At the end of Qin, I became a son of the plane

Chapter 425: Killing Decisiveness and Fertile Yunmeng Lake

The workshops under the Neishi Prefecture, because they were backed by the imperial court, did not suffer much loss during this economic crisis and many of them were still preserved. If these workshops also encountered a crisis, the days ahead for the Neishi Prefecture government would be very difficult.

The treatment of many Han officials in the Nei Shi Fu would plummet. The Han officials in the Nei Shi Fu were already busy as those in other places. If they were not paid enough, I was afraid that few of them would listen to me, the Nei Shi Ling.

But sometimes it is like this, the development of things is not subject to human will. The more Li Shang fears something, the more things develop in the direction he fears.

He inspected more than a dozen workshops under the jurisdiction of the Nei Shi, directly checked the accounts and counted the number of craftsmen, and found that these workshops generally hired more craftsmen than a year ago, with the number of people ranging from dozens to hundreds.

However, the technological content of the workshops under the Nei Shi is far inferior to that of the Shao Fu. The Shao Fu's workshops are all high-tech and high-tech industries, and many of them are doing unique businesses. Their profits are already high, and keeping a few idle people will not significantly change their profits.

However, the workshops under the Nei Shi were all in the fiercely competitive textile, timber and brick kiln industries. These were already fiercely competitive industries, and if they kept some idle people, the profits would be significantly reduced.

This made Li Shang furious. He had spent so much time trying to streamline the staff this year, but you managers just kept expanding the staff. Do you really think that he, the Minister of Internal Affairs, is just there to do nothing?

On August 25th, the 13th year of the Han calendar, in Chang'an City, at the Neishi Mansion.

The Secretary of the Interior summoned all the managers and craftsmen of the workshops under his jurisdiction to discuss the matter.

At the meeting, Li Shang threw out the data he had collected on the number of workshop craftsmen and their profitability.

Then he said with a sullen face: "Look at what you have been doing in the past six months. The economy of the Han Dynasty is obviously improving, but the profits of your workshops are declining. It would be fine if it were declining, but you don't want to find ways to improve and increase profits, but you are desperately recruiting workers here. The production capacity has not increased much, but I have added hundreds of craftsmen."

"What do you want to do? Do you want to find your own children to eat up the workshop? We see that each of you wants to build roads and make mortar."

The workshop managers explained, "Master, we also want to prepare manpower for the expansion of production capacity."

Hearing these people still quibbling, Li Shang was furious and slammed the table and said, "Do you think I am a fool? Why did you expand production capacity after the release of the reclamation order when there are so many other times? And look at the data of the workshop yourself, does this look like an expansion of production capacity at all?
You are spending money before your time. The profits of the workshop have dropped by more than half. I think you have forgotten the fate of your colleagues in the Central Plains. "

"Wu Sen, Sun Yong, Meng Yao, you three are the managers of the Internal History Department, but you are not loyal to your duties and have caused the workshop to suffer losses. This government officially dismisses you from your positions. From now on, you will no longer be the managers of my Great Han. Someone take them away."

"Yes!" Several Han officials rushed into the conference room and directly dragged Wu Sen, Sun Yong and Meng Yao away.

Wu Sen, Sun Yong, and Meng Yao shouted in panic, "My Lord, you can't do this. We were appointed by the court. You can't dismiss us without reason."

When they saw that this didn't work, they started threatening again: "We're going to complain to the emperor! We're going to complain to the emperor!"

But no matter how loudly they spoke, they were still pulled further and further away by the Han officials.

Li Shang sneered, "I have dismissed nearly a thousand Han officials in the past six months, and I am still short of you three small fry."

Li Shang could still tolerate the other managers, but the workshop managed by Wu Sen and the other two started to make losses this month. Even so, they still recruited more than 20 people this month. Li Shang could not tolerate such behavior of betraying his own people.

In the past six months, he has spent countless efforts to find a way to clean up more than 2500 Han officials, but he has only saved million yuan. As a result, you have caused him to lose more money. If you continue to let them work for nothing, it will be too unfair to those Han officials who have been streamlined.

