The fishermen were overjoyed as they watched the sea fish jumping on the deck of the boat. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

There are all kinds of marine fish in the Bohai Sea, such as the precious blackhead fish, which can be sold for 200 yuan a catty per catty. Common ones such as sea bass and barracuda are wholesaled to the market for 30 yuan a catty. Even according to the calculation of sea bass, the cheapest fish species, two thousand catties of sea fish are worth seventy taels of silver.

According to the efficiency of this first trawl fishing, a 200-ton fishing boat with 33 fishermen can catch more than 2,000 catties of sea fish in a day. After using preservation technology to treat live fish, the fish caught the first day are still alive the next day and can be sold overnight to Tianjin and coastal prefectures and counties in Shandong.

In other words, this means that on average, fishermen earn more than two taels of silver per person for half a day.

Earn two taels of silver in half a day, what an exaggerated output is this? At the end of a month, wouldn't a fisherman earn more than fifty taels of silver? Of course, according to the rules on board, fifty percent of the fishing harvest goes to the boss of the boat, and the remaining fifty percent goes to the fishermen. But even so, everyone can make a lot of money under such production capacity.

The trawling equipment of this steamer is complex and expensive, and the proportion of fishermen's share may be much lower than that of ordinary fishing boats. But in any case, the fishermen will always earn a little more than before.

One by one, the fishermen rejoiced and began to catch fish from their trawls and tie them into "bowfish" to keep them alive. Everyone had a smile of excitement on their faces, as if they were seeing a good day of abundance of food and clothing just around the corner.

The boss of the boat was a little more thoughtful than these fishermen, he walked up to Li Zhi, made a respectful gesture, and said: "Grandpa Guo, the little people have no eyes, and I didn't see the domineering of this trawl just now. ”

Li Zhi smiled and did not speak.

The boss of the boat said: "Grandpa Guo's trawling method requires the transformation of a sailboat into a ship to fish, I don't know how much silver this steam engine has, how much silver does it cost to transform a fishing boat?" ”

Li Zhi said: "The steam engine costs 30,000 taels of silver a piece, and if you buy and sell it in cash, you can't afford it." ”

The boat boss was taken aback by the price quoted by Li Zhi and took a breath.

After a pause, Li Zhi said, "I will allow you to buy converted ships and fishing facilities on credit." The fishermen freely formed fishing squads, each with 20 to 30 people, and each squad purchased a trawl steam fishing boat on credit from the public. The money owed by the fishing team to the company is recorded in the account, and the money is repaid once a month and every five years. ”

When the boat boss heard Li Zhi's arrangement, his eyes lit up. In those years, the fisherman was very poor, and even if he had his own fishing boat, he could not earn three taels of silver a month.

And if Li Zhi's arrangement is followed, tens of thousands of catties of sea fish can be caught a month, and the harvest of one or two thousand taels of silver a month will not be able to run away. In that case, in two or three years, the "fishing group" will be able to pay off the money for the purchase of steam engines and ships, and the rest of the income will be a net profit!

Didn't the fishermen want the carp to jump over the dragon gate and get rich overnight?

Although the boat boss is shrewd, he still does not understand the market very well and overestimates the future income of the steam trawler.

Fishermen can certainly earn a little hard-earned money by catching a lot of fish. But as more and more people enter the fishing industry, there will be fewer and fewer big fish in the ocean, and the output of fishing vessels will continue to decline.

At the same time, with the popularity of steam fishing boats, the total catch of the fishery continues to rise, which will eventually cause the price of fish in the market to fall. Maybe the sea fish will not be thirty-five pounds at that time, but only fifteen cents a pound. In the end, the income of the fishermen will definitely return to the average level of the people of Tianjin.

Of course, productivity has increased, seafood has flooded the market, and consumers in Tianjin and Shandong have benefited in the end. With the development of the marine fishing industry, the protein intake of residents in Tianjin and Shandong will increase dramatically.

Li Zhi said with a smile: "Your life will be much better than now, and you may be better than the life of the peasants, but you can't make a lot of money." ”

The boat boss was stunned, and after thinking for a long time, he nodded as if he didn't understand. However, he was still very happy, and walked up to the fisherman who was handling live fish and shouted: "Everyone, listen, Grandpa Guo said that he wants us to buy this steam fishing boat on credit!" You're going to have a good life! ”

The fishermen looked at each other for a while, smiling and cheering loudly.

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After getting off the fishing boat, Li Zhi returned to Fanjiazhuang and began to ponder how to increase the output of the steam engine.

According to Cui Changwu's statistics, there are more than 10,000 fishermen in Tianjin and Shandong. If these people all used steam steamers to trawl for fishing, Li Zhi would have to build more than 100 steam engines, which put forward new requirements for the output of steam engine workshops.

A steam engine can be sold for 30,000 taels of silver, but the cost is only a few hundred taels of silver. If all the fishermen in Tianjin and Shandong use Li Zhi's steam engines, it will be an order for more than 100 steam engines, and Li Zhi will be able to increase his income by hundreds of thousands of taels of silver every year in the future.

This is a lot of money, and Li Zhi wants to earn it no matter what.

In order to produce steam engines quickly, it is not possible to make them by hand with apprentices as before. Li Zhi wants to implement an assembly-line division of labor and cooperation, recruit new employees, and hand over all parts of the steam engine to a single person for batch production! New employees may not know how a steam engine works, but they quickly learn to make individual parts.

However, if you use an assembly-line division of labor, it is necessary to unify the size standards of the workpiece, which can prevent the occurrence of a large number of defective parts. Therefore, Li Zhi wants to standardize the weights and measures of the Fanjiazhuang factory.

Li Zhixian got a unit of length according to his height.

Subdividing this unit of length, Li Zhi obtained the length of meters, decimeters, and centimeters.

Li Zhi knew that the Ming Dynasty used 597 grams as a catty, so he made a one-catty scale and stipulated the weight of one catty.

After making the standard parts, Li Zhi summoned thousands of employees from various workshops such as steam engine workshop, rifle workshop, and cannon workshop to the school field outside Fanjiazhuang, and said loudly: "Workers, we will unify weights and measures in the future!" ”

Li Zhi took out a meter ruler and said loudly: "It's one meter so long!" One meter is a hundred centimeters. He took out a ruler of one-third meters and said, "Three feet is one meter." One and a half meters is a step! ”

Li Zhi moved out of the weighing stone and said, "Such a heavy weighing weight is a catty!" ”

Li Zhi was talking, and the second uncle Li Dao took out a ruler from his sleeve and matched it with Li Zhi's ruler.

"Guogong, there will be many problems if the size is not uniform, I have long been unified in the rifle workshop and the cannon workshop. The one we use is a little shorter than your one. ”

In the Ming Dynasty, a ruler was about 32 to 34 centimeters, and it was not fixed. The ruler used by Li Dao was about thirty-two centimeters, which was more than one centimeter shorter than one-third of the meters prescribed by Li Zhi.

Li Dao said: "But it doesn't matter, we can use a ruler like you instead." In this way, we can correspond to the one meter that Guogong said, one step at a time! ”

Li Zhi nodded and said, "Then from now on, I will operate according to my size!" We've settled on the size and weight units! ”

Li Dao took a puff of dry tobacco and nodded.