"Two comrades, please excuse me for a moment." Li Qiwei said, cupping his hands to the two of them.
"You are busy first, business is urgent." Li Shan said politely, and Li Qiwei stepped forward to unfold the cloth, and did the same operation again: shaking his head and nitpicking, and after some haggling, he quoted the price: "Two pieces of homespun cloth, a total of three triangles, four and six cents.
arts."
"Explain the price of cotton cloth?" The retail investor asked in surprise after hearing the quotation, "Yesterday my neighbor came to sell it, and he sold it for 2 cents a piece!"
"It doesn't matter, there are more cloths and more monkeys every month." Shopkeeper Li had a helpless expression on his face, "Besides, your cloth is made from local yarn, and the market is the worst! No one wants it on the market now..."
"Boss! Please do me a favor. Can you give me another one cent? Five cents is fine!"
"Brother, how big a business do you think I am! And the rent, and the man..." Li Qiwei said with a bitter look on his face, "I can't stand it any longer." "I just want to make some moving money. You have to sell it at a good price, and then you can do it in the future."
If you buy machine yarn, you should at least buy improved yarn for weaving fabrics!”
"Machine-made yarn is expensive. We have cotton in our village. We can spin and weave it ourselves. It is not cost-effective to buy yarn..." The machine worker shook his head repeatedly.
The next few cloth sellers were killed by shopkeeper Li with his dragon-slaying knife, and all of them returned home defeated. As the saying goes, they come with good fortune and return with bad luck.
"Look, does this mean I've charged three to five dou more?" Zou Biao poked at Lishan.
"I'm afraid this will become the norm from now on." Li Shan whispered. He was secretly surprised. Didn't he say that the price of cotton has increased a lot? Looking at it, the price is falling.
After Li Qiwei finished the work at hand, he hurried over to accompany him. He served tea and took out cigarettes. Li Shan took a look and saw that it was still a Shengchuan brand! This shopkeeper is really particular about people.
Lishan was confused about the price of cotton, so he asked: "Has the price of cotton dropped? I saw it was still rising yesterday..."
"It was true that it still rose yesterday. But today the market has changed." Seeing that they all declined cigarettes, Li Qiwei brought over a plate of betel nuts - which the two of them were even more grateful for.
"What's going on?" Li Shan asked.
"Originally, there is a big buying order for cotton every day, and the quantity is not necessarily certain, but even if it is the smallest amount, no one in the market can eat it alone. Several families share it." Li Qiwei said, "But the big one the day before yesterday
The buying orders didn’t come out, and I didn’t buy a single piece of cloth..."
Zou Biao frowned and said, "Who is buying?"
"Nanyang Company." Li Qiwei said, "Since the market opened, they have been buying continuously. Not only are the quantities large, but they also have cheap coarse cloth. The price has been raised immediately. When everyone sees the market, it is like this
Okay, everyone has followed up..."
Both Li and Zou recalled a joint notice issued by the Government Affairs Council and the Planning Institute last year. In order to promote the market economy and private manufacturing, in terms of material procurement, as long as it can be purchased on the market, try to purchase it from the market instead of going in-house.
Transfer settlement channels.
"Then why don't you buy it?"
"I don't know, maybe I can't even check all the buyers." Li Qiwei said, "There were no buying orders in Nanyang the day before yesterday, only scattered small buying orders. Everyone was hoping that it would be sold the next day.
Pan. After all, I heard that they have immigrants in Cochin and Nanyang. I heard that there are 100,000 immigrants. Just to make clothes and bedding for the immigrants, you have to buy 100,000 pieces of cloth..."
Zou Biao couldn't help but ask: "Who did you hear that Nanyang Company wants to immigrate 100,000 people?"
"It's been said in the market." Li Qiwei took a sip of tea and tasted the taste, "We don't know if it's true or not. But Nanyang Company bought so much cloth, it's not necessarily for hoarding, there must be a source..."
"There was no trading the day before yesterday, and there probably wasn't any yesterday either?"
"Exactly, so as soon as the market opened today, the price of coarse cloth fell..."
"How much did it fall?"
"Yesterday I paid only two cents for this kind of homespun cloth made of homespun yarn. Today it is only one dime and seven cents and three cents. It has dropped to two cents and seven cents...
Lishan made a rough calculation and found that the drop had exceeded 20%. He was shocked. This was too drastic!
In Guangzhou, two yuan is enough for a family of four to maintain the most basic livelihood. Earning two cents and seven cents less from a piece of cloth is no longer a small sum.
"Have you received the cloth? Can you ship it now?"
"Yes, homespun cloth is cheap and easy to ship." Li Qiwei said, "As long as the price is right, there will always be people who want it." He pointed to the cloth piled in the warehouse behind, "Even though the homespun cloth looks ugly and thick, people who like to use it still want it.
There are so many. Dealers who go to the countryside like to come to me to buy bulk goods."
"Aside from the lack of big buying, what other reasons are there?"
"There are more cloths on the market, so the price will naturally drop." Li Qiwei said, "It is now the end of June, and the Portuguese merchant ship will come to Guangzhou next month. By then, a large amount of Indian cloth will arrive in the port. The amount of cloth on the market
Cloth prices are going to drop again. So the market will only continue to go down..."
