The Rise of the European Emperor

In fact, Marin had long thought about engaging in the wool spinning industry, but there was no steam engine before, and there were no rivers with large drops in Beihai, so he didn't have any conditions to engage in hydraulic machinery.

Although Marin in the North Sea State built an artificial reservoir near the city of Lyle, artificially raised the water level, and then hit the hydraulic forging hammer to make weapons and armor.

However, the cost of artificial reservoirs is too high, and Marin gritted his teeth and built one to build weapons and armor. No matter how much investment is made in this kind of industry that is related to national security, it is worth it. However, it would not be worthwhile to build an artificial reservoir for the woolen industry. Mainly, it doesn't make sense economically.

Today, wool spinning is mainly done in Ghent and Bruges in Flanders, as well as in England.

However, it seems that the English woolen industry has more advantages in this respect. Because, the purchased wool needs to be rinsed and combed. Among them, the rinsing process in Flanders mainly relies on workers stepping on the water basin, which is labor-intensive. The wool spinning centers in England are concentrated near the reservoirs and waterfalls with abundant water resources in the mountainous areas, and hydraulic machinery has been realized to replace labor. Therefore, the cost is even lower. Including the rinsing after the woolen fabric is woven, it can be replaced by a hydraulic bleaching machine.

However, the higher labor wages in the UK have offset a lot of cost advantages. A textile worker in Flanders, for example, earns no more than two or three pfennigs a day. The wages of British textile workers are as high as four or five pennies (the equivalent of pennies and pfennigs), which is more than 1.5 times that of Flanders. The reason for this is that the price of food in the UK is about 1.5 times that of the German region. In this era, the money earned by textile workers was mainly used to buy food. Therefore, wages in various places mainly follow food prices.

Of course, the British wool is still cheaper, about 66 shillings per head, and most of them are high-end wool. Because British wool is high-grade wool. The woolen fabric weaved naturally also belongs to the high-end woolen fabric.

Flanders, on the other hand, is more sad, because, for more than a century, England, starting from Edward III, implemented a policy of imposing high tariffs on wool exports, which in disguise encouraged the development of England's wool textile industry. Therefore, the cost of importing wool from England to Flanders was very high. Because England raised the tax rate on wool exports to more than one-third. In this era when the pound tax is only one or two pennies, it is definitely a super high tariff, and it belongs to the earliest trade protection tariff.

In England, when buyers buy wool from aristocratic manors or monasteries that raise sheep, the purchase cost of a sack of wool (364 pounds) is only about 4 pounds, which is 80 shillings.

But the wool buyer needs to pay taxes to the king, and at the same time, needs to obtain a sufficiently high profit. A sack of wool therefore costs about £8 in the English market, chiefly in the port market.

However, after the royal family levied more than one-third of the high wool export tariff, plus the cost of ship transportation, and the management tax levied locally in the Port of Calais,

Its price is already as high as £12 or even £13. Its cost accounts for three-quarters of the price of woolen cloth in Flanders.

In other words, the profits that textile factories in Flanders can earn are already very meager after deducting the wages of textile workers, depreciation of machines, and taxes.

Therefore, at present, a large number of textile factories in Flanders have closed down. In particular, small textile factories with few looms were forced to close down due to low profits. Only large-scale textile factories can barely survive by relying on large quantities.

Fortunately, because of the marriage with Spain, the Habsburg family relied on this relationship to find a new source of wool for the textile factories in Flanders—Spanish merino wool!

Spanish merino wool is of better quality than British wool. However, it is also more expensive. Moreover, Florence, the wool spinning center of Italy, is also vying for Spanish merino wool as raw material. As a result, the price of Spanish merino wool remained high, and, because of the competition in Florence, there were not many available.

But because the quality of merino wool is top-notch, some textile factories that rely on the quality of merino wool to produce and sell high-end woolen fabrics can live comfortably. These textile factories that can get merino wool are generally behind-the-scenes bosses who are powerful Dutch nobles. However, other textile factories run by commoner merchants are still struggling to survive.

Of course, how difficult these Flemish textile factory owners are living has nothing to do with Marin. Instead, Marin intends to take this opportunity to poach a group of skilled wool spinning craftsmen and textile workers from Flanders. After all, the Flanders region is a famous wool textile industry center in Europe, and there are quite a lot of skilled craftsmen, which can be regarded as talents.

This question, of course, is handed over to Kohler to arrange for his men to dig people out. At this time, many textile factories in Flanders closed down, and naturally there were many skilled craftsmen and skilled weavers in the wool spinning industry who were waiting for work at home...

...

Sure enough, when Kohler sent people to Flanders, many woolen artisans and textile workers who had not gone to work for a long time expressed their strong willingness to come to the North Sea country. After all, for them, the most important thing is to be able to earn money to support their families!

However, when Kohler's men recruited craftsmen and skilled handloom workers in the woolen industry in Ghent, they attracted the attention of Prince Philip who lived in Ghent and caused his dissatisfaction.

Then, Prince Philip came to Beihai Kingdom angrily, accusing Marin of poaching his corner...

You know, these days, artisans and textile workers have to pay taxes. Unlike farmers, whether they are artisans or textile workers, they need to pay taxes every year.

That's why the kings of England like to develop the local wool textile industry rather than exporting wool directly. Because vigorously developing the wool textile industry can not only solve the livelihood of many vagrants, but also contribute tax revenue to the country.

Needless to say, vagrants have the hidden danger of becoming rioters, which is a factor of social instability. The taxes of textile artisans and textile workers were mainly collected by the handicraft guilds that were popular in the Middle Ages.

In England, the crafts guilds were responsible for taxing all artisans and laborers in the trade. And all craftsmen and textile workers must also be forced to join the handicraft guild.

Generally speaking, handicraft guilds adopt a tax package system. The king gave the handicraft guild a tax target, and then the handicraft guild of each industry was responsible for collecting it.

Moreover, the handicraft guild also has the functions of unifying the price of the industry's products and allocating raw materials, and its power is very powerful.

Generally speaking, when the handicraft guild sets prices for products, it will reserve profit margins so that practitioners in this industry can afford to pay taxes.

And the king let the handicraft guild collect taxes on his behalf, which saved a lot of trouble. Because, in this era, the king does not have so many professional tax talents. Handing over to the handicraft guild to cover taxes saves time and labor costs.

However, handicraft guilds can also become a disaster if they are in the hands of evil people with evil intentions. Moreover, handicraft guilds are almost not subject to official control except for the tax package, which is a bit like an independent social organization. The most important thing is that if the leaders of the handicraft guild instigate, the workers in this industry may all rise up to rebel... This is a big security risk...

Therefore, Marin did not allow Beihai State to establish a handicraft guild from the beginning. The vassal states that were seized also banned the handicraft guilds to avoid becoming a hidden danger to social stability.

However, after banning those old handicraft guilds, Marin found that his control over those handicraft workers was a bit weak.

The area originally controlled by Beihai State was fine, and the artisans were basically controlled by Marin himself. But after disbanding the handicraft guilds in the vassal states that were seized later, Marin found that he could no longer control those handicraftsmen...

How to solve this problem? After thinking about it, Malin finally came up with a solution - to establish a new handicraft guild, or in other words, to establish a new type of handicraft guild similar to the later Huaxia trade unions!