Novorosberg and Novgorod are prosperous. According to Rurik's theory, the people will become rich because of the new lifestyle.
The two cities represent the core area of eastern rule of the principality. They are essentially huge rural areas first, and commercial and other activities are added to agricultural activities.
Growing crops, fishing and raising livestock, agriculture, rural areas and farmers are the foundation of people's lives. However, if the general public spends all their time on this, they should not think about further improving their living standards.
Once the busy farming period of spring plowing and autumn harvest is over, the Rus and other Viking people must fish and hunt to increase their income.
As for the majority of Slavs, they can certainly do work such as weaving and chopping firewood, but their traditional agricultural slack period is really leisure. It's not that they are born lazy, but that they really lack opportunities for further development, so they can only gather at the entrance of the village and chat in the classic Slavic style.
Everything has changed.
If agricultural society wants to develop further, it must engage in industry. Based on the geographical conditions of the East, metallurgy is impossible. Any economic activities must be adapted to local conditions. The flat and huge Valdai Highlands are most suitable for planting and amateur animal husbandry, and can also raise more s population. The human resources of the principality are in conflict with Prince Rurik's great vision as a whole, but the human resources of this area are higher. Anyone who is idle must take advantage of it and develop handicrafts to increase people's income. Through the scissor gap, the principality's tax revenue can also be increased, which can then subsidize the three large ironworks in Blast Furnace Town, Roseburg, and Ellenburg in the north of the principality.
Industry is a process in which capital becomes the power. If the principality does not launch an invasion war to plunder the resources of others, it can only plunder the resources of farmers.
However, the Russian group with Rurik as the core represents the strongest productivity in Northern Europe. By expanding the size of the cake, the lives of the vast number of Slavic farmer families are rapidly improving on a macro level.
Look at these Slavic women!
As a very cheap labor force, they were grouped together in a building. Ten people were organized into a group to make finished clothes for Rurik.
Tailors make clothes. This kind of work requires very little cultural knowledge and low requirements for manual skills. Rurik had no intention of asking these women to embroider beautiful chrysanthemum patterns on the cloth, or make clothes with more complicated structures.
The fifty slaves with transferred ownership rights all served as group leaders. Such production teams suddenly became fifty. If a group of auxiliary personnel were added, the number of workers in the "Principal Garment Factory" would reach 600!
Each group has its own division of labor, some are responsible for tanning raw animal hides, some are responsible for cutting leather and cloth, some are only sewing, and so on.
They work from early morning to dusk, and their reward is three meals a day. The high-quality food attracts them. There are also cash rewards, but the Rurik plan will give each worker four silver coins on the first day of each month in the Julian calendar.
The director of the garment factory was Vodgen, and he had nothing to say about Rurik's method of employment and remuneration. The prince seems to be very kind, but considering the workload of the workers every day, it seems that the prince is also very mean. It is precisely because of this that Fo Degen feels that he has no right to speak, because he and the prince have the same attitude. Who doesn't want to make a lot of money? As for himself, he only needs to be the supervisor of the town, and he likes to bring in two pounds of silver every month.
According to Rurik's plan, the garment factory is producing a kind of robe to keep out the cold. Its lining is soft linen, the middle layer is slightly fluffy hard linen, the cold-proof layer is made of up to twenty sheets of red squirrel leather, and the collar is made of a bunch of squirrel tail hairs. As for the last layer, it is wear-resistant. burlap. This four-layered coat is not as good at keeping out the cold as wool, but it is very suitable for the current situation of the Principality of Rus based on local conditions.
Don't look at the fact that clothes have one layer on the inside and one on the outside. At the current market price, the comprehensive material cost of a piece of ready-made clothing is at most three silver coins.
In this way, the laborer’s monthly cash remuneration is enough to buy a piece of ready-made clothing?
How else can we say it is a scissor gap between industry and agriculture? The selling price set by Rurik was twenty silver coins. To put it another way, a laborer could buy a piece of clothing made by himself with his labor remuneration during the unexpected warm weather period during the off-peak farming period.
Of course, things shouldn’t be calculated like this. Even if they all sit on stools or cross-legged on leather mats to work, since the annual workload is set at a high level, they still have to put in a lot of effort. Therefore, the prince is the one who is short-changed in terms of food. Asking for losses. The free meal for each laborer was at least a pound of dry wheat and a piece of fish. Vegetable soup was not included in the statistics.
Ten pounds of dry wheat is worth one silver coin, and twenty fish are worth one silver coin. They work six days a week, and the average working time in a month is twenty-five days. Rurik pays four silver coins per month for each person's food.
The hiring cost of an ordinary mercenary is a rice cook plus ten silver coins. Calculating the hiring cost of these women, 600 workers are equivalent to more than 200 mercenaries.
In terms of labor and food expenses, as well as the remuneration paid to the director of the factory, Fordegen, the monthly labor cost of the garment factory reaches the equivalent of 5,000 silver coins, which is fifty pounds of silver.
