Chapter 2935: Tianjin Wei (14)

Small wonder, then, that the pack of Shanxi men in the capital had fought so, spending what they must, to grind Manager Leng down and hound him with false charges to the death's edge. Whoever held the purse-strings of the Governor of Tianjin held the throat of every canal, salt, and grain current in the north; and a slab of fat meat like that, the others would naturally suffer no outsider to touch.

The party came down from the rise and walked along a broad earthen road toward the river.

Xu Guangqi, after so long upon his feet, had now taken the wheelchair, pushed along by a servant. His spirits ran high, and he pointed and expounded the whole way — leaving Han Zhaoxian rather left out in the cold. Han Zhaoxian only smiled as he kept at the side, chiming in agreement, and adding a few further words when a matter of weight came up.

The road was newly made, its yellow earth rammed firm and level underfoot — far easier going than the field-paths. Trees stood planted along either side; they were not tall, but grew full of spirit, their leaves a glossy green, rustling in the light wind. Beyond the mulberries spread great sheets of cotton, the shoots half a foot high now, row upon row, rank upon rank, laid out in perfect order toward the distance, as if the earth had been carpeted in green velvet.

After perhaps a quarter hour's walking, a cluster of new buildings rose along the riverbank — no small affair, covering dozens of mu. Li Luoyou lifted his eyes, and his gaze tightened: the houses here were quite unlike those elsewhere, taller, and of a form wholly different from the stations round about.

These were not the gray brick and gray tile, the flush-gabled roofs, common to the north; nor earthen walls under rice thatch; they were built in a manner he had seen before — walls of red brick, long arched windows, roofs laid with gray tile, ridges standing high, small garret-like skylights opening in the gable ends. The houses stood well apart, ranked in order. The scene Li Luoyou knew only too well.

The Australians' factories in Lingao were houses just of this kind — tall red-brick works, arched windows long, skylights opening in the roofs, all for the light and the air. The cluster before him, if it fell short of the scale of Lingao's, matched the Australians' factories in style, in structure, and in layout stroke for stroke.

"Grand Secretary, this is..." he asked, turning.

Xu Guangqi smiled faintly and gave no direct answer; he said only, "Master Li, come with me and see," and, leaning on his bamboo staff, led the party toward the buildings.

As they drew near, the sound of water rose little by little into clarity.

Not the sound of the river running — another sound: a muffled, unbroken, rhythmic thunder, like storm-clouds bottled, like a distant cataract, coming out from within those tall red-brick houses, passing through the walls, trembling the very ground beneath their feet. Li Luoyou could feel the vibration climb up from his soles, along his shins, on up to his knees.

He rounded a clump of brush, walked to the river's edge, and at last saw clearly where the sound came from.

Along the river ran a stone channel laid parallel to it, and on the channel a stone sluice, its gate half raised: the river water rushed out of the sluice-mouth and struck a great waterwheel below. The wheel stood better than two men high in diameter, its spokes of iron, and between the spokes were set wooden paddle boards; the water broke upon the boards and turned the whole wheel in its slow revolution. From the wheel's hub ran a thick iron shaft, which passed through the wall into the red-brick works beside it. With every turn of the wheel the shaft went round, driving the machines within — whence came that muffled, rhythmic thunder.

And there was more than one wheel — ranging the eye along the feeder channel, four or five more could be seen, great and small, each set in its place. The greatest stood a full thirty or forty feet, its spokes thick as a man's arm, its paddle boards broad as door leaves; the water broke upon them and threw up a white mist that flashed rainbow colors in the sun.

Li Luoyou stood on the bank, gazing at that great wheel, and for a long while had no words.

Wheels such as these he had seen plenty of in Guangdong. Along the newly cut feeder channels the Australians had set many of them, driving every kind of machine with the water's power: hulling rice, grinding flour, making brick, pressing oil, spinning thread, weaving cloth. The sound of their turning went on day and night without stop, like a song that never comes to its end.

That the same things should have been built here at Gegu, on this alkali strand of Northern Zhili — that he had never imagined.

"This is..." He turned to Xu Guangqi, surprise in his voice, and inquiry in it too.

"A cotton mill." Xu Guangqi took the words from his mouth, his tone calm, as of the commonest thing in the world. "This old man trialed a few years at Gegu, and the cotton was grown, the yield climbing year upon year. But selling raw cotton alone — the margin is too thin. I thought: if the cotton can be grown, why not spin the yarn ourselves? Why not weave the cloth ourselves? So I engaged craftsmen from the south and raised this mill at Gegu."

He paused, then pointed at the wheel. "The water lay ready to hand. The Haihe's power does not match the great rivers of the south, but it serves to drive these machines. The machines too were bought through the priests: gin, carding engine, water-frame — the whole kit, nothing wanting."

Li Luoyou's mouth opened; he had something to say, and swallowed it back.

He followed Xu Guangqi toward the great door of the works.

Two soldiers stood at the entrance; at the sight of Xu Guangqi they saluted in haste and pushed open a heavy wooden door.

