Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 586 Money Shortage and Bills ([-])

On May 1647, 5, Fort Singjae (the town of Pedro Osorio on the banks of the Pilatini River in later generations, named after the Scouts severely injured the Guarani people here).

Zhu Heng was riding on the back of a Laschek horse, walking unsteadily on the rugged mountain road.It can be seen that if the mount under his buttocks is not a Bulgarian Raschek horse that is good at walking on mountain roads, it may be difficult to walk fast in this terrain.

Shengjie Fort is built in this rolling hills, and a brick-red building group stands out against the green leaves.There is a meandering river at the front and back of the brick-red buildings, and the neatly planned fields are on the banks of the river.

"It's a rare piece of mountain depression, but it's so organized and neat. The government here is well-organized and the government and the people are united, but it's much better than Daming." Master Zhu Heng Zhu, who is over fifty years old, sighed softly, Said.Although he has immigrated to the east coast for several years, Zhu Heng still regards himself as a Ming person consciously or unconsciously.Often when I wake up in the morning, I will feel in a daze that I am still in Qingzhou City.Homeland feelings, does it mean that you can let go of it?

A stalwart man in his early thirties who was leading the horse for Master Zhu nodded and said, "Although I haven't studied, I can see that the morals of the Ming Dynasty are rotten to the bottom. For our survival, we have to get up and beg for work. The East Bank is much stronger than the world of the old Zhu’s family. Those who share the fields, houses and daughter-in-law for us small people are more righteous to us than the old masters. Although Li Qun is not a good person, I will be able to protect the world on the East Coast! It's a pity that the army thinks I'm too habitual and refuses to recruit me into the army!"

"You are a killer, you are proficient in eating, drinking, whoring, gambling, rape and robbery. What skills do you have in war other than brute strength? The generals of the East Coast Kingdom are not blind. Wouldn't recruiting you into the army ruin the morale of the army? Master Zhu scolded, and said: "Besides, how many catties and taels you have, the old man knew everything outside Qingzhou City that day."

"Hmph, that day we only had hundreds of vanguards rushing to the vicinity of Qingzhou, and we were all exhausted. Mr. Zhu Dashan, you led several times the local soldiers to make a surprise attack, but you were invincible. What is there to brag about!" Hearing Zhu Heng talking about the past, Li Qun immediately turned his head to refute.

It is said that Li Qun was a low-level officer in the Shun Army back then, and followed the Shangguan to Qingzhou to recruit various prefectures and counties. Unexpectedly, he was attacked by more than 1000 landlords and township soldiers led by Zhu Heng and others more than ten miles outside Qingzhou City. There were heavy casualties, and less than half of them escaped successfully, including Li Qun.However, the armed forces of master Zhu and others did not last long. After Zhao Yingyuan led five hundred Shunjun cavalry to Qingzhou, they were defeated in the First World War, and the leaders were either captured or killed. Only Zhu Heng escaped to the countryside of other counties. Hide in the house.

Coincidentally, Li Qun and Zhu Heng, who had even seen each other on the battlefield at that time, came to the East Coast Republic successively by accident and became new immigrants here.Compared with Mr. Zhu Hengzhu, who is full of worries and cherishes his homeland, Liqun, who was born in Henan mud legs, does not have so many messy emotions.He had joined Marshal Mo with Li Zhengang and others, and he had a very good impression of the East Bank. After coming to the mainland, he saw more of the thriving side here. Although he himself has no interest in hard farming, he does not It means that he can't see that the court is really thinking about the lives of ordinary people, so his recognition of this country is still very high.

Seeing Li Qun, the "thief leader", glaring at him, Mr. Zhu, who is in a good mood, just looked at him, smiling and saying nothing.After all, he personally led the army to defeat Li Qun and others back then, and Li Qun and the others were not there when Zhao Yingyuan led the army back to the scene, so Master Zhu still has a little psychological advantage over Li Qun.

However, maybe thinking that both of them have left Daming and came to the East Bank now, Master Zhu lost the interest to continue bickering with Li Qun. He first smiled at himself, and then said in a lonely tone: " It's all in the past, why bring it up. Don't talk about it, don't talk about it. It's meaningless to argue about these things in this foreign country. You and I have known each other for a while. If you have any difficulties in the future, I won't worry about it. Will stand by and watch."

"Who wants your help?" Li Qun muttered something, but he didn't say anything after that, but led the horse and hurried on.There is a small wooden bridge about [-] meters ahead. After crossing the bridge, you will enter the boundary of Shengjiebao.

The two soon came to the small bridge, and there were several militiamen with rifles standing guard at the head of the bridge.After carefully checking the documents of the two, the militiamen waved their hands and let them go, so they came to this settlement with thousands of residents smoothly.

