The entire eleventh year of Chongzhen seems to be like similar years in history, although there have been good news from overseas, but the disasters in the northern region of Guannai are expanding year by year, and Hebei, Henan, Shandong, Jiangsu and other places have also begun to be affected. In history, after the 12-year drought of Chongzhen, the historical pattern of the entire Ming Dynasty began to reach a turning point. In this year, Xiao Xuan had to reduce or exempt agricultural and commercial taxes in many places in the north, and invested tens of millions of taels of finance for disaster relief, and also transferred a lot of people to Jiangdong and other places, plus the main force of the revolutionary army and many newly formed mobilized troops have been transferred to Central Asia and Europe to obtain supplies on the spot, and the supply demand in the rear is not as great as before, so the natural disasters in the entire country have not had much impact.

Correspondingly, not only did the fiscal revenue not increase, but also fell slightly to a certain extent due to natural disasters, from the price of rice equivalent to 50 million or 60 million stone rice to the price of 40 million stone rice. As expected, in order to fill the various financial gaps in the country, from cultural and educational selection to industrial and commercial support, it had to overdraft more than 20 million taels of debts and even the state treasury.

All this seemed to make Xiao Xuan feel that it was too unrealistic to let the entire East enter an era of industrial civilization equivalent to that of the late nineteenth century in a single Jiazi time? Only when you are really in charge of a country or even in charge of many things can you deeply feel how far away from modern civilization in the true sense of the word, despite the progress of the late Ming Dynasty, the East.

Approaching the New Year, the "roadmap plan" that has lasted for a long time without any breakthrough progress finally came good news, under the testing and investment of the fourth factory affiliated to the Central College for more than a year, especially at this time, many backbones of related industries in the East and West have also invested in the construction of the factory affiliated to the Central College, so that many fields have finally begun to have some results. In particular, after more than 200 years of Western technology accumulation in hydraulic and mechanical engineering, after obtaining a large number of manpower and material resources dedicated to research and testing, a series of breakthroughs were made in the approach of the New Year of the 12th year of Chongzhen. The water-powered loom and the Jenny machine were finally developed one after another, and the relevant team of technicians and organizers were rewarded with a total of two million taels of silver and a patent right to share the sales of goods for ten years.

Xiao Xuan seems to have heard of the damage caused by the excessive patent protection system in the early steam age to promotion, so he shared the incentive cost with the patent revenue on the basis of government finance, and did not have too strict requirements on the size and duration of patent fees. Even machines such as water-powered looms and spinning machines that increase efficiency several times are only about 10 years old, and the scale of the fees is controlled at about 2 percent.

Of course, this is also a huge benefit to a large extent, so that the whole team obviously has obtained benefits that exceed the cost of experimental development by several times. Under Xiao Xuan's organization and advocacy, first of all, some merchants in the Hero Outer City were first promoted in the field of new machinery.

The reason is also very simple, some people who are not so bad IQ can obviously realize that these machines that can greatly improve labor productivity can bring more benefits to a large extent, but they will also make the interests of some ordinary people difficult to sustain to a large extent.

It seems that at this time, many people have roughly learned Xiao Xuan's general ideas in many aspects from some publications and even new books, but after all, some people boldly use some publications published and distributed in Nanjing to openly say: "From papermaking to printing, from movable type to blast furnaces, from machine-driven looms to new spinning machinery, these can certainly reduce labor costs to a large extent, and bring huge benefits to people with industries and even the country." However, the consumer market is limited, these machinery as a hero outside the city and even Nanjing around the special workshop of the experimental pilot is acceptable, and if large-scale promotion, it will inevitably bring about the bankruptcy of the private weavers, is more conducive to the real sense of the people's profit--- the people here are not rich or gentry, and even the lowest level of the common people. . . ”

Since there was no bureaucratic system before the Inner and Outer Dynasties, even the Imperial Historical Observatory, and even the entire Ming Dynasty, many of the upper and lower orders were widely published in various periodicals in addition to internal newspapers. Some of these publications were sold exclusively within the central manor, some extended to the entire city of Nanjing and even the outer city of Heroes, and some were not restricted by any buyers. Through the exchange of these rounds of public opinion, to a large extent, it also played a role in strengthening information channels and even restoring foreign dynasties and imperial history platforms.

Although many disgruntled old bureaucrats and literati had suffered a lot of purge over the years, these purges were generally not on the same level as the Qing Dynasty's literary prison, so that many people did not dare to stand on the opposite side of the official side of the cold or hostile confrontation, but gradually accepted this other way of sending down feelings and even communicating up and down.

Many times, Xiao Xuan's response is because he is worried that his voice will cause the effect of "terminating the discussion", or the embarrassment caused by making mistakes in some discussions, many of the people who respond are also responsible for the students of the Central College who are secretly arranged, and in a public sense, no one knows which people are the "royal mouthpiece", of course, if it is a slightly experienced person, you can still roughly understand what kind of discussion or polemic recovery from the signatures and tone of some speakers, to a large extent, represents the holy will.

This time, however, it seems difficult to determine which of the responses were of divine will.

Someone responded: "In those years and even now, in many places, there was a generation of drought and locust plagues in the north, and the people have reached the point where their own survival is facing a serious crisis. At that time, many of the old tycoons in the people to take advantage of the plunder, and even forced people to struggle on the verge of famine, that is the real sense of unkindness, just the problem of trading and operation, if it is really because of the weak capital and the introduction of new machinery to change the mode of production, then it is natural to be eliminated. If you don't have a job or lose in the market competition, you can go to beg for food or go home to farm, or find another way to make a living. Pandering for the sake of catering will only hinder the promotion and progress of technology in the end... ”

(End of chapter)