Eighth year of Chongzhen

Chapter 496

Zhu Youjian and Wen Tiren returned to the capital after waiting for the comparison of the summer harvest results of the ten-acre experimental field and ordinary farmland.

This time, the field planted by Sinong Temple has achieved a bumper harvest. The average yield per mu has reached one stone and six buckets, which is half as much as that of ordinary farmers. If this technology is used, Daming's grain output will have a huge increase.

This is the income brought by intensive farming, which is much better than the extensive farming with low harvest. The problem is that this is only the first year, and there is still a lot of experience and needs to be summed up. After this method is perfected, Zhu Youjian believes that the yield per mu of grain will increase to a certain extent.

This is already a pretty good output in the present age without chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and high-quality seeds.

According to Zhu Youjian's knowledge, the current average grain output in the north of the Ming Dynasty is only about one stone, and the fields with poor soil are only seven or eight buckets in size. It has become a top priority to vigorously promote the experimental field model in various places.

Zhu Youjian was not in a hurry to order to promote the model of Daxing County. He was waiting for the statistical data after all the experimental fields had been harvested. Only such comprehensive data had reference value. Did you fool yourself by picking up the fattest and best growing field?

Even worse, if someone secretly transports the harvest from other fields, pretending it is the output of the experimental field?

This kind of deception is very likely to happen.

In case the experimental field is not successful, if I rush to promote it across the country without investigating through other channels, the result will be a waste of time and money, and it will also be a laughing stock, which will lower my prestige for nothing.

In order to prevent this phenomenon from happening, and to avoid being deceived, on the way back to Beijing, Zhu Youjian immediately ordered someone to send a message to Luo Yangxing, and immediately selected suitable people to visit Daxing County with different identities to secretly observe and monitor , to see what the real situation is.

A few days later, the summer harvest in the entire Daxing County was completed, and a few days later, the threshing was completed, and the data of the [-]-acre experimental field of Sinong Temple in Daxing County was also collected. Although it is slightly inferior to the yield of the [-]-acre field that Zhu Youjian saw with his own eyes, compared to other farmlands with an average yield of about one stone per mu, this yield is indeed exciting.

According to Jin Yiwei's information, Zhu Youjian's suspicion has no basis at all, and the data reported by Sinong Temple are all real and dry goods, without a little water mixed in.

After Zhu Youjian got the conclusive and reliable information, he immediately ordered Sinong Temple to write the specific methods of farming, and then compiled and printed them into thousands of copies. It began to be fully promoted in Daming territory.

In order to prevent some people from pursuing the gorgeousness of the text and not paying attention to the actual effect, Zhu Youjian especially emphasized that the content of the book should be concise and clear, without citing classics, but also with relevant illustrations to present the process in a more intuitive and easy-to-understand way.

While waiting for the results of the summer harvest, Zhu Youjian successively received the title books from Zheng Zhilong and Sun Chuanting.

Sun Chuanting mainly talked about the disposal method and thinking of nearly [-] Han people in the title book. This is roughly the same as Zhu Youjian's idea. Road construction is indeed one of the major tasks that the Ming Dynasty urgently needs to do at present.

However, 10 people are piled up on the two hundred-plus-mile road from Ningyuan to Songjin. Not only is it a waste, but it will also put huge pressure on the food supply of the frontline army. The daily consumption of a person is not a small amount. After all, building roads is a heavy physical activity that consumes a lot of physical strength.

Zhu Youjian made changes and adjustments to Sun Chuanting's plan.

The first is to select the main labor force of the family among the 10 people. After the recovery of the entire Liao territory, these Baoyis, both old and young, will have the opportunity to reunite with their families, so as to prevent many families that have lost their pillars from completely collapsing.

This point is purely based on the principle of humanitarianism. After all, these coats are all Han Chinese who were taken captive from the pass or originally belonged to the Liao region. Labor reform is punishment, there is no need to artificially create other tragedies.

