The arrival of grain in Luzon made the people of Hebei, Shandong and other places who were originally in a panic finally settle down. However, the disaster situation in Hebei and Shandong is not serious, and the center of this year's drought is Henan, which is the earliest developed Central Plains region in China, and Henan's original ecology is the most beneficial area for destruction.

Although this area has always been the most agriculturally developed region in China, its water evaporation is also unmatched by other regions. Therefore, Henan people often say: "There is no rain and a small drought for five days, and there is no rain and a big drought for ten days." ”

In the spring of the twelfth year of Chongzhen, a major drought that affected the whole province of Henan came unexpectedly. With the exception of the Qinling Mountains and the Huaihe River Valley, almost all other parts of Henan have been spared from this once-in-a-century drought, and Shaanxi, Shanxi, and Shandong provinces near Henan have also suffered from this drought.

The scale and depth of this year's drought in the north are rare in the history of Wanli. Even though the imperial court and local officials had already established a whole set of disaster prevention and relief measures, they were helpless in the face of this natural power.

In the past two years, although there was a drought in the north and a flood in the south, the drought was mainly in Shaanxi and Shanxi north of the Yellow River, and the population in this area had either starved to death or migrated out in the past few years, so it was not too difficult for the imperial court to allocate grain for disaster relief.

However, this year's drought has affected the whole of Henan, and although it is close to the grain-producing areas in the south, it should be said that the difficulty of transporting grain has been reduced. However, Henan is a major grain-producing province in the north, and it is also a province with a large population. The population of Henan is almost equal to the total population of Shaanxi and Shanxi, about one-twelfth of the total population of the Ming Dynasty, and if you want to give relief to the whole of Henan, at least not less than 30 million stone grain.

According to the calculation of Bi Ziyan, the head of the household department, if you want to help the victims in Henan and other places, the imperial court must allocate at least 25 million yuan, although this is an astronomical amount, the tax and silver paid by Henan Province was only less than 1.5 million yuan last year, but with the financial situation of the Ming Dynasty today, the household department is not unable to piece together this disaster relief money.

But if the imperial court has this money, it does not mean that it can buy 30 million stone grain. After ten years of reform, the Ming Dynasty eliminated many old yamen, and also added more new yamen, such as the Bureau of Statistics, the Price Bureau, the transportation department, and so on. The establishment of these new yamen was not to cater to the emperor's interests, but to play their own role.

Even the most stubborn old-fashioned officials have to admit to this day that these new yamen are not the worship bureau used by the emperor to place the villains who welcome him, but the necessary yamen for the emperor and the cabinet to better understand the operation of the whole country and communicate the situation up and down.

It is not difficult to get the household department to piece together 25 million yuan for disaster relief, and the problem is whether the imperial court can buy the necessary materials for disaster relief after taking out this money. If this money is just thrown into the market, then in addition to pushing up the price of grain, it will not achieve the purpose of disaster relief for the imperial court.

Even Qian Qianyi, a literary leader who does not understand the economy, after six years as the first assistant, has roughly understood that the relationship between money and prices is constantly changing. If there are not enough materials in the market, large-scale input of money can only push up the price of materials in the market, thus messing up the economic operation of the entire market.

In other words, the 25 million yuan put into the market will not only fail to provide relief to the victims, but may also cause financial problems. After all, the circulation currency of the Ming Dynasty is mainly paper money, the paper money itself has no value, the only value is the imperial court credit carried on the paper money, once the people lose their trust in the paper money, the bank will face a run.

Household officials are naturally unwilling to let the paper money lose its credit, after all, the Ming Dynasty's financial operation is good, and it is built on the credit of the paper money. Once the Ming economy returns to the past era of gold, silver and copper, then many engineering projects invested by the imperial court will be equivalent to losing the supply of funds, after all, the imperial court does not have so much hard currency in its hands, and the situation will become worse.

Qian Qianyi looked at his colleagues who were helpless at the cabinet meeting, and realized that these ministers, who slandered their incompetence behind their backs all day long, were not much better than themselves when they really encountered things.

