Win the Ding 1617

() "Huang Baimu's case is difficult!"

In the original main hall of the Ruan family, several high-ranking figures of the South China Army, headed by Shou Han, sat around a stove, turning over the sweet potatoes, corn and other crops that had just been transported from the mountains, so that these crops could be heated. Uniform, while discussing Huang Baimu's paper.

Huang Baimu's claim is actually very simple.

Wealth and honor do not return to their hometown, like a night walk in brocade.This is a common problem among Chinese people. People who work and study outside have to act like successful people when they return to their hometowns, otherwise they will be considered the best example of "things leave their hometowns, nobles leave their hometowns, and humble people".

What's more, Huang Baimu and others were the first group of people to enjoy the various preferential policies of Shouhan. After several years of hard work, they already had hundreds of acres of paddy fields and nearly a thousand acres of forests. Thousands of shi of rice, hundreds of altars of vegetable oil and meat oil, hundreds of catties of bacon and dried fish hanging from the beams, cows tied in the stalls, and pigs fed, wearing fine cotton cloth, and waists. There are often more than ten taels of silver.

In such a situation, Huang Baimu had the idea of ​​returning to his hometown to build the ancestral hall and continue the family tree.

Unexpectedly, as soon as he returned to his hometown in Sanshui, Guangdong, troubles followed one after another.

From Dibao to Sanshui County, officials at all levels, those who can be counted and those who are not, have come here one after another. The slogans are exactly the same, and the fugitives must be severely punished.

Facing the iron chains and iron rulers in the hands of the government officials, Huang Baimu had no choice but to sacrifice the most reluctant but most symptomatic magic weapon, stuffing money.

The dibao came to ask for favors, and stuffed him with five taels of silver and a piece of cotton cloth.

The team leader in the county led a group of yamen servants to congratulate him, two taels of silver per person, a suit of clothing materials, and ten taels of silver for each of the several team leaders.

Several old masters in the yamen each gave 20 taels of embellishing pens, imploring the old master to write to surpass life.

The two adults, Dianshi and Xiancheng, each entrusted the old master's son to pay 100 taels of ice respect on their behalf.

The magistrate grandpa gave a moistening pen of 200 taels of silver, and in return, the grandpa wrote a plaque for Huang's ancestral hall with a stroke of his pen.

After calculating such a mess of various expenses, Huang Baimu found that his hard work in the past few years might not be able to fill the bloody mouths of these officials.

Just now, he was about to flee back to Nanzhong on the grounds that there was not enough money and food to build the ancestral hall. Unexpectedly, the ruffians from the countryside also came to help him.

"Brother Huang, don't you have the money to build the ancestral hall? It doesn't matter, we will lend it to you. I will use your Huang's ancestral hall as collateral for the interest of [-] out of [-] returns!"

Huang Baimu saw that things were not going well, and if he didn't leave, he might lose his life in his hometown, so he endured the humiliation and endured the pain, and used the excuse of borrowing money to discuss with the old and young in the family as a tactic to delay the army, and won a few days for himself. time.

In the past few days, Lianye fled Guangdong with a few young people from the clan who wanted to work hard in Nanzhong.

When I arrived at home, I took stock of the food and money spent on this trip, and the money and food spent in just a few months turned out to be more than a thousand taels.This is still a number, and those scattered expenses are even more.

After thinking about it for a while, Huang Baimu felt that he couldn't swallow the bad breath no matter what, so he bravely wrote a pleading paper and went to the gate of the general's mansion to file a complaint.

His idea is also extremely simple. I pay the food and taxes on time every year, and pay various taxes every time I do business. Now that I have been bullied and blackmailed, the General’s Mansion will come out to make decisions for me. .

"This is the reason why this case is difficult to handle. Recently, many old settlers have returned to their hometowns to visit relatives, and by the way, do things like ancestral halls and genealogy. There are many things like Huangbaimu. We must Give these people a reasonable and legitimate result. If it is a matter within our jurisdiction, it will be easy to handle. Send these officials to the law enforcement office to deal with it according to the law. However, the officialdom of Guangdong and Guangxi is the same as ours. If I want to pursue it carefully, I'm afraid I'll burn myself." While peeling the sweet potatoes, Li Peilin expounded his opinion on this case.

