Cultivation of chastity

Chapter 45 Refugees Appear
On this day, Peacock returned to Zheng's house and discussed with Zheng's about [-] bolts of cloth.

The person receiving the peacock at this moment is her father Zheng Mingshang. As the two of them took their seats one after another, Zheng Mingshang hesitated a bit, but he still spoke first,

"Yu Xin, how are you doing in the palace? Did the people in the palace bully you?"

"The king of Yue treated me very kindly and gave me the right to operate outside." Peacock said here, paused slightly,

"Now the King of Yue has given me the name Peacock, and I have no right to be called Yuxin. Please don't call me by the wrong name."

"Yu... Peacock, what's the matter with you when you return home this time, the Zheng family is your backing, so tell me!" Zheng Ming said commercially.

"Is grandpa not here?" Peacock asked Zheng Ming with some doubts.

"Patriarch called, Grandpa has gone to the main house in Xingyang, and he will not be here for the past few months." Zheng Mingshang said to Peacock, "Is there something wrong?"

"It is true that there is a business plan to discuss with grandpa. Grandpa is not here, but the Zheng family is the master?" Peacock asked.

"If the business is less than a thousand guan, I can take full control of it. For the business above a thousand guan, I need to discuss it with the second, third, fifth and sixth rooms." Zheng Mingshang said to the peacock.

"Since that's the case, let me talk about the direct purpose of this time.

The King of Yue wanted to order [-] bolts of linen within one month to cover the people and refugees.

The output and raw materials of my workshop are limited, and I can't produce them for a while, so the King of Yue wants to go to the court warehouse to exchange them.

But I was persuaded, and I purchased from the Zheng family at a price that was two floors lower than the market price, and the king of Yue let me come over. "

Peacock looked at Zheng Mingshang, but he did not pretend to be polite, but said seriously,
"My lord, [-]% of the market price of [-] pieces of cloth, the profit in it is more than one million, this is a big deal.

But I have two requirements, one is to finish it all within one month, and the other is that the shrinkage of the linen fabric should not exceed one hundred and fifty. "

When Zheng Mingshang heard the words of the peacock, he couldn't help breathing a little bit, and said,

"This is not a small business. My father is not here. I need to hold a meeting and discuss for a few days before I can make a decision."

"Yes!" Peacock nodded, "But I can't wait indefinitely.

My lord, prepare a batch of about a thousand pieces of linen by yourself first, and send it to the big shop in Gaoling after ten days for me to make an emergency.

Ten days is enough time to discuss and come up with a result. If you are willing to take over the business, then send another [-] linen.

The remaining sackcloth will be delivered all at once in the next month, and all money will be settled on the day the fabric is delivered.

Pay with one hand and deliver the goods with the other. Of course, if you are not at ease, I can also sign a business contract with you and give the Zheng family a guarantee. "

"It shouldn't be like this!" Hearing what Peacock said, Zheng Ming said, "I am your father after all."

"But you can't be the head of the Zheng family! This guarantee is not only for you, but also for other members of the Zheng family!" Peacock said.

Hearing Peacock's words, Zheng Mingshang could only sigh.

If Zheng Mingshang could really control Zheng Fengchi's property, he wouldn't give his daughter to Li Tai to be a maid because of Zheng Fengchi's decision.

But now her daughter can directly decide on a business with a total price of over ten million and a profit of over one million.

But I still need to discuss with everyone in the family, just this difference makes Zheng Mingshang feel a little ashamed.

Zheng Mingshang knew that this matter was regarded as the care of the peacock for his family, but when Zheng Mingshang gave the peacock to Li Tai, he never expected that even in less than a year, there would be such a change in the peacock.

After saying these things, Peacock didn't pay any attention, so he immediately bid farewell to Zheng Mingshang.

And Zheng Mingshang also immediately began to attract several houses, large and small, and began to discuss whether to do this project.

One hundred thousand bolts of linen is not a small sum.

Because linen is the lowest grade of all clothes, it is the clothes of ordinary people.

As the richest man in Chang'an who started with cloth, the Zheng family must have a large stock of this kind of cloth.

Even if there are only [-], the rest relying on various channels is enough to squeeze out the inventory of Chang'an businesses, large and small.

However, for the Zheng family, the most important thing in this kind of matter is their interests.

