warring states careerist

Chapter 816 The Difficulty of Contention ([-])

The departure of those few people did not cause a sensation to the group of Yang Zhu School. At this time, it is very common for scholars to switch schools. knot.

Meng Sunyang said a few words to the remaining disciples, and continued to move forward. When he arrived at a manor, it was already noon, so it was convenient for him to rest and have lunch.

The owner of the manor greeted him when he heard about it. Meng Sunyang and others were all scholars. After greeting each other, the owner of the manor quickly asked his servants to prepare meals.

The owner of this manor is actually a man who knows the heroes of the world, so he kept asking: "Could it be Meng Sunyang, who argues with the birds? What's the point of dissecting grains and using them as bait?"

The owner of the manor named out the most proud things in the life of several figures of the Yang Zhu school, and the expression of surprise was praise. Everyone felt good and responded individually.

Zhan He is also a well-known figure in the Yang Zhu School. Among the disciples of the Yang Zhu School, he is as famous as Meng Sunyang and Zi Huazi, and he was even praised by Zhuang Zhou in later generations.

He is good at reasoning and logic, but he likes to pretend to be advanced, so later Han Feizi made up a story, saying that Zhan He was sitting at home, and there was a cow outside. The ox is a black ox with black horns. His disciples saw it and said it had white horns. Zhan He said that the horns must be wrapped in white cloth. You misread it, but his disciples saw it.

Han Feizi used this story to criticize Zhan He for not observing everything and making idealistic guesses. Of course, it is also because Zhan He's reputation for being good at reasoning has been left in later generations, and there are too many miraculous performances in the eyes of people who do not know reasoning.

The owner of the manor praised Zhan He for being good at fishing, that's another story.

After Meng Sunyang and others were entertained, they had a few more conversations with the owner, and learned that the owner of the manor was once a scholar, whose surname was Dongxiang. Doctor, so the descendants of later generations take Dongxiang as their surname.

He has a single name, Ziqi, and you can't call him by his first name when you are in the same generation, because the name is usually cheap at this time. The teacher can call him by his first name, so everyone in the Yang Zhu School can call him Ziqi, and when he recounts it, he calls it Dongxiang Ziqi.

The lunch prepared by Dongxiang Ziqi no longer has so many traces of etiquette, or it has been seriously affected by Sishang's silent influence.

After a brief conversation, Dongxiang Ziqi talked about what she had seen and heard over the years.

He is considered one of the best squires here. His family has more than [-] mu of private land, and dozens of people work with him to cultivate. There are a lot of cattle and horses. Every year, he grows cotton, wheat, rapeseed, etc., and sells them on Sishang, earning countless money.

The huts are all made of bricks and tiles, and there are two 璆林门 which can be regarded as status symbols besides Sishang.

During the coup of Song State more than [-] years ago, his father was still a scholar, but he was not affected. Then the central government of Song State was completely destroyed, and the grassroots rule outside the city was almost completely lost. Mohism took the opportunity to infiltrate In various parts of the Song Dynasty, in some places, the rule of the Song Dynasty outside the villages and towns was basically banned.

At that time, his family had about [-] mu of land, which was actually obtained by turning the public into private. At that time, the Song Dynasty already had private land, but the public land system, private land system, village communal heavy division system, and land serfs System coexistence, very chaotic.

Soon after, the area close to Sishang began the cruel land merger, because the development of Sishang's industry and commerce and the innovation of agricultural technology made it profitable to manage the land. For 20 years, Dongxiang Ziqi used various means to continuously Merge land.

Or occupying public land, or borrowing important land in a famine year...the original self-cultivating farmers, because this is not Sishang, there is no support from cattle, horses and iron tools, and the price of grain has dropped for two years, making their lives very poor, or Because of debts, bankruptcy and selling land, he was ruined and exiled in Sishang; or because of the dream of making a fortune in Sishang, he sold the land and left.

In villages that are not self-cultivated farmers, Dongxiang Ziqi gradually encroached on the land that needed to be redistributed every 20 years; or directly seized the land, and the farmers who originally owned a little land gradually became servants.

Up to now, Dongxiang Ziqi has owned [-] mu of land, and has been operating and developing it, earning a lot of money every year.

He is a rich man, but he is no longer an aristocrat.

Most of the nobles are rich, but they are not necessarily nobles. The basis of the existence of the nobles is the feudal system and personal dependence.

Nobles have the right to control the land and the people on the land. When the princes of the emperor seal the land, they seal the land bound to the people. Otherwise, the nobles are given a lot of land but there are no people. Is it possible for the nobles to farm the land by themselves?
In addition to some economic reasons for Dongxiang Ziqi's situation, there is also the fact that the coup d'état that year caused great changes in the political structure of Song State.

It turns out that the balance of aristocratic politics requires the balance of power in the aristocratic fiefs, and the balance of power in the fiefs is closely related to the number of serfs in the fiefs.

For the nobles, the farmers in the fief are not only tools for cultivating public land and tools for daily labor, but also soldiers. Nobles without soldiers have no say in the feudal system, especially under the political situation of the three surnames in the Song Dynasty, so the nobles Farmers need to be firmly bound to the land.

