Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 715 Social Change ([-])

On October 1648, 10, Meilin Port, Meilin County.

Agnelli has just finished filling the pot for a woman from the Ming Dynasty in the East. Now, he is going to pack up his things and board the boat for his next destination—Hekou Township, Zhenhai County, where he will join Gao Jinzhong who returned earlier.He has already made up his mind not to be a tinkerer anymore, because this job is more difficult and does not earn much, and now he wants to try his luck with Gao Jinzhong, an old comrade in arms, and start a machine-made flour business with him, maybe Can you make a fortune?

But before he left, he didn't mind going to the village to visit an old acquaintance of his - a small trader who used to travel around with him.This small trader is from the Ming Dynasty in the east. It is said that he was an employee of a small silk shop. After immigrating to the east bank, he did not know how to farm. He gave up his status as a farmer (you can own arable land) and applied for a vendor license instead. , Started a small peddler business that traveled all over the world.

His range of activities was initially limited to Port Merlin.At that difficult moment of starting a business, he was able to eat only one meal a day, and then carry a tattered small basket and walk around the streets to do business.His small and limited offerings did not prevent him from being admired by his neighbors for his warmth, honesty and genuine demeanor.At that time, Agnelli was also doing business in the area of ​​Port Merlin, which was still called Fort Merlin at that time. The two of them helped each other and had a pretty good friendship.

When Merlin Port was formally established in early 1641, this guy's "equipment" had changed from a small basket to a big burden; It was upgraded to a poor horse and three or four burdens.

In 1644, when Qishan Township was established, Agnelli met him again. At that time, he already had a small horse-drawn cart, and the business scale had reached a new level.And when Meilin County was officially established in January 1647, this guy was already a well-known businessman nearby. At the request of some regular customers in the county, he began to open a store in the county town specializing in various kinds of top-grade goods (dyed cloth) , printed cloth, high-quality woolen cloth, high-end fur, imported wine, whale oil products, etc.), which are exclusively for the middle-class in the city (there are no rich people in the strict sense on the east coast) and the female relatives in the family.

A few years ago, Agnelli had the honor to meet a senior cloth merchant who publicly expressed his gratitude to the customers who took care of his business in the past, and then announced that he would no longer go to the market or go to the four places to sell, and would open a fixed shop in the county instead. Store, I hope everyone will continue to support Yunyun.His friend has also embarked on this path now. To be honest, Agnelli is quite envious.

Far away.Agnelli's friend's store was out of competition with the state-run stores, which specialized in cheap groceries, so business was doing well.After all, the main purpose of the state-run store is not to make money. It also undertakes many government functions, such as stabilizing prices, etc., and it will bear some policy losses every year. For daily necessities, there is basically no competition between the two.

Speaking of this, I have to say one more thing. Since the opening of the train and the appearance of state-owned stores, the number of hawkers near Merlin Port has dropped sharply. Even the regular market has declined a lot. Farmers prefer to buy cheap and high-quality goods. I don't want to go to the state-run store to buy things, and I don't want to go to the market to buy some second-hand goods from the vendors.Nowadays, there are still itinerant hawkers in some remote villages, but with the great development of domestic transportation infrastructure, these hawkers will eventually be ruthlessly eliminated by the market, just like Agnelli who was driven from one place to another by a train. Same as another place.The development of the East Coast is really too fast!The transformation of society is really too dizzying!

The disintegration of village or town fairs also directly led to the establishment of a large number of professional markets.Agnelli vaguely heard people say that in Dongfang County, the capital, and Pingan County, the center of northern industry, there have been super-large stores called "department stores". It is very convenient and quick to buy all the things that can be bought in those department stores in one trip.

Moreover, it is said that going shopping in a department store is also a very fashionable and showy thing now.These stores often employ dozens of clerks—many of them bankrupt peddlers—to warmly entertain every customer, and they have all kinds of goods. hospitality.In particular, the state-owned No. [-] Department Store in Dongfang County, the capital, is said to sell hundreds of items, and there is no store in the country or even the entire New World that can match it.

The emergence of professional or comprehensive stores (department stores) has replaced the functions of vendors running around, and also changed people's inherent consumption habits.The continuous construction and improvement of railways, highways, and canals has played an unparalleled role in accelerating this trend. Even in the county towns of the six coastal counties, many people no longer sew their clothes at home. Switch to customizing or buying from a specialty or general store.

"God bears witness, life on the East Coast is really difficult. According to the words in the newspaper, it is the accelerated transformation of society and the faster pace of life, alas, but after all, it is much better than the old continent. Here, I can Free to do a lot of things, and I have unlimited possibilities to live a decent life through my own efforts." Agnelli held the tinkling tin tool in his hand, and walked down the street.

