Ming Dynasty man

Chapter 141 Issuing Banknotes
"No problem, I will move the supplies from the military warehouse to the mountain when I go back." Sun Meng laughed.

After thinking for a while, Sun Meng smiled and said, "Brother, I brought all the tiger squat cannons in the guard up the mountain, so why don't you equip Daqing with twenty new cannons? It's best to replace the weapons of the brothers under Daqing with Our new musket."

Li Jing thought for a while and said, "There's no rush, let's make arrangements after they arrive at Wudaoling!"

Sun Meng nodded, knowing that he was a little impatient. Even on the mountain, these new weapons can only be equipped by regular soldiers. How can they be easily spread to the outside world?

After more than a year, the original Suifa gun designed by Li Jing has taken another step forward under the hard work of Zhao Shuangxi and others. The previous front-loading gun was completely replaced by the rear-loading gun.

In fact, the Ming Dynasty also began to use Suifa guns a few years later. Judging from the firearm technology of Suifa guns alone, Li Jing was not a few years ahead of this era.

Even if the front mount is changed to the rear mount, it only speeds up the shooting a little.

But when the mechanical equipment designed by Li Jing was manufactured, more advanced weapons appeared, and this was a quick-fire gun that could fire bullets.

The manufacturing idea for bullets is actually entirely derived from shells.

At the beginning, Li Jing changed the guns of the artillery shells into shell shells, which improved the technical performance of the artillery. So when making muskets, Zhao Shuangxi and others considered whether the muskets could also use the guns to fire ammunition.

But the guns used to make muskets are actually different from the guns used to make cannonballs. Cannonballs are much larger than bullets. Even if there are flaws in some places, they can be repaired and improved manually.

However, the inner diameter of the musket is much smaller than that of the barrel, and the sub-gun is correspondingly smaller. It is completely impossible to mass-produce such a small thing by hand.

However, when equipment such as planers, milling machines, lathes, and drilling machines appeared, these problems that have puzzled craftsmen for a long time no longer became a problem, and the parts that craftsmen had worked so hard to make have become easy.

Although the equipment manufactured at first was very crude, and the bullet casings produced often did not meet the specifications, but there is no doubt that as the equipment became more sophisticated, the bullet casings would become more and more standardized.

However, the bullets at this time have to be manually assembled to complete the final assembly.

Because of the poor equipment, only the cartridge case and warhead can be processed. The installation of the cap behind the cartridge case, the filling of gunpowder and the final installation of the warhead all have to be done manually.

But this is completely hard-working Hongshanling residents. These people live in Hongshanling. Except for the busy farming season, these people basically only do two things in the rest of the time. One is sewing clothes and the other is making shoes.

Now there is one more thing, install the bullet.

And all the work is paid. Although the pay is not high, the enthusiasm of the residents of Hongshanling is very high. Anyway, they are idle, and every point they can earn is one point.

It's a pity that the production of cartridge cases and warheads can't increase, because the power of all these equipment comes from the reservoir, and due to the drought, the rainfall here in Hongshanling has decreased a lot, and the water in the reservoir is running out. Li Jing It was ordered that no water should be released until it is time for irrigation.

As a result, the manufacture of firearms is severely restricted, especially the manufacture of bullets.

Restricting the production of bullets is not only due to equipment, but also due to resource reasons.

There are no minerals around Hongshanling. Even if there are, Li Jing and his gang don't know how to explore and don't know where they are. Therefore, all the copper and lead used to produce bullets and shells need to be purchased from outside.

But lead and copper are not so easy to buy, because the output of copper in the Ming Dynasty itself was low.

In the end, Li Jing had no choice but to exchange silver for copper coins, and melted the copper coins to process bullets.

Jingji Bank can just solve this problem.

But it didn't take long for Li Jing to discover another problem. Because a large amount of copper coins were melted, the common people had no copper coins to buy things.

Although Li Jing doesn't understand economics, he also knows that if ordinary people don't have money to buy things, the consequences will be extremely serious. The most obvious point is that money is expensive and goods are cheap, and countless families will go bankrupt because of this.

Although the people in Hongshanling are richer than before, they are not so rich that they don't need change when they go shopping with silver!You have to use only copper coins to get change, right?
It should be said that Shen Jixian's suggestion helped Li Jing a lot.

At the beginning, Shen Jixian asked Li Jing for the right to manage all the businesses and stores in Hongshanling. It was Shen Jixian's exclusive management that helped Li Jing solve the problem of insufficient copper coins.

After learning that there were no copper coins available, Li Jing opened a bank on the mountain and issued banknotes.

Because Shen Jixian was the only one who exclusively operated various shops on the mountain, Li Jing didn't have to worry about the problem that the merchants didn't accept banknotes at all.

Li Jing took out 10 taels of silver as a reserve fund, and issued banknotes equal to 10 taels of silver.

People in Hongshanling took their silver to Li Jing's bank to exchange it into banknotes, and then used the banknotes to buy various daily necessities in Hongshanling's shops.

