Eighth year of Chongzhen

Chapter 680

In the few days after Hou Xun was warned, the gold and silver treasures confiscated by Jin Yiwei from Nanjing were delivered to the capital one after another.

Zhu Youjian is not very interested in these things now. No matter how much gold and silver there are, they are just numbers to him.

Rich and powerful, he has become numb to wealth.

Now is not the time when I first arrived in Daming, when I was so poor that my underwear had to be patched.

It is no exaggeration to say that his personal wealth is greater than those of the surrounding small countries combined.

In the past, I felt that money was too little, and I had to think about spending everything I did, but now I am worried about how to spend the money.

Spending money is also a science.

Although his financial knowledge is very lacking, he has heard in his previous life that a large amount of wealth flows into the market in a short period of time, which is likely to cause inflation, which will greatly shrink the little property in the hands of ordinary people, and make the poor poorer.

However, after thinking about it carefully with nothing to do, Zhu Youjian has some doubts whether this theory is feasible in the current Ming Dynasty.

In Daming, where more than 100% of the population is poor, even if you distribute [-] taels of silver to each household, these poor people will never squander because of their sudden wealth.

In addition to taking out the corresponding silver to improve the living conditions and then buy some normal daily necessities, the common people will 100% hide the remaining silver in a place where mice can’t find it, instead of spending it on crazy shopping.

In this era of extreme material scarcity, farmers, who account for [-]% of the total population, have no place to earn money at ordinary times, and what they ask for a year is nothing more than food and clothing.

However, most people can hardly eat a few full meals throughout their lives. People in many places have no cotton-padded clothes to wear in cold weather, and only a pair of straw sandals to wear on their feet.

Since there is no visible and tangible continuous income, even if you have a lot of money, who dares to spend money indiscriminately?
Spending a penny means never getting it back.

Now, if we want to stimulate the vigorous development of the handicraft industry, we must have a large number of consumer groups, and only with stable and sustainable income, farmers will be willing to spend money on consumption.

How to increase farmers' income is indeed a difficult problem.

Increasing grain production has become the only solution Zhu Youjian has thought of so far.

Relying on the method of distributing money alone can only treat the symptoms but not the root cause. Long-term planning is necessary so that more farmers can gradually become rich after the problem of food and clothing is solved.

Before the advent of chemical fertilizers, there was no possibility of a substantial increase in food production.

Judging from the current grain production in various parts of Ming Dynasty, Jiangnan still has to occupy a larger share.

In Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces, as well as some prefectures and counties in Henan and Shandong that were relatively lightly affected by the disaster, the average yield per mu is about one stone when the water conservancy facilities are becoming more and more complete. , some fertile land will reach about two stones, and the yield per mu will be maintained for a long time, and there will be no significant increase.

Except for the resettlement in the Jingxiang area and outside the customs that are still going on, the data reported by the local governments that have basically completed the resettlement work shows that after several years of unremitting efforts by all parties, the grain production in these areas is growing steadily.

Most of the resettlement sites have achieved self-sufficiency in food. Both the government and the farmers have a considerable amount of food reserves, and most areas basically no longer have to look at the sky for food.

After a few years, the resettlement work in the Jingxiang area is fully completed, and the number of reclaimed fields in other areas continues to increase. Based on the current population, Daming will no longer have to worry about food shortages, and the goal of fully solving the population's food and clothing will be achieved Achieved.

The results of the Nanjing Great Cleansing are still very gratifying.

This crackdown not only completely solved a stubborn disease that had been going on for thousands of years, but also allowed the gentry class, who had always enjoyed preferential treatment, to start paying taxes, and the direct results of the purge campaign were also extremely rich.

Jin Yiwei confiscated a total of more than [-] million taels of gold and silver, more than [-] million mu of land, more than [-] workshops, and more than [-] commercial shops. know the value.

In addition to these assets, the various mansions and mountain dwellings left behind by these big official and gentry families after their homes were ransacked and exterminated are also valuable wealth.

Except for the land, all other properties have been handed over to the Four Seas Commercial Bank for asset clearing and inventory, and then they will be digested and absorbed, and the realized assets will also be sent to the capital.

Seventy percent of the more than [-] million mu of land is planted with mulberry cotton, and the rest is planted with rice.

Lu Xiangsheng, who presided over the matter, allocated some of the land to many private farmers, and the remaining land would be assigned to the local government as public land for external rent.

In addition to paying [-]% of the tax on this part of the public land, the tenants also need to pay another [-]% of the tax to the local government to enrich the government's granary and prevent famine years.

In the south of the Yangtze River where every inch of land is very expensive, even if it is such a high rent of [-]% of the account, there is no need to worry about not being able to rent out.

The big local households are not short of food, but what they lack is the fields where they can grow mulberry cotton and then process it into commodities for greater profits. Ten times or even dozens of times of those grains, why not do such a good thing?
This time, a total of more than 12 private farmers were released from the large families in the south of the Yangtze River. Lu Xiangsheng distributed the land according to the amount of ten mu for each adult and five mu for each minor.

These private peasant associations are land-lost farmers or bankrupt civilians. When the land is allocated, their various materials will be re-registered by the government and obtained household registration. The land they are allocated is also strictly prohibited from monopoly. Not only will the land be confiscated, but the whole family will also be sent to serve hard labor outside the customs for five years.

This regulation prevents some big households from buying good land from these new tenants at high prices, and it is also an effective means of curbing land mergers.

Zhu Youjian does not reject or oppose the traditional practice of widely planting mulberry cotton in the south of the Yangtze River.

Jiangnan is the most developed area of ​​Ming Dynasty handicraft industry, and its prosperity is based on the foundation of workshops everywhere.

Planting mulberry cotton locally can effectively reduce transportation costs, so that these cash crops can be quickly transformed into commodities that are lacking in the world after short-distance transportation.

This phenomenon has been in existence for more than a hundred years. The grain and rice needed by people in Jiangnan has gradually developed from being self-sufficient to buying rice from Huguang for home use.

After the problem of food and clothing is fully resolved, crop rotation will be put on the agenda.

Commercial crops such as corn, sorghum, soybeans, rapeseed, peanuts, sesame, and sweet potatoes that do not occupy land will be fully promoted, which will not only enrich the consumption needs of the public, but also allow farmers to obtain additional benefits.

Corn had spread to Daming as early as the Wanli period, but due to the continuous natural and man-made disasters in the past ten years, the planting area of ​​corn in Daming was not large, and it was only planted to a certain extent in Guangdong, Guangxi, Shaanxi, Shandong and other places.

As for sweet potatoes, under the attention of Zhu Youjian, after a lot of seedling improvement in the past two years, they began to be planted on a small scale in the Gyeonggi area, while in the Jiangnan area where they were first introduced, sweet potatoes were abandoned like shoes.

Both corn and sweet potato are crops with high economic value. They can be used as staple food and the best feed for livestock and poultry.

　Thanks to Venus for the graphics card and Zeng Decai for the reward.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)