Chapter 213 Fiscal balance II
Chapter 213 – Financial Income and Expenditure II
After winter, the supply of fuel is very critical, the northern border has a cold climate, if there is not enough fuel for heating in winter, there will be a large number of people freezing to death.
Richard spent a lot of gold coins to buy population, naturally, he should be concerned about whether the indentured servants have fuel for winter.
Harland’s territory had discovered coal mines, and there was no shortage of wood, so the supply of fuel had not been a problem.
This year, about 20,000 tons of coal were mined and 6,000 tons were sold to the public, bringing in two thousand gold coins in cash income.
Of the remaining fourteen thousand tons, two thousand were supplied to the army and twelve thousand were given priority to indentured servants.
Most indentured servants were a dozen or so people crammed into a thirty square meter house, a house that consumed one ton of coal per year to get through the winter.
Although there are more than 90,000 indentured servants in Harland’s territory today, 12,000 tons of coal is enough.
Because of the increase in mining, Richard was prepared to let the coal mine expand next year, raising the production to more than 30,000 tons.
In fact, this year’s coal miners, only mined for a month and a half, and basically spent the rest of the time building the coal mine.
Repairing wooden tracks, building houses, constructing coal washing plants, and even digging toilets and other messy tasks.
There was enough food, enough fuel, and although there were a lot of indentured servants entering the territory this year, the conditions were actually not too harsh.
At the very least, one could have a full meal after entering the Harland territory.
Many of the serfs, because the lord squeezed them too much, even a full bite of food was a luxury.
After the time entered December, Richard once again gathered all the officials of the territory to summarize the income.
The first to report was Thomas, the head of the steel business.
“The territory’s steel trade has been very stable this year, with an annual revenue of twelve thousand gold coins, down about fifty percent from the peak year. If the orcs continue to invade as often as once every three years, the profits from steel weapons will skyrocket next year, possibly reaching over eighteen thousand gold coins.”
Nowadays, the steel production of Harland’s territory, had stopped growing, the main reason was due to the market restriction.
The steel industry was also a traditional industry in the Morning Glory Realm, and the competition was relatively fierce.
Harland Territory’s profit of more than 10,000 gold coins a year almost ate up most of the market, and the rest of the market could only be snatched up unless prices continued to drop.
Robbing the market will inevitably have rivals, and the commercial competition methods in the Morning Glory Realm are very brutal and direct.
In the past, Richard grabbed the market, mainly Baron Franklin’s market. Now Baron Franklin’s mines have been squeezed by Richard’s production fell by seven or eight percent.
Several big steel merchants in the northern border, now in addition to Richard, is some powerful big nobles.
Before making preparations, Richard would not impact the market of the big nobles and easily lower the price of steel products now.
In the future, the steel trade will mainly rely on the growth of the domestic market, unless Richard is promoted to a great noble, and has enough strength to grab the market with a few dukes in the northern border.
After Thomas finished speaking, the second person to report was Scott who was in charge of the textile business.
Since the new spinning machinery manufacturing out, Harland territory textile business development faster and faster, to this year the territory already has eight hundred thousand sheep.
Every year, 1,400 tons of woolen cloth is spun, enough to clothe more than 200,000 people.
In addition to the woolen cloth clothes provided to the indentured servants, Harland territory gained ten thousand gold coins by selling the woolen cloth to the outside world.
The Northern Border Region had always lacked cloth, and even the Kingdom of Harland, the production of cloth was not quite enough.
Regardless of whether it was linen, cotton or woolen cloth, as long as cloth was produced, there was not much worry about selling it.
The third was the income from hunting magical beasts, the territory had gained six thousand five hundred gold coins last year by hunting magical beasts.
The white wine market has now fallen to fourth, together with the fruit wine it only earns five thousand gold coins a year, almost only one third of its peak.
With the increase of freeholders in Harland territory and the expansion of the market size, the white wine income should increase a bit, but if you want to recover to two years ago, I’m afraid that you will have to wait for the domestic market to expand, and it will take a few years of hard work.
The fifth item was the territory’s tax revenue, counting the miscellaneous taxes, totaling four thousand three hundred gold coins.
The sixth item is the brown sugar income, it has been five whole years since the establishment of the brown sugar industrial park, this year the production of brown sugar brown sugar reached sixty tons. Although the selling price of brown sugar has dropped a bit, down to twelve copper coins a pound, it still brought Harland Territory a cash income of three thousand three hundred gold coins.
Moreover, the Brown Sugar Industrial Park is still developing rapidly, and next year the production of brown sugar may reach about one hundred tons.
The potential of this business is very large, and will be an important financial income for Harland’s territory in the future.
The seventh item is the hemostatic ointment, limited by the royal jelly production of Purple Head Peak, the hemostatic ointment revenue is very stable, around three thousand gold coins per year.
The eighth item was the coal mine income, the coal mine brought in two thousand gold coins of cash income.
The ninth item was glass income, because of the sales of fruit wine and canned goods, the glass mine reached one thousand eight hundred gold coins this year.
The rest of the brick kiln, cement, fruit sales, flaming spider silk, honey, and other miscellaneous income added up to a total of four thousand gold coins.
In addition the business of the Olafs of Black River Castle, which was fairly stable for a year, could bring in a cash flow of one thousand five hundred gold coins.
Not counting the Olafs’ small coffers, Harland Territory had about fifty-two thousand gold coins in cash income last year.
