open sea

Chapter 789 Opening

Acapulco.

Wars come and go quickly, and the port villages that have returned to peace hardly need to be restored, and they can directly develop.

It was only early in the morning, and the dilapidated streets of the village were already crowded with people. The aboriginal foremen of the brick kilns went door to door to wake up the workers before dawn to start a new day of work.

The hunters who went hunting at dawn have returned. Some brought their prey, while others returned empty-handed. The wild beasts in the forest are not as quick as humans to recover from the impact of the war. I am afraid that they will rarely see each other in the next month or two. haunt this jungle.

The Dafu ship that docked at the port last night transferred the goods from Zhuangyuan Bridge to Majia Port, and Lifu told the captain Jia on duty in Spanish with a smile that the goods would be moved by noon.

It was the Spaniards who changed the pace of life of the aborigines. Over the past few decades, they have long been used to going to bed late and getting up early to work hard, but they are more like walking dead. The arrival of the Ming army has injected new vitality into this place - doing things for the Ming Dynasty people, pay.

In order to mobilize the enthusiasm of the aborigines, Chen Mu and his staff took a lot of brains. When recruiting workers in brick kilns and paper mills, even if they told the people to start the wages, not many people applied, which made them think it was The reason for the low salary is that after all, Chen Mu's wages here are priced at one penny per worker.

The so-called one job refers to the normal day's workload of a worker. In the Ming Dynasty, the most common type of job was three cents of silver per job.

Zou Yuanbiao asked several chiefs of armor, and only then learned that the aborigines did not use silver, and it was useless to earn this money—their currency was cotton cloth and cocoa beans.

"One cocoa bean can be exchanged for one of this." Lin Manjue's servant Hei Jingang skillfully twirled the cocoa bean in one hand, and held a big tomato in the other hand: "Four, sometimes three are also fine, for one A six-horned dragon, uh...that's what the master calls that little thing."

Hexagonal Dragon, what a majestic name?

Chen Mu looked at the salamander with six beards that looked like a big tadpole, gave Lin Manjue a thumbs up to praise his talent for naming, and said to Hei Jingang, "It's very cheap, what can you do with this? "

Hei Jingang smiled and showed his slightly yellow teeth, looking very simple and honest: "Wrap in tortillas and bake them to eat."

Chen Mu gave a thumbs up again: "Talk to me about the price again, just use cocoa beans to buy things."

"it is good!"

Black King Kong was very happy that Chen Mu was interested in their affairs, and said, "A hundred cocoa beans can buy a slave or a turkey."

"Turkey is as expensive as human beings?" Chen Mu raised his hand to scrub his beard, with a strange look on his face: "The price is not good."

Lin Manjue, who was sitting with arms crossed, coughed lightly and said, "Marshal, the price is fair. Their slaves are different from the slaves we know. What's more, how should I put it, they are more enlightened?"

"The child of a slave is not a slave, and the cocoa of a slave has nothing to do with his master; if a slave enters a temple altar, or if he steps on dung outside the market, he is no longer a slave."

Chen Mu listened very carefully, and suddenly Zou Yuanbiao laughed silly for some reason, noticing that others were looking at him and covering his mouth, shrugging his shoulders, seeing Chen Mu's probing eyes on him, he could not bear it. Can't help explaining: "It smells bad, the master thinks it smells bad, hahahaha!"

this fool.

Chen Mu held back his nose and took a few breaths, then raised his finger to the door: "Go out."

Only then did Lin Manjue continue.

"If they run away, only the master's family can chase them, and others can't. They run away as soon as they run away, so the price of slaves is very cheap. By the way, there are fake beans."

Chen Mu frowned and couldn't help laughing: "Can beans be fake?"

"White ash, wet soil, and the one they ate. The commander-in-chief called it avocado, and used that seed to make fake beans, so Hei Jingang's fingers kept twisting the beans. I heard him say that the fake beans shattered as soon as they were twisted."

"So if you want to recruit workers, let the brick kiln factory use cocoa beans to recruit workers?" Chen Mu ignored the counterfeit money, looked at Hei Jingang and asked, "How much is the average worker's daily salary?"

"The best time in the past was one hundred." Hei Jingang was still a little cautious when facing Chen Mu, and he was afraid that Chen Mu would be displeased by saying something too general, so he added: "One hundred cocoa beans."

The price is not only not high, but also very low.

This is completely different from Chen Mu's imagination. If a turkey is not bad, it will be enough for a family to eat for two or three days. If it is a hundred tomatoes, it will be enough for the poor to eat for a long time.

This was beyond Chen Mu's expectation, and he immediately asked: "Then why do the people here seem to be working hard before coming here, and they don't have enough to eat and wear well?"

Black King Kong shook his head helplessly, and said: "Those things are worth these beans, everyone knows, but we don't have beans, and we don't have turkeys, no one goes hunting, and hunting is for the owner; no one sells tomatoes, so give them away." In Mexico City, no one sells anything."

Zou Yuanbiao poked his head out from the door and said, "Commander, the students know what to do now!"

"You stay outside and shut up, I know it too."

What could be a big problem, there are no goods and no market, and the currency has no value.

After their conversation ended, four shops opened in front of Daojun Temple soon. The first one is a bow and arrow workshop, which makes bows and arrows, makes arrow clusters, cuts arrow shafts, sticks arrow feathers, and specializes in bright shoot bows. And all kinds of iron arrow clusters and wooden arrows, but the bows sold by the military craftsmen selected by Chen Mu are not used in the Ming army's luggage.

The second shop is a blacksmith shop, which mainly manufactures and sells self-defense swords and agricultural tools such as handaxes and swords used by sailors on ships of the Ming army. It is also open for business by military craftsmen.

The third shop was a tailor shop. Several tailors on the boat of the Linqing Dynasty bought cotton cloth from the Ming army on credit to tailor clothes for people. It is said that this should be the first private shop in Acapulco.

As soon as the three stores opened, they attracted many aborigines. In a large village with a total of more than 2000 households, it took a long time to know what happened. It's not that the aborigines don't like it, they like it very much.

But the shops don’t accept barter, they have to use silver to sell, that is to say, the three shops are all ordered by Chen Mu, the aborigines bought three iron arrowheads with large jujubes and good-looking jade. The old military craftsman who paid a few taels of silver was about to cry, but he didn't dare to accept it.

The next day, the fourth shop opened, collecting jade, animal skins, turkey, corn, etc., and paying silver at a fixed price. At the same time, it informed the people in the port of the news of the silver for working in various factories, starting with the men in the village. The enthusiasm was mobilized, and with the opening of restaurants and other shops and the tailor shop receiving the wife of the village chief who sold a whole suit of shirts, jackets, Xiapei, sash, bijia and skirts, women were also mobilized.

The whole village is alive.

(End of this chapter)