Wind Rises in North America 1625

Chapter 274 Light Industry
"It's been reported that Spain's domestic industry—er, more accurately, its handicraft industry—had already fallen into decline as early as the 1990s, culminating in widespread bankruptcy. This meant that Spain's industrial production was unable to meet its own needs or the needs of the residents of its vast American colonies."

"Under these circumstances, Mexico actually gave rise to a variety of new handicraft industries, especially the rise of bulk consumer goods - textiles. In addition to meeting the needs of the colonial people, a small amount of textiles was also exported back to Europe."

"However, Mexico's textile production model is mainly dominated by handmade products and household products, which are inefficient and much more expensive than those in Europe. However, due to the Spanish trade restriction policy, the textile industry such as these small workshops can still thrive and is not greatly affected by smuggled goods."

"After all, the textile industry in continental Europe is not very efficient, and coupled with transportation costs, large quantities of smuggled textiles do not have enough price advantages in the Americas."

"However, because our woolen cloth production process utilizes extensive advanced machinery, its price is unmatched in Mexico. Furthermore, the quality is even better than their handmade production. This should earn Xinhua a lot of money!"

In a spacious production workshop, Xiong Zeqian, head of Xinhua Light Industry Group, led Zhang Ruosong, a member of the Ministry of Science and Technology, to visit the operation of the woolen cloth production equipment that had just been put into production.

After more than a year of preparation, the Guangfeng Woolen Fabric Factory, affiliated to the Xinhua Light Industry Group, was officially completed in May and put into trial production.

In fact, Xinhua did not harvest much wool during its years of animal husbandry, only about thirteen or fourteen tons in total. If it were put into processing and production, it would only take a month or so to consume all the raw materials.

However, the time travelers believed that after this battle with the Spaniards, a ceasefire was imminent and peace was expected. Therefore, whether through small-scale trade with Spanish America or continuing the previous smuggling trade, they could obtain a certain amount of wool raw materials.

It is reported that in Mexico alone, large and small estates raised more than three million sheep, which was one of the main economic pillars of the Spanish American colonies.

In the Nuevo Santander Province in north-central Mexico (covering present-day Tamaulipas and other areas), the Aguayo family alone owned more than 60 hectares of land and raised 15 sheep. They supplied mutton to nearby mines and the capital, Mexico City, and sold wool to surrounding textile workshops, making a profit of more than hundreds of thousands of pesos each year.

Therefore, there is no need to worry about insufficient raw materials when the woolen cloth factory goes into production.

They believed that as long as the right price was given, the Spanish smugglers and landowners would be happy to sell their wool to them.

After all, the simple and scattered wool textile industry in Mexico was not enough to absorb all the wool.

The first process in the wool textile industry is the cleaning and carding of wool.

The wool tufts vary in length from under 2 cm to over 20 cm or more, and all wools have small, curly hairs branching out from the main stem.

Therefore, short wool will stick together while long wool will not, and these different characteristics require the wool to be combed (long wool) and carded (short wool).

Before combing the wool, it must be cleaned with alkali solution. During this process, the travel experts introduced milder soapberry extract and warm water cleaning technology to reduce damage to the wool fibers.

Compared with linen and cotton fabrics, the carding of wool is the most difficult process to mechanize. Until the 18s, hand combing still dominated and mechanized operations had not yet been achieved.

After fully referring to the textile machinery manufacturing technology in "Book of Agriculture" and "Complete Book of Agricultural Administration", and drawing on and introducing the design of Jiangnan hand-cranked agitators, experts and craftsmen from Xinhua Heavy Industry spent more than three months to successfully build one of the most "complex and advanced" combing machines in the world today.

This machine uses a drum combing device with metal teeth to more efficiently comb the wool into uniform fiber bundles.

At the same time, the time travelers also converted the original pedal-operated multi-spindle spinning wheels in Jiangnan into water-powered spinning wheels, which are 30 times more efficient than traditional hand-cranked spinning wheels and 5-8 times more efficient than pedal-operated spinning wheels.

This spinning wheel can spin multiple yarns at the same time, and the yarns are more uniform and stronger.

This "high-tech" equipment also introduces a simple twisting device. By adjusting the twisting force, yarns of different strengths can be produced to suit woolen fabrics for different purposes.

