The Spring Festival in the 31st year of Chengshun was the sixth Spring Festival that Song Erniu celebrated after leaving his hometown, and it was also the first Spring Festival that he celebrated in his overseas territory of North America.
But to be honest, Song Erniu didn't feel much of the Spring Festival atmosphere in Shuanghe County.
Even with the sound of firecrackers outside, every household has posted Spring Festival couplets, and many people are smiling and saying Happy New Year to others.
But these have nothing to do with Song Erniu!
Because he has no relatives in North America!
The Spring Festival was supposed to be a time for family reunion, but Song Erniu couldn't find any relatives or even friends to reunite with.
On the evening of New Year's Eve, Song Erniu put up couplets in a small wooden house he temporarily rented, set off firecrackers, and cooked dumplings for himself in the room alone for New Year's Eve dinner. Eating under the dim oil lamp.
As I ate, tears flowed down involuntarily.
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Song Erniu did not rest for even one day during the Spring Festival. The miners all took a rest, but he did not. Even on the morning of New Year's Eve, he was still busy.
He continued to be busy on the first day of the new year. He walked out of the house with a smile on his face, nodding and saying hello to some neighbors he had seen but was not familiar with, and said a happy new year.
Although the days of fighting outside are hard and lonely, in the adult world, tears are of no use.
After the Spring Festival, he still has a lot of things to do.
He set up a small workshop producing canvas workwear before the Spring Festival, and is taking advantage of the Spring Festival to expand production scale to capture more markets.
Last winter, Song Erniu, who had just arrived in Shuanghe County, discovered by chance that miners' trousers and tops could be made from canvas. Such wear-resistant and cheap clothes were very popular among the miners.
At first, he just tried to buy some canvas and asked a few peasant women to help sew clothes, but he didn't expect to sell it soon. Although the money he earned was not too much, it was still more than gold mining. And stable.
In this way, Song Erniu simply focused on canvas clothes. He bought some canvases in succession, asked the peasant women from nearby neighbors to help sew them, and then took them to the gold mining area in the suburbs. peddling.
After a month, he also made a lot of money.
With this money, he was thinking about expanding his canvas work clothes business.
I always ask a few peasant women to help with hand sewing in their free time. The efficiency is too slow and the output is too low, which is far from meeting the market demand.
According to what Song Erniu has learned over the past month or so, there are at least 10,000 to 20,000 gold diggers in Shuanghe County.
These gold diggers will have a strong demand for this kind of canvas workwear.
At the same time, these people also have enough purchasing power. After all, these gold diggers hunt for gold every day. Although most of them are just hard-earned money, only a handful of them explode overnight.
But if you really think about it, even those who earn hard-earned money and these gold diggers have a monthly income of at least ten yuan. If you are lucky, it may even be more, which can reach dozens of yuan.
The reason why most of them are still paupers... That's because all kinds of expenses in the mining areas are very high. The rent of housing is not cheap, the food is not cheap, and the wine is even more expensive.
At the same time, most of these gold diggers are actually like Song Erniu, young people who came from China to make a fortune, and most of them are single.
Many people have enough to eat for one person and the whole family is not hungry, and the money earned from gold mining is spent lavishly.
Therefore, there are many gold diggers who come here, but there are very few gold diggers who actually make a fortune or even save enough money.
However, such a group of gold diggers has also brought sufficient consumption power to the local area. Shuanghe County has been able to transform from a small town with less than a few hundred people to a county with thousands of people. Various shops have sprung up like mushrooms after a rain, just because of these gold diggers.
Song Erniu's canvas workwear business also benefited from this situation.
Seeing that the output of hand-sewing was insufficient and the market demand was very high, Song Erniu naturally wanted to expand the scale of his canvas workwear.
He also made some money before, although it was not much, but there was still some money. So he rented a small warehouse, bought three pedal sewing machines, and asked a few women to use the sewing machines to sew, and then he would do it himself. I went to the mines to set up street stalls to sell, and embarked on the path of workshop-style production and sales.
