Chapter 173: Launching Currency
After the Minister of the Forging Department left, Zhou Xu himself fell into deep thought.
Reducing the length of the sword will make it more durable in disguise. To be frank, this method is only a temporary solution and not a fundamental solution.
In order to solve this problem more thoroughly, Zhou Xu came up with two solutions during a simple thinking process.
The first solution was to find a better material. Zhou Xu first thought of iron ore. Iron has better toughness than copper, and its overall performance is beyond doubt. This is why ironware can be used throughout the entire cold weapon era! But the problem is that he himself has little knowledge of ores. Finding a mineral vein is simply a matter of luck.
He now has no idea where the iron ore is, which makes the implementation of this method infinitely more difficult.
As for the second method, it is to make alloys! Alloys may sound very impressive at first glance, but in fact, to put it bluntly, it is to melt two or more metals together.
Their copper veins do not only produce copper ore, but also many associated minerals.
But Zhou Xu, who had no research on minerals, really didn't know any other minerals except some common metals.
The only thing he could be sure of at the moment was that there was no iron ore in those associated minerals.
Under this premise, the reason why he did not directly ask the forging department to melt the alloy, but asked them to reduce the length of the sword first and forge a new sword, naturally he also had his ideas in it.
Although he didn't understand ore, he knew that smelting metals was not a simple matter of just mixing them together.
A lot of attempts and test comparisons are bound to be required during this period.
There is no doubt that this is a time-consuming and laborious task.
But now he needs the forging department to forge him a batch of usable swords, because his soldiers need weapons for training! If they wait until the forging department develops a usable alloy and starts forging and polishing weapons, how much training time will they have left when the finished products come out? At this stage, even if he uses a shortened sword, their tribe's advantage in equipment can still be guaranteed.
The safest way is to first make a shortened sword and use it, and then let the forging department slowly research better alloys.
Zhou Xu's personal presence brought a long-lost sense of tension to all departments of Black Moon Village, especially the forging department.
Although both the Forging Department and the Equipment Department are responsible for making things for the tribe, to some extent, they each have their own responsibilities.
However, some members of the two departments could not help but compete with each other in their hearts.
This time, the rattan armor and round shields made by the equipment department can be said to have perfectly completed the task assigned by their leader, but the swords forged by their forging department were a great loss of face in front of the leader.
Now, after the members of the Forging Department learned about this from their minister, they are all holding their breath and are determined to regain their face!
For a moment, everyone was very motivated.
Zhou Xu, who was unaware of this, was now attracted by the few small round copper pieces in the palm of his hand.
Needless to say, this is the first batch of copper coins cast after the mold was opened! Because they were cast from the same mold, the size and thickness of each copper coin are exactly the same.
This copper coin is very thin, but according to his wishes, the words engraved on both sides are also very clear.
He weighed the coins in his hand and the crisp sound they made collided with each other in his palm made Zhou Xu smile with satisfaction.
"Good, let's start mass production."
There is no need for forging or polishing of this copper coin. Basically, the copper ingot is melted, poured into the mold, and cooled.
However, no matter how simple it is, there is no need to explain how important these copper coins and casting molds are.
To this end, Zhou Xu specially selected two reliable tribal members and established a "mint" to be responsible for minting copper coins.
In his subsequent plans, he also planned to mint copper coins with denominations of 'five cents' and 'ten cents'.
However, because this monetary system had never been used in the tribe before, Zhou Xu did not want to make things too complicated at the beginning, thereby causing resistance from the tribal members. Therefore, at this stage, he just needed to mint one penny.
The simple casting method means that the manufacturing efficiency cannot be low.
While copper coins began to be mass-produced, Zhou Xu himself was certainly not idle. In addition to the monetary rules and systems he had been thinking about before, he now began to busy himself with setting salaries and prices for various positions and products.
In this tribe, all resources can be said to be in his hands, and in the past they were all reasonably distributed by him as the leader.
To put it bluntly, the resources he distributed, including food, were the work remuneration for each tribal member.
And now, he has simply added something called currency between the two.
He converted his reward into currency, which the tribe members could use to buy anything they wanted.
Doing this actually saved Zhou Xu a lot of trouble, because before, he had to worry about the tribal members' eating, drinking, defecating, urinating, clothing, food, housing and transportation, and make all the arrangements by himself.
It was not difficult at first when the entire tribe consisted of only a few dozen people, but as the population of the tribe grew, these trivial matters became very annoying.
The promotion of the monetary system can completely free Zhou Xu from these trivial matters.
From now on, he will only be responsible for distributing money. The tribal members' daily eating, drinking, defecating, urinating, clothing, food, housing and transportation will all be taken care of by themselves, and they don't need to bother him anymore.
In order to promote the currency smoothly, Zhou Xu currently has a lot of things to do.
For example, if there is currency, there must also be corresponding goods and stores to sell the goods.
To this end, Zhou Xu directly designated a trading area to the east of Black Moon Village and named it "East Market".
Various simple stalls were arranged in the East Market.
Some sell fish, some sell meat, some sell vegetables and fruits, and some sell various utensils and even farm tools.
Basically, more than 90 percent of the things in their tribe can be sold in this East Market.
Under this premise, those who understand will understand that all these things belong to him.
In other words, he paid wages to the tribal members who worked for him, and the tribal members used this salary to buy things from him.
After a round, the money returned to his own hands...
When there is no need to open a store and just set up a stall, things are simple, and then the time happens to be the end of the month.
Zhou Xu seized the opportunity, called all the people in Black Moon Village together to announce this matter, and paid everyone a salary, officially launching the currency within the tribe! Holding the copper coins they received, the tribal members did not understand why their leader would do such a troublesome thing.
But since it was their leader's idea, they had no objection.
(End of this chapter)
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