This year, after grabbing Baron Harden’s vault and getting a large windfall, he got seventeen thousand gold coins, adding up to sixty-nine thousand gold coins of income.
There was no war this year, the military expenditure was not very big, expanding the army by 1,000 in the spring, together with the expenditure on raising the army and pensions, it added up to thirty-eight thousand gold coins. The number of territorial bureaucrats is small, adding up to a few hundred or so, with less than five thousand gold coins spent on salaries.
Next is the investment on hospitals and education.
The cost of hospital treatment in Harland territory is not too high, even for an operation, the cost is only about one gold coin.
Because the hospital expanded quite a bit this year and added a portion of necromancers, these people had to be paid high wages. Throughout the year, the hospital lost two hundred gold coins.
Educationally, because the Harland territory had cultivated some talents, the salary of the new teachers was lowered to six silver coins per month.
Coupled with the fact that the number of students expanded quite a bit, the entire year surprisingly managed to break even.
After all, Harland territory tuition is too expensive, one gold coin per year, only the children of upper class families can afford it.
Next year, Richard was prepared to lower the tuition fee by about half.
A tuition of six silver coins per year should be able to benefit a portion of the middle class population.
This year, Harland’s territory had a balance of twenty-six thousand gold coins.
After eight years of running the territory, Richard finally had cash income in his hands.
With this amount of money, Richard was not going to continue buying population.
This year, the territory had a large influx of population, and it would take some time to digest this part of the population, besides, it was likely that a war would break out next year. This amount of money is a reserve, acting as a war fund to make up for the lack of income in the territory.
Throughout this year, Richard learned two new spells, one was the fourth ring magic summoning fire elemental.
This was a summoning system magic, before learning this magic, one needed to open the space gate and sign a contract with the summoned creature. Every time he summoned a fire elemental to fight, Richard needed to pay a magic crystal.
A magic crystal was a crystal ore enriched with magic energy particles, usually mixed in metal veins.
Magic crystals were very precious in the Morning Glory Plane, and one magic crystal could be exchanged for ten gold coins.
Although Richard had quite a few gold coins in his hands, he simply couldn’t afford to exchange them for magic crystals. Right now, he only had a dozen pieces of magic crystals in his hand.
These magic crystals were accumulated from years of mining iron ore, and Richard couldn’t afford to use them at all.
Richard hadn’t learned the five-ringed magic space door yet, and by himself, he originally couldn’t learn how to summon the fire element. It was Sophia who helped him open the Elemental Realm Space Gate, and only then did Richard sign a contract with a Fire Elemental, allowing this Fire Elemental to become his own summoned creature.
When Richard used this magic, the fire elemental in the Elemental Realm would descend a projection to cooperate with Richard in battle.
The fire elemental projection was powerful in killing, immune to fire-attribute magic, and the vast majority of spirit-type magic was useless against fire elementals, multiplying the power of using fire-attribute spells.
However, it was restrained by water-attribute and ice-attribute magic.
Using this magic consumed quite a lot, once it would take ten gold coins, which was equivalent to hiring a fourth ring fire mage to fight for a short period of time.
Although a magician with a single attribute was more lethal, it was easily restrained by comprehensive mages, and was only suitable for large-scale wars, not for adventurous activities and solo battles.
The other was the five-ringed spell Dream Entry, which was a psychedelic type of spell. After using this spell, one could enter a sleeping person’s dream and look into the secrets deep within the dreamer’s subconscious.
When encountering special times, this spell was very useful.
After entering the winter season, Richard would occasionally personally instruct the territory mage apprentices and teach them some magic knowledge.
Nowadays, there are more than a dozen magic apprentices in Harland’s territory, these people have different foundations, their learning progress is different, and the knowledge they mastered is also different.
Most of these magic apprentices were ordinary, and the knowledge they had learned was not in-depth.
The five magicians of the Harland Mage Association all had the task of teaching, generally speaking one lesson a week, each lesson lasting about two hours or so.
Richard lectured on the knowledge of classical mechanics.
The rules of physical chemistry in the Morning Glory Realm were a bit different from Earth. Especially quantum mechanics, which could not be copied at all.
After Richard’s verification, there was almost no difference in the rules of classical mechanics, only the acceleration of gravity, and the gravitational constant were different.
Classical mechanics had a very important role in magic. Many change system and protection system magic needed to do force analysis.
However, the vast majority of the magicians in the Morning Glory realm did not understand some concepts of classical mechanics, and they released spells mainly relying on the experience of their teachers.
Three thousand years ago, legendary magician Erin proposed the law of inertia, and two thousand two hundred years ago, another legendary magician, Flatt, proposed the law of action and reaction force.
Two of the three laws of classical mechanics had already appeared in the Morning Realm, but the development of science had its own contingencies, and no magician had proposed the law of acceleration until now.
Richard, the plagiarizer, instead became the first person to propose the law of gravitational acceleration in the Morning Glory Realm, and was also the first to measure the gravitational acceleration, the gravitational constant, in the Morning Glory Realm.
Many wild mages are just a magic tool man, who can only cast spells according to the cat’s tongue, and have no idea about the principles of spells and the nature of magic.
Richard didn’t want the Harland Mage Association’s mages to be such magical tools, instead he wanted to cultivate magical researchers, even if their talent wasn’t good, they should still have a heart to study magic.
Sometimes great discoveries came from ordinary people with average talent. Relying on a large number of magical researchers with average talent to push forward, the science of magic can only develop.
(End of chapter)