Chongzhen revived the Ming Dynasty

It turns out that bureaucrats are very efficient when they are proactive.

A few days later, Zhu Youjian saw the first edition of the minted coins submitted by the Ministry of Revenue Bank.

He was extremely surprised and asked Dong Yingju:

"How was this made? Why is the craftsmanship so high?"

"It looks rounder than the Spanish dollar, and the words and patterns are better looking too."

Zhu Youjian was quite surprised when he praised Dong Yingju.

Because he was already prepared to introduce the corresponding technology from the West.

Dong Yingju thought it was nothing, because making silver coins was not a very advanced skill.

He gathered skilled craftsmen and had them hammer it out bit by bit.

This process, together with the casting method, is a commonly used process for making gold, silver and bronze wares.

For example, the common gold foil is hammered out, and the Chinese mastered this method as early as the Shang and Zhou dynasties.

(Golden ornaments of the Sun Bird from the Shang and Zhou dynasties unearthed from the Jinsha Ruins, with a thickness of 0.02 cm, made by hammering out gold foil, then shearing, polishing, and hollowing out)
Even gold foil and gold ornaments can be hammered out, so hammering out gold and silver coins is naturally a piece of cake.

In just a few days, he had skilled craftsmen hammer out gold and silver coins.

In fact, not only the Ming Dynasty has this ability, Nepal, which is next to Tibet, is now using minted silver coins.

In history, in the fourth year of Chongzhen, Tibet commissioned Nepal to produce silver coins. This was the first officially circulated coin in China, the Hei Dan Qi.

Nepal sought to profit from this, and later, after the Gurkhas established the Shah dynasty, they had trade disputes with Tibet due to excessive copper and currency value changes. They then invaded Tibet, triggering two Gurkha wars.

After the war, Tibet began to build mints with the help of the Qing Dynasty and mint its own silver coins, initially imitating the white Danqi of the black Danqi, and later the completely self-made Zhangga silver coins.

These silver coins are all hand-made and have exquisite appearance.

The technology of the Ming Dynasty at this time was no less than that of the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, so naturally it was also capable of minting silver coins.

After Dong Yingju explained the methods used, Zhu Youjian once again realized that he had underestimated the skills of the Ming Dynasty craftsmen.

Now he has deeply realized that the technology of minting coins is not a problem at all for the Ming Dynasty.

The main reason why silver coins were not used before the Ming Dynasty was that there was no motivation:

On the one hand, there are still many shortcomings in minting coins, and they are not necessarily better than silver ingots and silver blocks.

On the other hand, since silver coins with fixed face values ​​were used, it was impossible to impose additional levies on fire consumption.

Therefore, the issue of coinage has never been put on the agenda by the Ministry of Revenue.

Zhu Youjian urged several times before he proposed the idea of ​​silver dollar coupons, which made officials take the initiative.

Compared with the fire consumption which was mainly controlled by local governments, the officials of the Ministry of Revenue of the imperial court were more fond of silver yuan coupons.

This is a currency that can be issued at little cost.

If 10 million silver dollars could be minted every year, according to the rules previously set by the emperor, 900,000 silver dollar notes could be issued.

This is pure profit for the Ministry of Revenue.

They were even thinking about persuading the emperor to issue more silver yuan notes to gain more profits.

In order to achieve this goal, the Ministry of Revenue tried its best to improve the silver dollar so that the corresponding silver dollar coupons could be issued:
"Silver dollars have many advantages. I and my colleagues, including Minister Bi, believe that silver dollars can be used as the standard currency for taxation."

"Its value is still very high, and the people pay a few cents per acre of land, so it is inconvenient to use silver dollars."

"And when silver dollars are in circulation, they may be counterfeited or have their edges cut."

These problems appeared when the Spanish currency was in circulation. Therefore, the Spanish coins were weighed as silver bars in Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Youjian thought about the practices of later generations and suggested:
"The problem of counterfeiting needs to be strictly regulated, and specific formulas and processes should be used to make counterfeiting more difficult. The machines should also be improved, and specialized coin-making machines should be used."

"To solve the problem of trimming, you can add teeth to the edges."

"If the edges are damaged, the court can refuse to accept them and ask them to go to banks or money houses to weigh them and exchange them for complete silver dollars."

As he spoke of his thoughts, Zhu Youjian thought of the silver coins rolled up in the movies and TV series, and said:

"Also, you can roll up the silver dollars and call them a silver envelope of one hundred dollars."

"Those that easily leak out or bulge out during packaging are considered unqualified and need to be re-made."

"The thickness and weight of the silver coins must also be specified. There cannot be a big difference in thickness and weight between one hundred silver coins and another hundred silver coins."

These practices can improve the standardization of silver dollars, but they also put forward requirements for craftsmanship.

Dong Yingju said with some embarrassment:
"I am afraid that if this is done, the cost of minting will be very high, and many unqualified silver coins will be discarded."

Zhu Youjian said with a smile:

"Discarded silver coins can be remade without much loss."

"As for labor costs, it's OK as long as we don't lose money when issuing silver dollars."

