Chen Xu rejected Fan's request to enter the weaving industry. Not only that, he also asked Fan Caiying to write a letter to tell Fan Yong to prepare for heavy bleeding and spend money to eliminate disasters.

Chen Xu could not guarantee that Fan would be able to do what he said. After all, Fan's assets are now hundreds of millions, and Fan's family is not controlled by Fan Yong alone. Many people in the clan must not be willing to bear this huge wealth, but as long as he can understand Chen Xu's words, he will agree. Moreover, Chen Xu did not make Fan's contributions unreasonably, but would use the money to exchange for a noble identity.

Chen Xu's purpose is very simple, that is, to allow some merchants to participate in the decision-making of the court to form a political force representing merchants. This will ensure that business can develop continuously and healthily, use individual power to promote the germination of the bourgeoisie, transform the merchant group into an emerging bourgeoisie, and promote the Qin Dynasty to move towards a more mature political system through technology and wealth.

But this process is destined to be slower, maybe three or five years, maybe ten or eight years or even longer, but as long as the direction is right.

It is already spring. Given that the southern mulberry silkworms will soon start large-scale breeding, the improved looms and spinning machines need to be arranged and promoted quickly. The first recommendation is the Southeast counties with developed mulberry silkworms.

In mid-January, Chen Xu organized the Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Industry and the Shaofu Department of the Ministry of Industry and Revenue and other departments to write to the emperor after several days of discussion, requesting the construction of two large silk weaving factories in Hangzhou County, Kuaiji County and Guangling County, Donghai County, name it Hangzhou Silk Factory and Suzhou Silk Factory. These are two state-owned factories, funded by the Finance Department and Shaofu Department. The scale of looms has recently reached 300, and the long-term scale has reached 1,000. With the support of the mature mulberry silkworm breeding foundation in the southeast, at least 150,000 pieces of silk can be weaved every year after completion. This item will increase the current silk output of Daqin by nearly twice.

Although Daqin's mulberry silkworm breeding scale is large and the textile scale is also large, they are all based on families and there is no large-scale factory. Moreover, due to the limitations of textile technology, a skilled weaver girl can only produce three or five pieces a year. However, as long as the loom invented is simply improved, it can be suitable for silk textile textiles. Even if a textile machine is weaved into one piece a day, the annual output is equivalent to the textile scale of one hundred families, and a thousand looms are equivalent to the weaving scale of 100,000 households. This is almost the number of mulberry silkworm breeders in the entire Daqin. Most of them only raise silkworms and sell silk cocoons to grow silk, and half of the family spinning yarn. About one third of the families have skilled weavers in silk production. From technology to technology, the development of the silk industry is severely limited.

In fact, the current scale of mulberry silkworm breeding is not the Yangtze River Basin, but Qilu and other places. Among the seven heroes of the Warring States Period, Qi State paid the most attention to the silk industry and commerce. Therefore, the mulberry silkworm breeding in Qi State is also the largest, and there are very strict laws on mulberry silkworm breeding and textile management.

First of all, farmers must plant mulberry leaves around them, and no other trees are allowed, and every household is like this.

The second is to give people who are proficient in silkworm raising, prevent and treat diseases, giving them a pound of gold and eight stones of food every month.

Third, there is a lack of damage to silkworm plaques and utensils for raising silkworms, and government loans will support it.

Fourth, in order to ensure the development and inheritance of skills, it was determined that scholars, farmers, industry and commerce should be settled separately, handicrafts were managed by the government, silkworm breeding, silk reeling and textiles were all fixed types, and the son inherited his father's business and was recognized by the government.

It was under these strict management and support that the mulberry silkworm breeding in Qi State has developed greatly, and relying on the two industries of silk and salt, Qi State has become the richest country among the seven heroes of the Warring States Period.

After the Qin unified the six countries, it inherited many management methods of Qi in mulberry silkworm breeding. Qilu and other places are still the most developed areas of the Qin Dynasty. However, the southeastern counties have developed very quickly in recent years because there are many rivers and lakes in the south, and the climate and soil are more suitable for mulberry silkworm breeding. In addition, Daqin has formulated more stringent laws specifically for the mulberry silkworm industry.