When Song Erniu was working in Songjiang Prefecture, he had worked in a garment factory owned by a private owner. The garment factory mainly provided work uniforms to some local factories. The main machine equipment used in the factory was a pedal sewing machine.
So when he wanted to expand the production of canvas workwear, he immediately wanted this kind of pedal sewing machine.
This pedal sewing machine was developed and produced by Hantian Textile Company. It has been used in the domestic garment industry and other industries that require sewing, but the real sales volume is still in the household market.
Because the domestic garment industry in the Dachu Empire has not developed very well, there are actually very few professional garment factories. Some of them provide standard clothes for official institutions or enterprises, and few are for the general garment market.
The tradition of the people of the Chu Empire is that men farm and women weave... Although the textile industry is developing rapidly now, and there are not so many families spinning and weaving by themselves, in fact it is still relatively common in rural areas.
As for tailoring and sewing, even urban families and even middle- and upper-class families mostly make their own clothes. They rarely buy ready-made clothes outside. Basically, they buy fabrics and sew them by the women at home.
This is a matter of traditional habits and costs.
Hantian Textile Company, which couldn't sell ready-made clothes, thought about it, forget it, if the ready-made clothes can't be sold, then it can't be sold. I should just sell sewing machines... Not to mention, the two generations of household appliances developed and brought to the market by Hantian Textile Company Sewing machines, including hand-operated sewing machines and pedal sewing machines, have been selling well since the beginning, and are very popular among middle- and upper-class housewives.
Even now, when some women from middle-to-upper-class families in China get married, they will bring a pedal sewing machine produced by Hantian Textile Company in their dowry.
After all, the social atmosphere of the Chu State these days is actually very traditional and conservative. Women, even those in the upper class, are very particular about the craftsmanship of women.
Therefore, after the sewing machine was marketed to middle- and upper-class housewives, sales were surprisingly good, because the market demand was too large, its own production was not enough, and its expansion was slow. The most important thing is that Hantian Textile Company itself is not a machinery company. of.
Therefore, we cooperated with several domestic machinery companies and used technology licensing to expand production. This kind of thing gradually spread to the North American colonies.
Song Erniu had previously seen a tailor using a treadle sewing machine in a tailor shop in the county. After asking about it, he found this thing in a store of a trading company in Shuanghe County.
However, this thing is also relatively expensive. Although Song Erniu has a little money, he still cannot afford to buy multiple pedal sewing machines.
In desperation, he had no choice but to go to the local financial bank to apply for a loan.
Fortunately, the North American authorities provide relatively strong encouragement and support to the local area, and provide relatively strong support for immigrants to start their own businesses.
However, support is support, and other necessary procedures must be followed.
In order to obtain a loan, Song Erniu first registered a company, rented a small factory to serve as an office space, and then went to a local machinery trading company to sign a purchase contract for three sewing machines after paying a small deposit. After contract.
I went back to the financial bank with various procedures and successfully obtained the loan.
But before the loan was approved, it was transferred directly to the trading company, and the three sewing machines were also used as collateral for the loan.
After following this set of procedures, Song Erniu not only spent all the money he had earned before, but also nearly a hundred Chu Yuan that he had saved at home and brought to North America.
And he still owes a lot of debt!
However, at this time, his heart was burning because he saw hope for the future!
After intense preparations during the Spring Festival, before the Spring Festival ended, Song Erniu recruited more than ten full-time sewing women and began to use pedal sewing machines to produce canvas work clothes in a small warehouse.
The main raw material, canvas, was also obtained on credit.
There was a trading company at the scene that mainly dealt in various types of cloth. When they saw Song Erniu's demand for a large amount of canvas in a short period of time, they were also happy to see a bigger market for their canvas.
There are more than 20,000 people in Shuanghe County, most of whom are gold diggers. They are all potential consumers of this canvas workwear.
The market here is huge.
