Human nature is a very wonderful thing, the easier it is to get, the less people know how to cherish it, and even after getting it, they will discard it at will. But if people go through a lot of hard work to get something, even if it is just a broken stone in the eyes of others, the person who gets it will carefully treasure it and easily refuse to show it.

For example, a considerable number of the lottery jackpot winners in later generations have returned to poverty again within a few years of becoming rich overnight, and the huge wealth that is too easy to obtain has been squandered by them, and even their original survival skills have been thrown away, which makes these people only get poorer in the future.

In the same way, Zhou Zhong in the promotion of wool textile and canned production, on the use of this human weakness, he in advance instead of vigorously promoting the benefits of wool textile and canning, but also made a secret posture, and then by the imperial court, the inner government and his Nanyang Chamber of Commerce three took the lead in Xuanfu and other places to invest in the construction of factories, thus arousing the curiosity of people, and so on until these people inquired about the mystery, this human weakness will work, Zhou Chong is more to make a secret gesture, The more these people wanted to get the technology of wool weaving and canning, so in this case, Zhou Zhong took the opportunity to spread the two technologies, and in less than a few months, countless textile factories and canning factories appeared in Ningxia, Datong and Xuanfu, and even various factories competed to improve the treatment of workers in order to attract people, resulting in a shortage of local labor.

There were no invention patents in this era of the Ming Dynasty, and after a new invention was studied, except for a few military-related things. Most of the others cannot be kept secret, and as long as they are learned by others, then others can use this invention for their own profit, and even the inventor has no way, and in the end he can only consider himself unlucky, even the imperial court can't control it.

The same is true of wool weaving and canning, which were carefully proposed and then perfected by the craftsmen of the Nanyang Chamber of Commerce into mature techniques, and if they were to be followed by later generations, these two new inventions would have to be patented. Whoever wants to use both technologies in the future. They are required to pay royalties.

It's a pity that because of the "poor secrecy", these two technologies have now been spread, although Zhou Zhong is the king of Zhao, and he is also the prisoner of the Ming Dynasty. But there was nothing to be done. After all, the law does not hold the public accountable. Now there are countless wool textile factories and canning factories in Xuanfu and other places, most of which have deep backgrounds, such as Xu Li, the Duke of Wei who was in charge of the military academy. Their Wei Mansion also invested in the construction of several wool textile mills, and other factories also had the support of nobles like Wei Guogong, even if Zhou Zhong was tough, he could not be the enemy of most of the nobles.

For this situation, Zhou Zhong had expected it before, and even this was the result he wanted to see. However, on the surface, he pretended to be extremely annoyed by this, and even proposed to the cabinet several times to severely punish those who steal technology, but unfortunately the cabinet did not dare to call the shots at all in this kind of matter, after all, there were too many people involved behind it.

Zhou Zhong made a fuss in the court for nearly a month because of the theft of technology, and finally pretended to be helpless and acquiesced in the loss of technology caused to him, which also made everyone breathe a sigh of relief, especially those who used these two technologies without consent, and they were really worried that Zhou Chong would resist them regardless of it.

However, before these people could relax this, Zhou Zhong submitted two bills to the cabinet again, namely the "Patent Law" and the "Trademark Law", of which the trademark law is nothing, which is a good thing for most businessmen, and the impact is not great, so it is easy to pass.

After all, after the implementation of this law, it is no longer possible to encroach on other people's new inventions and new technologies as before. However, this time Zhou Chong was red-eyed and determined to support the passage of this bill, which gave people the impression that Zhou Chong suffered a loss in the previous wool textile and cans, so he proposed this bill, and if anyone dares to oppose it, it is simply not self-defeating, only those who stole the technology last time will oppose the bill proposed by Zhou Chong.

It is also in this case, the patent law, which involves a relatively large bill, did not cause too many people to oppose in the end, and finally passed with the support of Zhou Chong, but what everyone doesn't know is that they have fallen into the trap of Zhou Chong, after all, in his opinion, the production technology of wool textile and canning can be exchanged for the passage of these two bills, which is simply too worthwhile, especially the patent law, only to ensure the rights and interests of inventors, there will be more talented people to invest in new inventions in the future.

These two bills are just one of the by-products of Zhouzhong's economic regulation, and with the construction of wool mills and canneries, everyone is looking for raw materials. At the beginning, it was the Mongols who drove cattle and sheep to the border market opened by the Ming Dynasty to trade, but this kind of trading volume was not very large, so it soon could not meet the needs of those factories, so these merchants began to form caravans and took the initiative to enter the steppe to find Mongol tribal trade.

