After all, the construction of the railway has the participation of the big merchants along the route, Yangzhou is a big grain merchant, a big salt merchant, a silk merchant, specifically the salt merchant Liang family, the grain merchant Yuan family, the silk merchant Lin family; Xuzhou is a horse gang; the grain and oil merchants of Shunde Prefecture; The Li family, a tea merchant in Sizhou. It turned out that the goods of these merchants were transported by various ships, and once the railway was built, they would get a piece of the pie, which was to cut meat from them. The boatmen also heard that the capacity of the train was amazing, that the capacity of a freight train was 17,000 quintals, that the largest ship on the canal was now only 580 quintals, and that the capacity of one wagon was equal to that of 30 ships. So they all felt a great crisis, they felt that the train transport was going to flourish and the shipping was going to fail.

Now the boat gang in the Grand Canal is led by the Yangzhou boat gang, and the river section under its jurisdiction: south to Suzhou along the river through Chuzhou, and then west to Sizhou, the river section under its jurisdiction accounts for more than one-third of the canal. Speaking of boat gangs, it is an organization formed by stompers, sailors, and slender men who have gathered together for water transport, and here we are talking about a special group of people who beg for a living on the Grand Canal, which was originally born in response to the water transport. It is similar to the Cao Gang in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and there is no Cao Gang at this time, but it also has the prototype of Tangkou.

The Great Song Dynasty had already returned the power of local financial disposal to the central government, so the early Song Dynasty stipulated that all local taxes every year, except for a part that must be retained for reasonable local expenses, must be paid to the central government. In the process of transporting materials, this method has become the main way.

Now Huaiyang, Suzhou and Hangzhou are the land of fish and rice, rich and prosperous, more than half of the money and grain taxes of the Great Song Dynasty come from here, so the ship that escorts the state to collect materials is called Caoyun, and at first these ships participating in Caoyun are official ships, escorted by the box army; Since Zhenzong, the government has hired private ships to escort the transportation, but there are still sergeants to escort the transportation. Because the shipwrights and sailors were often harassed by the tax collectors and the sluice and dam troughs along the canal, and there were even more exploitation and oppression by the officials at all levels, the last stompers, sailors, and slender men formed a group of mutual assistance to jointly resist the oppression and exploitation of the government and the soap officials, mainly to negotiate with the government for the remuneration of sailors and compete with their peers for job opportunities.

Let's just say that this Yangzhou boat gang was organized and strengthened by the current gang leader Chang Chuanming. Legend has it that he was poor since he was a child, and at the age of thirteen he broke into the dock, but this person was different from ordinary people, quite business-minded, and also quite heroic, in his early twenties, he often felt the oppression of the government and the oppression of his peers, so he decided to set up a mutual aid group composed of many helmsmen, boatmen, and sailors.

The most famous one was when the chief official of Yangzhou Caoyun sent Wang Youdao to forcibly requisition civilian ships and arrears of salaries, resulting in many ship owners losing their money and ruining their families. Chang Chuanming stood up for them, so he went to the Yangzhou Prefecture to beat the drum and complain about his grievances, accusing Wang Youdao, claiming that Wang Youdao had taken bribes, embezzled and accepted bribes, exploited and oppressed the shipwrights, and owed the shipwrights their salaries, and demanded that the governor punish him. Because at this time the people sued the officials, and if they committed the following crimes, they committed the crime of disobedience, and they must first be punished with the rod and twenty boards. Chang Chuanming was not afraid, and he defied the law, and the skin that was beaten on the spot was open, the flesh and blood were blurred, and he was unconscious. In the end, the governor of Yangzhou accepted the complaint, found out the evidence of Wang Youdao's crime, brought him to justice, and issued the arrears of wages and silver to settle the families of the victims. This also brought Chang Chuanming great fame and fame, and a large number of boat owners joined his boat gang.

His business is also getting bigger and bigger, and he has done the shipping business in Suzhou and Hangzhou, and has also attracted a large amount of transportation business from the imperial court. After the family had a lot of money, he compiled the boat owners who joined him into the roster, established gang rules, and stipulated that "anyone who votes as a sailor must be taught by one of the gang." "It is forbidden to help domestic boat owners compete for life and compete with each other. Chang Chuanming subcontracted the shipping business he recruited and took a certain commission to ensure that the boatmen and sailors in the gang had work to do and had something to eat.