The door swung, and a wave of heat, thick with the dust of cotton lint, broke over their faces. The smell of it was not pleasant — hot and close, with oil and iron rust in it, and a certain cloying sweetness past naming, like cottonseed crushed. The thunder of the machines came rolling out in a body, drumming on the ear-drums till they hummed, as though one had been thrown bodily inside a giant drum.

Li Luoyou's brow knitted of itself; still he strode in.

The works were vast, better than thirty feet to the roof, skylights opening overhead, daylight pouring down from above and lighting the whole floor. Within, the light was dimmer than the open air, yet far from dark; the sun came through the glass and laid bright patches on machines and men.

The layout matched, stroke for stroke, the Australian factories he had seen: the machines ranked by process, from raw material to finished goods, link seizing link in one running production line. The floor was rammed earth, swept clean, without a straw of clutter. The walls were whitewashed snow-pale, and near the skylights ran several lines of slogans, the characters upright, the paint still vivid.

In the yard were piled many great hemp bales, stacked trim as so many low walls, their sides printed black with grade and mark. A few workers bustled about one machine, breaking open the bales, hauling out the cotton within, and feeding it into the hopper of the engine alongside.

Li Luoyou marked that these workers were mostly men, yet dressed unlike any workmen he had seen elsewhere — in matched blue short jackets, their faces without a trace of beard, and their voices unlike the voices of common men.

Something moved in his heart; of a sudden he remembered.

Han Zhaoxian seemed to read his doubt; he came to his side and said, dropping his voice: "Master Li has seen it, no doubt. These men are the 'nameless whites' of the Southern Park."

"Nameless whites?" Li Luoyou was briefly at a loss.

"Those who castrated themselves hoping to enter the Palace as eunuchs, and were never chosen," said Han Zhaoxian, his gaze resting on the busy workers. "Round the Southern Park in the capital such men gather the whole year through — tens of thousands at the least. Sons of poor and bitter households every one, who took this road only when the road ran out. Once they have cut themselves, the body is ruined; the Palace will not have them, and they cannot go home again; they drift about the capital, begging, thieving, robbing and murdering... there is nothing they will not do. The Court aches over them too; it has taken some in and enrolled them in the eunuch soldiery — but how many can the eunuch soldiery use? The greater part still drift the streets, and of those who starve, sicken, or freeze to death, no man can count the number."

"The Grand Secretary has taken them in?" asked Li Luoyou.

"Some few." Xu Guangqi nodded, his tone level. "Upon first coming to Tianjin, this old man memorialized the Court, saying the Tianjin farms wanted hands, and asking that the nameless whites of the Southern Park be assigned to Gegu. The Court was only too glad to be quit of the burden, and consented at once. The first batch came two thousand strong. I had them gone over once: those whose bodies would still serve were kept to work the mill; those too far gone were sent to farm and raise fowl. At least there is a mouthful of rice in it — I will not see them starve!"

"What the Grand Secretary has done here is a work of mercy that saves men — and a master stroke in the using of them," said Li Luoyou, choosing his words. "These men have no home, no household, no tie, no hold; employed, they hamper the hand far less than common hired laborers. And for all their bodies are maimed, they are no clumsier than other men."

Xu Guangqi gave him a glance, approval in it. "Master Li is indeed a man who sees to the bottom of things. When this old man first took them in, it was one part pity — they stood at the road's end with no way out — and one part plain judgment that they were useful. Consider: men who could use so merciless a hand upon themselves, all to enter the Palace — you may read in it how enduring their fiber, how absolute their will. Such men, well used, are a sharp weapon; ill used, a curse. Better than letting them brew trouble in the streets of the capital, and be led astray by rogues, to bring them here to Tianjin, to work under this old man's very eye — earning their keep by their own labor, and close under a strict hand, so that they come to no harm and do none."

He paused, then added: "Having no household to drag at them, they will not, like the common run of men, grow homesick after a few days' work. And spinning, after all, is women's work — yet a woman's strength is small, and the heavy labor of breaking and carrying bales is beyond her. Set these men to it, and one rids oneself of no end of gossip outside into the bargain."

Li Luoyou nodded, admiring in his heart. This Grand Secretary was not only a master of husbandry and a master of the art of war — he was a past master in the using of men.

Those who broke the cotton bales were for the most part the strong and sturdy: with iron hooks they prised up the bales' seals, plunged both hands in, hauled out great masses of cotton, shook them loose, and carried them to the gin's hopper. The cotton tumbled in the gin; the seed dropped out beneath the machine into baskets, heaped full and running over.

"The seed has its uses too," Han Zhaoxian explained. "Pressed for oil; the cake that remains goes back to the field as manure. Nothing wasted, not a bit."

From the gin the cotton went on to the carding engine. The engine's drum was sleeved in a pelt of close-set wire teeth, which combed and drew and straightened the cotton over and over until it issued from the machine's far end as a thin, even web. The workers folded the webs and rolled them, one and one, into downy rolls, and carried them off to the spinning hall.

(End of chapter)