Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 587 Money Shortage and Bills ([-])

Jiang Nanqi tightened his woolen coat, and jumped onto the simple wooden pier of Shengjiebao with his followers.Today's wind is a bit strong, and the temperature has dropped to about [-] or [-] degrees, which heralds the coming of late autumn.

Located in Fort Sejal on the banks of the Pilatini River, the traffic is quite convenient.This river, which originates from the depths of the hills, has a wide surface and abundant water when it reaches the middle and lower reaches. After the "Qingtangjun No. 4" dredger was sent to dredge the few shoals in the river, the entire river The river is now capable of navigating small river steamers, which was crucial to the settlement's construction.

The ship that Jiang Nanqi took was a 72-ton inland river steamer that transported wheat here.Shengjiebao Xinli is less than a year old. According to the national policy, each adult here is subsidized with 30 catties of wheat and two pieces of salted squid per month—this figure will be halved in the second year—all All food and supplies are transported by inland steamboats.

As the newly appointed executive vice president of the Nanyazi Lake District Circuit Court, Jiang Nanqi began to transfer his office to Shengjiebao this month, and will stay here for two months to focus on official business.Some cases in other settlements that were appealed to the district court were also sent to Shengjiebao to be heard by Jiang Nanqi according to the prior plan.

As a deputy regional official, Jiang Nanqi's arrival naturally attracted the attention of local officials.However, these veterans and cadres from Bingtuanbao students are very busy themselves, so they just greeted Jiang Nanqi briefly, sent someone to receive the supplies, and then left the pier to continue organizing the work. .For these new cadres, there is not much substantive benefit to being close to their superiors. After all, the only criterion for their superiors to evaluate them is still the degree of completion and efficiency of the assigned work.The East Coast Republic of China has not been established for a long time, and the atmosphere is still very simple. Everyone still conducts the assessment with real guns and live ammunition, without any sloppy.

About 100 immigrants from Scotland disembarked with Jiang Nanqi. These people were all illegally smuggled from Brazil to the east coast. All of them had worked odd jobs in the East Coast Republic for one to two years. A little Chinese, and some of them also have a little handicraft.At present, they have all obtained official identity certificates, and they are already considered as official residents of the East Coast Republic.More than 20 craftsmen came with them, such as stonemasons, brewers, tailors, cobblers, coopers, weavers and so on.

Some of them voluntarily immigrated to the east coast, but most of them were recruited by people from the east coast in the old continent through various means. On the east coast where even fishhooks had to be imported from the outside world, they came to the east coast by recruiting some craftsmen. It is very cost-effective to manufacture various daily necessities and even industrial and agricultural supplies.After all, collecting some odds and ends of daily necessities from the Old World is not only expensive, but also time-consuming and troublesome.These things are limited in quantity or lack of specialized talents, and the east coast often cannot produce them by themselves. Therefore, it is a very good way to import a large number of handicraftsmen from Europe.

In addition to the ship Jiang Nanqi was on, there were two 35-ton paddle steamers that were eliminated by the inland water transport company.The two ships seemed to have been bought by private individuals, and the six characters "Shunfeng Transportation Company" were painted on the ship's side with lime water.Regarding the origin of this company, Jiang Nanqi is still very clear. Its main shareholders are the leaders of the Zhenhai Shipyard.At the beginning, they raised funds to start this transportation company, but it caused a lot of trouble in China. Finally, they reluctantly got everyone's acquiescence after agreeing to Dongan Company to take 30% of the shares.

After the establishment of the company, it started shipping business in China by purchasing some old paddle steamers that were eliminated by inland water transport companies, and poaching the footholds (sailors and captains) of state-owned enterprises at high prices.Thanks to the increasingly large domestic transportation demand, the company's profits are still quite good.These two small-tonnage paddle steamers are steamships owned by the company, and they are mooring at the pier at the moment, and the dock workers are carrying sacks of corn neatly into the cabin.

And in the open space by the pier, Zhu Heng and Li Qun are leading two illegal immigrants from England to check the corn purchased in bags.They inspected it very carefully and seriously. After all, it is their own business. Can they not care about it?After checking a batch, Zhu Heng took out a few bank acceptance drafts from his hand and handed them over to the farmers who sold the grain.After the peasants get these "broken pieces of paper", they will not hold them for long at all. Like those Europeans, they also have extreme distrust of these acceptance bills, so they will take these bills of exchange to the township government as quickly as possible. , requiring the purchase of beef cattle.

