Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 717 Social Change ([-])

The mechanical flour mill of Gao Jinzhong and others is located by a small river, and its name is "Rabbit Hole Flour Mill"-a very vulgar name.There are currently only eight workers in the factory, or eight shareholders are more appropriate, because they cannot afford additional full-time workers, and can only spend money to hire people to snap up wheat in a short period of time during the busy season of wheat procurement every year.Today, under the impetus of some economic liberals, the non-governmental trade in miscellaneous grains (corn, potato, sweet potato, soybean, etc.) Let go, and the domestic grain market has been activated all of a sudden.Of course, the transaction price must be controlled by the government, that is, only a certain range of fluctuation is allowed outside the Ministry of Agriculture's guide price. It used to be 10%, and now it is 20%.

In addition to snapping up grain, the raw material for production, flour mill owners everywhere had to scramble for urgent means of transportation, such as horse-drawn carts, boats and even trains.Of course, small business owners like them are not allowed to make irresponsible remarks by trains, and the transportation cost of horse-drawn carriages is too high, which is only suitable for short-distance transportation in the county and township, so the competition for transportation ships is very critical.

In fact, it is not only the machine milling industry, but other industries such as private brick kilns, lime kilns (to supplement the production shortage of large state-owned building materials companies), wood product processing workshops (mostly set up by carpenters privately, processing various furniture, musical instruments, daily necessities such as wooden barrels), private fishery product processing workshops (mostly inland river fishing such as Duck Lake and Milin Lake and artificial breeding in cages), etc.With the implementation of the country's grand strategy of accelerating the development of productivity and creating more material wealth, various small private workshops have sprung up like mushrooms after spring rain in today's increasingly abundant private capital. Infrastructure, transportation, financing and other services put forward higher requirements.

Not to mention anything else, just talk about the private shipbuilding industry.At present, in the watershed around Yazi Lake (Zhenhai County, Xihu County, and Ping'an County), four or five private private shipyards have been built one after another. The new star shipyard built by Wei Hua and Zhang Xiao, the top executives of the modern special shipyard (through agents).This shipyard is located near the later city of Palmares in the northeast corner of Duck Lake. It has more than 80 workers, some of whom are technicians recruited from the three major shipyards with high salaries. In addition, they also go to Europe to recruit technicians through relationship trustees to further expand own technical team.In addition, the factory is preparing to build a factory-owned vocational school in order to train talents by itself in the future.And this factory is also the only one among the many private shipbuilding enterprises in China that can be titled "factory".

However, there are still many problems in the Xinxing Shipyard. First, they do not have large docks and slipways, and cannot manufacture large-scale ships with huge profits; in addition, they have not yet obtained the steam engine use license approved by the Government Council-this is a problem for private enterprises. It's hard to say.Therefore, the factory currently produces mostly small sail-powered ships, generally no more than 150 tons, and the required crew generally does not exceed 10 people, which are mainly used for bulk cargo transportation on fixed routes.

At present, the increase of state-owned transport capacity is slow due to various reasons. In addition, the executive committee also intends to release some industries to vent excess funds and relieve domestic inflationary pressure. Therefore, the status quo of domestic water transport capacity is that state-owned transport capacity still occupies the mainstream. However, the proportion is gradually decreasing; small ships with a few tons or even tens of tons have gradually assumed a considerable part of the inland river transportation tasks. These ships can be driven by only two or three boatmen, and are driven by poles or sculls. Go ahead, very practical.

The wood needed for shipbuilding is partly imported from abroad and partly provided domestically.At present, near the mouth of the Nishui River (Big Arroyo River, so the river carries a lot of sediment) into the lake, people on the east bank have built a large timber trading market, and most of the timber needed for domestic shipbuilding is now available Purchases are made here (with the exception of lumber for naval shipbuilding, but does not preclude navies from occasionally procuring sub-tier lumber on the market to build auxiliary ships).

This market is so large that it almost covers more than 60% of the country's non-military timber trade, such as the Parana pine provided by some lumber farms in the hilly area west of the lake in China according to the felling quota, such as sumac exported from Brazil , such as Central American guaiac wood exported by the British, such as Southeast Asian teak exported by the Dutch, and rare trees (Spanish walnut, Jamaican mahogany) exported by some "unscrupulous" Spanish or Genoese merchants etc. Of course, we must not forget the red sandalwood, rosewood, African ebony, etc. imported from the New China region.In short, this market has everything that one expects to find, from variety to quantity.

