Zhu Youdong didn't care about Wang Xi, and continued: "The counties also need to hire masters, and they don't need much knowledge, as long as they can read and write." After two years of teaching, I taught these children to learn the surnames of the hundred families, the three-character scripture, and taught them arithmetic. These schoolchildren are then tested, and the best ones are sent to the county to study. Even if you can't enter the county school to continue studying, you can be literate, earn a salary, and understand the national righteousness and the ancestors of the family and country. ”

Wang Xi was speechless with anger on the side, and Zhang Huangyan said to Wang Xi when he saw this: "Brother Ziyongxian, why bother to be angry? Hou Ye is just angry. Even if it is just about political affairs, teaching and educating people, isn't it a big deal to preach and solve doubts? Zhang Huangyan saw that Wang Xi was still angry, and said: "Brother Xian, if it weren't for the compulsion of this world, I would want to only be a teacher master, who would want to run around in this era of war and chaos." ”

Wang Xi saw that Zhang Huangyan kept persuading himself, and in the current situation, Wang Xi himself thought that if he continued to fight Zhu Youdong, it was estimated that there would be no good result. At the moment, he said: "Yes, since you can teach your studies, who wants to ask about political affairs." ”

Zhang Huangyan saw that Wang Xi had already agreed, and thought about Zhu Youdong and said: "Master Hou, since Ziyong has agreed, I think it is a matter of studying politics, so let Ziyong do it." Zhu Youdong said: "It's okay, but as I just said, the first meaning of teaching is to teach students what is the national righteousness and what is the family and the country." Otherwise, I would never agree. ”

Zhang Huangyan also has a deep understanding of this point now, and he does not object to it immediately. Seeing that Wang Xi was still arguing, Zhang Huangyan immediately pulled Wang Xi and hurriedly asked him to leave first.

After Zhang Huangyan pulled Wang Xi away, Yuan Kuoyu asked: "Master Hou, since Wang Xi is allowed to do the business of studying politics, do we still want to continue to gather those literati?" Zhu Youdong said: "Recruit, why don't you recruit?" He is just in charge of Xuezheng, and the master below, we have to recruit him. It is not only necessary to recruit these literati, but also to train them if possible. Most of the things they can teach now are the Four Books and the Five Classics, and the people we want are practical people, that is, people who can replace officials at all levels, and of course officials. ”

Yuan Kuoyu said: "Hou Ye wants to break the previous way of selecting officials at this time? Zhu Youdong said: "Yes, most of the officials in various places were retained by the local government before, and these people are basically people from local clans. If they collude with the gentry, they will not be able to fight them with a few officials we have sent and a few soldiers from the local regiments. ”

To say that Yuan Kuoyu is also from the local gentry, now when he heard Zhu Youdong's plan, he suddenly broke out in a cold sweat. According to Zhu Youdong's situation, the local gentry were directly excluded from the government by Zhu Youdong. The influence of those local gentry on the government is no longer the same as before.

In the past, the first thing officials did when they arrived was to visit the local gentry, because they had a great influence on the smooth administration of officials. As long as they don't agree, officials don't want to make any political achievements, and they may lose their lives. The reason why this is so is because these gentry have mastered the appointment and dismissal of officials in the local government. Although the officials were rogue officials, the officials were basically controlled by the local gentry. This is why all dynasties have to rely on the local gentry to govern, and there is a saying that the imperial power is not lower than the county.

Now Zhu Youdong's approach is to destroy the interference and influence of the local gentry on the government. In this way, it broke the saying that the imperial power was not lower than the county. If there were any local gentry who wanted to fight against the imperial power in the future, what was the dissatisfaction with the imperial court. But there is no longer a word from the gentry, and the surrounding people have responded.

In the past, all the interpretations of imperial power were decided by the local gentry, because the local officials were also their people. But as soon as Zhu Youdong breaks this phenomenon, the people will hear more than the words of the gentry. As long as the words that come to you are not a sound, will the people still listen to you? At that time, the people were not aligned, and the gentry could no longer have an influence on the imperial court.

For example, in the past, the imperial court had to collect taxes, but the population and land scales were all reported by the gentry. For as long as they speak, the county officials are the mouths of the people. Even if the county order wants to measure, it still has to be done by the officials, and the county order cannot do it himself. And the taxes sent by the imperial court are distributed according to the fish scales, so the amount of taxes of the imperial court is actually controlled by these gentry.

