Steel Dynasty - Chapter 512

[Chapter 512 Expanding Arms]

PS: There is another chapter below.

“Your Highness, I have almost been eaten by businessmen these days.”

In the main hall of Prince Qi’s Mansion, Li Kaiyuan presented the account books of the Chamber of Commerce with both hands and complained.

Xiao Ming smiled. He had also heard about these two things. The merchants almost broke the threshold of the Chamber of Commerce because of the white sugar incident.

But for him, he was mentally prepared when he was about to release the white sugar technology. After all, the success of the soap shop made many businessmen very jealous.

Moreover, this white sugar chamber of commerce has not even sold it in Dayu, which means that white sugar will be a brand new product. Compared with soap, which has already been made a lot of money by the chamber of commerce, the profit of this white sugar must be higher. .

Because of this, businessmen are so eager to get the white sugar production technology.

“You won’t know how to eat it. I’ll give you tens of thousands of taels in silver notes, and it’s possible to pick a few concubines for you.” Xiao Ming said with a smile while taking the account book from Li Kaiyuan.

Li Kaiyuan said with a tearful face: “Your Highness, please don’t bury the official. I have always been honest.”

Of course Xiao Ming was just joking. He gave Li Kaiyuan a very high salary in order to maintain his integrity. If he was a feudal country, In addition, Li Kaiyuan’s position is expected to be taken over.

Xiao Ming smiled teasingly and looked at the account book, which recorded the businessmen who purchased white sugar production technology in the past few days.

“Three hundred and seventy-eight people.” Xiao Ming was a little shocked when he saw the number of people on the account book, “So many.”

“No, the official has been reminding them not to buy technology too blindly, but they just don’t believe it.” Li Kaiyuan shook his head. shook his head.

“Now that I’ve warned them, let them go. Whether they lose or make money depends on their own lives. But even if there are more than 200 people, I’m afraid they will still make money in the early stage.”

“Xiaoguan also thinks so, this is nothing Sugar has never appeared on the market. There will be a lot of sales in the market, not to mention that now that the sea trade routes have been opened, merchants can sell white sugar to Goryeo and Japan.” Li Kaiyuan said.

Xiao Ming nodded when he heard this. This number seemed huge, just because the white sugar workshops were concentrated in Qingzhou. It was like there was only one canteen in a modern town, but the total number in the whole country was tens of millions.

In the same way, if these more than 300 white sugar workshops were evenly distributed throughout the Great Chongqing Kingdom, they would be like a drop of water pouring into the sea. And now that he wants to open up private capital, he cannot interfere too much with the behavior of these merchants.

Doing business involves both losses and profits. He only needs to control the general business operations of the entire feudal country, and the government will manage the specific details.

“With more than three million taels plus the sale of sulfites, the White Sugar Chamber of Commerce has made another net profit. Not bad, not bad.”

The numbers on the account book made Xiao Ming laugh happily. In fact, he was the one who made the most money. He could both Selling sugar cane can also sell chemicals, which means that businessmen have to share part of their money with him.

Except for the white sugar, this pendulum has not been sold yet. Once sold, it will be a huge amount of income. The finances that were strained due to the crazy military expansion are now finally relaxed.

Li Kaiyuan’s eyes narrowed with laughter, but he suddenly remembered something and said: “Your Highness, there is something I almost forgot. After these businessmen bought the technology, they complained that they could not find enough craftsmen to be responsible for the production, and Qingzhou Market There is also a very tight supply of slaves, and there is simply not enough for the merchants to share. The issue of lower officials will cause some problems for the development of business. “

“Yes, you are right.” Xiao Ming nodded, and had to talk about Li Kaiyuan’s issue. Very accurate.

In fact, he is also thinking about this issue. Now he obviously cannot compete with Europe for the slave trade, and it is very difficult to carry out the slave trade in Asia. After all, neither Japan nor Goryeo exist in a tribal situation like Africa.

However, he already had a specific replacement plan in mind, so he said: “You can tell the merchants to recruit craftsmen from outside the feudal country.”

“Recruit craftsmen from other places?” Li Kaiyuan rolled his eyes, Suddenly he laughed, “Your Highness, this trick is really good. In this way, whether these businessmen buy from outsiders or cheat, they will increase the population of Qingzhou.”

Xiao Ming had a smirk on his lips, which was what he The goal they want to achieve, through his on-demand, these businessmen will inevitably traffic people from outside the feudal country to Qingzhou to meet the population shortage in industry in order to pursue profits.

In his opinion, this situation is the same as European businessmen selling African people in pursuit of profits, but his method is more civilized, similar to modern labor export.

“That’s right, so you can secretly remind the merchant after you go back.” Xiao Ming said.

Li Kaiyuan nodded, “Yes, Your Highness, I will prepare this matter when I get back.”

After seeing off Li Kaiyuan, Xiao Ming asked someone to prepare his horse, and he planned to go to the military workshop.

Now that the situation in Dayu could take a turn for the worse at any time, he had to prepare in advance, so he was not idle these past two days, but was thinking about replacing equipment for the armies of various states.

After discussing with Niu Ben, he felt that now he should focus on replacing the equipment of the three armies, and the first one on the list was naturally the Youzhou Army.

Relatively speaking, the Youzhou Army is now the largest army in the feudal state, with 20,000 infantry and 20,000 cavalry, for a total of 40,000 people. The second one is the current Dengzhou Army.

After Dengzhou’s position became more and more important, he expanded the Dengzhou Army from 10,000 to 20,000 people. The last one is the Yunzhou Army, which currently only has 10,000 people.

This army was prepared for the resources of King Yong’s fiefdom. If there was a war in the country of Chongqing, he said that this army should not be used.

As for the armies of other states, Xiao Ming only left a standing army of 1,000 people. It was not that he did not want to expand the army, but his fiefdom only had a population of 2 million. The combined armies of Youzhou, Qingzhou, Yunzhou, and Dengzhou were enough Ninety thousand people, this is already the limit that the fiefdom can bear. This means that one person in more than twenty people is a soldier, which is a very high proportion.

Even so, it is impossible for him to use all 90,000 troops at once. After all, the logistics of a 100,000 army must be followed by 500,000 to 600,000 civilians. If the fight continues like this, his fiefdom will be over.

So after thinking about it, Xiao Ming felt that he could only improve the army’s equipment level and compare quality with quantity. Because of this, he decided to go to the military workshop to check on the equipment, urge production, and at the same time let Chen Qi transfer the hoarded equipment to Delivered to state armies.

When they arrived at the military workshop, the sound of metal tapping could be heard. Since the last time he went to sea, Xiao Ming had not been to the military workshop for two months.

Thinking of the rifled gun that Song Changping had given him, he first went to the gun workshop.

(End of chapter)