lovenovelstory 71. Luckily you're my brother.
71. Luckily you're my brother.
However, given the East India Company's character, Dugan had every reason to believe that this employment relationship would soon degenerate into a servile exploitative one.
But this has nothing to do with Dugan.
Dugan did the math for Megan.
Based on the stable production capacity of this bio-nitrate field, Dugan set a rule that he would charge a technology patent fee of one pound for every ton of high-quality saltpeter produced.
Mature saltpeter fields can be harvested every fifteen days, with a stable harvest of twenty-four times a year. The annual yield of high-quality saltpeter per mu can reach fifty-four tons. If all 100 mu of high-yield saltpeter fields are in full production and operate at full capacity throughout the year, the annual output of high-quality saltpeter can reach a full five thousand four hundred tons.
With this single technology patent, Dugan earns a steady £5,040 a year.
At this time, the entire British India, including all the traditional saltpeter fields in Bengal and Bihar, could only produce a little over two thousand tons of high-quality saltpeter throughout the year, barely enough for the British mainland and its global garrisons to sustain the war effort.
Dugan's 100-acre modern bionitrate field has an annual production capacity of 5,040 tons, single-handedly surpassing the annual output of the entire British Indian colony.
So, Dugan grinned and said to Megan, "With this kind of production capacity, beating Garfield in the workplace is like using a cannon to kill a mosquito. My dear brother, for your sake, I'll only charge one pound per ton in royalties!"
At that time, ordinary laborers in Britain toiled year-round, earning only twenty to thirty pounds a year.
A respectable priest, a low-ranking military officer, or a small businessman earns only a little over one hundred pounds a year, which is already a middle-class standard that ordinary people can only dream of.
Even respected old country gentlemen and upper-class gentlemen who owned land only earned three to five hundred pounds a year, enough to buy a manor, have a large retinue, and live a comfortable life.
In contrast, Governor Richard Wellesley, who was stationed in British India and held the power of life and death, controlled the military and political power of the entire colony, yet his annual statutory salary was only two thousand five hundred pounds.
With just a piece of nitrate-making technology and a hundred acres of nitrate fields, Dugan's annual patent income was more than twice the salary of the Governor-General of India, ten times the annual income of the top gentry, and two hundred times that of the lowest-level laborers.
Even senior cabinet ministers and high-ranking military and political officials in the UK rarely earn more than four thousand pounds a year.
In other words, with just this one patent revenue, Duggan's annual income far surpassed that of the vast majority of British court nobles, placing him among the top tycoons of the empire.
It's fair to say they're making a fortune overnight.
Who wouldn't be envious?
So when Megan heard this, she was slightly taken aback at first, then shook her head and chuckled, her eyes filled with relief and emotion.
Megan said to Dugan, "Patent fees are no problem, but you need to understand that you got here not because the 1624 Monopoly Act is protecting you, but because you are my brother, Megan's brother, and a member of the Connbay family."
"What do you mean by that?" Dugan asked, somewhat surprised.
Megan recounted an incident she had experienced.
"Last year, a Scottish engineer from humble beginnings came to western Kolkata. He had no family connections or powerful backers; he was just an ordinary craftsman. He improved the cotton combing process, which can increase the quality of local cotton by 30% and significantly increase export profits."
"And what was the result? When the East India Company found out, they didn't discuss cooperation, didn't grant patents, and didn't offer any compensation. First, they forcibly requisitioned his process drawings on the grounds of 'colonial public technology,' and then the commercial court directly ruled that his improved technology was 'obtained from colonial resources and belonged to the company.'"
"That engineer fought desperately to get his pay, but the company fabricated charges of 'concealing technology and obstructing colonial trade,' and he was expelled from the Indian colony. The company seized all the technological achievements of his life's research without compensation, and he didn't get a single penny. He ended up with nothing and returned home in a sorry state."
Megan shook her head with a sigh and said, "Although I sympathize with him, this is the cruel law of this world. Any inventor or craftsman without a background or connections can have a hundred legal or semi-legal ways for the company to make you 'willingly' hand over your results, leaving you with nothing but loss of fame and fortune."
