In October, the Jingshi is already quite cold, and the cool breeze is blowing everywhere, although it is not cold and biting, but it can also blow people who are cold and cold.

The weather is so cold, but many people's hearts are hot, not to mention the bosses of those paper workshops and printing workshops are like epileptic seizures, crazy purchases everywhere, crazy recruitment; Just talking about the little officials in the yamen of the various ministries, it is like a crazy head, lying on the table and writing hard as soon as they have nothing to do, and it is not popular to write at that time, are these mentally ill people all ready to write books and speak?

This, of course, is impossible.

In ancient times, writing books and speaking was generally a great writer, a great poet can have the honor, even if you want to come up with an essay or something, at least it has to be a first-class Hanlin or Shajishi, like the small officials of the various yamen, they are generally from a people's background, at most they are a third-class citong jinshi background, dare to write books, are you not afraid of laughing off people's front teeth?

Naturally, they are not writing a book, but writing a report for the Xindi newspaper. In the past few days, the general political envoy has also been like crazy, and posted the notice of the Xindi newspaper all over the yamen of the Beijing Division, and the strange thing is that the senior officials of the various yamen should not have seen it and ignore it! It's not that they really didn't see it, they just didn't dare to care, the emperor spoke at the court meeting, and whoever dared to obstruct the secretary of the political envoy from running the newspaper would be good-looking.

The high-ranking officials of the various yamen were also happy to turn a blind eye, anyway, they did not come to ask for money, but to send money to the small officials under them, so let them send it.

At first, the people in the yamen didn't believe it, a thousand-word article is ten taels of silver, what are you kidding, everyone is a reader, if you really want to start a ruthless attack, it is not impossible to write tens of thousands of words a day, and you can earn a hundred taels a day, it is simply a fantasy!

There are always some idle and boring, sitting there and having nothing to do, writing a few related articles, and throwing them into the collection box at the door of the general political envoys, it is a pastime, anyway, even if you don't adopt it, you will be given a hundred literary fees, one hundred wen a day, three taels of silver a month, and the family's rations are enough, of course, the premise is that the general political envoys are not cheating, they have to really give money.

The next day, all the people who submitted received money, of course, most of them were the cost of work, but there were also very few people who received ten taels of silver for the manuscript.

Now all the yamen of the Beijing division are fried, it turns out that there is really such a thing as ten taels of silver and a thousand words, whoever doesn't write is a fool, even if there are no ten taels, a hundred wen is not enough to buy some wine to drink, a thousand words of article, what a big thing, at most an hour to write, they are busy for one or two hours a day, and there is time.

So, as soon as the officials below the sixth grade in the yamen of the Beijing Division were idle, they began to bury their heads in making a fuss, and those who didn't want to write were forced to write, no way, if you don't write, your colleagues will scold you for being stupid!

Wu Meicun has suffered a crime here, the first day was better, dozens of people contributed, the writing was okay, and people who didn't have a little self-confidence didn't dare to throw this ugly, he picked a few of the best, and asked his subordinates to send all the manuscript fees to people the next day.

It's terrible now, the next day he received hundreds of copies, and his eyes were almost swollen before he finished reading it, and on the third day, it was more than a thousand copies, and he couldn't finish it when he was killed! He had to gather his subordinates, roughly talk about the screening conditions, and then let them check it first, and then hand it over to him for a look, and he watched it all day before he finished reading it. On the fourth day, there were still more than 1,000 copies, and he was buried in the pile of manuscripts all day long, even eating and going to the toilet with a few manuscripts in his hand, and he was about to vomit when he read it.

However, this also has an advantage, even if many manuscripts do not meet the standards for publication, but the content described has a lot of merits, as long as it is a little synthetic, and then polish a qualified article will come out. Now, if he is asked to write again, he can definitely write ten articles a day, of course, this is a bit of a suspicion of plagiarism, and he disdains it. Therefore, when he decided that he couldn't get the manuscript together, he wouldn't write an article again, because when he thought of the topic, the highlights in the various unadopted manuscripts would automatically appear in his mind, and he didn't need to think about it at all, just excerpt a few paragraphs, what is the difference between this and copying!

In this way, the first issue, the second issue, the third issue, and the fourth issue of the Beijing News ...... A steady stream of them are sent to Zhu Cijiong, at least one issue a day, sometimes two or three issues a day, anyway, except for the content of the first three issues, the rest can be appropriately adjusted according to the submission situation, which issue has ten articles, which issue will be made first.

At this time, there is no TV and no Internet, the news of the day is impossible, as long as the time deviation is not more than one month, it is considered news, of course, if you can receive the news on the day of a major event, it is also possible to insert it into the newspaper of the day.

Zhu Cijiong looked at it carefully one by one, after all, Wu Meicun is the champion of the new department, and there is nothing to say about the literary style, the articles edited by him are basically vivid and concise, but some articles are not very good with what he wants to promote, and they cannot have the desired effect.

