Chapter 189 188 Inertial Thinking
Wei Guangde took the letter from Lin Mao and said thank you.
Just as he was about to open it, Lin Mao spoke again: "Master Wei, let's go inside and take a look."
Hearing Lin Mao's words to stop him again, Wei Guangde felt that there was something in the letter that was not good for others to know. This time he did not ignore it, but nodded and said with a smile: "Okay."
"There are some things that I need to explain to Mr. Wei alone. Please allow me to go in with you."
Lin Mao hesitated for a moment and then spoke again.
"Mr. Lin, please."
Although Wei Guangde was curious, he did not ask. Instead, he stood up and reached out sideways to make a gesture of invitation.
Lin Mao naturally did not dare to go forward, but stood beside Wei Guangde with a bow, waiting for Wei Guangde to take a step before following him in.
Wei Guangde took Lin Mao into the courtyard where he lived, and asked Zhang Ji to wait outside. The two people following Lin Mao also stood quietly outside the door, and then they opened the door and entered the house.
"Mr. Lin, please sit down."
Wei Guangde smiled and sat down at the front seat. He ignored Lin Mao and picked up the envelope of the letter from home, opened it, and took out the letter paper inside. He was a little anxious now, not knowing what the letter said. What, doing it so solemnly.
Soon, a few pages of letter paper were pulled out, and Wei Guangde unfolded them to look at them carefully. Then his face lit up, and his heart that had been hanging before was completely relieved.
Let me just say, how could something happen at home? After all, my family is also an official, and my father is a fifth-grade military attaché.
The previous content is naturally that his father said that his family hopes that he can continue to work hard in the imperial examination, and also tells him not to forget about his words and deeds after he is awarded an official.
In response, Wei Guangde just said silently in his heart, "Dad, you are worrying too much. Your son has not yet become an official."
Naturally, his family is very happy with his results, and then, what comes next?
Wei Guangde was shocked when he saw this, and his father asked Huitong Commercial Bank to transfer him 20,000 taels of silver.
The last letter did mention giving me some silver, but I didn't say how much. Now I'm fine, I know the answer, twenty thousand taels of silver.
The silver was not transported directly from Jiujiang, but the father sent the silver to the Lin family in Jiujiang. The Lin family notified the Beijing Commercial Bank to give it to Wei Guangde, which saves money on transportation and is much safer.
Wei Guangde was shocked by the following content, but he did not express it. Instead, he folded the letter and put it back into the envelope and put it in his arms. Then he raised his head and smiled at Lin Mao: "Mr. Lin, I already know. I don't know what this is." silver?"
"Master Wei, the silver is in the merchant's bank. You can come and collect it at any time, or someone from my side can send it to you. After all, there is a lot of silver. It will take at least two big boxes to hold it. It is not good to send it rashly."
Lin Mao stood up and said to Wei Guangde.
Indeed, twenty thousand taels of silver is not a small number, the key is its large size.
When Wei Guangde received the thousand taels of silver, it was only a wooden box the size of a storage box, weighing dozens of kilograms, and it was quite laborious to hold it up.
Twenty thousand taels, if you think about it, it would be troublesome to carry the box in.
"I'd better leave the money with Mr. Lin first. I'll go over and get it when I need the money."
Wei Guangde thought for a moment and said.
"Well."
While talking, Lin Mao took out a note from his arms with several emblems of the Lin family stamped on it.
Lin Mao handed the note to Wei Guangde with both hands and said, "Master Wei, please keep the note. Please take this note with you when you use the money in the future. Record the amount on the note and use the seal."
Wei Guangde took it, looked at it, and nodded, "Okay, thank you very much."
But then, Wei Guangde thought of something, that is, Zhang Hongfu helped him lend money in Jiujiang.
Twenty thousand taels of silver, I will definitely not be able to use such money in the short term, and it is definitely not suitable to keep at home.
The way to make money in later generations is naturally to make money move in order to make more money and satisfy one's own consumption in the capital.
He doesn't know how to make soap, burn glass or cement, and Wei Guangde doesn't like the little income from buying land and collecting rent, so he can only make money in the simplest way.
I am still staying in the Jiujiang Guild Hall for free. In addition to paying for food, I also spend dozens of taels of silver every month, all on food.
Now Wei Guangde eats three meals a day in restaurants, so the expenses are naturally high.
After buying the courtyard in the inner city, I should hire talents. Zhang Ji and Li San are obviously not enough by my side.
But he finally had money, twenty thousand taels of silver, more than double what Wei Guangde expected. At first he thought it would be good to get five thousand taels of silver.
