Chapter 2542: Trial Production

While the canal and water turbine projects progressed, construction of the brick-and-wood factory building proceeded at a furious pace. The factory employed timber truss construction, a technique already well-refined in Lingao. Prefabricated components, processed at the sawmill according to design specifications, arrived on-site ready for assembly. A skilled crew with sufficient hands could erect the entire framework in under a week, after which masons filled in the walls with red brick. Had fire resistance not been a concern, they could have used wooden stud walls instead, cutting costs even further.

The chief advantage of truss construction was the ability to span large open spaces without excessive beams and columns—crucial for workshops that needed room to arrange machinery. Once the building was complete, a fresh crew rotated in to assemble the equipment.

The machines arrived at Nansha in crates, carefully unloaded and carried inside for unpacking and installation. Villagers watched these new workers with curiosity. Unlike the previous construction crews who mostly spoke Cantonese vernacular, nearly all of them spoke "Australian Mandarin." Though they wore similar work clothes and sported the same "Kun heads"—close-cropped hair—these men were sturdier, carrying themselves with a distinctive air. Word spread that these machine assemblers were "Old Kuns," more senior than the "New Kuns" who had dug canals and built walls.

The Old Kuns worked fast. By the end of June, all mechanical equipment stood ready. That day, Zou Feng conducted the first water turbine test. When the sluice gate opened, river water surged into the diversion channel and set the water wheel turning. Gradually, the wheel reached operating speed. The power transmission system engaged, the line shaft spun rapidly, and the entire factory building began to tremble. Some workers fled outside in alarm, but the internship group held their ground, carefully observing the shaft's rotation.

At Zou Feng's signal, workers pulled the connecting rods one by one, linking transmission belts to the equipment. The machines began to idle, filling the air with a deafening roar. The girls watched intently, jotting observations in their notebooks.

Chen Lin understood none of the technical details, but from the expressions on Zou Feng's face and the girls', he could tell the operation was going well. He allowed himself a quiet sigh of relief. Since construction began, tens of thousands of taels of silver had been spent. Most of it was Uncle Wu's money, true, but his own family had a stake as well. A catastrophic failure would have meant lasting disgrace for the Chen name.

The test results proved satisfactory. Next came trial production. Chen Ding had acquired a considerable quantity of cotton from the surrounding countryside and transported it to the factory.

In the old timeline, cotton typically underwent ginning in the production region before reaching the textile factory, removing the seeds before transport. In this timeline, however, only the Senate possessed ginning machines. To improve efficiency, this step was moved to the factory itself.

After the ginning machine stripped away the seeds, the cotton passed to the Cleaning Workshop—though "workshop" was perhaps generous. Because the work raised clouds of flying dust, cleaning took place beneath a large reed mat shed erected on open ground. Since the water turbine lacked sufficient power to drive cleaning machinery, this process remained entirely manual. Workers spread cotton on wooden frames and beat it with bamboo sticks, knocking loose the branches, leaves, insects, and soil tangled in the fibers. The work required neither special skill nor great physical strength. During the British Industrial Revolution, women had performed similar labor. Here, An Jiu likewise requested hiring women for the task.

"Spinning and weaving by women, that I understand," Chen Lin said, bemused. "But this is physical labor."

"Who says women can't do physical labor?" An Jiu replied. "Besides, this work isn't particularly strenuous."

Chen Lin thought privately, If this isn't strenuous, what is? But he didn't dare argue with this "Chief's student." He simply nodded and agreed.

The cleaned cotton was blended together, ready for the first process: carding.

Regardless of what technology or equipment was employed, cotton spinning followed four basic stages: carding, drawing, roving, and spinning.

"Start feeding material!" Li Tang called out, beginning to operate the carding machine. The first batch of recruited workers gathered around her, watching closely.

She fed the cleaned cotton into the machine. Inside, layers of metal rake teeth crossed and interlocked, teasing apart the tangled fibers and combing them into parallel alignment.

"See how the carded fibers now run roughly parallel?" She pointed to the product emerging from the machine. The cotton had transformed into loose, strip-like forms known in the trade as "slivers."

Li Tang deftly gathered the slivers and loaded them into the drawing frame in groups, where rollers applied pressure and combined them. This was the drawing process, meant to strengthen the slivers. The procedure would be repeated several times, the exact number depending on raw material quality and production requirements.