After the Song Dynasty coup more than [-] years ago, all the places were in chaos. Several major nobles could only control their own fiefdoms, while the nobles near the Sishang area turned around one after another.

It doesn’t work if you don’t turn around, the exploitation is too harsh, and Sishang is next to it, and farmers in the fief run to Sishang in groups... Even if the fief is still there, there is no one to work, and the nobles can’t work by themselves. No matter how big the fief is, it is tantamount to nothing.

The most violent land reform was carried out in Sishang, and it took 20 years for these places close to Sishang to go through a mode of merger by robbery.

This kind of plundering merger is accompanied by the progress of production technology. Many people who work as servants feel that their living standards are better than 20 years ago, so many people stay here as servants. As a pressure relief valve for this change, Sishang did not lead to large-scale peasant uprisings.

Dongxiang Ziqi hired a person who is proficient in farming to manage his land and reformed planting techniques. In addition, Sishang was in urgent need of grain, cotton and oil crops a few years ago, which made him earn a lot of money every year.

This time Sishang sent troops to the Song Dynasty, and he was not affected, because Sishang's policy was very clear: the land of the fugitive nobles would be taken back to the people, and the anti-fiefdoms were not anti-private fields.

However, he is still a little worried. What he is worried about is not that his land will be divided. Sishang's policy is very clear that his land will not be divided.

What he was worried about were the poor and lowly people who were hired to farm in his manor, whether they divided the land?
Especially when I heard that the peasant family of the "True Equality Party" would also participate in the Song Dynasty's governance, I was actually very panicked.

If the servants in his manor also share the land, then... the [-] mu of land he owns is his own, who will plant it?

Today's farming technology, iron cattle plowing, high-yield crops, ridge cropping and intercropping technology spread, a hundred acres of land, a family of nine, if there is no famine, there will be no hunger.

If the land was allocated to those people, or to organize production and open up wasteland like Xue Sishang, or to divide the fiefdoms of the big nobles to the people, including the servants in his own manor, then his [-] mu of land is actually comparable to ten thousand acres of land. There is no difference in acres of land.

Now there are a lot of opinions. Today, seeing the Yang Zhu school and others passing by, Dongxiang Ziqi was finally relieved, and she was determined that as long as she was not a farmer, she could talk about anything.

The population here is dense, but relatively speaking, there is still a lot of land or land that can be reclaimed in the Iron Age.

What Dongxiang Ziqi is afraid of is that the farming family or the Mohist school with executive and organizational capabilities will be in power. Cultivating land requires capital investment and organizational level. Otherwise, the people will be content with the status quo and would rather continue to farm. After all, there is no money, no cattle, no iron No farm tools, no seeds, no spare money to spend the previous few years.

He sincerely hopes to come to a group of schools of "governance by doing nothing", don't care about anything, don't organize the people to cultivate, don't organize the people to cultivate, don't provide the people with loans and support, just let nature take its course and everything will be self-contained.

During the banquet, Meng Sunyang mentioned the incident of the "beautiful and ugly second concubine" who lived in Yang Zhu's hotel, and said: "Yang Ziyan, to be virtuous, don't be virtuous. Now we are about to rule this place. In the past, Mi Zijian ruled Shan Father, to rule by playing the qin, it is because you are good at listening to the ideas of the people, knowing what people want for the people, and not thinking that the policies you implement are good governance, this is an example that can learn from experience."

"I don't know what Ziqi wants most?"

Dongxiang Ziqi looked at the crowd. He was also a straightforward person, and he did not lie. He said bluntly: "If we are honest, I want slave private property."

Several disciples of the Yang Zhu School hissed immediately, and Meng Sunyang waved his hands and said: "Don't make a mess, everyone has ideas, and they may not do it immediately. Besides, this is to say something from the heart, don't make noise."

After all the disciples calmed down, Dongxiang Ziqi said: "If the person who farms for me is a slave and my private property, then of course it is in my best interest."

"First, now that there are fewer people but more land, and there is more cultivation on the land, it doesn't matter if they farm for me or the people of my fiefdom. Once I suffer for them here, or if they can live better elsewhere, they will ask for help." run."

"If he is a slave, it is my private property. Even if he escapes to Sishang or the South China Sea, as long as he is captured, it is still mine. My private property belongs to me. Isn't Sishang also admitting private property? There are also laws protecting private property."

"But if I farm for the servants and seal the fields, and run away, what can I do?"

"You also know that Sishang respects private property. When Mo Di defended the city in the past, even if houses were demolished and wooden fortifications were used to defend the city, they had to be registered and paid back afterwards. If these people are not slaves, then they are not my private property." , They will not send me back if they escape or leave Sishang..."

"The mistake is that now that the iron ridges are planted, the land that was originally uncultivable can also be cultivated. The Huaibei land that the Mohists call fertile soil can be cultivated. It is too easy for them to leave. Even if it is hired for me, I will spend a lot of money to keep it. They originally only needed two meals a day, but now they want three meals, and they even need a little food during the busy farming season. Otherwise, they would go to Sishang or would rather join the co-cultivation community in Sishang to reclaim wasteland and suffer for three to five years..."

(End of this chapter)