The terrain of Shuozhou is very dangerous. It controls the Great Wall remotely, connects the desert outside, and lives on the back and faces Yanjing; it is on the right side and Yanmen on the left side and Ningwu on the south side, and lives in the middle of the three gates. It is surrounded by mountains and water, and the four blocks are solid, and the ancient pier is wild guarding, and the circle is protected.

It can be said that this was once the main border of Hedong Road.

However, when Shuozhou City, with a dangerous terrain, went north, it was a large continuous grassland with a flat terrain and no obstacles.

Today, millions of acres of cotton fields have been reclaimed in this large area of ​​flat land, becoming the main planting place for Datang cotton.

The cotton rough processing and cottonseed oil processing industries have become the most important industries in Shuozhou.

At the same time, the rise of beekeeping and the prosperity of border trade made this border town the premier prefecture in the northern part of the Tang Dynasty.

Chu Suiliang, who was arranged by Li Kuan to be responsible for cotton planting and promotion in Shuozhou, successfully took over as the governor of Shuozhou at the beginning of this year, and further expanded the scale of cotton planting with local nobles, merchants and people.

Outside Shuozhou City, within a radius of hundreds of miles, there was no Hu tribe seen.

"Fujun, this year's cotton harvest has been a bumper harvest, and the planting area has increased by nearly half compared to last year. So many cottons are continuously transported back to Chang'an City. The Ministry of Personnel's assessment for Fujun this year must be the best."

Shi Ming gave Chu Suiliang the latest statistics.

Students who came from Guanshishan Academy like to speak with data, no matter which yamen they entered in the central government or the prefectures and counties they went to.

For example, the cotton yield in Shuozhou area, Shi Ming specially arranged a large number of people to count the planting area, cotton yield per mu, total cotton field output, and various data changes last year.

Chu Suiliang looked at this information at a glance, and he immediately knew the situation under his rule.

As a border city with the cotton industry as its core industry, after understanding the cotton-related situation in Shuozhou, basically 80% of the situation in Shuozhou has been clarified.

"The cotton production has increased so much at once. Has the cotton purchase price fluctuated significantly?"

Chu Suiliang is also very familiar with the theory of market supply.

He was very worried about a situation similar to the situation where the low-grained farmers were injured.

Although the cotton fields on the grasslands in the north of Shuozhou are basically from the nobles of Chang'an City, as long as you plant cotton here obediently, Chu Suiliang can treat them equally.

Even the cotton fields of Changsun’s family, Chu Suiliang did not set any thresholds for them to think.

"Compared with last year's acquisition price, it has dropped slightly by several points, and the impact should not be very big. Because not only has the cotton output increased, but the number of cotton workshops has also increased a lot. In the past, except for cotton deseeding and oil pressing workshops, the others were basically built in Chang'an City.

However, it is actually very inconvenient to transport cotton to Chang'an City. Even if Shuozhou has a cement road leading directly to Chang'an City, the cotton is very light, but a little cotton is filled with a carriage. Therefore, the carriages transporting cotton on the road are often piled up high and wide. In fact, it is not safe, and the transportation cost is not small.

So since last year, some nobles have directly built cotton thread workshops in Shuozhou, first making cotton threads, and then transporting them to other places to process into cotton cloth. Some even directly put all the processes of removing cotton and making cotton cloth in our Shuozhou. This is the case with the Wang cotton workshop in Taiyuan, which was just completed by the river outside the city this year."

Although the cotton seed removal equipment was produced by Guanshishan Academy Machinery Workshop, it is now sold to the public unconditionally and just give it money.

As for the new cotton thread textile machine, Li Kuan, in order to promote the development of Datang cotton cloth, he sold it as long as he paid.

Of course, it is not allowed to be transported abroad, and mechanical workshops will conduct random inspections from time to time.

It can be said that Li Kuan completely gave up the idea of ​​monopolizing Datang cotton cloth and planned to make cotton cloth beyond silk and become the main export product of Datang.

Because whether it is silk or porcelain, it is often difficult for ordinary people to afford it, but cotton cloth is different, so every household has a demand and may be able to afford it.

Once the Tang Dynasty cotton cloth occupied the global market, the various potential benefits it brought would be too big.

