New Shun 1730

The situation here gradually stabilized. Liu Yu waited until the winter month of the lunar calendar and went to some river sections supervised by officials.

It went very smoothly. The winter was not as cold as Shanhaiguan to the north, and the land did not freeze.

It was the dry season, drought and no water, and the sea tide was also calm, everything went smoothly.

The bills for exchanging grains every day also increased day by day, and he was getting closer to his plan of catching all without leaving any.

Counting the days, before the 18th of the winter month, he arranged the affairs here and left northern Jiangsu directly to return to the capital to meet those big merchants from Shaanxi.

After he left, the people here were even more unscrupulous, needless to say.

When he returned to the capital, the Shaanxi merchants he had invited by letter had already been waiting in the capital.

In name, Liu Yu was still in charge of all business affairs, and he was also the "parent official" of these merchants, although it was a bit like the status of the 24 yamen of the previous dynasty, not a legitimate unit under the six governments... Tianyou Hall and the six governments were the state government, and the emperor's direct jurisdiction was not a government unit... But now the emperor had the greatest power, and these merchants dared not neglect the appointment of him, the "parent official of the merchants directly under the emperor".

In the Xiqin Guild Hall in the capital, the Shaanxi merchants who were invited to the meeting had been waiting for a few days, and none of them knew what they were looking for.

However, the merchants who did business in the south of the Xiqin Guild Hall told these merchants from Shaanxi and Sichuan: "You don't have to worry. If officials come to see you elsewhere, they either pay donations or contribute. It's different here with the Duke of Xingguo. We are looking forward to his coming. If he comes, there must be good things."

People in Shaanxi and Sichuan have also heard about this, but the relationship between officials and businessmen on weekdays is here, and seeing is believing, so they are still worried.

Liu Yu waited until the first day of the twelfth lunar month, and he actually came directly to the Xiqin Guild Hall. The merchants were surprised. After welcoming him, Liu Yu said, "I have official business in Lianghuai, and my time in Beijing is limited. I won't waste time today, just invite you to visit some things."

"The carriages and horses are ready outside, let's go now?"

These Shaanxi merchants have never seen such a scene before, and they are a little uncomfortable for a while, but they can't ask too much, so they have to follow the carriages waiting outside.

All the way north, after a long detour, they came to the Academy of Sciences, which is considered to be a semi-suburban area of ​​Beijing at this time. They only rested overnight nearby. The next morning, these merchants dressed up early and followed Liu Yu into the gate of the Academy of Sciences.

These are all rare scenes. Some of the merchants can't understand them at all, and they don't know what this broken thing is.

But as the saying goes, every profession has its own specialty. When Liu Yu came to the mechanical institute where the steam engine was displayed because of these merchants, several merchants who opened salt wells in Zigong stared at the steam engine that was turning there, and their eyes suddenly lit up.

The roar of the steam engine was too loud, so Liu Yu led them around for a tour and then went out.

To sell things, you have to find the right market and target. It is definitely difficult to sell a comb to a bald man, but if you sell a wig, the bald man's eyes will definitely light up.

The same is true for this steam engine.

The owner of the business who invested in the salt well in Sichuan couldn't help asking, "Duke, what is this?"

"Oh, this thing is called Iron Ox. It uses coal as grass and water as feed. Once it works, it will not stop all day long, and there is no need for a whip to drive the ox. When this thing came out, we didn't know how strong it was. If we use the ox pulling the horse to pull the iron ingot in the well, the strength of this thing is about five oxen."

This simple sentence has three or four words, which just touched the G position of these Shaanxi businessmen who invested in Sichuan well salt.

There are exactly three points in this sentence that can stimulate these people to jump up.

The first is "using coal as grass and water as feed."

The second is "once you start working, you will not stop all day long."

The third is "the strength of this thing is as strong as five bulls."

These three points just scratched the itch of the merchants who invested in the salt wells.

A businessman couldn't help but praise: "This thing is great! Great! I wonder how much it costs?"

Liu Yu pretended to say: "Why, are you interested in this?"

The man ignored etiquette and said in a rather inappropriate manner: "Very interested. Duke, you don't know that I opened a salt well in Zigong. This thing is simply tailor-made for the Zigong salt well. Even if you tailor clothes to your body, the material is not so suitable."

Immediately, he said why he valued this thing so much.

With the end of the war, the population of Sichuan gradually recovered.

With the end of the period of improvement after the founding of the country and the end of the use of troops against the other side, the Lianghuai salt that could not cure the corruption entered a period of collapse.

Sichuan salt began to develop.

And with the development of Sichuan well salt, some technical problems also emerged.

For example, the original salt well was only one or two inches wide.

Such salt wells can be pulled by one or two oxen.

Lifting 200 to 300 kilograms at a time, with the help of pulleys, oxen pulling 200 to 300 kilograms, isn't that like playing?

The development of technology is sometimes forced out.

And the points that Liu Yu deliberately picked on these Shaanxi businessmen are precisely the technical problems that were forced out.

These investors are from Shaanxi, not Sichuan.

The local gentry in Sichuan are landlords.

They are investors.

Capital and landlords, land rent and industrial capital are naturally opposed. This is the true essence of the era of "The Wealth of Nations".

Dashun is not a state-owned land system, but a private land system that is the most standardized to the extreme.

