British hegemon

Chapter 114 Textile Factory

The weather was nice; the sunlight, which had suddenly appeared after a long period of gloom, was a bit dazzling, piercing through the perennial damp and cold fog on the west coast of Scotland.

Outside the town of Brodick, the dilapidated cluster of workshops seemed to regain a glimmer of life on this rare sunny day.

On the once desolate road, occasional vehicles and pedestrians pass by among the wild grass, withered trees and ruins, their tire tracks pressing deep and shallow into the mud.

With the help of the one-eyed chef's wife, Halfpenny Jenny demonstrated her business acumen.

The situation changed dramatically, especially after Roger recruited four skilled textile workers and dyers from the mainland at great expense. Under their patient instruction and guidance, the islanders and soldiers' families recruited at low cost gradually became more proficient, mastering basic techniques such as sorting, combing, and spinning.

In the courtyard of Campbell Textile Factory, a dozen textile machines and dyeing tools were running at high speed, the creaking of wooden gears meshing and the clicking of shuttles intertwining.

The rough wool, mixed with withered grass, mud, and sheep dung, brought in through the front door, carried a primitive, fishy smell. After being repeatedly washed in alkaline water in the large wooden trough in the front yard, and then passed through the sweat-soaked hands of the female workers in the workshop, it was finally transformed into a tightly woven brown fabric.

This batch of defective cloth has now filled half a warehouse.

"—A while ago, someone put some unknown powder in the rinsing pool in the front yard," Jenny said, her voice still tinged with anger. "It's something that can make wool fibers hard and brittle, directly ruining two bolts of narrow-knit fabric. Luckily, the dyer we recruited was experienced and noticed the abnormal texture while rubbing the fabric, immediately stopping the machine and changing the water. Otherwise, the entire batch of fabric woven in those few days would have been wasted."

She paused, "Later, there were more cases of fabric being deliberately cut, and tools such as spindles and cranks going missing. We couldn't figure out who was behind it all, so we had a few brave and strong employees take turns keeping watch at night. Luckily, we caught a few suspicious guys that night. In the chaos, instead of running away, they attacked and injured our employees."

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Roger felt a surge of anger rising in his chest, but he tried to keep his face calm. He bent down and picked up a few wooden parts that had been taken off the spinning machine from the basket at his feet, and carefully rubbed them in his palm.

The spinning machines of this era were basically the same in shape and structure, except for slight differences in the diameter of the sheaves and the number of spindles. They all consisted of two parts: a spinning mechanism and a drive mechanism.

The spinning mechanism consists of components such as spindles, rope wheels, and rope strings, while the drive mechanism consists of components such as cranks, manual levers, and spikes.

The thugs dismantled the spinning machine, but didn't dare smash or destroy it; they just scattered it around.

Clearly, those who did this bad deed were not the same people who threw powder and destroyed cloth in the previous incident; they didn't have the guts to directly damage Roger's things.

"This spinning machine was a secondhand item we rented from an islander," Jenny explained. "Later we bought a larger machine from Glasgow to replace it, and this one was just sitting idle in the corner of the front yard. I never expected that someone would come and vandalize it."

"Is the injured employee alright?" Roger looked up and raised his voice.

"There were many of us at the time, and those guys didn't dare to resist when they saw that things were going badly. The workers only suffered some external injuries."

"Very good! Every employee who participated in capturing the robbers that day will be rewarded with five days' wages!" Roger deliberately raised his voice a few decibels.

Many employees in the textile factory heard the good news, and a stir immediately broke out in the air.

The female workers whispered among themselves, while several male workers who had been on duty that night straightened their backs and boasted in hushed tones about how brave they had been that night.

After the commotion subsided, Jenny leaned close to Roger and whispered, "Sir, I'd like to hire some tough female workers to work in the factory. That way, if anyone dares to sneak around here again, we won't always have to rely on male employees. The women can protect the factory on their own."

Roger paused for a moment, then realized it made sense. The textile factory was mostly populated by female workers, and the backyard at night was also full of women. If another theft were to occur, they would indeed need one or two bold and careful women to keep things under control.

"This is something we can do," Roger nodded in agreement.

"Then I'll go and invite her to work at the textile factory tomorrow," Jenny said, beaming.

Roger was surprised that Jenny already had someone in mind and asked curiously, "You've already chosen someone? Who is it? Someone from the Moulin Rouge? Then you'll definitely need Mrs. Kate's approval first."

Jenny smiled. "You must know that brave lady. Her name is Cecilia, and she's an incredibly brave woman."

Roger racked his brains, but he couldn't recall ever hearing the name "Cesia" before, and looked puzzled.

Seeing this, Jenny reminded her, "That widow from Gildonan."

"The Fat Widow!" Roger exclaimed, the image of that massive, hill-like figure flashing into his mind. "That woman is quite the warrior, but I wonder if she's willing to..."

"She was very willing. A few days ago, she took the initiative to come to me, hoping to work in the textile factory doing some manual labor."

The fat widow had fought alongside him last summer, killing people while fighting bandits; her fierceness was beyond question.

Later, during the dispute between the black dog Sigurd and the young widow Gildonan, the plump widow also displayed great loyalty and friendliness, leaving Roger with a very good impression of her. With her guarding the textile mill, those guys probably wouldn't even dare to approach the gate.

"Then let's hire her to work," Roger readily agreed.

Jenny was very pleased that Roger had taken her advice on personnel matters.

Roger rubbed his face and turned to the textile mill's operations. "I heard from the old steward that the textile mill has already started to make a profit?"

"Master, we'll be able to make a profit starting in February. At the beginning of the month, the steward from Islay brought us nine bags of wool. Five of them were commissioned to be spun into greige cloth, for which we were paid a processing fee. The other four bags were sold to us as raw materials."

According to the agreement, Islay would provide five bags of wool each month free of charge, but the brown fabric spun from these five bags had to be returned to Angus, who would pay a profit of one pound and eighteen shillings per bag of wool.

The wool beyond the five bags was supplied as raw material, and the cloth produced was entirely under Roger's control.

"However, you need to resolve the sales problem as soon as possible. Right now, only the islanders of Arun Island and a few gentry regularly come to buy cloth, and our warehouse is already overflowing with cloth."

At the end of January, two merchants arrived on Islay and bought a batch, and Sir Glenn of Argyll and a cloth merchant from County Ayre also sailed away some, but this was far from enough to cover daily production.

Roger let out a long sigh of relief; he was well aware of the pain points in sales. On this isolated island, once production capacity increased, unsold inventory would be a sword of Damocles hanging over their heads.

"You don't need to worry too much about sales. Focus on production first. The quality of the fabrics produced by Campbell Textile Mill must be guaranteed." He said firmly. "Also, during my trip south to Ireland, I saw many textile mills using linen to weave cloth. Could we consider using linen as a supplementary material for textile production?"

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