Chapter 64 Different Ways of Production
At the end of the workshop is a track, on which are neatly arranged with all kinds of timber, still steaming. After the pen www.biquge.info entered the workshop, it was unloaded by several workers with a pulley device, and the flatbed car on the track still went out from the place where it came in. The unloaded timber is loaded onto a machine that arches back and forth on the timber like a bull's head.
Yang Xuan pointed to the wood that had been transported in and asked Xu Ping: "Du Cao, is this wood hot?" ”
"Yes, it's all steamed in the outside trough to kill the eggs inside and prevent insects and ants. Planing while it's hot is because it saves effort and the wood doesn't crack easily. ”
Pointing to the bull-headed machine, Yang Xu felt extremely curious: "I have never seen such a machine to plan. ”
Of course I haven't seen it, this is Xu Ping's imitation of the cow's head in his previous life, and I am afraid that this era is only this one. If it is used to process steel, whether it is a planer knife, a transmission device or a control device, although Xu Ping is not good at saying that it will never be possible to do it in this era, but even if it is made, it has no practical value. But it is different when it is used to process wood, there is no problem with planers, and there are planers in the tools of carpentry. Because the strength and hardness of the wood is not high, brass gears can be used in large quantities for transmissions and controls, and the accuracy does not need to be very high. For wood processing, a simple cattle head planer is sufficient.
In fact, even in Xu Ping's previous life, the steel structure of many mechanical devices could be replaced by wood, but at that time, with the development of the steel industry, it was not as cheap to use wood as steel. In this era, it is natural that steel will never be used where wood can be used, not only because it is cheap, but more importantly, it is easy to process.
Just like the main structure on a vehicle, it is nothing more than a few large wooden planks, and traditional carpentry is time-consuming and laborious to do, and it is very troublesome. Now there are cattle head planers and sawing machines, which are very simple, use less manpower, and are convenient and fast. A large number of cheap vehicles not only rely on reducing the cost of wood, but more importantly, adopt factory production methods, and the cost has been reduced all of a sudden.
Yang Xue and Chong Shiheng stepped forward and walked around for a while, before they suddenly realized: "Du Cao wants to build a dam in the city, it turns out that it is of this use!" In the past, it was just a water mill, which saved countless manpower and material resources, but now it uses water power to do these chopping and cutting, how many things are saved! Without these machines, I don't know how many carpenters would have to be hired to do this work! ”
The dam was built to raise the water level of the Luohe River before entering Luoyang City, and various fields opened canals to divert water, using the water level difference to drive various machines, and finally discharged the water downstream. In this way, the water flow is much smoother, which is much stronger than installing water wheels directly in the river, and can replace most of the manpower and draft animals.
It is not only the head planer that is driven by water power, but also hacksaws, including circular saws and band saws, drilling machines, and even lathes and milling machines, and even a few polishing grinders. Although these machine tools are a little simpler, and they look very shabby in the eyes of Xu Ping's previous life, they can't process steel, and there is no problem in processing wood.
With these dozens of machine tools, as well as workers who have undergone preliminary training, this new field produces more horse-drawn carts and donkey carts every year than the entire Jingxi Road nearly 20 state armies combined.
Of course, the most important thing is to be cheap. Compared to the material cost of the vehicle, the labor cost is negligible.
This is the power of industry, large-scale production, which is fundamentally different from the previous workshop-style production method. Not only the labor cost has been reduced to a very low level, but the technical requirements for practitioners have also been infinitely reduced. As long as you are healthy, clear-headed, and have undergone simple training, you can be competent for the work you are engaged in, and you do not need to follow the master for a few years as before. If we add the standardization of parts, even the cost of use has been reduced to an incredible level.
Xu Pingjian's new field work, in terms of the scale of hired manpower alone, cannot be compared with the previous large-scale government-run field work. For example, the embroidery institute in the capital has tens of thousands of hired workers plus the van army, which is incomparable with the new field service. But in terms of production capacity and value created, it is far more than the old field work.
Embroidery institutes, ordnance supervisors, which use a lot of manpower, often do not pay attention to efficiency, but strive for excellence in the products produced. It doesn't matter how little you produce, the key is that the product must be good. They are also not aimed at the market, and the users are either the royal family or the military, and the customer base is the least cost-conscious.
The progress of the productive forces is not to see what incredible and ingenious rare items have been made by skilled craftsmen or ingenious minds, but to change the lives of ordinary people with the goods or services produced by the progressive productive forces. Xu Ping went to make a few tricycles for use in the well-ordered imperial city, and although it was meaningful to promote the progress of productivity, this progress was far from reaching the point of influencing society and changing people's lives.
In the past year, the new field affairs in the capital have been made more of luxury goods, used to make money, and in the eyes of dignitaries and officials, they are just novelty playthings. Only those new agricultural tools can really change the way agricultural production is done, and in the eyes of the officials who are actually in power, they are far more important than mirrors and the like, but they have not yet been popularized.
The new field business built in Luoyang, Xijing, will be completely different from the capital Kaifeng, that is, it is to industrialize, mass production, and bring it to the market at a low price, change the way of production and exchange in this world, and change everyone's life.
Walking all the way from the end of the workshop, Yang Xue and Chong Shiheng looked at the pieces of wood, turning them into parts step by step, and then forming frames, wheels and other parts in the middle, and finally forming a complete vehicle, which was pulled directly to the avenue outside the door.
This is a completely different way of production than before, and it is so efficient that they could not even dream of it. There were even several times when I was halfway through and turned back to see how these things came out.
When he arrived at the door where he came in, Yang Xue let out a sigh: "Du Cao, these carriages and donkey carts - how cheap are they to sell?" ”
Xu Ping smiled: "According to my thoughts, there are dozens of acres of land at home, and there should be one for a family that can cultivate and eat by itself." A cow and a donkey, can plough and harvest, and can also use a donkey cart to transport some local products to sell in other places, which is a well-off home in the countryside. ”
In the final analysis, the significance of these cars is to make the production and life of farmers larger, not like before, most people spend their lives wandering around ten miles and eight towns, and they feel that they have seen the outside world when they catch a grass market twenty miles away. Their horizons have been broadened, and they also have the tools and motivation to transport local local products out of the country, form a market for agricultural and sideline products, and let the tide of commodity economy sweep to the rural areas. Only by including the broadest rural areas can a fundamental change take place in society.
Food alone can feed the peasants, but there is no way to keep them rich. The harvest has been bumper, grain prices have fallen, grain prices have risen in famine years, but there is no grain to sell, grain will always fill the stomach, and in the vast Chinese mainland market, it is impossible and the official does not dare to make grain a real commodity. The money in the hands of the peasants can only be exchanged for cash crops such as cotton, linen and mulberry and various side businesses. In the countryside, what Xu Ping has to do is to push the development of the side business as much as possible.