Chapter 1470 Unworthy descendants
Chang'an two years, autumn.
Luzon, Taixing Islands, Miangang.
Mian Island, where Miangang is located, is the largest island in the Taixing Islands, which is larger than Maya Port in the northwest of it. Besides the Central Plain of Luzon, it is the most fertile plain among the Luzon Islands. It is located between the western mountains and the eastern hills. Between them is a fertile plain stretching 320 miles from north to south.
Several large river deltas form a vast plain lowland in the southeast of the island, and now it has become the most famous agricultural area in Luzon.
There are sugar cane, cotton, abaca, and rice plantations all over the place. In the plantations, Hu tenant farmers from Persia, North Korea, Pyuyue, and Tianzhu are working hard in the fields, and there are also many black slaves from Kunlun and Egypt.
The cotton port in the southeast of the plain, named after the cotton trade, is now an important trading port in Luzon.
Miangang faces Xinzhu Azhou Island across a narrow strait.
Xinzhua Island, which covers an area of more than 9,000 hectares, is full of mango trees. It is not a big island in the Taixing Islands, but it happens to be stuck between the two major islands of the Taixing Islands, Miandao and Xinlaizhou Island.
The distance between Miangang and Xinzhua Port is only five miles. The already narrow strait makes Miangang a good shelter from the wind. Trade in agricultural products flourished.
Qin Lang inspected the cotton port, and the wharf area was bustling. There were many cotton warehouses and primary processing workshops, such as seed removal and cotton ginning.
Cotton planting management and picking in the cotton manor are very labor-intensive, and it is a labor-intensive industry. However, the picked seed cotton needs to undergo many initial processing procedures. From seed cotton to lint cotton, it must go through many procedures.
Then the cotton is turned into yarn, and then into cloth, and there are many other industries.
In terms of cotton planting, processing, and weaving, the Qin family is considered to be at the forefront of the times. San Francisco is now the world's largest cotton textile center, with a small number of 100,000 cotton mill workers. In Miangang, it is mainly the primary cotton purchase, primary processing from seed cotton to lint cotton, forming an industrial group with more than 10,000 people.
Large factories and small workshops are everywhere.
Because of the advantages of the cotton port processing industry, cotton planting here is also more cost-effective, so there are cotton plantations everywhere on the plain of more than 300 miles, and there are far more serfs here than on other islands, especially a large number of black slaves .
The black slaves in the cotton plantations in Miangang and the Persian textile workers in San Francisco’s textile city are also two of Luzon’s characteristic industrial workers, comparable to the gold diggers in Ningyuan.
"The First Research Institute of the College of Engineering has recently developed the latest cotton gin, which can increase the efficiency of our existing cotton gin for removing cotton seeds by several times."
"Has it been verified?" Qin Lang couldn't help being surprised when he heard this, and asked quickly.
"They have applied for a technical patent to the Patent Office of the Luzon Academy of Knights, and the prototype has passed preliminary verification, and the technology is indeed feasible."
Before Wude, cotton was only grown in a small amount in Gaochang and other places in the Western Regions. The cloth woven into it was called white folded cloth, and when sold in the Central Plains, it was actually more expensive than silk.
The reason why their cotton cloth is expensive is that although the Western Regions are suitable for growing cotton, their cotton processing technology is still very backward. It is very backward, which leads to the production cost of cotton cloth, which is indeed much higher than that of other silk and linen.
Qin Lang started cotton planting since the beginning of Zhenguan, and has always used the method of offering huge rewards to improve new processing technology, and has researched and developed various machine tools for the cotton spinning industry from generation to generation.
The Qin family stopped picking cotton by hand for a long time, and the machines for removing cotton seeds have also been updated for dozens of generations, from the first-generation machine that used rollers to the current four-frame floor-standing mixer, which uses cranks, institutions such as leverage.
"This new type of agitator is mainly composed of two rollers. One roller is covered with iron spikes to catch the cotton and separate it from the cottonseed, and the second roller is covered with short and hard hairs. The cotton on the first roller brushes down so it doesn't clog."
"The research institute is still working on improvements, planning to use hydraulic power to drive the cotton gin."
