Huai'an Prefecture has jurisdiction over two states and nine counties, and is governed in Huaicheng, Shanyang County, which originally belonged to the territory of Nanzhili. However, since last year, Nanzhili has been divided into three administrative regions, Jiangsu, Anhui and Nanjing, and Huai'an has been assigned to Jiangsu.

It is the waterway hub that communicates the Yellow River and the Yangtze River, and is an important port for the northward transportation of grain and the southward movement of Huaiyan.

Although Huai'an Mansion has the personal soldiers of Dahewei, Huai'anwei and Governor Cao, but in Huai'an Mansion, which has a population of hundreds of thousands, this manpower is almost a drop in the bucket.

For example, Qingjiangpu is no less prosperous than Huai'an City, with a population of more than 60,000 or 70,000, but there will be no more than 500 soldiers stationed here, and there are only two small flags at most at the wharf.

The social order here is the same as that of other cities in the south of the Yangtze River, mainly controlled by the local gentry, and the government is just a signboard, not a case of rebellion and weathering.

However, the gentry maintained a social order that protected their own interests, rather than even intervening in petty theft and social security incidents, so organizations of this nature came into being. Basically, these raiders colluded with the local gentry, obeyed the gentry's orders to attack their opponents, or bullied the market to collect protection money from foreign businessmen to seek monopoly interests for the local gentry.

In the cities along the Grand Canal, in addition to the gangsters domesticated by these gentry, there are also boatmen's mutual aid associations spontaneously formed by the Cao army to fight against extortion along the way. However, these shipwrights' mutual aid associations eventually fell into the hands of officers, captains, and commanders, and formed an organization similar to gangs.

Although such canal gangs guaranteed the interests of the boatmen to a certain extent, they in fact also subjected the boatmen to more severe exploitation. The gentry, officials and merchants, and the officials of the water transport jointly oppressed the low-level boatmen through the gang organization, and used these boatmen who joined the gang to reject all changes in the way of water transportation, so as to maintain their own interests on the canal.

Since Chongzhen opened the white grain shipping 4 years ago to reduce the burden of the people in the south of the Yangtze River, the scale of the north-south sea transportation is greater than one day, which makes the officials, local gentry, officials and businessmen, and gang members who rely on the canal to eat anxious.

However, with the opening of the Qingdao-Jinan railway, the opening of the Nanjing-Shanghai railway, the completion of the wharves of Shanghai, Tianjin and Qingdao, and the completion of the collection of hydrological data of the north-south shipping seaway, this has greatly promoted the cause of north-south maritime shipping and also damaged the interests of canal transportation practitioners.

As the Grand Canal connecting Beijing and the Jiangnan region, it can be said to be the most important inland transportation route in the Ming Dynasty. From the day the Grand Canal was built, transporting grain from the south to the capital of the north was always the most important task, as was the case in the Tang, Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties.

For the Ming Dynasty, which fixed its capital in Beijing, Jiangnan Caoyun was the most important task of the year. In fact, there are two ways to transport grain, one is official transportation, which is mainly transported to the capital area to supply the daily needs of the emperor to the people; The other is the democracy movement, which is mainly transported to the northern border areas and supplied to the nine-sided army as military rations.

At the beginning, there was only the democratic movement and no official movement, because the capital was in Nanjing, and Jiubian was only near the Yellow River, so the cost of transportation was not very high. Moreover, when Ming Taizu adopted the method of democracy movement, the people who transported grain were all the local big and powerful, and this way of transporting grain was equivalent to reducing the strength of the local big and powerful families.

In addition, the grain chiefs who set up a liberation transport with 10,000 stones, these grain chiefs will be received by the emperor when they arrive in the capital, in order to inquire about the local situation, and if they do a good job, they can also be promoted to the officials of the six ministries, which can be said to be another set of organizational structures controlled by Taizu below the county level. Therefore, even if Ming Taizu repeatedly raised major cases, the local government has always maintained tranquility, and there will be no panic, which also depends on the normal operation of this grain chief system.

Of course, this set of grain chief system, in Chongzhen's view, is about the modern parliamentarians, although they do not have a formal body to exercise the functions and powers of the parliament, but the functions of the parliamentarians are basically already possessed.

However, after Taizu, Emperor Yongle moved the capital to Beijing, and sent troops to the outside several times, resulting in the entire grain consumption exceeding the upper limit that the local heroes could afford, and Emperor Yongle was not a person who liked to listen to the voices of the people in the village.

After the emperor after Yongle ascended the throne, the grain supplied to the capital was not timely enough, and finally changed from the democratic movement to the official movement, and most of the border army system was still the democratic movement.

The figure of the official transport grain in the highest period was 6.7 million stones, and by the end of the Wanli period, it was basically around 4 million stones. The grain of the people is about 6 or 7 million stones, and the grain of the people transported from the south to the north is about 6 million stones.

Since three or four years ago, when Cao Yun began to change to commercial transportation, the amount of grain transported from the south to the north last year was 16 million stones, of which 14 million stones went through the Grand Canal. But this year, the amount of grain transported north through the Grand Canal has dropped to 12.5 million stones, and this rapidly declining volume immediately alarmed the officials and gentry near the canal.

In Huguang Province, the rice-producing area, the purchase price of Yishi rice is about 045-05 yuan, and in the rice markets of Shanghai, Suzhou and Nanjing, the market price of Yishi Huguang rice is about 07-08 yuan. Rice shipped from Siam, Cambodia and Vietnam to Ningbo and Shanghai is about 08-085 yuan per stone.

