86_86695 "If conditions permit, let's not kill the landlord in private." We are going to have a public trial of the landlords. Whether the landlord is guilty or not, whether the landlord should die or not, we let the masses decide. ”

-- 1622, Wang Shuhui, "The Eyes of the People Are Bright"

Revival now has a new initiative. That is, before opening a criticism meeting for the landlord, it is necessary to "announce" it.

The so-called public notice refers to the collection of evidence of the landlords' crimes after pacifying the masses and relocating the masses. Of course, there is also such a problem. Generally, before the start of the "announcement" activity, everyone has already seen a lot of promotional plays. For example, "The White-Haired Girl", such as "The Chicken Crows in the Middle of the Night", such as "Rent Collection Courtyard" (a drama rehearsed by the Revival Society) and so on.

Most of the policies formulated by the Revival Society, except for major policy and policy things, are speculated and sold in the process of practice. This is not to say that Wang Shuhui lacks long-term planning. But for him, a traverser, in the environment of the last years of the Ming Dynasty, many things can only be imagined after encountering them.

There's nothing you can do about this kind of thing. This is the process of "crossing the river by feeling the stones". Fortunately, unlike the kind of "crossing the river by feeling the stones", Wang Shuhui knows that the other side of the river is a broad road.

In the past, the Revival Society also had a special policy for landlords, such as holding criticism and fighting meetings. However, although there are also links in these criticism meetings where the local people appeal in Taiwan and seek responsibility, the leader of the criticism meeting is the Fuxing Association. In Wang Shuhui's view, the enthusiasm of the people has not been fully brought into play.

What's more, Wang Shuhui lacks confidence in letting the people lead the criticism. He was not very sure that the common people could be ruthless and break with the landlords.

However, an accidental incident made Wang Shuhui change his opinion. He met a young man named Chen Li.

Chen Li is 15 years old this year and was originally from Daye County. His father, Chen Dabao, was a scholar. Because he has not been able to be admitted to the lifting of people, this Chen Dabao gave up studying and doing business and began to do business.

In feudal society, the identity of a merchant was really peculiar. Within the ruling class, the identity of a businessman is despised by those who pay lip service. It is said that all businessmen are "hoarders" and "no treacherous businessmen". But in real life, businessmen are often those who scold businessmen.

In the case of the Donglin Party, which is now in the limelight, more than 50 percent of the Donglin Party members are not only big landlords, but also big businessmen.

These businessmen are mainly engaged in three types of business. One is the textile industry, the other is the salt industry, and the other is the grain trade.

Among them, in the textile industry, their trade objects are mainly aimed at the common people. Some of these big businessmen are also involved in foreign trade and export their products to foreign countries. Relying on their spokesmen in the imperial court, under the banner of "not competing with the people", they have always resisted the commercial taxes levied on them by the imperial court.

Needless to say, the salt industry is bought and sold. They have to intervene in both official and private salt, and this is how the two Huai salt merchants who are famous in the Ming and Qing dynasties came.

The third business that these people do is the most shameless and black-hearted business, and that is the grain business.

Why do we say that the landlords' grain business is the most shameless and black-hearted? Here, let's talk about what they did after Zhang Juzheng's reforms.

The core of Zhang Juzheng's reform is to no longer levy taxes in kind and monetize taxes. No longer collect grain from the common people, but directly collect money.

If you are a farmer, you are not one of those people who can be completely exempt from taxes, so you have to pay the imperial grain tax.

However, as a farmer, even if you have a good harvest, you don't have much money. If you want to pay taxes, you have to sell your food for money. To whom is grain usually sold? It can only be sold to local grain merchants.

The local grain merchants are the big landlords.

In the southern region of the Ming Dynasty, taxes were generally levied twice. One is the summer tax and the other is the autumn tax. Both of these taxes are to be levied after the summer and autumn harvests. We will not talk here about how the local tyrants and gentry, who were both landlords and grain merchants, passed on taxes to yeoman farmers and tenant farmers. Let's just talk about this issue of taxation.

After the summer and autumn harvests, the common people had grain in their hands. In order to be able to pay taxes, they are very anxious to sell the grain in their hands. At this time, a seller's market is formed.

The grain merchants, who are also landlords, have a large amount of grain in their own hands, so they must work hard to suppress grain prices. They bought grain at low prices, which forced the peasants to sell more grain to the landlords in order to pay taxes.

As a result, there is very little food left in the hands of the peasants.

The peasants could not make ends meet with the grain they had left in their hands, and when the time came for them to be scarce, they had to buy grain from the landlords and grain merchants who had bought their grain at low prices. At this time, it becomes a seller's market.

The landlords and grain merchants would sell to the peasants the grain they bought from the peasants at low prices at high prices.

