Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 912 Purpose
The business of the Zhang family has never been managed by Zhang Siwei himself, but by Zhang Sijiao, so Zhang Siwei did not talk too much with Gao Yushi about how the Zhang family's business would be transferred from the salt industry to the entire forest.

However, Zhang Siwei still mentioned some developments of the Changlu Salt Field to Gao Yushi in recent years, and one of them particularly attracted Gao Yushi's attention.

In recent years, the Changlu Salt Field has experienced a trend of "decline in the south and prosperity in the north".

When Zhang Siwei mentioned this situation at the time, he didn't seem to be clearly aware of the reason, but Gao Pragmatic was different, and he was very keen to discover the root cause.

The root lies in Tianjin Port, or the development of Tianjin Port has affected the development of Changlu Salt Field.

Changlu Salt Field is not a separate salt field. The reason why it is named "Changlu Salt Field" is that the Ming Dynasty set up a transfer envoy in Changlu, Cangzhou, and Changlu Salt Field got its name.

As mentioned above, there were 24 salt farms in Changlu Salt Farm in the early Ming Dynasty, and four of them were merged later, forming a complex of 20 salt farms now, of which the Zhang family actually controlled 17.

Among the 17 salt farms controlled by the Zhang family, it is obvious that the closer to Tianjin Port, the better the development of the salt farms, while the farther away from Tianjin Port, there are signs of decline.

The simplest way to summarize this situation is that traffic conditions are crucial to the development of the saltworks.

After that, Gao Wushi began to collect some information about the traffic conditions in the Changlu Salt Field area. After summarizing, he was sure of this.

Historically, Nanchang, which was originally located in Cangzhou, benefited from the superior geographical environment of sea and river transportation and achieved considerable development.The shipping ports for southern materials are located at Huanghua Qikou and Dahekou (later Huanghua Port) in Cangzhou. After unloading, they are transported to various places in the north through inland waterways. The inland waterway in Cangzhou is mainly the Wudi River and Majia River in the south, and the Liuhe River in the north.

At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, sea transportation was diverted to Dazhigu (that is, Tianjin Port), and from then on, only river transportation remained in Cangzhou.After the mid-Ming Dynasty, the Yellow River changed its course and moved southward to the Huaihe River, resulting in the depletion of the water sources of the Wudi and Majia Rivers, and the rivers gradually silted up. Although they were dredged many times, the silting remained as usual.The Liuhe River, which has become the only important river, connects the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal and the salt fields in Cangzhou, supporting the continued development of Cangzhou's salt industry.

At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, after the Huitong River was dredged, the Grand Canal, which had always been running from east to west, turned to a north-south trend.As a result, all eastward rivers in Cangzhou lost their transport functions. "(Huimin) the river runs vertically, and the horizontal river east of Fan'an is abandoned."

As a result, "the transportation route in the South Field was cut off, while the Jiyun River in the North Field and the rivers in the South Field thought that they had been lost, and they went to each other day by day. There is no way to chase after the cooking class?"

Therefore, the Cangzhou salt industry changed from inland waterway shipping to land transportation. Land transportation was more expensive than river transportation and lost its competitiveness.Since then, most of the salt farm households in Cangzhou "abandoned the beach and changed their business" and returned to their original counties.

But at this time, the development of the South Field was only weak, but it was still barely able to maintain it. Until the high pragmatism built the Tianjin Port, the radiation capacity of the Tianjin Port was greatly improved, and the part of the Changlu Salt Field near Tianjin began to show a huge transportation cost. Advantage.

It’s all the same salt. The cost of transporting goods in Tianjin in the north is [-] to [-]% lower than that in Cangzhou in the south. Only fools and businessmen who can’t get goods in Tianjin will continue to fight in the south.

As a result, Gao Yushi found a trump card in his hand - even if it is a big salt merchant like the Zhang family, if Gao Yushi refuses to cooperate, their costs will increase greatly and their profits will decrease greatly.

Moreover, apart from the advantages of the port itself, the reason why Tianjin Port can reduce costs is that Tianjin Port has a strong transport fleet, and the transport fleet of Tianjin Port, the Jinghua Beiyang Fleet (transport ship) in the hands of Gao Pragmatism The team part) will occupy about half of the capacity.