After drawing, the cotton slivers went into a rotating container called a slubbing can for "weak twisting." During this stage, the roving frame's rollers drafted and elongated the slivers, thinning them to dozens or even hundreds of times their previous diameter. This was roving.

Once enough bobbins of roving had accumulated, workers moved them to the spinning frames. The spinning process was essentially a refined version of drawing.

Roving wound onto bobbins, and bobbins fitted onto spindles. Each spinning frame drove seventy-two spindles. The entire textile factory housed ten such machines.

Rollers drafted the roving into fine yarn, which emerged from the yarn guide hook to wind onto the spindle, twisting and winding in a single motion. This final twist was the crucial step that gave the yarn its strength—only at sufficient rotational speed could the yarn achieve proper toughness.

"It's coming out! It's coming out!" everyone shouted. None of them had ever witnessed such a magical and efficient method of spinning.

Soon the first bobbin was complete. Chen Lin picked up a sample the Australians had provided and compared it against his own. Looking closely, subtle differences remained. A layman would notice nothing, but an expert could see at a glance that the Australian yarn was superior.

This puzzled him. Could there be something wrong with the machines the Australians had supplied? They were supposedly the same model. Perhaps water and fire power together produced better results than water power alone?

Still, the quality was good enough. Yarn like this probably didn't exist anywhere in Guangdong—perhaps not in all of China.

With yarn like this, good cloth was guaranteed.

Unfortunately, the first phase of the Nansha Demonstration Factory did not include a weaving workshop. Cotton yarn was their final product.

Who would buy this yarn? The Senate had no need—they operated their own complete cotton textile enterprises. Fortunately, Chen Lin already had buyers in mind. The Fengshenghe looms weren't running at full capacity. Beyond a few large draw-looms, the accompanying waist looms could all weave cloth. The craftsmen at those looms could handle silk satin as readily as cotton.

Another market was the farmers in the surrounding villages. Though not universal, most peasant households owned looms for weaving cloth or silk as a sideline occupation. In the past, Fengshenghe had used the putting-out system for most of its ordinary products, distributing silk to village families for weaving. Cotton yarn could be handled the same way. The network was already in place, ready to use.

Local cotton cost slightly less than cotton from Songjiang, while local cotton cloth fetched higher prices. Chen Lin could still turn a profit producing machine-spun yarn, though the margins were thin. But if labor productivity increased significantly, those thin margins would accumulate into something substantial.

Traditionally, spinning a bolt of cotton cloth consumed four times as long as weaving it. In Songjiang, weaving a single bolt averaged seven days, and women produced roughly seven kilograms of yarn per month. Cleaning cotton for one bolt took twenty-one hours, spinning forty-nine, weaving eleven. Now, with spinning time drastically reduced, once village women received machine-spun yarn, their cloth output would double immediately.

After some simple calculations, Chen Lin reached his conclusion: if cotton supply held steady and prices remained at current levels, the entire investment could be recovered in just five years. Add the expanded capacity of Phase II... this wasn't thin profit. It was enormous profit.

Yet a serious problem immediately presented itself: the spinning was too fast. Based on local cotton production, supply fell far short. Even if he immediately urged villagers to plant cotton on a large scale, they would have to wait until autumn to harvest.

And when the time came, who would buy such vast quantities of cotton cloth? The satin from Fengshenghe already had established channels—three generations of operation had built a fixed sales network. But they had never dealt in cotton cloth.

The cotton problem was even more pressing. The cotton used for trial production had been arranged through Chen Xiaobing's help and shipped directly from Guangzhou. Honestly, Chen Lin didn't even know its origin. Some local Xiangshan cotton had been acquired as well, but once full production began, it probably wouldn't last a month.

That evening, he raised the matter with Li Guo. Older and steadier in temperament, she had taken on administrative management of the textile factory. Naturally, she was the one he consulted.

"Cloth sales are manageable. But the cotton supply—that's become a real problem."

"How does Mister intend to solve it?" Li Guo asked.

"I've thought it over, and there are a few possibilities. One is to send people to establish warehouses in nearby market towns to collect cotton. Local cotton harvests in August—however..."

"However?"

"No one has ever bought local cotton before. It was always spun and woven by the farm families themselves. I don't know if collection will even succeed."

"If the price is right, people will sell. After all, spinning takes time. If they can sell their cotton directly, they save that labor for other work."

(End of Chapter)