Chapter 139: Increasing Income and Reducing Expenditure

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

Joseph looked helplessly at the carriage and gestured to Emman: "Let's go to Versailles first and take a closer look after getting in the car."

"Yes, Your Highness. "

Soon, several carriages drove out of the Industrial Planning Bureau.

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

The letters were sent by the three "white gloves" who bought grain for him from overseas. For the sake of confidentiality, they used code words.

Joseph took the code book from Emman again and read it with great effort.

In the letter, the "white gloves" first reported the situation of grain procurement, which was generally optimistic. The first two batches bought nearly 70,000 ceti of grain, 10,000 ceti of corn, and more than 30,000 ceti of potatoes from Britain, North Africa, Eastern Europe and other places.

The ceti is a commonly used unit of measurement nowadays. 1 ceti is 43 bushels. As for how much grain it corresponds to... that's not certain.

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

That is to say, during this period, the three "white gloves" have bought back nearly 20 million pounds of food from all over the world.

And according to them, according to Joseph's requirements, every time they go to a place, they will first spend money to find people with local influence to publish news in the newspaper, saying that this year will be a bumper year and food is likely to be in excess of demand. Anyway, it's still early for the autumn harvest, and they can't say it casually.

After that, the local food prices will begin to decline, and the "white gloves" will enter the market to purchase, and as long as the price rises slightly, they will leave immediately. Therefore, their tens of millions of pounds of food are basically bought at a fair price.

Joseph roughly calculated in his mind that according to this purchase speed, Before the hailstorm in July, we should be able to buy about 500 million pounds of grain.

If we only rely on this grain, we will definitely not be able to survive the famine, but now nearly one-third of the provinces in France have planted potatoes, and the grain output will increase significantly, and there will be no total harvest due to hailstorms.

With the joint efforts of both sides, it should not be a problem to get through this winter safely. As for next year... we can only take it one step at a time.

Of course, there is another problem, that is, the national treasury must have 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 run out, and asked His Highness to allocate the follow-up funds as soon as possible.

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

Joseph couldn't help rubbing his eyebrows, transportation is also a very headache. problem. Of course, it comes down to money.

You know, the transportation capacity of this era is quite poor. Even if the cheapest river transportation is used, the freight will double the price of grain.

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

This is the result of the government ordering the governors along the way to cooperate as much as possible, otherwise the cost would be higher.

Speaking of river transportation, Joseph suddenly remembered that this year's 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 Feuillants' rule, in order to alleviate the food shortage in Paris, they used many means to collect food from other provinces, but in the end, due to the expensive land transportation costs, they could not transport food into Paris in time.

The fact that the people of Paris could not eat bread was also one of the important reasons why the Feuillants stepped down in disgrace.

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

This is another large sum of money.

Joseph calculated that Paris Fashion Week was about to open, and he should be able to make some money, but the gap was still large.

A large part of the income of Paris Angel Company was now used to subsidize the Royal Guards of the Crown Prince, and the rest was only more than 200,000 livres per month.

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

The patent fees collected by the wine industry itself were not much, and it was not the season for large-scale brewing.

Not to mention the industrial development zone in Nancy, which still needed to be continuously invested in. There was no need to think about the income.

Joseph looked at the street scene sweeping back outside the car window, and sighed in his heart, money was really easy to spend but hard to make.

It seemed that he had to increase his efforts to increase revenue and reduce expenditure.

In terms of increasing revenue, he had been doing it. The rest were projects that required large investments and long cycles, and it was difficult to generate revenue in a short period of time.

In addition, what the current European powers were doing was to open up colonies.

Since the Age of Discovery, colonies have been the blood bags of various countries. In the early days of the Industrial Revolution, they provided a huge amount of resources and were also a dumping ground for products.

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

France’s current financial difficulties are largely due to the fact that after the failure of the Seven Years’ War, it ceded a large number of colonies to the British, which led to a sharp drop in overseas income.

Joseph naturally thought about places suitable for developing colonies.

First of all, the Far East certainly has no power to get involved. Historically, it was not until nearly a hundred years later, when France completed the Industrial Revolution, that it re-entered the Far East.

America is now almost entirely under the sphere of influence of Britain and Spain. Although that place is rich, it is too far away and difficult to project power. At present, it is good enough for the French colonies in the Caribbean to be maintained.

After looking around, he found that the most reasonable choice made by the French in history 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 taken and the development of the Suez Canal is used to threaten Britain, France can gain a great strategic initiative. [Note 1]

But... Joseph frowned immediately. Britain regards France as a mortal enemy and keeps a close eye on every move of France.

As long as France has the momentum to take over North Africa, the British will definitely interfere. In history, the sea supply line of Emperor Napoleon was cut off by the British as soon as he landed in Egypt.

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 for the time being.

Since it is not easy to increase revenue in a short period of time, Joseph started to think about how to save money.

He recalled the current large expenditure items of France and was surprised to find that the largest item was actually the interest on the debt.

The interest to be paid each year exceeded 200 million livres!

If there was this money, famine and industrial development would not be a problem.

However, the agreement was clearly signed when borrowing, and the interest would increase over time.

Joseph knew that in just two years, the interest that the French government would need to pay would exceed 400 million livres...

[Note 1]: In 1788, the Suez Canal had not yet been developed. Trade from Asia to Europe had to go around the Cape of Good Hope via southern Africa. The voyage was more than 10,000 nautical miles. And through the Suez Canal, the voyage was only 5,000 nautical miles. So whoever controls the Suez Canal can control European trade!

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