Chapter 544: Greedy Ink, Tax Supervisor, Jining

Jining is known as the richest place in Shandong, Jining is the most important hub in the north of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, a large number of ships have to collect and distribute goods here, when industry and commerce are not so prosperous, Jining Mansion relies on water transportation and private salt, rich and incomparable, known as Jiangbei Suzhou and Hangzhou.

Up to now, because the cotton of the three northern provinces is to be transported to the south, the cotton cargo is large in size and light in weight, if it is transported by land, the cost is high and scary, and in terms of shipping, the shipowners are not willing to transport cotton this kind of goods without low profits, so the shipping of the canal is the best choice.

Every cotton harvest season, a large number of boats sail on the river, and the unprecedented situation is that there is a blockage, the price of cotton increases, and many textile factories in the south of the Yangtze River cannot bear it, and many of these factory owners cannot continue to operate, so they can only sell their factories to larger merchants.

There are also some smart people, with money to the north, after all, they are opening a factory earlier than the north, more experience and ideas, in the competition is also advantageous, there is a textile factory, there is also some money to make, access to raw materials is the most convenient, in and out of the goods is also extremely convenient Jining Mansion has become the first choice.

When the price of cotton in the three northern provinces began to rise, Jining almost became prosperous at a faster speed, and various factories were opened one after another, and after the cotton was transported to the river port wharf in Jining, it was supplemented in the past, and it was paused for a while, and now it is directly sold out of a part, and then the space is vacated to ship cotton cloth and various cotton spinning products, and transported to Jiangnan for sale.

In this matter, the most advantageous is Jining's river yamen and Zhizhou yamen, Jining was Jining Mansion when the Ming Dynasty was founded, and later listed as a state. In addition to a few major turmoil over the years, Jining's prosperity has not stopped, accumulating for more than 100 years, which is very amazing.

Coupled with the prosperity of industry and commerce, the soaring price of cotton, the scale of Jining Prefecture is expanding more and more, several towns and villages around the city wall are connected, a large number of workshops and shops and warehouses are located in it, at this time Jining Mansion basically does not see any idlers. If you want to make money and work, then there are a lot of shops and workshops waiting for you to do, if you want to wander the streets without doing your job, then the government also has a way, in the name of the saint's education, anyone who wanders on the streets and has no occupation, the first time you will be whipped fifteen lashes, and the second time you will be directly exiled, of course, this exile is to work in another way, and there is no pay.

The fathers and elders in the city are now constantly asking the Zhizhou Yamen to expand the city wall and enclose those workshops outside the city, and they don't need the yamen to ask for a penny, and everyone is willing to pay for their own work.

At this time, Jining Zhizhou is the world's fat shortage, and Yangzhou, Suzhou prefect, and some places are all at the same level, and the officials are willing to serve as the governor for three years, and the family has been rich for several generations, and it is also a rich man.

Because you sit in this position, even if you don't reach out to make money, as long as you take the usual silver money that should be in your hand, it will be easy to sit down in Zhizhou for three years, and 300,000 taels of silver.

Such a fat shortage, such a rich place, is naturally also the focus of the tax supervisors, in Jining to supervise taxes, even if you collect more silver, it is not a skill, because there is a thick foundation here, so since the first tax supervisor came here, I thought clearly, I am here to make money.

The first tax supervisor was full of money, the corners of his mouth were oily, and he reluctantly returned to Beijing, who was originally just a little eunuch who lived in Tongpu in the Forbidden City, and suddenly bought a few mansions in a good place in Beijing, and also bought a lot of shop transactions, which made the people around him red-eyed.

After the current second Ma tax supervisor came, he didn't want any face, and directly sent his subordinates to pass the word, if they didn't want to be audited, then each family should pay 1,000 taels of silver first. When Jiajing was ten years old, one thousand taels of silver was a large amount of money, and by the twenty-first year of Jiajing, the scale of one thousand taels of silver could only be said to be above average, because the maritime trade had flourished in recent years, and the precious metals mined from the local gold and silver mines in Japan, and the wealth plundered by Spain and Portugal in South America were all called all kinds of special products in the ports of the Ming Dynasty, and these metals flowed into the Ming Dynasty, which actually brought about a certain currency depreciation, which means that the value of one thousand taels of silver was not as good as ten years ago.

