No wonder Du Shouchang was excited, the salt industry system of the Ming Dynasty was a monopoly on salt.

All the salt works are under the control of the government, and the government sets up officials in the salt works, and the business methods are similar to those of the Weaving Bureau and the War Bureau.

As for the salt households, according to the tax system of the Ming Dynasty, the tax they paid was salt, which was called the salt tax, and after paying the salt tax stipulated by the government, the excess salt was called surplus salt, and these surplus salt were not allowed to be sold privately, and the government salt farms would buy them cheaply.

Salt farmers have to pay a lot of salt tax, the surplus salt is not much, that is, barely make a living, a very small number of good business, can buy the officials who guard the field, hire people to cook a large amount of salt, and secretly sell the surplus salt, not handed over to the salt farm, just like the Bian Rang family in Haizhou, which is a very large salt household, to a certain extent, you can negotiate with the salt merchants.

But in general, in the salt industry, it is the government and the salt merchants who have the final say, and it is a salt industry system in which the government supervises the traders.

The specific system is called the "Gang Salt System", the Ming Dynasty will hold the salt quotes of the merchants according to the region divided into ten gangs, each gang salt citation is 200,000 citations, each introduction of salt 300 catties, or silver six coins and four cents, called "woben", to obtain salt quotation called Zhanwo, need to pay a huge salt tax to the government at one time to get these salt citations.

However, to receive salt, you must use the source nest (also known as the root of the nest, the root of the nest), that is, the certificate to prove that you have the privilege of transporting and selling salt. In order to obtain this privilege, salt merchants must confess to the competent government authorities. When recognizing the nest, in addition to proving one's financial resources, one also needs to have a strong relationship and a doorway, and pay a huge amount of silver. But the salt merchants who held the lead had the hereditary privilege of transporting and selling the salt.

As a result, a large number of salt merchants are divided up by a small number of large salt merchants, who use a lot of money and connections to monopolize the salt introduction, and the salt merchants who cannot buy the salt introduction cannot buy salt in the government salt farm, and have no right to operate the salt industry, so they have to buy the salt from the big salt merchants at a high price, and the large salt merchants distribute the salt to small and medium-sized salt merchants to operate, and they do not have to bear any risks at all, and they can sit and collect profits every year, so they can be so fat. Become the first-class merchant gang of the Ming Dynasty.

It seems that buying salt is like buying invoices in later generations, but the difference is that the government of later generations has adopted an extremely strict audit system to supervise in order to make enterprises pay taxes according to regulations. The Ming Dynasty controlled the salt production process, forcing salt merchants to pay a large amount of salt tax to the government in order to obtain such a certificate.

But if this system runs well, it will be fine, after the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the official class degenerated and decayed, and even dared to play with such things as coinage, let alone salt introduction. Therefore, a large number of surplus salt households colluded with salt officials and sold a large number of illegal salt, so the salt introduction system was basically broken, and now, the city of Beijing has been occupied, and the imperial court is hiding in Fujian and shivering, who will care about this.

Therefore, there was a matter of Yangzhou businessmen crossing the border, and to be honest, the current salt industry has basically become the world of private salt.

Therefore, the Huai'an salt merchants wanted to squeeze Yangzhou merchants out of Huai'an through the government, and could not monopolize the salt in the Huai'an salt field by virtue of salt.

Originally, according to the standard salt production, salt production and salt sales were strictly divided into regions. The two Huai River are bounded by the Huai River, the south of the Huai River belongs to the Yangzhou salt merchants, and the salt fields such as Yancheng and Tongzhou (Nantong) in Huai'an are the exclusive areas of Yangzhou salt merchants, and the area of the same Huai'an salt merchants is in Haizhou in Huaibei.

Historically, Yangzhou salt merchants were a dominant company, but in the Ming Dynasty, due to the Yellow River's seizure of Huainan into the sea, a large amount of sediment pushed the coastline of Huainan towards the depths of the sea, resulting in a decrease in the salinity of the sea, while Huaibei had a higher salinity and a more geographical location. Therefore, it has developed into a business pattern of "salt frying in Huainan and salt drying in Huaibei".

