It seemed to her that it was almost impossible to pull such a huge carriage and more than forty people on it with only two horses.

But it was so, the huge carriage full of passengers was actually pulled by two horses, and then moved slowly on the tracks!

This is far beyond Song Maruko's imagination!

But although she was shocked, Song Maruko was also a person who had seen the world, and at the same time, she was born in a daimyo's family, and she would not easily show her shock, so although she was shocked in her heart, she still pretended to be the same as everyone else, and she looked like she was used to it.

When the driver collected the fare one by one, she, like her colleagues, took out a ten-cent bill to pay the fare.

The fare of ten cents is naturally a bit expensive for the poor people of today, but for a big city like Shanghai, it is not too expensive.

According to statistics, the per capita income in Shanghai, especially represented by ordinary workers in major factories, is about two yuan per month.

According to the recent exchange ratio of copper and silver coins, roughly speaking, one tael of silver is equivalent to nine hundred and sixty wen.

That is, the per capita income is about 2,000 yuan.

Of course, in the monthly income of 2,000 Wen, many of them still need to support their families, so this kind of public carriage is not something that everyone is willing to sit on, for ordinary people, it is naturally no problem to do it occasionally, but if you want to commute to and from work every day, it is usually a middle and high-level group with a relatively high income.

However, what surprised Song Maruko was that most of the people who paid the fare used paper money, not coins as she saw in Busan.

The ten-penny banknote can be regarded as one of the relatively large banknotes in circulation in the Tang Empire, and the circulation is second only to the banknotes with the value of one penny.

When he first came to Busan, Song Maruki was still a little skeptical that these fluttering papers could really be used as money, but he soon learned that this kind of paper money could really be used as money, but when he was in Busan, many people didn't accept it, and only some big merchants and the like would accept these banknotes.

The empire began to issue paper money very early, but the application scale of paper money was relatively limited in the early days, mainly because the people did not trust paper money enough, even if the empire has clearly stipulated in the law, paper money is also legal tender, and no one is allowed to refuse paper money.

But in real life, people still don't trust paper money very much!

Especially in some remote areas, ordinary people still only trust coins.

Unlike the difficulty of promoting paper money, the new types of coins issued by the empire were greatly welcomed by the people!

The Imperial Mint began to issue uniform gold, silver, and copper coins early on, and they were very popular from the very beginning!

Just when Song Marunzi used paper money to pay for the fare, in the palace annex of Jinling City, senior officials of the Ministry of Finance were reporting to Li Xuan on the reform measures of monetary policy!

The monetary policy of the empire has actually been reformed for more than a decade, but it has not been completely reformed!

This is mainly due to the fact that there is no unified monetary policy in China, where copper, silver and gold are all mixed, and there is no clear fixed exchange rate.

Even in today's Tang Empire, the gold coins, silver coins and copper coins issued by it are independent of each other, and there is no unified and fixed exchange rate.

It is often the market that goes with the market, and the higher the gold price in the market, the higher the exchange ratio of gold coins.

With the progress of overseas trade, a large amount of silver continued to be imported into the empire, so it was also directly caused by the continuous depreciation of silver, and the continuous appreciation of copper and gold.

The empire's major banks adjust their exchange ratios according to the fluctuations in the price of precious metals in the market.

The empire's currency exchange ratio fluctuates greatly, which has affected the empire's financial policy and even people's livelihood to a certain extent, so Li Xuan has to pay attention to it.

In the early days of the empire, the mixed currency system of gold, silver and copper was implemented, and it can even be said that there was no clear currency standard, and later after discovering the continuous depreciation of silver, in order to prevent the financial and even people's livelihood risks caused by the depreciation of silver.

This led to the hoarding of gold and the preparation of the transition to the gold standard.

For this reason, the empire gradually began to require strict implementation of the system of unified settlement of gold when trading overseas.

Subsequently, it was gradually led to the conversion of large-scale trade to gold settlement.

However, even today, the domestic gold reserves are still insufficient, and it is difficult to completely support the huge financial structure of the empire to implement the gold standard, so the empire has to continue to use the mixed standard, and it is difficult to completely switch to a single gold standard.

As for the single silver standard, it has long been abandoned, because in the absence of the silver standard, a large amount of silver has been flooded into the Tang Dynasty through overseas trade, even if the Tang Empire requires overseas trade to be settled in gold, but there are still a large number of foreign merchants who come to trade with a whole shipload of silver.

In this case, silver is already imported in large quantities, and if the silver standard is explicitly stated, then the import of silver will become a very terrifying thing.

When the time comes, foreign merchants will use a large amount of silver to buy a large amount of materials for the Tang Empire!