In addition to the spinning wheel, the time travelers also designed a semi-automatic flying shuttle loom, which is more than three times faster than the traditional loom.

The introduction of the flying shuttle also increased the weaving width and reduced the intensity of manual operation.

However, the only drawback is that the more complex jacquard device has not been developed for the time being, so it is impossible to weave complex patterns during the weaving process, nor can high-end woolen fabrics with patterns be produced.

However, this new woolen factory was the first factory in the entire Americas, and even in the world today, to use mechanized production on a large scale, upgrading the scattered and backward manual craftsmanship to a large-scale industrial production model in one fell swoop.

In order to produce higher-quality woolen cloth, the Xinhua immigrant fleet imported a large number of brighter and more durable natural dyes from the Ming Dynasty, such as indigo and madder red. They also used their full knowledge of chemistry to improve and optimize the dyeing process, introducing temperature-controlled dyeing tanks to ensure that the dyes could penetrate evenly into the fabric.

In order to improve the fastness of dyeing and make the woolen fabric maintain its bright color after repeated washing, the dyeing workshop used alum and acetic acid as fixing agents at the suggestion of the time travelers.

In addition, the time travelers also equipped this woolen factory with a water-powered shrinking machine, which uses the action of water flow and mechanical force to make the woolen fabric tighter and softer.

The raising process has also been improved accordingly, using a raising machine with a metal brush to make the surface of the fabric smoother and more textured.

This series of processes and equipment all adopt assembly line operation methods, which maximizes the production efficiency of the entire factory.

When you enter this woolen factory, you will see dozens of workers busy operating various machines.

The wool is taken out of the washing tank and turned into neat bundles of fibers after passing through the carding machine.

In the spinning area, a dozen workers, under the guidance of a skilled craftsman, operated the water-powered multi-spindle spinning wheel with somewhat unfamiliar skills. Yarn flowed from the spindles like water. In the weaving area, the shuttle shuttled back and forth on the loom, making a rhythmic clicking sound, and the woolen fabric gradually took shape on the loom.

In the dyeing area, several workers are immersing pieces of woven woolen cloth into temperature-controlled dyeing tanks, and the indigo dye spreads evenly on the cloth.

……

"In fact, we can use coal distillation technology to produce chemical dyes on a large scale to replace natural dyes, mainly indigo, thereby further reducing the production cost of woolen products."

Zhang Ruosong stood by the dyeing tank, watching the workers at work, when a thought suddenly struck him: "During the pyrolysis process, coal decomposes into three forms: solid, liquid, and gas. The solid is the coke we use in steelmaking, the gas is coal gas, which can be used as fuel. The liquid is coal tar, from which we can extract many derivatives, which can then be synthesized to make chemical dyes."

"Oh?" Xiong Zeqian was immediately interested. "If we can produce chemical dyes on a large scale, not only can we save the trouble of importing natural dyes, but we can also use these dyes to make higher-quality dyed fabrics. That's right. We can import large quantities of cheap coarse cloth from Ming Dynasty, ship it back to Xinhua, print and dye it, and then sell it back to Ming Dynasty as high-end printed and dyed fabrics, thus capturing the high-end textile market."

"I think it's best to forget about trying to sell your so-called high-end printed and dyed fabrics back to the Ming Dynasty," Zhang Ruosong said with a smile. "During this period, no textiles could enter the Ming market. Even in the late Qing Dynasty, with the help of the Industrial Revolution, the British were unable to successfully enter the Chinese market with their textiles."

"We might as well make an effort, leveraging our relatively advantageous industrial model, to quietly enter the Spanish American market. While this market isn't huge, it still has a population of over a million, which should be enough to initially meet the needs of our textile industry in its early stages."

"If possible, we can also import cotton from Mexico, develop our own cotton textile industry, and expand and strengthen our textile industry." Xiong Zeqian said thoughtfully, "Through interrogation of Spanish prisoners, we learned that the Spanish planted a lot of cotton in Oaxaca, Veracruz, and the Yucatan Peninsula, with an annual output of thousands of tons, most of which was exported to Europe."

