Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 911 Opportunities for Reforming Salt Services

Gao Yushi has been paying attention to the salt industry for not a year or two. As early as the end of the third year of Longqing when he entered Beijing with Gao Gong, he was already paying attention to the salt affairs of Daming. One of the best salt merchants, so he has been difficult to intervene.

Over the years, he has been studying how to deal with the salt problem, or in other words, how to solve some of the drawbacks in the salt problem.

Anyone who has a little understanding of the economic part of ancient Chinese history knows that the salt industry in ancient China has always been a big piece of fat, but whether it is fat or not is not the main reason for high-level pragmatic attention. There must be a way to make money, and it does not necessarily have to be in the salt industry.

The main reason why Gao Pragmatically pays attention to the salt industry is that the salt industry is a matter of people's livelihood and related to the stability of the country, and the problem of the salt industry in Daming is particularly serious and serious.

Specific to the use of salt in the north of the Ming Dynasty, the two main channels for a long time are "Lu salt" from Changlu Salt Field and "Pond Salt" from Xiezhou, Shanxi. In particular, Xiezhou is adjacent to Puzhou in the west, which is Zhang Siwei's hometown.

Lu salt is sea salt, and Xiezhou is pool salt—that is, the salt of the salt lake.

Zhang's family had also produced pond salt before, but later due to changes in climate and hydrology, the production of pond salt gradually declined.In the early Jiajing period, just when the Changlu salt field was reformed, the Zhang family gradually turned to Changlu for development, and finally basically monopolized the salt in Changlu.

The Ming Dynasty’s salt industry system was not static, and in fact, it had been fine-tuned and reformed all the time.

The specific reform process is limited by the length of this book, so it is inconvenient to describe it in detail (I estimated that there are no more than [-] words), so I can only make a long story short. Changes in policies such as "opening middle school", "surplus salt purchase subsidy", "salt tax discounted for silver".

The conversion of salt lessons into silver is roughly the reform carried out in the early years of Jiajing - there is a saying in later generations called "Jialong Wanda Reform", which can be regarded as an affirmation of some reforms in Jiajing's early years. This reform in the salt industry is also part of Jiajing's early reforms .

It was after this reform that the Zhang family entered the Changlu Saltworks.

In the ninth year of Jiajing, Fu Jiong, the censor of salt inspection in Changlu, approved the four salt departments of Jimin, Shibei, Huimin, and Guihua under the Qingzhou Branch. After changing cloth, they further changed silver. As soon as the salt is introduced, the silver is paid for one qian, and the merchants can buy the remaining salt from the kitchen stove to make up for it."By the 29th year of Jiajing, almost all the salt courses of the [-] salt farms affiliated to the Cangzhou Branch had been paid for in silver.

Do you find this routine familiar?Yes, this reform is very similar to a whip.So I said a long time ago that the one-whip method was not Zhang Juzheng's invention at all, and he was not even the first chief assistant to promote the one-whip method.

What is the specific method of this reformation?

"It is agreed (Cangzhou Branch) that the kitchen households in Haiyingchang, Shenzhou, except for thirteen households in the vicinity of Yanshan County, who live in Hengshui County, Zhending Prefecture, etc., will receive one penny for each. Benefit the country Wait for the [-]th year-old to enter Tianjin and other warehouses to teach rice, and collect five coins for each stone; for Haiying and other thirteen games, the price of rice and salt is levied in silver. class solution."

It should be said that the reform of the salt class is not only in line with the self-interests of the salt farm households, but also conforms to the general trend of Changlu salt administration reform.

The salt class is converted into silver, "accepting the color to the Yunsi to give to the merchant", which can be said to kill two birds with one stone.It not only effectively solves the problem that Zao Ding suffers from compensation due to the melting of salt catties, but also complies with the willingness of businessmen to open salt farms in areas with convenient transportation, thus playing a role in praising Zao and enriching merchants.

However, this system has also created some new problems: First, compared with the previous operation mode of salt farms, there is an additional link in which kitchen households sell salt and get money, and in this link, kitchen households are often vulnerable to salt merchants deliberately lowering salt prices risks of.

During the Jiajing period, someone once pointed out: "Fuzao is a self-employed person, Yaner. Today, all the levy is paid for, and the loan is doubled. Ten rooms are empty, and they are often forced to flee and have no means of living."

Second, it is inevitable for kitchen households to break free from the shackles of the saltworks, leave the saltworks, and change their careers.Especially after "various Zaotan grasslands were invaded by the powerful, or they changed their positions to buy and sell", the poor and weak households who lost their means of production could not guarantee production and were forced to flee.