There are records in the Qin bamboo slips of Sleeping Tiger: Some people pick mulberry leaves, and the soil is not enough to make money, so what should I do? The treasure is 300 years old.

What to explain is how to deal with stealing other people’s mulberry leaves less than a penny? In the end, you will be sentenced to three months of labor service.

This punishment is quite terrible, and from this it can be seen that Qin Lu is indeed a bit too strict. Li Si, the disciples of the Legal family who uphold the court, have no mercy or mercy towards ordinary people.

Later Suzhou and Hangzhou areas were the center of the entire silk weaving industry. In view of the increasingly developed mulberry silkworm breeding and silk industry in the Yangtze River and Taihu Lake Basins, Chen Xu decided to place the two state-owned factories in Suzhou and Hangzhou respectively, and use the convenient transportation of the Yangtze River and Zhejiang to radiate the entire southeastern counties, and at the same time, he also wanted to use this to drive the development of the entire southeastern economy.

Moreover, in order to support the development of the private economy, Chen Xu asked the Academy of Sciences to speed up further research on spinning machines, miniaturize and improve the loom, and make a home-based textile machine as soon as possible, so that those farmers who rely on raising silkworms to make a living will not lose their livelihoods by large-scale factories.

There are two purposes for Chen Xu to quickly open two large state-owned factories.

First, there is currently no similar textile factory in the entire Daqin except the weaving office of the Shaofu in the palace. All the cloth and silk are produced in families. Chen Xu wants to use these two large-scale factories to let businessmen all over the world learn how to open weaving factories, and understand the management and operation methods and benefits of such large-scale factories.

Second, after the conquest of the Western Regions, the sales of silk were completely in short supply. The merchants from the Western Regions liked the most were silk and glass porcelain, especially silk, which was light in weight and high in value and convenient transportation. After being transported to the Western Regions, a piece of silk from Daqin was transferred to the merchants of Dayuan and Daxia, making a profit of at least five to ten times, and they were all traded in gold, and no one else admitted it, because such exquisite silk fabrics had never been seen by people from Western countries, and very few people heard of them. From the Warring States Period to the early Qin Dynasty, it was the beginning of understanding and exchanges between the East and the West. The reputation of the Qin Dynasty continued to spread to the West with tribes such as the Xiongnu and Yuezhi, but it was just a spread. If it weren't for Chen Xu's appearance, then the West would have to truly understand the Central Plains until Zhang Qian, a hundred years later, went on a mission to the Western Regions.

Today, the Qin Dynasty has embarked on another road. The Western Regions have been conquered in advance. There are endless caravans between the Western Regions and the Qin Dynasty on weekdays. Silk is the most popular commodity. Glass and porcelain tea is also popular, which is much worse than silk. Because it is inconvenient to carry and transport, it is easy to be damaged on the road. Silk is different. A person and a horse can bring dozens of horses. If you transport it back and sell it, you can earn several times or even ten times the money. I heard that the best silk in the Qin Dynasty can buy five thousand yuan in the Western Regions, which is worth far more than a pound of gold.

When Chen Xu heard this number, his chin almost dropped.

However, although silk is valuable, there are only a handful of silks circulated among the people. The silk of the Qin Dynasty was basically collected by the Shaofu. The annual output of tens of thousands of pieces was only enough for the emperor to support a huge harem and reward it to kings and princes and nobles. The remaining Qin nobles themselves were not enough, let alone sold it. Silk is a hard currency that surpassed gold, and ordinary people could not buy it even if they had money.

This is the current situation caused by the low textile technology of silk.

The rise of the Silk Road in later generations was thanks to the invention of looms and jacquard machines. Now Chen Xu finally developed these two machines more than a hundred years ahead of schedule, and even the process was more advanced, which would bring about a blowout development of the textile industry and would inevitably lead to a large-scale development of silk trade.