The salt works in Huaibei have the conditions to generally use the salt drying method, while Huainan continues to use the boiling salt method, because it is a salt monopoly. Yangzhou salt merchants don't care about the cost, anyway, it's the salt farmers who are bitter, but after the country broke the salt government, the advantages of Haizhou's salt drying were reflected, and the Huai'an salt merchants faintly came to the top, although they have not surpassed the Yangzhou salt merchants, but they can already fight against the court.

So when Huai'an was controlled by the Qing army. After Haizhou was controlled by Yang Chao, a large number of Yangzhou salt merchants went north, colluded with local salt farms and salt households, and swallowed a large part of the territory of Huai'an salt merchants.

Therefore, Du Shouchang is more eager than Yangzhou salt merchants to get the support of the government, and hopes to restore the salt system, but Yang Chao does not want the salt industry to return to the era of the government, think about the Ming Dynasty, thousands of miles of coastline, and the people of the Ming Dynasty have been reduced to salt as a luxury, how can Yang Chao allow him to continue to exist.

Therefore, it is impossible for Yang Chao to agree to Du Shouchang, but he promised that Huai'an salt merchants can open their own salt farms, and there is no limit to the number of citations, which is equivalent to letting them directly participate in all aspects of the salt industry, how can Du Shouchang not be excited.

So he immediately stood on Yang Chao's side and began to go back to organize Huai'an salt merchants to cooperate with Yang Chao.

The salt merchant is a giant crocodile in the pawnshop industry of Qianzhuang, and he can compete with the wealthy and nobles, and they also have a large amount of copper money in their hands, and now the salt merchant who wants to run the salt industry will not hesitate to release the money, and after ten days, the price of silver will be raised to the price of 800 copper coins.

At this time, Yangzhou salt merchants also found Yang Chao, they wantonly swallowed the territory of Huai'an salt merchants in Haizhou, and stabilized their own Huainan territory, originally eating oil from their mouths, but when they heard that Huai'an salt merchants had Yang Chao's permission to operate their own salt farms, they immediately became restless.

Seeing that the Huai'an salt merchants helped Yang Chao to suppress the price of copper coins, they immediately did not dare to wait and see, and sent Qiao Chengwang as a representative to communicate with Yang Chao, and they also hoped to get permission to operate the salt industry independently.

"It's still the old way, sell copper coins and absorb silver. In addition, Benjue has issued a large number of silver tickets, and I also need your support. In this way, in addition to paying a fee of 100,000 taels, I will give you a salt sticker and allow you to set up a salt farm. You must also deposit 100,000 taels of silver in my bank, and I will give you 100,000 taels of silver, which can be exchanged for silver in various parts of Jiangnan, and ensure full payment. ”

"Uncle's silver ticket, we are naturally relieved!"

Qiao Chengwang agreed without the slightest hesitation, they were indeed relieved of Yang Chao's silver tickets, after all, when they strode towards Haizhou, there were chaos everywhere, and no one dared to take the silver on the road with confidence, so they all exchanged it through Yang Chao's bank, and they were used to it.

"However, this time, the main thing is not to let your silver tickets be exchanged, but to let you release these small silver tickets through your own money bank, pawnshop, silver number and even salt shop, and put them in the hands of the common people. Remembered. This is a major matter related to Benjue, and if you do it well, Benjue will take care of your business. ”

"Yes, yes."

Qiao Chengwang didn't dare to object, Yang Chao was fighting a war. Aren't they fighting a war, a salt war with the salt merchants of Huai'an, and the key to success or failure is to see if they can get Yang Chao's salt stickers.

Sticking this word means a kind of pass, a kind of license. Or the franchise rights of Westerners, the Ming Dynasty has a rule, for example, the tooth shop has a tooth sticker, which is a license issued by the government to carry out intermediary business, with a tooth sticker, in order to introduce transactions for buyers and sellers in the market, evaluate the quality of goods, and extract commissions from prices.

