The Textile Factory's Imminent Opening

Inside the textile factory, Fang Zheng led Li Yuanzhao on an inspection tour of various areas.

He felt confident entrusting the Liu Xun case to Xie Xian. Xie Xian was one of the few highly educated talents in the county, skilled in both commerce and... banditry.

Apart from his personal combat abilities being rather pathetic, he was an excellent choice both in theory and practice.

Currently, his most urgent task was the textile factory.

The construction of the textile factory was indeed partly due to the princess.

But more importantly, it was to provide winter clothing for the people of the capital, while promoting new textile machines.

The capital was the economic and political core of the Great Jing Dynasty. Once new inventions exploded from here and could generate enormous profits, they would quickly spread throughout the realm.

For Fang Zheng, romantic affairs were certainly wonderful, but people should have some ideals and aspirations.

Since he had already left Taoyuan County to shoulder greater responsibilities, he must leave something good for this world.

The textile factory was now nearing completion. Even the female workers had been recruited and were just waiting for notification to begin work.

Currently, all that was lacking were some simple facilities and basic furnishings for the female workers' dormitories.

The main factory building occupied a vast area, basically designed according to assembly line principles.

First came spinning, then according to processing steps, gradually moving down to sewing various parts together.

As for the clothing produced, the sizes were basically on the larger side.

Ordinary people of the Great Jing Dynasty usually didn't buy clothes that fit perfectly when purchasing clothing; larger was better.

First, it was more comfortable for working, and second, it was convenient to pass down to the next generation.

If children grew larger than their parents, they could still wear the previous generation's clothes. If the clothes were too small, it would cause much more trouble.

This was remarkably similar to the fashion styles of early rap artists.

They were all poor kids who could only wear their relatives' oversized hand-me-downs.

Of course, they also had the addition of a large gold chain with density lower than water to mask their unfortunate childhoods...

To improve production efficiency, the textile factory also built dormitories.

After all, it was located outside the city. Coming and going was extremely inconvenient and wasted time. To increase production efficiency, this was a necessary facility.

The female workers' dormitories housed eight people per room with tables, chairs, and benches, resembling university dormitories.

Actually, that wasn't quite right. After all, the dormitory space appeared considerably larger than university dormitories.

Outside the buildings, there were specially designated areas for hanging clothes to dry, as well as some dedicated recreational spaces.

Between the dormitory clusters were wells for convenient water access, and not far away was the cafeteria.

The cafeteria was free and also provided specialized childcare facilities.

If conditions allowed, they might even hire some elementary teachers to conduct classes for the children in the future.

It wasn't that Fang Zheng was being particularly considerate—it was just that women in this era generally gave birth at quite young ages.

Having children at fourteen or fifteen was already commonplace.

Female worker recruitment started at age fifteen, and most women had children. Men went out to work before dawn, leaving no one to watch the children.

Without establishing childcare facilities, they probably couldn't recruit enough workers.

The remaining sections were the raw materials warehouse and finished goods warehouse.

These areas were assigned to male workers for transportation... after all, women were far inferior when it came to physical labor.

After touring the entire facility, Fang Zheng felt there were no problems. He turned to Li Yuanzhao and asked, "Your Highness, how do you think our textile factory construction turned out?"

Li Yuanzhao nodded and asked, "Pretty good, but isn't it a bit too good?"

"Sigh... compared to this, our early days as reporters were worse than dogs..."

When had dogs ever been paid wages?

Fang Zheng curled his lips. "Recruiting female workers is difficult to begin with. If we built it any worse, who would be willing to come work here?"

"Don't look at these higher costs, female workers are cheap!"

"If we recruited male workers, that would be two taels per month. Female workers? One and a half taels! That saves a quarter! And their handiwork is even better than carpenters!"

After hearing this, Li Yuanzhao's expression grew serious. "Women are actually this cost-effective? Then why doesn't the newspaper use female reporters?"

"Female reporters haven't studied, have they? Who wouldn't prefer female reporters!"

Fang Zheng vaguely remembered that in his previous life, he had a girlfriend or wife? who was a female reporter, seemed to be named Bingbing...

"Besides, which refined young lady from a good family would be willing to constantly show her face in public every day?"

Li Yuanzhao looked somewhat regretful. "That's a pity then."

Fang Zheng sighed. "Indeed, our newspaper doesn't even have uniforms yet. This time we should have the textile factory make a set."

"What uniforms?"

"Nothing much. Once our textile factory is built, we'll not only sell clothing and fabric but also textile machines!"

"Hmm? The same textile machines as in Jianjiang?"

"Exactly!"

Li Yuanzhao asked puzzledly, "Old Fang, I could understand the urgent need to recruit people in Jianjiang, but there's no such necessity in the capital."

"If we sell textile machines to them, won't we earn less money? Wouldn't it be better to keep them for our own production?"

Fang Zheng chuckled. "I can understand others thinking this way, but I can't understand you thinking this way."

"You're the crown prince of the nation. You shouldn't focus on petty, short-term gains."

"The promotion of new textile machines benefits the country and the people."

"This actually benefits us too."

"Once new textile machines spread nationwide, clothing prices will rapidly decline. When clothing becomes cheaper, people will naturally be willing to buy. This way, all production stages before clothing will correspondingly increase, and everyone will benefit from it. This is win-win cooperation."

Li Yuanzhao smiled and said, "I understand this principle. When I first went to Taoyuan County, when the county bookstalls sold books using vernacular to pad word count, you explained it to me this way. I later told Imperial Father, and he said you were being glib and argumentative!"

Fang Zheng's eyebrows shot up. "How can padding word count be called glib argumentation?"

"Let me give you an example. Suppose our newspaper has no news to report, but tomorrow's paper must be published. What should we do? We need to pad word count!"

"We could first do a celebrity interview transcript, putting the dialogue between two people in the newspaper. Wouldn't that give us as much content as we want?"

"There are other methods... in short, we can pad as much as we want!"

Li Yuanzhao mumbled, "But wouldn't that make it boring? Who would want to read padded content?"

"Who cares if it's boring? It's thirst-quenching!"

"Alright, let's not discuss this. Padding word count is a scholarly pursuit. Your Highness should find some books to study this properly when you have time."

"Once the textile factory is officially operating and production begins, we'll gather all the cloth merchants in the city for a meeting! We want to buy up as much of their inventory as possible."

Buy up all the cloth from every merchant in the city? What kind of operation was this?

Li Yuanzhao stammered, "Why buy it all? How much would that cost?"

Fang Zheng pondered, "I say buy it all, but they might not sell it all! I think fifty or sixty thousand taels should be enough!"

"Once our textile factory starts operating, our products will completely crush other cloth merchants in the capital in terms of price!"

"If we start production and stockpiling without warning, it would be a fatal blow to those small business people."

"First, their inventory wouldn't sell, and they'd have no chance to sell it in the future. Even if they did sell, they could only do so at a loss, so it's basically like their goods are stuck in their hands."

"On the other hand, being able to produce fabric or finished clothing is one thing, but selling it is another! Doing them a favor also allows us to use their existing shops to distribute goods to the market. This is another win-win, understand?"

"I understand! But where would our district get fifty or sixty thousand taels of silver?" Li Yuanzhao asked.

Fang Zheng straightened up solemnly. "For the people of the Great Jing Dynasty to all wear quality, affordable clothing! I'll pay this money myself!"