Li Shang's act of killing a chicken to scare the monkey shocked the whole audience, and all the managers and craftsmen dared not say a word.

At the same time, Li Shang's words also woke them up. If they had complained in the past, it might have been of some use, and Li Shang would still have some reservations.

But now the court has directly streamlined more than 20,000 Han officials in order to save money. A few more of them would not be a big deal. Complaining at this time would only be courting death.

Li Shang looked at them and said, "I understand your desire to keep your children in Chang'an City, but you can't completely eliminate all opportunities. Your foundation is this workshop. If the workshop prospers, your family will prosper. If the workshop declines, you will just be like your counterparts in the Central Plains and have nothing to do but work."

"It just so happens that the court is reducing staff everywhere, and you can't stay out of it. This government has also set a target for you. Your workshop's profit cannot reach 30%. For every cent short of that, I will ask you to lay off half-finished craftsmen. If after three months, there is still a workshop that is in a loss, since you in the Internal History Office are not of one mind, then we should all part ways amicably. This government will sell the workshop, and you can find better jobs."

So the stewards assured Li Shang one after another: "Don't worry, my lord, we will work loyally and guarantee that the profit can be increased to 30%."

After these people left, Li Shang called his chief secretary Zhang Bo and said, "During this period of time, you should focus your main energy on the workshops under the internal secretary. If anyone among them dares to mess around, don't be polite, just drive the manager away and select a new manager to take over."

Zhang Bo nodded seriously and said, "Yes!"

Zhang Bo was also very angry at this time. The entire Neishi Mansion had been extremely depressing in the past six months. They were trying to streamline the staff, but the workshops below were expanding. How could Zhang Bo not be annoyed by such anti-Tiangang behavior?

The workshops under Nei Shi County acted very quickly. It was obviously a good choice to destroy their own jobs or those of others.

As a result, within less than a month, Shi's workshops began to be in mourning. More than a thousand apprentices were kicked out, and even some craftsmen were kicked out in order to save costs and increase profits.

This behavior caused heated discussions among the entire Chang'an gossip party. The court's workshop has always been a place with good welfare, but now it is actually starting to expel people. These gossip parties feel that their three views are a little shattered.

Xu Fan soon learned about Li Shang's behavior. He did not think that Li Shang had done anything wrong. As an economic unit, if it could not make a profit, then there was no need for it to exist. Market competition was so cruel that the bottom line could only be left to the court.

Because of Li Shang's behavior, Xu Fan began to understand the situation in the Shaofu Workshop and found that the situation was similar. In many cases, the father was a master craftsman in the workshop, the mother was a female worker in supporting logistics, and the children were apprentices in the factory. The whole family lived in one factory.

Xu Fan also asked the master craftsmen of these factories, but they said confidently: "Your Majesty, you told us to treat the workshop as our home. These master craftsmen and their families are serving the workshop. This was called the death warriors and retainers in the Warring States Period. They do this to show their loyalty to our workshop.

Moreover, these master craftsmen have made great contributions to the workshop. In other workshops, annual salaries of hundreds of thousands or even millions would not be a problem, but they still work in the workshop with relatively low salaries. Shouldn't the workshop take care of their wives? "

As the industry's top talents, they naturally have their own pride and do not think there is anything wrong with their model.

Xu Fan was speechless. According to the tradition of the Warring States Period, I will take care of your wife and children, and you really can't say that they have done anything wrong.

You can't promote the idea of ​​treating the factory as your home on the one hand, and at the same time drive away the craftsmen's families.

The workshops under the Shaofu are truly high-tech industries. The profits created by each craftsman are far higher than their salaries. If the Shaofu's workshops don't even provide this little bit of welfare benefits, how can people feel at ease?

Xu Fan really couldn't say that these managers and craftsmen did anything wrong.

But according to the information Xu Fan obtained from later generations, workshops that did this would be overwhelmed by the huge logistical staff, or they would become lifeless zombie enterprises due to inbreeding, and eventually drag down the entire workshop.