When Shen Jixian needed to purchase goods, he took banknotes to the bank to exchange them for silver, and then went out to buy goods.

Relatively speaking, paper money is much more convenient than silver and copper coins. At the very least, it is easy to hold. A string of copper coins costs at least a few catties, but the paper money equivalent to a string of copper coins is only a few cents.

The most important thing is that the people in Hongshanling believe in Li Jing. They have known Li Jing for more than two years, and the people know that Li Jing will never lie to them.

In addition, Shen Jixian's shop was fueling the flames, making it better for ordinary people to buy things with banknotes, and Li Jing's banknotes were quickly popularized in Hongshanling.

In the end, even the soldiers were paid in banknotes.

The reason is simple, you can buy things with banknotes, so why do the soldiers try to hide the money, and who do they go to if they accidentally drop it?Anyway, if you need to go out to buy something, you can exchange it for silver at the bank in Hongshanling at any time.

Even if you forget to exchange silver when you leave the mountain, it doesn’t matter, there is Jingji Bank in the city, and you can also exchange it there.

Some people say that most successful people are lucky and encounter good opportunities. Although this sentence is not completely correct, it is sometimes true. However, people who can grasp opportunities also need ability.

Du Laojiu is a small role in Qi County, he is just a small owner of a small grocery store.

The business of the grocery store is only enough to sustain his family's food and expenses, so Du Laojiu doesn't have much money in his hands, and he always dreams of encountering a chance to make a fortune.

But Du Laojiu knew that if he stayed in the grocery store all day, he would never be able to make a fortune, so he wandered around Qi County every day, hoping to encounter some opportunities.

It's a pity that opportunities are not so easy to come across. Du Laojiu has been transferred for several years and is still the same. For this reason, people in Qi County no longer call him Du Laojiu, but Du Laozhuan.

But Mr. Du's transfer these years has not been in vain. He has been observing carefully in the past few years. It can be said that the county magistrate may not know as much about Qi County as he does.

Du Laojiu has been around for a few years and suddenly discovered a problem. The people in Qi County seem to be getting poorer and poorer, especially in the past two years, the people are so poor that they don't even have money to buy things.

At first, Du Laojiu didn't pay much attention to this issue. It is normal that there are many poor people, but it is abnormal if there are many rich people.

But it didn't take long for Du Laojiu to realize that something was wrong, because the people in Qi County were not so poor that they had no houses and no land. These people were not all poor farmers, on the contrary, many of them had a lot of land.

Du Laojiu was very surprised to find this. How could these people have no money?It wasn't until one day when his wife who ran the store told him that the neighbors wanted to exchange things with him for oil, salt, soy sauce and vinegar, did he realize that the poor people in Qi County didn't mean they couldn't produce food and various supplies. , but everyone does not have copper coins for transactions.

Although Du Laojiu discovered this problem, it is obviously not something he, the owner of a grocery store, can solve.

Until one day he saw a man exchanging money in a bank.

Du Laojiu clearly saw that the money changer took out a stack of papers, but in the end he only exchanged five taels of silver and a small amount of copper coins.

Du Laojiu was very surprised. He knew what kind of business this Jingji bank opened in Qi County was, and he also knew who went in and out of it.

But the person making the exchange in front of him is obviously not a businessman, and he is not getting the banknotes exchanged by a bank, but rather looks like a Daming banknote that has long been disapproved by the common people.

When the man finished exchanging money and went out, Du Laojiu hurriedly stopped him and asked him what money he used to exchange it for.

The man was honest, and immediately told about the Hongshanling Jingji bank issuing banknotes.

Hearing that Jingji Bank issued banknotes by itself, Du Laojiu was taken aback. He heard that someone privately minted copper coins, but he never heard of anyone issuing banknotes privately. This is a serious crime of treason.

But Du Laojiu immediately thought that the government would never go after this kind of money that was only used in the mountains.

Suddenly, Du Laojiu remembered something. Now Qi County is short of copper coins. If this kind of banknotes can be circulated, won't it immediately change Qi County's plight of no money?
If I can make this matter work, then in the future, the shops in Qi County will not be able to offer themselves as their ancestors?

However, Du Laojiu knows very well that if the money is to be circulated, the premise must be that it can be exchanged at any time. This requires the bank to have enough cash as a guarantee, and it must also have absolute credibility. As long as the bank can achieve these two points, then The circulation of banknotes is guaranteed.

Fortunately, Du Laojiu knows that although Jingji Bank has not been established for too long, its reputation is not a problem.

Now it only depends on whether the bank can have enough cash and whether it can provide enough banknotes for the common people.

Listening to Du Laojiu asking how much cash Jingji Bank has in reserve, the guys at the counter laughed.

The guy at the counter told Du Laojiu that for a small grocery store like Du Laojiu's, Jingji Bank could open tens of thousands of them anytime and anywhere.

(End of this chapter)