That's for the imperial court, and after the amount of taxes that the imperial court needs to collect is distributed, it is not a county order to collect it. At this time, it will be handed over to the local security chief, and the first chief will collect it, and these security chiefs, the first chief are all local celebrities, that is, the gentry themselves. They will definitely not let their own families pay, and directly share the taxes that their families have to pay equally.

Since no one else knew exactly how much tax they had to pay, of course the gentry said they were as much as they wanted. The gentry also had a reduction in the number of scholars in their own homes. For example, Xiucai and Juren, these governments have given a certain amount of tax-free land. In this way, in order to reduce the taxes paid to the imperial court, many people put all their fields under the names of these talents and people, and then handed over the taxes that were originally to be handed over to the imperial court to these scholars.

These people are scholars, and no one knows whether they will be officials in the future, and of course these chief armor leaders dare not offend them, and they will not give them more assessments, not to mention that they still have tax-free fields given by the imperial court. Compared with other people's apportionment, the person who hangs the land in the name of the scholar will have to pay much less. Moreover, most of these scholars also came from the families of the local gentry.

This is still normal to hang in the name of the reader, that is, the common contribution. What's more, the land that those gentry were donated was not only the amount given by the imperial court, but the extra fields were concealed by these gentry, so that those who did not donate paid more and more taxes. In the end, he could not pay the taxes, so he had to sell his land at a low price and became a landless tenant farmer.

After these people became tenant farmers, someone still had to pay the taxes of the imperial court, and the gentry would not let their interests be damaged, so they had to let the tenant farmers pay for the extra money and grain. In this way, when the tenant farmers could no longer support their families, these people had to become homeless people, fleeing and begging for food.

This became a vicious circle, causing the gentry's families to get bigger and bigger, the scholars to get bigger, the families to get richer, and the more and more land to hide in their names. The people who really need to farm the land are getting poorer and poorer, and no matter how much land they plant, it is not enough to share the taxes of the imperial court. On the other hand, in the imperial court, these gentry would say that the local people were miserable, that the taxes were already overwhelmed, and that there were more and more displaced people.

Even if the imperial court reduces taxes, because there is not much land to bear the imperial court taxes, it cannot be reflected in the hands of the people. The taxes of the imperial court are getting less and less, and the people are getting poorer and poorer, but these gentry are making a lot of money in the middle.

But the only explanation that the common people could hear was from the mouths of the gentry, that they paid the taxes of the imperial court. The heavy taxes on them are all stipulated by the imperial court and must be paid. This became that the people forced by the imperial court taxes had no way to live, so they had to rebel against the government and rebel.

And then the spokesmen of those gentry in the court, the officials who were born into the families of these gentry. He also blames the court in the court all day long, the government is under heavy pressure, the government is harsh and fierce, and the court has no way. Blamed all the roots of everything on the imperial court, but said that the imperial court was dark, which caused the people to rise up. Then their own family is fat-headed and big-eared, and their family wealth is rich.

Of course, this is only one of the reasons, and some officials continue to send all kinds of fires, and the taxes collected by the imperial court at the beginning are only thirty percent. After the continuous increase of officials at all levels, when they finally said in front of the people, it became ninety percent. But the common people had no way to understand the imperial decrees, nor did they know how much taxes the imperial court had to collect, and all they could know was conveyed by the local gentry.

The officials of the imperial court also have the supervision of the Supervision Yuan, the supervision of officials at all levels, and they can all kinds of corruption and corruption. These local gentry had no one to supervise them, and as long as they did not make a big case, no one dared to touch them. Therefore, they have achieved their lawless nature, and in the late Ming Dynasty, the gentry in various places controlled the government, especially Jiangnan.

In fact, the Donglin Party is also the officials trained by the local gentry, and they are in the imperial court, fighting against the party and fighting for the interests of the gentry in Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Later, the restoration of the society was even more powerful, and before entering the officialdom, it was already able to decide the selection of the imperial cabinet. This is how these gentry, for their own interests, manipulate the court at will.

These gentry are local gentry in the people, and they are civil officials in the court, these people only care about their own interests, and the rise and fall of the dynasty is just a stage for them. It doesn't matter who this stage is, what matters is whether they can shine on this stage again, and whether they can find benefits for their families on this stage.

