Guo Yunhou had not yet woken up from the news brought back by Huang Liji and Yuan Keli, and received an order from Chongzhen to summon him. Guo Yunhou quickly regained his composure and followed Wang Chengen to the main worship hall.

Zhu Youzhen greeted Guo Yunhou and asked him to sit opposite the Marquis of Fengcheng, and then said to the two: "Regarding the implementation of the rationing system, the obstacles encountered among the gentry and landlords of the six prefectures of Xunqi and Baoding, Zhending, Hejian, Shunde, Guangping, and Daimyo, the Marquis of Fengcheng has reported to me in detail.

Mr. Guo should also be aware that the obstacles to the requisition policy of grain and cotton in the rationing system should have been dealt with almost all the obstacles of the Shandong San Francisco.

Next, the gentry landlords in Shandong, Henan, Shaanxi, and Shanxi provinces would keep an eye on the actions of the gentry landlords in Beizhili, and use this as a criterion to determine their acceptance of the rationing policy issued by the imperial court.

The gentry and landlords of Beizhili, in the final analysis, are the most powerful in the six provinces in the south, they are either attached to the door of the relatives, or they have formed a family with some relatives, and some of them even have ties with the palace.

If they were just alone, they would naturally obey the orders of the imperial court honestly. But now that their relationship is intertwined and shaped as a whole, some people tend to misjudge the situation and think that their own power can be countered by the power of the imperial court.

Although in my eyes, even if these gentry and landlords are united with some of their relatives and eunuchs, they are just a praying mantis that wants to intercept the carriage without any means. As long as we show determination, the carriage will be able to run over the mantis.

However, the gentry landlords of Beizhili and the nobles of Jingzhong are still supporters of the imperial court after all, and if we crush the past like this without saying a word, it will first weaken the power of the imperial court itself.

Moreover, they are all famous and wealthy families in the local area, and the people who are attached to these large wealthy families do not know that there are tens of millions of households. In the eyes of these people, these big families who have dealt with them for several lifetimes are the local representatives of the imperial court.

A proclamation sent hundreds or even thousands of miles away from them, who had never had direct contact with them, could not be believed by these ordinary people without the approval of these local wealthy families.

Therefore, I thought that the imperial court needed to divide the relationship between the lords, gentry and large landlords and local small and medium-sized landlords and ordinary people. It was only when they were antagonistic that the imperial court could intervene in the localities as arbiters through the local government and control the power of rule and management below the county level, and implement the rationing system in every village. ”

For Chongzhen to give up the solution of breaking the situation by force, Fengcheng Hou and Guo Yunhou were relieved in their hearts, and Guo Yunhou immediately asked the emperor tentatively: "Your Majesty said that you want to divide these people, I don't know if you already have a comprehensive plan?" ”

Zhu Youzhen thought for a while and said: "I haven't had a comprehensive plan yet, but after thinking about it these days, I have a way to solve it."

The voices of the Northern Zhili who oppose the rationing system that we want to solve can actually be divided into four categories of people: the nobles, gentry, and merchants who invest in the cotton textile industry; landlords who own large tracts of fertile land to grow cotton for profit; landlords who own large tracts of fertile land and still maintain the old-fashioned subsistence economy; There are also small and medium-sized landowners who have a large number of people, but the land area is not as large as that of the first two.

The purpose of the imperial court to promulgate the rationing system was, first, to ensure the most basic survival needs of the people in the north; The second is to ensure that cotton textile workshops, grain processing workshops and other industries can obtain sufficient industrial and agricultural raw materials.

Mr. Guo should understand that serving one acre of wheat requires about 4 working days from farmers; Serving one acre of cotton is about twice the labor time of a wheat field.

A couple ploughs 50 acres of land in Beizhili, if it is their own field, they can harvest 50 stone of wheat, now in the market 1 yuan per stone of wheat, deducting the cost can get 44 yuan. On average, it is 22 yuan per person per year, and if the land is not owned, the income will be even less if the land rent is subtracted.

But a woman who worked in a cotton textile factory for 10 months could earn 30 yuan. And the value she has created in these 10 months is at least more than double the amount she was paid.

It can be seen that as long as these workshops have enough raw materials, recruiting these peasants to work in the factories can create more wealth than letting them work in the fields. The more wealth people create, the more taxes the state can collect to alleviate the financial woes we face.

Moreover, for a country, leaving a large number of people unemployed not only means that a large amount of living labor is lost virtually, but also requires the state to come up with valuable grain reserves to feed them, which is a double loss.

Knowing this, we should clearly know what the future work goals of the imperial court are.

For the imperial court, the purpose of developing agricultural production is, first, to ensure that we can obtain enough food to feed everyone; The second is to provide sufficient raw materials for industrial production.

Therefore, we must break all the self-sufficient small-scale peasant economy in the countryside and make our agriculture part of a market economy for the purpose of exchanging commodities.

Proceeding from this goal, the first and second types of people are the targets we can woo, while the third and fourth types of people are the targets that we will inevitably attack. ”

Chongzhen paused slightly when he said this, observed the expressions of Guo Yunhou and Fengchenghou, and found that there was no change in their faces, so he continued.