This is the hottest place in Meilin County.A stone bridge spans both sides of the Meilin River. At both ends of the bridge are two huge markets, one is called the Farmer's Market and the other is the Cloth Wholesale Market.As an important north-south transshipment node, as well as the starting point for the coastal area to advance to the inland hinterland (through the Yi River system), Meilin Port has naturally become a large-scale cargo distribution center.Shopkeepers or vendors in many towns in the Yihe area and the Northwest Reclamation Bureau came to Merlin Port to buy goods, and then tried to transport them back for sale, which created the prosperity of some wholesale markets in the county.

The place where Agnelli was standing at this time was called "Qiaodong Cloth Wholesale Market", and a large number of cloth salesmen or intermediaries searched for every potential customer in the crowd with shining eyes.They wore clothes of different colors, and they were clearly divided into two camps. One specialized in all kinds of cloth produced by the Dayuhe Machine Textile Factory, and the other specialized in selling textiles produced by the Pingan Weaving Factory in the north. Famous goods distribution centers have launched fierce competition, trying to make every vendor or shopkeeper who comes to buy goods buy the goods they sell.

The means of competition are nothing more than cheap bidding and various empty promises. Of course, competitors will inevitably be blackmailed in this process.Near the wholesale market, there are also some shops selling various kinds of textiles, some of which are very grand, with glass window cabinets, and even gold leaf paper on the walls inside the shops, which looks like a nouveau riche.

The owners of these stores were originally small traders, but they were recruited by the two major textile factories to become agents, and began to sell their finished products for these upstream manufacturers.Because this is a distribution center for goods, some quick-witted and capable people quickly completed the primitive accumulation, and then directly took the goods from the factory to their own stores for sale.After the competition became more and more fierce, they began to hire some salesmen to solicit customers outside to sell the products in their stores. This is how the business system developed step by step.

After passing through the bustling Qiaodong wholesale market, Agnelli crossed the stone bridge and came to the farmers' market in Qiaoxi.Unlike industrialized commodities such as cloth, the sales of farmers' markets have not changed significantly over the years. Except for a few foods such as whale meat, salted fish, dried fruits, and shredded tobacco, which are shipped from far away, the rest Various commodities such as vegetables, fresh meat, poultry eggs, butter, soybean products, etc. are all produced locally.

Many years ago, this place was an agricultural product market, and farmers in the countryside regularly brought their own products to the market for sale.Today, this model has not changed much, except that the market has changed from an open-air one to a roofed one, and the sellers here are still those people.Perhaps there are fewer direct producers among them, and more businessmen who go to the countryside to buy farmers’ products and resell them back, but the change of this trend is still extremely slow, far less than the rapid and drastic changes of those industrial product markets.

The streets of the market are somewhat narrow, and a large number of carriages and pedestrians are crowded among them.Merlin Port is home to the South Vehicle Factory. In this city, a high proportion of merchants or shopkeepers buy minivans. They pull the trucks to the four miles and eight villages to collect agricultural products, and then transport them back to their stores for sale.

Agnelli could smell the pungent fishy smell emanating from some carriages from a distance. Those were merchants who went to the fishing village near Mirin Lake to buy fresh or salted fish.Occasionally there was some horse dung or cow dung on the ground, which was so stinky that people complained. Agnelli also watched his feet carefully, he was afraid that he would be accidentally squeezed into the cow dung by pedestrians.

A milk truck unexpectedly appears on the street.The milk comes from nearby suburbs, and some cream even comes from the horse-farming villages of the East.The emergence of this new industry has benefited from the great development of transportation and the vigorous construction of county roads and township roads, which has made logistics transportation much more convenient than in the past. This has made milk, a commodity that pays attention to transportation timeliness, begin to enter from the countryside. City.

Some milk merchants (often transformed from dairy farmers who completed primitive accumulation) hired some cheap Italian or Guarani women (who often also worked part-time as prostitutes) and let them act as milk girls, wearing uniforms in and out of places such as the Southern Vehicle Factory Large-scale enterprise family areas such as railway machinery factories and railway machinery factories-the residents of these areas are the main force of milk consumption.

It took Agnelli a lot of effort to get through the crowded farmers market, and then came to the house of the friend he remembered, but it was General Tie who guarded the door.I went to his store and saw a [-]- or [-]-year-old Italian boy watching the store. He told Agnelli that his boss had gone out to buy goods, and he might not be back until a week later.Agnelli could only return disappointed after hearing the words. He didn't have time to stay here, and he wanted to rush back to Zhenhai County in the north as soon as possible.

(End of this chapter)