When Qin Lang heard this, he also knew that this new type of cotton gin was indeed very advanced. Compared with the traditional single-person hand-operated mixer, or the current three-person or four-person driven mixer, this double-drum cotton gin , is indeed more advanced.
"Give them this year's Luban Award, and then give them a special reward from the king, and those few research talents, give them the title of knight..."
Qin Lang has always attached importance to technology and likes these ingenious things. Now Luzon has set up a number of technical awards such as Luban, and the rewards are generous.
Even set up a patent office in the Academy of Knights to provide protection for some technical inventions, so that they can obtain patent transfer fees or royalties, so that more people are willing to research and create, and drive the development of new technologies.
"Cotton is a great economic weapon for us in Luzon, especially in cotton spinning. We must always maintain technological leadership. From ginning to spinning to dyeing and weaving, we must always maintain technological advantages. In this way, we Only in this way can we always control costs, reduce costs, have cost advantages, and then gain a larger market.”
The agricultural conditions in Luzon are still good, but there are frequent typhoons every year, but after all, with such excellent land and weather, agriculture must be developed, but Qin Lang has long set the tone of Luzon's agriculture, that is, he will not follow the tradition The old way of growing and exporting food, that has no future.
Sugar cane planting, cotton planting, and planting of abaca, spices, tea, etc. are the future development direction. After ensuring the basic grain field grain planting and the red line of grain self-sufficiency, vigorously developing these economic crops is the kingly way.
In the cultivation of sugar cane and cotton, further development of sugar refining, textile and spice processing, etc., are also not necessarily development goals.
And the Qin family has long understood through the dividends in sugar refining and sugar trade that only by mastering high-end technology can they seize more markets and obtain more profits.
You only earn the most hard-earned money by growing cotton, and weaving cotton into cloth is the core piece of cake in the entire industry.
And these are inseparable from technical support. Whether it is a ginning machine, a spinning machine, or a weaving machine, it needs to be constantly updated to continuously improve production efficiency and reduce costs.
After cotton is spun into yarn, it is then processed into two categories: natural color cotton cloth and dyed weaving cloth. Various forms of specialized looms can weave various printed cloth, plaid cloth, striped cloth, etc.
The Qin family's cotton cloth now occupies the mainstream cotton cloth market. Because of the rapid technological innovation, other merchants can't keep up. The backward technology has brought about rising costs, and the price has no advantage, so they can only be eliminated by the Qin family.
Qin cloth has also become synonymous with cotton cloth. There are all kinds of cotton cloth, among which Luzon cloth and San Francisco purple cloth are famous cotton boutiques all over the world.
It is more expensive than many high-end silks, why? Just rely on technology.
The jacquard technology in the Qin family's cotton cloth alone can put down all the merchants who want to get involved in this industry. After all, the Qin family now almost monopolizes the cotton textile industry. The biggest trump card is that its technology is updated quickly, and its industry The chain is complete and the industrial scale is large, so that the cost is low and the competitiveness is strong.
Many merchants also tried to use the traditional methods of weaving linen and silk to join the cotton textile industry, but they soon tasted the bitter fruit.
Qin Lang is very optimistic about the cotton spinning industry. He has publicly declared more than once that compared with silkworms, cotton has the effect of harvesting without the labor of harvesting. It can be said that it can be said to be cloth without hemp, and cotton without cocoon", "it can also be used as a substitute for felt blankets to mend the cost of browning clothes".
So sooner or later cotton will surpass silk, hemp, and wool.
Since the Qin family has made a good start in such an industry, they will naturally lead it all the time.
"This year, the number of cotton plantations in the Western Regions has increased significantly, and cotton production has also doubled several times. In addition, Dianyue, Lishui, and Xindu Road have also increased many cotton plantations this year. We have new Yangzhou Port, Xindengzhou, and New Fuzhou Port. The cotton purchase points in the country were too busy, and the cotton waiting to be inspected and put into the warehouse was piled up. The ships transporting cotton in the port were almost full. Hire sea ships everywhere to transport the cotton back to San Francisco, but this year's volume, even the manpower in San Francisco's Textile City will not be able to handle it."
Qin Lang looked at Miangang in front of him.
"Then divert some of them to Miangang. Anyway, Miangang is not too far from San Francisco, and here itself has a certain basis for cotton processing. Moreover, the place here is also large now, and there is enough space to expand the workshop here. Build dormitories, canteens and other living quarters.”
