North Zhili, Henan, Shandong three provinces, at this time if you are in the county of Fuxian City, you can still see a thriving scene, all kinds of industrial and commercial banks are rising, are recruiting manpower to expand the scale, from the south of the Yangtze River and coastal businessmen to buy and sell. There was a smile on everyone's face, this was the best day in the past hundred years, and the food in the grain store was cheap and scary, all of which were from Nanyang and outside the Guan.

As long as the workers are fed and clothed by their wages, there is no problem, not to mention that every day there are Chinese people standing at the city gates and bazaars and other crowded places shouting, recruiting people for various workshops and shops, and seeing the young people who have entered the city is to come forward to talk, nothing more than to say, "It is not easy to live in the countryside now, and it is not easy to enter the city, wouldn't it be better to work to feed the family, this salary is still rising!" ”

These jubilant images are all in the city, and it is indeed not easy to live in the countryside now, especially the honest peasants who have no power.

The current situation is that the local clans are often the largest local cotton landlords, and they rely on the power of the clans, on the one hand, they hire the poor families of their own clans to grow cotton fields, and on the other hand, they rely on the size of the clans and the force of collusion with outlaws to coerce people who are not of their own clan to do cotton farming.

At this time, the cotton peasants, not so much hired peasants as serfs, were watched by the minions of the landlords and gentry, and they all signed documents with no freedom before plowing, and if they had been written according to these documents, they would not have been free even if they died.

All these serfs did every day was to cultivate the fields, and they worked incessantly, without stopping. In the past, when I was a hired farmer, I didn't want to plant anymore, and I returned the land to the landlord, even if I went to ask for food, no one cared about it, but now each manor is a country of its own.

The serfs were strictly forbidden to leave the scope of the manor owner's control without permission, and there was often only one way to escape, that is, they were hacked to death and thrown directly into the ground and buried, and they wanted to go to the complaint, first to see if they could run out, in the past, someone's field people could not go out for a day, and only a few large landowners had such a scale, and now, after a bloody and rapid annexation, almost every county has a manor of this size.

In the past, the minions and thugs of the landlords were at most armed with wooden sticks and kitchen knives, but now they are all riding tall horses, sharp weapons in their hands, and many have strong bows. Many of the bandits who used to fall into the grass on the mountain are all good, and they have become a family or something, this meal is more comfortable than the previous strongman life, there is a meal without a meal is much more comfortable, and there is a good citizen's identity.

Even if they are still out of the grass, the main industry of these people is not to rob the passing merchants, but to keep an eye on those villages that have not yet been annexed, go there to loot the population and then sell it to the cotton landlords, this money is not risky, and it is much more stable.

It is said that the society is constantly advancing, from the slave society to the feudal society and then continue to develop forward, and finally the world is the same, but in the countryside of the three northern provinces, there is a slave society scene in the dark age, at this time the order of the yamen can not get out of the city, because the countryside is now controlled by fewer and fewer people, and the so-called official orders only need to send a letter to the homes of these big landlords.

Not to mention that these big landlords all have such and such merits, and they all have the right to be exempted from land and servitude, even if they want to collect those poor and medium-sized families, these people are under the protection of those big families, and they only pay some of the money they should pay every year.

In the past, the rule was that these landlords and squires did not have to pay taxes and levies if they had meritorious reputations, and the officials and tax collectors in the yamen were extorting and extorting from those poor families, and would always make up for the shortfalls.

An acre of cotton and an acre of grain, the production and profit in this is huge, if in the past, those small households who planted cotton fields were based on the annual income of cotton fields, but now, these big households say that their hired farmers are planting grain fields, and the officials dare not say anything, after all, it is the other party's greater power, more money, and harder fists, so they can only go back in ashes.

In Qingzhou Prefecture, Shandong, there is a magistrate who is really in a hurry, and rushed into a large household with a servant to strictly order the other party not to cover the population, conceal taxes, and the cotton fields planted must be paid in accordance with the national law.