All the wood shipped from foreign countries will first be inspected by the customs in Sanpaotai Township, Zhenhai County, and the customs duties will be paid.Over the years, due to factors of war and shipping capacity, the gap in high-quality wood in the East Coast Republic has been quite large, especially the demand for high-end furniture, musical instruments, carriages, and shipbuilding materials.

At the beginning, the average entry tariff for foreign timber imports on the east coast was 1.6 yuan/lode, but it was urgently revised to 1646 yuan/lode before the outbreak of the war in 0.8.Later, the Ministry of the Navy scolded this policy of the Ministry of Trade because of the lack of high-quality wood for shipbuilding. While switching to inferior New China wood, they strongly demanded that the Ministry of Trade include guaiac wood, Brazilian sumac, and Spanish wood. Tariffs on a variety of high-grade timber including walnut have been greatly reduced.The Ministry of Trade was also questioned by the Executive Committee. In desperation, they lowered the average tariff on imported timber from foreign countries to an astonishingly low 0.2 yuan. The tariffs are all zero, which makes the Admiralty a little satisfied.

In all fairness, timber shipped from abroad is not cheap, and its unit shipping price (per Lode) is about 5-10 yuan.However, due to its multiple advantages in quality and size, it still poses a great impact on domestic timber harvesting, processing and a series of downstream industries on the east coast.Let’s take the big pine as an example. The big pine, fir and other round logs shipped from the New World (especially North America) are extremely huge, and the texture is quite good, obviously exceeding the forest trees in the hilly area on the east bank and west of the lake.More importantly, the production capacity of timber resources on the east coast is seriously insufficient-this industry can also be said to be a labor-intensive industry, and it is also impossible to use large-scale machine logging, so the local timber production capacity on the east coast has always been quite large. Limited, at the beginning it could only meet three-quarters of the domestic demand.

However, with the rapid development of various industries in the East Coast, the consumption of wood, an important industrial and agricultural raw material, has increased significantly, and the original domestic production has gradually become insufficient.Except for the previous period of economic depression that lasted for a year and a half, the contradiction between the supply and demand of timber has always been very prominent. The Ministry of Trade urgently contacted the Dutch and the English to increase imports, and at the same time lowered tariffs and gave them Foreign captains are taxed at preferential rates.It is not a bad thing to attract foreign captains, because they will never return to the place of departure empty without buying any goods.

In addition to importing these round logs, people on the east coast especially like to import large quantities of processed round timber, pine boards, wide boards, narrow boards, barrel boards, etc., which will greatly make up for the lack of processing capacity on the east coast.You must know that the large and small ships, rail trucks and buses, highway heavy trucks and buses, rail sleepers, gun mount brackets, tool materials, etc. exported to the Ottoman Empire have already overwhelmed the domestic wood processing industry on the east coast.Some time-consuming, labor-intensive but unprofitable small product processing, it is better to gradually spin off from large state-owned factories. Part of these spin-off industries will be undertaken by domestic capital-of course, they need to find workers themselves; Subcontract to foreign countries for processing. At present, many wood processing workshops have sprung up in those Portuguese towns among the Gerard Mountains.

There are more than a dozen people in these workshops, and the few are a master with two or three apprentices. They undertake orders from the people on the east coast, use hydraulic or pedal machines that are eliminated on the east coast, and use equipment that is several times higher than that of the old continent. Efficiently processing wood of various standard sizes, and then transporting them to the east bank to settle material costs, processing fees and so on.Coupled with the large number of handicraftsmen serving the East Coast Republic in these towns, it can be said that the Portuguese villages and towns near the Gerard Mountains have now increased to six, at least economically, they have been firmly included in the East Coast. within the system.

The government on the east bank has no control over them, and at the same time has no obligation, but uses the magic of money to drive these towns to operate according to the will of the east bank.This kind of magic even transcends the gaps of race, religion and culture, making the Portuguese, Germans, Irish, and Scots who came from the Old World to produce a large number of handicrafts that they did not produce for the East Coast day after day. products.At the same time, they bought a large amount of daily necessities from the east bank to maintain their livelihood, which means that they transferred a large part of their hard-earned profits and returned them. They could not even be self-sufficient in food, so they needed to buy flour from the east bank from Ping'an County nearby. , like a standard East Coast colonial economic system.

However, in general, with the accelerated population growth of the East Coast Republic of China, and the gradual increase in tariffs on common large timber such as large pine and fir from abroad (in response to the strong demand of domestic producers to protect the domestic industry) At present, the self-sufficiency rate of timber on the east coast is gradually increasing.At least, in the statistics of the first ten months of 1648, wood from the New China colony accounted for more than half of the imported wood, which was a full eight percentage points higher than a year ago!

(End of this chapter)