Only when they see this benefit, will these so-called two-bedroom and three-bedroom Zheng family members really work, otherwise Zheng Fengchi needs to be in the Zheng family to be able to keep their promises.

This kind of discussion is naturally a matter of debate for the Zheng family, and Zheng Fengchi also wants to use this opportunity to win over some clan members who are willing to move closer to him, so as to prepare for himself to take over the Zheng family in the future.

Zheng Fengchi chose Zheng Mingshang to sell his daughter to Li Tai, and he wanted to use Li Tai's influence to stabilize Zheng Mingshang's position.

After all, after his death, his son's ability was not good, and his character was not strong enough, so he had to find a backer for Zheng Mingshang.

In the future, after I die, I will be able to find a guardian god for the Zheng family who can last for at least ten years. As for the further distance, it will depend on Zheng Fengchi's choice.

These ten years are enough for Zheng Mingshang to control the Zheng family's property and wealth. If he can't even do this, Zheng Fengchi feels that he shouldn't count on Zheng Mingshang. His other children who have killed Zheng Mingshang and become superior are probably more reliable. .

Now the benefits brought by the Peacock in the Yue Palace are faster than Zheng Mingshang expected. For Zheng Mingshang, this project will make him more secure in his position as the successor of the Zheng Mansion, so no matter what To carry on.

After all, Peacock itself has a complete cloth production line, but it is not so easy to expand the production capacity if it wants to expand, and even if it wants to scale up, it will not be achieved overnight.

Because manpower needs to be trained, raw materials need to be collected, machinery needs to be tried, and more importantly, the market.

For China in the feudal era, as long as you can change into two pieces of clothes every year and wrap yourself tightly, you can basically be regarded as a rich peasant.

For the vast majority of people, being naked is the norm, and it is even more natural to rely on a thin coat for winter.

In other words, these refugees are not potential customers in the eyes of most cloth merchants.

Because if they want to buy a new dress, they may have to save money for a year, and for this kind of people to increase manpower and equipment, they still sell the lowest grade linen and Gebu. It's really the job of the bottom cloth merchants.

Therefore, cloth shops are basically prepared for middle peasants and rich peasants. Those ordinary people who can't save two hundred coins a year have no qualifications to enter cloth shops.

Of course, this is only the money for the cloth. If you want to buy a complete piece of clothing, you may need to reach five hundred cash or even a penny.

This makes it difficult to integrate and expand the cloth production line under the name of Peacock in a short period of time.

Because in the final analysis, the improvement of social productivity is still needed, so that the cost price of cloth needs to be further reduced.

At least in this regard, Li Tai couldn't meet the requirements at all, because it wasn't something that could be solved immediately by finding a way to develop a spinning jenny or a pedal loom.

These require sufficient textile materials, but it is a pity that all these raw materials are in the hands of different families.

There is nothing wrong with Li Tai's small-scale acquisitions, but if it reaches a certain scale, he will definitely be suppressed.

Another point is that all the materials are basically economic plants.

Although apart from cotton, other plants do not take up too much resources, but since Li Shimin ascended the throne, there have been many natural disasters.

This has led to the promotion of food crops when the land is reclaimed, and the promotion of cash crops has naturally slowed down.

Although with the increase of population, economic crops are slowly promoted by market regulation, but they are definitely not as highly respected as food crops.

Maybe that's why the Dafeng Year in the fourth year of Zhenguan appeared.

Because of the perennial protection against natural disasters, Datang actually won a good year without disease and disaster.

As a result, there is no need for disaster relief everywhere this year like in previous years.

At the same time, no one thought that the war between the Tang Dynasty and the Turks would be completely over in this year.

It was originally predicted that it would be a century-long war like the Han and Hungarian wars, a peak collision between the two empires.

But no one expected that Li Jing, the military god of the four sages of the military strategist, made a magnificent appearance on the stage. With an incredible gesture, he directly destroyed the East Turks, and even Jieli Khan was arrested and danced in Chang'an.

As a result, many aristocratic families that stockpiled grain found that they had been storing it in their hands. If they did not sell the grain that they planned to slowly exchange for political resources, they would probably rot in their own warehouses.

Therefore, under the multiple good news, it seems unbelievable to directly wear dry grain to four or five cents per bucket.

But now, if Li Tai can't get the resources directly, he can only solve the problem of cloth through big cloth merchants like the Zheng family in Chang'an. After all, things like money are easy to come by, but the production of materials depends on the average labor of society. Time.