To get a dental stick, you need to pay dental tax, which is divided into upper, middle and lower three, and the dental tax varies from place to place, such as Jiangxi pays three taels of silver every year. two taels in the middle, one tael in the bottom; Hubei tooth tax is two taels of silver, one tael in the middle, and five coins in the bottom; For the rest of the remote villages and towns, one tael of silver is paid at the top, five coins in the middle, and three coins at the bottom.

Nanjing's tooth tax is higher, but the upper tooth tax is only five taels of silver a year, the middle is three taels, and the lower one is two taels.

Yang Chao's salt stickers are obviously much more expensive than dental stickers. A salt paste is 100,000 taels of silver, but there are still eight companies in Huai'an that have bought salt stickers, while Yangzhou has ten.

It means that the Huai'an salt merchants sold 8 million copper coins, while the Yangzhou salt merchants directly threw 10 million copper coins into the market. Now it's time to hit the copper coin worthless.

The small amount of silver tickets soon reached the hands of the people through the network of salt merchants, and the Yangzhou salt merchants even used the temporary monopoly advantage to tell the people that their shops only accept cash tickets and want to eat salt in order to let the small amount of silver tickets in their hands be sold this morning. Then go and exchange the silver ticket, where to change? The money banks, pawnshops, and silver numbers they run can all be exchanged.

In ten days, the 10 million centime silver ticket was exchanged.

But the common people are still very worried about these silver tickets, try to only exchange enough silver tickets to sell salt, and do not let the silver tickets remain in their hands, and in a blink of an eye these silver tickets are back in the hands of salt merchants, which is not what Yang Chao wants to see, he hopes that the people will hold these silver tickets and use them as currency.

"Listen, everyone, you salt merchants only recognize silver tickets This method is very good, from today onwards, you will not accept copper coins in the future. Only the silver and the silver tickets will be collected, and you can rest assured that the silver tickets in your hands will be paid to you in cash. And to give you a discount, your exchange fee Benjue only charges two cents! ”

Previously, Yangzhou merchants were accustomed to foreign exchange, but Yang Chao had to charge three points of interest, one hundred taels of silver is three taels of interest, which is much higher than the handling fee of later generations, but it is equivalent to the risk of transporting silver on the road, it is still worth it, but it still makes many people feel pain, because operating the salt industry is a large amount of business, and the liquid capital is often one million taels, and the exchange interest paid every year is tens of thousands of taels of silver, which is still very distressing.

In particular, many salt merchants went out with six cents of interest as soon as they exchanged money back and forth, and it was even more heart-wrenching, and it was still very cost-effective to reduce it by one-third for them at once.

And they have to agree if they agree, and they have to agree if they don't agree, and now they are tied to Yang Chao, so to speak, as long as Yang Chao's army is still in Haizhou, they have to accept Yang Chao's exploitation.

"Moreover, Benjue has decided that all your salt stickers in the future shall be paid with silver tickets, and you will not be charged a penny of silver. That way, you don't have to worry about the silver ticket rotting in your hands. ”

"At the same time, Benjue also decided that in the future, the imperial court will collect taxes through silver tickets, and one or two silver tickets will be one or two silver, and the copper coins will at least be in Nanzhili, and the government will not recognize them in the future."

The silver ticket can be used to pay taxes, which is equivalent to the government directly admitting that the gold content of the silver ticket is the silver at face value, which is equivalent to injecting the official credit into the silver ticket, of course, the credit of the Ming government is not valuable, and it is still negative if it is not good, but Nanzhili is different, Yang Chao has always been a talker, and the Nanzhi government is still very trustworthy in the hearts of the people.

On the same day, Yang Chao posted a notice throughout Nanzhi, informing the people that the copper money in his hand could not be used to pay taxes, nor could it be used to buy salt, nor could it be used to buy grain at the government's standing position, and the government only accepted silver tickets. (To be continued.) )