Late Tang

In Shamen Town, ever since Li Jing held a banquet on the night of Shangyuan Festival, hosted hundreds of business representatives on the island, and performed a swordsmanship in public at the banquet, the new business management regulations began to be enforced on the island. Come.

More than 1000 shops on the island, hundreds of warehouses, shopkeepers, shopkeepers, craftsmen, guards, and wharf workers are all forced to go to the registration points temporarily set up in various wharves, villages, towns, and streets. Register your name and receive your ID card.

The newly expanded reconnaissance capital has 200 people. Under the leadership of the two generals Li Wei and Xuan Cheng, the Shaobing Island with the Pearl Gate Waterway sandwiched between them was used as the training base for the reconnaissance capital. Zidao serves as the two secondary bases, and the three affiliated islands of Shamen Town are fully guarded and defended by reconnaissance.

After the expansion of the military police, they immediately divided the more than 50 troops into four divisions according to Li Jing's instructions, and took over the four wharves of Fenghuangshan Wharf, Shikou Wharf, Taishan Wharf, and Beishan Wharf, and established garrisons on the wharf. fortress.In addition, Li Jing also organized a city management team and a city guard team. The former is responsible for round-the-clock inspections of all villages and streets on the island, and is responsible for security inspections. If there is nothing to do, they will check the business licenses of shops and shop assistants. Their identity card, temporary residence card.The city guard team is composed of some elderly people and women over [-] years old, and is responsible for garbage sanitation on the island.

Of course, none of this comes for free.No matter which one it is, Li Jing has formulated a clear charging standard.

In just a few days, all the expenses were added up, and Li Jing successfully collected an average of ten pennies from each shop.There are nearly [-] shops, warehouses and workshops on the island, and [-] cash has been received for this item alone.In addition, after taking over the four piers, the daily income of the piers is not small. On average, each ship boards and leaves the piers, at least a consistent fee, and now all the loading and unloading tasks on the piers are covered by Li Jing, specially designated for The newly formed dock handling team.The people in the loading and unloading team were originally peasants on the wharf. They worked hard all the year round, but they often worked hard, but they didn't make much money, and their lives were hard.Li Jing organized all these people and set up a loading and unloading team.

All the loading and unloading work on the dock is contracted by the dock, and then reasonably arranged for all dock workers.The price of cargo loading and unloading has increased a lot compared with the past, the work is less than before, and the wages are more than before.Although the ships entering the dock were somewhat dissatisfied, and the loading and unloading costs had increased a lot, but now that the dock was completely in the hands of Shamen Town, they had no other choice at all.

The money and silk were collected like water. Every day, the four wharves transported boxes and trucks of copper coins and silk cloth back to the town.Looking at the boxes of copper coins and bolts of silk cloth, Zhang Hong's smile never stopped.

Shamen Town finally has a stable income, and it is no longer the situation of sitting and eating mountains and nothing in the past.He, the big butler, finally felt a burst of relief.

When you have money, you can do things easily.

Last time, Wang Jin and Feng Zhang were blackmailed for a large sum of money, and those pirate heads were used and sold for a large sum of money. After calculation, Feng Zhang got [-] coins and [-] sets of equipment.Wang Jin also harvested a lot there, extorting [-] yuan of money, and there is also a complete underground workshop, which is not counting the money confiscated by the shops and warehouses of the Wang family.Those heads were also sold by Li Jing for almost [-] guan.This time, they got another [-] coins from merchants on the island.

After doing the math, there were actually 17 yuan in income.Adding in the 22 guan money confiscated after the war and the remaining [-] guan after disbursement of pensions, Shamen Town has a full [-] guan in its account.For the first time, there was no deficit in the account of the town general's mansion.

Without those bright red pen deficits, Zhang Hong felt like a few mountains were missing from his head.The whole person is also brisk, and the smile is always there, and I even have to drink an extra bowl of porridge in the morning.

"General, we now have 22 yuan in cash in our account. It is not a problem to put such a large amount of money. Even if the money for building the city is removed, there is still a lot of surplus. In my opinion, we might as well put away the money now." Pay back the [-] usury loan owed to the Han family. This debt always makes people feel panicked and uneasy. No debt is light, so don’t worry about it.” Zhang Hong took the account book and followed Li Jing said behind.

Li Jing had just come out of the military academy and was discussing some construction matters with several craftsmen at the construction site of the southern city.Hearing what Zhang Hong said, he couldn't help but frowned.Zhang Hong's financial management is indeed very attentive, but there is a shortcoming, too small peasant consciousness.Usually the town general's mansion uses two coins, but he is always reluctant to pick and choose, wishing to turn a copper coin into two petals.

Just like now, the town general's mansion managed to collect a few extra dollars, and with some spare money, the first thing he thought about was to pay off the debt.

