British hegemon

Chapter 84 Martial Arts Competition and Trade

Chapter 84 Martial Arts Competition and Trade

Dozens of shops lined the edge of the meadow, selling everything from wool and leather goods, felt clothing, iron farm tools, fruits and vegetables, belts and boots, animal skins and falcons, pottery, gems, wax products, spices, and feathers—the variety was astounding.

Jugglers, puppeteers, and magicians weaved through the crowd —

Of course, prostitutes, thieves, and hooligans also flocked to the scene, so Baron John had to temporarily increase security by sending half of the castle's soldiers to the temporary free market to maintain order.

The larger of these temporary stalls were organized by various island lords, including Baron John.

Those goods scattered on the grass with a tattered felt cloth, a few sour apples, hard dried fruits, or salted fish were clearly Arran Islanders who had come spontaneously to participate in the grand trade.

The shrewd, grumpy-faced housekeeper naturally wouldn't miss this rare trading opportunity.

Milk House Manor has a large stall made of felt, located in the most central and bustling area.

With a bitter face personally overseeing the operation, assisted by a young stable boy and a plump cook, the stall mainly featured fine salt (second only to refined salt) produced locally from the sea salt flats, "Campbell" bread specially made by the Milk House Manor, a secret-recipe yeast powder, and some mountain products gathered from the Caiyi Forest Farm.

The stall was filled with furs and other items.

Bitterface will sell goods in the early stages of the martial arts tournament and buy them back later. He estimates he can earn three to five pounds from the tournament.

Nicholas Freeman, the old black sheep who had been eating idly at the Milk House Manor for many days, had also asked to perform his magical fireworks show at the market to earn money for Roger.

But Roger told the old sorcerer that his value wasn't in earning money through juggling, so the old man had no choice but to stay at Milk House Manor and continue to live off others.

I was looking forward to the early completion of the "laboratory" that Roger had mentioned.

Blackie had already seen the sights of Dublin, so he wasn't as excited about the bald man and ponytail man as he strolled through the free market. He simply followed closely behind Roger, occasionally picking up some cheap items from the stalls next to him to take a look.

Ahead was a wine stall, quite large, with seven or eight oak barrels and many earthenware jars for storing wine.

A beautiful woman with a slender figure stands behind a stall hawking her drinks, while Gary, the perpetually worried village chief of Lockzalan, is unloading the last oak barrel from an oxcart with the help of his freckled apprentice.

Roger smelled a faint peat aroma in the beer; the ale from Milkhouse Estate had always had this strong fragrance lately.

Because the brewery in Lokzalan Village in the north of the island delivers a barrel of ale to the Milk House Estate every Sunday, and especially in the last half month, the number of workers at the Milk House Estate has surged, resulting in a significant increase in the amount of ale delivered.

"Sir Roger, good day." The freckled apprentice was the first to see Roger walking towards him, and was so frightened that his voice trembled.

Gary turned around and paused for a moment, forcing an awkward smile onto his troubled face. "Sir Roger, good day."

With a troubled expression, he greeted everyone as he walked to the stall, gestured to his daughter who was hawking her wares to move aside, then picked up a ceramic jar and turned to offer it to Roger, saying, "Sir, are you thirsty? Please."

Roger took the wine, turned around and handed it to the black dog behind him, intending to take out money from his waist to pay.

With a distressed face, he waved his hands repeatedly. "Lord Roger, your estate buys wine from me every week, and you always pay in full. I've made quite a bit of money. This jar of wine is on me."

Roger didn't stand on ceremony, nodded his thanks, and continued walking.

Throughout the entire ordeal, Roger never once gave the voluptuous young woman who had retreated behind the stall a second glance.

Roger was always fond of women but never addicted to them.

Moreover, his values ​​hadn't yet adapted to this era, and Gary's daughter, with her full figure and lack of delicate charm, didn't amaze Roger; she was merely pleasing to the eye.

This may be related to the films and television shows Roger was exposed to in his previous life; he has always preferred light and refreshing Japanese and Korean films and disliked heavy and intense Western films and television shows.

The voluptuous girl was a little worried when the pervert passed by the stall, but he just glanced at her and didn't even look at her properly.

This hurt the pride of the girl who considered herself pretty, and her gaze as she stole glances at the pervert's back became somewhat complicated.

Roger was unaware that a pair of disappointed eyes were peeking at him from behind. Besides, he was no good at this kind of thing in either his past or present life; after all, he wasn't the protagonist of a romance drama. (Note)

The girl's gaze fell upon a newly erected weapons shop where Roger stood.