Megan concluded by saying, "I'll make sure you keep an eye on this patent fee; not a penny less."
Dugan nodded; he understood.
In this world, you either need power or connections; fairness and reason are never the norm.
******
Meanwhile, Megan's rival, Garfield, was also busy.
News of the surge in production capacity in the Bangladesh region quickly spread to the East India Company's headquarters in Calcutta.
At the same time, the competition between workplace factions has been brought to the forefront.
Megan and Garfield have long been locked in a fierce competition, with both tacitly placing spies on each other.
Any movement by the other party will be immediately relayed to the person in charge.
Without the help of time travelers, Galford could only expand production using the most cumbersome and traditional methods.
Using his power, Galfort seized old saltpeter sites, forcibly recruited more workers, opened more boiling workshops, and expanded the traditional saltpeter production area at any cost.
He was convinced that even if the technology was outdated and inefficient, as long as the scale was large enough, the total output would be able to increase significantly, enough to surpass Megan's.
But reality soon dealt him a heavy blow.
The shortcomings of traditional saltpeter production methods are deeply ingrained, and human effort simply cannot overcome the constraints of nature.
Still relying on the old process of natural saltpeter accumulation on the ground and crystallization by the weather, and greatly affected by the high humidity and rainy climate at the end of the year in Bangladesh, even with more sites and more workers, it is difficult for new saltpeter to be generated on the ground, the purity of the existing saltpeter soil is low, and the boiling loss remains high.
Despite its reckless expansion, Galfort's saltpeter plantations only achieved a negligible increase in production, with the growth rate barely reaching 10%.
On the other hand, Megan's situation is one of complete dominance.
Relying on Dugen's new biological saltpeter cultivation technique, all saltpeter fields can be stably harvested and produced in a cyclical manner, without being subject to the strict limitations of weather and natural cycles.
The yield per acre is dozens of times higher than that of traditional saltpeter fields. After the 100-acre production base was fully operational, the overall output increased exponentially. In just half a month, the high-quality saltpeter produced had already caught up with the total monthly output of the entire Bihar saltpeter field in Garfur.
The huge gap completely threw Galfort, who had always been confident that he could win by sheer scale, into a panic.
He simply couldn't believe that Megan could achieve such a terrifying breakthrough in production capacity in such a short time, and was convinced that she must have mastered a completely new method for producing nitrates.
In an attempt to reverse the decline, Galfort immediately mobilized all his informants and bribed laborers and local officials guarding the perimeter of the Megan saltpeter fields with large sums of money, sparing no expense to investigate and learn this new saltpeter-making process in an attempt to replicate the same technology.
The informants lurked around the new saltpeter fields, spying day and night and recording the workers' operations in their entirety.
From turning the soil, mixing the ash, leaching, to boiling and drying, every exposed step was completely replicated and passed back to Galfort without any error.
Galfort was overjoyed and immediately copied all the procedures, promoting and imitating them on a large scale in his own nitrification plant. He invested huge sums of money to improve the site, allocate materials, and train workers, attempting to replicate Megan's high-yield miracle.
But he only learned the basics and never grasped the core concepts.
And so, an extremely absurd scene unfolded.
The saltpeter plantation in Galfort followed the exact same procedures as Megan's new saltpeter fields, with all the necessary facilities, materials, and manpower. The costs, resources, and financial investment far exceeded those in Megan's plantation, yet the results were worlds apart.
The copied process is merely a formality without the essence. The soil cannot be activated, the efficiency of nitrate accumulation remains low, the concentration of nitrate brine is thin, and the crystallized nitrate soil is full of impurities and has extremely low purity, making it a completely substandard product.
All of Galfort's human and financial resources were wasted. Not only did it fail to increase production, but the large amount of waste and ineffective investment led to a crazy surge in production costs, resulting in almost no increase in overall production capacity.
In just one month, the gap between the two sides widened dramatically.
However, Governor Richard and the directors of the East India Company didn't care about the reasons; they only cared about the results.
Soon after, two pieces of news arrived: Megan was about to be promoted, and Dugan's transfer order had been officially issued.