But when he thought about what was going on, Wei Guangde only had a rough look, but he also understood what was going on.
"Mr. Lin, could you please make a trip and let's go out to eat to express our gratitude."
Wei Guangde thought that someone came to give him money, so he should be grateful no matter what, and then he said.
"I don't dare to trouble Mr. Wei. The little old man won't be out for a long time. He still needs to take a look at the store."
Lin Mao did not agree, but said he wanted to go back. The store was still busy, but after getting up, he still smiled at Wei Guangde and said: "Next month, the Twelfth Store will open a new store in Chongwenmenli Street. I wonder if Mr. Wei has Is it time to appreciate it?”
"oh."
Wei Guangde was stunned for a moment, then understood something, and immediately handed over his hands and said: "I will definitely go when the time comes."
Wei Guangde thought about it. Maybe when the new store opens, he can find some official people to support the scene. The black and white people may pay more attention to it in the future.
Wei Guangde had been in the capital for quite a while, but he had also seen Jinyiwei and Dongchang's men walking on the street, collecting monthly fees from the shops. Wei Guangde understood this as "safety fees".
When you open a door to do business, you seek to make money in harmony.
"When the time comes, the second son will come to invite you and your three peers. Please ask the second son to talk to you in advance."
Wei Guangde agreed immediately. It was actually very simple to celebrate the opening of the new store, and you could also have a meal. Why not do it?
After seeing Lin Mao off, Wei Guangde asked Zhang Ji to order wine and food for him. He would not go out to eat today, but eat in the house.
He would not live here for long. After signing the contract over there, he would pack up and move over.
Wei Guangde made up his mind in his heart, and then took out the family letter and read it.
This time, I will not read the previous content, mainly the following paragraphs.
Okay, although I came from a time travel, this era is like this. I have a premonition that I can't get rid of the constraints of this era.
Marriage, parents' orders and matchmaker's words
In fact, even in later generations, although free love is very common, concepts such as being well-matched that affect marriage are still deeply rooted in people's minds.
Many people do not admit it verbally, but they actually agree in their hearts.
Dad did not mention which family in the letter, but the words between the lines revealed that the other party seemed to be from a family with a very good background.
Wei Guangde read it carefully twice, then folded the letter and put it back in the envelope, thinking about how to reply.
Forget it, let's finish what I wanted to do before.
Wei Guangde put the letter in the box and put it away. There were already two letters from home lying quietly in it, but he only replied to one.
At night, Wei Guangde lay in bed, thinking about what to do next.
The court clearly stopped the tribute trade, but obviously the business resumed, and the court also knew that it was making money, and wanted to make more money to meet the court's expenses, so it wanted to increase silk production.
In Zhejiang, a large amount of land was used to grow mulberry and raise silkworms to increase the supply of raw materials and weave more silk.
Wei Guangde thought that he would have to check the annual silk production of the Ming Dynasty.
If he thought of it, he would do it. The next day, after Wei Guangde arrived at the Hanlin Academy, he found the data of weaving in previous years in the library and learned about the official textile data of this period.
Wei Guangde also made clothes on weekdays, but he preferred Songjiang velvet fabric, which was also the most expensive textile fabric of this era. A piece of cloth was ten feet, that is, one hundred feet, and the market price in Jiujiang was as high as 86 taels of silver.
Silk and silk were not cheap either, but silk was cheaper per foot.
Silk could not be woven very long like cotton cloth. Generally, a piece of silk was only three feet, about thirty feet, and the market price was 6 taels of silver.
Wei Guangde was a little confused. In later generations, cotton cloth was much cheaper than silk, but in the Ming Dynasty, it was obviously the opposite of later generations. Cotton cloth was more expensive.
After finding the information, Wei Guangde slowly flipped through it in his public housing. If he didn't look, he would not know that there were many textile centers in the Ming Dynasty, both in the north and the south.
Not only the silk weaving industry in Suzhou, Changzhou, Zhenjiang, Huzhou, Hangzhou, and Nanjing in the south of the Yangtze River has always been very prosperous, but also the silk weaving industry in the northern capital Beijing, Zhuozhou, Taiyuan, and Chengdu in the southwest is also quite prosperous.
In Wei Guangde's original impression, the lawsuit should be the most, and the reality is the same, but there are also many textile workshops in other places, and the scale is not small.
The official textile institutions include the "Two Capitals Dyeing Bureau", which are divided into the inner weaving and dyeing bureaus in Beijing and Nanjing, the Nanjing Libo Hall, the Suzhou weaving and dyeing bureau, and the Hangzhou weaving and dyeing bureau.
