"Two comrades, please allow me to accompany you for a moment." Li Qiwei said to them.
"You are busy first, business is important." Li Shan said politely, and Li Qiwei stepped forward to unfold the cloth, and did the same operation again: shaking his head and nitpicking, and after some haggling, he quoted the price: "Two pieces of homespun cloth, a total of three triangles, four and six cents. arts."
"Explain the price of cotton cloth?" The retail investor asked in surprise after hearing the quotation, "Yesterday my neighbor came to sell it, and he sold it for 2 cents a piece!"
"It doesn't matter, there are too many cloths every month, but there are too many monkeys." Shopkeeper Li said with a helpless expression, "Besides, your cloth is made from local yarn, and the market is the worst! No one wants it on the market now..."
"Boss! Please do me a favor. Can you give me another one point? Five cents is fine!"
"Brother, how big a business do you think I am! And the rent, and the man..." Li Qiwei said with a bitter look on his face, "I can't stand it any longer." "It's just to make moving money. You have to sell it at a good price, and then you'll be able to If you buy machine yarn, you should at least buy improved yarn for weaving fabric!”
"Machine-made yarn is expensive. We have cotton in our village. We can spin and weave it ourselves. It's not cost-effective to buy yarn..." The machine worker shook his head repeatedly.
The next few cloth sellers were killed by shopkeeper Li with his dragon-slaying knife, and all of them came back defeated. As the saying goes, come with good fortune and return with bad luck.
"Look, does this mean I've charged an extra three to five dou?" Zou Biao poked at Lishan.
"I'm afraid this will become the norm from now on." Li Shan whispered. He was secretly surprised. Didn't it mean that the price of cotton had increased a lot? Look at this, prices are falling.
Li Qiwei finished his work and hurried over to accompany him. After serving tea and taking out cigarettes, Lishan saw that it was still a Shengchuan brand! This shop owner is really particular about people.
Lishan was confused about the price of cotton, so he asked: "Has the price of cotton dropped? I saw it was still rising yesterday..."
"It was true that it still rose yesterday. But today the market has changed." Seeing that they all declined the cigarettes, Li Qiwei brought another plate of betel nuts - something the two of them were even more grateful for.
"What's going on?" Li Shan asked.
"Originally, there is a big buying order for cotton every day, and the quantity is not necessarily certain, but even if it is the smallest amount, no one in the market can eat it alone. Several families share it." Li Qiwei said, "But the big one the day before yesterday The buying orders didn’t come out, and I didn’t buy a single piece of cloth…”
Zou Biao frowned and said, "Who is buying?"
"Nanyang Company." Li Qiwei said, "Since the market opened, they have been buying continuously. Not only are the quantities large, but they also buy cheap coarse cloth. The price has been raised immediately. When everyone sees the market, it is so Okay, everyone has followed up..."
Both Li and Zou recalled a joint notice issued by the Government Affairs Council and the Planning Institute last year. In order to promote the market economy and private manufacturing, in terms of material procurement, as long as it can be purchased on the market, try to purchase it from the market instead of going in-house. Transfer settlement channels.
"Then why don't you buy it?"
"I don't know. Maybe I can't check all the buyers." Li Qiwei said, "There were no buying orders in Nanyang the day before yesterday, only scattered small buying orders. Everyone was hoping that it would be sold the next day. After all, I heard that they have immigrants in Jiaozhi and Nanyang. I heard that they want to immigrate one hundred thousand people. Just to make clothes and bedding for the immigrants, they have to buy one hundred thousand pieces of cloth..."
Zou Biao couldn't help but ask: "Who did you hear that Nanyang Company wants to immigrate 100,000 people?"
"It's been said in the market." Li Qiwei took a sip of tea and tasted the taste, "We don't know if it's true or not. But Nanyang Company bought so much cloth, it's not necessarily for hoarding, it must have a provenance..."
"There was no trading the day before yesterday, and there probably wasn't any yesterday either?"
"Exactly, so as soon as the market opened today, the price of coarse cloth fell..."
"How much did it fall?"
"Yesterday I paid only two cents for this kind of homespun cloth made of homespun yarn. Today it is only one dime and seven cents and three cents. It dropped to two cents and seven cents...
Li Shan made a rough calculation and found that the drop had exceeded 20%, and he was shocked. This is too fierce!
In Guangzhou, two yuan is enough for a family of four to maintain the most basic livelihood. Earning two cents and seven cents less from a piece of cloth is no longer a small sum.
"If you can collect the cloth, can you ship it now?"
"Yes, homespun cloth is cheap and easy to ship." Li Qiwei said, "As long as the price is right, there will always be people who want it." He pointed to the cloth piled in the warehouse behind, "Even though the homespun cloth looks ugly and thick, people who like to use it still want it. There are so many. Dealers from the countryside all like to come to me to collect goods."
“Aside from the lack of big buying, what other reason is there?”
"There are more cloths on the market, so the price will naturally drop." Li Qiwei said, "It is now the end of June, and the Portuguese merchant ship will come to Guangzhou next month. By then, a large amount of Indian cloth will arrive in the port. The price on the market Cloth prices are going to drop again. So the market will only continue to go down..."