In Tianjin, a stone of rice is worth 15 yuan, and in Beijing it is 16 yuan. Transporting a stone of rice from Shanghai to Tianjin, the current sea freight is 025 yuan, deducting other expenses, and each stone can probably earn 02-03 yuan. But if it is transported by canal, the transportation cost per stone is 045 yuan, which is almost unprofitable.

For household officials, it is natural to prefer to transport grain by sea rather than inland waterways. However, the cost of transporting 16 million stone of grain by inland river was 7.2 million yuan, of which nearly half of it had to fall into the hands of gang members, contractor merchants, Cao Yun officials and gentry, how could they be willing to lose so much for no reason.

Changing from the original way of transportation to the current mode of commercial transportation has caused many people to lose a lot of benefits, but the new emperor ascended the throne and everyone still couldn't see the direction clearly, and Cui Wensheng, the governor of Caoyun and the great eunuch in charge of the river, had a smooth wrist, so these people finally endured it.

Today, although the imperial court did not explicitly say that it would replace river transportation with sea transportation, the continuous decline of river transportation of grain has shown that the imperial court has indeed done it. This naturally made some people start to get agitated and try to take some means to protect their own interests.

It's just that the rebellion of vested interests will always be a bit forward-looking, especially when the emperor has not publicly stated that he wants to replace the sea with shipping. Just getting these people together to discuss how to deal with the shrinking business of Caoyun has wasted a lot of time.

And it is even more difficult to get everyone to reach a unified opinion. Seeing the arrival of winter, the canal has entered the suspension season, and everyone has not discussed a solution. The four gentry of Qingjiangpu finally couldn't bear it anymore and decided to organize the workers who had nothing to do at the wharf to make trouble in front of the yamen of the governor of Caoyun, so that the officials of the court and China could use this to attack the maritime policy.

The reason why these four gentry were so active was that once the transportation business of the Grand Canal shrank, the first thing to be affected was the Qingjiangpu wharf. These four gentry were all large landowners who had built private wharves in Qingjiangpu. Don't look at Huai'an, a place with developed industry and commerce, in fact, this place is an area that has been damaged by floods all year round. The Yamen, the governor of Caoyun, had to be relocated three times because of the floods over the years.

The Grand Canal has brought wealth to the cities, villages and towns along its route, but it has also brought disaster to these areas, whether it is the large amount of sediment brought by the Yellow River or the neglect of water for the farmland on both sides of the canal to ensure the water supply of the canal.

As a result, the gentry on both sides of the canal mostly invested in industry and commerce rather than in the fields, but not in the form of creating productive forces, but by digging the foundations of the imperial court. Once the business began to shrink, the gentry who depended on the canal for their livelihood did not know what to do in the future.

On December 9, the four gentry of Qingjiangpu contributed money, and the gang elements on the wharf came forward to organize, and thousands of coolies squatting in the grass hut area near the wharf for the winter were instigated, and took to the streets to walk towards the Caoyun Division, the county government and other yamen in the city. Except for some gang members who shouted hoarsely in the ranks, "We want to eat, ban shipping, and the court should not compete with the people for profit..."

Most of the coolies mixed in with the procession were blind-eyed, unable to see the slightest enthusiasm for the march, and they followed the procession one step at a time hungry. They didn't know what the shouting of the leaders around them meant, they just came out for a walk for two buckets of rice.

After watching nearly a third of the gang members' dock coolies call out, Zhang Xianzhong, who was squatting on a wooden bench and drinking porridge, finally jumped off the stool. Dressed in shabby clothes, he has become the leading brother in the eyes of the dock workers.

Although he has already put on the hat of Jinyi Wei Baihu, Zhang Xianzhong still has not escaped the influence of being poor, and there is no obstacle at all when lurking among these workers and boatmen. With his good skills and winning the hearts and minds of the people, he is now the most influential leader of the Canal Dockmen's Union.

The dockworkers' unions were formed to fight against the gangs on the canals and on land, and to fight against the merchants and officials for the rights and interests of the workers. With the support of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Yamen, the governor of Caoyun, this trade union organization was able to compete with the old gangs.

The trade unions were the most powerful in Qingjiangpu and Yangzhou, and the fact that these gang members were able to bring out nearly a third of the dock workers from the shantytowns was naturally due to the fact that there were trade union members mixed in to incite them.

Zhang Xianzhong had already received an order from the emperor a few days earlier, so he was very nervous about supervising the cities along the canal, and a few days ago he heard that some people were inciting workers to oppose the imperial court on the Qingjiangpu side, so he hurried over. I didn't expect to watch a good show.

After throwing the porridge bowl on the table on the side, Zhang Xianzhong said to the righteous Sun Kewang beside him: "Okay, these birdmen have set up the stage, it's our turn to go up and sing." Go and inform the team leaders, mobilize the remaining dock workers, put up banners, demand the punishment of profiteers, and crack down on the gang members who deduct the wages of the workers..."

Sun Kewang, who is nearly ten years younger than Zhang Xianzhong, his father was originally Zhang Xianzhong's colleague when he was a catcher in Yan'an Mansion, but because of the impact of the peasant uprising, his father was killed, and only his mother, himself and his younger brother were left in the family. When it was difficult to maintain himself at home, Sun Kewang heard that this uncle had made a fortune, so he couldn't help but write to Zhang Xianzhong.

Zhang Xianzhong, who was worried about the lack of close help around him, sent a sum of silver taels and asked Sun Kewang to go to the capital to help. Sun Kewang, who was only 15 years old, was cunning and wise, and soon won Zhang Xianzhong's love, and was accepted by him as his righteous son, and took him with him to do things.

After hearing Zhang Xianzhong's order, Sun Kewang immediately replied respectfully: "Yes, father-in-law." ”