The content of these assessments has been worked out last year, and several civil officials such as Huang Fengfu have been discussed for several months, explaining to them their selection methods and purposes, so that each of them can clearly understand, and after thoroughly understanding them, they will be implemented immediately as soon as the Chinese New Year is over, and the relevant decrees have been announced in Shandong, Jiangnan, Jiangxi and other places, and the examination will be held in March, encouraging eligible people to actively participate in the registration and work hard to prepare.

After these notices were issued, the repercussions aroused were extremely fierce, first of all, the gentry class lashed out at this, which was as sad and indignant as the death of the country, but the merchants, craftsmen and old masters responded enthusiastically, and there were many people who signed up, and the screening work was very difficult.

Obviously, the level of knowledge and self-confidence of the merchant class and the old masters was higher than that of the artisan class.

As a businessman, especially a big businessman, except for the self-made group, basically have the conditions to receive education, reading and literacy are essential, and they also know some business knowledge. And they also have a strong desire for power, whether it is the collusion between officials and businessmen, or the fact that Hui merchants began to vigorously train their children to study for the imperial examination after making money, it is all this kind of plot.

Not to mention those old masters, one by one is teaching for a career, except for a very few masters who are indifferent to fame and fortune, in fact, most of them are forced to teach all the time, who doesn't want to be an official when there is a chance, how many gray-haired old masters walk into the examination room with their students The scene makes people feel a lot of emotion.

The illiteracy rate of the craftsman class is still very high, and Yang Chao's father, Yang Yong, is an illiterate blacksmith, and it is obviously impossible for such a person to meet the examination conditions. But like Bai Lei. For generations, he has been a craftsman of the Ministry of Industry's Metropolitan Water Division. Obviously, if you want to master some water conservancy knowledge, you have read books, and at least you will not have a problem in reading and writing.

Therefore, although the vested interest group of the gentry class has vigorously criticized Yang Chao's imperial examination system, and many people are not afraid of death to make slanderous remarks, but in the cheers of the three strata, especially the merchants and old masters, these slanders cannot make waves, not to mention the wealthy and powerful businessmen, if those gentry really dare to obstruct the imperial examination. I'm afraid these old masters will be able to eat them alive.

As for the artisan class, they are much weaker, they themselves are very unconfident, they have not held power for thousands of years, they themselves do not think that they can grasp power, they are only satisfied with being able to eat by handicraft.

This made Yang Chao hurt a little.

You must know that Yang Chao attaches the most importance to the craftsman class, which will be divided into the industrial bourgeoisie class in the future, that is the class that can really strengthen the country, and the next class that represents the most advanced productive forces, but this class obviously has no confidence at this time.

As for the business class. It is also the source of another industrial bourgeoisie, but this stratum has been a vassal of a subordinate power class for thousands of years. They do not represent the advanced productive forces themselves, and can be said to remain only vassals until they are transformed into the industrial bourgeoisie.

However, Yang Chao also knows that it is not so easy to cultivate a new class, and now he will loosen the restrictions on these classes first.

The ancient Chinese management method has an advanced side, and the Chinese society was called a super-stable society by later generations, and it was successful to a certain extent, but the times have changed, and the Age of Discovery opened the era of global competition.

Therefore, Yang Chao has no choice but to break this super stable state and inject vitality into the already dead society, first of all, it is necessary to break the past management method, or start from the past way of selecting talents.

In the past, the method of selecting materials, starting from the Tang and Song dynasties, became the imperial examination, and the talents selected by the content of the imperial examination only had strong writing ability and talent, of course, to a certain extent, it also represented that the selected talents had a higher degree of intelligence, but they could not be used according to their talents.

Yang Chao wants to try his best to let the right people manage the country, that is, let the right people do the right things, let the old master manage education, let the craftsman (project manager) manage the construction, and let the businessman (manager) manage human resources.

Throughout March, the heat in the Jiangnan region continued to rise, with Shandong in the north, Zhejiang in the south, Jiangxi in the west, and the sea in the east.

Because the imperial examination was opened.

Different from the imperial examinations in the old days, all gathered in one place, Yang Chao considered that the old masters, merchants and craftsmen from all over the country rushed all the way to Nanjing, this kind of cost is really expensive, for businessmen, this kind of cost is of course consumed, but for the old masters and craftsmen may be pressure.

So Yang Chao set up the examination rooms directly in various county governments.

However, merchants were the first to arrive, and some even arrived a month early. The old master is the second group of people, who often arrive at the test center ten days and half a month in advance and rent a place nearby. The craftsmen were the last to arrive, most of them local craftsmen, or from nearby villages and towns, and many of them got up in the middle of the night and set out on the journey for the exam with a sense of hope and apprehension.