If supply is sufficient and market expectations are bearish, prices will naturally fall. This is a simple truth.
When Li Shan asked about "machine yarn", Li Qiwei boasted: "This is really a first-class yarn! It is uniform, delicate and tough, and the weaving is smooth when hung on the machine. It is not easy to break, and the cloth produced is also fine! There are many workshops Both the machine workers and the machine workers are willing to buy machine-made gauze cloth. Although the price is more expensive, the woven cloth is much better than the native gauze cloth!"
"Then why do people still use earthen yarn?"
"The price is high!" Li Qiwei looked at him with a strange expression, "Everyone knows that machine yarn is easy to use, but the price is much higher than that of homespun yarn. Besides, most of the homespun cloth from farmers is self-spun and self-woven. How many of them are there? No matter how much yarn is made, cotton yarn is rarely purchased from outside.”
It seems that the launch of machine yarn and improved yarn has not shaken the homespun cloth market. Zou Shan knows that the output of machine yarn is now limited and is still in a state of "high quality and good price". As a rural sideline, homespun yarn has almost "zero" labor cost. , can still occupy the low-end market at a very low price. To defeat local yarns, machine yarns must rely on larger scale and lower production costs...
"Is local yarn sold separately?" he continued to ask.
Generally speaking, most of the goods under the feudal economy were self-produced, self-used, and self-sold from raw materials to products. Most of the goods were also used for taxes, so trade in semi-finished products was actually relatively rare.
"Of course. Before there was machine yarn, farmers would spin and weave cotton yarn by themselves. People who didn't have looms would sell the yarn - you probably know that spinning yarn doesn't require much capital, and you have cotton at home. That’s it…”
The most primitive spinning method does not even require a hand spinning machine. It can be spun with just one spindle. The inputs required are just cotton and manpower. But weaving is different. A loom can cost as little as a few taels of silver or as much as dozens of taels. Ordinary farmers can rarely afford it.
Therefore, local local yarn has always been circulated, but the scope of circulation is very small, and the farthest is only the nearby market. Small cloth merchants like Li Qiwei initially went to rural markets to purchase cotton yarn, gave it to small businesses on credit, and then bought back their woven cloth.
"...Originally, my family collected yarn as well as cloth, but now we only collect cloth. The yarn went out on credit, and if we can't collect a load of cloth, we will suffer a big loss. We are a small business and cannot afford to lose money."
"Is there anyone who buys yarn locally in bulk?"
"Yes, there is one in Dabuzhuang. They have strong capital and are backed by the government or large gentry families. They are not afraid that your weavers will not pay the cloth."
"Then, are there a large number of yarn sellers?"
"I've never seen this before. Speaking of which, Australians are the first to sell machine-made yarn in large quantities."
It seems that the launch of machine yarn and improved yarn has not shaken the homespun cloth market. Zou Shan knows that the output of machine yarn is now limited and is still in a state of "high quality and good price". As a rural sideline, homespun yarn has almost "zero" labor cost. , can still occupy the low-end market at a very low price. To defeat local yarns, machine yarns must rely on larger scale and lower production costs...
As he was talking, the clerk brought out a piece of paper, which turned out to be the "Market Updates" printed by the market every afternoon. Li Qiwei looked at it and sighed: "It's fallen again! The price of cotton yarn has also fallen! It seems that the market will be even worse tomorrow."
The waiter said: "Shopkeeper! Do you want to stop collecting..."
"Don't stop yet," Li Qiwei thought for a moment, "From now on, no matter what kind of cloth, each horse will be trained five cents... no, five cents!"
"So? Did you fall again?"
"That's right, this time it's all falling!" Li Qiwei handed the business paper to Li Shan, "Not only did cotton fall, but cotton yarn fell, and even cotton started to fall... This is incredible..." He suddenly remembered something, He called a waiter and said, "Go back to the city right away and tell my uncle to get rid of all the paper and cotton in your hands right away. No matter how much money you have now, sell it immediately, and there won't be a single piece left!"
Li Shan looked at the market, and sure enough, all cotton prices fell. The magnitude was not particularly large, but it was the first time since the market opened that such a comprehensive decline occurred, and the two of them suddenly became nervous. After hearing the shopkeeper's order to sell paper and cotton, Li Shan couldn't help but ask:
"What? You also bought paper cotton?!"
"I didn't buy it, my uncle did!" Li Qiwei's face showed anxiety, "My wife probably also invested her private money in it..."
"I heard that the price of paper and cotton is rising every day. As long as your uncle bought the paper and cotton a few days ago, he can still make a profit by selling it now."
"The two comrades are right," Li Qiwei's expression of anxiety subsided slightly, "I'm just afraid that he is greedy for small profits and refuses to get rid of it in time! After all, this paper price also fell a few days ago, and then it went back up."
"Then how do you know whether the price will go back up this time?"
"It goes without saying. At present, the prices of cotton cloth and cotton yarn are falling across the board. How can the cotton, which will be delivered in a few months and whose location is unknown, not fall? As soon as the Portuguese merchant ship arrived, Indian cotton cloth was unloaded and entered the market. The price of this cotton cloth fell faster and more If there are too many, this paper cotton will probably be just a piece of waste paper by then!"
(End of chapter)