"Anyway, it's like herding a flock of sheep. Since we already have wool textiles, it won't take much effort to start cotton textiles. We can buy up all the cotton produced in Mexico and completely monopolize the textile market in Spanish America."

"The wool textile industry in Mexico arose from the combination of cheap labor in the entrustment territories and the burgeoning livestock economy. As you can imagine, the Spanish workshop-style production and technological level were certainly not very advanced and could not be compared with our large-scale industrial production."

"It's just that the Spanish have been able to accumulate enough productive capital through cheap labor, but they cannot regard it as the basis of modern manufacturing. As in the case of mining, there are few or no Spanish investors interested in focusing on manufacturing."

"Instead, the Spanish are widely involved in various commercial activities that generate stable and rapid profits, such as purchasing land, engaging in trade, and investing in mining. Those workshop operators are often also large landowners and city councilors. Not only do they lack the necessary specialized production models, but they also blur the lines between government and business, and between agriculture and industry. If we can't destroy this production model, it would be a disgrace!"

"That's not easy!" Zhang Ruosong looked at him in surprise, his face showing even more astonishment. "I didn't expect you to have done so much research on the textile industry in Mexico. It's really impressive!"

"Commissioner Zhang, look at how much you're praising me. I'm almost embarrassed." Xiong Zeqian spoke modestly, but inwardly he was quite proud. "Since I'm in this position, I must govern accordingly. Since I've been appointed by the decision-making committee to head the Light Industry Group, I must do a good job and strive to make this Light Industry Group a golden goose for Xinhua, thereby providing a steady stream of financial support for the national treasury."

"After all, there aren't many profitable industries in Xinhua right now. We can't all rely on government subsidies to survive, right? Besides, looking back at hundreds of years of industrial development history, most of the countries that ultimately achieved industrialization started with a textile industry."

"So, our Xinhua Light Industry Group can be said to be shouldering the heavy responsibility of launching the industrial revolution. Naturally, I have to do my homework and invest my utmost energy to avoid losing face."

A few years ago, during a discussion about what kind of industry to develop to make money, he suggested starting with chocolate, a light luxury food, and then selling it to Mexico and Ming Dynasty to supplement the cost of immigration.

But after some operation, it was found that this overly advanced industry was not very reliable at all.

Not to mention, the cocoa production in the Viceroyalty of Spanish Peru was very low and could not fully meet the needs of the Spaniards, let alone export it in large quantities to supply Xinhua with raw materials for chocolate production.

Even if it is produced, there is not much room for consumer market.

Compared to the bitter taste of chocolate, people of this period preferred pure sweetness, whether they were Europeans or Orientals.

If you want to make a very delicious piece of chocolate, you have to add a lot of sugar to it, which makes the production cost ridiculously high.

Even after it was produced, it failed to gain people's favor and was denounced by consumers as "black material like dog shit."

For this reason, as the proposer of the suggestion, Xiong Zeqian was depressed for a long time.

This time, after being appointed as the head of the Light Industry Group, in order to avoid repeating the same mistakes and doing ridiculous things, he put in a lot of effort and thought about how to make this newly built woolen factory bigger and stronger, and lead it to glory, so as to achieve his own career.

Relying on the time traveler's advanced vision and technology and production models that are slightly ahead of this era, he believes that this woolen factory will soon become the most prestigious woolen production center in the entire Americas.

Semi-automated spinning and weaving equipment will greatly improve production efficiency, and the output of woolen fabrics will far exceed that of traditional workshops. The improved dyeing and finishing processes will also make woolen fabrics softer and more durable, and the colors will be brighter and longer-lasting. In addition, the large-scale industrial production model gives it a manufacturing cost far exceeding that of any competitor. If it cannot occupy the Spanish American market, it would be a shame to find a piece of tofu and kill itself.

Industrial development trends have proven that traditional manual industries are destined to be eliminated by modern machine manufacturing!

We at Xinhua have brought this trend forward by more than a hundred years.

Xinhua's location, isolated from the Eurasian continent, will prevent these advanced machinery and technologies from spreading to other regions, thus maintaining its production and manufacturing advantages for a considerable period of time.

Well, Xinhua's textile industry has ushered in a small technological leap, which has planted a seed of hope for the next industrial revolution.
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(End of this chapter)