Eighth year of Chongzhen

Chapter 143
After a simple lunch in Huangzhuang, it was the end of Shen Shi when Chongzhen and his party returned to the palace, and Erya was escorted back to Beicheng's home by her own guards.

With the increasing income of craftsmen, the original living conditions of abject poverty have been drastically changed, and a series of changes in the surrounding area have been triggered.

When many craftsmen have enough money, they naturally hire plasterers first to renovate their original old houses, and replace the original broken tables and chairs with new furniture.The thatched roof was also replaced with tiles, the gate building was rebuilt to be taller, and the low loess courtyard wall was replaced with a new brick wall.

It used to be a luxury for this group to be able to eat a full meal, whether it was grains or white rice.The lack of clothing and food is the truest portrayal of their life at that time.

Now that they suddenly have a sustained and stable high income, most of the poor artisan households still choose to save money and put it in a hidden place, or store enough grain in exchange for a rainy day.

But with more and more money in their hands, and seeing that this situation has become the norm, people's consumption concepts have gradually begun to change.

Not only daily necessities such as firewood, rice, oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, tea, etc., but also the consumption concept of shoes, hats, clothing and furniture gradually moved closer to the wealthy class in the capital.

Now the basic salary of ordinary craftsmen is one tael of silver, and the military supervisory department also manages two meals.Due to the limited identity of the craftsmen, as long as there are adult males in the family, they have to work in the Military Arms Supervision.If the main labor force of a family eats at the workshop, and there are only women, children, old and weak in the family, a lot of expenses will be virtually saved. Adding the money received every month, the hard days will suddenly disappear without a trace. no trace.

With the statute of piece rate commission, there is no craftsman who only gets a basic salary of one tael.If you only get a basic salary every month, you don't dare to say anything, it would be too embarrassing to say it.Getting less money can only show that you are a lazy person. In this era, no one looks down on poverty, but lazy people are despised by everyone.Often when there is a lazy person in the family, the whole family will be poked in the back.

While ensuring the quality of weapons, most craftsmen spontaneously worked overtime and worked hard in exchange for more money to improve the conditions at home.

Take Liu Er of the firecracker workshop as an example. Liu Er and his three sons, who are over [-] years old, are all working in the workshop of making firecrackers.

Liu Er's craftsmanship was passed down from his ancestors. Not to mention his superb skills, his three sons are also good at it. The rolled gun barrels are fine and tight, and they are durable and top-grade.

Liu Er once boasted in Haikou that the gun barrels made by his family would not explode after firing [-] rounds.The exact results are unknown, because no one has fired more than three hundred rounds since the new guns entered the Yongwei Battalion.The daily training of the Yongwei Battalion is also based on the principle of speeding up the loading speed after simulated firing. The live ammunition shooting is only once every five days, and each person shoots three guns each time. After all, there is no time for the gunners to relax Fire more than three bullets.

Liu Er's monthly income was more than five taels, and his three sons were not much different from him. The four of them could get about 20 taels of silver per month, which was quite a high income at that time.

Among the three sons of the Liu family, only the eldest is married.Although the other two sons are in their 20s, they never got married because of one reason—poverty.

Who would want to marry into a poor family who ate their last meal without their next meal?Among the many artisan households, Liu's family can be described as an extremely poor family.His wife died many years ago, and there are only four bachelors in his family.Because there are no women to do the housework, the house can only be described as barren and messy.

After the boss became an adult, Liu Er borrowed money everywhere, and finally wiped out his family's assets. After spending nearly two taels of silver, he finally married him a daughter-in-law, who was also a girl from the same craftsman's family.

For the current Liu family, a mere two taels of silver is nothing at all, isn't it just the wages of a few people for a few days?None of this matters.

But for the Liu family, whose livelihood was a problem at that time, it was a huge debt, which made the family unable to breathe.

At that time, the Military Weapons Supervision only sent sorghum mixed with sand and moldy pickles to the craftsmen every month, and there was no silver or copper coins at all.The food and salaries pulled out by the imperial court were all greedily divided by Jianzheng and others, and the food was also resold and replaced with low-quality miscellaneous grains.

Liu Er could only use his rest time to secretly go out to do odd jobs to earn some extra money. It took several years to pay off the debts, and he really had no spare time to marry the second and third children in the family.

Now that the Liu family has become a well-known well-to-do family, Liu Er, who is frowning all day long, has also become rosy. After returning home from work, he has to put on a brand new robe to show off everywhere.

Liu Er built two new houses on the open space next to the old house. After the courtyard wall was opened, the original gate was still used. The second and third children also married wives one after another.In addition to the old family's wife who gave birth to a pair of grandchildren for him, the second and third families are also pregnant one after another, and they are about to have a full house of children and grandchildren. Liu Er is happy from ear to ear all day long. The current life is something he never dreamed of of.

The situation of Liu’s family is very typical among artisans. The stability and long-term income has brought huge benefits to everyone in this group, bringing new vitality to Beicheng where the poor gather.