Chang Chuanming also won the qualification to participate in the Cao Yun from the imperial court, although the imperial court had a strict management system and assessment standards for the Cao Yun, such as sometimes the unfortunate grain ship sank, the Cao grain was lost, and the court forced compensation. If this happens, they will be "shared with the gang" and share the loss. The boat owners who participated in the transportation would get the right to tun land from the imperial court, each household had hundreds of acres, and many were nearly 1,000 acres, and the fields and ships were not allowed to be resold, and the maintenance and dismantling of the ships had state subsidies; Shipwrights and sailors were paid silver, and their families were given monthly rations; There are other subsidies and tax exemptions; In addition, they enjoy preferential treatment for bringing local products, groceries, and illegal salt for sale. It is precisely because the Cao Yun Boat Gang has quite a preferential policy of the imperial court that it has considerable assets. Otherwise, the loss of grain will be compensated, and "sharing with the gang" is an empty word. The boat owners involved in the Cao Yun need to be rotated every three years, and everyone in the gang has the right to participate, reflecting justice, so the boat owners in the gang are very recognized and convinced.

In addition, Chang Chuanming is quite knowledgeable about medical skills, he also always helps the public to treat diseases and administer medicine, and he also established a charity hall in the canal wharf of Yangzhou to worship the gods of the ship, when the first year of the Cao Yun is over, the second year of the Cao Yun has not been opened. The sailors ate and lived here, and later more and more people were helped, and more than 50 charity halls were built along the river. At the end of the year, "when the winter is empty, they will rest in this place, and the money will not be counted", and "the surplus of food will be kept for the expenses of the court along the way". These nunnery have fields outside the nunnery to support the congregation who guard the nunnery and to serve as a burial ground for sailors after their deaths. The Luo belief gave the sailors on the way to spiritual sustenance, and its nunnery could provide practical benefits for the sailors, and the sailors naturally joined the gang one after another.

The helmsmen and sailors on the Grand Canal have gone through a process from being adrift to huddling together for warmth and becoming a boat gang. A group of proletarians became shipwrights in order to survive, and then in order to obtain a little security, they apprenticed to the church. On this basis, the Sailors' Boat Gang came to the fore and brought the sailors together to demand higher salaries from the government.

Chang Chuanming is over fifty years old at this time, coming and going in the rain in the water, and has been in charge of the Yangzhou Boat Gang for 30 years, just like watching his children grow up and become stronger, the Yangzhou Gang is his life's work, and it is his pride. Now the Yangzhou Boat Gang has 5,000 people and feeds 20,000 or 30,000 people, and now they are in charge of everything in the gang, and it can be said that they can be impartial internally; Externally, whether it is to the government or to peers, it can deal with it with ease, and strive for the rights and interests of the public to the greatest extent. Therefore, the brothers are also united and unusually united; became more and more convinced of him, and basically only looked at him.

Chang Chuanming had already sensed the huge crisis encountered by the boat gang at this time, and since the construction of the railway, he felt that the transportation from Tokyo to Hangzhou would fall sharply within ten years. He is now a wealthy family with a fortune of tens of millions, and he can completely get out of it. But thinking about the tens of thousands of people in the gang and their families, they still have to live, and they have to find a way out.

At the same time, he also decided to let Yang Junshi take his son to Tokyo to communicate with the ministers who were familiar with the DPRK and China, and even if he grasped the policy adjustments and changes of the imperial court in terms of Cao Yun, he had already figured out a countermeasure in advance. Then go to the Bianliang Boat Gang to visit them, listen to their thoughts and opinions, and exchange ideas. Now, after all, everyone is in the same spirit, and they are also sympathetic. It is also necessary to brainstorm and seek a way out. So he wrote a letter to the relevant people, and then called the military advisor Yang Fenglong and his son Chang Yilin, gave them a careful order, and handed the letter to his son, asking them to go to Tokyo and handle it according to what he had just asked. He also asked Chang Yiming and his party to take the train.