Salt production is definitely a money-making project. This can be seen from the wealth of salt merchants in Lianghuai Salt Fields, Changlu Salt Fields and other places. It should be an undisputed issue, but the salt fields in Liaodong are almost at a loss.
Well, this is worthy of further study.
Of course, Gao Wuzhi doesn't have time to delve into it now, because in his opinion, salt production can almost make a loss for two reasons: first, there are too many loopholes in the management system, and second, the salt production technology is outdated and backward.
We are all Han Chinese of the same origin, so we cannot say that the people of Liaodong are particularly lazy, right? You must know that the living environment in Liaodong is worse, so how can they be lazier? Obviously not.
Therefore, the difficulty in opening a new salt farm in Liaonan is not where to open it - not to mention the entire southern Liaoning, Yingkou alone is already a "hundred-mile silver beach". As long as there are money and people, there will be no big business anywhere.
Coming to the salt farm?
The difficulty lies in the management system and technical system.
In terms of management system, although Jinghua has no experience in opening a salt farm, the general direction of business operations is similar. Most of them can be copied, with at most some relevant technical changes, so there is no need to be pragmatic or troublesome in this aspect.
But the technical system needs to be upgraded.
After Gao Jingshi asked his uncles Zhang Siwei and Zhang Sijiao to help provide several salt-making masters from the Changlu Salt Field, after exchanges and understandings, it was confirmed that there is considerable room for improvement in the current salt-making technology of the Ming Dynasty.
China's salt-making technology developed to the Ming Dynasty. The raw materials were mainly four types: seawater, pond brine, well brine and mineral salt. Different raw materials, of course, also have different salt-making methods. Specifically, when it comes to seawater salt-making, there are two main methods:
Sun-made salt and boiled salt.
At first, Gao Pragmatic did not consider the option of boiling salt at all, because boiling salt requires fuel.
Burning charcoal to boil salt has been popular in Chinese dynasties in the past. This is obviously a very expensive method of making salt. Although boiling salt does not require a large fire and the energy consumption is not particularly high, the price of charcoal is not low after all.
Still very uneconomical.
Later, coal was started to be burned to boil salt, and the cost began to decrease. This was good news for Gao Pragmatic, because he really had no shortage of coal.
Jinghua's current coal mining capacity is almost explosive compared to the amount used - mainly due to the large number of mines. Later Hebei, Henan and the famous coal province Shanxi are all Jinghua's main spheres of influence. In addition to Jinghua's long-standing
In addition to the Kailuan Coal Mine and Mentougou Coal Mine (on the outskirts of Yanjing) that were occupied in advance, there are many large mines in Gao Pragmatic's hometown in Henan and his "uncle's family" in Shanxi. As long as Gao Pragmatic gives the order, production capacity will not be a problem at all.
Even if transportation costs are high these days, Yingkou can at most afford to use coal shipped from Kaiping. However, as a business group, Jinghua must have lower costs, so Gao Pragmatic did not plan to boil salt at the beginning.
Use your brain.
The first thing he considered upgrading was the sun-cured tobacco technology.
According to the master craftsman of Changlu Saltworks, there are currently four methods of sun-curing tobacco in the Ming Dynasty, namely the salt-making method of making salt in the border, the salt-making method in the beach and the pool, the salt-making method in the well and the wooden-plate salt-making method. [Not detailed.
For those who are interested, I would like to introduce a paper: "The Development of Salt Production Technology in China and Europe from the 15th to the 19th Century", written by Xu Baozheng and Wang Liandi.]
At this time, Europe had no technical exchanges with East Asia, especially the Ming Dynasty, in salt production technology (there is currently no evidence in the historians), but there was a strong convergence. The differences were only in some minor issues, but there was one item in which Europe was ahead.
During the Ming Dynasty and even later, there were many Tatar and Qing dynasties, and that was brine extraction equipment.
Europeans had developed a "brine extraction machine" (Erhard Han of France) as early as 1437, and it was replaced by the Heinz water pump in 1507. Later, it developed faster and faster, and finally in the steam engine era
As a matter of course, we came up with steam brine extraction equipment.
