Lin Gao Qiming

Chapter 1374 Trial Production

The boiler workers arrived that night, and early the next morning, black smoke rose from the chimneys by the river.Zhao Yingong doesn't understand technology, but has been watching the trial operation of the boiler on the spot.

This is not the first trial run. The last time the people from the mechanical port have come to debug it to a working state, but it has been a month since then.Whether it can be turned on successfully at one time remains to be tested.

Fortunately, this set of things is not complicated except for the boiler, nothing more than pipes and water pumps.Except for the fact that the boiler was not going well when the fire was raised, and it took a long time to toss, there was no problem in the operation of the whole set of equipment.

"Let's start trial production." Zhao Yingong said.

The first batch of well-trained female workers walked into the workshop timidly and took their seats.The workshop starts to function.During the entire trial run, only fifty cars were driven—this is the maximum number of people that Li Yaoer can take care of himself.

These female workers are all refugees picked from Cihui Hall, unmarried and childless women aged from 20 to 16.Silk reeling itself is very labor-intensive and requires a high degree of concentration, and it is most suitable for young girls.During the industrial revolution in the old time and space, most of the silk reelers were child laborers between the ages of ten and teens, and their labor productivity was no worse than that of adults.In order to protect the health of young children and prevent them from prematurely aging and wasting manpower, the Planning Institute limits the age of employment in silk factories to [-] years old.

She plans to concentrate on this group of workers first, and then use them as key workers to train new workers after they have matured their skills.

No one in the Senate knows how to reel silk. Fortunately, Jichanglong’s equipment is not high-tech, and the silk reeling technique is no different from the local silk reeling method, so no special training is needed in this area, Li Yao’er The main thing is to train them to use treadmills and hot and cold water hoses.

The work of making pots is not complicated. The cocoon is still boiled in boiling water. After the female worker finds the silk mouth from the cocoon body, she puts it on the wooden silk reeling button, steps on a small iron rod with her foot, and pulls the axis of the button, so that The button is rotated, and the silk roll is made into a finished product.

The silk reeling of the local method is all a handicraft sideline of the peasants. The cocoons are boiled over charcoal fire, and then the silk is reeled.After the raw silk is produced, it is sold to the silk industry, and then turned into dry warp by the silk industry.

The production equipment and technology of the Cihuitang silk reeling factory are not only much better than those of ordinary farmers, but also the processing methods are more advanced than those of the silk industry.The multiple processing links that originally required the silk industry to contract with many craftsmen were completed in one stop in the silk reeling factory.

Although there were some minor faults during the first day of driving, the overall operation was still barely working—the workers had been trained in advance and were no strangers to using the machine, but the overall cooperation was not good enough.Some supporting and auxiliary work cannot keep up in time.The texture of the silk that comes out is not as good as Li Yaoer imagined.

However, these are all caused by lack of proficiency at the beginning. Li Yaoer thinks that the problem is not big: after doing more, she will naturally become proficient.The most urgent task now is to establish a management system-she is weak in this regard.

She shared this concern with Zhao Yingong.

"We have a big library, and a group of management people..."

The management system was compiled by the large library entrusted by the Planning Institute, covering all aspects of the production and operation of the entire enterprise.

The workers in the Cihui Hall, except for a few naturalized workers who were dispatched from Lingao to maintain the equipment, were all contract slaves selected from the refugees in the Cihui Hall.

It wasn't that Zhao Yingong felt that slave labor was more useful, but under the conditions at that time, it was completely unrealistic to hire urban poor or rural female workers to work.There are not many things for women to work away from home. Unless they are very close to home and can go back and forth every day, they will not be assured of staying overnight.It is easier to use indentured slaves who have no personal freedom at all.

The main types of work in Cihuitang Silk Reeling Factory: silk reeling, cocoon peeling, water knotting from dendrobium, cocoon making, cross-stitching and threading, etc.These are all remunerated by the piecework system, but the only thing that sends cocoons is the monthly salary.Because pai cocoons do not require skills, but only physical strength, all of these jobs are clumsy but powerful women.All day long, according to the needs of each female worker's silk reeling position, the cocoons are delivered to the designated position.

When the female silk reelers get off work every day, they take off the finished products they reeled that day, put them on the pot of the steam throat, cover them with a large oilcloth, and then go back to the refugee camp to rest.The handyman in the factory collects the silk, puts it in the silk baking room and bakes it again, and then picks the flower and draws the thread.After twisting the silk and then packing it—very elegant, Zhao Yingong decided to sell his raw silk as a high-quality product.