This kind of thinking is normal in this era, and it is an idea that will live.But for Li Jing, who came from later generations, such an idea is too backward.What is debt-free?For Li Jing who came from later generations, he owed as much as he could, and the debtor was the grandson who was the creditor.Which of the corporate groups in later generations would not try their best to obtain bank loans, and the more the better?Doing business with bank money is called a white wolf with empty gloves.

Li Jing deeply agrees with this financial concept. From the first day he asked the Han family to borrow money, he never thought about how to repay the borrowed money in the future.Although it can't be said that Li Jing had made up his mind to not repay the debt from the beginning, but to Li Jing, he was not afraid of borrowing money, but he was afraid that he would not be able to borrow money.Although there is interest in borrowing money, as long as it works well, that interest is nothing at all, even if it is high interest.

"There are still three years left for the Han family's money. Why are you so anxious to pay it back? Now, the interest is still so much. It's better to wait until it's due." Li Jing said with a bit of resentment. , "Besides, do you think we are really rich now, and we will not be short of money in the future?"

Li Jing spread out his hands and counted with Zhang Hong's fingers one by one, "This new city is urgently needed to be built. We had no money before, so we had to build the city wall first. Now that we have money, you can't Let everyone live in the diwozi outside the city all the time? It’s okay if it’s colder now, but when the spring starts and there’s more rain, how can people live in the diwozi? Now that we have money, the construction plan of the new city You have to follow suit, the city walls and residential areas must be started at the same time."

"We have recruited almost all young and strong men into the army this time. Although there are many people on the island, there is a serious shortage of strong men. My plan is to recruit another group of young men from Taishan Village and Beishan Village. Strong come to build the city, and you can also go to the hometown of our soldiers and craftsmen to recruit another group of people. My idea is to recruit only young and strong this time, and don’t let them bring their families here for the time being. The more the number, the better , within three thousand, we can all digest it.”

After this expansion of the army, the number of soldiers on the island reached more than 4000. The families that Li Jing brought were almost all soldiers, and all the young and strong were recruited at once.Except for a small number of teenagers and old people, almost all of Xiucheng and workshops are women.The demand for young and strong men on the island suddenly became huge, and Li Jing had to start preparing to recruit a group of relatives and fellow villagers of the soldiers from Qingning Township.

"The construction period of the new city is tight, and the manpower must be increased. I have already prepared to spend [-] yuan for the first phase of the construction of the city wall and city defenses, as well as the residential area." Li Jing said: "In addition, we have newly expanded more than [-] soldiers and horses. , There is still a huge gap in weapons. Although more than a thousand sets of equipment were seized last time, and hundreds of sets were obtained from Salmon Island, but all in all, our current equipment is only enough for half a third of the way. One’s war barracks. In addition to the one thousand sets of equipment that are about to be bought from the governor of Song Dynasty, even the war barracks can barely be equipped.”

"In addition, the equipment of the auxiliary barracks adapted this time needs to be specially made. More than 1000 rifles, round shields, helmets, horizontal knives, and battle robes. These are not small expenses. In addition, we also need to build catapults, heavy Heavy weapons such as crossbows cost money. Although we now have craftsmen who can make them ourselves, the cost is cheaper, but the materials also cost money."

Li Jing estimated that it would cost at least 4000 yuan to equip the new army of more than [-] people.

In addition to equipment money, the monthly consumption and food expenditure of the new army of more than 4000 people is also a large sum of money. Each person has two liters of rice a day, and more than 300 people have to consume more than [-] shi of grain per day, which is [-] shi of grain per month.If you add the monthly food subsidies to the soldiers and the food subsidies for the soldiers' families, you will have two or three thousand shi.And the salary of each soldier is tens of thousands of guan a month.

This is all money. Although recruiting soldiers is simple, a team of more than 4000 people was pulled up at once.But it is not easy to train them, not to mention that it is difficult to form an army without long-term training, just the equipment money for arming them, as well as consumption, food and wages, etc. add up to an astronomical figure.

There is a lot of money extorted from Wang Jin and the others, but this is not something that can be obtained often.

Although Zhang Hong, Lin Wei, etc. have proposed to Li Jing whether to lower the standard of food and pay for the soldiers, but this one was rejected by Li Jing.The soldiers were licking blood on the tip of their knives and fighting the front line with their lives. If they didn't even have basic food and pensions and rewards, then where would the morale come from? Who would be willing to work hard.The combat effectiveness will inevitably decline, and even military discipline will disappear.

Zhang Hong felt that there was a lot of money in the account of more than 20 yuan, but Li Jing felt that he was short of money everywhere.Li Jing rubbed his forehead, it seems that he has to find a way to get some more money, should he start with the merchants on the island and then squeeze some money out, or think of other ways?

(To be continued)