This made Xu Fan very puzzled. He was just a farmer in the later life. He had never seen these workshops and didn't understand how they operated internally. He had only seen some such plots in TV dramas.

But after watching so many TV dramas written by brainless screenwriters, such as workers living in villas and temporary workers living in houses with small gardens, Xu Fan would not believe the plots in the dramas.

Is the current operation mode of these Shaofu workshops correct? Even Xu Fan doesn't know. If the monopoly model is like this, he can naturally judge that it is wrong.

But these are high-tech industries in the Shaofu, and the apprenticeship of this era has the tradition of passing down knowledge from father to son. The entire operation model of the workshop is in line with everyone's three moral values. Xu Fan really doesn't know whether this model is right.

After thinking about it, Xu Fan decided to continue observing, but he still warned these managers and master craftsmen: "I know you want to evade the court's reclamation policy. I will not stop you within the scope permitted by the law, but you must have a bottom line. The workshop is your foundation. If the workshop under your management cannot make a profit, the court will ruthlessly purge you, and even bankrupt and liquidate you like the Zhongyuan workshop. A workshop that cannot make a profit is a cancer, and there is no point in staying in this world."

"promise!"

On the twelfth day of the ninth month of the thirteenth year of the Han calendar, in Nanjun, Yunmengze, Anling Fort.

The first batch of Han settlers arrived in the Yunmengze area in the south of Nanjun in February last year. They then established Anling Fort as a settlement base and built ten villages around it. A total of more than 10,000 people worked here. Under the leadership of Li De, the settlement commander, they built dams to reclaim the swamp, dug drainage ditches, and then used steam pumps to continuously drain the water in the swamp, turning the swamp into fertile land, and finally planted rice on it. Swamps are one of the most fertile lands in the world. As long as the water on them is drained, there is no need for fertilizer at all, and food can be planted directly.

And there is also a part of the newly reclaimed land for planting soybeans. These 20 young settlers have reclaimed 4 mu of land in the past six months. Among them, the first batch of mu of rice is about to mature. The sight of the rice waves blowing in the wind makes all the young settlers extremely happy.

"Sir, our fleet is back with supplies!" a young man said happily to Li De.

At this time, Li De was no different from an old farmer. Coming to Nanjun was a great opportunity for Li De to develop his talents. There were a lot of unowned lands here, but no one organized the people to cultivate them. Yunmengze was called a lake, but it was more like a sea. It was extremely vast, and the area of ​​the swamp was even larger than that of the lake. It needed people who understood water conservancy to cultivate it.

After Li De arrived at Yunmengze, he decided on a plan to simultaneously enclose the lake and reclaim wasteland. At the same time, he established a fishing team in order to solve part of the food problem using the rich resources of Yunmengze.

Logging camps, cement kilns, brick kilns and other facilities were built near the camp, and Anling Fort was constructed. This was why Xu Fan insisted on recruiting craftsmen to join the reclamation. The infrastructure for many reclamation projects by farmers alone was not enough, and craftsmen were necessary to provide them with logistical support.

Of course, in a wild place like Yunmengze, it is difficult for the reclamation team to be self-sufficient in a short period of time. They also need support from the outside world. The court gave the reclamation government 10 thousand-ton transport ships. Most of the materials for the young people who settled here were provided by this transport fleet.

The person in charge of transporting supplies to the reclamation team was Zhou Chang. Although he lost in the competition with Li De, because the reclamation area still needed to transport a large amount of supplies, Xu Fan appointed Zhou Chang as a temporary commander to assist Li De in completing the reclamation mission.

Li De followed the crowd to the dock outside Anling Fort. When they arrived at Yunmengze, the first facility they built was this dock. In the south where there are densely populated water marshes, shipping is almost their only channel to import supplies from the outside world.

When Li De arrived at the dock, the young men on the dock had already started moving supplies.

Li De asked, "What goods did you bring this time?"

Zhou Chang smiled and said, "1 sickles, 10 refractory bricks, and I also brought blacksmiths from Nanyang. They will help us build a small blast furnace that can produce several thousand kilograms of iron. They also got some blacksmithing tools that can help us repair farm tools."

