[Comprehensive History] Clothes are all over the world

In China's invention and creation circle, there is a strange tradition that it is good to enjoy the shade under a big tree.

Whenever there are some brand-new inventions, creations and transformations, they like to rely on the old predecessors. It can be regarded as an advertising effect while being exposed. For example, wooden products must be tied to Luban, and all kinds of wonderful creations must be found by Mr. Kong Ming. It is an old practice to hang up Sun Simiao.

The Huangpo machine is also a product under such a big tree. It is the result of improvement of the existing spinning machinery by a group of folk craftsmen. It is powered by hand and drives seven spindles with one spinning wheel. It is just such a machine. It is bulky and requires rubber bands for force transmission because of the high cost.

Daming has a large population, and manpower is cheap, especially in some remote mountainous areas. The labor force is free even if it is rounded up. Compared with spending energy on making large-scale machinery, before that, more businessmen chose to outsource labor services.

But the situation is different now. The market is urgent and the price is high. Give it a go, and the donkey will turn into a carriage.

In modern business terminology, there is a situation called the "catfish effect", which refers to putting a few catfish that feed on fish in a school of fish. The fish school is under pressure to survive, but it is more vigorous. Today's market in Daming is in this way.

Since June, due to the demand for cotton yarn, a large number of manufacturing workshops have poured into the market. These workshops that use and transform various spinning machines rely on their own output and market share to gradually dominate the yarn product market. In order to catch up With the trend of the times, more and more handicraft workshops have to purchase these upgraded machines.

Time turned to August, and the supply of cotton yarn in the Yingtianfu market quickly caught up with the demand. Thanks to the efforts of all parties, there were even signs of exceeding it. Although the market in Yingtianfu was only a small part of the country, as a The capital is also the center of the textile industry, and the data and indexes of Yingtianfu are undoubtedly very representative.

"The output of cotton yarn is too high, and the price has begun to fall. The price has exceeded [-]% in the last month, and the trend is still unabated." Xia Yuanji, the right servant of the household department who is in charge of monitoring the prices of goods across the country, presented the fruits of his labor for half a decade with both hands. After the internal officer took the memorial from him, he stood there bowed, never raised his head from the beginning to the end, and followed the face-to-face etiquette in every move—even if he was meeting the prince of the Ming Dynasty instead of the present emperor, he would still be in step. Follow step by step, dare not have the slightest fallacy.He was still young when he entered the officialdom, and his qualifications were far from being able to face the saint. He was able to come to visit His Highness the Crown Prince today. Apart from the fact that he was in charge of this matter, it was mainly because of his good looks.

There are laws in the Ming Dynasty. Those sent by the six heavenly officials must be the ones with the most upright appearance and the loudest voice. It's because the emperor of Ming Dynasty had such a little problem with face control, but because the court meetings of the Ming Dynasty were all held in open-air squares. In this era without amplified microphones, if a person with a voice like a mosquito came out, even if he was tall Badou, it's useless if everyone can't hear it.

When it was decided that he would report to His Highness this time, even though Xia Yuanji was usually calm, he could not help feeling uneasy. Fortunately, his colleague, Jian Rong, the left servant of the household department, gave him a lot of comfort and taught him how to get along with His Highness the Crown Prince. way.

"To put it simply, it's just a straight talk," Jian Rong said with a smile, "His Royal Highness likes people who speak straight words, and doesn't like to go round and round, let alone flattery."

According to Jian Rong, His Royal Highness the Crown Prince of Daming could not get along any easier, but at this moment, Xia Yuanji was secretly complaining.

Brother Jian, did you never tell the next crown prince that besides speaking directly, he also likes to ask questions that are too direct and harsh.

When asked the question of "what's your opinion on this matter", Xia Yuanji felt cold sweat in his palms.

He was born in the common people, and he understands the difficulties of people's livelihood. From his point of view, it is natural to judge that the current situation is not good.

Xia Yuanji didn't want the merchant to go bankrupt. There are at least ten or even hundreds of farmers and artisans behind a merchant. The relationship between them can be said to be complementary and closely related.

But he was really not sure about the Crown Prince's attitude towards merchants. If he said he didn't care...His Royal Highness would send someone to investigate the data of Daming merchants every once in a while, but if he said he cared, this question was really not very friendly.

Hesitating again and again, Xia Yuanji gritted his teeth, and still expressed his opinion: "I heard that the yarn households purchased a batch of textile machinery with a large investment before, and hired a large number of people to work. If the purchase price of cotton yarn continues to fall, It is bound to affect Sato's interests, and it will also dampen the enthusiasm of the other party."