As soon as the test date arrived, a large number of vehicles and ships, escorted by Yang Chao's personal soldiers, arrived at various county governments at the same time, this kind of operation itself is a kind of high-precision management, obviously for this era, it is impossible to arrive at the same time, but Yang Chao gave a three-day error, basically as long as there is no accident, it can arrive three days ago.

If there is an accident and some vehicles and ships do not arrive, then the test paper will be used to assess the test in the place to prevent the leakage of test questions as much as possible and to achieve fairness and justice. The examiners are also the strictest military judges in the army, and these people will open the papers until the moment before the exam, and they will stay with the exam papers until then.

After the examination, the examiner put away the papers, sealed the papers, pasted the name, and then loaded and shipped back to Nanjing, where the unified marking of the papers, all the process in theory, are absolutely confidential, unless there is favoritism, otherwise there will be no unfair situation, of course, any system has defects, good at drilling camp Chinese people will definitely be able to find loopholes, but this first time they obviously can't find it.

The acceptance rate is quite high, out of 10,000 businessman candidates, 1,000 were admitted, which is more than the test for Xiucai.

Of the 8,000 old masters, 1,000 were also admitted.

The knowledge level of the craftsman class is indeed a little worse, Yang Chao gritted his teeth and admitted five hundred, a small half of which are rough and ink, and can only barely express his thoughts in an orderly manner.

The admission list has been issued, and suddenly the entire Jiangnan and other provinces are boiling, the merchant class is thunderous, the old men are crying with joy, and the craftsmen are also stunned in a daze, they are so simple to become officials!

For a time, the fireworks in several provinces were out of stock almost at the same time.

Many merchants put on a feast, and passers-by forcibly pulled them over to eat and drink, but let some beggars report their meals for several days.

The old masters sacrificed to the Confucian Temple one after another, crying and laughing in front of the Confucian Old Confucius Temple.

The craftsmen still have some difficulty accepting this change of identity, and they are still a little awkward in front of some local leaders who came to Doxi.

After being admitted, the position is immediately arranged, of course, it is still basically a grass-roots position, and it is still commanded and arranged in the state and county, and there is at least one old master in a county as an education officer, and the official position is seven grades, which is higher than the county order. A county also has at least one officer who will be responsible for evaluating the officials of the county. A county must also have an engineering director who is responsible for dredging roads, canals, and maintaining utilities, such as the city's drainage system.

These three departments naturally improved the status of many merchants and craftsmen, but the gentry did not really have any rebound, because the final result made everyone find that it was the gentry class who benefited the most.

This result also made Yang Chao very helpless, and he could only sigh that the power of the gentry in this country was far beyond his imagination, but he didn't expect that in a reservation like himself, which was obviously a merchant and other three classes, he would still let the gentry children be killed.

There is no way, in addition to craftsmen, the gentry class has integrated into the merchant class too much, and the big shopkeepers with experience in managing a hundred people are also everywhere among the children of the gentry, because many of the gentry themselves are big businessmen. As for the old master's class, this is the class of scholars, and many of the family schools and private schools in the countryside of the wealthy family are actually the scholars of their own clan who are educating the children of their own clan, and these people are naturally old masters who meet the requirements.

In the end, according to statistics, more than seventy percent of the officials and rites are gentry or have a background of gentry, and only less than thirty percent are simple businessmen.

Of course, the craftsman class, the gentlemen have always been reluctant to do anything, and the gentry class, who have always disdained to practice their own actions, can't get in, but they don't care too much about this engineering, after all, even the Ministry of Engineering of the imperial court is ranked last of the six, and it is the department with the least status and the least power.

On the contrary, it is the criminal department, the military department and the household department that are not limited to status, and the participation of the gentry class in these three departments is less, because these three departments require that they must be soldiers, in fact, they are limited to the selection carried out in the army, although there are tens of thousands of gentry children in the army, but compared to the million army, it is still too few.

And over the years, Yang Chao's perseverance has cultivated a large number of readers, these people started from literacy, step by step, there are always some talented and intellectually superior characters who take this opportunity to stand out, relying on a huge number, they are just from the hands of the gentry in the army, snatching more than six layers of share.

"It's not so easy to change the composition of the ruling class in this country. Not to mention cultivating a new class. ”

Yang Chao could only sigh, but he already had a follow-up plan, and with these new class officials in place, the next step was to strengthen the power of the new class.

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My new book has been released, the title of the book is "The Rise of Great Powers 1900", remember to collect it. (To be continued......)