Wind rises time and space gate

Chapter 552 Pricing
There is a house near the north gate of Hangu City. Lin Zhaoxia and Wen brought their servants to check the progress of equipment adjustment.

"Meet the princess, meet Madam Jiang."

"No need to be polite."

Lin Zhaoxia greeted everyone with a smile, asking them whether they had adapted to the Northwest and how they were settling in. She felt relieved when she heard everyone said everything was going well.

"Sister, is this the weaver you invited?"

Lin Zhaoxia nodded. "They are good at weaving all kinds of fabrics, but they have never seen cotton before. It will probably take them some time to get familiar with it."

"I heard that the princess is looking for people to come to the northwest to weave new fabrics. Everyone is very interested and is vying to come. Even if we are not familiar with it, we have come into contact with mulberry, hemp, brocade and silk, so we should be able to do it. When the time comes, we will work together to complete the task assigned by the princess."

A weaver girl who was following nearby said with a smile.

Wen looked at her. Lin Zhaoxia introduced the two parties, "This is Miss Mi. She used to manage a weaving workshop in Lizhou. When the manager found her, she agreed to come to the northwest without hesitation and brought her daughter with her."

Miss Mi next to her also timidly called for help.

"From now on, I will let Madam Wen manage all the affairs of the weaving workshop. Madam Mi will be the manager of the weaving workshop. If you have any questions, just go to Madam Wen."

"Yes."

Everyone agreed, and Wen pulled Mi Niangzi over to chat with her. Lin Zhaoxia also followed them to visit the weaving workshop.

Now the twisting machines, reeling machines, looms, etc. have all been completed and are in the debugging stage. We can just wait for the cotton to be harvested so that we can put them on the machines to weave cotton cloth.

Everyone had never seen cotton before, and only knew a little about it after listening to Lin Zhaoxia's explanation. Lin Zhaoxia said that they would go to the cotton fields to experience the fun of picking cotton in a few days. It would be easier for these weavers to weave this new fabric after experiencing it for themselves.

In addition to cotton cloth, Lin Zhaoxia also coveted blankets, felts and other items brought by Western merchants. When the time comes, he will buy various furs from Western merchants or herdsmen, make leather and wool yarns, and send them to the Central Plains to provide the people with an extra item to keep warm.

When the cotton fields grew into a sea of ​​white flowers, each city would post notices recruiting cotton pickers on the walls at the city gates and at each post station.

Men and women are welcome, aged 12 to 50, healthy, three meals a day, 10 jin 5 wen per person, more work more pay. There are cars to take you to the military farms.

Boom! The cities were boiling again.

Flower pickers? I don't know what flowers they pick, but they get paid 5 cents for 10 kilograms. Can't they pick 100 to 180 kilograms of flowers a day? They are used to doing farm work. Flower picking is a bit more delicate, but who can't do it? Isn't flower picking easy? Is it harder than pulling a plow and digging a hole?
Even if the harvest is small and the wages are low, you still have to go for three meals a day. And not only young and strong people are recruited, but also children as young as 12 and old people around 50 can go!

As soon as the job recruitment information was posted, the post stations and city gates were crowded with applicants.

The public carriages carrying the flower pickers ran to Hangu City and the guard camps of various cities, leaving afterimages. The ruts on the ground were like deep trenches.

After hearing this, Lin Zhaoxia suddenly recalled the years when there were no large-scale cotton picking machines in the northwest and cotton was picked manually. More than 100,000 cotton pickers from neighboring provinces took green trains to Xinjiang to pick cotton.

Picking cotton for two months is equivalent to working for half a year in one’s hometown. The team is huge and the green train is full of people.

How similar to now.

There were quite a few soldiers in the guard camp, but there were many cotton fields, and picking flowers was a delicate job, and they had to catch up with the flowering season. So Lin Zhaoxia discussed with Zhao Guangyuan and recruited flower pickers from all over the place to help pick cotton in each guard camp.

This time, the entire Luo Mancang family went out.

At the beginning of the year, when everyone in the village went to the northwest to find work, Luo Mancang thought that the northwest was unstable and there was a war going on there before the New Year. Who knows when those foreigners will come back again? So he refused to go to the northwest.

As a result, when the villagers who went out to work sent money home, his family was still unable to make ends meet.

When the villagers started to build houses, his family almost had to go out to beg for food. The village chief was kind enough to tell him about the recruitment of flower pickers in the guard camp.

In addition to his parents, Luo Mancang's family also includes him and his wife, who have four children. Except for the two youngest children, one ten years old and the other eight years old, the rest meet the recruitment requirements.