Seeing that everyone racked their brains and couldn't come up with a useful suggestion, he couldn't help but feel a little happy in his heart, so he cleared his throat and said to his colleagues: "You are always talking about the major affairs of the country and the dynasty on weekdays, and you always blame Your Majesty for not using your words. Your Majesty is not here today, don't you want to speak? Is it possible that I have to invite Your Majesty here before you are willing to speak? ”

Even if he was ridiculed by Qian Qianyi in person, the ministers could only endure it. It is clear to everyone that today's ministers have different powers than they used to be, but they also have different responsibilities.

If it was before the Chongzhen Dynasty, when such a disaster was encountered, the ministers only had to write to the emperor for disaster relief, and they would be considered to have fulfilled their responsibilities. If the emperor asks how to provide disaster relief, the most he can do is to add a sentence asking for internal funds and appointing honest people to be responsible for disaster relief, and basically there is nothing to do with the ministers.

But in today's Ming Dynasty, such a chaotic cabinet minister can't stay in the cabinet. Cabinet ministers now have much more power than in the past, but they are also responsible for the power in their own hands. Disaster relief involves the distribution, use and supervision of money, food, transportation, and disaster relief funds, and each ministry is responsible for disaster relief work within its own sphere of authority.

Therefore, for such a large-scale disaster relief operation, it is no longer the past to nominate a person to be in charge, and then hand over the money and food to him. Instead, people from the six ministries were selected to form a disaster relief headquarters, and then the cabinet ministers took command by name, and once there was a problem, the responsible person must be held accountable from top to bottom.

In the face of the premise that they may be responsible, the ministers will naturally not be perfunctory at will, they can be perfunctory to the emperor now, but when there is a problem in disaster relief, the emperor will inevitably use their heads to calm the anger of the victims. For these ministers, this is obviously not cost-effective.

As a scapegoat afterwards, it is better to lay out the problem in advance, and solve what everyone can solve, and leave what cannot be solved to the emperor to decide, so that even if something goes wrong, it will not lose his life inexplicably.

It should be said that over the past few years, the Cabinet has been extremely effective in its consultation mechanism. It has not only eliminated many contradictions between various ministries, but also solved many problems, and has indeed improved the efficiency of the cabinet's work.

However, no matter how effective the cabinet meeting mechanism is, it cannot create food out of nothing and conjure up food out of thin air. This is not a problem that can be solved by printing paper money and issuing Treasury bonds.

After several ministers looked at each other a few times, Fan Jingwen finally couldn't help but ask: "If you get rid of the grain that can be allocated in the south, how much grain is still lacking now?" Can the Four Seas Trading Company fill this gap from overseas? ”

Li Banghua, who served as the Minister of Agriculture, was very familiar with the grain output of the provinces, so he quickly replied: "In recent years, the south has used a lot of struvite in the construction of water conservancy and the promotion of improved varieties, and the increase in grain production has also been good.

However, this year Zhejiang has also suffered a severe drought, and according to my calculations, if the part of the grain that should be supplied to the border army and Jingcang is deducted, the remaining grain will be used to fill the supply of the disaster areas in Henan and other places, and there will be a gap of about 15 million stones.

As for the grain shipped from overseas by the Four Seas Trading Company, it has already been fixed, and at most 3 million stones can be squeezed out to turn around, and I am afraid that it will be impossible to use more..."

