Chapter 9 Cloth Workshop

A meeting made many people's hearts heavy.

After Xu Shenchun sent everyone away, he wrote dozens of letters for the people below to send out, and these letters were all over the Ming Dynasty, some to Suzhou, some to Nanjing, some to Beijing, and some to Guangdong.

This is Xu Shenchun's network.

After Xu Shenchun did these things, although he was worried, it did not prevent him from following his habits. That's to go to the cloth mill and have a look.

Xu Shenchun took a team of family members out of the mansion, got into the sedan chair, and couldn't walk a few steps. Xu Shenchun only felt a pause under his feet, and knew that it had arrived.

Xu Shenchun's cloth workshop is not far outside the city of Songjiang Mansion.

As soon as the sedan curtain opened, Xu Shenchun came out.

The familiar scenery came into view, and the first thing I heard was the sound of various clicks, this body was sharp and short, the sound of a loom.

But countless such sounds, mixed together, become noise, which is very difficult to accept.

However, Xu Shenchun is very familiar with this voice.

"I've seen the master." More than a dozen family members standing guard immediately saluted and said.

Xu Shenchun waved his hand and said, "Open the door." ”

Immediately several people opened the high gate.

This courtyard is not visible anywhere else, but one thing is certain, and that is that the walls of this place are high enough, and the gate is large enough.

The wall is high, but it prevents the people inside from escaping. However, the door is large but it is convenient to transport goods.

In terms of architectural aesthetics, it looks extremely clumsy, which is somewhat different from the traditional architectural style of the Ming Dynasty.

As soon as Xu Shenchun came in, several old women came to salute.

Xu Shenchun nodded slightly, and ignored these people.

Because of the great defense of men and women in this era, most of the people who come to work here are female workers. So the male thugs are all outside, and the managers inside are all women.

Men are not allowed to come in at all.

But Xu Shenchun is not an ordinary person at all.

Xu Shenchun walked in the tall factory with his hands behind his back.

In fact, the so-called factory building is just a big shed. It's all a straw mat topped with wood on top of it, and there's some thatch on it.

However, the place is paved with triple soil.

It's not for the sake of employees or anything, but for the convenience of transporting goods.

Xu Shenchun pinched his beard, and his eyes slowly became blurred, and he saw female workers working in front of looms.

It seemed that what he saw was an ingot of silver.

Actually, there is nothing wrong with that.

Because cotton cloth can exist as hard currency in many places in this era.

For a long time in Chinese history, cloth was used as a pawn

Money is used.

Although today's market is a little bad, Xu Shenchun has no doubt about the prospects of the cloth industry.

In terms of many factors, the prospects of the cotton industry can be much stronger than that of the iron industry.

Because of the iron tools of this era, many people have to use them for many years, and even from father to son, even if there is any problem, they are all repaired by knocking and beating themselves.

But clothes, even if they are tinkered, cannot last for many years.

Xu Shenchun is sometimes even proud, even if it is Shaofu, what about it, is his Xu family's industry worse than Shaofu?

In the eyes of others, it is a chore to inspect the cloth workshop and inspect the processes one by one, but for Xu Shenchun himself, it is a supreme enjoyment.

It's just that this supreme enjoyment has been interrupted.

At this time, suddenly a woman knelt in front of Xu Shenchun with her hair and said, "Master, let go of my child, let go of my child." ”

Xu Shenchun frowned at first, then spread his eyebrows, asked the people around him to get out of the way, and said, "What's the matter with you?" ”

Xu Shenchun was kind and pleasant on the surface, but he was already angry in his heart.

Xu Shenchun has such a big industry, and he can even be said to be the largest businessman in Jiangnan. But there was also a lot of pressure. Even though he asks for almost half of his net income every year, he gives gifts everywhere, but he doesn't have much security.

And it also bears a lot of blame.

In the cloth workshop, the most troublesome thing for him is the problem of employment.

Jiangnan women, ingenious, are the most suitable as textile workers, but after gathering a large number of female textile workers, there will be such and such problems.

The biggest problem is weathering.

Because this is the main reason for being rebuked by the doctors.

Therefore, Xu Shenchun has made a lot of preparations.

The first source of workers he recruited was women bought in the famine-stricken lands of the north.

Although the Daming disaster relief is still quite effective.

But the power of the imperial court cannot be exhaustive. Naturally, there are places that cannot be taken care of, although the imperial court has ordered the prohibition of slaves and maids, but there is no explicit prohibition of human trafficking.

Zhu Qizhen also thought about it, but in the end, he could only acquiesce to this fact.

It is in a blank area where the imperial court has neither legal nor illegal regulations.

At the beginning of Zhu Qizhen's amnesty, the slavery system was abolished, at least the use of slaves in the field of production was completely abolished, as for those who were domestically engaged in domestic service, although they were exempted from the status of slaves and maids, this strong dependency relationship still exists.

Many things, in another era, are tragic things, such as buying and selling human beings, but in the production relations from the Ming Dynasty to the present, there are certain reasons.

After the disaster, many ordinary people sold their sons and daughters, on the one hand, to keep themselves alive, and on the other hand, to let them live

The child lives.

If they are not sold, the child will have to die with them.

After selling, even if you are a slave or a maidservant, or enter a green building, although you have a miserable life, you can still live.

At a time when being alive in itself is a task that can only be accomplished with all one's might. A lot of things are also helpless.

Even if Zhu Qizhen prohibits the sale of human beings, can it be exported into a constitution, and people dare not violate it? Even so, it also cut off the last way for the people to live.

However, Zhu Qizhen was naturally unwilling to endorse the Da Ming Law in this regard, but the previous laws regulating human trafficking were deleted.

It is not suitable to prohibit human trafficking, but Zhu Qizhen always has to make them suitable.

When even the poorest people in the Ming Dynasty could survive without selling their children and daughters.

And this kind of human trafficking is signed in the form of a contract as a commission, generally speaking, it means that the two parties sign a document to work for so-and-so for how many years. So.

But it's all fiction.

This still has an identity. There are those who ascended the throne in the yellow books of the imperial court. This still has to go through a form, as for those black households, they don't even have to go through a form.

But that's not enough.

Long-distance human trafficking also comes at a cost. After all, after the reform of the Ming Dynasty, the management became stricter, although it was not as good as the Hongwu era.

But it's not like even the road guide can be faked before.

The reason is simple, the fine is attributed to the local treasury.

Up and down in the county, if you want to have a good year, it depends on how much you can be fined. If a servant lets go, what he loses is the interests of the entire yamen.

It's okay if I don't know, but I know that I can't allow it.

In the past, the county magistrate could cover the sky with one hand, but now even in a small county, there are more than a dozen officials with official status in the eighth and ninth grades.

The power of the county order has been divided a lot by so many officials, although it may not be impossible to do a word, but it is not easy to deceive it all.

Therefore, even if the officials buy off the county order, it is not very easy to operate.

This is something that will cause public anger, and as long as the people and officials who still want to climb up, they will not do it.

And human trafficking, this gray area business, is becoming more and more difficult to do.

Therefore, the second largest source of female workers in Xu Shenchun is the wives or daughters of poor people in the vicinity.

There are not many women in Jiangnan who weave cloth at home, but the small-scale peasant economy, if it can be compared to large-scale factory production. When Xu Shenchun made his fortune, he should also see that in many places, the economic model of self-sufficient small-scale farmers was broken.

Xu Shenchun tried his best to let these female workers work in the factory.

In general, there is a contract with the parents or husbands of these female workers for a limited number of years. And the age of these female workers is also around thirteen or fourteen to thirty years old.

The older ones are gone.