But the bibliography of this thousand taels of silver, in addition to the salt merchants and grain merchants in Jining City, the rest of the merchants have just expanded their scale in recent years, and they have a few dollars in their hands, and a thousand taels of silver are still very bad, but this money is not a tax, if it is a tax, you can also send a few hundred taels of silver, so that the tax supervisor can be lenient, and it will fool the past.

However, the second tax supervisor searched for it, and he didn't say anything at all, just let it go, and each family paid a landing money of 1,000 taels of silver first, and then discussed the rest of the money.

When the current eunuchs left the capital, they didn't have the intention of making a show and not letting others look down on them, and when they left Beijing, they spent a lot of money to donate this tax supervisor, and they were really unwilling to get back the capital as soon as possible and continue to make some money.

Although some large merchants are in pain, they still scraped together the 1,000 taels and handed them over to the tax superintendent, but some medium-sized or small merchants have only the current capital, and they can get the money there.

When it came to the deadline for paying the money, the tax supervisor Ma was not soft at all, and the people he brought were about four or five hundred people, many of whom were peripheral personnel from the former Jinyiwei and Dongchang, these people had no real skills, they were all masters of looting money and squeezing the people.

Since a magistrate of Qingzhou Prefecture was stripped of his official position and exiled to Sanshan because of his angry scolding of the tax supervisor for harming the people, other people did not dare to speak out against the tax supervisor's actions, and some people who were ready to take this opportunity to make a fortune took the opportunity to act for the tiger and harm the people together, so as to reap some benefits in it.

There are almost two or three hundred people on this list who can't afford to pay the landed money, all of them are merchants and factory owners of all sizes, so many people have been raided and their property confiscated, and suddenly the entire Jining City is a sensation, and everyone is silent, and they can only watch through gritted teeth in secret.

Those who were raided from their homes, after a few years of hard work, caught up with the good time, from the former commoners or well-off, quickly got some property, thinking that good days were still in the future, but they didn't expect that suddenly, all of this was wiped out, and everything became a bubble.

Some people were reluctant to argue with the tax supervisor's subordinates, and they were immediately beaten up, some were directly sent to the Yamen prison with shackles, and some did not pay and did not dare, but they were unwilling to pay the money, and they couldn't think of it, so they hanged themselves and jumped into the river.

There was no famine, but Jining City on this day seemed to be a hell on earth, the cries of women and children, the old and weak, and the angry scolding of officials, all intertwined, and the prosperity passed down for more than a hundred years was completely dimmed in one day, but the horse tax supervisor made a fortune.

Raiding the house, confiscating the property, the cat in this is too big, this Jining City relies on the tax and salt tax on the wharf, as long as it is a little more means, it can complete its own tax amount, then the rest of the money is in his own pocket, this day's harvest is too much, even if it is deducted from the engulfment of those accomplices, this money still makes his eyes squint with a smile.

These people who broke their homes are all merchants in Jining City, and these people's industries are employing people, more than 100 people, less than a dozen, as soon as they fall, these people suddenly have no support for life, and they don't know what to do next.

Let them go back is absolutely impossible, the situation in the countryside is naturally extremely clear to them, it is already a place where there are no ordinary people, all of them are large estates controlled by the cotton gentry, in the countryside there are nothing more than two ways out, one is to be a strong family of the cotton gentry, and the other is to be a slave, but then again, if you can be a family, who will come to the city to work, if you are a slave laborer, it is not as good as a beast.

But in the city, in the past, there was a shortage of manpower in all kinds of transactions, and now the first round of looting of small and medium-sized merchants has hurt their vitality, and the second tax supervisor has come to bankrupt and break many families.

In the past few years, after Jining City announced the law of indoctrination and the strict prohibition of the outcast, for the first time there were a large number of people who had no work to do on the streets.

Jining City began to circulate a slip of the tongue, saying that "the harsh government is like a tiger, and the tiger is not as good as a horse", and this horse tax supervisor is already more terrifying than a tiger......