Chapter 3043 Confidence
With an extra skill, if one day they no longer serve the princess and don't get married, they will be able to make more money after going out, and their lives will be better.
The princess walked around every courtyard and had a good idea of their daily output. She couldn't help but wonder, "Are all these clothes going to be sold to the farmhands?"
Yue Xiu Niang hurriedly said, "Almost. The county magistrate has a requirement that farmhands bathe at least once every three days, so each farmhand will be prepared with an extra set of clothes."
"Besides that, there are also the conscripts who are serving in the army. Now, some families in the countryside will occasionally buy our clothes because they are not very expensive."
Mingda asked, "Doesn't this mean we're taking business away from cloth shops and clothing stores?"
"That's all we can do, but we've also done some research. Our current clothes, aside from those made by us embroiderers, can't compare to the ready-made clothes from the cloth shops, and their prices are higher than ours. Most of the people who come to us to buy clothes have never bought from them before."
So it’s not considered stealing business.
Mingda nodded and looked at the palace maids beside him, "Have you remembered it?"
The palace maids were stunned for a moment, then happily knelt down and replied "Yes".
Mingda nodded, holding the maid's hand and walking out. "So, the weaving workshop is still losing money?"
Yue Xiu Niang and Jiang Zhi Niang said embarrassedly, "The cloth and yarn the county government paid for are not at a loss. Occasionally, when business is good, we can earn some wages, but..."
The two exchanged glances and reported quietly, "We're still losing money on paper. This is mainly because besides wages, we also have to pay for food and drink, which is a significant expense."
Zhou Man didn't care much about this. She even comforted Mingda, "Don't worry, you can always make money."
Mingda was different from Changyu. She said, "I don't want the government to compete with the people for profit." So she wanted the weaving workshop to make money and continue to operate, but she didn't want it to be too big and compete with the people for profit.
Zhou Man thought she was overthinking it. She said, "It's hard to have the best of both worlds. If we have to support them, then in the future the weaving workshop will inevitably compete with the private cloth shops and clothing stores for profits. This is inevitable."
She said, "What we can do is to pass on more benefits to ordinary people. Are these female workers also ordinary people?"
Mingda asked, "We're still losing money now. Once all the farmhands buy two sets of clothes, they'll have three sets. Given how frugal they are, I'm afraid they won't buy any more clothes for three or four years. What will happen to all those clothes then?"
She really couldn't see any future for it. The weaving workshop was now considered semi-public welfare, basically running at a loss while benefiting the farmhands.
This would save money for both the farmhands and the county government, better than asking them to go out and buy clothes, so no one objected.
Zhou Man said: "Once they have them, and the weavers and embroiderers have mastered their skills, we can then sell the clothes they make outside the county."
She pointed at Yue Xiu Niang and said, "Don't you keep the clothes you made?"
Yue Xiu Niang's eyes lit up, and she immediately said, "That's right. According to the county magistrate's order, as long as the quality of the clothes you make is comparable to those sold in the clothing shops outside, they should be kept separately. He will have a use for them in the future."
Zhou Man nodded and said, "That's it. And to be honest, the weather will get cold soon, and even the farmhands doing hard labor will need more clothes. Don't worry, the clothes in our weaving workshop will not be unsalable in the short term."
The more Mingda listened, the more unreliable it seemed to him. He couldn't always fleece the farmhands, could he?
Yue Xiu Niang and the others didn't think about these things. As long as they knew that the clothes from the weaving workshop could be sold, they would just keep the two workshops open.
When Zhou Man saw Si Jing and the others, he couldn't help but call them over and ask, "Are you used to living here?"
"I'm used to it." Si Jing and the others bowed deeply, looking at Zhou Man with reverence and saying, "Thank you very much, sir, for interceding for us to get a daughter-in-law and send our families away. Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to stay in the weaving workshop any longer."
As Beihai County recruited more and more long-term workers, Sijing and his family also heard some rumors.
Although they were angry about the dozen girls running away from home, and thought that they were ungrateful people who could never be tamed, because they were not raised by their families since childhood and had followed their former masters and mistresses to live a life of luxury, they now looked down on their families and could not bear the hardship. However, they did not know where they had run off to, and it would cost money to find them.
So they only searched in a few nearby villages, and when they found no one, they cursed and pretended that they had never given birth to these daughters.
But I didn't expect that they went to Beihai County.
They heard that working in Beihai County is profitable, whether male or female, so these families whose daughters ran away couldn't help but make an appointment to come to Beihai County to look for their daughters.
Unfortunately, these families were scattered across the country. Although they lived in the same county, they were in different villages, and some were even in different neighborhoods. So we only found seven families, and each of them sent one person to Beihai County.
They thought it was quite easy for a group of grown men like them to capture a few young ladies. In fact, it was not difficult to find them. The difficult part was that they really couldn't take them away.
The female workers who came to Beihai County either went to the farm to grow vegetables and raise chickens or cook, or worked as weavers and embroiderers in weaving workshops.
Without thinking, they went to the weaving workshop to inquire. Their daughters (sisters) were sold as maids since childhood and had learned some knitting skills, so they should be in the weaving workshop.
Then they knocked on the door and found the person, but as soon as they reached out to arrest him, the women waved their clubs and ran them out, and even reported them to the police.
Then Beihai County threw them into a farm and forced them to work for half a month before releasing them on the grounds that they were causing trouble.
Every three days they watched their co-workers collect their wages, while they received nothing.
After the fifteen days were up, Bai Shan took time out of his busy schedule to meet with them again in the lobby of the county government office. He said to them, "These people came to Beihai County as refugees. So, we don't care if you are their family members or not. Since they are already registered as female residents in Beihai County, they are our people. Don't harass us anymore, let alone forcibly take our people away from Beihai County."
Bai Shan said with dignity, "And do you have evidence to prove that they are your daughters or sisters?"
Except for a few individuals, most people really didn't, because when the county government released them, they directly returned the indentures to the girls. But after they returned home, except for a few families, other families did not take their household registration to register. In other words, they only lost their slave status, but did not get the naturalization certificate.
When they ran away, they took the cancelled indentures with them, so except for a few families, no one could produce evidence to prove that their daughter was their daughter and their sister was their sister.
Of course, there are other ways besides the household registration book, such as asking neighbors and the village head to come and testify, but Beihai County is not far from their home. If they invite someone to come and testify, they have to provide them with food and accommodation.
Just thinking about it made them not want to fight this lawsuit, not to mention that it was a case of competing with a county magistrate for someone.
So they thought about it, and three of them prepared to go home, while the other four chose to stay, planning to do some work on the farm, earn some money, and then go home.
Bai Shan welcomed him warmly and turned around to hand the person over to Zhao Ming, who re-registered him and sent him to the farm.
See you at 7pm
(End of this chapter)
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