The officials of Shengjiebao never thought that someone would get so many bank acceptances (more than 4000 yuan) so quickly to buy things in their new and remote place in the backcountry.That businessman named Zhu Heng really did a good deal. He exchanged the bank acceptance bills in hand for corn, and then the farmers who had obtained the bills by selling grain quickly took these bills and demanded that they be exchanged for beef cattle.

The officials of the township government were also a little dumbfounded after seeing this situation. The one-year bank acceptance bill issued by the state to alleviate the money shortage and increase the stock of money in the circulation link was actually issued in less than two months. Time returned to the government in dramatic fashion.In the process, the "banknotes" issued by the government returned to their own hands at a speed that exceeded expectations, but the two speculators seemed to have made a fortune (the total profit was more than 15 yuan, and the profit rate exceeded [-]%) ).

However, out of the consideration of maintaining national authority, the officials of Shengjiebao had to admit the validity of the bank acceptance bills brought by the farmers, so they quickly sold [-] cows and harvested [-] cows. A bill of more than one hundred yuan.But they were obviously dissatisfied with the two speculators, one big and one small, so when an official was on the pier just now, he asked Jiang Nanqi straightforwardly whether the two businessmen could be tried for the crime of "speculation" imprison?

Jiang Nanqi vetoed the official's proposal as a matter of course, and warned these single-minded officials in a stern tone: the country is currently experiencing a serious money shortage, and the lack of currency in the market has greatly affected the national economy. Everywhere.In the case that the Ministry of Finance is also extremely short of precious metals such as gold and silver, it seems that the currency needed to maintain the normal operation of the economy can only be supplemented by issuing banknotes.The one-year bank acceptance bill that the country is currently promoting is obviously a prelude and warm-up for the issuance of banknotes. Maybe after a few years, ten years or even decades, when the public starts to pay attention to banknotes After a certain degree of acceptance, the East Coast government can fully promote banknotes as the only legally circulated currency in the country.As for gold and silver, they can be traded as commodities, but they can no longer exist as currencies.

Jiang Nanqi also euphemistically told the officials of Shengjiebao that instead of taking down Zhu Heng and Li Qun for various reasons, they had to publicize the deeds of these two people, and publicize the legality and integrity of bank acceptance bills from the side. authoritative.After all, what the two of them are currently doing is actually positive for the promotion and circulation of bank acceptance bills.Any kind of banknotes that can be circulated stably for a long time in the world has never been issued but not received. If such banknotes cannot be recycled by the issuing agency and can only be circulated among the people, then it will definitely depreciate repeatedly and will eventually be hated by everyone. out of circulation.The one-year bank acceptance draft issued by the East Bank government is of course not a military ticket-like tool for plundering, so the township government must recognize and accept this "paper currency"!

Zhu Heng and Li Qun, two daring speculators, finally received a total of nearly 35 tons of corn in Shengjiebao, enough for the two 21-ton inland river transport ships to transport them back and forth three times.The purchase price of these 26 tons of corn is around 27 yuan/ton, but after being transported to the port of Racha, they can be sold to the Dutch at a price of 3-4 yuan/ton.If some labor, transportation, tax and other costs are removed, it is not a problem to earn 15-[-] yuan per ton of corn, and the net profit should be around [-]%, which is quite good.And if everyone knew that the large number of bank acceptances held by these two people were actually bought by them in various settlements at a price of [-]% or [-]% off the face value, they would probably vomit even more blood.

But this is basically a one-shot deal, and this is the only chance.When the circulation of bank acceptance bills in the domestic market becomes more and more clear, and its value and authority will be recognized by people, then who will sell the so-called "paper" on hand to others at a low price?It's impossible!

Therefore, after finishing this ticket, Zhu Heng and the two of them are not going to continue to engage in such little tricks.They decided to invest a large amount of money in exchange for selling food to the Dutch in La Plata, and buy the Spanish livestock they looted from the Kelandi and Gauchos there, and then think about it. Ways to ship it back to the country for sale.Now that domestic demand for livestock is so hot, even if you can't buy enough beef cattle, just buying some goats and sheep from those Kelandi people and selling them back to China will still make you a fortune!After all, the huge shortage of livestock caused by the promotion of the three-crop rotation system has clearly shown to everyone that the livestock trade will never lose money.

After dismissing some officials of Shengjiebao, Jiang Nanqi also entered his office with his entourage, opened the files one by one, and began to analyze and deal with the case.

PS: My brother was stuck in traffic for seven hours on the eleventh road before returning home, and then went to a relative's house to have engagement wine, and then he had to try on clothes, take wedding photos, his wife's birthday, and so on.I haven't coded in the past few days, so I will stay up all night and take the time to code, and try to keep updating as much as possible. Forgive everyone, if there is a broken update, I will make it up later.

(End of this chapter)