The boilermaker arrived that night, and early the next morning black smoke was rising from the riverside chimneys. [Read the latest chapter] Zhao Yingong does not understand technology, but has been watching the trial operation of the boiler at the scene.
This is not the first trial run. Last time, people from the mechanical department came to debug it to an operable state, but it has been a month since then. Whether it can be successfully booted at one time remains to be tested.
Fortunately, except for the boiler, everything else in this set is not complicated, just pipes and water pumps. Except for some troubles when the boiler started to fire, which took a long time, there were no problems in the operation of the entire equipment.
"Start trial production." Zhao Yingong said.
The first batch of female workers were so well trained that they walked into the workshop timidly and sat down at their workstations. The workshop began to operate. During the entire trial run, only fifty cars were driven - this was the maximum number of people that Li Yaoer could personally take care of.
These female workers were all refugees selected from Cihui Hall, unmarried and childless women ranging in age from sixteen to twenty. The work of reeling itself is very labor-intensive and requires a high degree of concentration, which is most suitable for young girls. During the Industrial Revolution in the old time and space, most of the silk reeling workers were child laborers aged ten to ten years old, and their labor productivity was no worse than that of adults. In order to protect the health of children and prevent them from aging prematurely and wasting manpower, the Planning Institute limited the working age in the silk factory to sixteen years old.
She plans to focus on this group of workers first, and then use them as key workers to train new workers after their skills have matured.
No one in the Senate knows how to reel silk. Fortunately, Jichanglong's equipment is not high-tech. The silk reeling technique is no different from the traditional silk reeling and potting method, so no special training is needed in this aspect. Li Yaoer mainly trained them to use pedal machines and hot and cold water pipes.
Potting work is not complicated. The cocoon is still boiled in boiling water, and then after the female worker finds the thread opening from the cocoon body, she puts it on the wooden reeling button, steps on a small iron rod with her foot, affects the axis of the button, rotates the button, and rolls the silk. Made into finished product.
The silk reeling of native method. They are all handicrafts and side jobs for farmers, boiling cocoons over charcoal fire and then reeling them out. After the raw silk is produced, it is sold to silk shops. Then the silk lines are translated into dry sutras.
The production equipment and technology of Cihuitang Silk Reeling Factory are not only much better than those of ordinary farmers, but the processing methods are also more advanced than those of silk mills. The multiple processing links that originally required the silk shop to outsource to many craftsmen were completed in one stop at the silk reeling factory.
Although there were some minor glitches on the first day of driving, the overall operation was quite satisfactory - the workers had been trained in advance. Not new to using machines. It’s just that the overall coordination is still a bit poor. Some supporting and auxiliary work cannot be kept up with in time. The texture of the silk that came out was not as good as Li Yaoer imagined.
However, these are all caused by lack of proficiency at the beginning. Li Yaoer feels that the problem is not big: after doing it more, you will naturally become proficient. The top priority now is to establish a management system - she is weak in this area.
She told Zhao Yingong about this concern.
"We have a big library and a group of management people..."
The management system was compiled by the Big Library commissioned by the Planning Institute and covers all aspects of the entire enterprise's production and operation.
Except for a few naturalized workers who were deployed from Lingao to maintain equipment, the workers in Cihuitang were all indentured slaves selected from the refugees of Cihuitang.
This is not because Zhao Yingong thought slave labor was more useful, but under the conditions at the time. It is completely unrealistic to employ the urban poor or rural women workers. There are not many things for women to work away from home, unless it is very close to home. You can go back and forth every day, otherwise you won't be able to worry about sleeping outside. It was easier only to use indentured servants who had no personal freedom at all.
The main types of work in Cihuitang Silk Reeling Factory include reeling, cocoon peeling, dendrobium insertion and water knotting, cocoon making, cross stitching, etc. All of these are paid on a piece-rate basis, except for those who receive a monthly salary. Since cocooning does not require skills, only physical strength, all those who perform this kind of work are relatively clumsy but powerful women. All day long, cocoons are delivered to each female worker's reeling position according to their needs.
At the end of each day, the female silk reelers would take off the finished products they had reeled out that day, put them on the pot of the steam pipe, cover them with a large oilcloth, and then return to the refugee camp to rest. The handymen in the factory will collect the silk, put it into the silk baking room for further baking, and then stitch and tie the thread. It is then twisted and then packaged - very sophisticated. 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 bakery, plumber, nylon, patrol, handyman and machine maintenance workers. These people are all paid according to the monthly salary system-no matter what kind of worker, all wages paid are circulating coupons. Since the vast majority of workers are indentured slaves in refugee camps, their wages are extremely low, which in Zhao Yingong's opinion has only symbolic meaning. It’s just that the food supply is three meals a day, and the quality and quantity are better than in the refugee camp. The key is that receiving compensation, even if it is as low as purely symbolic, is enough to motivate workers to work. Zhao Yingong plans to set up sales points in the refugee camp to sell 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 worker levels, setting wage levels and additional bonuses can serve as effective incentives, which is much stronger than pure slave labor.
