Chapter 492: Unrighteousness before the Benefit

Li Jin is an example, the prosperity of Huazhou in recent years has made many people, especially those who read, no longer look forward to returning to Daming.

Ming scholars always have such a habit, as long as they read the four books and five classics, they have to take a fame and fame, and after becoming a showman, they are lifting people, and after lifting people, they are jinshi or something, and when the time comes, they will become an official, and they will naturally be rich and beautiful, and the so-called inferior products will only come from this is how the concept of high reading comes.

Although the scholars who are literate and literate can rely on their knowledge to gain a place in the yamen at all levels in Huazhou, and they can also live a good life, the officials under the Jiangfeng system are quite well paid.

But for these scholars, food and clothing is only one aspect, but also have a political future, they couldn't see it before, so they are lukewarm to Huazhou, and now Li Jin is really set up in front of them, a talented person who is poor and poor, can actually achieve such a position as the prefect of Lelang, not to mention his high and terrifying income, his subordinates are in charge of millions of people, which is almost equivalent to the territory of half of the Ming Dynasty.

This official position, even if it is not the Ming Dynasty, what can it be, this example makes the readers are tempted, even if they can return to the Ming Dynasty, they can rely on a higher fame is unknown, and there are not many people who come to Huazhou, most of them are talented children.

To put it bluntly, these people belong to the lowest level of the literati, and there will be no immediate change when they return to the Ming Dynasty, and being an official in the Ming Dynasty must be the identity above the people, where will there be their position, but here there is a golden avenue in front of them.

There are four counties under Lelang Mansion, each county has a county, these positions are also held by scholars from Huazhou, everyone knows that outside the Guanwai, Yizhou, and Malacca, there is no setting of civil officials, so to speak, there are still many official vacancies to wait.

Competing for these positions is much easier than Daming going to the scientific examination to make a name for himself, so as soon as Li Jin's appointment came out, the various Huazhou institutions that were originally understaffed suddenly became lively, not how many people were handling official business, but all of them came to recruit to see if they could find an errand in it.

In Daming, Cangzhou is said to be because of the belief in gods and Buddhas, many days of good deeds to have a good retribution, obtained several times the previous output of equipment, now in the northeast of Shandong, Zhili and even Henan spread around, a large number of cotton to be transported to the south to sell, are intercepted.

Suddenly, the Thirteen Chamber of Commerce in Jiangnan found that the cotton cloth in their hands could not be sold, and many maritime merchants would rather buy goods in Linjiadao and Huazhou than come to Jiangnan, although for the fleet trading on the northern sea, although the distance to the south was farther, but the cheap price of the goods was enough to make up for the cost of this extra journey, but suddenly, the sales volume plummeted.

At the peak of Songjiang, the production of tens of millions of horses a year, in such a large number, in fact, the proportion of sea trade is not large, many of them are supplied to the domestic demand of the Ming Dynasty, but at the turn of summer and autumn when the demand is the strongest, the number has fallen a lot compared with previous years.

Originally, Songjiang's cotton cloth output has always been in short supply, the cloth merchants and maritime merchants who walked the Ming Dynasty have been raising prices to compete, often the maritime merchants give a relatively high price, so they have a great advantage, this time, the northern merchants who came to Jiangnan to purchase cloth in the past are rarely present.

The handicraft merchants in Songjiang were not in a hurry, and the maritime merchants would buy them in large quantities anyway, hoarding them and waiting for the next year, and selling them to the maritime merchants at a better price.

No one thought that in the early autumn, there were still no merchants coming to the door, and these handicraft factory owners, who had always only been in charge of production and did not consider sales, began to panic, but the things that made them panic were obviously not only this one, this time last year, cotton merchants in the north also wanted to transport a large number of cotton, but this year did not see it.

The Thirteen Chamber of Commerce was finally in a hurry, and sent his men to Beijing to investigate, in the hearts of these big businessmen, such a scene must have something to do with the imperial court, but when the boat sent to investigate arrived at Jining Mansion, he knew that there was no need to move forward.

There, cotton boats even blocked the river, and the wharves that used to be mainly used for loading and unloading grain and southern goods were now piled up with cotton bales, and a large number of merchants were shouting and buying there.

After the news was transmitted back to Jiangnan, almost everyone who knew anything about the machine invented by Deng Min judged clearly what was going on from the information they received from all over the country, and the price of cloth in the north suddenly and greatly decreased, and the purchase of raw material cotton increased significantly.

