New Shun 1730

When the woman heard this, she smiled happily, thinking that this was not bad. Whether the machine is suitable for use or not has not yet been seen.

Even if it was available, it wouldn't be too expensive after thinking about it. It was just three to five taels more expensive than the current loom with a shuttle.

How could she have imagined that the machine Liu Yu was talking about was completely different from the machine she was using now? How could it be as simple as costing three to five taels of silver?

The woman felt that it was not in stock now, but just a loaf promised by a man who was really capable of five loaves and two fishes.

Although the imperial court has banned religion for a long time, there were too many churches in Songjiang Prefecture. Although this woman did not understand the teachings, those who believed in religion often told stories. In addition, there were also many female workers and women who believed in religion secretly. Five loaves and two She often hears and knows fish stories.

It's hard to tell when others will make good on the pie. But the person in front of me has basically fulfilled his promise, at least in terms of business and industry.

I thought that if the weaving speed could be increased several times, and it wouldn't even require a very skilled female worker to weave, I would be able to make a lot of money in the future.

Nowadays, these weavers, depending on their skills, charge "quite high" prices. During festivals, they had to give wine and cut their meat to prevent them from turning elsewhere.

If there is such a machine in the future, the weavers will be reduced like tenants, and they will be able to knead whatever they want.

If you don't do it, there are many people who want to do it, and when you see these people asking for money based on their skills, how can they dare to negotiate terms with you?

Moreover, the officials of the imperial court also said that if someone starts a fight in the future because the machine takes away their work, the government will definitely send troops to arrest them all.

For a moment, this woman only felt that the future would be infinitely better, and she was really born in a good era.

…………

Outside the back hall, in the house where the machinist was busy, the sound of weaving was heard constantly.

While the weavers were busy weaving to earn piece-rate wages, they had become so good at it that they could chat and weave at the same time.

Some skilled people can even weave with their eyes half closed. This is a skill honed by a hard life.

Today, there are no gas lamps or kerosene lamps in Dashun. The brightest ones are whale oil lamps, and candles are expensive. Ordinary farmers in the village weave, most of them just work together to build a shed, so that each family can have one light.

The lamp of rapeseed oil or cottonseed oil is dim. It is better to sit on the lamp panel, a little further away. In fact, it is just relying on the feeling and using the skill of an oil seller to knit in the dark.

Pulling and pulling, the warp and weft emerged, and a weaver asked a fellow worker: "Is our master family related to the high officials of the imperial court? How come Marquis Jinghai, whose name I often hear, is here?"

A weaver next to him moved the shuttle and said with a smile: "It doesn't matter if he has relatives or not. We are not machinists of the imperial government, but we have relatives. Is it possible that we don't need to be paid? We only need to pay by the piece." What's going on By the way, every hair on the prince's body is thicker than our waist. Although the emperor has three or five poor relatives, they are still richer than ours. , still need to do this?”

"Nowadays, those who run the world, invest, and speculate in stocks are the big businessmen. How can you get into this business just by taking some inside information? By the way, when your man comes back from Nagasaki this time, will he go to Nanyang? I heard that some ship owners going to Nanyang are recruiting sailors, and the wages are higher than those going to Japan. "

The female worker who asked if her master and the high-ranking officials were related shook her head and said, "I won't go to Nanyang. Nanyang is not a good place. Although it makes a lot of money, it is more dangerous than going to Japan. I thought, if he works for another two years, I will not go to Nanyang." After another two or three years of weaving, I can buy two looms and hire someone to do the other.

The woman's accent was not that of Songjiang, but rather Shandong. This is also a major feature of Songjiang. Many sailors from Weihai came to Songjiang Prefecture to settle down. In addition, the accent of Xinxue School is either Gyeonggi Mandarin or Jiaoliao accent. Gradually, the accent of Songjiang Prefecture is slightly mixed. Got the taste.

The woman's husband is a sailor. She also knew about the shipowners who went to Nanyang to recruit sailors these days, but she heard that Nanyang was hot and miasmatic, and also heard that there were some cannibals. Although she was given more money than going to Japan, she was reluctant to ask her husband to go there. Nanyang Run.