"Making cotton cloth directly in Shuozhou and then transporting it to other prefectures for sale is theoretically a cheaper method and is also very beneficial to the people of our state. However, this cotton cloth workshop requires a lot of manpower. Judging from the current situation, if a large-scale recruitment of cotton workshops in Shuozhou may affect cotton planting, because once farmers find that the money earns more money to work in the workshop than to grow cotton themselves, they will definitely not grow cotton.

Once such a trend is formed, it will soon affect our cotton yield, which is an unfavorable factor. Therefore, the most urgent task is to attract more people to settle in Shuozhou. Only by turning Shuozhou into a large-capital state can Shuozhou develop faster and make the border more stable."

Many times, border problems are often population problems.

Whether it is now or in the future, it is the same.

Imagine if the Tang Dynasty had millions of Han people in the Western Regions, then would the problem in the Western Regions still be a problem?

Similarly, if the Tang Dynasty had a million people in Shuozhou, then the borders would inevitably no longer be borders near Shuozhou, and the borders would naturally extend outwards.

Because at this time, everyone will find that continuing to expand land outward will make the difficulty and the benefits will be greater.

Therefore, the population and the range of the border are often complementary.

As long as the population of border prefectures and counties can be increased, the territory of the Tang Dynasty will become more and more glorious.

"From the recent report of the Datang Daily, the baby birth rate in the Tang Dynasty has been rising in recent years, but the increase in adult men requires a period of time to accumulate. In addition, the imperial court is constantly developing Jiangnan Road, Lingnan Road, Liaodong Road and Qinghai Road. These places are places where the imperial court encourages immigration, and the northern part of our Hedong Road is also a place where the imperial court encourages immigration.

Now that the tax revenue in Shuozhou is increasing, can we propose to the court to provide more support to the people who immigrate to Shuozhou, and on the basis of the current situation, we will continue to provide more support in terms of agricultural tools, food rations and housing for the first year?"

Shi Ming came from Guanshishan Academy and his ideas were obviously more open than those of ordinary officials.

"We can try these. At the same time, I think Shuozhou can imitate Liaodong Road and set up a Shuozhou Production and Construction Corps to further explore the land on the grassland and use cheap land to attract the people of Guanzhong. Our yamen only needs to be responsible for organizing the construction of water conservancy irrigation facilities and do a good job in logistics for the people."

Chu Suiliang knew that the position of the governor of Shuozhou means a very different meaning to him.

Whether you can improve step by step in the future depends on whether you can achieve results here.

In border cities, if the contribution of expanding territory can be combined with the traditional increase in population and taxes, the significance will be even more extraordinary.

"What the Fujun said is reasonable, but if we need to continuously use the land on the grassland to plant cotton, it is necessary to continuously increase the sales of cotton and expand the use of cotton. Otherwise, if we grow cotton, we will not be able to obtain more profits, and our intention will be difficult to achieve."

"Well, I'll write a letter to Xuan Ce and Wang Fugui to talk about this topic and see if they have any good suggestions."

...

"Langjun, I have just tried it. All the water trucks and equipment can operate normally, completely reaching the speed we designed. At this point, our Wang cotton cloth will surely become the largest cotton cloth workshop in the Tang Dynasty, providing the most favorable cotton cloth for the people."

Outside Shuozhou City, in the Wang cotton workshop, Wang Sheng was excited to report the trial production of the workshop to Wang Jie.

As the son of Wang Xiaotong, the master of mathematics, Wang Sheng thought of entering the officialdom through the Ming Mathematics Department, but was hit by the candidates of Guanshishan Academy of Calculation and almost doubted his life.

Since then, Wang Sheng has been in a slump.

After several years, he resolutely turned around and devoted himself to business.

This change made his life more exciting.

With deep knowledge of mathematics, he put down his status as a scholar and devoted himself to the shopping mall. After several years, he became the main business manager of the Wang family in Taiyuan.

This time, Wang Jie planned a brand new cotton workshop and handed it over to Wang Shenglai to take charge.

According to the plan of Wang family in Taiyuan, this cotton cloth workshop is the largest cotton cloth workshop in the Tang Dynasty. After trucks of cotton entered the workshop, the cotton cloth came out one by one. It can be said that the entire cotton cloth production process was placed on a large workshop.