A tall man with a forked blue beard was selling ornately decorated helmets, the tops of which were embroidered with gold and silver and exaggeratedly shaped like various birds and beasts.

Beside the anvil inside the shop, a blacksmith had just forged a cheap iron sword. He was short and stout, no more than five feet tall, but with a broad chest and thick arms, and a large black beard. He picked up the iron sword with a proud look on his face, while the blacksmith's apprentices, covered in sweat, huddled to the side and gulped down cheap beer.

The bald man and the ponytail man, who were looking around curiously, followed them in. They went into the shop and touched and looked around, showing great interest in the swords, armor, and shields hanging on the wooden rack. However, after asking about the prices, they all gave up.

A man's love for weapons is an innate instinct, but Roger was more interested in the short, stout blacksmith, or rather, the weapons master.

Such talent is truly sought-after. There is a blacksmith at Milk House Manor, but that middle-aged man can only lead his apprentices to forge sickles and hoes. He can do some repairs, but don't expect him to forge decent swords and armor.

There was only one craftsman on the entire island of Arran who could make fine weapons and armor, and he was treasured and kept hidden in the castle by Baron John.

Roger beckoned the bald man over and whispered a few words to him. The bald man glanced at the short, stout blacksmith and nodded, saying, "Don't worry, sir, I'll definitely find a way to keep him here."

After wandering around the makeshift market town for a while, Roger crossed the wooden bridge and arrived at the equally bustling Brodick market town. He walked through the crowds and went straight to Campbell's textile mill by the pond outside the market town.

In this era, there was no strict distinction between workshops and factories. Roger could only use the same Gaelic word to express it, but in his mind, this workshop was definitely different from a traditional family workshop.

The road leading from the muddy streets of Brodick town to the textile factory has been cleared, and the short section near the factory yard, which was already paved with cobblestones, is much cleaner.

Roger walked through the open gate, where a busy scene unfolded in the wooden shed at the foot of the courtyard wall—a burly woman was pouring water drawn from the irrigation canal into a large stone trough with lead rims, and every now and then she would pinch off a certain amount of loose soil from a bag and add it to the trough.

Inside the large stone trough was woolen fabric completely submerged in water, and two men were using a floatation stick to beat the fabric in the trough.

This process shrinks the wool, thickens it, and makes it more waterproof. It also helps to remove dirt and filter out grease from the wool.

At the far end of the shed, there were bundles of unbleached woolen fabric, all newly spun and loose, along with bags of bleaching agents.

On the other side of the courtyard, many woolen fabrics were hanging on a wooden frame, drying in the sun.

He saw an old woman bending over, arranging woolen fabric on a wooden frame.

Through Jenny's explanation before the opening ceremony, Roger learned that wool needs to be washed, combed, spun into yarn, woven into cloth, and then the loose fabric is bonded or bleached to shrink and thicken it, making it a material that can be used to make clothes.

If the purpose is to make cloaks, tents, felt, etc., the wool cloth will be soaked in goose oil for waterproofing.

The process in the courtyard should be the final step in the textile process; the dried woolen fabrics are the finished products.

Roger waved to the workers who were bowing or kneeling, signaling them to get up and get back to work. Then he walked directly into the main house behind the courtyard.

The place was originally empty, but recently, thanks to Jenny and her assistant's efforts, four spinning machines, three looms, and some wool cleaning and sorting tools have been brought in.

Seven textile workers were working here, along with two children around eleven or twelve years old who were helping with odd jobs such as washing and sorting wool. They were clearly child laborers brought in along with some of the women.

The room still appeared quite empty.

Jenny was surprised by the sudden visit from her employer, Roger. At that moment, she was still wearing a tattered apron, personally demonstrating to the somewhat inexperienced textile workers how to pinch a ball of wool with her left hand and spin a spinning wheel with her right hand to quickly and evenly produce yarn of uniform thickness.

Everyone was so focused that no one noticed the employer had been standing at the door for quite some time.

It was a little girl who reminded Jenny.

Roger's arrival filled Jenny with both nervousness and delight. "Sir, we didn't know you were coming. We were here—"

"It's nothing, it's nothing. I came to participate in the martial arts competition today and just stopped by to watch. I thought the factory would be closed today to watch the competition."

Jenny turned to look at the employees who had returned to their respective workstations. "Sir, they all rely on the factory's half-penny wages a day to support their families, and if the factory stops operating, they will lose that free, hearty lunch."