"The first group of people wants to lower the ceiling on the price of grain and cotton, especially the price of cotton; The second group of people wants to raise the lower limit of the price of grain and cotton, and what they are most concerned about is also the price of cotton.

The third and fourth groups are not interested in the prices we set, and they will only hoard the output of their fields until the price of grain and cotton in the market rises to the price they expect.

The reason why there is such a big difference between the performance of the latter two groups of people and the first two types of people is that the purpose of production of the latter two groups of people is to meet their own needs, and whether or not the grain and cotton in excess of their needs are exchanged has no impact on their lives.

Understanding this, what we need to do is to win over the first and second types of people and suppress the third and fourth types of people. Eventually, all the landlords will be turned into farm operators who produce commercial grain and cotton for the market.

The rationing system is not simply about pooling limited food for the most efficient and equitable redistribution. At the same time, it is also one of the means to enable our factories to obtain stable raw materials.

Therefore, to a certain extent, the interests of the imperial court are the same as those of the first and second types of people. On this basis, we can reach out to the first and second groups of people to determine the maximum and minimum prices for grain and cotton, so as to ensure that everyone acts within the scope of this consensus, and does not harm each other's interests.

And for the third and fourth types of people, there is no need for the imperial court to take direct action. We can allow some people to set up grain and cotton collection and storage companies, and the imperial court will issue them licenses to purchase grain and cotton within a specific range, so that they can obtain a part of the benefits after the implementation of the rationing system, so that the third and fourth categories of people's dissatisfaction with the imperial court will be transferred to these executors.

Of course, for the establishment of these collection and storage companies, the household department should carry out strict selection, and try to select influential personnel in the local area to establish. Don't choose, those who want to gain benefits through grain and cotton requisition, but want the court to give them a platform..."

If he had heard the emperor's remarks two years ago, Guo Yunhou would have felt that this was a young man's cranky thoughts, and he regarded national affairs as a game of playing housework. Because he himself is one of this kind of self-sufficient gentry and landlords, relying only on the little money given by the old Zhu family, he would have drunk the northwest wind a long time ago.

Therefore, this policy does not need to be discussed, and he himself will be the first to stand up against Chongzhen's proposition to protect his family business. Even if he had already taken up the post of head of the household department at that time, he would not feel that there was a problem with the state finances and how much it had to do with the household department.

If it had been a year ago, he might have understood the emperor's remarks, but he would not have expressed his support. For the power of the first two groups is too insignificant compared to those self-sufficient gentry and landlords.

Of course, he would not completely deny the emperor's proposition, because the power to manage the state finances belonged to the household department, which not only greatly improved the status of the household department in the imperial court, but also brought considerable economic benefits to the officials of the household department.

It can be said that a year ago, the household officials had taken the lead in breaking away and had to rely on the income of their families to subsidize their eunuch career. The successive appearance of the three major banks, stocks, and bonds alone has already allowed the officials of the household department to obtain from it, which is equivalent to the output income of some officials' fields for more than ten or twenty years.

After obtaining such a high gray income, the household officials are a little disdainful of the fixed output in the fields every year. They began to be enthusiastic about their work, or to actively expand the power in their hands.

The emperor's idea would give the household a chance to expand its power, and Guo Yunhou, as the head of the household, would not completely deny it, but he would suggest that the emperor should focus on the small landowners and yeoman farmers, rather than trying to challenge the large class of ordinary gentry.

But today, Guo Yunhou thought about it for a long time, but he couldn't find a reason to oppose the emperor's proposition. Today's household department has become, a department with strong internal cohesion.

This is not only because the household department has taken the lead in establishing a closer organizational management system, but also because the power and benefits obtained by the household department have been fairly distributed to each household official through the centralized redistribution method.

The original feudal bureaucratic system of layers of tribute has almost collapsed, and for the first time, the interests of the department have appeared before the personal interests of officials.

The reason for this situation is that when the emperor introduced accounting standards in the household department, the way in which one or several officials could conspire to dispose of a matter was broken.

Without the concerted efforts of the entire household department, it is difficult to carry out irregularities in the affairs of the household department, unless some key officials are willing to take responsibility for it. However, the bureaucratic system of the Ming Dynasty has developed to the present, and it is the code of conduct for these officials to never take any risks, so the unity of the entire department of the household department has become a rare sight among the six departments.

The food department under the Ministry of Household Affairs will benefit the most from promoting the rationing system, and the officials of the Ministry of Household Affairs will never give up promoting this policy. In the eyes of the officials of the Ministry of Households, the power of the ordinary gentry in the vicinity of Gyeonggi was actually not as strong as that of the gentry who invested in industry and commerce.

In this era, the gentry and merchants who were able to invest in industry and commerce were themselves large landowners with extremely wealthy wealth. As for places outside Gyeonggi, some officials really can't see this far, after all, no matter how noisy those places are, they will not bring fire to the capital.

After thinking about it repeatedly, Guo Yunhou finally decided to support the emperor's proposition and use the first and second types of people to fight the third and fourth types of people, so as to remove the obstacles to the implementation of the rationing system. The Marquis of Fengcheng did not have so much consideration in his heart, and after the emperor finished speaking, he praised the idea loudly, once again showing his infinite loyalty to Chongzhen.