For the sake of the potential big market in the future, they were willing to provide Song Erniu with a batch of canvases on a partial credit basis.
Therefore, while others were still celebrating the Spring Festival, Song Erniu was already busy completing the expansion of the production of his own canvas workwear.
The efficiency of using a pedal sewing machine to produce ready-made garments can be countless times faster than manually sewing stitch by stitch, which means a huge increase in output.
On the sixth day of the Lunar New Year, when the miners in the gold mines or the gold prospectors who just worked alone began to go to the mines to pan for gold, Song Erniu also drove a two-wheeled carriage, pulling hundreds of sails The installers arrived at the mining area.
After arriving at the place where the stall was previously set up, Song Erniu placed his goods on the carriage and arranged the horses that pulled the carriage.
This carriage is not his own, but rented from the owner of a wood workshop next door. Whether it is a carriage or a draft horse, it must be properly managed. If something goes wrong, you will have to pay for it.
After settling in, a four-wheeled carriage came next door. The driver was very smartly dressed. Unlike Song Erniu, who was wearing a self-made canvas work suit, this middle-aged man in his thirties wore Wearing a decent business suit made of wool and a black round hat.
Song Erniu recognized this man as Boss Chen, who was the first to set up stalls in this mining area. He mainly sold daily necessities, which seemed to be very fragmentary, but his sales were very good and he earned much more than Song Erniu. .
This four-wheeled carriage and the two Fengzhou horses pulling it all belong to him. He said that there is also a grocery store in the county town.
After meeting this person, Song Erniu took the initiative to say hello: "Hello, Boss Chen!"
Boss Chen nodded slightly, glanced at the two-wheeled carriage next to Song Erniu, and immediately said: "Hey, Xiao Song, you have become rich during the Chinese New Year. You have already bought a carriage!"
Song Erniu waved his hand quickly: "No way, this is rented from someone else, how could I buy a carriage?"
In North America, carriages are actually not valuable. After all, they are just ordinary carriages used for pulling goods. Ordinary carpenters can basically make them.
The most valuable thing is the horse that pulls the cart.
In North America, there are no local horses. The native horses in America have become extinct long ago. Nowadays, the horses in America are basically brought over by outsiders.
The Spanish were the first to bring some, but the Spanish's sphere of influence was mainly concentrated in the southern region of North America, that is, the Mexico area, and then a small amount of the east coast of North America.
As for the west coast, the Spaniards had not set foot there before, so naturally there were no horses there.
The horses used by the Chu people in North America were basically brought directly from the mainland and bred.
Because shipping horses by sea is expensive, and the time for local breeding of grazing horses is relatively short, the Chu people still lack horses in North America, and they have to purchase a lot of Spanish horses from the Spanish in the south every year.
However, North America, especially the southern region, has a good climate and is very suitable for grazing and breeding. The number of local horses owned by the Chu people is also increasing rapidly, and the price of horses will drop significantly in a few years.
But that's later.
Nowadays, the price of horses is still relatively expensive. Song Erniu's canvas workwear business has just started, and he can afford it even if he bites the bullet. But in a short period of time, the money is not spent here, and Song Erniu can only Rented.
Song Erniu greeted Boss Chen and helped Boss Chen unload and arrange the goods. He didn't ask for anything. He was just doing stall business in this mining area. Naturally, he had to establish good relations with the bosses who set up stalls nearby. It's better to be kind.
Harmony brings wealth!
While Song Erniu was helping Boss Chen settle down, other people who came to set up stalls also arrived one after another. Some used horse-drawn carriages to transport goods, while others simply used handcarts or carried them on their own shoulders.
The items sold are daily necessities, and there are also some food stalls selling food and drink. Basically, they sell whatever the gold diggers in the mining area need, and there are all kinds of things.
Many of them also engage in gold recycling business.
Among the gold diggers here, only a very small number are formal employees of mining companies, and most of them are actually independent gold diggers.
Many people from Chu State came all the way here to find gold and make a fortune overnight, not to work as miners for others.
