Chapter 191 Textile Technology
After capturing the flame spider, Richard asked people to carefully search the spider nest and take away all the spider eggs.
After catching the spider queen, these spider eggs can hatch flame spiders.
After collecting the spider eggs, Richard sent people to dig up some nearby plants and prepared to find some mice for experiments to see if there were any plants that could detoxify the flame spider poison?
Generally speaking, some detoxifying plants often grow near the nests of highly toxic creatures.
If detoxifying plants can be found, the threat from flame spiders to humans will be much reduced.
At that time, there may be no need for magicians, ordinary people can raise flame spiders.
After entering the new nest, the Flame Spider Queen was very frightened and waited for more than ten days before she slowly adapted to the environment.
In late March, good news came again from the territory.
The task assigned by Richard to develop a new textile machine was finally successful.
The textile machines in the Dawn Plane are all old-fashioned textile machines and their efficiency is very low.
There is no silk-raising technology in the Grant Kingdom. Of the three continents discovered in the Dawn Plane, only some areas on the west coast of the Holy Glory Empire can produce silk.
Silk was transported from the Holy Glorious Empire to the Grant Kingdom. The transportation route was more than 20,000 kilometers long, causing silk to become an expensive luxury product.
A piece of silk clothing costs more than eight gold coins in Nolan, and the price of silk in Geda Province is even higher.
The nobles compare with each other, and a piece of silk clothing often costs more than ten gold coins, which is about 20 to 30% more expensive than in the royal capital.
Generally speaking, there is an unspoken rule in Grant Kingdom that those who wear silk clothes are nobles.
In the northern region, the most common ones are linen and cotton.
The area near the Kingdom of Grant and the Kingdom of Delon also grows cotton and spins cotton cloth.
In recent decades, some provinces in northern Xinjiang have grown cold-resistant cotton, and a lot of cotton cloth has appeared on the market.
Because the territory captured many goat-like people and raised a large number of sheep, Richard planned to use wool to spin wool threads and make sweaters, felts, and woolen cloths.
We have been researching the wool thread technology for three or four years, and the technology has become very mature.
The material selection and washing process are no longer difficult. Using lime water solution can wash the fat of wool very cleanly.
After the large-scale production of steel in the Harland territory, it was possible to make slender steel combs, and carding wool became much easier.
Using an old-fashioned spinning wheel, wool can be spun into wool.
Although the finished product is still relatively rough and not as fine as cotton. But a sweater knitted with wool has a very good thermal insulation effect.
This winter, Richard is preparing to distribute sweaters to the army on a large scale.
The territory set up a quilt factory six years ago. At that time, the quilt factory was just a cutting factory, making clothes for the army and serfs.
Five years ago, Richard began to organize female slaves, began to weave cotton, and accumulated textile technology.
At the beginning, the efficiency was very low and the textile technology was insufficient.
After several years of accumulation, the skills of female textile workers in the territory have improved a lot.
But using old-fashioned textile machines, the efficiency of spinning is far from enough.
From the knowledge he learned in his previous life, Richard knew that the beginning of the industrial revolution lay in textile technology.
I vaguely remember the invention of the Jenny machine, which greatly improved the efficiency of spinning.
The invention of the Jenny Machine is, to put it bluntly, a matter of imagination, without any difficulty.
If science is regarded as an infinitely tall tree, technological achievements are the fruits of this tree. Some are very technically difficult and may never be able to pick the fruit. Some are very low and can be picked up by raising your hand. The Jenny Machine is a very low-level fruit. To put it bluntly, it means arranging the spindles vertically. However, to open up this idea, you need very good luck and talent.
The apple fell on Newton's head, and Newton proposed the law of universal gravitation. If it hits an ordinary person on the head, it will only break the head.
Although Richard knew about the Jenny machine, he didn't know the structure of this machine.
Although he had learned about the Industrial Revolution, the Jenny Machine, sheep eating people and other historical knowledge, he had never seen an old-fashioned textile machine.
The task of researching new textile machines can only be left to the craftsmen of the territory.
After four years of continuous improvement, craftsmen could only tinker with the original textile machines, basically making no progress.
Just as Richard became more and more disappointed and temporarily lost attention to textile technology, good news suddenly came.
A carpenter named Scott accidentally kicked over the spinning wheel and found that the spinning machine was still spinning. He immediately opened up this idea and arranged several spindles vertically and drove them with a spinning wheel. It worked. The price has increased several times.
After hearing that Scott had successfully manufactured a new spinning machine, Richard immediately granted him the status of a free citizen and appointed him as the director of the textile factory, responsible for managing the wool spinning and cotton spinning businesses.
There are now more than 100,000 sheep in the Harland territory, and they can shear about 100 tons of wool every year.
It takes three kilograms of woolen cloth to make a suit of wool clothing, which can clothe more than 30,000 people.
With the expansion of sheep farming, the territory will soon be self-sufficient in clothing, and in a few years it will even be possible to sell woolen clothing.
Richard knew in his heart that cloth was a bulk material and its importance in daily life was second only to food.
Many lords in the northern Xinjiang region did not grow cotton. They had mastered textile technology and needed to purchase cloth from the outside world.
As long as wool spinning and cotton spinning develop, they can bring a lot of income to the territory.
Harland Territory is a mountainous territory with a small area of arable land, making it difficult to grow cotton on a large scale, so Richard could only increase investment in sheep breeding.
Because mutton is relatively expensive in the market, a live sheep weighing 50 to 60 kilograms often costs three or four silver coins.
To purchase tens of thousands of sheep, you need to invest 10,000 gold coins in cash.
Richard didn't have that much money, and now that wool textiles had shown promise, he could only stop slaughtering live sheep and increase the size of the sheep flock.
As for how to solve the army's meat problem, the only solution is to raise pigs.
There is a pig farm in Harland territory. In recent years, the scale has become larger and larger, and a lot of pork has begun to be put on the market.
Today's pig farms can produce thousands of adult pigs weighing more than 100 kilograms a year.
Although the supply of pork from pig farms to the army is still slightly insufficient, during this period, the soldiers can only overcome it.
As for indentured servants and freedmen, it would be difficult for them to eat officially sold meat within a year or two.
Because of the shortage of meat and its price becoming more and more expensive, many hot freedmen brought their bows and crossbows and chose to become part-time hunters.
Because of the thin tax policy established by Richard, no additional tax will be charged for hunting.
However, there are laws in the territory that prohibit the hunting of cubs and pregnant female beasts. In addition, ordinary people cannot hunt Warcraft cubs, insect-like magical creatures, and cannot dig magical plants.
Relying on hunting by hundreds of hunters, the meat supply in Harland's territory was barely maintained.
It’s just that the price of meat has soared about three times this year.
Freedmen with some spare money bought piglets and lambs from other territories and invested them in the breeding industry, taking advantage of the sharp rise in meat prices to earn an income.
(End of chapter)