Shengjiebao was established at the beginning of this year. The first batch of immigrants were all from Jinan Prefecture in Shandong Province. There were about 1000 people in total, including about 400 adult men and [-] women of childbearing age.After the merchant ships headed for Europe return, hundreds of Greeks will be relocated here, and there may be a few (one or two hundred) old nationals from the three counties in the south.

The settlement is located on the banks of the Pilatini River and the conditions for agriculture are quite good.However, limited by the late development time and the shortage of manpower, this year only a mere 1 mu of land has been roughly developed here, and only a crop of corn has been planted in time. The harvest is naturally terrible, with an average yield of only 200 catties per mu. , very disappointing.

A special commissioner from the Ministry of Agriculture came here just last week, urging officials of the local township government to promote the three-crop rotation system as soon as possible, and reclaim more wasteland before the end of autumn sowing at the end of this month, so as to achieve food self-sufficiency as soon as possible.However, there are many prerequisites for promoting the three-crop rotation system, the most important of which is the need for a sufficient number of livestock—8-10 cows per family, otherwise the land may not be able to maintain sufficient fertility (lack of manure), and the fallow land There is also nowhere to digest the huge amount of alfalfa grown.

And if you want to get livestock, according to the current domestic situation, buying from the government is the only way out.But now all over the country and counties are vigorously promoting the three-crop crop rotation system, and the demand for livestock has skyrocketed. If a farmer needs 8 livestock, 1 farmers need 8, not to mention the number of farmers in the country. Far more than [-], at least more than [-] (last year's data), this demand is overwhelming.

A while ago, the army fought in La Plata for such a long time, and through overt or covert means tossed for more than half a year, it managed to get more than 5 cattle from there, and half of these cattle went directly to the In the state-owned ranch in Ranch Township, Dongfang County, the capital, less than [-] head were publicly subscribed across the country, and they were sold out quickly. How can there be any extra cattle now?For this reason, the chief officer of Shengjiebao went to the regional administrative office several times, but he only had to come back with a mere [-] emaciated beef cattle that were picked by others, which was not enough at all!What's more, the Northwest Reclamation Bank has not yet set up a branch here, and even if the local farmers want to borrow money to buy cattle, they have no way to go—because they don't have any cash on hand now.

In fact, it is not accurate to say that they have no money on hand, so they just harvested a crop of corn a while ago, and they can sell the corn for cash to buy some beef cattle to raise.And this, the official reason why Master Zhu Heng Zhu came here, is to see if there is a chance to buy grain.

Today, the state has monopolized the monopoly of staple foods (wheat, barley, rice, sorghum, mainly wheat and sorghum), and vigorously cracked down on private grain transactions, but it has not done anything about non-staple foods such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, and corn. Special restrictions, but allow free trade among the people.In fact, with the sharp decline in the sown area of ​​potatoes and sweet potatoes in the east coast (because harvesting is troublesome, mechanized harvesting is not possible and labor-intensive), the production of these grains, which are called "miscellaneous grains" according to the standards of the east coast, has also declined rapidly.Corn is okay because it is easy to harvest, but the sown area of ​​potatoes and sweet potatoes is decreasing at a rate of 10% every year.

This time, Mr. Zhu Heng Zhu raised a huge sum of nearly 3000 yuan from various domestic business partners (all of whom were original attendants)—all of which were white silver dollars.Originally, they had been trading in La Plata wool for almost two years, so they naturally had a lot of circulating funds. When they tried to issue bank acceptance bills in China, this guy resisted all opinions and brought a lot of silver dollars on hand. Go ask people who are very mistrustful of these "broken pieces" to buy.

Especially those Spanish farmers who have accumulated a large amount of bank acceptance bills because they were forced to repurchase their land. Master Zhu Hengzhu received the bills at a discount of [-]% or even [-]% and paid them silver dollars at the same time.For this reason, when he spent all the [-] silver dollars on hand, he already held a one-year bank acceptance bill issued by the Northwest Reclamation Bank with a face value of more than [-] yuan.And Liqun, who was hired by him to come here with him, also held hundreds of yuan of bank acceptance bills. It seemed that the highly speculative people, old and young, were planning to use these bank acceptance bills to buy grain.

The residents of Shengjiebao were naturally very happy to see someone coming to buy grain, because everyone knew that the township government had brought in more than 2000 lean cows, each of which sold for only seven yuan, which was very cheap.But the problem is that everyone lacks enough funds to buy these cattle, which makes many people so worried that they can't eat.So selling part of the harvest for cash seemed the only option.Compared with the purchase price of miscellaneous grains fixed by the government (20 yuan per ton), the purchase price of small businessmen in other places generally rises by about 5% on this basis, and they are also responsible for door-to-door delivery, so these farmers are willing to sell grain to them.

(End of this chapter)