Her family was originally from Wendeng Prefecture, and they also had several acres of land. At this time, it was rare for families to live apart. Although her father-in-law is gone, her mother-in-law is still there.

My husband is the fourth eldest child in his family, he is neither older nor younger, and he is not liked by the elderly. When I was at home before, I was "not doing my job properly" and was not keen on working in the fields. Instead, I would rather go out and find work.

It is conceivable that since the mother-in-law manages the house and the husband is not doing his job properly, he will not have a good life. My mother-in-law is getting older, and her elders are in charge of everything at home. Later, her husband went out to work, and she was even more annoyed at home.

Her husband doesn't farm the family's land, nor does he give the money from his work to the family. It's strange that the family can treat her well.

Her weaving skills were also developed at that time.

Every autumn, after finishing the work in the fields, her mother-in-law would give her three kilograms of cotton. These are the clothes that their small family wears during the Chinese New Year.

How can three pounds of cotton make clothes for a small family?

But it's also simple.

Spin these three pounds of cotton into yarn, then weave the yarn into cloth, then sell the cloth, then use the money from selling the cloth to buy cotton, and then spin the yarn...

This cycle continued until the New Year, when the family was about to arrive, they could change their clothes for the New Year. It was easy for the children, and if the older ones were too small, they could wash and starch them for the younger ones, and that was enough.

She did not understand what a self-sufficient small peasant economy was, nor did she understand what industrialization inevitably meant by the bankruptcy of small peasants.

But she and her husband broke up with their family, left the house with nothing, and did not ask for land. They moved to Songjiang Prefecture and saw the new flying shuttle loom, which made them have some thoughts.

Thinking about the fact that she was also a good weaver in the past, weaving 15 feet a day. But the cloth was narrow, only one foot wide.

Now this flying shuttle loom can still weave 15 feet a day, but the cloth is wide, two or three feet, which means one or two more quilts of cloth out of thin air.

If there are new machines in the future, so that this kind of workshop can weave faster... Thinking about the past, I am afraid that three pounds of cotton will not be enough to make new clothes for the whole family.

The premise of being able to make new clothes for the family is that the three pounds of cotton can be spun and woven into cloth and sold for five pounds of cotton; another set can be exchanged for ten pounds of cotton...

If the cloth in the workshop is really cheap in the future, you can't make any money by weaving, and three pounds can only become three and a half pounds of cotton, then no one will weave.

There are many families like hers. Many families don't have so much cotton, they only have three or five pounds of cotton, relying on the craftsmanship of female workers to earn that little bit of hard work.

The impact of initial industrialization on small farmers is not only on these three pounds of cotton, but it is a very intuitive microcosm.

When she was in Wendengzhou, the three pounds of cotton were not only clothes for the family, but sometimes they were also salt for the family, oil for the family, and money for urgent need of money...

Like her master, this woman also has some visions for the future, and even thinks this is a very good era.

Leaving her hometown and coming to Songjiang Prefecture, her husband went to sea as a seaman, and she worked and wove cloth. Although her life was a little hard for the time being, she had hope.

There were no children who died in infancy, and all of them studied in the Xinxue Charity School.

It was free to study in the Xinxue Charity School in Songjiang Prefecture, but the children, who should have been working at the age of twelve or thirteen, did not work but only ate, which made them have more mouths to feed, and their lives were tight.

I had originally thought that the eldest and second child in the family would not go to school and go out to work early. Even if they went to pick cotton for others or sell cigarettes and matches at the dock, they could help supplement the family income.

If I save a little more and my husband doesn't have any accidents, I can save up for a flying shuttle loom in two or three years.

At that time, with my own skills and weaving speed, I can use two or three taels of silver as capital, weave and sell by myself, which is better than earning piecework wages here.

I will work hard for two or three years, save enough money, and then buy another loom and hire someone.

