You were made to farm, and now you're the emperor of an empire?

Chapter 127 Textile Machine

Romanovich crafted one hundred single-piece longbows.

Longbowmen are ranged units, used for suppression.

It's not very effective against heavily armored units, but it has a huge advantage against small, weaker units.

The downside is that the training is quite difficult. Even for a fully-fledged military unit, it takes six months of training to be considered qualified, and the logistical challenges are extremely high.

Arrowheads and fletchings are relatively easy to handle. The former can be cast into shape, and the larger the production volume, the lower the cost. Ideally, tens of thousands of cast iron arrowheads should be produced at once, which would allow them to use them for several months.

Arrows aren't difficult to obtain; there are plenty of birds in this land.

The arrow shafts, however, are extremely difficult to make. A carpentry apprentice can only make twenty or thirty arrow shafts a day, even with all the tools available, such as planes, chisels, saws, and even after Roman invented the hand-operated lathe.

Roman specially designed a foot-operated lathe, which increased the efficiency of carpenters' work by more than several times.

The era was barbaric, the technology was backward, and the tools were primitive.

Outside of Sig Town, a carpenter who makes ten arrow shafts a day is considered competent—lacking proper tools, they have to rely on files and hand-file.

For this reason, the training difficulty for longbowmen is second only to that for riders.

During regular training, things are fine, as the arrows can be repeatedly retrieved and reused.

In any large-scale war, at least ten thousand arrows are used in a single battle, and most of them cannot be recovered.

Roman currently only plans to train one hundred longbowmen who can fire volleys with a certain degree of accuracy.

……

Amidst the busy period, in the days following the melting of the first snow, the temperature in Sige Town began to drop significantly.

Winter is not suitable for production in agrarian societies.

Many farmers took out their treasured wool sweaters and sheepskin coats to keep warm.

With a brick house, this winter will definitely be easier, they thought.

However, most slaves did not have this luxury; they were penniless and could not afford warm clothes.

Roman realized this problem before the autumn harvest.

He has also purchased a lot of wool during this period, and has slaughtered quite a few sheep at the livestock shed, accumulating a lot of fur.

Back then, Roman and Vickers had already invented the water-powered cloth-bleaching machine, the spinning jenny, and the foot-operated loom. These things were the accumulation of civilization and human wisdom, but they were readily available to Roman.

Tens of thousands of kilograms of wool are boiled, rinsed, and combed, then woven into yarn using a spinning jenny, and finally woven into cloth using a loom, forming a complete textile process.

He planned to give everyone in Sig Town two wool sweaters, and slaves an extra two sheepskin coats as winter clothing benefits.

Others couldn't understand it, but were deeply shocked.

If you were to process 10,000 kilograms of wool by hand, it would take 100 women two months to spin it into thread.

The low productivity of this era is no joke.

Therefore, this amount of wool is usually absorbed piecemeal by the market.

Those who raise sheep at home are in a better position, as they can shear the sheep once before selling them, yielding about a pound of wool per sheep. Adult sheep with wool will fetch a higher price.

If you can't afford to raise it or can't get it for free, then you'll have to buy it.

Wool was inexpensive; one copper coin could buy two kilograms of wool.

However, this is a primary raw material, and after buying it home, it takes a lot of time and effort to clean the wool.

This work often has to be done during the off-season, taking up their already limited rest time.

Women and daughters need to participate in order to support the daily life of the family.

From dawn till dusk, they had to work non-stop just to barely make ends meet for their family.

Is it terrible? Yes, it is. But for people in this era, misery is just a part of life; they are used to it.

After the textile technology was changed, things were completely different. Wool could be washed and spun out very quickly, with extremely high efficiency.

Large quantities of pure white wool are first spun into yarn, then made into cloth, and finally transformed into thick wool sweaters. The entire process is extremely labor-saving.

The low cost is enough to disrupt the external wool market. As long as this place is developed into a textile base, wealth will flow in continuously.

However, Roman had no interest in economic warfare.

He wants an invincible iron fist to smash his face, not to fleece them!

Is there any faster way to get rich than war?
No!

He invented textile and weaving machines purely to save time and labor costs, and the products he produced were limited to just enough to meet everyone's needs—without improving production efficiency, it would be impossible to satisfy everyone's basic needs for food, clothing, shelter, and transportation.

Roman didn't want a trade war at all; he just wanted them to be able to work even in the dead of winter.

How can we expect everyone to huddle in bed shivering all winter long?
After you've eaten and dressed warmly, get out there and get to work!
Then Roman awkwardly discovered that there wasn't enough wool.

With a population of over 4,000 in Sige Town, the 10,000-plus jin of wool would only average out to about two jin per person.

However, after boiling and rinsing, 10,000 kilograms of wool will shrink by at least 3,000 kilograms, since the debris covered in feces and dirt cannot be counted as weight.

Fortunately, Daken found a wool merchant and brought in another three or four thousand kilograms of wool, which alleviated the problem of insufficient warmth.

This godforsaken place is unbearably hot in the summer, and in the winter, although it won't freeze people to death, it's enough to make it impossible for them to work.

The wool sweaters were to be distributed to those who needed them most, so families with warm clothing could only receive two wool sweaters, which weighed a little over a pound in total.

The slaves, however, could take four items, including two sheepskin coats, which weighed five or six pounds in total.

Warm clothes are essential in winter.

Roman gathered more than a hundred women and taught them how to use spinning and weaving machines to process the treated white yarn.

……

Roman sat in front of the loom, stepped on the pedal, and the heddle frame rose up, the warp threads opening through the weft threads.

Then loosen the feet, lower the heald frame, and close the warp threads.

Complete one standard weaving action.

The structure of a loom is simple, and it is extremely efficient at weaving, but it is not easy to learn.

The peasant woman, who had never handled this before, moved rather clumsily and slowly, and dared not make a move.

Roman was not discouraged and could only hope that his opponent would become more skilled through practice.

He deals with this bunch of idiots all day long, and he's basically managed to control his blood pressure.

He was prepared to teach them step by step and personally demonstrate the weaving process, with specially selected, skillful women standing beside him.

His movements were smooth and fluid, his fingers were extremely nimble, and his operation was very elegant and precise.

But when they try to imitate it, it feels awkward and like they're just mimicking someone else.

Roman couldn't even show any aversion or disgust; such negative expressions would only increase their psychological pressure. For such meticulous work, the more flustered they were, the more likely they were to make mistakes.

Just as he was numbly carrying out his daily teaching, a shrill voice came from outside the crowd.

"Master Roman, Master, something's happened..." Jimmy ran over, panting.

Roman released the pedal, the heald frame descended again, and the warp lines closed once more.

He stopped what he was doing and frowned slightly: "What is it?"

(End of this chapter)