Chapter 191 Textile technology
Chapter 191 – Textile Technology
After capturing the Flame Spiders, Richard had his men carefully search through the spider nests and take all the spider eggs as well.
Having captured the Spider Queen, all of these spider eggs could hatch Flame Spiders.
After collecting the spider eggs, Richard sent people to dig up some nearby plants, ready to find some rats to do some experiments, to see if there were any plants that could detoxify the Flame Spider’s poison?
Generally speaking near the nests of highly poisonous creatures, some antidote plants would often grow.
If they could find antidote plants, the threat of flame spiders to humans would be much lower.
By then, there might not be a need for magicians, ordinary people could raise flame spiders.
After entering the new lair, the Flame Spider Queen showed great trepidation and waited for about ten days before slowly adapting to the environment.
By late March, the territory once again received good news.
The task arranged by Richard to develop a new type of textile machine was finally successful.
The textile machines in the Morning Glory Realm were all old-fashioned textile machines with very low efficiency.
This area of Grant Kingdom also did not have the technology to raise silkworms, and of the three continents found in the Morning Glory Realm, only some areas on the west coast of the Holy Glory Empire could produce silk.
Silk was transported from the Sacred Radiance Empire to the Grant Kingdom, and the long transportation route of more than 20,000 kilometers caused silk to become an expensive luxury item.
The price of a silk dress in Nolan was more than eight gold coins, and the price of silk in Gerda Province was even higher.
As the nobles climbed up the ladder, a silk dress often cost more than ten gold coins, which was about twenty to thirty percent more expensive than the king’s capital.
Generally speaking, there is an unspoken rule in Grant Kingdom that those who wear silk clothes are nobles.
In the northern region, the most common are linen and cotton.
The area of Grant Kingdom near Delong Kingdom also grows cotton and weaves cotton cloth.
In recent decades, some provinces in the Northern Border Region also planted cold-resistant cotton, and a lot of cotton cloth appeared in the market.
Because the territory captured a lot of goat-bodied people and raised a large number of sheep, Richard was prepared to utilize the wool and spin wool yarn to make sweaters, felts, and woolen cloth.
The technology of spinning wool yarn had been studied for three or four years, and the technology was already mature.
The selection of materials and the washing process was no longer much of a challenge, and the use of lime water solution could wash the fat of the wool very cleanly.
After the mass production of steel in the Harland Territory, it was already possible to make thin steel combs, and carding wool had become much easier.
Using an old-fashioned spinning wheel, it is possible to spin wool into woolen thread.
Although the finished product was still rough and not as fine as cotton. But sweaters woven from the wool were very good at keeping you warm.
This winter, Richard was already preparing to mass-issue sweaters to the army.
The territory had set up a quilt factory six years ago, and at that time, the quilt factory was just a tailoring factory that made clothes for the army and serfs.
Five years ago Richard began to organize female slaves and started spinning cotton cloth to accumulate textile technology.
At first the efficiency was very low and the textile technology was insufficient.
After a few years of accumulation, the skills of the territory’s female weavers improved a lot.
But using old-fashioned spinning machines, the efficiency of spinning was far from enough.
Richard’s knowledge learned in his previous life knew that the beginning of the Industrial Revolution lay in textile technology.
Vaguely remember the invention of the Jenny machine, which greatly improved the efficiency of spinning.
The invention of the Jenny machine was, to put it bluntly, a brainstorming problem without any difficulty.
If science is viewed as a large tree of infinite height, technological achievements are the fruit of that tree. Some of the technical difficulties are so high that you may never be able to pick the fruit. Some are so low that they can be picked by lifting a hand. Jenny machine is a very low fruit, to put it bluntly is to arrange the spindle vertically, but to open this hole in the brain, but need very good luck and talent.
An apple smashed on Newton’s head and Newton came up with the law of gravity. Smash it on an ordinary person’s head, and it will only break his head.
Although Richard knew about the Jenny machine, he was not clear about the construction of such a machine.
Although he had learned about the Industrial Revolution, the Jenny machine, sheep eating people and other historical knowledge, he had never seen an old-fashioned textile machine.
The task of researching a new type of textile machine could only be given to the artisans of the territory.
After four years of continuous improvement, the craftsmen could only tinker with the original textile machines, basically without any progress.
Just as Richard became more and more disappointed and temporarily lost focus on the textile technology, good news suddenly came.
A carpenter named Scott accidentally kicked down the spinning wheel, found that the spinning machine is still rotating, he flashed a flash of light immediately opened this hole in the brain, several spindles are arranged vertically, driven by a spinning wheel, the efficacy of an instant increase of several times.
Upon hearing that Scott had successfully created a new spinning machine, Richard immediately granted him the status of a free man and appointed him as the director of the textile factory, responsible for managing the wool and cotton spinning business.
Harland’s territory now had more than 100,000 sheep, which could shear about one hundred tons of wool every year.
It takes three kilograms of woolen cloth to make a woolen garment, which can solve the clothing of more than 30,000 people.
With the expansion of sheep farming, the territory’s clothes would soon be self-sufficient, and in a few years, it would even be possible to sell woolen clothes to the outside world.
Richard knew in his heart that cloth was a bulk material, second only to food in terms of importance in daily life.
Many lords in the northern frontier region did not cultivate cotton and mastered textile technology, so they needed to buy cloth from the outside world.
As long as one of the wool textile and cotton textile was developed, it could bring a lot of income to the territory.
Harland’s territory is a mountainous territory, the arable land area is very small, it is difficult to plant cotton on a large scale, so Richard can only increase the investment in sheep breeding.
Because the market price of mutton is expensive, a live sheep of fifty to sixty pounds is often sold for three or four silver coins.
Buying tens of thousands of sheep would require an investment of 10,000 gold coins.
Richard did not have that much money, and now that wool weaving had seen the light of day, he could only stop slaughtering live sheep and increase the size of his flock.
As for how to solve the army’s meat problem, it could only rely on raising pigs.
There are pig farms in Harland territory, and in recent years the scale has grown larger and larger, starting to put a lot of pork on the market.
Today’s pig farms can put out thousands of adult pigs of over a hundred pounds a year.
Supplying the pork from the pig farms to the army was still slightly insufficient, but for the time being, it would have to be something for the soldiers to overcome.
As for the indentured servants, the free people, it would be hard to eat meat sold by the officials in a year or two.
Because of the scarcity of meat, the price is getting more and more expensive, many hot freeholders brought their bows with them and chose to become a part-time hunter.
Because of the thin tax policy set by Richard, no extra tax would be charged for hunting.
However, the territory had a law that prohibited the hunting of young beasts and pregnant females, in addition ordinary people could not hunt magical beast cubs, insect-like magical creatures, or dig up magical plants.
Relying on a few hundred hunters to hunt, they barely maintained the meat supply of Harland’s territory.
Only the price of meat this year, skyrocketed about three times.
Some of the freeholders who had money to spare bought piglets and lambs from other territories and put them into the farming industry, taking advantage of the soaring meat prices to earn an income.
(End of chapter)