In this way, after four or five years, one became two, two became four, four became eight, and eight became sixteen. When the sons grew up and were about to get married, she had also jumped from a machine worker to a machine owner, completing the class leap.

But the husband had been at sea for a long time and had some ideas. He thought it was better to let the children go to school, even if it cost money.

In addition to eating and not working, since they were going to school, even if the pen, ink, paper and inkstone were too expensive, they could buy a bluestone slab for writing and two pieces of chalk and talc, which also required money, right?

But the husband said that he had seen a lot in these years at sea and felt that there was a way out for new learning.

If he learned well, he would move from the lower house to the upper house in the future. If he could eventually be admitted to the Jinghai Palace and become a naval officer in the future, would he still have to worry about his son's marriage?

Ordinary landlords, unless they had a reputation, looked down on naval officers. But if they did not have a reputation, they would also be willing to marry the naval officer trainees of the Jinghai Palace.

You can earn a lot, and the uniforms are nice. In recent years, it is not popular to say that the navy is a soldier, and the future is good. If you can get a few years and become a first mate or a captain, even if you don't work in the navy, you can go to various large business houses and trading companies, wouldn't they be eager to hire you?

Besides, even if you can't pass the exam to Jinghai Palace, you can learn some new skills and go to the Chamber of Commerce to do accounting and purchasing, isn't that good?

Nowadays, these trading companies and large chambers of commerce don't want those who have learned classics from private schools, but prefer those who have learned new things.

If you are at the worst, you can go to the "barefoot medical clinic" founded by Jinghou, learn the skills of vaccinating cowpox, and go to various places to vaccinate people. This is also a way out for new students: although it seems that this thing doesn't need arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and geography, but this "barefoot medical clinic" only wants new students, and the selection is very strict.

In addition to these expectations for the future of the child, another important reason for her husband to convince her is that good days are still to come.

Based on what I have seen in Nagasaki in recent years, trade in Japan is getting better and better. Nanyang will not be bad in the future.

Even if the children go to school and only eat but do not work, they can save a little. If they do not go to school, they may be able to buy their own looms in two or three years; if they go to school, it will be five or six years instead of two or three years, so it doesn't matter if these few years.

Good days are still to come.

The beautiful vision of the future and the expectation that the situation will get better in the future are the reasons why the woman finally decided to listen to her husband and let the children continue to go to school.

She is not the kind of unreasonable shrew, and she did not scold her husband, saying things like if you quit drinking and don't buy chewing tobacco, won't you save money?

She only thought about her husband going to sea. Life on the sea is boring. If he doesn't even drink wine or chew tobacco, isn't he no different from a donkey pulling a mill?

Besides, what her husband said was right. If life continued to be so good, food prices remained so low, and cotton cloth continued to sell so well, it would not be impossible to save a little less money every year, and then change from a machine worker to a machine owner three to five years later.

But she never expected that what was discussed in the back hall at this time might make her beautiful vision come to nothing.

If it was three to five years later, if it remained unchanged, her vision and future planning would be absolutely correct.

But this is an era of small changes every five years and big changes every ten years. If it was three to five years later, it is very likely that there would be no chance to complete the class leap - at least there would be no hope for her generation. If the children were promising and entered the Jinghai Palace Naval School, it would be considered that the next generation had completed the class leap.

Once it was three to five years later and the steam loom appeared, her dream of primitive accumulation of buying a loom, turning one into two, two into four, and four into eight would be shattered.

I am afraid that life would be worse than it is now.

By then, they would definitely not be able to pay the current salary, not to mention the dream of working hard for a few years and buying a loom to become a boss.

How could the capital of a steam-powered loom be completed by the primitive accumulation of simple labor? When handicrafts are transformed into industrialized production, how can the salary of supporting a family be rolled up to beat the 13- or 14-year-old female bonded laborers who work for a bowl of rice?

However, from another strange perspective, it seems to indicate that Dashun's advantages in foreign trade will be great. After all, in Dashun, the money to buy a 13- or 14-year-old girl as a contract slave in a disaster year is not enough to buy a leg of an American slave.