partnerships to purchase the last item.

Of course, the initial investment is large, and the expected profit is also amazing.If you are a full-time fisherman, with such a boat, if you are lucky, it will take only two or three years to pay back your capital. Therefore, it has attracted some veterans who don't know where to invest their money to invest.

At the current stage, these fishermen are basically veterans themselves-and they are basically farmers, with a few Irish and Scottish labor hired through labor brokers.It is worth mentioning that a while ago, the government had just introduced a policy to remove some legal obstacles, which allowed these people to go fishing smoothly.

Behind the introduction of this policy is another fierce confrontation between several domestic political forces.First of all, the military, as a representative of conservative forces, strongly opposed allowing farmers in various towns to go fishing in the open sea on the grounds that "this will affect the safety of food production."Because once these farmers have tasted the sweetness of fishing windfall profits, who will farm the land?The current domestic food price is strictly controlled, and to put it bluntly, it is to squeeze the agricultural subsidy industry under the economic environment of high inflation.And the profits from the industry have been invested in immigration, new land development and infrastructure construction, and the farmers themselves have not received much feedback.

Workers can still increase their wages under inflation, but when food prices are firmly controlled, the real income of farmers is constantly declining. This will inevitably make farmers less willing to cultivate the land, and then reduce domestic food production decline, affecting food security.

Farmers are the basic base of the military, and the rural grassroots is also the place where the military has the strongest strength. More than 95% of the officers and soldiers come from the vast rural areas.The government's control of food prices and exploitation of agricultural subsidies to the industry have already aroused dissatisfaction among the military leaders, and now they have to ask the countryside for labor to go fishing. How can they bear this behavior of grabbing food from the army's bowl?

Although they have organized some people to invest in plantations overseas through the soldiers committees of the counties, in the final analysis, this is only to export capital overseas in line with national policies, reduce domestic inflationary pressure, and by the way, make money for these soldiers who have made contributions to the country. Just some benefits.The soldiers are only the investors and the shareholders of the plantation. The local people still have to figure out the large amount of labor required by the plantation.But going fishing now is tantamount to directly asking the countryside for labor. It’s drawing the blood of the countryside. Besides, going to sea today can ask for labor from the countryside. Tomorrow someone discovers another very profitable business. Does it mean that they also need to ask for labor from the countryside? Woolen cloth?If things go on like this for a long time, wouldn't the sheep-cannibalism that emerged during the British industrialization period be about to repeat itself?

The representative of the military department seriously pointed out that if farmers are to leave their land and go out to work, they must simultaneously release the price control measures in the grain market, and readjust grain purchases based on factors such as current market demand and the domestic inflation environment. Price, exactly protect the interests of farmers.

Most of the people who invest in the fishing industry are cross-travelers. Unlike those soldiers who make small joint ventures to buy a boat, the wealth and wealth of the cross-travelers are much bigger. For example, Bai Siwen himself made a joint venture with others to order Five boats and one processing boat were bought, and the total cost exceeded 4 yuan.

These people are advocates of the so-called "liberation of the rural labor force."Bai Siwen's Guangming Candle Factory has been unable to effectively release its production capacity due to insufficient number of workers. This has made him depressed for many years.Now that domestic policies are being liberalized and capital is pouring in, if you don’t take the opportunity to open up the rural labor market, what are you waiting for?What?Go abroad to engage in labor in the Old Continent?Pooh, how much will that cost me, and there is no time!

Now that the fishing industry is so profitable, don’t you take advantage of this opportunity to grab a piece and occupy a favorable position, should you wait until the future is not so profitable to enter?And this time the executive committee really played too big. Not only will the rural labor market be affected, but even some factories with low income in the cities will be seriously affected.Factory owners must either raise wages to counteract the attractiveness of emerging profiteering industries to their workers, or simply close the factories and go fishing. There is no third way to go!Raising wages is always a tangled matter. This will reduce the profits of factory owners, increase the cost of the industrial system on the east coast, reduce product competitiveness, and erode a large amount of profits, which will have a greater negative impact on the entire national industrial system. .

This is the consequence of taking a shortcut!Originally, according to the normal way, agriculture should be the first field of commercialization and capitalization, and capitalists (or government and other organizations) who completed primitive accumulation in agriculture began to gradually enter the field of light industry with more lucrative profits; Level, when the industrialization of the whole world deepens, it will gradually enter the field of heavy industry.But now the economic development of the east coast is obviously taking a shortcut. Agriculture, light and heavy industries are developed together, and the domestic market is very small, which depends entirely on external maintenance. Then it encounters the ravages of war, and the members of the executive committee are also very good at governing the country. Generally speaking, it is normal that the domestic economic system is full of loopholes.

It was also at this time that the bureaucrats of the Executive Committee suddenly discovered that in order to solve the hyperinflation caused by the war in the country, they started the process of private private capital entering many fields, but this obviously brought new problems. question.The profit-seeking nature of private capital makes them accustomed to entering the most lucrative industries, and in order to obtain quick profits, they will use all means to exploit various loopholes.

For example, this time the competition for rural labor force, the farmers whose real income levels are falling rapidly under the conditions of inflation are attracted by the high income of the fishing industry, and some industrial enterprises with low profit margins (such as construction material companies, seafood processing factories) etc.) workers were also attracted in large numbers, and for the first time, private capital had a strong impact on the system established by the Executive Committee, which was dominated by the public sector of the economy.

If this behavior is allowed to continue, then these state-owned enterprises can only respond by raising wages for workers, which will inevitably reduce the amount of profits they turn over.In other words, the fiscal revenue of the government of the East Coast Republic will decrease, and most of these reduced fiscal revenues were originally used to immigrate from the Far East. If this situation continues, the living standards of the local people on the East Coast will be greatly reduced. It will indeed increase, but the number of immigrants from the Far East will decrease.

In other words, in fact, the current east coast is equivalent to the whole people sacrificing their living standards to immigrate from the Far East (including preparing houses, livestock, seeds and wives for the new immigrants), but they don't know it.But in the long run, once the east coast government is controlled by capital decades later, the plan to emigrate from the Far East is bound to come to an end.After all, for the capitalists, it is cheaper to bring in blacks, Indians, Malays, and even Europeans nearby than the Ming people. It is a sick mind that they spend a lot of money to immigrate to the Far East!

For the time being, the executive committee won't consider and take care of things that will happen decades later.Therefore, they finally came up with a compromise method, which is to issue licenses to fishing boats to control the scale, and at the same time encourage boat owners to recruit labor from abroad, and other industries that require a large amount of labor follow the same example.In addition, they have also liberalized some controls on domestic grain prices, allowing wholesale prices of commodities such as wheat to fluctuate up to 20% above or below the Ministry of Agriculture's guide price.This typical and muddy policy, in the words of some people, aptly shows the level of governance of the bureaucrats of this executive committee.

(End of this chapter)