After those gold diggers who work alone find gold sand, it is inconvenient to directly take the money they spend in gold sand. If they need to exchange it for money, they must either go to the bank to exchange it, or simply exchange it here to some bosses who buy gold.
Song Erniu did not do this. He purchased the sand on the spot and then took it back to the county seat to sell it to a big gold buyer.
Although there is a large profit margin between the price of gold in the mining area and the domestic retail price of gold, in fact the gold buyers on the scene are all small buyers, and they only make a small price difference, so the profits are not very large.
If the profit difference is too big, and the gold diggers are not stupid, they will take it directly to the county or Jinshan City and sell it directly to those large gold buyers, or simply sell it to a financial bank, without letting you do anything else.
So if you are doing gold business here... you won't actually make much money.
But the risks involved in gold business are not small... Shuanghe County is not a safe place today.
The huge number of gold diggers not only brought huge consumption, but also brought subsequent agricultural labor resources. However, among these people, there are also a very small number who are not willing to accept the reality and then embark on the illegal path.
It hadn't been long since he arrived here, but Song Erniu had already heard about several cases of robbery and murder.
Years ago, a gold prospector who had just arrived was very lucky. After only a few days of gold mining, he picked up a piece of gold nugget the size of a pair of fists. Before he could be happy, he was killed in his tent that night. A piece of gold nugget the size of a pair of fists disappeared.
The patrol police at the mine are still investigating this case, but I heard from some people who have been here for a long time that this kind of thing is basically impossible to detect.
Because most of these gold diggers work alone, with at most a few relatives and friends, and the mobility of people is very high. Many people come from China to hunt for gold excitedly, but they don’t work for long, or they leave within a few months. , and then went to farm and become a small landowner.
People come and go, there is great mobility, and many gold prospectors do not have a fixed residence. They always set up tents in the wild in the mining area. Even because of the good climate in Shuanghe County, some gold prospectors do not even have tents. Just use the earth as your bed and the sky as your quilt.
Under such circumstances, it is difficult for patrol officers to identify potential criminals.
In addition, there are no surveillance equipment and other criminal investigation methods these days, so it is actually difficult to detect a murder in a timely manner after it occurs in the mining area.
These deeds also made Song Erniu understand that money is easy to make here, but it is not easy to keep money, especially if it is related to gold, it can easily become the target of robbers.
Therefore, Song Erniu would rather engage in the direct canvas workwear business than get involved in these gold businesses.
To be honest, his income from the canvas workwear business is no less than that of these gold dealers.
On the first day of work after the Spring Festival, he sold dozens of sets of canvas work clothes, which was much better than a year ago.
Because after this period of preparation, more gold diggers have learned that this kind of canvas work clothes is strong and wear-resistant and suitable for gold mining work, so many people come to buy it.
In the afternoon, Song Erniu packed up his things and set up his carriage to return to the city. In order to be safe on the way back and avoid encountering robbers, Song Erniu chose to stay warm and return to the city with other businessmen.
He sold a lot of things today, and he had a lot of cash on him. If he was robbed, he would cry to death.
Boss Chen looked at Song Erniu, who looked cautious, and immediately lifted the hem of his clothes slightly, revealing a revolver inside: "Xiao Song, listen to my advice, you have to apply for a gun license later, buy I used a gun to defend myself, but here is no different than in China. Making money is not a skill, but making money and being able to keep it is a skill!"
Many of the dozen or so businessmen around also echoed that when doing business outside, guns are indispensable.
Some people also say that you don’t have to use a gun, but you must have it and let others know that you have it. Otherwise, if the robbers see that you don’t have a gun, they will directly bully you as a soft persimmon.
Some people, like Boss Chen, took out their own guns, including revolvers and long shotguns.
Song Erniu was shocked when he saw it... Each of these dozen businessmen had a gun, and some even had several... Boss Chen had a shotgun and two six-ring revolvers!
Only he didn't...
This North America is indeed different from China!