As for the cost of raw materials, three silver coins per piece of ready-made clothing must be added to the selling price.
A piece of ready-made clothing is priced at twenty silver coins or two hundred pounds of wheat. Therefore, the output value can only be achieved if the monthly production capacity reaches 300 pieces.
How can they produce at such a fast rate of ten pieces a day with so many people? Twenty of the fifty groups are responsible for the final "final assembly", and the fabrics and leathers that have been cut and rough-processed by other groups are shipped here to be made into ready-made garments. Two hundred women made clothes using a workshop-style processing method, and each of them had to sew a robe every day. In actual practice, they were able to complete the task.
They must complete their respective tasks. If they fail, they will be starved for the first time and fired for the second time.
There is no way, Rurik is really not doing charity this time. He provides good food and drink for the laborers for profit. The guys who "gather wool" must be expelled. After all, there are so many women who are eager to enter the garment factory.
Theoretically, in twenty-five jobs per month, the garment factory can produce five thousand pieces of clothing, provided that the supply of raw materials is stable.
As far as the current situation is concerned, the very important raw material linen can be supplied for three months. As for squirrel skin, it is an inexhaustible resource based on the current era.
The garment factory is a benefit that only Novgorod enjoys. Almost all the women who enter the factory are women from the White Tree Manor. Other farms can also get a share of the pie, but their job is to provide raw materials.
The food problem has been solved, because the people of the principality can also get a lot of fish in addition to the wheat. Fish is naturally a food with a very short shelf life, with the exception of winter. In the past, the majority of Slavs could not catch much fish based on poor technology. The arrival of the Russians brought new technologies in trawling, which caused a sharp increase in catches. The harsh winter was like a big refrigerator, and the catches were piled up into a wall. As a result, Changing direction increases year-round food reserves.
In order to solve the problem of food, the focus now is to solve the problem of clothing.
The existence of garment factories objectively stimulates the entire downstream industry. The area under flax cultivation expanded, and hunters, both Rus and Slavs, also increased. The production capacity of raw materials has increased significantly, causing the state's purchase price to plummet. At least they still made some money. In order to get more profits, the people who had once been idle in farming continued to work bare-chested, such as cutting down trees to obtain land from the forest. Even if they could not grow wheat in the first year, they would plant flax instead.
Each farm unanimously chose to weave heavily. Even if the purchase price of the principality was very low, it was better to make a profit than to do nothing on weekdays.
Small boats carried all kinds of raw materials to Novgorod, because here there were not only garment factories, but also paper factories. Even if each farm couldn't get much flax, they could chop down trees and peel off the bark, wield scythes to cut reeds and rushes, transport these materials in small boats to the paper mill, leave the goods and receive wheat payment on the spot.
The farms around Lake Ilmen are responsible for the supply of raw materials for various handicraft industries, and the Novgorod factory completes the processing and production of finished products. Part of the finished product is digested within the principality, and the other part is transported to Sweden and the price is doubled.
In the summer of 836, a set of handicraft industry chains in the Principality had completed an ecological closed loop, and idlers during the slack period were mobilized on a large scale.
A benign system began to operate. Although there were certain flaws that needed to be improved, the flaws were not concealed. Rurik found that he no longer needed to interfere.
Many times the invisible hand would make adjustments, and he retained the power to intervene directly when necessary. The control of salt, iron, and granaries, which are related to the lifeblood of the country, is tightly held in Rurik's hands.
What is Rurik himself focusing on now?
As soon as they heard that the prince sent people to educate the children and even take care of their meals, regardless of whether they were boys or girls, the entire city of Novgorod sent out children of appropriate age. There are even children who are clearly five years old but are brought in by their parents to receive education just because they look old.
How could they have such a high consciousness? It's just that the prince's management of food means that their family has less expenses.
Children of school age ended the princely style of comprehensive education in culture, physical fitness, and labor. Women were attracted to work as handicraft workers. Men started logging, burning charcoal, making pottery, etc. to provide raw materials for the industrial chain, and even worked in shipbuilding workshops. Young children can only be left to the care of the elderly. The use of labor force in Novgorod City has reached its limit, and new wealth that is different from agriculture has begun to be continuously created.
There are as many as 2,000 school-age children from Novorosberg, Novgorod, and Mstisk, a number that far exceeds Rurik's imagination. Since all the children have been sent, as the prince, he can only take them all in. At this moment, the census that was done during the land counting last year came in handy.
Each child was given an identity file, which was clearly written in a roster. In a sense, this was the child's written school record.
The school's teaching buildings were built, and faced with a large number of children, Rurik had no choice but to become a teacher himself to cope with the shortage of teachers.
How to manage this group of children and how to let them understand basic discipline?
This is not a nuisance.
Whether they are Rus, Slavs, or even Suomis, all ethnic groups under the principality adhere to the same principle. There is no absolute freedom for every individual in the so-called tribe. Men and women have a major obligation to defend the tribe. Once something happens, In war, anyone who can afford a weapon must go to the battlefield.