Xia Yuanji's eyes fell on his shoes. His shoes were soap boots issued after he joined the job. This kind of shoes have been starched, and the fabric is crisp and waterproof, not easy to wrinkle. However, the surface of his shoes already has a layer of floating Hair, this is the result of washing too many times.

Ordinary officials would not stare at a pair of shoes to wear, but Xia Yuanji was born in a poor family, and it was not easy to study and study all the way. He was also the eldest son of the family, even though the official salary of the Ming Dynasty was quite considerable after adding various subsidies, But for him, today's life still needs to be considered to buy a pair of shoes again.

And after he finished his next words, this kind of life may be gone, but even so, the young man took a breath, and continued: "The yarn household is a small matter, but I think this is also a test for the merchants. If you buy brand new The mechanical Shado has failed, and I am afraid that no merchant will dare to upgrade the equipment in the future. I dare to speculate that this should not be a scene that the imperial court would like to see, so I ask Your Highness to help."

After his words came out, there was silence in the room. The servants and maids who were serving were watching their noses, their noses, their hearts. They even breathed quietly, but they couldn't help but sigh in their hearts that this strange little official was so bold. But with a lot of threatening meaning.

"Hmm..." A moment later, when the atmosphere in the room was so cold that it was about to freeze Xia Yuanji's heart, the young man in dark yellow uniform moved. He turned a page of the note in his hand, calmly Said: "Go on."

Xia Yuanji's mental strength suddenly relaxed, and he let out the breath he had been holding in quietly just now, and forced himself to calm down, "I am not good at business, but I feel that the speed of the yarn workshop is a bit too fast. Before that, I checked the expansion speed of Daming bookstores from the household department for comparison. Daming bookstores were opened in large numbers after the book "Three Kingdoms" became popular. The investment of bookstores is lower than that of yarn workshops, but the expansion speed is only [-]% of that, so I dare to guess ..."

"Do you think there is a pusher behind it?"

"Yes, I am stupid."

Mu Bai smiled, he put together the memorials in his hands, put them aside, picked up another volume from the table, and handed it to the inner officer: "You are really sharp, look at this."

Xia Yuanji took it, and when he unfolded it, he was startled. This memorandum clearly stated a flow of funds, and the relationship among them was intricate. Just these three parties.

Funds flowed out from the cloth merchants, passed through the bank and arrived at the yarn mill through various means.

It is because of sufficient funds that the mill owners of Daming carried out drastic industrial upgrading.

This is not a bad thing at all. If one or two cloth merchants have a surplus of funds, it is normal to borrow money from the yarn mill through the bank. reluctantly.

This was clearly a bloodless fight and encirclement.

"Your guess is correct." As if judging from his expression, Mu Bai nodded: "The textile industry has always been the pillar and leading industry in the Jiangnan area. In the past few years, whether it is silk or cotton , Most of the bargaining power for fabrics is in their hands."

"However, in recent years, with the sea transportation and the proximity of Guangdong and Guangdong, cotton can be purchased at a cheaper price, and foreign trade has become more convenient. Guangzhou and Guangdong have begun to send people to purchase cloth in large quantities in Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Its output is restricted by merchants in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, so they deliberately transport cotton to the mountainous areas and use the cheaper local labor for production, so Jiangnan's bargaining power is weakening."

As if to make it easier for him to understand, Mu Bai spoke slowly, but the meaning in his words was very clear.

It is precisely because Daming opened the sea trade, which took away the advantages of cotton planting from the Jiangnan area, and now there are yarn workshops that are becoming stronger day by day, so the merchants in Jiangnan, who sensed the crisis, united and became fierce, intending to pass the current It happened that the method killed the yarn workshop in one breath.

If spinning, which is the first step in the cotton spinning industry, is curbed, no matter how much cotton there is, it will not have much impact on cloth prices.If they really achieve their goals, the price of the cloth may really be manipulated by them.

In today's Daming, cloth itself is also a valuable commodity, and it can hold the pricing power. To some extent, the effect of controlling the price of grain is similar.

Xia Yuanji, who wanted to understand this, suddenly shuddered. Previously, he was only out of sympathy for the people who were implicated innocently, but now he knew that this was a fight without swords or swords.

"Your Highness..." He said dryly, "Is the government going to arrest someone?"

"Of course not," Mu Bai shook his head. The current development of the matter is still purely in the commercial field, and what the other party has done has not violated any major orders... Well, maybe illegal fundraising is one, but the boundary is still a bit blurry. If the government acts directly and violently, it will also easily dampen the enthusiasm of private capital.

Faced with this situation, it is necessary to use magic to deal with magic.

"Find a few safe people to contact the yarn workshop, and connect them with each other, and get to know each other and communicate with each other." Mu Bai rested his chin on the table with one hand, and tapped his fingertips on his cheeks, "They If we can unite, so can the yarn mills. If the fabric houses have the power to set prices, so can they. It’s not appropriate for the officials to come forward for this kind of thing, so you should do it more secretly.”