In addition to solving the factory and machinery, the preparation of two state-owned silk manufacturing plants also involves the procurement of raw silk, training of textile workers, and regular management issues. Moreover, this is just the first generation of looms, full manual production model. Chen Xu asked the next generation of looms carried out by the Academy of Sciences to adopt hydraulic drive methods. Therefore, the factory should try to choose to build factories in places with abundant hydraulic resources, and also survey the terrain and build dams or water mills, etc.

Moreover, in order to catch up with the time when spring silkworms were put on the market in March, Chen Xu, after obtaining the authorization of the emperor, issued a dead order to the officials of the Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Revenue, the first phase of the factory must be completed by the end of February, and the supporting one hundred looms must also be made. At the same time, the contract for purchasing silkworm cocoons and raw silk with mulberry silk farmers near the factory is signed to strive to start production in mid-March. When summer silkworms mature in May, the second phase of the factory must be completed, and the total scale of the looms will reach 300...

As various orders were passed down from the Secretariat, officials from all departments dared not neglect. A group of craftsmen in charge of the research and development of looms in the Academy of Sciences went directly to Suzhou and Hangzhou to recruit carpenters and apprentices to open wood processing plants to manufacture looms. Officials of the Ministry of Industry also quickly used the funds allocated by the Finance Department to go to the survey factories of the two places to call for local merchants to bid for the construction of the factory. Officials of the Ministry of Revenue also went to Kuaiji. Guzhen, Jiujiang, Sishui and other counties to inform the local governments to cooperate with the construction of the silk factory to recruit skilled weaver girls and the purchase of raw silk cocoons between silkworm farmers.

As the news of opening two state-owned silk factories came out, more merchants immediately became turbulent and inquire about the procedures for opening factories.

A few days later, the latest issue of Daqin Metropolis Daily published news about two silk factories, and it was reported that businessmen who were interested in opening a weaving factory in the world went to Guangling and Hangzhou for inspection and observation in mid-March to learn about the preparation and management of this large-scale integrated chemical factory.

After Chen Xu traveled over, Daqin's industry was mainly handicraft workshops, including copper and iron smelting and weapon production. Shaofu and the craftsmen who will be in charge of Shaofu are both registered apprenticeship inheritance, and there is neither professional technical schools nor large-scale factory model.

The same is true for the copper and iron workshops I saw in Wancheng, all of which were family-style. On the edge of the Baihe River outside Wancheng, thousands of small workshops gathered together. The chimneys of the smelting furnaces were rolling all day long, and tens of thousands of prison slaves kept transporting ore to smelting copper and iron day and night, but the output and quality were tooth pain, which was worse than those of later township enterprises. They could only be described as backwardness and chaos.

After Chen Xu arrived in Xianyang, he prepared for the Academy of Sciences, opened an experimental factory, and began to develop in an intensive manner. He later promoted paper mills, bearing factories, glass factories, machinery factories, steel factories, cement factories, food factories, weapons factories, etc. After seeing the benefits of these large factories, private shipbuilding, car manufacturing, ceramics and other industries gradually abandoned the new style of small workshops and slowly developed into large-scale intensive chemical factories. This will not only reduce the manufacturing cost of each product, but also form a scale effect to increase production.

As for the real factory, Chen Xu believes that it should start with this weaving factory.

Hundreds of identical industrial machines are put together to start construction at the same time, which will create a great visual and psychological impact on the inspectors.

Large-scale factories will definitely form a huge joint effect, driving the scale of local mulberry silkworm breeding and raw silk processing to continuously expand, gather more upstream and downstream merchants to participate, absorb a large number of farmers to become professional workers, and eventually form a new industrial group, that is, workers.

The most common textile mills are of course female workers.

When Chen Xu thought of the fact that Yingying and Yanyan's young ladies in uniform appeared in groups every day to and from get off work, he couldn't help but feel excited. This scene was so desirable.

Moreover, in order to protect the labor rights and interests of these female textile workers, Chen Xu decided to promote the eight-hour working system in the state-owned factory, and to work four hours a day, and not to force employees to stay up late and work overtime. There is still a day off every ten days. In short, the factory cannot be made a cage for capitalists to exploit and exploit the working class. Only the young lady who keeps a happy mood is the most beautiful.
Chapter completed!