"I think this is an opportunity." Shou Han took a bite of the baked potato that had blossomed.He sighed, and mumbled his own opinion in his mouth.

"Firstly, it will allow the old settlers everywhere to realize how different those officials are from our officials, thereby enhancing their loyalty and sense of identity. Secondly, it is also an opportunity for us to attack Guangdong and Guangxi!"

"Tap!" The sweet potato in Peilin's hand fell to the ground.

"My lord, do you mean that if you want to take advantage of the new king's first accession to the throne, will you use troops against Guangdong and Guangxi?"

"There are some things that don't necessarily require a knife or a gun."

Shou Han happily took a bite of the potato in his hand.

"That's right! I went to the governor's yamen of Guangdong and Guangxi. Li Fengjie took a lot of benefits from us. A mere county magistrate invited the Emperor Sword and Wang Ming Banner to kill him, so what?" Li Peiting The playboy's temper flared up again.

"Second brother! Let me ask you, what criminal evidence do you have for the Sanshui county magistrate? Excuse me, did he make any mistakes in ordering the fugitives according to the Ming Law? Does he have any evidence of blackmailing the people under his rule?"

A few questions from Peilin made Li Peiting hesitate.

"Second Brother, not long ago, during Emperor Daxing's funeral, Ye Qi wrote a letter back from Jiangnan, and described such an incident in the letter." Shouhan began to teach the two brothers-in-law.

In Suzhou, people were surprised to find overnight that the price of goods in the city had changed a lot, and it became more and more difficult to do business.

Compared with the previous few days, all kinds of goods placed in the market seem to be much cheaper, but no one cares about them.

Merchants are also worrying. For some reason, their gold and silver positions suddenly seem to be short.

After several days, as some big families took out the gold and silver from their cellars and took this opportunity to absorb valuable goods to buy field shops, the turmoil gradually subsided into nothingness.Only then did people find out the reasons for this crisis.

The shops of several Shanxi merchants ended their business in Suzhou. After cleaning up all the accounts, they shipped 10 taels of gold and silver from the shops back to Shanxi.All of a sudden, there was a shortage of gold and silver circulating in the Suzhou market, which caused this disturbance.

After listening to Shou Han tell what Ye Qi had seen and heard, all the people present were thoughtful.What kind of problem does this kind of thing explain? Everyone is quickly searching for the answer they think is appropriate in their minds.

"I'll talk about another thing next."

This matter is related to the Spaniards and Portuguese of Gonzalez and Alfonso. "The Spaniards conquered the Quartet, allowing the royal family to acquire overseas territories dozens of times larger than the mainland. The gold, silver and wealth accumulated by the natives from generation to generation were all owned by the royal family and nobles. However, the inflow of a large number of gold and silver goods did not It made Spain peaceful from now on, and people cheered and sang, but it caused a huge disaster. In a short period of time, prices rose five times! In order to prevent the situation from getting worse, the Spanish royal family took a series of rules: began to use iron fists to prevent The outflow of gold and silver kept them in the country and prohibited their export; however, due to the excess of gold and silver, it caused a relative shortage of various materials, and attributed the reason to the export of goods to overseas territories. Then it was ordered to prohibit the export of Spanish goods to overseas territories After several times of tossing, the economy and people's livelihood in Spain have withered. There is not much gold and silver in the treasury, but the life of the people is not without hardship. You have seen Gonzalez, Alfonso Na How do people spend a lot of money in the market, they are afraid that one day they will never be able to buy such cheap and high-quality goods with the gold and silver in their hands, and will never be able to enjoy such delicious food and wine again!"

Less money is not enough, more money is more troublesome.This kind of paradox made the Li family brothers, Fu Bo, Wu Laolang and others feel as if they had fallen into the mist, but there seemed to be some vague light in front of them to guide them.