This is a normal situation, Wu Meicun has never seen the overwhelming propaganda techniques of later generations, and it is understandable that he is not sure of the main points. Therefore, usually after reading it, Zhu Cijiong has to call Wu Meicun to him for patient guidance.

After a few issues, Wu Meicun finally fully understood what Zhu Cijiong meant, and the key points slowly became more accurate, and Zhu Cijiong was relieved at this point, and finally didn't have to study the newspaper all day long, that thing was really not the job that the emperor should do.

After the newspaper is finalized, it will be sent to typesetting and printing, and the bosses of the printing workshop are called a positive ah, they specially customized a batch of frames about the same size as the newspaper to ensure that each side can be printed at one time; They also changed the printing workbench to the size of a newspaper, which made it more efficient; As for the personnel, they have doubled the number of recruits, and each table is two sets of people taking turns to fight, and they are printing frantically for twelve hours a day.

Truckloads of printed newspapers were delivered to the Yamen of the General Political Envoy Department, and their small warehouses were filled in one day, and the back was even more full of office spaces, almost everywhere.

Wu Meicun looked at the increasingly piled up newspapers, and was worried, how could they be distributed to individuals with so many of them! This question seems simple, but it is indeed difficult to think about it, the territory of the Ming Dynasty and the three capitals and thirteen provinces is so vast, even if it is fast, it will take two or three days to cross a province, and send it to the most remote provinces, and it will be fast to get there in half a month! And not only is it delivered, but you still have to distribute it, who will distribute it?

This issue was beyond Wu Meicun's purview, and he had to ask the emperor for help again.

Zhu Cijiong was also broken when he heard this question, and he found that he had ignored a very important point, there was no network and no fax machine in the Ming Dynasty at this time, how could this newspaper be delivered! He began to think about it, and he vaguely remembered that in his previous life, there was a newspaper before there was no Internet and a fax machine, and how did this newspaper be published? The post office, yes, it was issued by the post office, and the problem was that there was no post office in the Ming Dynasty!

What if you don't have a post office? If you don't, let him have it, being an emperor is this good, something that is impossible to accomplish in the eyes of others is quite simple in his opinion. Post office, as long as you know what kind of institution it is, are you afraid that you won't be able to build it?

He immediately gathered a group of cronies and directly put forward the idea of building a post office, and he explained the general role of the post office, and asked them to analyze how long it would take for the post office to be built, how much money it would cost, and how many additional personnel would need to be added.

But he never thought that as soon as he finished speaking, Sun Yuanhua looked at him with a strange face, looking like he wanted to speak and stopped.

Zhu Cijiong asked curiously: "Chuyang, what's wrong, is there something wrong?" ”

Sun Yuanhua said hesitantly: "The post office that the emperor said is a bit similar to the post station, Wei Chen is thinking, can you simply transform the post station into a post office, this post station has many post guards, and it has always been a big burden on the military department, if ...... Weichen said that if, if Lord Wu can share some profits and come out as a post man's monthly salary, then it is not impossible for the post station to transmit and sell newspapers separately. ”

Post station, this Zhu Cijiong has the impression that the history books seem to say that Li Zicheng was born as a post officer, and it was because Chongzhen listened to the minister's suggestion to abolish the post station, so that Li Zicheng lost his job, and he rebelled.

Therefore, a few years ago, a minister suggested that the post station be abolished, and the regent Zhu Youzhen couldn't be the master, so when he came to ask Zhu Cijiong, Zhu Cijiong angrily directly snatched the brush in Chongzhen's hand and drew a big fork on the fold. Nima, do you want to force Li Zicheng to rebel? Do you want to kill me?

As a result, Li Zicheng still reversed, which made him not embarrassed, so Zhu Cijiong was very impressed by the post station. How did he know at that time that Li Zicheng was actually a rogue murderer, and he might be exposed at any time, and he would rebel if you cut or dismantle the post station!

Now that I think about it, this post station is not similar to the post office, but fortunately it was not cut at that time, otherwise it would have been a lot of trouble at this time.

Zhu Cijiong made a decision on the spot, your military department is too burdensome, right, so you simply directly changed the post station into a post office, and assigned it to the yamen of the general political envoy department, in addition to the original function of picking up and dropping off officials, retaining the function of transmitting official documents, and adding the function of transmitting and selling newspapers, and for every newspaper sold, they will be given a penny, and the Ministry of Food and Household will allocate it. As for the future, when officials go out on business, their respective yamen will check and reimburse their expenses, and the post office will no longer provide food and lodging free of charge.

The world-famous Daming Post was born in this way, after belonging to the Yamen of the General Political Envoy, the post guards of the post stations around the country gradually broke away from the military status, and the post office gradually developed from the military official document transfer station to a service department integrating communication, mailing items, and issuing newspapers and periodicals.

It is much more convenient to have a post office to distribute newspapers, Wu Meicun will be bundles of newspapers after affixing seals, began to distribute through the post office to all parts of the Ming Dynasty, within 10 days, the first three issues of the "Beijing News" on time to complete the printing and send to various places, just wait for the day to come, open the seal, free distribution to the hands of readers everywhere.