This cotton workshop alone employed as many as 3,000 craftsmen in the first phase, and will exceed 10,000 in the future.

In other words, the Wang family in Taiyuan has extraordinary influence in Hedong Road, otherwise ordinary noble families would not dare to build such a large workshop in Shuozhou.

"The price of cotton can now be the same as linen. In the future, except for some silk, leather, wool thread, cotton will become the main source of cloth for the people of the Tang Dynasty. With the improvement of the living standards of the people of the Tang Dynasty, the demand for clothing will definitely rise to a higher level. We must take advantage of the fact that others have not yet reacted, and make everyone accustomed to going to our Wang cotton shop to buy cotton."

Wang Jie looked at the equipment after equipment that was constantly rotating in the workshop with high spirits.

These equipment driven by waterwheels greatly improves the production efficiency of cotton fabric production and further reduces the cost of cotton fabrics.

Although the cotton cloth workshops in the King of Chu Mansion have the greatest influence, other cotton cloth workshops in the Cui family, Lu family, Changsun family and other cotton cloth workshops still occupy a part of the market share.

If the Wang family in Taiyuan wants to become a leader in this industry, they must have something unique to them.

Obviously, no one thought that when everyone connected the waterwheel with cotton fabrication, Wang Jie took action in advance.

This can at least be a year of battle for Wang's cotton cloth.

Don’t underestimate this year. Through this year’s promotion, when the price difference is not large, the people will definitely go to the Wang’s cotton shop to buy cotton.

This is what Wang Jie hopes to achieve.

"Our cotton cloth uses the latest hydraulic textile machine, and the quality is very stable. Each cloth is almost the same, making people feel the difference. In addition, we built the workshop directly in Shuozhou, which can save the cost of cotton transportation, and the high efficiency of hydraulic textile machine also makes the processing cost of cotton cloth cheaper.

Langjun, as long as we maintain a small profit but quick turnover price, the people have no reason not to buy our Wang cotton cloth. Even if the cotton cloth from the King of Chu Mansion wants to compete with us, there is no advantage at all."

Wang Sheng rarely regained his high spirits.

He had always felt a sense of anger in his heart and wanted to vent his anger from the Chu Palace.

Now, this opportunity has finally come.

"The water wheel was first launched by the workshops under the Chu King's Mansion. They did not expect to use the water wheel in a cotton workshop before. Now we have built a new cotton workshop in Shuozhou. As long as they arrange hot air balloons to idling around us, they will understand what we are using the water wheel. With the strength of the Chu King's Mansion, it takes less than a few months to rebuild a cotton workshop like us."

Although Wang Jie was very confident in his workshop, he was not blindly arrogant.

"The Chu Palace currently only occupies about half of the cotton cloth market, and the remaining half is other cotton cloth. This time, as long as we grab part of the market from the Chu Palace and squeeze the space of other cotton cloth, we will immediately become the largest cotton cloth production workshop in the Tang Dynasty. Today's cotton cloth is not only popular in the Tang Dynasty, but also very popular in Japan and other places. At that time, this workshop in Shuozhou will become the main source of income for our Taiyuan Wang family."

"It is good that you have this confidence. Next, I will do my best to increase the production of cotton. I have purchased a large amount of cotton in advance, and all four-wheeled carriages for transporting cloth have been arranged. As long as you produce cloth, you can immediately transport it to Chang'an City and catch other workshops off guard."

Soldiers are more important than speed, and so is business wars.

Wang Jie is obviously not a real playboy, he is still somewhat capable.

"Don't worry, our Taiyuan Wang family shops are all over the world. I am confident that within one month, our cotton cloth will appear in the main prefectures north of the Yangtze River, so that people can choose our cotton cloth first when buying clothes during the winter."

With the official production of the cotton cloth workshop in Taiyuan Wang's family in Shuozhou, the cotton harvested in Zhenguan in the past 17 years officially transformed from flowers to cloth, following the trajectory of the four-wheeled carriage, and quickly spread in Guanzhong Road, Henan Road, Hedong Road and Jiangnan Road.
Chapter completed!