In a word, the policy of disbursement of salt in the salt field, matching of high and low levels of the salt field, purchase of surplus salt, and discount of salt in the salt field were the Ming government’s solution to the problem of salt deposits in some salt fields in Changlu, without commercial development. countermeasures.However, in the late Jiajing period, some salt fields eventually appeared in the situation of "there are fields but no stoves", and the salt fields have no name.

So in the third year of Longqing (before Gao Gong returned to Beijing to recover), the Ming court merged Yiminchang into Fucaichang, Haifuchang into Hairunchang, and Runguochang after being approved by Zhili patrol censor Fu Mengchun. Merged into Fuminchang, and Sanhanguchang merged into Fengcaichang.As a result, the number of Changlu Salt Fields was reduced from 24 in the early Ming Dynasty to 20, and 17 of them were actually controlled by the Zhang family, basically completing the monopoly.

This time, the merger of the salt farms, in Gao Pragmatic's view, actually means that the operation mode of the Changlu salt farms has deviated from the development path set by the state.

That is: kitchen households produce salt in the salt field→sell the produced salt and exchange it for silver→the ambassador of the saltworks urges the kitchen households to levy salt tax silver, and develops into: the kitchen household leaves the saltworks and no longer produces salt→returns to the state and county where it was originally, and changes to other places Industry→Salt field ambassadors urge the kitchen households to collect salt tax money.

The problem it brings is that it is easy to breed disadvantages in the actual process of urging stoves.The ambassadors of the saltworks have no skills at all, so they are bound to assign the task of urging the kitchen class to the kitchen head or the general manager, which will easily lead to the disadvantages of taking over the cooking class, arbitrarily assigning more, and arbitrarily delaying the appointment.

And the officials of the prefectures and counties "belong to the kitchen households with their own nationality, and have their own dedicated personnel, without restraint, so that they hide traitors and act arbitrarily, which is also inevitable."

All in all, it is not good for kitchen households, field officials, and the country.Therefore, the restructuring before Gao Gong returned to Beijing in the third year of Longqing did not solve this problem.

As for Gao Gong’s time in power, firstly, because Gao Yushi had previously persuaded him (see Chapter 020 “On Salt and Iron” in the first volume of this book “Xiaoge Lao” for details), and secondly, because Zhang Siwei was the core of Gao’s party Thirdly, due to the lack of effective means to reform the salt affairs at that time, the alliance failed to make any achievements in this matter.

Later, when Guo Pu was in power, he could be described as Xiao Gui and Cao Sui in one word. Since the iron-fisted reformers like Gao Gong did not touch the salt affairs, Guo Pu, the more stable chief assistant, obviously would not act rashly.

What's more, the relationship between him and Zhang Siwei is not as close as Gao Gong and Zhang Siwei. In many cases, Gao Pragmatic is even needed to lubricate it, so it is naturally even more impossible for him to touch the salt business, which led to the split of Gao's party.

It stands to reason that after Zhang Siwei himself became the chief assistant and began to take charge of the government, there should be no chance to change the salt issue, because Zhang Siwei himself is the so-called vested interest.

However, the fact is that Zhang Siwei himself is also dissatisfied with the current status quo of the salt industry, and because he himself is the chief assistant of a family of salt merchants, he has a clearer view of the problems in the salt industry, and because he hopes to leave a name for future generations, in fact On the contrary, he is more willing to further reform the salt industry.

When Gao Yushi visited Zhang Siwei last time, Zhang Siwei tentatively mentioned the salt industry issue to Gao Yushi for the first time—of course, he did not directly say that he wanted to reform the salt industry, but asked Gao Yushi in a roundabout way. Investment channels prevent the Zhang family from hanging on the tree of the salt industry.

Since then, Gao Pragmatism has discovered that Zhang Siwei may have an intention to reform the salt industry, but he may not have made up his mind yet.

But intentions are the best news, because the rest is just a matter of means.

I'm afraid that Zhang Siwei insists that the salt industry is the core interest of the Zhang family, and if he is not allowed to touch it, it will be a big trouble.Because of his highly pragmatic identity and personality, then he can only wait for Zhang Siwei to pass away before he can let go of his hands and feet to reform the salt affairs.

After all, in this era, uncles are like mothers. What's more, Zhang Siwei's gift of Sanshen Garden to Gao Yushi was actually his first pot of gold. No matter how sufficient the national level is, it will inevitably give him an unfilial reputation.
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(End of this chapter)