"My lord, what you said just now seems to have a lot of coincidences with what was explained in Guan Zhong's "Guanzi" back then!" Wu Laolang, who was born as a scholar, seemed to have touched a little bit.

"Everyone, if we want to attack Guangdong and Guangxi, can we also follow the example of the sages?"

"My lord, do you want to use Guanzi's tactics against Chu to deal with Guangdong and Guangxi?" Wu Laolang's eyes shone with green light, as if just like his nickname, he really looked like a wild wolf.

"That's right! The deer of Lu State is the deer of Chu State!" Li Peilin, who often told Shou Han a subset of classics and history, also understood at this time.

On the contrary, Fu Bo and Li Peiting, who didn't read much, were still a little confused.

It was inevitable that Wu Laolang would explain such a tactic to the two of them.

Qi State and Lu State are close neighbors. In order to destroy Lu State, Qi State, under the unified organization of Guan Zhong, set off a craze for wearing Lu State's special product, but ordered in the country to strictly prohibit the planting of mulberry trees.At the same time, in order to meet the domestic demand for this kind of high-grade silk fabrics, Qi State Minister Guan Zhong ordered that the merchants of Lu State sell [-] horses of rice to Qi State and get [-] gold.Sell ​​[-] horses and get [-].So the price of Ti desperately went up.The people of the state of Lu felt that it was profitable, so they all gave up farming and started weaving rice paddies.Soon, the domestic grain fields became barren.The state of Lu ran out of food, and if they wanted to ask the state of Qi to buy it, they had to accept the conditions of the state of Qi.If you buy from other countries.The state of Qi blocked the food passages, and immediately made the monarch of the state of Lu very miserable. Guan Zhong easily subdued the state of Lu, and asked for help from the state of Qi honestly, and obeyed the mercy of the state of Qi. (Does it look familiar? Today's bald eagles often use this trick.)

As for the purchase of deer by the state of Chu, it is even more sinister.

In the state of Chu, it was regarded as a carnivorous animal. You can buy a deer for two copper coins. Among the merchants in the state of Qi, it became a favorite ornamental animal of Duke Huan of Qi, and the price rose rapidly to five copper coins.Such a price soon shocked the entire Chu State, but soon the price rose to [-] copper coins a head.Farmers in the state of Chu saw that the price of a deer was worth tens of thousands of catties of grain, which was very profitable, so they put down their agricultural tools one after another, picked up hunting tools and went to the deep mountains to hunt deer.In the dense forest, there are peasant brothers from Chu State everywhere.Later, even the officers and soldiers of Chu State changed their weapons into hunting gear and went secretly to hunt deer in the deep mountains.In this year, large tracts of land in Chu State were abandoned, but copper coins were poured in.As a result, the fate of the State of Lu once again fell on the head of the State of Chu.Guan Zhong ordered the prohibition of grain trade with Chu.At the same time, the vassal states also received a unified order issued by Duke Huan of Qi, strictly prohibiting the grain trade between the vassal states and the state of Chu.Now the people of Chu State are miserable, the price of food is skyrocketing, and copper coins cannot be eaten.The king of Chu panicked and sent people to buy grain everywhere, but they were all stopped by the state of Qi.The refugees from Chu State who fled to Qi State amounted to four-tenths of the country's population.

As a result, the state of Chu was in turmoil. In desperation, the king of Chu had no choice but to send envoys to seek peace with Duke Huan of Qi, acknowledging the hegemony of Qi.

"However, there are neither deer nor rice in Guangdong and Guangxi!" Pei Ting still didn't react.

"I told you a long time ago, don't walk around Mazhangtai Hulu and pheasant every day, but read more books, but you just refuse to listen! Who told you to copy the original? You must know that doing business is the same as using soldiers to fight wars. Using them It’s wonderful to have one heart. In the same Thirteenth Chapter of Sun Tzu, there are Zhuge who uses soldiers like gods, and there are Zhao Kuo and Ma Di who can only talk about war on paper!" (Zhao Kuo cried pitifully, when I was reading military books, there was no paper OK?!)