Although San Francisco has established a textile city, after all, San Francisco has a large population and is the political, cultural and economic center of Luzon, so the land is still relatively precious.
In the past few years, cotton plantations have increased greatly. There are actually reasons for this. The main reason is that the Northwest and Southwest lands newly conquered by the Tang Dynasty are more suitable for growing cotton. The family members all obtained a large amount of land, and conquered the aborigines through the frontier army, and captured a large amount of labor.
Especially the people from the Qin family lobbied everywhere. After signing a cotton purchase contract with them, they simply calculated that growing cotton is much more cost-effective than growing other things.
The most important thing about growing cotton is to get a lot of land, and it is better to have a large area of land, which is easy to manage. Secondly, growing cotton requires a lot of manpower, and it takes a lot of manpower. It is most cost-effective to plant manor-style planting with serfs. However, there are conditions in the frontiers.
The most important thing for a newly conquered land is land.
As for the cheap and large amount of labor, there is no shortage of them. Finding a reason to start a war against the natives is to take the defeated as slaves. This kind of thing involves the interests of all the soldiers, generals and soldiers on the frontier. Who would object?
And the military towns in the northwest and southwest of the Tang Dynasty, the newly conquered lands, have a climate that is very suitable for cotton cultivation. Since it is profitable, everyone is naturally vying for it.
Especially after the first few batches who took the lead in planting cotton made money, others became more active. This has led to the three towns in the Western Regions, and the newly established Xindu, as well as the annual cotton production in Yunnan, Vietnam and Lishui. It has increased greatly year-on-year, and most of the cotton was finally purchased by the Qin family and shipped to Luzon by boat.
"It seems that we are going to expand the textile city, and we also need more female textile workers!"
Both men and women can grow cotton and pick cotton, but the cotton textile industry needs more professional and skilled industrial workers, especially young female workers.
Faced with this problem, Qin Lang thought about the meeting and proposed a solution, raising wages to attract more young women to work in textile factories to earn money. It is no longer limited to using slaves, whether they are bearded women from Persia, She is also a woman from a good Han family, and the textile factory can recruit her, and she is even willing to raise her wages.
Datang now produces tens of millions of silks of various types this year.
In comparison, the cotton cloth output of the Qin family in Luzon is actually not high. Last year, the cotton cloth shipped out of San Francisco Port in Luzon was only about three million pieces. Although this amount seems amazing to others, Qin Lang felt that It's still not enough, after all, the Qin family now almost monopolizes the cotton textile industry, and the output of cotton cloth is still far behind that of silk and linen.
Qin Lang needs more looms and textile workers.
"Your Highness."
"Luoyang Eryilang wrote back, saying that he had ordered Guangning King Qin Shi to go south with his four sons."
Qin Lang frowned slightly.
"Qin Shi doesn't seem to want to come back? Just let the eldest son come back with four grandchildren?"
"King Wei said that he had just served as the Deputy Privy Envoy for less than a year. Now that he has resigned and left, he owed the Holy Grace, and he resigned to the saint, and the saint has repeatedly asked to stay, so he plans to return after completing this five-year term."
The general local officials in the Tang Dynasty were mostly held for three years, with a small exam every year and a big exam every three years. After the four exams, they had to plan for promotion, promotion or demotion based on the results of the exam. Hold the position for many years. It is even stipulated that after a term of office, officials have to return to the court to report on their duties and seek new positions.
Sometimes it is possible to wait for several years at a time.
As for ministers and ministers, they usually serve every five years. Of course, this is unwritten. In reality, ministers of this level rarely come in strict accordance with their terms of office. It all depends on their relationship with the emperor and whether they are trusted by the emperor. wait.
With the trust of the emperor, even after the age of seventy, he will not be required to serve as an official, and even if he has been in power for more than ten or twenty years, he will not be replaced. If he is not trusted by the emperor, he may be dismissed as soon as he becomes prime minister.
Qin Lun replied to Qin Lang on the grounds that his term of office had not yet expired, which undoubtedly meant that he did not want to return to Luzon.
"It seems that my previous worries were true. When my son grows up, he will become a kite with a broken string."
(end of this chapter)