The rest of the people will be escorted into the customs to start leveling and widening the official road from the capital to Shanhaiguan, and some will be assigned to build the official road from the capital to Xuanda.

Zhu Youjian estimated that now that productivity and production tools are extremely backward, it will take several years or even longer to widen and level these two roads alone, and the money, food and materials needed during the period are also a huge number. The state treasury, which has just been improving, can't afford it. I have to spend a lot of money in my internal funds. Fortunately, the business of the Four Seas Commercial Bank is getting bigger and bigger, and the money is flowing into the internal funds every day. So the cost is not to worry about.

The task of supervising road construction will be undertaken by officials sent by the local government, while Yu Shi and Jin Yiwei will conduct inspections and inspections in the open and in the dark to prevent corruption in the project.

Because the amount of money and food used in such a huge project is too staggering, if there is no effective supervision, according to the bad habits of the Ming Dynasty officialdom, corruption will occur [-]% of the time. The saying that people make money and kill birds for food is the best for many officials. portrayal.

Some people are really daring, and dare to do anything with money and food.

Just in the first ten days of May, Jin Yiwei arrested dozens of military officials and entourages from the Ningyuan official army's supply battalion who had joined forces to embezzle the Mexican army's food and supplies.

These guys hid nearly ten thousand stones of grain in the name of "big fights in and small fights out" and the officialdom's unique drifting, and then secretly transported Mo Xia's grains back to the pass when they returned to the pass with the grain carriage. In the pass, he handed it over to the grain store opened by his relatives for distribution, earning huge profits with empty-handed white wolf behavior.

Jin Yiwei, who was ordered to be in charge of secret surveillance, had long been prepared for this, and reported the details to the Commander Si Yamen after the investigation. Luo Yangxing immediately went to the palace to report the situation, and Zhu Youjian immediately ordered a search.

In the end, Jin Yiwei found out that a member of the Armory Department of the Ministry of War, Wai Lang, two principals, and several low-level officials were involved. After they were captured, they were beheaded and abandoned in the downtown area. The shop opened by Zhong Zidi was also raided, and the main criminal was also beheaded.

Because of this incident, several hall officials of the Ministry of War and the Secretary of the Arsenal were all sentenced to one year of imprisonment. Zhu Youjian severely warned Yang Sichang and others at relevant meetings that if similar incidents occurred in the Yamen again, they would have to consider their own future. .

Penalties were the most commonly used method by the emperors of the Ming Dynasty. In the past, this kind of punishment was more like scratching the itch, and the effect was almost like fined three glasses of wine.

But since Zhu Youjian has greatly increased the salaries of officials, punishment is no longer a painless punishment, but actually involves his own interests, which makes the punished feel very painful.

Take Yang Sichang as an example, the annual salary is 200 taels, plus 600 taels of Yanglian silver, this is equivalent to being stolen by someone for nearly 2000 taels of silver, even if you treat money as dung, it doesn’t hurt It's strange to panic.

And the annual salaries of the two servants are only slightly less than Yang Sichang's, and the arsenal's Langzhong also has an income of nearly a thousand taels a year. Only a few days after this good life, there is a sudden shortage of a large amount of legitimate income Well, these people really want to sew up those people's heads again, and chop them off again with their own hands to get rid of the hatred in their hearts.

The road construction strategy can be implemented after simple adjustments, but Zheng Zhilong's matter about the Dutch and Spaniards is a bit unexpected.

Zheng Zhilong claimed in the inscription that the special envoys sent by the Netherlands, Spain, and the East India Company had arrived in Fujian and wanted to come to Beijing to meet the Ming emperor in person.

In the inscription, Zheng Zhilong also mentioned one thing: According to the businessmen who fled back to Fujian from Manila, the Spaniards carried out a large-scale massacre of the local Han people in Manila.

　Thank you Yanhuang for your reward.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)