1848 Great Qing Charcoal Burners

Chapter 77 Rural Bank
Peng Gang brought over a musket with a wrought iron barrel and had eight blacksmiths forge a musket with a diameter of about 1.5 centimeters, and inquired about the timeframe for its forging.

Tang Zheng proudly told Peng Gang that it would only take him two or three days from preparing to forge and extend the wrought iron plate to rolling the wrought iron plate into a tube.

As for other blacksmiths completing this step, it could take anywhere from five days to eight or nine days, or even ten days.

The other blacksmiths did not refute him; Tang Zheng was telling the truth and was not boasting.

Tang Zheng came from the Guangdong Ordnance Bureau and had been firing muskets for over a decade, making him highly skilled.

Although some of them had made homemade guns, most of them simply used cast iron barrels, which required little technical skill.

"Tang the blacksmith, you've fired muskets before, so from now on you'll be the foreman of the blacksmiths. I'll raise your monthly salary to the same standard as Qin the carpenter, three taels of silver per month."

"You teach them how to fire the gun barrel. Once they've mastered it, for every gun barrel they fire that meets the standards and passes inspection, I'll give you a bonus of three qian of silver."

Peng Gang appointed Tang Zheng as the foreman of the blacksmiths and promised him a share of the profits.

In order to monopolize technology and livelihood, artisans have a tradition of keeping their unique skills secret, especially those with superb skills.

Making bird guns was Tang Zheng's proudest skill, and he wouldn't easily teach these blacksmiths how to make gun barrels without giving them some incentive.

"Boss, how will our wages be calculated?" the other blacksmiths couldn't help but ask.

“Everyone will be paid on a piece-rate basis. As long as the standard is met and the inspection is passed, you will be paid one and a half taels of silver for each gun barrel,” Peng Gang replied.

The blacksmiths were paid on a piece-rate basis, receiving one and a half taels of silver for each gun barrel, which was equivalent to their monthly salary. The blacksmiths were very excited and satisfied.

Tang Zheng was a sensible man. Since Peng Gang had already offered a high enough price, if he continued to act coy and cling to outdated ideas, he would be ungrateful.

As an expert, Tang Zheng quickly realized a critical problem.

"Commander, but we don't have a drill bit. How are we going to drill the barrel?"

“You guys keep drilling,” Peng Gang said. “I’ll take care of the drill bit.”

It was already the mid-19th century, and the Qing Dynasty's doors had been forced open for almost ten years.

This problem is no challenge for Peng Gang.

Europeans, led by Britain, have always been profit-driven. As long as you pay enough, they'll sell you not only high-carbon steel, but they might even sell you their obsolete drilling and boring machines.

If you can't buy one, you can settle for second best, sacrificing precision and efficiency, and make your own hand-cranked crank drill press, using rudimentary forging and carburizing steel as a makeshift drill bit.

After assigning production tasks to the craftsmen, Peng Gang walked around the village with his hands behind his back, inspecting the progress of various construction projects.

The building with the highest priority in Honglian Village is the Honglian Village Bank, planned by Peng Gang.

After the bank is built, it will provide small loan services to customers in need in the vicinity, as well as Shangdongtang and Bitanxun. Of course, it will also provide work point exchange services.

Work point redemption is currently the most frequent business of Honglian Village Bank.

Peng Gang's ten training groups are given work points each day based on their production and training performance.

As their contact with the local residents became more frequent, they would sometimes use their work points to buy things from the residents.

Initially, the local residents were unwilling to accept the work point card transaction.

Later, the villagers discovered that using work point cards allowed them to exchange for charcoal from Peng Gang at a more favorable price at any time. Peng Yi would also occasionally buy back work point cards with silver at Peng Gang's behest. Gradually, the villagers accepted the value of the work point cards. The Honglian Village Bank was managed by Peng Gang's younger brother Peng Yi and younger sister Peng Min, with several cousins ​​from his maternal uncle's side occasionally helping out at the bank.

The bank was built to high standards, with its own rammed earth walls and a brick and tile house as the main building. Peng Gang's future residence was also next to the bank.

As a result, the construction progress was relatively slow, and Peng Yi and Peng Min had to work and handle business in a temporary shed in front of the Honglian Village Bank sign.

As Peng Gang took office as a director of the group, his reputation grew, his financial resources increased, and the circulation of work points cards expanded.

Most of the people living in the mountains of Xiping, as well as the soldiers of Bitan Xun and the boatmen who often came to sell river goods, could accept the work point card transaction.

Peng Gang hired local people to work for him. Initially, he paid them in copper coins. However, silver was expensive and copper coins were cheap. Copper coins had a small denomination, were inconvenient to carry, and were easily stolen or robbed.

Gradually, some of the workers suggested that Peng Gang could settle their wages with work point cards first, and then exchange the work point cards for silver, which was easier to carry, after they finished their work.

Peng Gang thought the suggestion was good, so he agreed and issued large-denomination work point cards with a face value of ten work points.

Currently, the exchange rate between work points and copper coins in the Honglian Village market is 1 work point to 25 copper coins, and 10 work points to 250 copper coins.

Because many Bitanxun people come to Honglian Village to work, many Bitanxun people even asked Peng Gang to open an exchange station in Bitanxun.

In this way, they could directly take their work points back to Bitanxun to exchange them for silver.

Peng Gang did not agree directly, but said that he could deposit some silver with Xie Bin, the guard of Bitan, and let them go back and persuade Xie Bin themselves.

Compared to banks, schools, which had the same construction priority, were already completed because they were just ordinary thatched huts and did not require the special purchase of bricks and tiles.

The blackboard that Peng Gang commissioned the carpenters to make has been painted black and hung up, and the simple long table and square stools have also been completed.

Peng Gang walked into the thatched classroom, picked up a piece of plaster chalk, and tried it on the blackboard.

Although chalk made of lime is brittle and easily broken, it can still be used normally as long as the force is controlled.

With a blackboard as the instructor, his teaching efficiency will be increased exponentially.

The simple blackboard and small piece of chalk revolutionized teaching methods.

In the pre-blackboard era, whether in the East or the West, teachers relied on oral instruction or passing around handwritten copies of texts to teach, which was inefficient and made it difficult to maintain a consistent pace.

In the era of blackboards, teachers could present the same teaching content to dozens or even hundreds of students at the same time, promoting standardized classroom teaching.

From then on, education was no longer the exclusive domain of the nobility and the upper middle class; the broader urban and working classes could also receive a decent quality education and acquire basic literacy skills.

Of course, capitalists also gained access to highly skilled laborers who could be mass-produced like on a factory assembly line, greatly improving production efficiency.

The same applies to the military. Prussia was a pioneer in promoting standardized classroom teaching, vigorously promoting the use of blackboards and chalk, which significantly improved the literacy rate of Prussians.

By the 1830s and 1840s, the Prussian artillery was so advanced that even ordinary artillerymen could read artillery firing tables, and the army's literacy rate was the highest among European countries.

Peng Gang was in a great mood and gave the young men who were practicing marching on the playground a half-day off. He told them to boil water to take a bath, change into the new clothes he had prepared for them, and then come to class after lunch.

Taking advantage of this break in time, Peng Gang asked Zhao Hanwei and her aunt to cut up the paper he had bought from Xunzhou City and sew it into notebooks.

(End of this chapter)