And silver is a thing that can't be eaten or worn, and the industrial use is not very big at the moment, and to be honest, this thing doesn't have much effect on the industrialized development of the empire.

In addition, as a currency, this thing does not retain its value, and the annual output is getting larger and larger, and more importantly, the empire cannot control the production of silver at all, because now Fuso and the Americas are large producers of silver, and it is difficult for the empire to control the silver production in these places, especially in the Americas, the Spaniards are said to have discovered a large number of silver mines in the Americas, and they are mining them desperately, and then shipping them to the world to buy various goods.

If one is not done well, it will become, the Spaniards get a lot of silver, and then buy a lot of goods from the empire, while the Tang people can only be stunned by a pile of silver!

In Li Xuan's view, this trade model is similar to the dollar trade of later generations, and the Americans are also desperately printing dollars, and then buying a large number of goods from the world, especially from China, and all they need to pay is a pile of paper......

Silver, while not paper, is essentially not much different.

In order to prevent this, in order to allow the empire to completely control the currency power, Li Xuan is unswervingly ready to promote the gold standard!

Although the empire does not control much gold today, and much of the gold production is not in the hands of the empire, gold has a huge advantage over silver, and that is scarcity.

Scarcity is destined to make gold an irreplaceable currency!

This is also the fundamental reason why the empire has promoted gold settlement on a large scale in recent years!

However, even if the gold calculation is promoted, but under the current chaotic standard system, the price fluctuations of precious metals will still greatly affect the stability of the financial market.

At the same time, the Tang Empire also began to vigorously promote the paper money system, trying to separate money from precious metals, but it was not too successful, although people gradually accepted paper money, but still regarded paper money as a supplement to metal currency.

For this reason, Li Xuan decided to speed up the reform of the domestic monetary policy, the current chaotic monetary policy is not good, sooner or later there will be big trouble.

Of course, it is not feasible to implement the gold standard directly in one step, because the domestic silver stock is too large, and if the gold standard is directly implemented and the silver standard is abolished, it will cause big trouble.

Therefore, Li Xuan decided to implement the dual standard system of gold and silver, but at the same time as the implementation of the double standard system, he adopted official guidance and pegged the currency directly to gold.

It is no longer the traditional metal currency of the past, but the imperial currency with legal significance, and a unified currency exchange ratio is formulated!

Today's report is the Ministry of Finance's report to Li Xuan on the relevant monetary measures.

"According to the comprehensive argument of our colleagues in the Ministry of Finance, the monetary system has been basically determined, and according to His Majesty's instructions, we have preliminarily formulated a new type of dual-standard system."

"The new dual-standard system will be improved in the original dual-standard system, and the biggest feature of it will be the complete collection of coinage rights, and the official establishment of the exchange ratio of gold and silver coins!

At the same time, the empire will not recognize the right to circulate and repay gold and silver coins in other regions in the country, and the gold and silver coins that can be circulated in the country will only be minted by the Imperial Mint. ”

"At the same time, the exchange ratio of gold and silver coins in domestic circulation is formulated by the official guidance, adjusted according to the proportion of gold and silver in the market, and is based on the price of gold!"

"According to this system, the empire will issue a new imperial gold coin, one imperial dollar, the gold content of which is one penny and six cents, according to the existing gold and silver market, the exchange ratio of one tael of gold to six taels of silver, the value of this imperial yuan is also equivalent to one tael of silver."

"The newly minted one-dollar gold coins will circulate at the same time as the existing existing silver coins, but no new silver coins will be minted into the market, and many existing silver coins will be gradually recycled, but in the future, all official pricing will be uniformly based on Imperial Yuan!"

"At the same time, because of the limited gold reserves, it will guide the large-scale issuance of banknotes, and will not distinguish between gold coupons, silver coupons, and copper coin coupons, but will adopt a unified imperial yuan banknote, and the old banknotes will be uniformly recycled and exchanged for new imperial yuan banknotes."

"At the same time, we will guide the public to use paper money as much as possible in daily transactions, and for this reason, we will join forces with the tax department to promote the application of paper money!"

Li Xuan listened to this set of monetary system, although it sounded similar to the current mixed standard, it was still used together with gold and silver, but the biggest feature of it was that it was linked to gold.

To some extent, this is a kind of gold standard, but in practice it also allows silver coins to continue to circulate!

However, the focus is not on whether to adopt the gold standard or the silver standard, the biggest feature of this monetary reform is to determine the concept of the imperial 'yuan', and at the same time promote the issuance of paper money on a large scale according to this concept.

It is already the beginning of the industrial revolution, and it is about to enter the era of industrialization on a large scale, and it is not okay to directly trade precious metals in kind!

In the past ten years, the application of paper money has not been widespread, and now, the empire is ready to use administrative means to directly promote the application of paper money!