The steam yamen was extremely strict with the management of craftsmen, and in this era few people could withstand the work of three shifts, and people did not have the experience of not sleeping at night.

But in the face of good income and alternating holidays, people can learn and try to accept.

The nine factories were not involved in assembling steam engines, and the workers in the factories did not have any money, but they would get a share of the steam engine after deducting the cost after selling it, which made them extremely enthusiastic about their work.

Zhou Sijing was not born as a technical craftsman, he was born in Macheng, and was born as a jinshi in the second year of Longqing, even if there is no new department like the Steam Bureau, he may be able to achieve the level of a squire, and he may even be sent to other branches of the sixth department with his talent.

It was only because the imperial court had this department, and he did a good job in a few years, and it was when Wanli was in power that the official position was promoted and promoted, but people always stayed in the Steam Bureau.

Wanli trusts 'his people' and does not hesitate to entrust them with important tasks, but what is 'his people'? Wanli may not have an answer himself.

At least for now, this scope is extremely broad, and those who are promoted by him or who work hard for him are all his people.

As for his people, Wanli has always been very generous and trusting.

Perhaps this is because...... He had never tried what it was like to be betrayed.

Zhou Sijing's background as an orthodox jinshi made Zhou Sijing extremely concerned about the financial situation of the Yamen, and this was actually the direct reason why Zhou Sijing urgently needed to develop a method that could be widely used in farmland or ordinary roads...... Their reserves are running out of silver.

It stands to reason that the Steam Bureau has a lot of money, even if it does not mention the steamers needed by the government, there are many models of factory machines sold to the private sector, and the prices range from 122 to 9,000 taels per machine, and in the 9th and 10th years of Wanli alone, more than 90 columns of Daqinglong, more than 40 military Xuanwu and 26 naval Chijiao were made for the imperial court in the three major ordnance bureaus of Beiyang and Nanyang Xuanfu.

These more than 100 steam engines are of different models but all of them are large steam engines, with an average annual output of eight units per plant except for civilian use, and they have extremely terrifying productivity...... And the civil steam engine that was removed made the steam yamen pay a total of 360,000 taels of silver to the imperial court and the inner treasury last year, and kept 250,000 taels for itself to maintain operation.

It stands to reason that the steam yamen should not be short of money.

However, Zhou Sijing is a person who is prepared for danger in times of peace, and he has analyzed from the contracts in recent years that the craze for private procurement of Xuanwu and Black Bull is coming to an end, and in a more modern phrase, demand tends to be saturated.

The places where the steam engine was used in the Ming Dynasty were too concentrated, basically Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, South Zhili, and North Zhili; There are not many industries that can use steam engines, and the three most affected industries are weaving, metalworking, and mining and metallurgy, and the so-called 'biggest impact' is only to a certain extent just a subdivision of the work done by one person in the past.

For example, the extremely prosperous spinning and silk industry in Suzhou and Hangzhou, as early as when the cotton weaving industry began to gradually merge and monopolize large steam engine factories, hand-woven silk households were able to compete with machine weavers.

There is no other reason, the weaving of silk is complex, and complexity means that the original efficiency is low, the required skill threshold is high, and the skills of practitioners are relatively higher, so it is less likely to be eliminated by social change, so as to have the opportunity to join this change.

Nowadays, the silk weaving industry in Suzhou and Hangzhou is in the general use of small Xuanwu conditions to complete the initiative of the industry division of labor, some weavers who used to weave half a horse a day in the countryside did not save the capital now can not make money, so they give up the loom to drive ox carts, mule carts to travel to various townships and even go to Linxian County, buy silkworm cocoons from the fields, sell them to the upper family outside the city, and make some strength money.

Their ancestors are also weavers in the past, but the difference is that in the past, they were independent small producers, who cooked the purchased silkworm cocoons, purchased a small Xuanwu and connected the original spinning machine, turned the silkworm cocoons into a roll of silk thread, and sold them directly to the upper family without continuing to weave.

Shangjia is a small workshop owner who hired weavers to produce in the past, they have a small family wealth, have the capital to purchase a few small Xuanwu, and the collected thread is screened and selected twice, and the hook shaft, brush silk and other processes are completed, and a piece of silk is woven out of a piece of silk, and then sold to the upper family.

Mogami hired a large number of workers to boil the newly woven silk in alkaline water, soak the pig's pancreas, and clean it with water, because the newly woven silk was very hard and required a lot of labor to make it soft and comfortable, and after completing this process, it could be sold to various tailors and large merchants overseas.

Interestingly, the lowest and most uppermost families in this process do not require much technology, and the lowest cocoon collectors need a lot of manual labor and country contacts, and this process does not involve the steam engine; Mogami required a lot of labor and a sales network, and they were often the largest silk and satin mills in the past, and the only way the steam engine was involved in this process was to hammer the water with precise mallet after the water was cleaned.

The whole process is benign, and the cocoon collectors can open factories to make silk threads after obtaining a certain amount of capital; Spinning households can also open a spinning workshop after obtaining a certain amount of capital; Silk spinners have capital, connections, and can also hire a large number of workers to complete the final process and sell.

Zhou Sijing's favorite is such an industry, which means that his little Xuanwu will always be in short supply.

However, this is not the case in the weaving industry, in which the steam engine participates the most, weaving is not as complicated as spinning, the profits are not so high, and it is an industry that is scattered and generally labored, and the polarization of the practitioners is extremely serious, or the family has no money to spare and no income for a month, and the whole family has to run out of food; Either the large cloth sellers have a lot of property, and once the steam engine is involved, the small weavers have no chance to participate in the process, and the land of a county often comes up with two or three medium-sized basalts that are ordered by a merchant.

Most of the practitioners in the silk weaving industry are weavers, and they are professional; Most of the people working in the weaving industry are farmers, and they work part-time.

Then the county's cotton and linen weaving was monopolized, and the huge increase in output made it difficult for other weavers to have a chance to compete, and the first to use the steam engine The workshop owners soon had new funds to continue to buy the steamer and hire weavers, while others with extraordinary skills could do jacquard, but more people were eliminated before the competition began, and they didn't even have the opportunity to go to the countryside to harvest cotton, and they degraded directly to go home to plant cotton.

Although he has been in charge of the machinery factory for so long, Zhou Sijing has long been deeply aware that everything can use a steam engine, and the Huangzhuang of Wanli Ye Shuntianfu uses a horse-drawn steam engine to mount a sickle to harvest wheat, who cares?

But the common people in this world have to consider practicality and cost performance, even if your steam engine is cheap to 30 taels of silver, I can buy a few new clothes for my family for 30 taels of silver a year, and I can't move an iron ox home for those few acres of land, right?

And it was this sad situation that Zhou of the Steam Yamen saw - the weaving industry in this county no longer needed steam engines.