Li De nodded and said, "A settlement cannot be without a blacksmith shop."

Although Li De was from Shu, he mistakenly worried about the rain in the south. The Han Dynasty's ironware rusted very quickly here. Coupled with the losses during the reclamation period, a large number of ironware needed to be repaired. However, they did not bring blacksmiths here in the early stage, resulting in a large number of tools being damaged and unusable.

"I think that the settlements established by the court in the future must be equipped with blacksmiths, carpenters, kiln makers, cement workers, and stonemasons. Each settlement may not have a workshop area like the counties of the Han Dynasty, but it must have five small workshops: a lumberyard, cement kiln, brick kiln, blacksmith shop, and wood shop."

"You can compile it into a book and report it to the court."

Then Zhou Chang pointed at the people who followed him off the boat and said with a smile, "These are reporters from Chang'an City. They will record our settlement in Nanjun and publish it in all newspapers and magazines of the Han Dynasty. This time, they came with me including the Han Monthly, Legal Monthly, Confucian Monthly and other major newspapers and magazines. It can be said that they are a gathering of elites."

The reporters bowed to Li De and said, "Greetings, Your Excellency."

Li De smiled and said, "Nanjun is a fertile land. I hope all reporters can announce the true situation of Nanjun to the world."

"Yes!" These reporters scattered and went looking for things they thought were worth recording.

The craftsmen under the Shaofu were unwilling to send their own sons to the reclamation areas. Xu Fan felt that more publicity should be given to the border counties, so he sent so many reporters over. They will carry out all-round publicity for the reclamation teams.

Zhou Chang looked at the waves of rice not far from where he lived and asked, "How is the harvest this year?"

Li De said: "The land in Yunmeng Lake is fertile. This year, the rice yield per mu is 3 dan. The land on the shore is a little worse. The soybean yield per mu is about dozens of kilograms. Fortunately, the climate here is hot, so we can grow food at any time. The food planted behind our reclamation site can also be harvested."

Li De and his men cultivated crops almost every piece of land they reclaimed. At that time, the south was in a subtropical climate. There was no so-called winter, only rainy and dry seasons, so there was no need to rush to farm.

Zhou Chang exclaimed: "Such good land, why didn't our ancestors come to cultivate it?"

There was almost no profit in the first three years of land reclamation in the Han Dynasty. Farmers had to cultivate the land for three years before the virgin land could become mature land. Of course, farmers in the Han Dynasty have now learned to use farmyard manure and soybean fertilizer to save time in land cultivation. Now it generally only takes more than a year for the land in the Han Dynasty to become fertile.

Moreover, soybeans can be pressed into soybean oil, and bean cakes can be used as feed. At the same time, tofu, bean puffs, tofu pudding, dried tofu and other foods were also invented by Xu Fan, and the value of soybeans as an economic crop was developed.

In recent years, the price of grain in the Han Dynasty has been falling, but the price of soybeans has been rising against the trend. Even one acre of raw land has an economic value of soybeans that is three times that of grain. It is precisely because of the economic crop of soybeans that the enthusiasm of the Han people to open up wasteland has been greatly increased.

Li De said, "Our ancestors may not have wanted to cultivate this precious land, but it was too difficult. There is too much rain here, and if we are not careful, there will be a flood. We must first build canals and dams to reclaim the land. At the same time, the climate here is hot and humid, and plants grow very fast. The grass and trees that have just been cleared today will grow again tomorrow. Without the refined farm tools in our hands, it is very difficult to cultivate this land.

There are many wild animals and mosquitoes, and the unfamiliarity with the local climate alone will cost many lives. If the court had not made adequate logistical preparations, 20% of the tens of thousands of people in our reclamation camp would have died. For these 10,000 people, we spent almost 10,000 gold coins this year. How many courts can afford such high costs for land reclamation? "

However, Li De continued, "But as long as it is reclaimed, it will be a treasure land. The silt accumulated in Yunmengze for thousands of years is extremely fertile. As long as we use a pump to drain the water from the swamp, we can make full use of the fertile land of Yunmengze.

