Nanjing, Cheng Bo'an's Cheng Mansion.

"The salt of Changlu Salt Farm has dropped by five cents a catty, and now the salt of Changlu Salt Farm sold in various places is basically about twenty Wen, should we continue to reduce the price?"

Cheng Bo'an's most powerful master, Cheng Xuan, who is also from the side branch of the Cheng family, hurriedly found Cheng Bo'an and reported the latest situation to Cheng Bo'an.

"Keep dropping, as long as they lower the price, we will follow the price."

Without the slightest hesitation, Cheng Boan said.

"If the price is restricted, our salt is only about ten cents a catty, and the price we sell to various places is not even five cents, at this price, we..."

Cheng Xuan thought about it and reminded.

They only need salt to get salt from the salt field, and salt introduction is a thing, in the past, it was necessary to transport grain to the border town area to be able to change the area, but since the fifth year of Hongzhi changed the grain opening to the silver opening, everyone only needs to pay silver to the imperial court to get the salt introduction.

Because these salt merchants basically had people from the imperial court to the local area, they could often get a large amount of salt by paying a symbolic amount of silver.

It can be said that the cost of their salt is almost zero, and more of the cost is spent on the upper and lower points, and the other is the freight, which was inconvenient in ancient times, and transportation was a big problem.

In terms of the transportation of grain in ancient times, one hundred catties of grain were transported from the Jiangnan region to the capital and the border areas, and at most less than half could be left, because the transportation in ancient times was basically carried by shoulders and hands, and only horse-drawn carriages and mule carts could be used if conditions permitted, and Cao Yun was the bulk of the transportation, but Cao Yun needed a place with water.

This is also the reason why these salt merchants like Nayin Kaizhong very much, because in the past, it was too troublesome to transport grain to the border area, and the loss was too great, so the salt merchants often had to find ways to recruit people to the border area to grow grain, so as to obtain salt introduction.

Nayin Kaizhong is different, you only need to pay silver to get salt, and it is much more flexible and convenient to operate, and there are your own people everywhere.

Originally, paying 100 taels of silver could only get 100 citations of salt, but because they got through the upper and lower levels, they could get 1,000 citations, 10,000 citations, or even 100,000 citations of salt by paying 100 taels of silver.

It has only just begun a few years after the opening of the silver in the middle of the country, and the imperial court can still receive more than two million taels of tax silver every year, but in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, with the corruption of the court bureau, the Donglin Party gradually took control of the government.

The amount of silver that the imperial court could receive in terms of salt introduction was very small, and even in the later period, in a year, the silver purchased from salt introduction was only tens of thousands of taels, and the tax was even more miserable.

At this time, it has not been a few years since the implementation of the silver opening, and the salt policy has not been completely corrupted, so Cheng Bo'an and the others still need to pay silver if they want to obtain the salt introduction, although they will definitely open more salt introductions, but at least, there is still a cost.

Cheng Xuan's meaning is very clear, that is, if the price is reduced again, Cheng Boan will lose money.

Salt is very cheap for them to take out from the salt farm, but if you count the upper and lower points, the transportation costs, and the silver to buy salt, if you add up, a pound of salt is almost a few pennies in cost.

This price can be said to be quite low.

So in the past, it was very simple for them to make money, using silver to buy salt, and then going to the salt factory to pick up the salt, and then selling it layer by layer.

A few pennies a pound of salt, change hands and sell it for twenty or thirty pennies a catty, several times the windfall profits, and then the next layer of salt merchants will add a few pennies to sell to the terminal sellers, these terminal sellers add a few pennies a catty, and then lack a catty of less, seepage sediment and so on, the final sales price is still as high as dozens of pennies a catty.

This is still a normal situation, sometimes, these salt merchants will increase the price according to the situation, such as Yunnan-Guizhou region, Jiangxi, Hunan, Hubei these places, some places are inconvenient, and they do not produce salt, the price of salt will be higher, hundreds of pounds is not rare.

Therefore, the salt merchants can be divided into three levels, the first level is Cheng Bo'an, Zhu Benduan, Feng Xiang, these big salt merchants, they control the salt farm, only they can get salt from the salt farm, so they are in the upstream of this industrial chain and eat the biggest profits.

A pound of salt is sold for fifty wen a catty, and they, the big salt merchants, will eat at least half of the profits, and twenty-five wen of the profits belong to them.