Now Zhu Youdong is to disintegrate these gentry and cut off their way to control the government. At the same time, it also disrupted the gentry's right to speak in the local area, disturbed the gentry's words, and let the voice of the court appear in the local area. Let the ordinary people also hear the voice of the court, so as to truly break the phenomenon of the gentry and tying the people to them.

In this way, there will be no more gentry, and the people will be miserable at every turn, and they will threaten the court by provoking popular uprisings at every turn. Zhu Youdong didn't want to, but when he knocked down the world, he was stretched out and picked the fruit.

Of course, Zhu Youdong can't say these words explicit now, but now he must train a large number of talents for the localities, and then tie up the officials and officials in the later stage, so that the officials can become officials in a training period, and let the officials of the world compete with the local gentry for the quota of officials. It also allows these self-trained personnel to have a promotion channel.

Although Zhu Youdong didn't say it, when he saw Yuan Kuoyu's expression on the side, he also understood that Yuan Kuoyu had some clues. Seeing that Yuan Kuoyu saw so quickly, he wanted to move these officials, although he had not yet discovered that his actual target was the civil official group of the imperial court.

But let Yuan Kuoyu go back and think about it carefully, and it is estimated that he will understand. He immediately said: "It's good that you know these things, and don't leak them." I'm not afraid of what they'll do, and even if they want to resist, I can easily suppress them, but at least it's going to be a nuisance. ”

Yuan Kuoyu saw Zhu Youdong's advice, so he had no choice but to cooperate: "Master Hou, this is to clean up the place, it is related to the survival of our hundreds of thousands of troops, of course my subordinates don't dare to go out and talk nonsense." Then he said: "I will gather more literati in the three provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan as soon as possible, so that they can teach the school-age children in the three provinces as soon as possible." If you want to find these people, it will be easy to find them, but how to solve the problem of these masters? ”

Zhu Youdong said: "Now the production in various places has not been restored, so it will be supplied by the Metropolitan Governor's Mansion for the time being." Zhu Youdong remembered that there are hundreds of thousands of troops now, and he has to add these tens of thousands of masters, and he suddenly became worried, how can there be enough food and grass?

When Yuan Kuoyu heard that Zhu Youdong asked the Metropolitan Governor's Mansion to take on the responsibility, he was immediately relieved, and said: "Then who will distribute these masters' salaries, and how much will they set?" Zhu Youdong thought for a while and said: "I think let's let the regimental training in various places be responsible for the distribution, if the county order is issued, it is estimated that it will be inseparable from the local officials." Anyway, these students will also have to practice, and when the time comes, the local group practice will also go to the school club. Then let the school administration supervise the distribution of the money, and the local county order supervises it. The Master's fortune was first set at one stone of rice or one tael of silver per month. It's not high, but at least it's a stable income. ”

Yuan Kuoyu said: "It's okay to directly bypass the local officials and the masters, and go directly to the Dadu Governor's Mansion to come out, and the person in charge of the regimental training will send it to the master." ”

At this time, Zhang Huangyan came in again and asked Zhu Youdong: "Master Hou, really let Wang Xi be a teacher." Zhu Youdong said: "Is there anything wrong with this?" As long as he can do this well, isn't he also contributing to Daming? ”

Zhang Huang said: "Of course, this can be regarded as contributing to the Ming Dynasty, but only let Wang Xi do the teaching, and some pearls are secretly invested." Zhu Youdong said: "That means I buried talents?" Master Zhang, think about it, a person who has no national righteousness, no courtesy, righteousness and shame, even if he is talented, I am afraid that the harm will be greater than the talent. I can let him do the work of teaching and educating people, it is already for the sake of Master Zhang's face, if it is someone else, I will kill him directly, and I am afraid that I will not be able to find someone to teach and educate people? ”

Zhang Huang said: "Of course Master Hou can find it, but it's just ......." Hey, why should Hou Ye be like this? Hou Ye wants everyone in the world to be loyal and courageous, mighty and unyielding, how difficult it is. There are still many people like Wang Xi in the world, who are self-interested. ”

Zhu Youdong said: "Okay, Master Zhang doesn't need to persuade anymore, I know that what Wang Xi is doing in the Qing court is the Ministry of Rites, but isn't this Ministry of Rites also educating the world?" Why are you reluctant to come to Daming? If he really doesn't want to, let him be an ordinary person. ”