New Shun 1730

Chapter 1168 Preparation for War (VII)

From the long-term perspective of a nation that has immigrated to occupy land, Dashun has actually come this far only by grasping two issues.

The first one is to solve the problem that the rich are unwilling to go and the poor have no money to go.

The second is to ensure the rate of return on overseas investment. Under the premise of forcing the use of Chinese and increasing labor costs, the profit rate is still higher than buying land and collecting rent.

Here we have to pay attention to the fundamental difference between Dashun's expansion in the South Ocean and India and its reverse expansion in the North Pacific, the west coast of North America, and Oceania.

Take North America as an example.

Regarding the population of Honolulu, Liu Yu can responsibly say that with what Meng Songlu has done, once the sandalwood trade rises, the originally fragile agriculture will collapse, and the population will be reduced to half.

Dashun’s capital wants to dig gold in North America. Where will the nearest and richest labor force come from?

We can and can only capture our own people from Dashun as a labor force.

Including Oceania, the same logic applies - if the west coast of North America is adjacent to the African slave-producing area, it would be damned if the capital of Dashun is willing to spend an extra damn money to move a commoner from Henan and Shandong to do labor.

This is a variant of wanting to be a comprador but not being able to do it, and wanting to be a slave but not being able to do so. When the time comes, you will have to cross the vast Pacific Ocean and recruit people from Shandong, Henan, and Hebei.

Therefore, there is no need to put too much thought into it, just relying on the invisible hand, there will be no problem.

As for Southeast Asia and India, if we rely solely on invisible hands, the future of the Netherlands will be the today of Dashun - working hard for whomever, and finally making wedding clothes for others, making a lot of money, and the core of the nation's basic base , that is not expanded at all.

Because India’s labor prices are not much higher than a large surplus.

And from the perspective of distance, mortality, tropical climate adaptation, cultural traditions, caste hard labor traditions and other issues, it is cheaper than immigrants here in Dashun.

Therefore, Liu Yu introduced a very strict labor ratio law. Some places, especially places where high profits can be obtained, such as gem mines, require a sufficient number of Chinese workers.

Money can be earned, and it will definitely be higher than buying land and collecting rent.

But money cannot be made infinitely, and it is impossible for them to recruit a bunch of cheap Tamils ​​in order to save costs.

Some people may feel that there is a different kind of pride in oppressing other ethnic groups and obtaining high profits for one's own nation.

However, every time a Tamil is oppressed there, it means that a fellow disaster victim in Dashun will starve to death, and more people will die in the long-term conflict between man and land.

For many serfs, landless people, and disaster victims in Dashun in an economic sense, this is really an era when they want to be exploited but cannot.

It's even an era when you want to be a slave but you can't.

Historically, during the slave era in North America, there was a very famous escaped slave, Jordan Anderson.

He wrote a famous reply to his former master who asked him to return as a slave.

Apart from the spirit of resistance and the pursuit of the rewards one deserves, there are also some contents that will make people in some parts of the world many years later, even after World War II is over, break their defenses.

After his escape, his monthly salary was US$25; his son's salary was US$2 per week, US$8 per month. For two people together, it’s $33.

At that time, the U.S. dollar was benchmarked against gold. One U.S. dollar was worth 1.5 grams of gold, and the Kuping tael was worth 37 grams. In other words, the father and son escaped slaves could earn one, two, and six gold dollars a month.

Even if you don’t take inflation into account, don’t take gold decoupling into account, and just count paper dollars, in 2020, 160 years after this letter was written, the international poverty line is just over $30 a month.

God-given land, massive arable land, and massive resources are really not just talk.

According to the North American War of Independence, which was about to begin, if only white people were counted as human beings, at the moment of the founding of the country, per capita income would have reached the level of high-income countries in later generations according to inflation standards at the moment the gun was fired in Lexington. And what does that have to do with the Industrial Revolution?

Including the Chinese workers on the Pacific Railway, many people said that they were servile and did not know how to resist. But their standard monthly salary is US$36, which is nearly a pound of gold a year. But compared to the suffering they have endured, what is that?

If you dig anywhere in San Francisco, without weaving or spinning, you can dig up 12 million taels of gold in a few years.

If you dig up an old silver mountain casually, without planting or cutting, you can dig up 3.5 billion taels of silver in a few years.

Slaves could eat watermelon and fried chicken until they vomited; however, a law was issued before the New Year that slaves could not eat lobster more than twice a month; the biggest dream of London workers after the Industrial Revolution was to save enough ship tickets to become farmers there...

The difference in personal living standards between an average person of 5 acres of land with chemical fertilizers and improved seeds and an average of 100 acres of land without chemical fertilizers is almost the same. This is a monster that has saved a 150-year gap in the fertilizer industry the moment it was born. It is too difficult to chase.

Faced with the helplessness of this reality, Liu Yu would rather let his compatriots replace the labor positions of black slaves, Javanese slave workers, and Tamil slaves.

Such factors of geographical location and resources and land can be smoothed out by developing productivity and technology.

But now, at this time. If we want to smooth out the factors of geographical location and resources, we still need at least the second industrial revolution and the popularization of the fertilizer industry.

At this time, Dashun ranked first in the world in terms of agricultural yield per mu, cotton textile efficiency, cotton cloth quality, and luxury goods quality. This was not simply due to the large number of people. Now, the best cotton weavers in Manchester can be beaten to death by the weavers in Songjiang Prefecture, both in terms of quality and efficiency.