Wei Guangde also knew the number of employees in these official textile workshops, which was more than 6,000, not including private workshops.
According to official statistics, the national production of satin and cloth in the 34th year of Jiajing alone reached more than 2 million pieces, which did not include the cloth woven by farmers themselves. All of them were reported by major workshops, because the Ming Dynasty was to tax the production of these cloths.
According to the current tax rate of 1/30, the government collected 80,000 rolls of satin and cloth, and most of the official production was used by the inner court and for the salary payment of the outer court.
It is not clear how many textiles are sold overseas every year, and Wei Guangde can't say anything, but it is obvious that the textile industry of the entire Ming Dynasty is still very strong, and the owners of textile workshops are all very rich.
Now the court is discussing the change of rice to mulberry in Zhejiang, which naturally means increasing the production of raw silk and preparing for the greater expansion of silk workshops. It can be seen that the foreign barbarians prefer the silk of the Ming Dynasty, and are not very interested in cotton cloth.
Well, Wei Guangde carefully looked through the data of looms and cloth production in the past few decades, and had a general understanding of the production capacity of the Ming Dynasty in textiles. According to the number of looms and cloth recorded in the workshops above, it seems to be close to saturation.
Wei Guangde is very clear that those who now propose to change rice to mulberry to increase the supply of raw silk are most likely not to expand foreign trade, but to take the opportunity to annex fertile fields in various parts of Jiangnan.
Wei Guangde pondered for a while and knew that this operation would definitely not work.
The current "changing rice to mulberry" policy is a bit like the administrative orders of later generations. The final results are generally not very good. Only market demand can avoid many problems.
If I want to climb out of this quagmire, I must come up with a better solution.
Market demand?
Since someone proposed to increase the production of silk, it means that the increased output can be fully absorbed by the market. At least whoever proposed it must come up with a solution.
Wei Guangde doesn't need to consider the terminal, so the rest is production.
Let the owners of textile workshops expand the scale of the workshops and increase the number of looms. The increase in production will naturally lead to a greater demand for raw materials. When the production cannot be increased in the short term, they can only compete to raise prices in order to compete for the limited market supply.
The price of raw materials has risen, thus attracting farmers to voluntarily change from growing rice to growing mulberry and raising silkworms.
If the use of the fields is changed voluntarily, it is impossible for everyone to rush in.
According to Wei Guangde's understanding of the current people, although they have various problems, they are very practical. Even if they find that growing mulberry and raising silkworms is more profitable, they will not use all the fields to do this at once, but will only use part of the land to change rice to mulberry.
In fact, Wei Guangde found that in the early Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang had issued an imperial edict to encourage mulberry and silkworm farming and cotton planting.
After thinking about this, the only thing Wei Guangde is still uncertain about is whether the increased silk production can be sold and how to make the owners of textile workshops willing to increase the number of looms. As long as these two problems can be solved, the silk production can be greatly increased in a few years without changing rice to mulberry.
Well, we still need to figure out the first problem, the sales, whether it is really sold overseas as we guessed.
Wei Guangde knows that silk is popular in the East and West these days, that is, Japan in the East and Arabia and Europe in the West. It is said that if a piece of silk is shipped there, the price will be several times higher and people will still rush to buy it.
Of course, unlike in the Ming Dynasty, those who can afford Ming Dynasty silk there are only local rich people, and ordinary people certainly cannot afford it.
In the Ming Dynasty, the situation is actually similar. Most of the people wear local cloth clothes or ordinary cotton clothes, and they cannot afford high-quality cotton cloth and silk.
While reading the materials, Wei Guangde accidentally discovered something he didn't know before. Cotton was not an ancient Chinese product, but was introduced to the Central Plains in the late Song Dynasty and early Yuan Dynasty. Before that, it was only planted in small quantities in the south, mostly used by local ethnic minorities for spinning and weaving.
That is to say, when the Ming Dynasty was founded, the production of cotton in the mainland of the Ming Dynasty was not large. It was only after more than a hundred years of promotion that it gradually expanded. Not only has the planting technology improved, but the cotton varieties and grades have also been classified, and the textile technology has been optimized a lot.
Just like the Songjiang velvet cloth that Wei Guangde likes is the top-grade cloth in cotton cloth now.
Who should I ask for information?
Wei Guangde was in trouble again.
Before, Chen Jin and the others told him everything they knew, and Wei Guangde asked in detail at that time, but because he didn't know about the Shibosi, he forgot to ask about the sales of silk. This was also due to the inertia of thinking. Wei Guangde thought that China had no worries about selling silk since ancient times, and foreigners wanted as much as it produced.