In just three days, the salt merchants of one hundred and five counties in the ten prefectures of Yunyang have gathered in Hutoubao. Those who could come were basically here, and more than a dozen of them had not yet arrived, and because they were temporarily in other provinces, they were also attended by important people.

Salt has always been the most profitable commodity, and salt merchants are also the richest merchants, and most of these salt merchants have their own backers, although they are rich, they can't move if they want to. Involving a hair and moving the whole body, these salt merchants have a special status. But now, Liu Jun killed Zhou Wenshun when he said that he would kill, and even uprooted the Zhou family all at once.

Many people know that behind this Zhou Wenshun is a county king of the Chu family in Wuchang City, such a relationship is hard enough, but now, the person is dead, the family is in prison, and all the hundreds of thousands of family wealth have been confiscated.

No one wanted to touch Liu Jun, the king of Yama, at this time.

Everyone came with the idea of making money with harmony, calming things down, and destroying wealth and eliminating disasters, as for the big plans that Liu Jun had repeatedly mentioned before, win-win cooperation, etc., few people believed it. Everyone thinks that Liu Jun just wants to grab food and just want a piece of the pie.

Liu Jun really wants to get a piece of the pie, but the profits are too high. As far as he knew, the heirs and nobles of the court could make a profit of one million taels of silver a year by reselling the salt bills they had obtained through privileges every year.

The most powerful salt merchants in Yangzhou today are said to have a capital of no less than 30 million taels in the salt industry, and they can make a profit of 9 million taels every year, of which only 1 million taels are paid to the state, and after removing 3 million taels of various expenses, they can still get a huge net profit of 5 million taels in the end.

The annual tax collection of the Ming court was only more than 2 million taels.

Hubei is a province with a large population, since the development of Huguang in the Ming Dynasty, it has become the granary of the world, the population has grown significantly, and the more salt is consumed. Huguang belongs to the official salt sales salt area of Huaiyan. The annual sales volume of official salt reached more than 600,000 imported salt. And now Liu Jun's Yunyang Town has occupied half of Huguang, and there are also several prefectures in Henan, Shaanxi, and Sichuan, such as Huguang, which is only big and not small.

However, although this area of Yunyang is said to be an important area for salt consumption, it does not produce salt. The salt needed had to be brought in from Yangzhou, or from Guangdong, Fujian, or even from Shanxi or Sichuan.

But is there really no salt in the Huguang area?

No, there is salt, and there is a lot of salt.

Some time before Liu Jun sent troops to Sichuan, Zhang Shan was ordered by Liu Jun. The investigation of the smuggling of salt revealed an incident. At that time, he found a group of smuggled salt dealers, all of whom were just loose dealers, selling smuggled salt from the countryside with their hands on their shoulders, and after Zhang Shan caught them, he wanted to check them up, but unexpectedly found that the salt of this group of people was not from other provinces, but actually boiled salt by himself.

Finally, carefully track down. These people were found digging for salt in Yingcheng County, De'an Prefecture, west of Huangzhou.

It turned out to be a gypsum mine, and the previous mine owner only took white gypsum when mining gypsum. The upper and lower layers of bluegypsum that coexist with it are discarded as waste slag outside the hole, and then the waste ballast accumulates over time to form a hill. It rained heavily, and the water produced by the shower flowed to the nearby rice fields. Killed the rice seedlings. The local people found that the water that killed the straw had a salty taste, and boiling it could produce salt. Farmers near the plaster cave used waste ballast to soak water to extract juice instead of salt. The surrounding residents followed suit.

Later, the mine owner's gypsum business failed, and the mine owner simply took a risk, he simply stopped taking gypsum, but directly used the waste hole to store water, draw water to boil salt, once the water was taken, he could get three or four catties of salt, and then sell the boiled salt to some bold people nearby, and then they picked it out to sell.

This news should not be too surprising, at least many of the salt merchants present here knew about it. But they sent people to inspect the mine, but the scale was too small, and it didn't produce much salt in a year, so they couldn't look down on it at all.

Liu Jun looked at these people, but shook his head. Those salt merchants may not look down on the newly discovered mine, but Liu Jun was quite excited when he found out, because the salt merchants looked down on the mine because they were only salt sellers, not salt producers. The yield is not high, so it is naturally unattractive.

But who is Liu Jun, he is the chief soldier of Yunyang, and now he still holds the special purpose of raising money from the emperor in his hand. This multi-faceted fund-raising naturally includes self-mining of salt.

The only thing that made Liu Jun hesitate before was how many reserves there were in Yingcheng's salt mines, and he sent a lot of people to investigate, and found that the area should be a large salt layer, with a large amount, at least for a hundred years, there is no need to worry about no salt mining.

The reserves are enough, and the rest is how to make this money. Under normal circumstances, it should be Liu Jun who recruited people to pick salt, but in the end, Liu Jun vetoed this idea. First, salt mining requires a lot of labor, and second, the effect is slow. Liu Jun urgently needs money, what he needs is a business with little investment and quick results.

In the end, after thinking about it, Liu Jun came up with the idea of borrowing chickens to lay eggs.

Liu Jun waved his hand, and a group of personal soldiers entered the hall, causing a commotion and tension in the hall, and many businessmen thought that Liu Jun was going to take them.

But then it turned out that it was just a false alarm.

The soldiers came in to give them a notebook.

Liu Liangzuo took the notebook handed by a soldier and found that it was printed. He glanced at it, and was quickly drawn to what it was about.