If supply is sufficient and market expectations are bearish, prices will naturally fall. This is a simple truth.
When Li Shan asked about "machine yarn", Li Qiwei boasted: "This is really a first-class yarn! It is uniform, fine and tough, and the weaving is smooth when hung on the machine. It is not easy to break, and the cloth produced is also fine! There are many workshops
Both the machine workers and the machine workers are willing to buy machine-made gauze cloth. Although the price is more expensive, the woven cloth is much better than home-made gauze cloth!"
"Then why do people still use native yarn?"
"The price is high!" Li Qiwei looked at him with a strange expression, "Everyone knows that machine yarn is easy to use, but the price is much higher than that of homespun yarn. Besides, most of the homespun cloth from farmers is self-spun and self-woven. How many of them are there?
How much cloth can be woven with yarn, and cotton yarn is rarely purchased from outside."
It seems that the launch of machine yarn and improved yarn has not shaken the market of homespun cloth. Zou Shan knows that the output of machine yarn is now limited and is still in the state of "high quality and good price". As a rural sideline, homespun yarn has almost "zero" labor cost.
, can still occupy the low-end market at a very low price. To defeat local yarns, machine yarns must rely on larger scale and lower production costs...
"Is local yarn sold separately?" he continued to ask.
Generally speaking, most goods under the feudal economy were self-produced from raw materials to products, used by oneself, and sold by oneself. Most goods were also used for taxes, so trade in semi-finished products was actually relatively rare.
"Of course. Before there was machine yarn, cotton yarn was spun and woven by farmers themselves. People who didn't have looms sold the yarn - you probably know that spinning yarn doesn't require much capital, and you have cotton at home.
That’s it…”
The most primitive spinning method does not even require a hand spinning machine. A spindle can be used to spin yarn. The investment required is just cotton and manpower. But weaving is different. A loom can cost as little as a few taels.
It costs dozens of taels of silver, and ordinary farmers can rarely afford it.
Therefore, local yarn has always been circulated, but the scope of circulation is very small, and the farthest is the nearby market. Small cloth merchants like Li Qiwei initially went to various rural markets to purchase cotton yarn and gave it to small businesses on credit.
The machine owners then buy back their woven cloth.
"...Originally, my family collected yarn as well as cloth, but now we only collect cloth. The yarn went out on credit, and if we can't collect a load of cloth, we will suffer a big loss. We are a small business and cannot afford to lose money."
"Is there anyone who buys yarn locally in bulk?"
"Yes, there is one in Dabuzhuang. They have strong capital and are backed by the government or large gentry families. They are not afraid that your weavers will not pay the cloth."
"Then, are there a large number of yarn sellers?"
"I've never seen this before. Speaking of which, Australians are the first to sell machine-made yarn in large quantities."
It seems that the launch of machine yarn and improved yarn has not shaken the market of homespun cloth. Zou Shan knows that the output of machine yarn is now limited and is still in the state of "high quality and good price". As a rural sideline, homespun yarn has almost "zero" labor cost.
, can still occupy the low-end market at a very low price. To defeat local yarns, machine yarns must rely on larger scale and lower production costs...
While they were talking, the clerk brought a piece of paper, which turned out to be the "Market Updates" printed by the market every afternoon. Li Qiwei looked at it and sighed: "It has fallen again! Even the cotton yarn market has fallen! It seems that tomorrow
The market situation is even worse."
The waiter said: "Shopkeeper! Do you want to stop publishing..."
"Don't stop yet," Li Qiwei thought for a moment, "From now on, no matter what kind of cloth, each horse will be trained five cents... no, five cents!"
"So? It fell again?"
"That's right, this time it's all falling!" Li Qiwei handed the business paper to Li Shan, "Not only did cotton fall, but cotton yarn fell, and even cotton started to fall... This is incredible..." He suddenly remembered something,
He called a waiter and said: "Go back to the city immediately and tell your uncle to get rid of all the paper and cotton in your hands immediately. No matter how much money you have now, sell it immediately and leave no one behind!"
Li Shan looked at the market, and sure enough, all cotton prices fell. It was not particularly large in terms of magnitude, but it was the first time since the market opened that such a comprehensive decline occurred. The two of them suddenly became nervous. They heard the shopkeeper's order to sell.
Paper cotton, Li Shan couldn't help but ask:
"What? You bought paper cotton too?!"
"I didn't buy it, my uncle did!" Li Qiwei's face showed anxiety, "My wife probably also invested her private money in it..."
"I heard that the price of paper and cotton is rising every day. As long as your uncle bought the paper and cotton a few days ago, he can still make a profit by selling it now."
"The two comrades are right," Li Qiwei's expression of anxiety subsided slightly, "I'm just afraid that he is greedy for small profits and refuses to get rid of it in time! After all, this paper price also fell a few days ago, and then it went back up again."
"Then how do you know whether the price will go back up this time?"
"It goes without saying that the prices of cotton cloth and cotton yarn are all falling at the moment. How can the cotton, which will be delivered in a few months and whose location is unknown, not fall? As soon as the Portuguese merchant ship arrived and Indian cotton cloth was unloaded and entered the market, the price of this cotton cloth fell faster and more
If there are too many, this paper cotton will probably be just a piece of waste paper by then!"