Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 973 Construction of Southern Liaoning (Part [-])
Salt production is definitely a profitable project. This can be seen from the wealth of salt merchants in Lianghuai Salt Field and Changlu Salt Field. Well, this is worth looking into.

Of course, Gao Wuzhen has no time to delve into it now, because in his opinion, salt production can make a near loss. There are no more than two reasons: one is that the management system has too many loopholes, and the other is that the salt production technology is outdated and backward.

We are all Han people of the same root and race, so we can't say that the Liaodong people are extra lazy, right?You must know that the living conditions in Liaodong are a little worse, so how could they be lazy?Obviously not.

Therefore, the difficulty of opening a new salt field in southern Liaoning is not where to start it-not to mention the whole southern Liaoning, Yingkou alone is already a "hundred miles of silver beach". Salt field?

The difficulty lies in the management system and technical system.

In terms of management system, although Jinghua has no experience in running a saltworks, the general direction of business operations is similar. Most of them can be copied, and at most some relevant technical changes can be made, so this aspect does not need to be too pragmatic and too laborious.

However, the technical system needs to be upgraded.

After Gao Wu asked his uncles Zhang Siwei and Zhang Sijiao to help him provide several master salt makers from Changlu Salt Field, after exchanges and understanding, he confirmed that there is a lot of room for improvement in Daming's salt making technology.

China's salt-making technology developed to the Ming Dynasty. The raw materials are mainly seawater, pond brine, well brine and mineral salt. The raw materials are different, and the salt-making methods are of course also different. When it comes to seawater salt-making, there are two main methods: Japanese Sun-made salt and boiled salt.

In the beginning, Gao Pragmatism did not consider the option of boiling salt at all, because boiling salt requires fuel.

Burning charcoal to boil salt was popular in Chinese dynasties in the past. This is obviously a very expensive salt production method. Although boiling salt does not require high fire and rapid fire, relatively speaking, the energy consumption cannot be said to be particularly high, but after all, the price of charcoal is not low. Still not worth the money.

Later, we started to burn coal to boil salt, and the cost began to decrease. This is good news for Gao Yushi, because he really has no shortage of coal.

Jinghua's current coal mining capacity is almost out of the table relative to the amount used - mainly due to the large number of mines. Later generations of Hebei, Henan, and Shanxi, a famous coal province, are the main spheres of influence of Jinghua. In addition to the Kailuan Coal Mine and Mentougou Coal Mine (outskirts of Yanjing) that he occupies, there are many large mines in Gao Pragmatic's hometown in Henan and Shanxi's "uncle's home".

Even if the transportation cost is high these years, Yingkou can at most use the coal shipped from Kaiping to support it, but Jinghua, as a commercial group, must have the lower the cost, the better, so Gao Pragmatic did not intend to boil salt at the beginning Use your brains.

The first thing he considered upgrading was the drying technology.

According to the master of Changlu Salt Field, there are four kinds of tobacco drying techniques in Daming, namely the furrow drying method, the beach drying method, the Kanjing drying method and the wooden tray drying method. [Without going into details, I will introduce a paper to friends who are interested: "The Development of Salt Production Technology in China and Europe from the 15th to the 19th Century", by Xu Baozheng and Wang Liandi. ]
At this time, Europe had no technical exchanges with East Asia, especially Ming Dynasty, in terms of salt-making technology (there is no evidence in the historical circles), but there was a strong convergence, and the difference was only in some small issues, but there was one point, Europe was ahead In the Ming Dynasty and even later, there were a lot of Daqing, that is, the equipment for extracting brine.

As early as 1437, Europeans invented the "brine extractor" (Erhard Han in France), which was replaced by the Heinz water pump in 1507. Later, the development became faster and faster, and finally in the era of steam engines As a matter of course, steam brine extraction equipment was developed.

In addition, the long-distance brine transmission pipeline is also an advantageous project in Europe, but this project is related to the situation of the division of Europe (especially the Holy Roman Empire), and the environment in which Gao Yushi is located is different, so it has little to do with it.

The first technology that Gao Pragmatism intends to upgrade at present is brine extraction equipment, which can significantly improve the efficiency of salt production, especially after adopting this technology, boiling salt can also be included in the upgrade category-referring to the final stage of salt production. Boiling processing, in order to speed up the speed of salt production, the key is that the amount of coal needed is not large, and the requirements for coal itself are also very low, and some coal types that are not very useful (there are many types of coal) can be used.

For Jinghua, to some extent, it is close to waste utilization.

Such two major upgrades, in addition to spending a little money on the manufacture of brine extraction equipment at the beginning, the rest only need to pay some coal shipping costs, but it can increase the efficiency of salt production by two to three times, Gao Pragmatic thinks Well worth it.

For these two matters, the high-level pragmatism was left to Kaiping, and Gao Rui was responsible for contacting Jinghua Artisan School in the capital to jointly handle them. The Beiyang Fleet was only responsible for transportation.

Then Gao Wushi went to learn from a certain great man of later generations, and went to the beach in Yingkou to "draw a circle".

The "institutional advantages" of feudalism were undoubtedly manifested at this moment. Gao Bingxian first went to Shuyi and did not even wait for an approval. So the nature was changed, the original guards were dismissed from the old place, and the military government office paid this year's salary-this money was subsidized by highly pragmatic individuals, but in the end it would be shared with Zhu Yijun.

The guards didn't have any special reaction to this. Instead, they asked Gao Yushi to report to the court, saying that since the salt was not exposed, should they be exempted from the salt.

Gao Yushi was very courageous, so he agreed directly, and sent away the skeptical representatives of the guards.

In fact, he had already discussed this issue with Zhu Yijun before. The original Liaodong 25 Guards and the 2 Zizai Prefectures will produce 200 million catties of salt per year, which will be borne by the future Jinghua Salt Farm, and will be provided to the guards and states in both quality and quantity. And the Jinghua Salt Farm will increase by 220% on the basis of this quota, that is, actually pay [-] million catties of fine salt.

This is also the reason why Gao Pragmatism is not afraid of being scolded: In the past, it was said that Liaodong’s amount of salt was 200 million catties, but in fact, how much it could be, even the gods were not sure. Now after Jinghua took over, it has not only increased from 200 million catties to 220 million catties, Moreover, the standard of coarse salt has been raised to the standard of refined salt, and there is a lot of premium in it.

In fact, his hand seems to be a "contracting system". He has personally contracted all the "foreign salt" in Liaodong in the past. To check and go to remind, and only need to find a high-level pragmatic person. In terms of administrative efficiency, it has increased by at least 25 times.

If you still get scolded for this, it can only mean that the other party's doing so is not right at all, it is completely against people.

The high-practical memorial was sent to the capital, which really caused some controversy.

However, the focus of the controversy is not the "contracting system" of high pragmatism - Daming's salt industry is actually a contracting system now, but it is contracted in the form of "salt introduction" in other areas. Most of the salt in the Lu Salt Field almost monopolizes the Salt Field.

And Gao Wuzhen's current practice is just a contract system that does not require salt quotations, and the main reason for not using salt quotations is that he has eaten the entire amount of salt in Liaodong—anyway, it is only his family, and the specific number of quotations does not matter. As long as he can hand over the 220 million catties of fine salt he promised, everything else is easy to talk about.

Because as far as the imperial court is concerned, sitting like this will allow them to get rid of a bad debt and dead debt.

The really controversial issue is the resettlement of the group of Yan Ding who were sent back to the guard by Gao Yushi.
-
Thanks to book friends "i58" and "ASolaF" for their monthly ticket support, thank you!
(End of this chapter)