Increasing revenue and cutting costs

General the famous United States five-star critic General MacArthur once said, "Nothing is more important than Father. ♙💣 ♦🐟" Father's call is definitely the highest priority.

Joseph looked helplessly toward the Carriage and gestured to Eman, "Let's go to the Versailles Palace first, and then we can take a closer look once we're in the carriage."

"Yes, Your Highness."

Before long, several Carriage drove out of the Industrial Planning Bureau.

Inside 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, and it was sent in code to keep it secret.

Joseph took the Codebook from Eman again and began to read it with great effort.

In the letter, the "White Gloves" first reported on the grain procurement situation, which was generally optimistic. The first two batches purchased nearly 70,000 Setier of Grain, 10,000 Setier of Corn, and more than 30,000 Setier of Potato from the United Kingdom, North Africa, and Eastern Europe.

The Setier is a commonly used unit of measurement nowadays; one Setier is equivalent to 43 Bushel. As for how much grain that corresponds to... well, that's not necessarily true.

Because Bushel is a unit of volume. In practice, a large bucket is used to store grain, and one Bushel is the volume of a full bucket. For example, a Grain would hold approximately 45-50 French Pound, while Potato would hold approximately 55-60 French Pound.

In other words, during this period, the three "White Gloves" had purchased nearly 20 million pounds of grain from all over the world.

Moreover, according to them, at Joseph's request, wherever they went, they would first pay someone with local influence to publish a message in the newspaper saying that this year would be a bumper harvest and that the supply of grain would likely exceed the demand. Anyway, it was still a long time before the autumn harvest, so they could say whatever they wanted.

After that, local grain prices would begin to decline, and only then would the "White Gloves" enter the market to buy up the grain. As soon as prices rebounded slightly, they would leave immediately. Therefore, they bought tens of millions of pounds of grain at cost price.

Joseph did a rough calculation in his mind: at this rate of acquisition, he should be able to buy about 500 million pounds of grain before the hailstorm hits in July.

These grains alone would certainly not be enough to survive the Great Famine, but now nearly a third of France's provinces have planted Potato, which will greatly increase grain production and prevent crop failure due to hail.

With both sides working together, getting through this winter shouldn't be a problem. As for next year... we can only wait and see.

Of course, another problem is that the State Finances needs to have the money to buy these 500 million pounds of grain.

Sure enough, in the latter part of the letter, the "White Gloves" mentioned that the first two funds were about to run out and asked His Highness to allocate the remaining funds as soon as possible.

In addition, they inquired about the destination of the grain that Joseph had stockpiled in the Le Havre Port.

Joseph rubbed his temples; transportation was a major headache. Of course, it all came down to money.

It's important to understand that transportation capacity is quite poor in this era. Even using the cheapest river transport, the cost of freight would double the price of grain.

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

This was only possible because the government ordered the Governor along the route to cooperate fully; otherwise, the cost would have been even higher.

Speaking of river transport, Joseph suddenly remembered that this year's severe drought would cause some waterways to dry up. At that time, it would be necessary to transport grain by land, which would increase costs several times over.

Historically, during the reign of the Feillant, in an effort to alleviate the food shortage in Paris, they used various methods to requisition grain from Outer Provinces, but ultimately failed to deliver the grain to Paris in time due to the high cost of land transportation.

The fact that Paris couldn't afford bread was also a major reason for the downfall of the Feillant.

Therefore, we must take advantage of the current normal river transport and transport the grain from the Le Havre Port to various places as soon as possible.

This is another large sum of money.

Joseph did some calculations. Paris Fashion Week was about to open, and he should be able to make some money, but the shortfall was still huge.

A large portion of the Paris Angel Company ' revenue now goes to subsidizing the Crown Prince Guard Legion, leaving only about 200,000 Livre per month.

The Paper Mill is still under construction and won't be profitable for at least three months.

The Distilling Industry itself doesn't collect much in Patent fees, and it's not currently the season for large-scale brewing.

Needless to say, the Industrial Development Zone in Nancy still requires continuous investment. Returns are out of the question.

Joseph watched the street scenes rushing past the car window and sighed inwardly, thinking that money is really easy to spend but hard to earn.

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

I've been working on open source projects myself. The rest are projects that require significant investment and have long timelines, making it difficult to generate returns in a short period.

Another thing that current Europe powers are doing is expanding their Colony.

Since the Age of Exploration, Colony have been the lifeblood of various countries. In the early stages of the Industrial Revolution, they provided massive amounts of resources and served as dumping grounds for products.

Therefore, colonization is absolutely the only way to make a country rich and powerful.

France's current Finance difficulties are largely due to the cession of vast Colony to the United Kingdom after its defeat in the Seven Years' War, which led to a sharp drop in overseas revenue.

Joseph naturally began to think about suitable places to develop the Colony.

First of all, the Far East certainly didn't have the power to get involved. Historically, it wasn't until nearly a century later, after France completed its Industrial Revolution, that it re-entered the Far East.

The Americas are currently almost entirely within the sphere of influence of the United Kingdom and Spain. Although the region is rich, it is too far away to easily project power. At present, it is already a miracle that the France Colony in the Caribbean Sea are doing well.

After looking around, he realized that the France had made the most reasonable choice in history: North Africa.

It is close to France, possesses vast fertile lands, and especially has Egypt, a world-class strategic location. If France were to take Egypt and use the development of the Suez Canal to threaten United Kingdom, France could gain a significant strategic advantage. [Note 1]

However... Joseph immediately frowned. United Kingdom regarded France as a mortal enemy and kept a close eye on France every move.

If France gains momentum in conquering North Africa, the United Kingdom will certainly intervene. Historically, Napoleon's sea supply lines were cut off by the United Kingdom as soon as he landed in Egypt.

Therefore, the most important thing in gaining control of North Africa is how to deceive the United Kingdom...

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 open source was not easy to achieve in a short period of time, Joseph then began to think about how to cut costs.

He recalled the major expenditures currently being made in France and was astonished to find that the largest expense was actually debt interest.

The annual interest payment exceeds 200 million Livre!

With this money, Famine and industrial development would be no problem at all.

However, the loan agreements were clearly signed when the loan was taken out, and the interest will only increase over time.

Joseph knew that in just two years, the French Government would need to pay more than 400 million Livre in interest...

[Note 1]: In 1788, the Suez Canal was not yet developed. Trade from Asia to Europe had to go through the South Africa and around the Cape of Good Hope, a journey of over 10,000 nautical miles. However, the journey via the Suez Canal was only 5,000 nautical miles. Therefore, whoever controlled the Suez Canal controlled Europe trade!

(End of this chapter)