"You can make money through silver dollar certificates."

As he spoke, he asked again:
"What is the approximate purity and weight of the silver currently used?"

“All in metric.”

Dong Yingju understood this very well and responded:

"Silver bars vary in purity. Most silver ingots have a content of 95%, but some can be as low as 93% and as high as 98%."

“So when silver blocks are melted into silver ingots, there will be a 10% or 20% fire consumption.”

"The solution that I have discussed with the officials of the Ministry of Revenue is to set the weight of a silver dollar to one tael in the metric system, which is 37.5 grams. The silver content is 92.5%, which is the standard silver set by Your Majesty."

"The actual silver content of such a silver coin is 34.6875 grams."

"Previously, one tael weighed about 37.3 grams. Based on a silver content of 93%, the silver it contained was 34.689 grams."

"One silver dollar can be exchanged for one tael of silver."

"If the fineness is lower than this, it will be converted. If the fineness is higher than this, it will be the minting income of the court."

Zhu Youjian shook his head slightly and said:
"Whether it's low or high, it has to be converted."

"A one-yuan silver dollar is set to contain 37.5 grams of silver, with some copper and other metals added to improve toughness and wear resistance, with a total weight of about 40 grams."

"The imperial court made silver dollars not for the profit of coinage, but more importantly for the unification of currency and the convenience of transactions."

"This way, we won't have to keep casting and wasting fire."

"A lot of money is wasted on intermediate losses."

When Dong Yingju heard the emperor mention fire consumption, he was shocked.

They were worried that the emperor did not know the pros and cons and would arbitrarily cancel the fire consumption after issuing the silver dollar.

He reminded:

"Fire consumption is not only a loss for smelting silver ingots, but also a source of local expenditure."

"In addition to the fire consumption of silver, there is also a fire consumption levy on grain."

Frowning, Zhu Youjian finally sighed and said:

"Huohao and Jiahao will be levied as additional taxes in the future as local revenue."

"But this expenditure must be clear and supervised by the local council to be controlled within a certain range."

"How much huo fei should be collected and where should it be used? The parliament should monitor all of this to prevent corruption."

Considering huohao as a local surcharge, Zhu Youjian decided to delegate the supervisory power to local councils.

This is to prevent some officials from being unscrupulous and levying heavy taxes.

At the same time, this is also a way to make the fire consumption public, and to put the fire consumption that was previously collected privately on the table for management.

Dong Yingju had no objection to this. In fact, he and the officials of the Ministry of Revenue had already thought that after the silver dollar was issued, the fire consumption would no longer be levied in name. This was also the reason why they were not very enthusiastic about the silver dollar before.

Not only would it offend local officials, but the silver dollar would also be difficult to promote locally.

Now the emperor has changed the fire consumption into an additional tax, which is a more appropriate solution.

At least local officials had no reason to oppose the silver dollar.

After solving this problem, Dong Yingju mentioned that the face value of a silver dollar of one tael was still too large and that people might use silver bars.

He proposed to mint small silver coins to assist in transactions, so that it would be more convenient for people to pay taxes of a few cents per acre of land.

Zhu Youjian was very impressed by this and, following the practice of later generations, confirmed:

"There should be two kinds of subsidiary coins below the yuan: jiao and fen."

"The equivalent of jiao is qian, but because there are copper coins, we borrow the term silver jiaozi to call it jiao."

"A dime contains one ounce of silver, and the same is true for a dime and a nickel."

"A one-cent silver coin contains one cent of silver, and the same is true for two cents and five cents."

"Because the cents use very little silver, if only silver is used, the weight will be very small, so when making it, you can add more copper to control the weight to about one cent to avoid losing it easily during use."

"One yuan is equivalent to ten cents, and one cent is equivalent to ten fen. The face value is marked on the silver coin. The same is true for silver dollar certificates. They must be able to be exchanged for silver coins of the corresponding face value."

"As for how many copper coins are equivalent to one cent, it depends on the price of the precious metals exchange."

"From now on, the prices of gold and copper will be calculated in silver dollars."

One fen was not forcibly converted into ten wen because the quality of copper coins varied and the exchange rate with silver was unstable.

When the price of silver was low, one tael of silver could only be exchanged for five hundred coins.

When the price of silver was high, one tael of silver could be exchanged for one thousand coins or even more.

Now, because of the war in the West, the amount of silver flowing into the Ming Dynasty has decreased. It is a time when silver is expensive and money is cheap, and one tael of silver can be exchanged for about one thousand money.

However, the price will definitely change in the future, so we will have to follow the market at that time.

One of the reasons he set up the precious metals exchange was to facilitate the exchange of gold, silver and copper.

The previous plan was to use copper coins to determine the value of gold and silver.

However, after establishing the two subsidiary coins of jiao and fen, Zhu Youjian found that the court could collect all the silver coins, and copper coins were only used as a supplement.

So he formally decided to use silver dollars as the currency and implement the silver standard thereafter.

Although Dong Yingju had no concept of the silver standard, it did not prevent him from knowing that the status of the silver dollar would become more important in the future.

