Since the Song Dynasty, Suzhou has been a prosperous place in China and is known as the "paragraph on earth" together with Hangzhou. Because it is famous for its elegant gardens,
At this time, Shang Yi, Lin Zhiyang, Li Gefei, Zhang Gengqiu and others walked along the downtown area. They saw river forks, and small bridges and flowing water were everywhere. Boats were shuttled back and forth in the river, all with the characteristics of an ancient water town. And along the river bank, it was also known as a water town.
There are all kinds of shops, lined up and full of days. There are also opera singers, martial arts performers, jugglers, storytellers, and quiz stalls, all kinds of things.
Shang Yi couldn't help but sigh that this is the original antique style, which is completely different from the artificially made antique scenes in later generations.
Duan Peng said: "I think Suzhou is much more lively than Hangzhou."
Shang Yi smiled and said, "Hangzhou has just been robbed by rebels and has not fully recovered yet. After a few months, its appearance will definitely not be worse than Suzhou."
Lin Zhiyang also said: "Since ancient times, Suzhou and Hangzhou have been named together, so naturally there is no distinction between the top and bottom."
Shang Yi suddenly saw a group of ragged young people gathered here in groups of three or five, chatting with each other or looking around, and there were not hundreds, and there were seventy or eighty people. It was quite like the ones waiting for someone to hire in later generations.
The migrant workers looked like. Shang Yi said: "What do these people do? If they gather here, are they waiting for someone to hire workers?"
At this time, one person walked to the crowd and shouted: "I want ten people, there are looms at home."
Immediately, more than twenty people surrounded the mountain and said, "I have a loom, and my loom. Boss, just use me."
Cheng Xiexiang said: "These people are local machine-employed workers who gather here every day, waiting for the big shops to summon them to work. Some people still have some land at home, just to earn some money to subsidize their household income, but some rely entirely on it.
Work and make money to keep a living.”
Shang Yi said: "Is it difficult for these large workshops to hire fixed weaving workers? It's all because of this temporary recruitment."
Cheng Xiexiang said: "If you hire a fixed worker, you must accumulate a lot of raw silk to ensure that they have work every day and cannot work a day. However, only a few large households have this strength, and most small and medium-sized workshops cannot afford to spend it.
We can weave as much raw silk as you can. After you buy it, you can buy it for raw silk to produce it. However, some workshops cannot buy raw silk even if they have money, so they cannot afford fixed workers, so they can only hire them temporarily. And that's it.
Big households will not use all fixed workers. They will always empty 20 to 30% of the looms and temporarily hire people. After a long time, such a rule has been formed."
Shang Yi was a little surprised and said, "You can't buy raw silk even if you have money. Could it be that the supply of raw silk is not enough?"
Cheng Xiexiang said, "That's not the case." He looked around and whispered: "In addition to Suzhou Weaving Bureau, Longxingtang has the final say. Most of the weaver owners want to buy raw silk,"
Everyone has to follow the route of Longxingtang. However, Longxingtang is very tight to raw silk, so it is difficult for people who are not from Longxingtang to get enough raw silk. We open a factory here, and we may encounter this trouble in the future.
.”
Shang Yi nodded and smiled and said, "Raw silk is not only available in Suzhou. We also have many silk farmers in Hangzhou. Longxingtang can manage Suzhou, but they are beyond the reach of Hangzhou, let alone raw silk from other places. We just arrived.
Suzhou, don’t easily conflict with Longxingtang.”
Cheng Xiexiang hurriedly said, "Yes, yes, it is better to be kind and make money, and make money with harmony."
Shang Yi looked at him again and said lightly: "But if he wants to bully us, then we won't blame us."
Li Gefei also said: "What the adults say is reasonable. If no one offends me, I will not offend others. We do business in a harmonious manner and do not bully others, but we will never be bullied by others."
Shang Yi asked again: "I just heard from the hired worker that he wanted to hire someone who had a loom at home. Do these retail investors have a loom at home?"
Wang Bai said: "These random workers are divided into two types. One type of workers has a loom at home. They only need to get raw silk from other large workshops and go home to weave them. Some people do not have a loom and can only go to the workshops of large farmers.
Go to work with their loom." After a pause, he said: "But the few retail investors who have looms at home are, and most of the families are still well-off, because a loom is not cheap, so you have to say at least two.
Ten taels of silver are all over the place, and some good jacquard looms may reach sixty or seventy taels of silver. There are also many people who are small workshops in their own homes, and they usually weave some plain silks by themselves, but there is no such thing as
When you work hard, you will also come out to take on some work."
Shang Yi thought about it and said, "How many looms are usually found in the largest weaver in Suzhou now?"
Wang Bai said: "Overy large households have seventy or eighty to hundreds of looms. Only Jiangsu Weaving Bureau has nearly a thousand looms, and only thirty or forty. We have now negotiated three workshops, if all of them are
After buying it, there are more than 100 looms, which can be regarded as the largest weaver in Suzhou."