Thinking that the family was about to run out of food, Luo Mancang waved his hand and decided that the whole family should apply for the job together. The two children who failed to apply could help the family with housework, such as washing clothes.

So the family took a public carriage to Fufeng County.

A simple shed had been set up outside the Fufeng County Guard Camp to house the cotton pickers as their resting place at night.

Arriving at the camp, everyone rested in the camp after listening to the camp manager's instructions. The next morning, dozens of large pots were set up outside the camp, bubbling with steam, and the aroma drifted ten miles away.

Luo Mancang and his family lined up with their bowls. He first got half a bowl of soup, then changed places, got another half bowl of noodles, then changed places again, and the cook from the guard camp scooped a full spoonful of pickles into his bowl, and the big bowl was full, and the soup almost overflowed.

"Dad, it's bone soup!" Luo Mancang's eldest son sipped the soup and shouted in surprise.

His grandparents, mother, and sister couldn't wait to take a sip, their eyes lit up, "It's bone soup! I can taste the meat." This full bowl of bone soup noodles must have more than 300 grams of noodles. And the toppings were greasy.

It was just dawn when they were awakened by the sound of gongs. They thought they would have to go to the fields on an empty stomach, but each of them got such a big bowl of noodles!
Luo Mancang's wife was reluctant to eat it and said, "How about I leave half of it for Sanlang and Simei?" The two children were unable to join the army, and they didn't know whether they could find food in the near future.

Seeing that his parents were also reluctant to leave their children and were ready to leave one for their grandchildren, Luo Mancang scolded, "General Jun is showing us special favor by allowing us to leave our two children in the camp. Don't break the rules, or we will be chased away again."

Luo Mancang's wife Yan Shi was relieved. Seeing the sound of people slurping noodles around her, she also started eating. The whole family was extremely satisfied with the meal.

After eating, I followed everyone to the cotton field.

Luo Sanlang and Luo Simei waited until the entire camp was empty before they ran out of the camp. They looked around and saw that there was really no one there. They sniffed the fragrance of noodles in the air and tried their best to suppress their rumbling stomachs.

Seeing the cooks cleaning up the dishes and stoves, I ran over to help...

Luo Mancang and his family followed the soldiers of the guard camp to the cotton field, and after listening to the rules, they started to pick flowers. "Is this cotton? How come I have never seen it before?" At first, everyone stared at the flowers in their hands. They were white like snow, soft and light to the touch, but they weighed them in their hands and felt nothing.

"I heard that the Princess of Yue bought the seeds from merchants in the Western Regions, saying that the flowers can be spun into thread and woven into cloth."

Everyone had heard that cotton, like mulberry and hemp, could be made into cloth, so they were all very curious.

After studying for a while, I heard people around me say, "The more you work, the more you earn. Whoever picks more will get more wages." After coming to my senses, my hands and feet became nimble.

With both hands, he picked a flower and put it into the cloth bag in front of him. When the bag was half full, he pressed it hard. When it couldn't hold any more, he poured it into the basket. When the basket was full, he took it to be weighed, got a token from the soldier, and ran back to the cotton field to continue picking.

At lunchtime, Luo Mancang's family took up their chips and counted. In the morning, in two and a half hours, the six people in the family had picked a total of 180 kilograms. On average, each person picked 30 kilograms.

Ten jin cost five cents, and I earned 90 cents in this morning!
The whole family was so happy that their eyes almost popped out of their heads. If they picked so many more in the afternoon, wouldn't they be able to earn nearly two hundred coins a day? If they picked for ten days, they could earn two taels of silver?
I almost jumped out of joy.

Then I heard people around me counting, and one skilled female worker picked 50 kilograms by herself, and some picked 35 or 40 kilograms!
Now the Yan family mother-in-law and daughter-in-law could no longer sit still. As women, they were well-known in the village for their quick work, so it was unreasonable for them to be unable to pick flowers better than others.

Wouldn't it be possible to earn more money if I picked more?

Luo Mancang's mother couldn't sit still any longer. She called her daughter-in-law and two grandchildren, and kicked Luo Mancang and his son who were slumped on the ground. "Let's go get some food. After we eat, we'll have the strength to work. If we eat early, we can go to the fields earlier and pick more pounds."

There were many people who thought the same as her, and the iron pot was immediately surrounded by people who came to get their meals.

"Line up, line up properly! If you dare to cut in line, you won't be allowed to eat!" As soon as the soldier maintaining order shouted, the flower pickers in front of him lined up automatically.

For lunch, we had rice, two dishes and a soup. One of the dishes even had meat. Everyone was very surprised. They could not eat meat once in a month or two at home.

After eating, they sat on the ground in groups of three or four and ate with relish.