In addition to these workers who have direct contact with raw silk, there are more than 30 cocoon bakers, plumbers, new silk workers, patrol workers, handymen and machine maintenance workers.These people are all paid according to the monthly salary system-no matter what kind of workers, the wages paid are all negotiable vouchers.Since most of the workers are indentured slaves in the refugee camps, the wages are extremely low, which in Zhao Yingong's view is only symbolic.It's just that the food supply is three meals a day, and the quality and quantity are better than those in the refugee camp.The point is, getting paid—even if it's as low as a token token—is enough to motivate workers.Zhao Yingong plans to set up a sales point in the refugee camp to sell some additional food, so that the indentured workers can use their wages to buy more food for themselves or their families to improve their lives.Moreover, by artificially separating workers' grades, setting wages, and additional bonuses can be used as effective incentives, which is much stronger than pure slave labor.

The silk reeling factory works in two shifts for the time being, but Zhao Yingong and Li Yaoer plan to switch to three shifts when the number of workers increases. Compared with Lingao, there are abundant human resources here, and the wages and benefits are lower. A two-shift system is necessary.Moreover, the silk reeling station faces boiling water and steam for a long time, and the labor intensity is high, and people are prone to fatigue. The production process is full of boiling water and steam, and fatigue production is prone to work-related accidents.Furthermore, Hangzhou Railway Station originally planned to use it as a training base for silk industry workers. Increasing the number of shifts will help train more workers.Reserve workers for future industrial expansion.

After working continuously for a week, Li Yaoer evaluated the work efficiency of the female workers: skilled workers can reel about 150 grams of silk per day, and those who are unfamiliar can reel [-] to [-] grams per day.This speed is still unsatisfactory. According to the information provided by the Great Library, skilled female workers can produce more than [-] grams of raw silk per day on this production equipment, and unskilled workers can also produce [-] grams of raw silk.

But even so, the production efficiency is amazing.As a result, Zhao Yingong soon discovered that if he could not get the silkworm farmers used to reeling silk and selling local silk as soon as possible, his factory would fall into a situation where there would be no cocoons to reel in the future, and it would only be able to operate intermittently every year.

In the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, how did selling raw silk be changed to selling cocoons?It is nothing more than a natural choice after silk reeling factories are blooming everywhere and the earth silk has no market.It's a pity that his own silk reeling factory is limited in scale, and the current situation does not allow him to let go.It's like tigers and wolves around, everyone is the enemy of the country.

"When will there be opium... No, what about the Raw Silk War?" Zhao Yingong lit a cigar on Xiangfei's couch.

After the silkworm season ended, Jixian Village fell into a gloomy mist. This melancholy not only enveloped here, but also spread to all local sericulture farmers, and even affected sericulture areas in Jiaxing, Huzhou, Suzhou and other places outside Hangzhou: After hearing the news that the price of cocoon silk in Hangzhou had plummeted, various silk shops also joined forces to lower the purchase price.The price of silk and cocoon in Jiangnan has plummeted all the way.Let the silk industry make a lot of money.On the contrary, a large number of sericulture households went bankrupt because they could not repay the loan sharks.

The villagers of Jixian Village haven’t gone bankrupt for the time being—because of Mr. Zhao’s benevolent relationship, although every household in the villagers owes him a monthly interest, they haven’t been forced to pay. The families in other villages where Ji was forced to repay the debts were much better off.Finally, each household can temporarily ignore the issue of how to repay or evade debts, and focus on spring plowing.

But ignoring it for the time being does not mean that the debt will disappear.Wang Siniang's family never mentioned this matter, but it made every family feel uneasy.

In the early years, as long as the weather was good, we had our own land, and our family members were healthy and healthy, we would always have some money left after excluding all kinds of expenses in a year, and there was still hope to pay off our debts.But in recent years, when farming has not been smooth and rainy, the taxes in the yamen have been heavy.It is a blessing to be able to survive the whole year in a peaceful manner, so how can you talk about saving money to pay off debts!
Shen Kaibao said several times when he was chatting his teeth in the village: Mr. Zhao, don’t think he doesn’t want debts now, but when he wants to pay debts, he will definitely be more ruthless than anyone else—people in the village will go to Wang Siniang’s house every three days to borrow rice and money Yes, it's just asking for death.

"When the time comes, the land will be gone, the house will be gone, and even the whole family will have to be slaves to Master Zhao!" Every time Father Shen said this, he spat viciously on the ground to increase his tone.

But being able to see clearly does not mean that you can hide from it. My family needs to farm and eat, so where can I get money if I don't borrow money?Now even if you want to sell the Namulberry Garden for money, you can't do it - it has been mortgaged to Mr. Cao.He knew that Mr. Zhao's debts were bait. Could it be that other masters' loans were not?In the end, it's not all about your own land, who cares about the life and death of your farmers!
He knew that his family members had borrowed money and rice from Wang Siniang's house several times one after another, but he just didn't know.His heart seemed to be on the sidelines, anyway, it was already like this.I really can't get along anymore, so I just sold the house and the land, and the family went to Songjiang to find a way out--I heard that there is building a house and repairing the wharf there recently, requiring a lot of labor, and Daqing and Sanqing are all young men. Although I am old, I can still do active work, and I can make a living by working hard.

(End of this chapter)