People don't think about entertainment when they are hungry.

Roger nodded in agreement and asked, "Jenny, how has the trial of labor been going?"

Jenny lowered her head slightly. "Sir, the situation is worse than I thought."

"As you can see, our spinning and weaving machines are all rented from the islanders' homes. They vary in age, condition, shape, and size, and even the skill levels of the textile workers are inconsistent."

"The workers' skills can be learned gradually, but the looms are a real problem. Some can weave fine fabrics, while others can only barely weave soft and rough inferior fabrics."

The looms in the workshop were just wooden frames, mostly a few yards square, standing upright on the ground.

"Currently, our machines can only weave narrow-width fabric," Jenny explained. "Narrow-width fabric is a roll of cloth that is one yard wide and twelve yards long. We can't weave wide-width fabric for the time being because the looms aren't wide enough."

She then pointed to four rolls of brown unbleached cloth placed in the corner, "One bag of wool can be woven into four bolts of narrow-sleeved cloth. (Note 2)"

Roger had just carefully observed the machines in the workshop. They were all wooden machines, small household appliances used by the islanders' women for weaving during their off-season. It was really difficult to standardize their design.

"I've already started working on the problems with the spinning machine and the loom. Have you calculated the costs and profits?"

After a moment's thought, Jenny replied, "Given our current situation, the processing cost for a bag of wool—washing, spinning, and weaving—is four shillings."

Question: "How much cloth can be woven from this?"

A: "Because it's a long-term partnership, we buy a bag of inferior wool from the simple wool processing workshop next door for 36 shillings. It costs another 4 shillings to process it into cloth, which can be woven into a 48-yard bolt of cloth."

Q: "How much do you think it can sell for?"

A: "In the past, my family's workshop in Glasgow was where wool was bought at low prices. So, undyed brown fabric cost one shilling and six pence per yard. After deducting costs, we could earn thirty-two shillings per bag of wool processed into fabric. However, in Glasgow, we had to pay a cloth tax of one shilling per bolt of fabric."

Roger scratched his head and did a quick mental calculation. Damn it, the profit from spinning a bag of wool into cloth was basically the same as the profit from smuggling the wool directly to Ireland and selling it.

"Considering the money we've invested and the low wages on the island, this isn't much profit," Roger said, his disappointment barely concealed. "I see that it's not just raw fabric in the yard; aren't there people doing finishing work in the front yard?"

"Yes, sir, I was only referring to the price of the brown greige cloth. In fact, most workshops don't sell cloth for that price."

"Go on."

Jenny, feeling reassured, spoke with much greater confidence, "If we add another twenty shillings to each bag of wool for bleaching, densification, dyeing, and final finishing, we can sell it for twice the price of three shillings per yard, and a whole sheaf can sell for seven pounds and four shillings, eighty-four shillings more than you paid!"

No wonder commoners are always poorly clothed; the price of this fabric is indeed exorbitant.

"This is just the price within the island or surrounding area. If it can be transported to the Highlands or Ireland, Norway, etc., the price can rise to nine to ten pounds per horse. Of course, you will have to pay high tariffs."

"Furthermore, if you can purchase suitable spinning and weaving machines, and open your own dyeing or finishing workshop, the processing cost of sixty shillings can be reduced by at least one-third..."

""

Before they knew it, Roger's applause had already begun.

Tariffs? What are tariffs?

For Roger, as long as he can sell it, it's pure profit.

With the king gone, what's the point of paying customs duties? He had no intention of paying taxes to the English.

Of course, Roger also knew that not paying tariffs did not mean he would not be exploited.

During their conversation, Ma En arrived.

"My lord, I couldn't find you at the Moulin Rouge, but I guessed you were here." Marne interrupted Roger's excitement as he entered the workshop. "The preparations for the tournament are all done. Your coat of arms, banner, and bloodline documents have been submitted, and the black mare has been fed bean feed in advance."

"The competition will begin when the first bell rings in the afternoon. Would you like to go to the arena and choose your opponent first?"

Roger had no intention of making a fool of himself, and said nonchalantly, "Why should I be in such a hurry? To get stabbed? I don't have any of those weird fetishes like Whiteface John."

"Go and find out later, and pick the weakest opponent for me. I don't want to lose too badly."

After saying that, Roger turned to Jenny and started discussing the matter of stockpiling wool in the next few days.

Ma En left with a helpless expression, knowing that his master had no interest in the martial arts competition at all.

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