What I didn't expect was that what the magistrate who had collected all the taxes was waiting for was not a reward from the ministry, but an impeachment from a certain imperial historian in the imperial court, saying that he was insulting Sven, greedy for money and profit, and blackmailing local virtuous gentry. It is directly that there is no possibility of promotion after the expiration of the term.

With this example in the front, who will give a head to this field in the back, everyone has fooled around, or increased taxes in the industrial and commercial shops and workshops in the city, and then bought grain with the grain merchants to make up for the gap, and this country field is no longer daring to touch.

Some of the notes of the Ming people once described such a phenomenon, saying that the bureaucrats at the grassroots level could be powerful in the past, but now they can only speak loudly in the prefecture and county, except for the city gate, it is completely the world of those big landlords in the local area, and these people often have children and nephews behind them to serve as officials in various places, coupled with the rapidly expanding wealth, the real prefect and prefect are them.

It is often the mistakes made by these people's hired peasants, and these people write a complaint, which states what crime should be convicted of someone, and how to deal with someone, and the officials of the county government can only do so, otherwise, the grain will not be collected at all, and there are people in the officialdom who are obstructing them everywhere, and this official does not need to go now.

In the place where there are cotton fields, the people who control a large number of cotton fields are above the government, this kind of people are comparable to the heroes of the two Han Dynasty, and the people in their families are getting closer and closer to the direction of private soldiers.

After this note was written, no one paid attention to it, or everyone kept silent, but a name for the big landlord in it spread-cotton gentry.

The concentration of raw materials in the cotton fields in the north, and the strict control of the subordinate population by the cotton gentry, is not a good thing for the handicraft workshops and shops in the south of the Yangtze River, and the emerging industries and businesses in the north are basically related to the sea trade in Shandong, and the things produced are mainly sold overseas, no matter which country the people are, they always have to wear clothes. Therefore, the stores in the north only need to have a sufficient supply of raw materials and someone to work, and nothing else will have an impact.

However, the weaving workshops in Suzhou, Hangzhou and Songjiang are different, their market is about forty percent in the country, in the period of the forbidden sea, this share is even higher, although now they are also using new spinning and weaving machines, but the raw materials are choked by the northern merchants, and the price of cotton is gradually rising, but in the past, the middle and lower classes of the main customers of the Jiangnan merchants were all encircled by the cotton gentry to make cattle and horses, where there will be any ability to buy.

Many literati and officials born in Jiangnan naturally want to speak for their own people, and they began to preach in the court and among the people, saying that the three northern provinces treat the peasants like this, and what is the difference between treating the beasts, and the sage has always hated this cruel thing in the teaching, if these cotton gentry are allowed to continue like this, the power of the Ming Dynasty in the local area will inevitably be hollowed out, and these people will continue to expand, It will inevitably repeat the catastrophe of the Wei and Jin dynasties that disturbed the world.

Of course, the workshop of the Thirteen Chambers of Commerce in Jiangnan confined the hired workers in the workshop, which is also a trend like a slave, and the force in the hands of the Thirteen Chambers of Commerce is strong, these things, the literati and officials in Jiangnan are selectively ignored, these people are just speaking for the interests they represent.

However, after they finished saying this, there was no good response, for no other reason, even the imperial villages around the capital division and the manors of the ministers, now they are planted with large patches of cotton, and they are generally cultivated by the military households of the guards, and this is still the case at the top, not to mention those below.

When the three northern provinces and the south of the Yangtze River were fighting for their fortune, the border towns in the southwest and northwest seemed to have been forgotten, and in this almost miraculous economic leap, they did not take any advantage, on the contrary, because the local handicraft industry was devastated by the coastal area, they were also full of complaints.

In the face of boiling public grievances and quarrels between officials of various factions in the court, Emperor Jiajing has been very silent......

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Thank you all for updating two chapters today

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