Now this set of habits is regarded as the system of the principality. Looking at this group of children, they are obliged to be warriors once they reach the age of twelve, and it does not matter their gender. They must master fighting skills at the appropriate age. In this case, it is even more appropriate to carry out militaristic management while still young.
If a child is naughty and misbehaves, he or she will be punished by being forced to stand or slapped on the palm. If the child still refuses to change, it is easy to deal with it. Just follow the list to find his or her parents and ask for a fine.
Rurik is developing a compulsory education system similar to that of the Kingdom of Prussia, but due to the many practical problems faced by the Principality of Rus, its development needs to be more conservative.
Just to cook for two thousand children every day, Rurik had to hire as many as fifty cooks. In order to ensure that the children had three meals a day, the cooks were really busy from morning to night.
The most astonishing thing is that two thousand children have a huge appetite when they gather together. They consume up to 60,000 pounds of wheat every month. The key is that these inputs will not produce results for several years. Even if they are required to do voluntary labor, the results of their labor will It is also difficult to cover the losses.
The principality has invested a lot in education. According to accurate statistics, during a five-month term in the warm period, the food consumption of just two thousand children and those cooks is at least three hundred thousand pounds.
The principality taxed four million pounds of wheat last year, and purchased and plundered another one million pounds from other places. Taking into account the losses that poor storage had to face, Rurik estimated that there must be at least no less than four hundred and fifty pounds. Thousands of pounds of wheat.
Based on this rough calculation, my investment in education and food alone this year is as high as 8% of last year's agricultural tax. If classrooms and teaching tools are also included, the investment can only be even higher.
As for the principality's fiscal revenue last year, it certainly far exceeded the so-called five million pounds of real wheat.
However, due to the winter expedition to Karelia, a large amount of food was consumed in the war. Although a huge number of reindeer were plundered, deer cannot be killed casually for meat, and food is consumed every day. The existing food in the treasury must supply all the people who live on the emperor's salary, so there is no problem in persisting until the autumn harvest this year. Of course, a major prerequisite is that the principality can completely eliminate its troops temporarily.
Rurik is the prince and the largest controller of industrial capital in the principality. The share agreement with the blacksmith union has always been valid. As a result, he not only always enjoys 10% to 20% of the operating profit share, but also collects high business taxes every year. . There are also large taxpayers like the Gould family, who follow the principle of collecting three things and making mistakes, so those small businessmen have no reason not to pay taxes.
Rurik controls the economic lifeline of the principality and has also made some statistics. He is the person in the entire principality who knows the national situation best. The principality is actually very rich, or in other words, Rurik as the prince is very rich, and the crisis also exists, which is the growing internal consumption.
Part of the reason why the principality can obtain higher taxes compared to its limited population naturally comes from the direct courage of Rurik, who is both wise and handsome. Another major reason comes from war and plunder. The first test was carried out in 827 AD. From 828 to 833 AD, the principality had been engaged in a war to gamble on the fate of the country, and also fought a war in the next two years. Fortunately, the principality has won all the fierce battles. Thanks to the unprecedented seizures and the very safe external situation it has achieved, it will have the opportunity to make a fortune in the east and north this year.
But Ross did not really give up war and plunder because of this.
Rurik had to personally educate the children during the day. This was the first time ordinary people had seen this kind of personal education by a prince. The people thought this was a sign of the nobles being close to the people, but from Rurik's point of view, it was actually a serious shortage of teaching staff.
At night, he had to organize all the wives and concubines, and even the young teachers who had been busy all day, and he continued to do some training and summarize the situations encountered by the young teachers. That's all, we still need to keep those with good math skills to do economic calculations with us.
"I should train more scribes, I have to find out all the math geniuses in my cubs, and I have to establish a suitable civil service system! Otherwise, this huge country will gradually be unable to carry it! I don't want to live as Emperor Yongzheng. So exhausted."
Originally, Rurik should arrive at the real capital, Novorossberg, but the Lake Ilmen region where Novgorod is located has demonstrated its strong economic strength. It is a major grain-producing area and can provide 80% of the principal grain and 90% of the staple food. of linen. She actually became an economic capital, so it was also the core area of handicraft industry and education. Economic geography determines this outcome, unless Novorosberg's commercial capabilities truly bring value beyond that of Novgorod.
The governors of various places will manage the territories well, and the shipping traffic between the settlements has been stable, and as long as the lakes and two large bays have ships from the Ross Principality fishing, the so-called eastern and northern Baltic Sea and its land areas, the Principality People are actively engaged in economic activities.
Rurik even ignored the privateer and the explorer Spyut. As a result, the Salmon Chief actually sailed backwards on the Volkhov River under the tow of the rowing boat. This privateer is back! Seeing that she needed as many as four long boats to pull the oars, and the obviously astonishing draft, Rurik arrived at the dock after hearing the news. He just took a look at the draft of the big boat and made a judgment with a smile: "Okay. Si Puyute. It seems that you have snatched a boatload of treasures to deliver."