"The chief historian is right. Shopkeeper Li must not be good at reading. Did he use the few books issued by the general's mansion as pillows?" Shou Han half-truthfully teased Pei Ting.

"Guanzi" which tells about Guan Zhong's theory, "Sunzi" which is respected as a classic of military strategists, "Mozi" which tells about the ideological system and craftsmanship of Mohism, and "Han Feizi" which tells about the way of Legalism are all printed uniformly by the General's Mansion as A must-read book for officials, the "Analects of Confucius", which is so highly regarded that it is said that half of the Analects governs the world, is poorly listed as a selected publication.

"Qi has the benefits of fish and salt, which can be used to destroy the economy and people's livelihood of other countries. Compared with the mainland, what we have is not the benefits of fish and salt." Shou Han began to conduct heuristic teaching.

"Everyone, you can think about it, what advantages do we have compared with Guangdong, Guangxi and Fujian?"

"The above-mentioned three provinces have narrow land and dense population, and there are not many grain-producing areas. Our Nanzhong has a lot of fertile land, which can attract people who have no land and little land to cultivate wasteland in our Nanzhong. This will increase the population and fields of our Nanzhong."

"Okay! What Uncle Fu said is one, it is one of our goals, to attract refugees to cultivate wasteland."

"Guan Zhong uses purchases. We can use our rice, ironware, cotton cloth, etc. to sell to Guangdong and Guangxi."

Wu Laolang is in charge of the tax department, so he is naturally familiar with the export situation.A large number of businessmen from Guangdong, Guangxi and Fujian went to the Nanzhong area at all costs, just for the cheap rice here.

"I did some calculations below. Right now, in our South Central Army, we have 500 million mu of paddy fields and 820 mu of six parts per year, excluding mountains, dry fields, and ponds. The registered population is more than 50 million people. If you add laborers and official slaves who work in various places, at least [-] people will be added. The annual harvest of rice is about [-] million tons. According to the principle proposed by the master to eat three meals a day, except In addition to the surplus grain kept by the farmers themselves, there is also a lot of grain consumed in road construction, mining, wharfs, steel mills, textile mills, and the army. There are at least ten million tons of rice accumulated over the years in Cang and Siwucang.”

Although Forber is old, the numbers in his mind are still very clear.A series of numbers were announced, which immediately made everyone present smile.

Right now, there are only 800 million people eating food in the entire territory, and I have nearly 800 million tons of rice storage alone, which means that each person eats a thousand catties of grain every year, (including fish, meat, eggs, etc. variety), the food stored is enough to feed these [-] million people for several years!

"These grains, as well as the various oils we reserve, mainly vegetable oil, are the materials we sell in large quantities to Guangdong, Guangxi and Fujian."

"And salt!"

Pei Ting added to Shou Han that he knew the price of salt in the mountainous areas of Fujian.

"Salt, naturally you can have as much as you want." Shou Han said lightly, "Now let's discuss, what price should we use to sell rice to the three provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi and Fujian?"

In the past, it was sold to Guangxi, but it was a kind of sale with the meaning of benefit transfer, and each stone of rice was only five yuan. What kind of market is the rice in Guangdong now?Not to mention, when Emperor Wanli was alive, the price of rice was seven cents to one tael. In the past few years, there have been floods, droughts, locusts, hailstorms and windstorms everywhere. The grain production in various places has been reduced, and the price of rice has also skyrocketed. , This is why He Shijin, Li Fengjie and others are unwilling to turn against the Nanzhong Army. Once the Nanzhong Army is torn apart, and the Nanzhong Army no longer supplies cheap rice to their privately controlled rice consumption and grain stores, where will they go? Looking for this injection of money?

"In the past, we sold it for five yuan and one stone, but now it is at least two to three yuan more than this!" Pei Ting said whenever he thought of it. "The year before last, in the sixth year of the Apocalypse, the price of rice in Liaodong reached as much as two taels per stone!"

"The rice we sell is expensive, and the price is the same as the local rice. Who will buy it?" Pei Lin reprimanded his younger brother in a serious tone, "Don't only have money in your eyes!"