A small market gradually formed in the gathering place of artisans. At first, some peddlers carrying burdens selling needles, threads and brains set up stalls in the open space to sell, and then more and more peddlers joined in one after another, and the variety of materials became more and more abundant. .

Finally, merchants in the capital with a keen sense of smell began to build houses and shops in nearby vacant places to replace those small-capital merchants, until the merchants were completely squeezed out of this new market.

The poor people around have also benefited from it.Shops were built one after another, and each shop had to recruit apprentices. The surrounding people were of an appropriate age, and the clever and sensible children naturally became the buddies of the new shop.

There is no money withdrawal for the time being, but two meals are taken care of in the shop, which means that someone else is raising their own children.If you do a good job, you will naturally become an official employee in the future, and you will receive a monthly payment. With one more person's income, your family's conditions will be greatly improved.

Chongzhen did not expect that he was only out of sympathy for the poor at the beginning, and more of an unintentional move to stimulate their enthusiasm for labor. He was cultivating a group of consumer subjects similar to the prosperous Jiangnan - the middle class.

It may be a bit too much to say that they are middle class, but the income of these artisan households has far exceeded that of normal food and clothing families.

If the average income is calculated, there are more than 500 artisan households in the Military Weapons Supervision, and the per capita should be around three taels per month.These 500 people came from about 40 families. If other family members had no income, the annual income of each family would be nearly [-] taels of silver, far exceeding the total annual income of ordinary families.

You know, the people in the capital have a steady income of 20 taels of silver per household per year, and they can live a pretty good life.

In that era, there were no dazzling array of goods and materials in later generations, and ordinary people lived with their families, nothing more than food and clothing.There is no need to buy a house, no need to buy a horse or a car for travel, and there are no more entertainment activities. The prices are low, and food and clothing have become the mainstream of consumption.

Facts have proved that the middle class is the main body of social consumption and the most important class that stimulates domestic demand.

Those high-ranking officials and noble families also consume a lot of money every day, but they mainly eat food, and other supplies are given by people who are in need.For Daming, which is seriously short of food, the consumption of these people is also a waste, and it will not play a big role in promoting the economy of the capital.

The artisans purchased various materials, which correspondingly drove the development of other industries.For example, making a new set of clothes for each member of the family requires a lot of cloth, needles and threads.

Vendors dealing in these commodities will increase their purchases of cloth, and the bosses and employees of the weaving workshops will benefit from the good sales of their products, so they will buy a large amount of cotton yarn, and the spinning workshops and families will have more profit.Goods need to be transported, and owners of carts and merchant ships also reap profits from it.On the way they trade south and north, they will go to the top for food and accommodation, so restaurants and inns also benefit from it.

When Chongzhen saw this item from the information collected by Jin Yiwei every day, he was secretly happy, but at the same time felt a little regretful.

The middle class he inadvertently created is too small.

There are more than [-] families with a total population of just over [-]. Compared with the capital's population of one million, the amount of consumption that can be stimulated is pitifully small.

Unless the population of this class reaches 5 or 10, it will virtually stimulate the consumption demand of the entire capital, thereby driving the economic development of the surrounding areas.

But the huge flaw of this model is that it cannot exist as a pillar industry.

Ordnance can only be provided to the military as a specific group.That is to say, the situation in Daming is turbulent now, and the consumption of ordnance is very huge, so there is a small group of high-income earners.

If all slaves and thieves at home and abroad are pacified and wiped out in a few years, the demand for ordnance will drop sharply, and the spending power of these craftsmen will also shrink rapidly. This is an obvious result, unless wars are provoked everywhere like a big country in later generations Then sell arms to make huge profits.

As for the establishment of a pillar industry with sustainable development capabilities, Chongzhen has no idea. He was neither a businessman nor an official in his previous life, so he lacks understanding of this aspect.

Let’s talk about the future. Everyone’s wisdom is limited. At a certain point, a genius will emerge to solve these problems that seem very difficult now.

Now what Chongzhen has to do is, since he sees the benefits of the middle class, he should find a way to expand the size of this group so that more people can benefit from it.

Relying on investment to stimulate consumption, as for the source of funds, only Chongzhen's internal money.Those rich and powerful families hid their silver in their cellars, and ended up taking advantage of others.

The main channel for these people to consume is the brothel.The restaurants can't earn their money, and their own chefs are higher than the level of the big restaurants, so there is no need to go to the restaurants to spend money.

In Huangzhuang, Wang Chengen reported to Chongzhen all kinds of situations discovered by the clerks sent by Dongchang to various yamen.

One of them is that many middle- and lower-level officials in the yamen, as well as the officials, attendants, and book offices in the yamen, live unsatisfactorily.Many people complained about the imperial court, and the result was a sense of slack in handling government affairs that they were personally responsible for.

The main reason for this is because the court has no money.

Where did all that money go?

　Thanks to book friend DENNISCHUNG for the reward.Thanks to the book friends who voted for collection.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)