Wen Tiren's heart suddenly moved, and he said to Qian Qianyi: "I remember that there are about 10 million stone of military food reserves in various places on the nine sides, can this grain be borrowed and turned around first?" ”

Qian Qianyi was still hesitating, Jiang Dejing and Guo Yunhou had already objected in unison, Guo Yunhou glanced at Jiang Dejing before he spoke: "The military grain of the nine sides is divided into five places: Fengzhen, Datong, Xuanfu, Chengde, and Shanhaiguan, not to mention how much it costs to transport grain from these places to Henan. The key is that without these military food reserves, once the Manchu Qing sends troops, what will we use to defend the northern defense line? ”

Wen Tiren was silent, but Li Tianjing, who knew nothing about military affairs, responded with some dissatisfaction: "The Manchu Qing Dynasty has not made any movement in the past few years, how can it be so coincidental to send troops." The country has treated these warriors so favorably in the past two years, and now that the country is in trouble, they can't inspire their conscience and be loyal to the country? In the past, during the Anshi Rebellion of the Tang Dynasty, even if the food was cut off, it was necessary to dig up rats to resist the rebels. ”

Jiang Dejing immediately retorted: "Changde's words are not right, Zhang Xun is surrounded by rebels, and it is difficult for the imperial court to transport food supplies to him, not that the imperial court wants him to resist the rebels hungry."

Besides, not all of our Ming troops are guarding the northern defense line now, and the purpose of the Mongolian departments to assist in the defense of our army is nothing more than to get food from us. If they were cut off from food, wouldn't they be forced to go to the Manchu side, and if these Mongol tribes cooperated with the Manchus to make trouble, the northern defense line would no longer exist.

We now only have to deal with the victims in the Central Plains, and if the Manchus break through the northern defense line, then the imperial court will be attacked from both sides. Wouldn't the ten years of the imperial court's operation in the north be ruined? Do you want the Manchu garrison outside the Great Wall to have another battle to break through the pass in the second year of Chongzhen? ”

Li Tianjing said in frustration: "This doesn't work, that doesn't work, can we just watch the people starve to death?" If the Central Plains is in chaos, what will happen to Zhongdu and the Fengyang Imperial Mausoleum? ”

Wu Chunfu saw that everyone was silent again, he rolled his eyes and said: "If you want me to see, this grain matter still has to fall overseas, and the potential of the grain allocated by the south has been exhausted.

However, there is no end to the grain from overseas, and it is said that the Philippines produces as much as 15 to 6 million stone of grain a year, which is still not obtained under the condition of cultivating all the grain.

Last year, we fought a war with the Spaniards, and Guo Qing also shipped 3.55 million stone of grain from Luzon, and since Luzon has fallen into our hands this year, we should let Guo Qing use all the fields on Luzon Island to grow grain, whether it is rice or miscellaneous grains, and order him to ship back to China no less than 10 million stone of grain this year, and then send people to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand to buy grain, I think this year's disaster relief grain will not be so scarce.

The only problem is that we don't have so many ships to carry grain..."

Guo Yunhou said indifferently: "We don't have so many ships, but the British, Dutch, and Portuguese have ships, and as long as we can subsidize customs revenue, we should be able to let them transport grain for us." However, if you want to adjust the customs policy, you need the cooperation of the Prime Minister's Yamen..."

For the problem of damaging the interests of the customs, everyone here has no feelings, after all, this is the South Library of the Son of Heaven, even if there is any loss, they are not distressed. So Jiang Dejing said without hesitation: "The people are waiting to be fed, how can they still take care of the private wealth of the Son of Heaven." I thought that we could first invite foreign merchant shipowners to negotiate in the name of the Cabinet, and then write directly to Your Majesty and allow us to hire foreign ships to transport grain. But dare to ask Shousuke, why didn't His Majesty come to a meeting like today? ”

Qian Qianyi was silent for a while, and then said: "Since the beginning of winter last year, there has not been a single case of plague in the northwest region, and Wu Youxing and others have temporarily ended their epidemic prevention operations in the northwest and returned to Beijing today." His Majesty said that he would personally go to meet these meritorious men, and therefore could not come to the meeting. ”

Shoufu's words suddenly silenced the ministers, and after a long time, Guo Yunhou finally sighed and said, "Thank God, there is finally good news. In this way, the development of the Hetao area can continue again, and the victims of the disaster in Shaanxi and Shanxi will now have a place to divert them, and we only need to pay attention to the disaster situation in Henan and Shandong..."