"What the second brother said is not unreasonable. We sell it at a low price, and the price of buying from various places is bound to be lowered. There is a danger of cheap grain hurting farmers, like this!"

Shou Han proposes a workaround.

"In the past, five renminbi a stone refers to the price of delivery, and the freight is included in it. Now we remove the item of freight, and the FOB price of each dan of rice in Nanzhong is five renminbi a stone. If there is no ship If we ship it ourselves, we have to add shipping costs on top of that.”

Several people calculated silently in their hearts. If calculated according to this standard, the cost of adding one qian per stone of rice at most, compared with the crazy rice price in the mainland, still has a great advantage and competitiveness.

"In addition, the Hu Cao discussed and brought up a charter. For the farmers who sell grain, in order to prevent the farmers from being hurt by the price of grain, see what incentives are given. For example, with the grain sales certificate and the household registration, you can use the reward price Buy all kinds of wrought iron, nine-turn steel farm tools, pesticides, fertilizers, etc."

The eyes of several people were filled with joy when they heard this. In this way, the products of Hanyuan Company, Iron and Steel Plant, Chemical Workshop, etc. have found buyers, and farmers everywhere have pure iron farm tools, so they can cultivate More grain fields, more grain harvested, at worst, a lot less labor is needed per unit area of ​​land, and a lot of people can be freed up to use elsewhere.

This is not to seek justice for the grievances suffered by the reclamation people, this is clearly to lay a solid foundation for Nanzhong's industrial and agricultural production to a higher level!Several people couldn't help but fell into some imaginings about a better future in the future.

"Now, in order to achieve this goal, everyone divides the work into one task. Calculate our transportation capacity, the storage capacity of the warehouses and warehouses of each port, and order the Hanyuan Company to organize a planned and step-by-step purchase of the stored grain in various places. The objects of the acquisition are mainly rice for two to three years. Order the steel factory to quickly manufacture a batch of water mill accessories to turn rice into rice. Relying on the original stone water mill is not enough!"

"Only by implementing these tasks can we carry out targeted sales activities for rice, oil, salt, ironware, and cloth in Guangdong, Guangxi and Fujian!"

"Today," the guard on duty who guarded Han Ming took the almanac and looked it over carefully, "It's the three-month day since the death of Emperor Daxing. On November 22, the seventh year of Tianqi, we are scheduled to start from the twelfth lunar month." , to prepare for the cargo color, the salt factory, the rice mill, the steel factory, the Tonghe dyeing workshop, and send additional manpower within this month. It is necessary to drive out at least 150 people on New Year's Day next year, which is the first year of Chongzhen. Wanshi rice and other related goods come out."

Following Shou Han's instructions, various departments became busy.

Hufang came up with an incentive method for farmers to sell surplus grain, clearly stipulating that every time a certain amount of surplus grain is sold, farmers will get the standard of buying iron farm tools and nine-turn steel farm tools at the reward price. If you don’t want to buy farm tools, then, A variety of industrial products will also be available for you to choose: exquisite printed and dyed cloth, dyed cloth, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, horse-drawn carriages needed for farming, etc. are all exciting.

People in the iron and steel factory used wrought iron and nine-turn steel to manufacture water-milled metal components for rice mills, which not only speeded up the rice milling speed, but also made the rice whiter and more refined.In addition, according to Shou Han's request, the two small blast furnaces are kept day and night, and people do not stop the furnaces.A large amount of wrought iron was transported to the vicinity of various ports, ready to be shipped away.

Even the Salt Company and the sugar mill are in full swing. Batches of salt and sugar as white as snow are loaded into tightly closed wooden barrels according to the standard of [-] catties per barrel. Shipped to the northern region for sale.

On New Year's Day in the first year of Chongzhen, amidst bursts of celebration firecrackers, several lucky boats left the dock, loaded with rice, ironware, cotton cloth, sugar, salt, etc., and headed for Guangzhou.

The dumping operation against Guangdong, Guangxi and Fujian, which was named "Qi Chu" by Shou Han, kicked off.

However, the changes in the situation brought about by these ships were beyond Shou Han's expectation.