The literary giants of the late Ming Dynasty began by copying books

Chapter 116 Reporting
Wang Wenlong: "If you have anything to do, you just have to tell me."

Xu Xueju said: "It's not about anything else, it's because our Tang newspaper office has used your wax printing method and the number of workers required is less than [-]% of the original number. A large number of craftsmen are idle. I wonder if you have a way to deal with it. "

Although the government these days has adopted a whipping method for many years, and you can avoid being forced to do so by paying exemption money, places like the Tangbao House in the Yamen still need a large number of carving craftsmen, so the corvee system has always been adopted to raise funds. He hired many craftsmen from government-run workshops.

Although Xu Xueju has been using the craftsmen of Tangbao House to do some private work for him, such as printing "Guochao Dianhui" and "Liang Zhejiang Famous Virtues", which he is happy to produce, but with the promotion of wax printing, There is still a surplus of craftsmen in these pond newspapers.

Wang Wenlong couldn't help but wonder after hearing this: "How many workers can there be?"

Xu Xueju: "I asked about it two days ago. About half of the craftsmen in Tangbao Fang have nothing to do. Now they have a surplus of more than 100 taels."

Wang Wenlong was surprised at first when he heard this number. After thinking about it carefully, he found that it was quite normal.

The chief envoy, Si Yamen, is responsible for the civil affairs of Fujian and has a large number of paperwork, so there are 30 people in charge of the post office.

Among these people are writers, printers, folders, bookbinders, etc., and the largest number are more than ten engravers.

Of course, they don't serve all year round, but craftsmen supported by various places come to the Yamen in turn to serve. Each person works for two or three months to maintain the number of people who live in the pond and apply for housing.

Such a number of people is already sufficient for a bookstore of a certain size.

In the past, the Chief Envoy Si Yamen's Tangbao Office was responsible for the exchange of official documents for many yamen throughout Fuzhou. Some official documents were relatively sensitive and could not be known to outsiders before they were printed and released. They could only be handled by the internal Tangbao Office. Therefore, the Yamen were indeed also It takes so many talents to not be short of manpower when printing official documents is busy.

It was also because the Chief Secretary's Yamen had a newspaper office, so Xu Xueju was able to get close to the office on a first-come-first-served basis and use the company's resources to print his own books.

But now with the promotion of wax printing, the job of Tang newspaper office is the first to be replaced.

The key to official document printing is that it is fast and cheap, and does not require much precision, so it is very suitable for wax printing.

One of the major customers of Wang Wenlong's ink workshop and wax paper workshop was yamen purchasing from various parts of Fujian.

In the past, there was an important position in the Tang newspaper room called a writer, who was responsible for copying official documents written in the yamen in standard printing. No one else could really do this, because the engraved characters had to be printed, such as Song font. It looks easy to recognize, and at the same time, the strokes are horizontally and vertically carved and are very easy to carve. If not, even if the handwriting is beautiful, it will greatly increase the carving time.

But now this writing job is almost no longer needed.

Less sensitive documents were sent directly to the wooden movable type printing. If they were sensitive documents, such as many of Xu Xueju's official documents, which were engraved by Wang Wenlong himself, the wax plates could be sent directly to the Tang Newspaper Room for printing.

Just like the skills that were necessary for writing documents before the spread of copy machines in later generations, many masters in Fujian now use their spare time to practice the craft of engraving wax plates and engrave their own seals. The newspaper office has become a dispensable feature.

The current workload of the Tang newspaper office only requires a few typesetting and printing workers and two or three engravers to repair the typefaces. The remaining [-] or so people are all redundant personnel.

Craftsmen are here to serve, not to enjoy themselves. The chief envoy Si Yamen will not let these people idle, so they will find other jobs for them to do.

The most important thing is to help print some books and then sell them for profit.

This was a common phenomenon at this time. For example, the earliest version of "The Popular Romance of the Three Kingdoms" was printed by the Sili Supervisory Factory during the Jiajing period. After printing, it was sold in the palace. "Ziuzhongzhi" records that the eunuchs in the palace at that time " Everyone is happy to buy and read." He also used books as gifts for palace maids, excluding the portion given to the state. After the profits from printing the books, the eunuchs in charge of rituals also had a surplus, which was equivalent to bonuses.

The Jinling Guoxue edition and the Supervisory Yuan edition of Romance of the Three Kingdoms were also printed in this way, and those responsible for printing were the government-run workshops of these units.

An engraver can engrave two hundred characters a day, and the wage at this time is three cents of silver for one hundred characters. In conversion, the value created by an engraver for one month of service is more than ten taels.

There are more than a dozen engravers in the newspaper office of the Chief Secretary's Yamen. They have been using the wax printing method for several months. Theoretically, the surplus should be 300 taels. The reason why there is only more than 100 taels on the books is that except for the people in the yamen Apart from their own hands, the biggest reason is that these foreign workers are doing unpaid labor for Xu Xueju, helping him print his "Guochao Dianhui".

As an official at this time, Xu Xueju didn't think there was any problem with this at all. He expressed his worries: "With so many people idle, I'm afraid someone will gossip after a long time."

No one can give up the right to allocate and use resources for no reason. Therefore, even if the Tangbao Office in the Chief Envoy Si Yamen is maintained and earns a living, it is impossible to voluntarily abolish it. But now that there are so many workers, it is really unjustifiable. The key is I am afraid that other officials will gossip.

