Chapter 2393

"Although coffee was available in the era of King Louis XIV, it really became popular at the end of the 17th century when a Sicilian named Francisco Procopu promoted a new drink at the market in Saint-Germain It's right next to the tennis courts and bowling alley, so the hipsters would go to his cafe after bowling for a little drink and a chat." Georgiana put Farron on her arm Walking on the lawn with his hands, the old perfumer said, "In my time, there were many cafes, and the most famous one was the Procobe Cafe, where Diderot, Voltaire, and Rousseau were all there. regulars."

"Have you seen Voltaire?" Georgiana asked teasingly.

"Of course not." Farron smiled. "If I had met him, I would be older than I am now, but now I heard that the best cafe is in the Royal Palace. Have you ever been there?"

Georgiana shook her head.

"Did the head of state take you to a coffee shop?" Farrong asked.

"Yes," she said dryly, "but not to the Café Royale."

"How do you feel?" Farron asked.

How would she answer? To say that he behaved badly to her like a little hooligan?

She felt more and more that the "Leon" she knew during that time was completely different from the current one.

"By the way, where is the cafe at the Royal Palace?" Georgiana asked.

"It used to be the palace of the Duke of Orleans, so it attracted a lot of women," Farron said.

"What?" Georgiana wondered.

"The palace is not open to the public casually, ma'am, they are very curious about court life. With female customers, there will be male customers, and then music, coffee." Farrong smiled. "If you want to fish, you need bait. Women love coffee, and men love women."

Georgiana couldn't laugh or cry.

"The biggest feature of Paris is conversation, and because coffee has become a group activity, do you know how much Parisians spend on coffee every year?" Before Georgiana could answer, Faron said, "It's 3 million livres. Well, that's more than cheese is consumed."

"How do you know?" Georgiana asked.

Farron did not answer this question and continued, "I used to know many friends who had land in overseas colonies. For Europeans in the 1980s, cotton was not produced in the United States."

"Where is that?" asked Georgiana casually.

“Plantations in the Caribbean, the Ottoman Empire, and India,” Farron said. “There was a planter named John Montalet who grew cotton instead of sugar.”

"What's the matter?" Georgiana asked.

"Not all the land on that island was suitable for growing coffee and sugar, ma'am, it was small at first and then more and more, and the traders who would have shipped sugar cane and other tropical commodities began to divert cotton, which they intended to let Loosening the soil, and then using the profits from the cotton business to invest in sugar, hundreds of plantation owners later banded together to create a new commodity, and if it hadn't been for the revolution, Santo Domingo would have become cotton sooner or later. main place of origin."

"What do you mean?" Georgiana let go of Farron's hand.

"Cotton and sugar are in competition, ma'am, they both need slave labor, and since we now exchange sugar and silk freely with Great Britain, and the high tariffs on cotton, the cotton growers turned to sugar cane."

"Is the price of cotton skyrocketing?" Georgiana asked.

"The price of cotton is rising every day, but it has not risen twice as much as when the revolution broke out in Santo Domingo. Because of the abolitionist movement, Liverpool currently transports much fewer slaves than before, and now the slaves are valuable." Farr Rong said, "Soon small farmers will find out that buying a slave is not earning them cash, and some say emancipating slaves would double or triple the cotton cloth, with devastating consequences for Britain, and at the heart of these trades Yes, cotton goes from America to Europe and money flows from Europe to America, and this money is often mortgaged on slaves, and if the debtor defaults, the creditor of the mortgage takes a certain number or specific slaves, friends I know are 88% mortgaged That's how the loans are made, South Carolina is 82%, so the increase in the price of slaves represents asset appreciation, but if they run away..."

"A lot of money is going to be lost," Georgiana said.