Shang Yi smiled and said, "What's the use of more than 100 looms? If we want to do silk business, we will do the largest, best and strongest. The best loom is only sixty or seventy taels of silver, and one hundred can only be
Only 60,000 to 70,000 taels of silver, what does it count?"
Li Gefei said: "Sir, what's the point of doing it? Otherwise, we wouldn't have to work so hard to open a weaving factory in Suzhou." Lin Zhiyang and Zhang Gengqiu nodded frequently after hearing this.
, but Wang Bai and Cheng Xiexiang's faces became obviously unnatural.
Shang Yi saw their expressions and also made a new assessment of his five partners. Lin Zhiyang was born in a wealthy business family, and Li Gefei and Zhang Gengqiu were also people who had seen the world.
Abominable to big things, he was very supportive of his plans from the beginning. Only Wang Bai and Cheng Xiexiang were inland businessmen after all, with narrow eyes and shallow eyes, only looking at the small profits in front of him, but lacking the spirit of adventure, although they didn't say it.
What, but I kept wondering, but Xin Shangyi made the weaving factory bigger and it would be difficult to deal with it in the end. Of course, this is also a common problem for Chinese merchants in this era, and they still need more guidance.
On the other hand, Shang Yi also knew that this was the state of the capitalist production relations that appeared in the late Ming Dynasty. The so-called capitalist production relations Yindian actually refers to a kind of employment production relations that completely deprived the land, and the weaver.
Survival is entirely due to earning wages rather than agricultural production, and some characteristics of early workers have been found in terms of economic living. Of course, this is also the inevitable result of the development of commodity economy in China's coastal areas.
However, although the commodity economy was very developed in the late Ming Dynasty, the development of capitalist Yinya was very fragile. Suzhou's weaving industry was diverse, but the largest weaving workshop was only 100 looms, small and medium-sized units based on households.
Handmade production workshops still account for the majority. And there are not many weavers who survive purely on wages. Most weavers themselves also have land or tenant farmers, and they only come out to find work during the slack farming period. Therefore, although the Qing Dynasty
The commodity economy was inferior to the Ming Dynasty, but capitalism was more developed than that of the Ming Dynasty because some similar workshops in the Qing Dynasty were larger in scale and more early workers survived on wages.
But overall, whether in the Ming and Qing dynasties, the development of capitalist Yinya has always been very weak, and it cannot disintegrate the small peasant economy, family production mode, promote social division of labor, trigger revolution, and build new production relations. It has made China always wandering in a feudal and autocratic society and it is difficult to achieve breakthrough development.
However, the reasons for this result are many aspects, not to what some people in later generations say, that the Qing army entered the pass and interrupted China's development. In fact, after the Qing army entered the pass, they almost completely copied the political and economic situation. The Ming Dynasty's system was just that autocracy was more severe and its means were much more brutal. Even without the Qing army entering the pass, according to the development trend of the Ming Dynasty, China could not achieve breakthrough development and entered the capitalist era.
But now it is different. Since Shang Yi has come to this time and space, Zhi Shao must do his best to do some useful things for China's development and try to make China move forward on the right path. Although historical development is not personal Power can be controlled, but it cannot be denied that individual prominent figures can promote changes in the direction of history at certain historical development moments.
Today, China can be said to have reached such a historical crossroads. On the one hand, social development has initially prepared the capitalist development revolution and changed the conditions for production relations. On the other hand, ancient traditions and decadent feudal autocracy The system is hindering the development of new forces. China is actually not in conflict with the two ends of innovation and conservatism. Unfortunately, China in another time and space finally chose to go all the way to the darkness on the road of conservatism and missed this The best time for history.
But if someone could use one force to pull China on another path at this time, what kind of results would they get? This is also a topic that some historians in later generations are interested in. However, Shang Yi has now gotten Although such an opportunity may not be guaranteed to be successful, at least we have to try it. Even if it fails, there will be no loss for China. At worst, we can still return to the old path of another time and space. I didn’t even dare to try it. What’s the point of traveling through time this time?
This time, the establishment of a weaving factory in Suzhou was the first compensation trial made by Shang Yi. Since the Yinya of capitalist production relations is still weak, then do your best to make it grow. Shang Yi believes that As long as you successfully run the factory this time, more people will definitely follow it. It will inevitably bring about a great development in silk production, create more industrial workers, and drive the development of other industries. Then your own goal is also That's it.
Thinking of this, Shang Yi suddenly felt that he had a collision with history. If he could really succeed in this time and space, then how would people in this time and space evaluate this matter? Will they? Is this a matter seen as a point of demolition in China's historical development?
And at this moment, Cheng Xiexiang said, "Everyone, it's here, we have arrived with the sutra."