This made him somewhat worried about the shortage of silver dollars, and he proposed issuing more silver dollar notes:

"The Ministry of Revenue has just started minting silver dollars, and I am worried that there will not be enough for civilian use."

"Can you issue more silver dollar notes to make up for the shortage of silver dollars?"

Zhu Youjian frowned at this question.

In fact, this was what he was worried about, so he did not entrust the issuance of silver dollar notes to the Ministry of Revenue Bank.

This is to prevent the Ministry of Revenue officials from printing silver dollar notes in large quantities and turning them into waste paper like treasure notes.

So he said sternly:
"The court will issue as many silver yuan notes as it has silver dollars and silver bars."

"Make sure every silver dollar certificate can be exchanged for silver coins or silver bars."

"It must not exceed the limit, so that people cannot exchange their money."

"If that happens, it will be a fatal blow to the silver dollar notes, and it is possible that the silver dollar notes will become waste paper like the treasure notes."

"I reiterate once again that the number of silver dollar notes to be issued in the future must be reviewed by Congress."

After reprimanding Dong Yingju, Zhu Youjian said, regarding the problem of insufficient silver dollars:
“We should encourage craftsmen to invent coin-making machines and offer them rewards such as titles of nobility.”

"Also, I will have the Royal Bank set up a mint and gather the craftsmen in the inner court and the gold and silver craftsmen controlled by the Financial Association to help the Ministry of Revenue to forge silver dollars."

"We will try to produce 10 million of them this year and then launch them in Beijing."

"First, start with officials. Change the silver in the official salary to silver dollars. The banknotes in the salary should be gradually changed to silver yuan coupons."

When Dong Yingju heard this, he was both surprised and happy.

Because this means that the emperor will increase the salaries of officials.

The actual salaries received by officials in the current Ming Dynasty are far lower than their nominal salaries.

One of the reasons is that part of the salary was converted into cash.

Although the amount of banknotes obtained after folding is large, it generally ranges from several hundred to several thousand strings of cash.

In reality, they are all waste paper and cannot be spent at all.

So when Dong Yingju heard that the emperor wanted to change the banknotes into silver yuan coupons, he immediately said happily:

"If so, there should be no obstacles to the issuance of silver yuan notes."

"The face value of the silver dollar certificate should also be guaranteed. It should be able to be exchanged for a sufficient amount of silver coins and can also be used to pay taxes."

Having experienced the pain of the treasure notes becoming waste paper once, Ming officials would never want the silver yuan notes they received to become waste paper like the treasure notes.

Therefore, Dong Yingju no longer mentioned the issue of issuing more silver yuan notes, but believed that the value of the silver yuan notes must be maintained.

For the sake of their own salaries, officials would supervise the issuance of silver yuan notes and curb their over-issuance.

Zhu Youjian's intention was the same, using his connections with officials to protect the silver dollar notes.

If there was a problem with the silver dollar notes, all officials would suffer losses. He did not believe that the officials of the court would be so upset about this.

At the same time, in order to appease the officials, he deliberately sighed:
"It's a pity that the court has insufficient revenue and cannot directly change the salaries of officials from shi to silver dollars."

"Now we can only follow the old method and convert the salary into silver dollars."

"In the future, when Liaodong is pacified, disasters are alleviated, and the court has sufficient income, Dong Qing and the officials of the Ministry of Revenue must remember to remind me to change the salaries of officials into silver."

"In addition to the salary determined according to the official rank, the salary for the position actually held and the honors awarded to the Lords must also be paid."

"In the future, officials who do practical work and have made meritorious contributions should be able to enjoy double or even triple salaries, and should not live a hard life like Hai Rui."

"We must ensure that all those who are willing to be honest officials can do so with legal income."

This sigh moved Dong Yingju even more.

Because the emperor really cared about the treatment of his officials.

In fact, many Ming Dynasty scholars encountered a dilemma after becoming officials:

That is, if they were to be honest officials like Hai Rui, the meager nature of their salaries would make their lives very poor.

Many officials could no longer endure it and had to give up and engage in corruption.

As a result, some acts of corruption have even become commonplace, becoming a well-known form of corruption in official circles.

In this way, all officials were guilty of original sin, so that when Wei Zhongxian persecuted his political enemies in the name of recovering stolen money, he could always find a reason.

Many honest officials feel deeply ashamed of this.

But there are also some officials who, after getting used to taking bribes, fall into the abyss of corruption.

When Dong Yingju thought of this, he couldn't help but shed tears.

I don’t know whether I was sad for those corrupt officials or was thinking of my past self.

If the imperial court had increased the salaries earlier, would the fate of some corrupt officials have changed?
This reaffirmed his determination to pacify Liaodong. He wanted to complete the suppression of the rebellion and disaster relief as soon as possible so that he would have enough money to pay the officials.

Not only should the number of stones be changed into silver dollars, but they should also be given double or triple salaries as the emperor had said.

Ensure that every official can earn a decent living through legal income. (End of this chapter)