It may seem to others that it will be very dangerous for the Ming caravan to enter the grassland, after all, there is an endless war between the Ming and the Mongols, and the Ming caravan entering the grassland is like a sheep entering the tiger's mouth. But in fact, this is not the case, in order to weaken the power of the grassland people, the Ming Dynasty has always exercised trade control over the grassland, and even sometimes banned trade, so that the materials urgently needed by the grassland people cannot be solved, which is like choking the throat of the grassland people.

It is precisely because of the blockade of the grassland by the Ming Dynasty that the grassland people have formed a tradition, that is, to respect the caravan, as long as the caravan arrives at a tribe, not only will it not be attacked, but also will be warmly entertained, which has also led to the smuggling situation in the northwest and northeast of the Ming Dynasty is very serious, not much worse than the sea, so the caravan of the Ming Dynasty is still safe to enter the grassland, of course, it is not without a little danger, there are also robbers on the grassland, these robbers are riding horses, coming and going like the wind, Therefore, it is also called a horse thief, and this kind of horse thief has not been eliminated until the liberation period of later generations.

However, horse thieves on the grassland are generally small groups of action, after all, if there are too many people, not only is it inconvenient, but also will be hit by some tribes, so as long as the number of caravans is enough, the general horse thieves do not dare to fight their ideas at all, unless several horse thieves work together, they dare to impact the caravan, but this situation is very rare, after all, the competition between horse thieves is fierce, and few people will trust others, let alone cooperate.

The caravans of the Ming Dynasty rushed to enter the grassland, and the previous Ming Dynasty's trade blockade of the grassland was naturally abolished, in fact, this decree has long lost its effect, and the border line between the Ming Dynasty and the Mongolian steppe is full of smuggling caravans, especially in Shanxi, which controls the vast majority of the Ming Dynasty's trade in the grassland and Liaodong, so after this decree is abolished, the most affected are the wealthy merchants in Shanxi, because they can no longer monopolize the trade in the grassland.

With the abolition of the ban on grassland trade, these Shanxi merchants can no longer control the trade between the grassland and Liaodong, so they are very dissatisfied with the imperial court, and these merchants are very wealthy in the local area, and even have a large number of thugs and guards, even local officials have to obey their orders, the villain is worried that if these merchants are dissatisfied and make trouble, it will lead to another disaster on the border of my Ming Dynasty!" In the small room of Zhou Chong's office in Wenyuan Pavilion, a middle-aged man wearing the uniform of the commander of the Jinyi Guard was reporting to Zhou Chongyu.

Zhengde left the capital, and at the same time took a large number of people, including not only ministers like Gu Dayong, but also ministers like Jiang Bin, and Qian Ning was also worried that he would be completely replaced by Jiang Bin if he was not by the emperor's side for a long time, so he left the affairs of Jinyiwei and ran to Xuanfu himself. However, this also brought an opportunity for Zhou Chong to rectify Jinyiwei, the young man in front of him is named Sun Liang, who used to be the commander of Jinyiwei, he is stable and reliable, and he is very talented, it was Wu Shan who recommended Sun Liang to him before, and now Sun Liang's performance does make Zhou Zhong very satisfied.

"Good job, this king heard that Shanxi Jin merchants are rich and rival the country, and how many of them are even more representatives, I don't know which ones?" Zhou Zhong asked indifferently, he did not have the slightest good impression of the Jin merchants during the Ming and Qing dynasties, because these Jin merchants for their own selfishness, Li Tong Mongolia and Jurchens, especially a few decades later, these Jin merchants provided military salaries, weapons and food for the Jurchens, and vigorously supported the Jurchens, it can be said that the reason why the later Houjin was able to establish, and in one fell swoop to destroy the Ming Dynasty, most of it was thanks to the support of these Jin merchants, and after the establishment of the Qing Dynasty, these Jin merchants became the imperial merchants of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and they have been prosperous for hundreds of years.

During this time, Sun Liang had already figured out Zhou Chong's temper, although Zhou Chong's tone of voice was very indifferent, but he couldn't help but shudder and said: "Lord Qiqi Supervisor, Shanxi Jin merchants initially relied on regional relations and began to smuggle between the Ming Dynasty and Mongolia, and later became bigger and bigger, and even used money to buy off many generals in the border army, so their caravans can be unimpeded in the border pass, but other caravans can only stop at the border pass. ”

When he said this, he saw Sun Liang pause and said: "It is precisely in this way that the Jin merchants monopolized the trade of the Ming Dynasty on the grassland and Liaodong, and after generations of accumulation, these Jin merchants can indeed be called rich and rival the country, which is represented by Wang, Jin, Fan, Liang and other eight families, these eight are all Shanxi clans, not only have many people, but also have a wide range of money and grain, this time the court abolished the ban on trading, these eight families are also the most noisy!" (To be continued......)