Businessmen who have been doing business for so many years naturally do not believe in the rumors of ghosts and gods, and the only thing that can be contacted is the magical machine invented by Deng Min.

And the businessmen who jumped out at the beginning to suppress and kill Deng Min and prevent this kind of equipment that destroys the balance of the industry from appearing in the world, especially the high-level wealthy merchants of the Thirteen Chambers of Commerce, the owners of those shops and firms, did not have the slightest affection of the Thirteen Chambers of Commerce, and directly let their subordinates and shopkeepers go to the north where they can buy cheap cloth to buy goods.

The few businessmen who controlled many handicraft workshops took out the drawings of Deng Min's equipment one after another, although the people of the Thirteen Chambers of Commerce at that time made a so-called blood oath to protect this secret and not be leaked to the outside.

Since they did this, the merchants and handicraft workshop owners under the jurisdiction of the Thirteen Chambers of Commerce naturally did not abide by it, and the eight immortals crossed the sea, each showing their magical powers, and everyone found all kinds of methods, either to go to the north to purchase cheaper cotton cloth, or to try to get the secret of this device into their hands.

Some of the merchants in the north and south were elated, and some were so anxious that they seemed to be ants in a hot pot, and the landlords in Beizhili, Shandong and Henan were all elated, and they originally planted grain to maintain a well-off livelihood, but they were one step late when they watched the merchants in the prefecture and county get rich.

But today they found that this fortune has also come to their own body, the price of cotton has risen so that they can smile, some people have sold the harvest in the cotton field for several years in advance, and soon these landlords who think they have made a cheap profit are also regretted, because the price of cotton in the south after the merchants joined, the rise is still continuing. The price of those who have signed the contract in advance is already nailed, and it is too late to regret it.

Many people understand that the price of cotton is so high, even if you don't grow your own rations, it is much more cost-effective to buy it completely from outside.

A large number of grain fields have been forcibly converted into cotton fields, and some people have calculated that they rent the land to tenants to cultivate, and the tenants will give themselves 30 or 50 percent of the rent.

The tenants make too much money, so when many farmers want to renew their leases after the end of farming, they are rejected by the landlords, and the conditions given are very simple, I want to take back the land, but I don't kick you away, if you want to continue to eat, you will work for me.

How much land to plant, let's settle the wages, many small households originally still have a little bit of their own land, rent some seeds, can barely maintain food and clothing, suddenly, can only be for the landlords and squires to do long-term work.

The situation mentioned above is not a good situation, after the great prosperity of industry and commerce, no one in the countryside is willing to cultivate, all of them go to the city to work, and the grain from Nanyang and outside the customs is constantly transported into the customs, and the grain is also very cheap, and the fields cannot be sold at any price.

Almost all of a sudden, the price of land has risen suddenly, and the more land you have, the more cotton you can grow, and the more money you can make.

Before the landlords and squires realized the land, those small households naturally knew that the price of land had risen, and they could make some money by selling cotton, even if someone bought land, they were not willing to sell it, but the land sale in Daming has never been a matter of giving money to the land.

It was filled with countless blood and darkness, and for a time, the laws that were originally much harsher because of the arrest and slave trade became even more unclean, and many families in the north inexplicably broke the laws and were arrested and put in prison, no matter what the final disposition of people was, the land had to be confiscated anyway.

Now in the handicraft workshop in the city, the original eight people can do the work, now one person can do it, at the beginning, really laid off some weavers, and then the production capacity expanded, the funds were abundant, the purchase of machinery, and it was necessary to hire manpower, and at that time there was no circulation of labor in the north and south, Shandong, Henan, and Zhili three places of industry and commerce, suddenly, there was a lack of manpower, the original people who were fired not only found work, but also cotton ginning and other related industries are also a large number of people need labor.

The landless peasants from the countryside filled these vacancies, but the cotton fields required more labour than the grain fields, and the landlords found themselves with land but not enough people to work on it, which was equivalent to having money to put on the ground and not enough people to pick it up.

On the one hand, they raise the price to hire people, and on the other hand, they keep a firm eye on their hired workers and prevent them from leaving their own territory.

In the following years, the handicraft workshops in the prefecture lacked labor, and the local cotton farmers were firmly controlled by the landlords and gentry, and their lives were miserable. The artisanal workshops in the south are unusually withered.

In the nineteenth year of Jiajing, the society began to be in turmoil.......