Xu Xueju wanted Wang Wenlong to find other things for these workers to do for Tang's housing agency.

There's nothing to criticize. That's how the yamen are these days. It's impossible to spit out the available tax corvee easily. It's already good if it doesn't require a tax increase.In contrast, Xu Xueju already cherishes human resources. At least Xu Xueju is really putting his heart into compiling books, and at least he has created some value by using the resources of Tangbaofang.

At this time, some local newspapers were even more ingenious. For example, Changle's county government specialty was various exquisite pocket-sized poetry collections, all printed by the county's government-run workshops. The county officials used these to give gifts everywhere.

Using the country's corvee to make such gifts for official exchanges is a pure waste of people's energy.

Wang Wenlong was still reading the Di newspaper in prison yesterday. When he heard Xu Xueju's request, he felt sleepy and someone gave him a pillow.

He said directly: "Nowadays, many newspaper copy houses on the market use the wax printing method to sell Di newspapers, which makes a lot of profits. How about our Chief Envoy Si Yamen's Tang Newspaper House also runs a commercially available newspaper?" "

Xu Xueju said: "Isn't this too philistine? After all, it is a government-run workshop."

These days, government-run workshops can print books for officials, because no matter how wasteful it is, it is considered elegant, but if you end up pursuing profits, you will be criticized.Therefore, even if the previous government-run workshops wanted to make a profit, they would still print some Four Books and Five Classics. The most exaggerated ones were the Three Kingdoms and the Water Margin. Those were novels more than a hundred years ago. They could barely be regarded as classic literature. It makes sense, but it is difficult to print books no matter how fashionable they are. .Otherwise, Xu Xueju wouldn’t have to worry at all.

Wang Wenlong laughed when he heard this and said: "We print the Di newspaper to convey the sentiments to the superiors and subordinates. After all, to correct the people's customs, many Di newspapers on the market have gossips. Our newspaper upholds justice and denounces evil. Every content is first reviewed by the yamen. Once approved, it can also have the effect of communicating with people's sentiments, and can even be said to promote enlightenment. What can outsiders say?"

Xu Xueju was interested when he heard this and said, "Tell me more about it in detail."

At this time, Xu Xueju still had no clear idea about newspapers, so Wang Wenlong described:
"I have been reading the Di newspaper in Fuzhou City these days, and I have come up with the following three uses for newspapers:

The first is to promote the court's policies and help civilize the people; the second is to communicate information in a timely manner, such as promoting new crops and communicating about buying and selling matters, so as to facilitate the production and life of merchants and landlords; the third is to write some market stories to entertain the people, and at the same time speak outly whether Zang promotes enlightenment; The fourth chapter can also publish some poems and essays for famous people to chant the wind and the moon. "

Wang Wenlong talked eloquently about policy news, business news, market gossip, and the literary part. Soon Xu Xueju roughly imagined what a comprehensive newspaper would look like in the future. The more he listened, the brighter his eyes became.

Wang Wenlong smiled and said: "If you really want to print a newspaper, I can also provide you with a recreational novel."

Xu Xueju was curious: "Jianyang has another excellent work. What is it about this time?"

Although "The Scholars" is a novel, because it writes about Confucian affairs and the emotions are extremely real, as time goes by, it has become less popular among the people.

If novels such as "Three Kingdoms" and "Water Margin" were still in the script stage at this time, with a large number of storyteller's narration and meaningless descriptions of actions and scenes at the beginning and end, then "The Scholars" is already completely A mature novel form, this kind of novel is no different from later novels. "The Scholars" has only one opening poem and no long paragraphs of descriptive content. The purpose of publishing it is for literati to read.Readers with a keen sense of art no longer feel that talking about this book is a shameful thing.

Xu Xueju also praised the book quite a lot and was also curious when he heard it.

Wang Wenlong smiled and said: "I won't write a big book this time. I want to write a martial arts novel."

"What is martial arts?"

"Although "Water Margin" is well written, the characters in it are still real. What I want to write about are knights who come and go. Although people are a matter of swords and force, they are not ordinary."

Xu Xueju smiled and said: "It has the meaning of "The Legend of Swordsman"."

Wang Wenlong nodded: "That's right."

"The Legend of Swordsman", the originator of martial arts novels during the Wanli period, has also appeared.

The author of "The Legend of Swordsman" is said to be Wang Shizhen, but it is not certain. It is more likely that it is a combination of a large number of previous swordsman novels. Although it has not been printed on a large scale, because it is composed of short stories, there are Several stories have been circulated around the world.

"The Legend of Swordsman" has been slightly evolved with the popular novels about gods and monsters, Lu Dongbin's stories, etc. at this time, and the worldview of swordsman novels and martial arts novels has actually emerged.

Wang Wenlong has always wanted to try martial arts novels before, but these days when bookstores buy manuscripts, they have to buy the entire book, without writing a chapter. A martial arts novel has hundreds of thousands of words. This type of book has never been published before. It had appeared on the market. Even if the bookstore was interested, it did not dare to invest in printing rashly. The bookstore did not dare to buy it and it would be a waste of effort to write it, so Wang Wenlong did not write it.

What he had thought before was to wait until he had more money before trying to print a simplified version with a wax plate, but now he felt that it was more reliable to test the water on Xu Xueju's Di newspaper. After all, you don't have to write too much in one printing of the newspaper. If the reader If the response is not good, just end it immediately, which can greatly reduce the initial investment.

(End of this chapter)