June 17, 1870 (half a month earlier).
"Clank, clank..."
In the stifling boiler room, bare-chested workers began shoveling coal into the boilers. As the temperature steadily rose, the flywheels drove the enormous crankshafts into motion, producing a piercing racket.
The pressure gauge needle shot upward, finally stabilizing within a reasonable range. The steam engines continuously delivered power throughout the factory.
Through tracks and rotating shafts, the steam engines drove more than fifteen hundred machines at high speed.
Jiaozhou Textile Factory was one of Hohenzollern Daily Necessities Company's only two textile mills. Unlike the Berlin Textile Factory, it used a full set of textile machinery imported from Britain.
The Berlin Textile Factory, also known as Hohenzollern Textile Factory, had been converted from a textile enterprise acquired in Berlin. It therefore used Prussia's domestically manufactured equipment and was not particularly large, with only around a hundred machines. Before Jiaozhou Textile Factory was completed, it had always been East Africa's largest producer of "Prussian" military uniforms.
During the East African colony period, Prussian military uniforms were not merely military attire; they were also civilian clothing. Men and women, young and old—unless they were European immigrants—basically had nothing but Prussian Army uniforms to wear.
Now that the Kingdom of East Africa had been established, they naturally could not keep doing things this way. Otherwise, it really would become a kingdom of "Prussian troops."
Moreover, Ernst had recently begun producing Prussian standard military uniforms in preparation for the Franco-Prussian War, intending to stockpile a batch for supply to the Prussian Army. The Berlin Textile Factory therefore simply abandoned the East African market and sold its finished products directly in the German territories.
Meanwhile, the Jiaozhou Textile Factory in the Far East began taking over its operations. Jiaozhou Textile Factory had been formed by reorganizing three