Han’s Son is Not a Slave

What Zhou Shixiang wanted to solve was the problem of food shortage. If Wang Shirong's method was adopted, he would naturally not allow silver to replace food. However, if the open-Chinese method is adopted in its entirety, another problem will arise. Part of the land in hand will be used to grow grain. Although the cost is lower than that of the merchants who transported the grain to the border in the early Ming Dynasty, it is also extremely laborious. It also requires a lot of manpower. This will reduce the profits of the merchants a lot, and textiles have huge profits overseas, but the bulk is not in their hands, but in the hands of the Zheng family in Jinxia and other Western merchants. After two calculations, businessmen will still feel that they are not worth it. In order to reduce their losses, they have only two choices, either to raise the price of the goods, or to reduce the acquisition cost.

It is basically impossible to raise the price of goods only now, because the sea route is controlled by the Zheng family, and the Zheng family needs huge maritime trade interests to support the army, and it is impossible to cede the pricing power to the merchants. In the words of Zhou Shixiang's previous life, the distribution channel is in the hands of others, and the price is not what the producer can say. If the merchants forcibly raise the price and the Zheng family no longer purchases, then no matter how much more goods, they can only be thrown into the hands of the merchants themselves. After all, they have no chance of selling two goods. Obviously, profit-seeking businessmen will only drive down the cost of acquisition. In this case, the losses will only fall on the workers in the workshops and the farmers who grow mulberries and raise silkworms.

Daming drove away the Qing Dynasty, how to toss the gentry and gentlemen, ordinary people may not be able to control, but if they really want to damage their interests, so that they can't even solve the problem of food and clothing, then the problem will return to the old way .

After all, Jiang Guozhu had been a vassal official for so many years before he surrendered, and he could see things clearly. In his reply, he clearly pointed out that the natural disasters* since Wanli have caused the Central Plains, Huguang, and Northwest China to be destroyed. It can be said that there is no self-sufficiency at all, and the local people are almost living on the death line. In the 17 years since the Manchus entered the customs, on the one hand, due to the large-scale slaughter of the Qing army, and on the other hand, because of the competition between the Ming and Qing Dynasties in the south, the food production in the south has almost stagnated. million. As a result, there is a lot of empty land in many places, but no one is farming. Therefore, the method of recruiting refugees and restoring production adopted by the previous dynasties is not enough to solve the problem at present.

There must be refugees, there are people of all dynasties and generations who have fled to the mountains to avoid the disaster. The key to solving the problem is still to have people. Under the premise that a large number of people die, there is only one option to completely solve the problem of food insufficiency, and that is to multiply the population. With a sufficient population, production can naturally resume, and as long as the imperial court acts without governance at this time, it will naturally be a prosperous age in twenty or thirty years. And this obviously takes time. Therefore, recruiting refugees can only be used as a means to restore food production, not as the main means.

Jiang Guozhu has been the governor of Jiangning for several years, and he has a deeper understanding of the situation in Jiangnan than others. Although Jiangnan has always been known as the wealthy land of the Qing court, in fact, food can only be self-sufficient. At that time, when the Qing court's three-way army entered Yunnan and Guizhou, the food allocated from Jiangnan was extremely limited, mainly to provide a large amount of silver salaries and some baggage for the Qing army. When Hong Chengchou was in Yunnan, he sent a letter to the Qing court euphemistically pointing out that the Qing army slaughtered the city indiscriminately in Yunnan and Guizhou, and plundered money and grain. . The plundering of the local area is also the basic policy that the Qing army has set for more than ten years, even before entering the customs. In the words of the book, it is "eat the enemy." When all the enemies are killed and there are fewer people, then things will become simple, a grace will be exempted from taxes for a few years, and the locality will slowly recover.

The reason why there is no food in the south of the Yangtze River is that the effort and the harvest are not equal.

The income from growing grain cannot keep up with the income from growing cash crops, so people will naturally choose the latter. The fall in textile prices will make it impossible for them to buy food, but they will certainly not complain about the merchants who lowered the purchase price, but the Taiping Army. There has never been a shortage of rumors or instigators in this world. The government has always asked the people to abandon cash crops and grow food instead. The people are unwilling, and suddenly the price of textiles has plummeted. It's the government's fault.