This situation brought Gao Yushi a thought: should we gradually transfer the past saltworks, and gradually move the saltworks across the country closer to the big ports?
His idea was not to target Zhang Siwei or the Changlu Salt Field alone. In fact, his focus was mainly on Yangzhou salt merchants.

It is not convenient for Gao Yushi to attack the Zhang family, but it does not mean that he is inconvenient to attack the Yangzhou salt merchants.

Of course, some of the current salt merchants in Yangzhou are Shanxi merchants. For example, Zhang Sijiao went to Yangzhou to stay in Yangzhou more than ten years ago, with the purpose of developing business in Yangzhou. room for development.

But Shanxi merchants were not the strongest in Yangzhou. Nanjing’s honorable forces had many agents among Yangzhou salt merchants, such as Anhui merchants, Zhejiang merchants, and local salt merchants in Yangzhou, etc., and so on.For these people, Gao Wushi will not feel distressed when he moves.

It's just that Gao Yushi doesn't really want to use political means to do this, because political means are more likely to be backlashed, and he has been thinking about using economic means to solve this problem.

Producing salt in Liaodong was his first step in cautiously exploring the salt industry.

What he said to Zhu Yijun just now about selling to North Korea, Jurchen, and even Mongolia is not a lie, but it is not complete. In fact, Zhu Yijun is worried about offending people, but he is not very worried about offending people, at least putting aside the Jin Party After that, he didn't worry about offending the salt merchants in the south.

These people were almost all the behind-the-scenes funders of the Donglin Party in history. From Gao Yushi's point of view, if you offend them, you will be offended. Anyway, it will be a matter of time.

Gao Wushi has been hoarding land in Shanghai for a long time because the market around Nanjing is not easy to infiltrate. The purpose is to suddenly launch Shanghai Port when the time is right, so as to set aside Nanjing and even Suzhou to go it alone and grasp the commercial initiative of Nanzhili. .

Now the land in Shanghai Port is almost ready, and the staffing may be close, but Gao Yushi is not worried-he has several big ports on hand, and it is not a problem to recruit some people.With the advantage of the port, Yangzhou salt merchants have to worry about the pressure of high pragmatism.

In this case, if we want to continue to increase the pressure, there is only one key thing left: goods.

Make the worst plan: Gao Yushi owns Shanghai Port with the most advantageous traffic conditions in the future, but Yangzhou salt merchants and their Nanjing Xungui and Jiangnan Shilin are unwilling to compromise. The final result may be that Yangzhou salt merchants would rather cost [-] to [-]% higher, and not going to Shanghai Port-this is a lose-lose.

Therefore, if you want to strangle the throat of Yangzhou salt merchants, you need to have a source of supply, which is strong enough to force Yangzhou salt merchants to go bankrupt!
Can the Changlu Salt Field work?Not very good, even if Zhang Siweiken fights head-on with the Yangzhou salt merchants, the output is estimated to be insufficient. After all, the Changlu Salt Field supplies more than half of the north. If these goods are used to start a price war in the south, will the north eat light food?
Therefore, Gao Yushi almost recommended himself to Zhu Yijun today and expressed his willingness to go to Yuanma Temple in Liaodong to be the temple minister. What he valued was not just a mere military preparation, but the area under the jurisdiction of Yuanma Temple in Liaodong-the Liaodong Peninsula.

As we all know, the Liaodong Bay Salt Area is one of the four major salt areas in China in later generations, and Gao Yushi, as a traveler, still knows some ideas for improving the salt drying technology.

Ideas certainly do not represent direct technology, but as long as the position of Liaodong Yuan Ma Siqing falls to Gao Yushi, he will have enough capital to conduct experiments, not to mention asking Changlu Salt Farm for help—just use "" The whole forest" in exchange.

Anyway, Gao Yushi has long hoped to bring the Zhang family and even more northern "chaebols" into a new channel, instead of sticking to the old business that has been around for thousands of years.

(End of this chapter)