As the days passed, the drought continued, and the sun became hotter and hotter in June, making it unbearable.

Although the water levels of the Weihe River and the Jinghe River have not dropped significantly, the soil around the rivers has been somewhat bleached, and the soil is broken one by one. Obviously, at least the surface layer of the soil is quite dry and cannot be solidified at all.

At the same time, sporadic refugees began to come along the river in twos and threes, and then went to the big cities to find their own chances of survival.

They ate grass roots and bark along the way, and occasionally ate relief food wrapped in fine sand and gravel for a few days to survive.

But all the refugees did not choose to give up, but continued to hold on to their bodies and came to Chang'an step by step.

Because Chang'an is the most benevolent place, if other cities may choose to close the city gates, or even send soldiers to drive away the people.

But at the foot of the Chang'an emperor, as long as there are no rats running in the treasury, there will definitely be a porridge shed under Chang'an.

At least let these hard-fleeing people have a bowl of gruel a day, so that they can barely survive.

The kind of monarch who flees to other places to eat because of insufficient food, regardless of whether the people live or die, is fine if the national power is rising, but if the country’s life is declining, it is basically the same as Yang Guang’s going to Yangzhou .

To be honest, when Li Tai really started to take over the people who had fled to Chang'an due to the drought, he soon discovered that compared to other disasters, the people who migrated because of the drought were in an order that was unexpected.

Originally, Li Tai thought that the disaster would be that the mob would oppress the city and open the city wall, and then lose order and want everything in the chaos, completely destroying the tranquility of a city.

But in fact this is not the case. The most affected people in the drought are tenant households and poor farmers.

They do not have their own land. When the drought strikes, the landlords and rich peasants, and even a large part of the middle peasants, can rely on the land in their hands and the food they usually accumulate to forcibly support them.

Some homes even have cisterns where snow is accumulated in winter, so they are not afraid of drought.

But for tenants and poor farmers who have no land and usually rely on servants and renting other people's land for a living, the biggest problem caused by the drought is that these people do not need tenants and farm workers.

This directly makes them who have no land and no means of survival directly abandoned by the local society.

This is like an ordinary office worker without a house in a modern city. Under normal circumstances, the wages obtained by selling labor can have a place in a modern big city.

Sometimes when they drink coffee and stand on the high-rise buildings and look at the beautiful neon lights, they think that this gorgeous stage is prepared for their arrival.

But as long as the epidemic comes, all migrant workers who do not have a house will basically be forced by the ever-increasing rent and living expenses. Even if the epidemic is raging, they still have to take risks to work.

Because if you don't work, you can't live!

This is still a modern society. In the face of sudden natural disasters and man-made disasters, there is a strong government, there are strong people who are willing to hold up a sky for the weak, and the joint efforts of the people who are united as one and try not to hold back. It also consumes a lot of money. The difficulty was overcome at the cost of it.

But in a feudal society, it was impossible for the power of the ordinary imperial government to resist such natural disasters in several states, or even the entire Guanzhong, because it was simply not something that the bottom-level people with little means of survival could resist.

With a lot of food in store, they planned to stay in the local area for a few more days to see if it would rain.

As long as it rains, even if they sell themselves into slavery, at least the landlord will advance part of the food to keep him alive.

Those who have little food in store or even can't borrow it can only leave the local area.

Because they no longer have the capital to survive locally, they can only try to visit other cities, even if they become refugees, because they want to survive.

Therefore, like other disasters like drought, the refugees continue to grow like a snowball.

But compared to other disasters, they will be relatively peaceful in the initial stage, and it will be relatively easy to manage these refugees.

If it was changed to other victims caused by earthquakes, plagues, and floods, it would spread to a large area in an instant, and the people who lost everything would really be a powder keg that could be ignited at any time.

But now as long as the rules are formulated in the early stage and strictly enacted, the people who have fled here due to the drought, as long as they can find jobs that allow them to make ends meet, they will basically stop making troubles.

So in fact, Gaoling County, which had made preparations earlier, did not have the difficulties Li Tai expected to deal with these refugees.

But unlike other disasters, most of the other disasters are dealt with after-disaster work, and some of them are the survivors.

But at this moment, in the face of continuous drought, it is necessary for the people to use their will to survive until it rains in this despair.

(End of this chapter)