However, the reality is still difficult.

Except for the Liaohe agricultural area in the northeast and the family textile area along the canal in Songsu, the gap between other places in Dashun and Europe is very huge. Only these two places can be equal to the living standards of Britain and France at this time. After all, there is a price revolution, and the silver income reaches one-third of that over there, even if it is equal.

Since Liu Yu can't create a large-scale fertilizer industry in this era, he would rather choose an extremely cruel policy.

Forcing millions of families to be broken up, destroying the thousand-year-old Yangzhou, and destroying hundreds of thousands of porter families who rely on the Nanling trade route for survival, forcing them to go overseas to replace Tamil slaves, black slaves, and Javanese slaves.

The future fate is in their own hands, but that is a matter of the future.

He doesn't believe in tenderness.

So after he introduced the treatment of workers in high-profit industries such as gem mines and gold mines, he stuffed some of the core members of the riots in the Banga mining area into the mining area.

History has proved that these core members of the riots are the most effective laws.

Just as soon after the Pacific Railway was completed, those core members raised their average monthly salary from 36 to 50 despite waves of suppression by company gunmen. And in those days, a Colt 1873 with an ivory grip, the same as Patton's later model, was only 50 yuan.

They can spend more money only when they earn more.

They can make the planting industry profitable only when they consume.

Only when the planting industry is profitable can capital spend money to immigrate there for reclamation.

In remote areas such as Mohe, Ceylon, Heihe, North America, and Oceania, only high-profit industries can make the planting industry profitable and reverse the distorted dilemma of "the rich are unwilling to go and the poor cannot go."

That is, gold, silver, and gems.

At the same time, because of the abundant labor force around here, Dashun had to adopt the "inefficient" and "low-profit" means of government supervision and business operation, forcing investors to choose to pull people from Dashun.

Tie a rope to the emerging class, whip them with a whip, and don't forget to hang a carrot on a stick.

As for the carrot on the stick, it involves a "luxury aesthetic revolution" that is quietly happening in Dashun at this time.

The cultural heritage of a gentleman is like jade and the charm of Taoism makes things like gems not have a good market in Dashun.

Of course, it's not that we don't like gems here.

But the highest level of aesthetics is the unity of man and nature.

Therefore, for some gems, even the gems on the phoenix crown, they will try their best to keep the gems in their original inlay, asymmetrical natural fit, and form a high-end aesthetics with culture.

Liu Yu hired a lot of gem craftsmen and gem cutters at high salaries through his relationship with Europe and France to increase the added value of Ceylon gems and increase profits.

This is naturally a delicious carrot for investors, and it is also one of the reasons why they can accept and continue to invest when they are forced by Liu Yu and the backbone of the riot to offer relatively good wages.

Liu Yu believes in the profit-seeking nature of capital. He just doesn't believe in the brains of the emerging class of Dashun, so he has to teach them to process deeply and increase added value, instead of selling the raw stones directly to Europe after digging them out.

Humans are similar to other animals. They are born to like shiny things. This is also true for the local culture of Dashun, otherwise there would be no saying that jade cannot be made into a tool without being carved.

It's just that cultural traditions shape aesthetics, and the beauty of this kind of gemstone with multiple facets is a low-end aesthetic in Dashun.

Therefore, an aesthetic revolution led by the emerging class is quietly going on.

Because of the problem of etiquette, the emerging class is more likely to accept shiny gems, and soon it will lead to a trend.

In order to obtain the franchise income of gems, the emperor also added fuel to the flames, and the luster of gems would also quietly shine in the tea parties of concubines and nobles.

The coarse grinding machine driven by the steam engine also improved the efficiency of cutting gemstones; the demand for high-hardness frosting due to initial industrialization and the demand for glass knives under the development of the glass industry also increased the value of gemstones from an industrial perspective.

For exports to Europe, Dashun itself has the high-end advantage of "luxury goods".

Porcelain, silk, fans, lacquerware, these have already triggered a Chinese fever in Europe.

There is nothing abrupt about adding another gemstone to the luxury goods, and with the coarse grinding machine driven by the steam engine, mass-produced low-end gemstones have flooded into Europe.

In Dashun, the cut gemstones are still similar to the nouveau riche aesthetic of "new houses, short trees, and old paintings", but they can still be sold to some extent, and the price is not low.

It can also be regarded as laying the foundation for Dashun to monopolize the world gemstone market after seizing India in the future. A new handicraft group with cutting gemstones as a skill has been established under the demand of the market.

At least before the diamond mines in South Africa were discovered, seizing India meant obtaining the monopoly of the world gemstone market, as well as the definition of industry standards and luxury aesthetics.

By the way, it also laid a solid talent pool for Dashun's optical lens grinding talents.

And what is reflected in the Jewel City of Ceylon is the treatment of workers that shocked Quan Zheshen - every Chinese worker will actively exclude cheap Tamils, and take the initiative to report, and even under the leadership of those Banga riot backbones, they will call for a break to maintain the treatment they can accept psychologically.

Even the hired workers here have the choice of not eating rice and eating flour instead. It is basically higher than at least 70% of the population of Dashun.

Tap the screen to use advanced tools Tip: You can use left and right keyboard keys to browse between chapters.

You'll Also Like