The working hours of the silk reeling factory are temporarily in two shifts, but Zhao Yingong and Li Yaoer plan to change it to three shifts when the number of workers increases - compared with Lingao, the human resources here are richer, wages and benefits are lower, and there is no A two-shift system is necessary. Moreover, the reeling station is exposed to boiling water and steam for a long time, and the labor intensity is high. People are easily fatigued. The production process is both boiling water and steam. Fatigue production is prone to work-related injuries. Furthermore, Hangzhou Station originally planned to use this place as a training base for silk industry workers, and increasing the number of shifts would 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: Those who are skilled in the operation can reel about one hundred grams per day, and those who are unfamiliar can reel up ten grams per day. This speed is not satisfactory yet. According to the information provided by the Great Library, skilled female workers can produce more than 150 grams of raw silk per day on this production equipment, and unskilled women can also produce 100 grams.
But even so, the production efficiency is amazing. So Zhao Yingong soon discovered that if he could not get rid of the habit of silkworm farmers to reel their own silk and sell local silk as soon as possible, his factory would be in a state of being unable to reel cocoons in the future and could only operate intermittently every year.
At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, how did selling raw silk change into selling cocoons? It is nothing more than a natural choice after silk reeling factories have blossomed everywhere and the market for native silk has disappeared. Unfortunately, the scale of his silk reeling factory is limited, and the current situation does not allow him to go big. It is simply surrounded by tigers and wolves, and 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 Concubine Xiang's bed.
After the silkworm season ended, Jixian Village fell into a gloomy mist. This melancholy not only enveloped the place, but also extended to all local sericulture households, affecting even sericulture areas in Jiaxing, Huzhou, Suzhou and other places outside Hangzhou: in After hearing the news that the price of cocoon silk in Hangzhou plummeted, various silk shops also joined forces to lower the purchase price. The prices of silk and cocoons throughout Jiangnan have plummeted. Let the silk shop make a lot of money. On the contrary, a large number of sericulture households went bankrupt because they could not repay usurious loans.
The villagers of Jixian Village are not bankrupt yet - because of Mr. Zhao's kind-hearted relationship, although every household in the village owes him a debt of one cent a month, they have not been forced into debt yet. Families in other villages where Ji was forced to repay debts were much better off. Households are finally able to temporarily put aside the issue of repaying debts or evading debts, and focus on spring plowing.
But if you don't consider it for the time being, it doesn't mean that the debt is gone. Wang Si's family never mentioned this matter, which made every family feel uneasy.
In the early years, as long as the weather was good, you had your own land, and your family was healthy, you would always have some money left over after deducting all kinds of expenses in a year, and you could still hope to pay off your debts. However, farming has not been going smoothly in recent years, and the taxes in the yamen have become heavy again. It would be considered a blessing to be able to get through it peacefully throughout the year, but there is no way to save money to pay off debts!
Shen Kaibao said several times while chatting at the head of the village: Mr. Zhao, don’t think you don’t want debt now, but when you have to incur debt, he will definitely be more ruthless than anyone else - the villagers will go to Wang Si’s mother’s house every two days to borrow rice and money. Yes, it is simply asking for death.
"When the land is gone and the house is gone, even the whole family will have to work as slaves for Mr. Zhao!" Every time Father Shen said this, he spit on the ground viciously to increase his tone.
But seeing clearly doesn't mean that you can hide from it. Your family has to farm and eat, so where can you get money if you don't borrow money? Now even if I want to sell Nasang Garden for money, I can't do it - it has been mortgaged to Mr. Cao. He knew that the debts lent by Mr. Zhao were good bait, wouldn't the debts lent by other gentlemen be the same? In the end, you are all interested in your own land. Who cares about the life and death of your farmers!
He knew that his family had borrowed money and rice from Wang Si's mother's house several times one after another, but he just didn't know. His heart seemed to drop, which was already the case anyway. I really couldn't survive anymore, so I simply sold the house and land, and the family went to Songjiang to find a way out - I heard that houses and docks were being built there recently, which required a lot of labor. The people in Daqing and Sanqing were all young men. Although I am old, I can still work hard, so I can probably make a living even if I work hard. To be continued. .
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