In addition, long-distance brine pipelines are also an advantageous project in Europe, but this project is related to the division of Europe (especially the Holy Roman Empire), and is different from Gao Pragmatic's environment, so it has little to do with it.
The first technology Gao pragmatic plans to upgrade at present is the brine extraction equipment, which can significantly improve the efficiency of salt production. Especially after adopting this technology, salt boiling can also be included in the upgrade scope - referring to the final stage of salt production.
The key to boiling and processing is to speed up the production of salt. The key is that the amount of coal required is not large, and the requirements for the coal itself are also very low. Some types of coal that are not very useful can be used (there are many types of coal).
For Jinghua, to a certain extent, it is almost like recycling waste.
For these two major upgrades, apart from the initial cost of manufacturing the brine extraction equipment, the rest only requires some shipping costs for coal, but they can increase the efficiency of salt production by two to three times. Gao Pragmatic feels
This is well worth doing.
Gao pragmatically left these two matters to the Kaiping side and left them to Gao Rui, who was responsible for contacting the capital's Jinghua Craftsman School, to jointly handle them. The Beiyang Fleet was simply responsible for transportation.
Then Gao pragmatically went to learn from a certain great man of later generations and went to the seaside of Yingkou to "draw a circle."
The "institutional advantage" of feudalism was undoubtedly demonstrated at this moment. Gao Bingxian went to Shuyi first, and without even waiting for approval, he went to Yingkou himself to take a look, and with a stroke of his pen, he went to Yingkou to see some of the salt fields that had long been deserted.
The nature was changed, and the original guard post Yanding was sent back to the old guard, and the Bingxian Yamen paid this year's salary - this money was a pragmatic personal subsidy, but in the end it would be shared with Zhu Yijun.
The various health offices did not have any special reaction to this. Instead, they all asked Gao Pragmatic to report to the court, asking whether they should be exempted from the salt requirement since they were no longer exposed to salt.
Gao Pragmatic was so courageous that he agreed directly and sent away the skeptical representatives of the guards.
In fact, he had already negotiated this issue with Zhu Yijun before. The original two million kilograms of salt per year for the 25 provinces and 2 free prefectures in Liaodong would be fully borne by the future Jinghua Salt Farm, and the quality and quantity would be guaranteed to be provided to each prefecture.
, and Jinghua Salt Farm will increase this amount by 10%, which means that it will actually pay 2.2 million kilograms of fine salt.
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! This is also the reason why Gao Pragmatism is not afraid of being scolded: It used to be said that there were two million jins of salt in Liaodong, but in fact, even the gods were not sure how much there was. Now in Jinghua
After taking over, not only did it increase from 2 million jins to 2.2 million jins, but the standard of coarse salt was also raised to the standard of refined salt, which resulted in a considerable premium.
In fact, his move is like a "contracting system", and he has personally contracted all the "salt" in Liaodong in the past. In the future, the court will not need to go one by one when the output of salt in Liaodong is insufficient.
You only need to find a person who is highly pragmatic to check and urge. In terms of administrative efficiency, it has increased by at least twenty-five times.
If you still get scolded for this, it only means that what the other person did is not a matter of fact at all, but a complete insult to people.
Gao Pragmatic's memorial was sent to the capital, which really caused some controversy.
However, the focus of the controversy is not actually the "contracting system" of Gao pragmatism - the salt industry in the Ming Dynasty is actually a contracting system, but in other areas it is contracted through the form of "salt introduction". For example, the Zhang family controls the long-term contracting system.
Most of the salt in the Lu Salt Field is imported, which almost monopolizes the salt field.
And Gao Wuchen's current approach is just a contracting system that does not require salt introduction, and the main reason why he does not require salt introduction is because he eats the salt of the entire Liaodong - anyway, he is the only one in the family, and the specific amount of salt does not matter.
As long as he can hand over the 2.2 million kilograms of fine salt he promised, everything else is easy.
Because for the imperial court, sitting like this allowed them to get rid of a bad debt and a dead debt.
The real controversial issue is the resettlement of the salt soldiers who were dismissed by Gao Pragmatic and returned to the defense.
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