And these big salt merchants often don't need to be complicated, all they need to do is take the salt out of the salt farm, which is very simple.

Of course, not everyone can become such a big salt merchant, these big salt merchants have an extremely large background behind them, and basically everyone's family has someone in the imperial court.

or the children of their own families, who are officials in the court, or people who marry in their own families, or their own townsmen, etc., in short, each has a very large network of relationships.

In addition, they have opened up every link in the place, up and down the salt farm, and so on, so they can take out the salt from the salt field after paying the silver and getting the salt lead.

If it were someone else, even if they paid the money and got the salt guide, it would be almost impossible to get the salt out of the salt farm.

Because there are many reasons for the salt farm to easily suppress you, such as the need to queue up to lift salt, and basically every salt farm has been queuing for decades, when do you think it will be your turn?

Unless your background is big enough, such as imperial relatives like Jianchangbo and Shou Ninghou, they often ask Emperor Hongzhi for salt introductions, one is still 100,000 citations, 200,000 citations.

Naturally, no one dares to slack off on their salt introduction, and they can quickly propose salt, but generally these people will not really carry the salt themselves, but will sell these salt introductions very easily, and directly turn them into silver.

In general, the salt farms are all controlled by Cheng Bo'an, Zhu Benduan, Feng Xiang and other big salt merchants or big families, such as the Ye Qi Ye family in Nayin Kaizhong is a wealthy family in the Jiangnan region, and they are also engaged in the salt business, and the number of salt farms directly occupied by the Ye family is as many as seven, plus there are several salt farms controlled by some families, a proper big salt merchant.

The next down is the salt merchants in the middle, these salt merchants are far less powerful than Cheng Bo'an, Zhu Benduan, Feng Xiang, their sphere of influence may be limited to a province, there is no way to go up to the imperial court, and naturally there is no way to get salt from the salt field.

So they became middlemen, and the big salt merchants took salt from the salt works, and they took it, resold it and sold it to the terminal sellers in their respective spheres of influence, which was also a profit.

Salt is just in their hands, and a pound of salt will make them at least ten cents.

Finally, there are the terminal sellers, these people are often the powerful in a small place, who can monopolize the salt trade in a place, and only they can sell the salt.

Naturally, when this salt arrives in their hands, a pound of salt will earn at least ten cents, and some of them will earn even more.

Therefore, the imperial court benefited from the salt as the smallest, and the tax silver received every year was pitiful, and as time went by, it would become less and less, and in the end, it basically lost this piece of income.

The stove households in the salt field are the most miserable, because of the restrictions of the household service system, so they have been stove households for generations, and they can only boil salt in the salt field day and night.

The officials who manage the salt farms often try their best to squeeze these stove households for their own interests, and the stove households can only work four hours a day, but in order to produce more salt, the officials may let these stove households work six or seven hours a day.

Naturally, this extra salt will not be reported to the imperial court, and it will naturally go into the pockets of these officials.

As for the stove households, who cares about their life and death.

Of course, the people of Daming are also very hard, salt is not expensive, it is a few pennies when it is calculated, but in their hands, it is often dozens of pennies a catty, and it is also infiltrated with sand and soil, who should the people talk to?

What really benefits is these salt merchants, large and small, layer upon layer of salt merchants, all rich and rival countries, and all of them are full of oil.

Many salt merchant families were originally just a family, but because they were related to salt, they quickly grew and became a wealthy family.

These salt merchant families are well aware of the root of maintaining everything for themselves, so these salt merchant families will continue to build private schools to support their children's study and entrance examinations.

or marry off the women of his own family, marry those who are scholars, marry officials up and down; There is also the investment in their own fellow villagers, there are scholars in their hometown who go to Beijing to take the exam or something, they are very willing to give money to fund, and they like to make friends with these readers.

After a long time, a huge network will be formed slowly, which is also the fundamental reason for the formation of the Donglin Party in the middle and late Ming Dynasty.

As for the emperor of the Ming Dynasty, he also knew how to use the power of the factory guards to check and balance these civil officials, stupid as Emperor Hongzhi, Chongzhen and the like, and he was directly fooled to death by these civil officials.

The emperor wants silver without silver, the treasury starves to death rats, the internal treasury doesn't even bother to patronize mice, and the power is basically controlled and restricted by civil officials, even if a group of civil officials are replaced, it is still the same, and it is impossible to do something.