"Yingcheng Salt Works Recruitment Plan." Liu Liangzuo read softly and continued to look down. The more he looked, the more surprised he became, and the more he watched, the more excited he became. This is really a big plan, Zhennanhou actually found a large salt mine in Yingcheng, and then he wants to recruit people to partner in mining salt mines, according to the above plan written, Liu Jun is ready to dig salt wells, water mining method to mine salt, three years later, it is expected that the salt field will dig 100 salt wells, 100,000 salt workers, and an annual output of more than 1 million quintals of salt. In the future, as long as salt wells are added, the output can continue to increase.

One hundred catties of salt, one hundred catties of salt. In the past, the annual sales of Huai salt in Huguang Province were 600,000 yuan, not including the sales of various illegal salt entering Huguang. An average person gets at least 10 catties of salt a year, so the salt trade can be done all the time, and the profit is also extremely high.

Liu Liangzuo secretly calculated in his heart that when official salt is cheap, it is one pound and one cent, and when it is expensive, it even reaches six cents of silver, while private salt is between one and a half to two cents of silver, and the gap is huge. But even if it is one pound and one centimeter and five centimeters, and there is no need to pay taxes on private salt, it is still profitable.

Although the price of illicit salt is lower than the price of grain. But the private salt is constantly boiled out of energy, but the grain output is fixed.

A pound of illicit salt is sold for one and a half cents, and one quintal is five dollars, and one million quintals a year is 150,000 taels.

Of course, the accounts cannot be counted in this way, and the people here are not pure smugglers, most of them actually have the status of official salt merchants. This means that they can sell the cheap private salt that is not taxed and sold it in the name of official salt, and the price is very different. The spread is 10 times, and sometimes even 40 times.

One of the most important places is that Yingcheng is in Huguang De'an, near the Han River, and also very close to Wuchang and the Yangtze River, which means that the salt here can be transported quickly and easily. Compared with many salt merchants who have to transport salt from the southeast coast, Huguang's self-produced salt is definitely more advantageous.

Of course, in the face of this temptation. Still, some people raised doubts.

The imperial court strictly prohibits private salt, and the general private salt is flowed out by the stove households in the salt factories of the imperial court, and this kind of private salt is relatively secret. And like Liu Jun, he wants to build a salt farm directly in Yingcheng. And it is also a salt farm that intends to produce hundreds of thousands of quintals per year, isn't that too ostentatious, can the imperial court allow it?

"Of course you can." Liu Jun smiled at the salt merchant. "You don't know, the emperor asked Liu to train the new army. But the imperial court now has no food and salary to pay, so the emperor asked some parties to raise their own funds. Now I'm going to mine salt for money, which will help the court solve a big problem. Of course, the imperial court would agree. As a matter of fact, I have already submitted to Your Majesty that I will collect salt in Yingcheng, and the Emperor has allowed me to set up a salt factory in Yingcheng, and the salt collected in the salt factory can be sold, and the proceeds can be used as military salaries and food for the training of soldiers and horses. ”

As soon as Liu Jun's words came out, all the businessmen became excited.

The biggest trouble has been solved, and Liu Jun has this purpose, and he can start salt mining at will. This means that Yingcheng will really be able to provide a lot of salt in the future.

At this time, no one asked if they would have to pay a high salt tax if they went to Yingcheng to buy salt in the future.

"Now, ladies and gentlemen, we have a great opportunity in front of us. I plan to directly recruit 1 million taels of silver as the share capital, recruit craftsmen to dig salt wells, recruit workers to mine salt and boil salt, and build a large salt field in Yingcheng. ”

"A million?" Many people took a breath of cold air, although all of them were salt merchants, all of whom were worth a fortune, but one million taels of silver was still very surprising.

"That's right, it's one million taels of silver, a total of 10,000 shares, and one hundred taels of silver per share."

A salt merchant stood up and asked, "Then if we invest money in it, can we be regarded as shareholders of the salt factory, and can we participate in the management decisions of the salt factory?" ”

Liu Jun unceremoniously dispelled his dream, "Of course not." The salt works were established by me, belonged to the imperial court, and were usually managed by us, and you invested in silver and shares, and enjoyed the right to dividends. ”

Some of the salt merchants felt a little disappointed and began to talk to each other.

"According to our expectations, for every hundred and twenty shares of the silver money you have invested, you will get a return of almost ten taels of silver a year. That's the annual income of 10%, which is definitely higher than if you bury the silver in the cellar or take the silver to buy a house and land. ”

"In addition, you don't have to worry about your share capital, three years, as long as it is three years, then you can withdraw the principal at any time, and we will return a lot of money."

Many people are moved, there is a rate of return every year, how can there be dissatisfaction. To buy land, not to mention that the field is priceless and difficult to buy. And most of the land bought has to be tenanted out, one acre of fertile land produces five stone of rice a year, the tenant pays half of it, gets two stone buckets, and finally goes to the shell to get about one stone of rice, seven or eight buckets, and has to pay the field tax and other parts, and the final income is only more than one stone of grain. You can get more than one or two points for silver, and one acre of fertile land now has more than ten or twenty taels or even higher, and the annual income is far less than one percent.

Of course, the benefits of investing in the salt farm are not only these, Liu Jun told them that if they take a stake in the salt factory, they will have the qualification to buy salt from the salt field first. Moreover, they must buy salt tax-free.

Heartbeat, there are indeed many people who are moved. (To be continued......)