The result of everyone's pricing is bound to be a fight, but compared to the original unilateral strangling, it is now considered a needle-point confrontation. As the upstream and downstream of the supply chain, they will always negotiate a price that is acceptable to each other.

Hello and me are good for everyone.

In fact, these cloth merchants have jumped too early. When sewing machines become popular in the future, the demand for cloth will rise, and the supply of cotton yarn will be sufficient, and they will naturally return to their previous high status.

It’s just that now that there is such a commotion, all walks of life will follow suit in the future. In the long run, the market with high prices and available prices will be replaced by pricing mechanisms and industrial protection. Just be pushed away.Although they are all leaders, there is a huge difference between active and passive.

Maybe one is not good. Yarn workshops with sufficient volume and experience in transformation will bypass cloth merchants for industrial upgrading. Nowadays, looms are not considered very confidential items. Those who have money and leisure can buy a few back. It is not impossible to think about how to improve.

Well, the expressions of those Jiangnan merchants must have been pretty at that time.

But what does this have to do with Mu Xiaobai?He just slightly suppressed the input of the sewing machine.

The reason for the pressure is entirely to give priority to the supply of iron materials to the production of firearms. This reason is completely justified. After all, after nearly 30 years of developing firearms, Ming finally wanted to set up an independent department to focus on the manufacture of firearms and gunpowder. .

And this also means that Daming's gunpowder and firearms will move to a new level, whether it is specialization or standardization, it will take a new level.

In the fourth year of Jianwen, the right to make firearms from all states in the country was collected, and it was dedicated to Yingtian military battles.

In the same year, the Bingzhan Bureau handed over their first product after its establishment-a long tube, spindle-shaped copper-iron composite artillery.

This cannon is formed in one piece, with ballistics inside and front sights outside. The range can reach an astonishing thousand steps, and within [-] steps, its accuracy can be within an arm's length.

Its appearance heralded that Ming Dynasty had officially entered the world of guns, and it also indicated that the country had embarked on a new journey since then.

In the fifth year of Jianwen, Ming's first large-scale ship equipped with naval guns, "Triumph", went to sea for trial voyage. Led by Yan Wang Zhu Di and Zhou Wang Zhu Huan, they embarked on their third search for the island full of minerals and pastures in the South China Sea. journey.

This is also King Zhou's first time to go to sea. This King of Daming, whose skill points are all in botany, insists on traveling this time to find overseas medicinal herbs.

He had heard about many miraculous herbal medicines overseas, and had personally seen many plants brought back by various parties. He had long wanted to go out and have a look, but as a typical liberal arts student, His Royal Highness King Zhou was physically weak. Weak chicken, if it weren't for his half-brother who went to sea this time, he would definitely not be able to get on this ship.

Before the trip, Zhu Huan collected all kinds of difficult and miscellaneous diseases in Daming medicine, especially various diseases with external appearances, especially the epidemic situation. In order to show the disease more accurately, he specially asked someone to use it before. The method of perspective drawing draws the pathology on the paper.

The so-called perspective painting method comes from Baihua, and today Baihua has traveled all over the north and south of Ming Dynasty with the registration of identity and household registration. This lifelike painting method has attracted a large number of painters to learn and imitate since its appearance, especially It was after the court painters followed suit that countless people tried to decipher its mysteries.

To put it bluntly, Baihua is the magic of light and shadow. When you realize the existence of shadows, the equipment is no longer important.Now in Daming, there are already a group of people who have come out of the small black room and can draw paintings similar to Baihua by hand. Zhu Wei is also one of them, but he has a specialization in art. He can be said to be lifelike in painting plants, but in other aspects Just a little bit worse.

However, it was his eldest nephew who asked someone to draw the disease. His Royal Highness smiled and said that the languages ​​used in different places are different, and the words used to describe the disease are also different. Just across the Yellow River and Yangtze River in China, there are different sayings, but the disease is Disease, no matter how many changes in words, there is still not much difference in expression, as long as it is drawn and displayed, people should be able to understand what it means even if the language is different.

Zhu Wei gave his nephew a big thumbs-up, and then collected a bunch of intractable diseases, so ambitious that he boarded the boat.

By the way, considering that the ship was headed south, and their purpose was to find Australia, His Royal Highness was so prescient that someone made a batch of gauze curtains and screen windows for them to wear.

Neither Zhu Di nor Zhu Huan expected that when they were deviated from the course by the waves and storms, and finally landed on an island after a long voyage, and came into contact with a group of local aborigines with naked bodies and feathers, no Not by silk, nor by china, but by these nets that acquired their first kindness.