Many peasants with little land, and tenant farmers who had no land at all, had to borrow usury from the landlords.

Usury is a donkey rolling. After a year, the yeoman farmer became a tenant farmer, and the tenant farmer became a serf. This is how the landlords became bigger landlords, and this is how the yeoman peasants became serfs, and in the end, more than 90 percent of the land in China was in the hands of the big landlords.

You see, the man who sells cloth is a landlord, the man who sells salt is a landlord, the man who sells grain is a landlord, and the one who makes usury is also a landlord. This is why it is said that the core of feudal society is the feudal land system, and the ruling class of feudal society is the feudal landlord class.

The landlords took control of people, things, and means of production and turned the peasants into serfs dependent on them for survival. They make a profit in everything they do. That's why it's been said that class society is a winner-takes-all society.

Chen Dabao doesn't have much land. As a scholar from a homesteader background, Chen Dabao's personal ability is not strong, but the small shop he opened is prosperous. It's not for nothing, it's because he married a shrewd and capable wife.

Chen Dabao's wife, Wu, had a bizarre background, she fled to Daye County in a great famine 16 years ago. Although in order to protect himself during the disaster year, Wu ruined his appearance. But even so, Wu's gorgeous appearance was still photographed by Chen Dabao and rescued her.

Out of a mentality of repaying his gratitude, Wu married Chen Dabao, who was not married at the age of thirty, and gave birth to a son and a daughter. One of the sons is Chen Li.

If a person does not succeed in something, in general, he will not succeed in anything. Chen Dabao can't study, and he has no ability to do business. The entire Chen family's shops are supported by the Wu family. Even so, Chen Dabao still complains about self-pity and self-pity, thinking that he is a great talent who has never met talents.

Chen Dabao doesn't care about his family's career, and he doesn't care about his two children at all. It was Wu who was struggling to support the shop while teaching two children. Eventually, in the lower grades of forty, he fell ill and died.

Since then, the Chen family's family has been in complete decline, the shop has gone bankrupt and closed down, and the house has been sold to someone else's family in order to pay off debts. And Chen Dabao, who has always felt sorry for himself, also filled in a new problem, that is, abusing his children.

When Chen Li's sister and brother were fourteen years old, Chen Dabao climbed to the high branch of Wu Chaozong. The reason is nothing else, because Chen Li's sister grew up and inherited her mother's beauty, and by chance, she was known by Wu Chaozong's doglegs. Since then, Chen Dabao has become Wu Chaozong's cheap father-in-law, and his family moved to Songzi County.

Wu Chaozong is fifty years old, not only has a wife, but also a lot of other concubines. After the young but fourteen or fifteen-year-old girl of the Chen family entered the Wu family, she was soon affected in the battle in the back house, and finally died inexplicably.

Although Chen Dabao didn't care about his children, at the instigation of someone with a heart, he went to the Wu family to ask for an explanation. The Wu family's well-known family in Jingzhou is really not a cover, three punches and two kicks, and Chen Dabao was beaten to death.

Fourteen-year-old Chen Li has completely become an orphan and lives begging for food in the county town. Maybe God looks at him pitifully. Chen Li waited for the arrival of the Revival Army in the year of the catastrophe, was accepted by the Revival Army, and entered the youth camp.

One day, when Wang Shuhui went to the juvenile camp to inspect his work, Chen Li, who was wearing a gray uniform, suddenly asked Wang Shuhui, "Since the Revival Association administers justice to the people under the world. I have a great grievance and I want to ask the Revival Society to give me justice! ”

Chen Li, who was thin and weak, made a deep impression on Wang Shuhui. Because this fourteen-year-old boy has the best academic performance in the entire youth camp. Although he was physically thin, he not only had the best academic performance, but also the best grades in military training. Wang Shuhui found that this child had the strength to not admit defeat.

Of course, Wang Shuhui wants to administer justice to Chen Li. But Chen Li's answer also made Wang Shuhui feel a lot of emotion. He did not ask Wang Shuhui to kill the captured Wu Chaozong, but wanted the Revival Society to give justice to his sister and father in public.

Chen Li's request gave Wang Shuhui a wake-up call. Is it really as simple as taking possession of the land for the landlords?

No. The evil of the landlords and the evil of the feudal landlord class lies in the fact that the means and process by which they acquire the means of production are full of blood. Every common man enslaved by the landlords, whether indirect or direct, is a victim in the process of land annexation by the landlords.

Wang Shuhui reflected on this. He always taught the members of the Revival Society to believe in the masses and support the masses. Then, relying on the deep hatred of the masses for the landlords, there is no reason to think that the masses lack the ruthlessness to break with the landlords.

This was the beginning of Wang Shuhui's establishment of the Renaissance Society's trial system