readx; After learning that the new prefect Shi Kefa planned to apportion a group of wealthy households in Yangzhou City to pay the silver, the rich and wealthy families immediately exploded. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo

These big landlords and profiteers, in order to obtain the protection of the government, so that they can make a windfall through illegal acts, and all of them are generous in bribery, which can be described as spending a lot of money. No matter how much this kind of silver is spent, they will not feel distressed, because "the wool is out of the sheep", and spending 1,000 taels of silver can be exchanged for 3,2500 taels or even 10,000 taels, so why not!

As for their own lives, they are even more poor and extravagant, and they have been like this since ancient times. During the Sui and Tang dynasties, Yangzhou was already a big gold cave for paper fans and gold drunk, even if the waist was wrapped in 100,000 yuan, under the night sheng song, it would not take long to spend it all. Du Mu Shiyun's "Yangzhou Dream of Ten Years", presumably when he put pen to paper, he must have regretted not being at the beginning.

But now Shi Kefa asked these people to pay, even if the amount was not much, it was one or two thousand taels of silver when it was spread out to a large account, and these people felt like they were taking meat from their bodies, and none of them took the initiative to cooperate. When they fought a war to quell the rebellion, it was a matter for the imperial court, so what did it have to do with them? Not only does it matter, but after the rebellion is quelled in the future, they will have to ask the government to provide them with more convenience, and make up for the losses caused by the thieves blocking the traffic through various means. Now I want them to pay, but there is no door!

The initiative did not receive any response, which was also expected by Shi Kefa. He knew very well that these people were not well-dressed and full of fat, but they were all short-sighted, only staring at their own little profits, and never shed tears when they saw the coffin. The best way to deal with such people is to be tough, like Lu Xiangsheng forcibly "borrowed food" by virtue of the holy decree, and these people had to stare dryly.

However, Shi Kefa did not ask the emperor to speak again, because he also knew that many of these wealthy businessmen were inextricably linked with the court officials, especially with the Donglin Party. You must know that Li Sancai, the leader of the Donglin Party back then, once served as the governor of Caoyun, during which he had a close relationship with Yangzhou merchants and did many unsightly deeds.

If these people are in a hurry, they will definitely find their own backers, and there may be the leaders of the Donglin Party among these backers. Lu Xiangsheng is a second-rank senior soldier and a powerful minister who is trusted by the emperor, so he can not care about these, but Shi Kefa cannot, he is a member of the Donglin Party, and he has to be constrained by these intertwined officialdom relations.

But without silver, it is absolutely impossible to do anything, so Shi Kefa still decided to take advantage of the fire and must let these rich people pay. Since you can't come hard, you have to use your brains.

Soon, Shi Kefa sent invitations to the wealthy families in Yangzhou, saying that he had just come to office and wanted to set up a banquet to meet the elders of Yangzhou and contact him. It is also common for local officials to entertain local celebrities every year, but it is called an official banquet, but in fact, no one will be so blind, and it really makes the "parent officials" pay out of their own pockets, and they are all scrambling to pay for it, and they are all proud of it.

In fact, there are two main categories of big households in Yangzhou, one is the salt merchants, and the other is the Cao merchants.

The so-called salt merchant is a merchant who receives salt from the government and thus obtains official permission to sell salt. Since ancient times, the salt industry has been a profitable business, because the profit is extremely high, and salt, like grain, is a must-buy thing for every family, and it is a strategic material, so it has always been a monopoly of the government.

However, where there is a monopoly business, there must be smuggling. Even if it is stipulated that the sale of illicit salt is a capital crime, it cannot stop the enthusiasm of merchants to pursue profits. In view of this, the Ming Dynasty slightly adapted this and established a salt introduction system. That is, private merchants are allowed to sell salt, but they must pay "salt tax silver" to the yamen, which is specially responsible for supervising the salt industry, and receive "salt introduction", with the help of salt introduction, they can go to the designated salt-producing areas, buy a certain amount of salt from the designated "stove households", and then transport it to the designated areas for sale. In this way, the government no longer transports salt directly, and does not have to bear any responsibility and risk, and can obtain a lot of salt income; In order to make money, salt merchants will naturally actively transport salt to meet the needs of the market.

The idea of this system is very good, but the actual implementation is not the same. Those salt merchants were all mercenary villains, who paid money to the government, and naturally found it back from elsewhere in a different way. And the officials who run the salt industry also want to reap the benefits and enrich their own pockets. The two hit it off, because for more than 200 years, the salt industry has formed a complete set of unspoken rules, and salt merchants have operated for generations, and the profits are extremely amazing.

For example, among the salt merchants, who had the most strength and the best relationship with the government, they would contract the work of collecting the salt tax silver, and promise to hand over a certain amount of silver taels to the government a year, and the government would not have to take care of the rest. Such salt merchants are called "general merchants", and they are also the most lucrative of all salt merchants. The reason is also very simple, the salt silver he handed over to the government is far less than the actual silver received, and the difference between the two goes into his pocket, as long as he takes out a small amount of it and bribes the relevant personnel of the government.

Under the general merchant is the "field merchant", who monopolizes the right to purchase a salt farm. In other words, the local stove owner can only sell the salt to him at a low price, and then he sells it at a high price to receive a huge profit.

Underneath the market traders are the "carriers", i.e. the merchants who are responsible for specific trafficking. Their capital is much smaller than that of the general merchant and the market merchant, and after the two-level price increase of the general merchant and the market merchant, the profit has been much smaller. However, because of the huge amount of salt transported, the income is still quite considerable. As far as Yangzhou is concerned, the Wu family, the largest general merchant in the country, is in the city, and there are more than a dozen field merchants and transportation merchants combined.

And what can be compared with the salt merchant is undoubtedly the Cao merchant. In fact, Cao Shang is a kind of grain merchant, but because most of the grain transportation from the south to the north has to pass through the Grand Canal, the merchants who specialize in operating grain through the canal have the largest amount of grain, so they are also called Cao Shang.

As in the case of the salt industry, the cao transportation industry also has a complete set of unspoken rules. Although the imperial court had a salt transportation envoy yamen and a cao transportation governor, the actual control of the salt transportation industry and the cao transportation industry in the whole country was in the hands of these merchants. These people colluded with each other, deceived their superiors and subordinates, and made a lot of money for themselves, which greatly increased the burden on the people, but the court confiscated a lot of taxes and silver.

As a member of the Donglin Party, Shi Kefa has been exposed to officialdom for many years and knows the drawbacks. He also wanted to show the emperor and urge the court to eliminate the accumulated shortcomings and benefit the people's livelihood, but since the young emperor ascended the throne, there have been constant wars in various places, and he has not been able to spare his hands to do this, and Shi Kefa has to temporarily forbear. But now that he is the prefect of Yangzhou, the so-called county official is not as good as the current management, and he has his own means to make these profiteers spit out the silver.

And his focus is on the conspicuous transporters and the Cao Gang.

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