When these Shaanxi businessmen came to Sichuan to open salt wells, they had to pay rent to the landlords.

There are many types of contracts, but one is a lease for a hundred years, with monthly rent and a non-refundable deposit.

The other is to rent shares and pay dividends.

The former, that is, the situation where land rent is fixed, was the mainstream before.

The land rent is fixed, how can we obtain greater benefits?

This doesn’t require any thinking. Obviously, the simplest way is to raise the original wellhead standard of one or two inches to three, four or five inches.

This is one aspect.

On the other hand, a truly good well needs to be dug six to seven hundred meters deep. For such a deep well, later generations can certainly control the wellhead by about an inch, but with current technology, the diameter of the wellhead has to be expanded.

Wells that are six to seven hundred meters deep are highly profitable, contain large amounts of salt, and are often combined with natural gas, which can save a lot of money for boiling salt.

Land rent forces capital to improve unit land production efficiency, and the advancement of technology itself has increased the size of wellheads from one to two inches to four to five inches.

The relationship between diameter and volume is not an equal ratio, but a square relationship.

Therefore, the brine bucket that originally weighed two to three hundred kilograms has expanded to seven to eight hundred kilograms, or even a small thousand kilograms.

It must be easy for an ox to pull two to three hundred pounds.

But what about an ox pulling 700 to 800 pounds?

In these days, there were no bearings, and the pulley block coupled with the friction force actually required at least one to two thousand kilograms of strength to continue to lift the brine bucket.

Cows are made of flesh and blood, extremely fragile, far inferior to steel.

The cow is tired from working.

The original small windlass was upgraded to a large one that required five or six big oxen to pull.

Originally, one cow could do a morning's work, but now we need to raise 20 cows, working in three shifts.

Cows are not humans and have no subjective initiative. For these twenty cows, three shifts of workers have to be allocated.

In addition, there are people who are preparing to raise cattle, transport grass, clean up cow dung, veterinarians, etc.

This is the so-called "five or six oxen must be used, and the rate is three to draw and one easy"

Just like the British Industrial Revolution in history, water-powered textile machines appeared first, and then steam engines came into use.

At this time in Dashun, if Liu Yu had not been the matchmaker, the first ones to take the initiative to adopt steam engines must have been the hydraulic sawmills of the northern shipyards and the brine extraction equipment of the well salt in southern Sichuan.

And Liu Yu's seemingly unintentional and casual words when he introduced the steam engine just hit the inner needs of these people.

"Use coal as grass and water as material."

Not every well is equipped with a natural gas stove.

Moreover, the use of natural gas only began to rise in the late Ming Dynasty.

But Zigong was a salt-producing area before. What was it used for?

Naturally, the coal mines in nearby Rong County were used.

Coal mines had already been opened there during the Song Dynasty, and were largely used to supply salt for cooking in the Zigong area. The coal industry was the basis for the development of salt wells.

Zigong is not in the Western Regions, so there will naturally be no shortage of water.

Using coal as grass and water as material is exactly the same as the original system of Zigong Salt Well.

“Once you do something, you keep doing it all day long.”

The contradiction between land rent and industrial capital requires industrial capital to seize every opportunity to improve production efficiency.

Nowadays, cows and people work in three shifts, which greatly affects the operation efficiency.

At the very least, when the first wave of cows get tired, they have to be unyoked to rest, and the new wave of cows have to be yoked to work, which also takes time.

Moreover, cows also have to chew their cud.

The capital to invest in the salt industry is in urgent need of a kind of cattle.

A kind of iron cow that does not need to be fed, does not need rumination time, and does not need to take a break every three or five times.

It would be best if this kind of cattle does not need to eat grass or feed.

Of course, even if you feed them, if you can get some coal to fool them around, it will make them work harder, and that’s not impossible.

"The strength of this thing is as strong as five oxen."

This is exactly the right power for the salt well industry at this time. It just so happens that this is the power that current steam engines can achieve, and that's about it in the early days.

If it is too big, it will be a waste, because the matching pulley block, bamboo strips, etc. may not be able to bear it, and it will still only absorb so much salt.

If it is too small, it will be useless, because the width of the wellhead determines it, and if the power is lower, it will not be able to pull it at all.

At the same time, because of the particularity of water lifting - brine and water lifting can be regarded as one thing. When the steam engine first appeared, it was originally used to lift water. This is the original destiny of the steam engine - so the water lifting equipment for salt wells only With a little modification, it can be directly matched with the steam engine.

Its technical modification is not even as difficult as using chopsticks to pick up two peanuts at the same time.

The subsequent truly difficult technical transformation, such as replacing bamboo cables with oily wire ropes, has nothing to do with steam engines and other mechanical industries. This has to be done by the metallurgical industry.

Therefore, the three characteristics that Liu Yu seemed to mention casually are actually precisely the market demand accurately obtained through information from private salt dealers.

He didn't just say it casually, he came prepared.

Liu Yu is not a person who likes to wait and see for himself.

So when he saw the British Industrial Revolution, he would not lament why the Jiangnan textile area did not coincide with the coal-producing area.

That cannot be changed by human power, and the sigh is also a sigh of relief.

So looking at the essence through the phenomenon, what handicraft industry has developed that is close to coal and is in urgent need of a power source?

These can be considered purely technical issues.

In addition to technical issues, another issue must be considered.