The method proposed by Jiang Guozhu is a grain subsidy. Through high subsidies, the people can earn no less than the income from planting grain, or it is not bad to plant too much cotton or mulberry, so as to encourage the people to grow grain voluntarily. However, this approach can only be done in the short term, not in the long term, and it can only be limited to one or several prefectures, and cannot be implemented nationwide. The reason is very simple, even if he has amassed a lot of wealth through cases such as clearing debts and Tonghai, Zhou Shixiang's treasury cannot afford such subsidies like flowing water.

Jiang Guozhu believed that this part of the grain subsidy money should be passed on to the merchants, and the government came forward to set up the General Administration of Textiles with a nature similar to the General Administration of Salt Affairs, stipulating that all workshops must accept the unified management of the General Administration of Textiles, and then control the circulation of textiles. The port is specialized in setting up cards, and all the textile mouths exported overseas must collect taxes through the port, and the tax revenue will be used to subsidize farmers to grow grain.

The combination of this method and Wang Shirong's method is equivalent to peeling two layers of skin on the heads of the merchants and workshop owners engaged in the textile industry. Neither of them considered that the merchants would pass the losses on to the farmers. In essence, the approach proposed by the two is to emphasize agriculture and suppress commerce.

Zhou Shixiang now wants to have both fish and bear's paw, so after thinking about it, there is only one way to make the people willing to grow food, and to allow the merchants to bear the loss of "opening the law". There is only one way to raise the price of goods. In this way, there is only one solution, and that is to control the sea route.

Zhou Shixiang can now subsidize farmers for one or two years, or even three or four years. As long as the grain output in Jiangnan is stable, the efforts in these years will be worthwhile. But how many people and how many provinces are there in the whole of northern China, and how much food and forage will be needed to get out of the customs and recover them in the future. You can't always slaughter the hungry people like the Qing army wherever the flag of the Taiping army goes.

Like the navy of the Zheng family, control of the sea route became another reason for Zhou Shixiang to be eager to solve Jinxia.

The method proposed by Zhang Changgeng is to build water conservancy, introduce good seeds, reduce rent and interest for tenants, and distribute the land of the landlords who fled north to the landless farmers. The construction of water conservancy is a matter of curing the root cause, and it is also a matter of benefit in the future, but it cannot be done overnight~www.wuxiaspot.com~ Introducing improved seeds and high-yield crops, Zhou Shixiang has also been working on it, but it has not been heard from Guangdong. News about sweet potato seeds.

In fact, Zhou Shi is not enthusiastic about introducing sweet potatoes. In his opinion, what he wants to do is to let the surviving Han compatriots eat rice noodles, not to fill their stomachs with sweet potatoes, so that people come and go.” dishes". Corn is also a high-yielding crop and is suitable for large-scale planting in the north. This Zhou Shixiang specifically instructed Guangdong to look for it from overseas.

In the end, Zhou Shixiang decided to set up the General Administration of Textiles, under the unified jurisdiction of the weavers and operators in Songjiang, etc., and paralleled the "license system", forcing merchants and ordinary people engaged in the textile industry to pay grain to the government; at the same time, it implemented farming subsidies to encourage Farmers grow grain and reward those who are outstanding among them by reducing or exempting taxes or rewarding them. At the same time, the commercial routes were investigated, and customs duties were set up at the port. In addition, the debt settlement divisions in various places were converted into formal yamen, accepting government affairs from Qianfu County, promoting the construction of villages and townships, integrating rural areas, and improving production efficiency. In addition, the "food stamp" system was implemented in Jiangnan to reduce the flow of gold and silver, making "food stamps" the only legal "currency" in circulation.

It is imminent to start the Zheng family in Fujian, and Zhou Shixiang is waiting for good news from Fuzhou. As soon as Fuzhou arrived, the Taiping army in the four towns immediately rushed towards Jinsha, forcing Zheng Sen to come to court, and Zheng Jing surrendered.

The arrogant heart said thank you for the 10 yuan reward from the book friends of Long Live Jiangshan!