Although the manager of the guard camp told everyone to rest for half an hour before going to the fields, everyone was eager to go to the fields to earn money, so few people listened. After finishing their meal, they put down their bowls and went to the fields again.

They were probably too excited in the afternoon and started picking cotton very skillfully. However, there were too many impurities in the cotton and it was rejected by the soldiers who weighed it.

I had to take it back and pick out the impurities in the cotton, and only took it for weighing when it met the requirements.

In this way, the desire for speed and quality has slowed down the process.

But after a morning of getting used to it, the overall speed was improved. By the afternoon, Luo Mancang's family had picked 40 kilograms more cotton than in the morning. The six of them worked for five hours that day and picked a total of 400 kilograms of cotton.

It can be exchanged for 200 copper coins. The average daily wage for one person is 50 copper coins!
Fifty coins! "His father, this is much more than what you used to earn when you carried bags in the city!" In the past, Luo Mancang only earned a dozen or twenty coins a day when he carried bags in the city. Now he can earn fifty coins a day!
And my elderly parents and two half-grown children can earn that much!

The whole family was very surprised. "Dad, I think I can pick more tomorrow!" Luo Mancang's eldest daughter was full of confidence.

"Yes, yes. Mom thinks we can pick more tomorrow. This afternoon we tried to hurry up, so we had to go back to work several times and wasted time. Now that we are familiar with it, we can pick more tomorrow."

"Yes, I heard that it can take half a month to pick cotton. And I heard that after picking, people are needed to peel cotton seeds and do other work. Then our family will stay here to work and earn more money, so that we can find a marriage for Qingxing."

Luo Mancang's eldest daughter Qingxing is almost fifteen years old, but no one cares about her because her family is poor and she has many younger brothers and sisters.

"Okay, then let's perform well and try to get the manager to keep us."

The afternoon meal was not as good as lunch, after all, we still had to work in the afternoon. But the afternoon meal was not worse than lunch, it was dry noodles, a spoonful of toppings, meat and oil.

Several people wanted to secretly leave some food for the two younger ones at home, but the two children came to tell them that the cook in the military camp saw that they were diligent and asked them to run errands. They didn't get paid, but they had meals to eat.

The whole family was overjoyed. They were even more grateful. From then on, they picked cotton even more attentively.

The cotton picking in Fufeng County Weiying ended in just fifteen days.

Because the flowering season had not yet ended, the workers who had been called in were not dismissed. Cottonseed peeling also required work. This time the wages were calculated based on the weight of the cottonseed. It was not as hard as picking cotton, and the wages were not that high.

But it was still around 20 to 30 coins a day. Previously, Luo Mancang's family had saved more than 6 taels of silver from picking cotton. The whole family was very happy to be able to save so much money in half a month.

Like Luo Mancang, the applicants for the job all wish they could go to the fields to pick cotton every day and hope that the cotton would grow again and again.

After picking the cotton, peeling the cotton seeds, cleaning the impurities after peeling the cotton seeds, combing the cotton, etc., Luo Mancang's family worked for another month. The whole family earned another six or seven taels of silver. In one and a half months, the family had saved thirteen taels of silver!
This was unthinkable in the past.

The streets were crowded with people, and those who had made money began to visit the markets in the northwest. The cities in the northwest were extremely lively.

The flower pickers also saw the cotton cloth made from the cotton they picked in the cloth shop. They touched it and it was very soft. The shopkeeper said that the clothes made of it were very breathable and comfortable, and the quilts made of cotton were even warmer and cold-resistant.

Everyone is eager to make a move.

I went up to ask the price. The cotton cloth dyed in various colors was more expensive, and pure white cloth was 60 wen per foot. It was several times more expensive than the linen cloth which was wen per foot. I couldn't help but smack my lips.

"This is the first year of cotton harvest. There is no cotton in the whole Daqi or the capital. Only in the northwest of China. It is rare, so it is normal that it is a little expensive this year. The price will drop after next year or the year after next."

Why not wait until next year or the year after next to buy more? The flower pickers still couldn't bear to buy such expensive fabrics.

"How much is this kind of lint cotton?" Lint cotton is cotton picked by flower pickers themselves, and the seeds are peeled off. If it is made into a quilt, it can keep people warm. Everyone wants such a quilt.

"This kind of lint costs 120 wen per jin. Six or seven jin is enough to make a quilt."

Six or seven pounds? That means we need to make several beds at home. It’s a bit painful to calculate.

The flower pickers thought the price was too high, but Mrs. Jiang and her friends thought the price set by Lin Zhaoxia was too cheap. They urged Lin Zhaoxia to raise the price and blocked him in the study.