Chapter 139 Increase revenue and reduce expenditure

The famous American five-star critic General MacArthur once said: "The world is vast, but Dad is the biggest. Dad's call must be the highest priority."

Joseph looked helplessly towards the carriage and gestured to Eman: "Go to the Palace of Versailles first, get in the carriage and take a closer look."

"Yes, Your Highness."

Not long after, several carriages drove out from the Industrial Planning Bureau.

In the carriage, Joseph opened the envelopes one by one.

The letter was sent by the three "white gloves" who bought food for him from overseas. For the sake of confidentiality, the code was used.

Joseph took the codebook from Eman again and read it carefully.

In the letter, the "white gloves" first reported on the situation of food procurement. Generally speaking, they were relatively optimistic. In the first two batches, a total of nearly 70,000 setsia of grain, 10,000 setsia of corn, and more than 30,000 setsia of potatoes were purchased from Britain, North Africa, Eastern Europe and other places.

A setie is a commonly used unit of measurement nowadays, and 1 setie is 43 bushels. As for how much food it corresponds to...that's not necessarily the case.

Because the bushel is a unit of volume. In actual operation, a large barrel is used to hold grain, and a full barrel is 1 bushel. For example, grains are roughly 45-50 French pounds, and potatoes are 55-60 French pounds.

In other words, during this period, three "white gloves" have bought back nearly 20 million pounds of grain from all over the world.

And according to them, according to Joseph's request, wherever they go, they will first spend money to find people with local influence and publish news in newspapers, saying that this year will be a good harvest year and the supply of food is likely to exceed demand. Anyway, it’s still early for the autumn harvest, so it’s not up to them to say whatever they want.

After that, the local grain prices will start to fall, and the "white glove" guys will enter the market to buy. As soon as the price rebounds slightly, they will leave immediately. Therefore, their tens of millions of pounds of grain were basically bought at a fair price.

Joseph made a rough calculation in his mind. According to this purchasing speed, he should be able to buy about 500 million pounds of grain before the hail comes in July.

It would certainly not be possible to survive the Great Famine with this food alone, but now that nearly one-third of France's provinces have planted potatoes, food production will be greatly increased, and the harvest will not be ruined due to hail.

With the combined efforts of both parties, it should not be a big problem to get through this winter safely. As for next year... we can only take one step at a time and wait and see.

Of course, there is another problem: the national finance must have the money to buy these 500 million pounds of grain.

Sure enough, in the second half of the letter, the "white gloves" mentioned that the first two funds were about to be exhausted and asked His Highness to allocate follow-up funds as soon as possible.

In addition, they also asked Joseph where the grain piled in the port of Le Havre was going to be shipped to the country.

Joseph couldn't help but rub his eyebrows. Transportation was also an extremely troublesome problem. Of course, in the final analysis it is still a matter of money.

You know, the transportation capacity in this era is quite poor. Even if you use the cheapest river transportation, the freight will double the price of food.

He had previously seen in Varenne's report that nearly half of the 5 million livres used to purchase potatoes in Alsace, Lorraine and other provinces was spent on transportation.

This is the result of the government ordering the governors along the route to fully cooperate, otherwise the cost would be even higher.

Speaking of river transportation, Joseph suddenly remembered that this year's severe drought will cause some waterways to dry up. At that time, food will have to be transported by land, and the cost will increase several times.

Historically, during the Feuillant period, in order to alleviate the food shortage in Paris, they used many means to collect grain from other provinces. In the end, due to the expensive land transportation costs, the grain could not be transported into Paris in time.

The lack of bread for the people of Paris was one of the important reasons why the Feuillants resigned.

Therefore, it is necessary to transport the food from Le Havre Port to various places as soon as possible while the river transportation is still normal.

That's a lot of money again.

Joseph calculated it. Paris Fashion Week was about to start, and he should be able to make some money, but the gap was still huge.

A large portion of the income of the Paris Angel Company now goes to the Dauphin's Guards Corps, and the remaining amount is only over 200,000 livres per month.

The paper mill is still under construction, and it will take at least three months to generate profits.

The brewing industry itself doesn't charge much in royalties, and it's not the season for large-scale brewing yet.

Not to mention the industrial development zone in Nancy, which still needs to continuously invest money. Don’t even think about the benefits.

Joseph looked at the street scene sweeping backwards outside the car window and sighed inwardly, money is really easy to spend but not easy to make.

It seems that we need to increase our efforts to increase revenue and reduce expenditure.

In terms of open source, I have been doing it myself. The rest are projects that require large investments and have long cycles, making it difficult to generate profits in a short period of time.

The other thing is what the current European powers are doing - developing colonies.

Since the Age of Discovery, colonies have been a major source of blood for various countries. At the beginning of the industrial revolution, it provided a huge amount of resources and was also a dumping ground for products.

Therefore, colonization is definitely the only way for a rich and powerful country to choose.

France's current financial predicament is largely due to the fact that after the failure of the Seven Years' War, it ceded large tracts of its colonies to the British, which led to a sharp decline in overseas income.

Joseph naturally began to think about suitable places to develop a colony.

First of all, the Far East definitely does not have the power to interfere. Historically, it was not until nearly a hundred years later that France completed its Industrial Revolution that it re-entered the Far East.

America is now almost the sphere of influence of Britain and Spain. Although that place is rich, it is too far away to easily project power. For now, it would be good if the French colonies in the Caribbean could survive.

After looking around, he found that the French had historically made the most reasonable choice, and that was North Africa.

It is close to France and has a lot of fertile land, especially Egypt, a world-class strategic location. If Egypt is captured and the development of the Suez Canal is used to threaten Britain, France will gain great strategic initiative. 【Note 1】

But... Joseph frowned immediately. Britain regarded France as its mortal enemy and kept a close eye on France's every move.

As long as France has the momentum to win North Africa, the British will definitely interfere. Historically, as soon as the emperor landed in Egypt, the maritime supply line was cut off by the British.

Therefore, if you want to get involved in North Africa, the most important thing is how to hide it from the British...

He thought about it for a long time, but still couldn't figure it out, so he had to give up temporarily.

Since it was not easy to increase revenue in a short period of time, Joseph began to think about how to reduce expenditure.

He recalled France's current large expenditure items and was surprised to find that the largest expenditure item turned out to be debt interest.

The interest to be paid annually exceeds 200 million livres!

If we had this money, famine and industrial development would be nothing.

However, if the agreement is clearly signed when borrowing the debt, the interest will increase as time goes by.

Joseph knew that in just two years, the French government would have to pay more than 400 million livres in interest...

[Note 1]: In 1788, the Suez Canal had not yet been developed. Trade from Asia to Europe passed through southern Africa and around the Cape of Good Hope. The range is over 10,000 nautical miles. By taking the Suez Canal, the voyage is only 5,000 nautical miles. So whoever controls the Suez Canal can control European trade!

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