"Let me give you an example. There were two young men, let's call them Tom and John. Tom bought a rice plantation and he planted rice on the land until 1793, when he heard Whitney's cotton gin, so loaned $32,000, used the money to buy additional slaves, replanted some fields with cotton, and bought some cotton gins. This business made money very quickly, because cotton has been rising, only seven years Then he paid off all his debts, and had the money to renovate the dilapidated manor luxuriously and buy more slaves and cotton gins. Another man, John, planted indigo. In 1790, due to the disappearance of the British market, John's indigo business collapsed had to grow food for his family on a plantation, and was in deep debt pain. Also in 1793, he heard about the cotton gin, a crop that was so profitable that he paid off all his debts after 4 years, And a new estate was built, new slaves, and a cotton gin. Thanks to men like Tom and John, American cotton dominated the English market, while West Indian producers suffered losses, and the price of cotton is still at rising, but the number of slaves used as collateral for loans has decreased, and some of the decreased slaves have been distributed to sugar plantations in the Caribbean, so what is the problem now?"

Georgiana tilted her head in thought.

"If slaves made it cheaper to grow cotton, so that many people could afford clothes and bed linen, the market would expand rapidly. It is because the cotton material is cheap that the cotton industry has grown rapidly. Now the price of cotton has become high. There are also high tariffs and less market demand, so continuing to expand production will cause textiles to pile up like a mountain, but the price will drop, and the supply of cotton will not worry about shortage. In addition to the United States, there are Ottomans, India and Brazil. The problem now is slaves. Without them, loans and no labor, there will be other farmers stuck in tom and john's plight, once the slaves go to the free states, I think those public works companies that open banks can give them jobs, so the problem that forms is america The contradiction between the free state and the slave state, and they also have a gunpowder factory and a musket factory, which may eventually lead to a civil war. In this way, Britain needs to find other suppliers to provide raw cotton. In fact, apart from the United States Besides, Egypt can grow cotton, and as far as I know, unlike the Europeans who rely on credit, the Egyptian rulers do not want foreigners to interfere with domestic trade."

"I still don't understand," Georgiana said.

"European explorers have been on the coast and haven't gone deep into the interior, so they don't know how cotton is produced. Some Americans went deep into the plantations of the West Indies. They knew how cotton came from, and then they started planting, but Sea island cotton does not adapt to their land, and the annual cotton production is declining, so they need new land to continue planting. If there is no slave trade from Liverpool to the Americas, they can still capture the aborigines as slaves for mortgage loans, but this means In order to tear up the peace treaty signed between Washington and the aborigines in 1790, there will still be wars in the Americas, so it is important to find new raw cotton production areas."

"I heard that Naples..."

"It's Egypt, my dear. I heard that the British are still stationed there. Why don't they build there like the head of state?" Faron said, "I heard that they sent simplified cotton textile machinery to Saxony and Switzerland."

Georgiana didn't ask. When Napoleon used the land to make the princes of the Rhine obey his orders, the British were also using technology to buy people's hearts.

"Everyone knows that there are only one or two factories, and they cannot compete with the UK without forming an industry. The other is the steam engine. Without it, it will be the same as Portugal. Even though the same machine is used, it still cannot compete with the UK. Everyone is in Britain and France. In the competition between the two countries, even if the head of state wants to impose a trade blockade on the UK, these countries will still obey orders even if they suffer losses.” Farrong said.

"Sly," said Georgiana.

"It's good to get used to it, ma'am. British merchants themselves are unwilling to export cotton yarn, especially in Germany. Low wages and cheap food will make their handmade products cheaper than theirs. They are worried that it will affect the employment opportunities of British people. "

She was even more incomprehensible.

If factory owners really cared about workers' employment, where did those Luddites come from?

"The key is to provide a way out for those who want to invest but have no skills. No matter what they do, they will swarm." Farrong said contemptuously, "Do you think that all perfumes produced in France are 'French perfumes'? "

"Looks like you've suffered a lot," Georgiana said, looking at the perfumer.

"Don't mention it." Farron said dullly, "St. Germain used to be the most prosperous, but now it's all depressed."

"Have you ever been to Paris?" asked Georgiana.

"I lived there, but I just don't know how many old friends I can see when I go back this time."

Georgiana was speechless.

Farrong then went on to walk with her on the lawn.