There is no winter in Yunmengze, so we don’t have to worry about the soil fertility being insufficient for three crops a year. We can plant two crops of rice and one crop of soybeans in between. As long as we cultivate the land into mature land, 20 acres of land in Yunmengze can be equivalent to acres of land in the Central Plains.”

"The rich Yunmeng Lake can greatly speed up the process of land reclamation. After the autumn harvest of Anling Fort this year, we will be self-sufficient. Next, we need the court to continue to send people to settle here. With more people, we can build reclamation sites and cities here, and use this as a foundation to continuously expand our homeland to the south."

Zhou Chang said: "It is true that the emperor's emphasis on publicity is justified. If we hadn't told the world, who would have known that Yunmeng Lake would be so rich."

After exchanging pleasantries, the two men came to the meeting hall of Anling Fort, where all the Han officials who had settled there gathered to discuss matters.

Chief Lieutenant Jiang Zhi said to Zhou Chang: "If you want to travel in Nanjun, you need a boat. There is a lot of wood here. It would be a waste to only use it to make furniture and houses. Please send some shipbuilders here. Anling Fort can build some small fishing boats and transport ships to connect us with Qianzhong County, Changsha County and other places."

After Jiang Zhi came to Anling Fort, he was soon promoted to chief clerk by the Colonization Commander Li Desheng because of his rich experience in government administration and his proper handling of the affairs of the reclamation site. In one fell swoop, he jumped from a minor official with a salary of 400 stones to a senior official with a salary of stones. This move mobilized Jiang Zhi's enthusiasm for governing, and he once again turned from a salted fish into a hard-working ox and horse.

"Please order us to speed up the process. If we can't find a master shipbuilder, we will have to sell the wood drying kiln to other shipyards. It would be a big loss for us to just sell the raw materials. We can only make ten times more profit by selling the ships."

Zhou Chang said: "I will ask. If it is just to build a transport ship of a few hundred tons, it should not be difficult to find a master craftsman."

Yin Qun said, "There are also many tea trees in Yunmeng Lake. Now the price of a pound of tea in Chang'an City can be sold for hundreds of coins. If we develop the tea in Yunmeng Lake, we can solve many problems. But now we lack craftsmen who know how to make tea. Please ask for permission to find a tea master to come here."

Zhou Chang took out a pen and paper to write down Yin Qun's request.

Later, the Han officials in Anling Fort also wanted skilled craftsmen and wanted to build workshops locally. The resources around Anling Fort were too rich, and they now lacked workshops and craftsmen to turn these raw materials into goods.

However, when Li De heard his subordinates making so many requests, he asked with some concern: "Can the court allocate so much money to build a workshop in Anling Fort?"

Anling Fort has cost over 100 million yuan this year alone, and the cost of building a workshop will be even higher. Li De is worried that the court does not have enough money to invest in Anling Fort.

Zhou Chang took out a copy of the Han Dynasty Semi-monthly Report, turned to an article and said, "This is the statistics of the tax supervision order. As of September this year, the asset tax has increased by 9 million coins, and it is expected to reach 74000 billion coins for the whole year. The workshops and craftsmen we requested are nothing."

"One billion coins" Li De and Jiang Zhi were also a little dizzy when they heard this number. Although this number is nothing compared to the tens of billions of coins in the Han Dynasty's fiscal revenue, this money belongs to their military settlement government, which is a lot.

Li De exclaimed: "There are so many rich people in the Han Dynasty!"

Yin Qun sneered, "This number is already considered low. Those workshop owners must have found ways to evade taxes, otherwise the asset tax collected in Guanzhong would be more than 50 billion. Don't forget, the emperor's carriage costs 5000 coins, but more than are sold every year. There are many people in the Han Dynasty with assets worth millions."

Grassroots clerks like them deal with the workshop owners the most, and they are also the most familiar with the wealth of workshop owners like Dahan.

(End of this chapter)