The first wind and rain drifted away

Wen Shoufu stood at a high angle, and his eloquence was not to be said, with the few words of this old fox in the political arena, Emperor Chongzhen knew the salt merchants of Huizhou very well.

Huizhou salt merchants are mainly dominant in the two Huai, famous in the north and south of the river.

In the salt industry, they have a natural geographical advantage.

Huizhou is two Huai away, although there is the limit of the lofty mountains, the separation of the big river, but compared with the Jin merchants in the far northwest, it is still a close neighbor.

And from Huizhou to Yangzhou, the central city of the Lianghuai Yan District, the water and land can be passed, the traffic is convenient, and the journey from the waterway through Ningguo, Wuhu and Nanjing will go straight to Yangzhou.

Moreover, doing business requires culture, as has always been the case.

The salt industry is a special kind of business, and the Ming Dynasty has complete policies and regulations on the production management, transportation and marketing, taxation and so on of the salt industry, which are very detailed and specific.

Therefore, to engage in the operation of the salt industry, it is necessary to be familiar with the salt law.

The Hui merchants were a merchant gang characterized by "Confucian Jia", and although they were merchants, they basically belonged to the literati.

Therefore, they understood the study of the salt law more thoroughly and deeply than the salt officials sent by the imperial court.

Hooligans are not scary, what is scary is that hooligans are cultured.

The law of salt in the Ming Dynasty was mainly to supervise and supervise business, and the imperial court appointed people with a high level of education to serve as salt officials.

Because salt affairs are related to the national economy and people's livelihood, no one who is not a Confucian master, capable and sensitive, can take on this important responsibility.

Salt merchants, especially general merchants, must often deal with salt officials, and they must have a certain cultural knowledge to have a common language and common tastes with salt officials, and may even become friends with salt officials in poetry and literature.

So, things turned out sadly.

Collusion between officials and businessmen has become inevitable.

The merchants provided the salt officials with a good livelihood, and there is no doubt that the salt officials themselves were able to give the merchants special attention.

In particular, the Hui merchants are good at making friends with officials, and the means are so awesome that people can't refuse, and the famous Yangzhou Thin Horse is what they want to come out to corrupt the court officials.

Of course, the clever Hui merchants are far more than just a woman, and their means are diverse.

In short, in a word, few people can withstand the bombardment of their various means by land, sea and air.

In this way, the consequence of the collusion between officials and businessmen is that the income that originally belonged to the state is gone, and all of it falls into the pockets of corrupt officials and Hui merchants and salt merchants.

"Last year's revenue from the salt tax was less than one million taels of silver. In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the revenue from the salt tax generally exceeded more than two million taels of silver, almost two-thirds less. ”

At the end, Wen Shoufu said in a low tone and began to list the actual data.

Where the money is going, in fact, is a matter of knowing it.

Especially as the first assistant of the Ming Dynasty, it is impossible not to know.

But so what?

Can it be managed?

How many years have passed, isn't it still the same?

However, the emperor's recent methods have made Lord Shousuke feel that there may be a way to solve the problem.

It's just that this pit is a bit big, I don't know the emperor......

MMP, after listening to Wen Treacherous's words, Emperor Chongzhen felt that the dragon egg was faintly painful.

The mess I took over, in fact, was completely overturned, and it was easier to destroy and rebuild.

tinkering with the original system like this, beating and killing the real fucking is embarrassing.

It's just that I'm the emperor, and I can't rebel against myself, so I can only endure it.

However, the more I think about it, the more angry I get, and the more I think about it when I take a step back, the more I lose.

That's just the way to do it!

"It seems that he is going to kill again!"

Emperor Chongzhen shook the dragon's head, his mouth cracked, as if helpless and sneering, and said to Wen Shoufu, who was full of hope.

Wen Traitor frowned, his heart sank, his mouth was bitter, his hands were spread, and he opposed Emperor Chongzhen for the first time and said: "Your Majesty, I'm afraid it's not appropriate!"

Salt officials are corrupt, and there is naturally a court law, and this can be killed. But the Hui merchants are different from the Jin merchants, they did not collude with foreign enemies, and they were not charged with death!

If the emperor forcibly kills him, the hearts of the people in Jiangnan will definitely be lost, and once someone with ulterior motives provokes him, there may be turmoil.

Moreover, the imperial court had a request for these Hui merchants. ”

As the first assistant of the Ming Dynasty, Wen and the traitor naturally put stability maintenance in the first place.

After hearing this, Emperor Chongzhen was stunned.

That's right, these Hui merchants are not guilty!

They are legitimate, hard-working and rich.

After all, if you don't even have to pay taxes, there is naturally no tax evasion, and there is no theory that the Ming Dynasty is guilty of bribery and bribery, so how can you be convicted?

Without a conviction, how to deprive people of their property?

Moreover, not only are they not guilty, but in the hearts of the people of Jiangnan, they are still living bodhisattvas.

Hui Shang is a Confucian merchant, a scholar background, very particular about weekdays, and cares most about reputation.

To be honest, during the Taiping years, there was no shortage of things to do to repair bridges and roads.

In disaster years, it is not uncommon to open warehouses to release grain for disaster relief.

In a word, they did a pretty good job of charity.

Moreover, Emperor Chongzhen knew that they were still one of the financiers of the Restoration Society, and those scholars who were sponsored by the Restoration Society on weekdays did not hesitate to promote good deeds for them.

Therefore, their reputation in Jiangnan has always been good.

And, on the other hand, they are also patriots.

Historically, after the Ming Dynasty was cool, the Jiannu army went south, and the Southern Ming court began to resist.

Among them, some of the scholars and Ming officials who came to their senses began to recruit troops and horses to build a team and build slaves.

And the food and salary in this are sponsored by these Jiangnan salt merchants or maritime merchants.

This practice is quite similar to that of some businessmen and large landowners during the Republic of China who donated to Lao Chiang to resist the Japanese invaders.

The world is turned upside down!

Emperor Chongzhen felt very helpless, and finally realized the mood of the previous emperors.

If a gentry does not pay taxes, he already makes the country unbearable?

But that's not all, there are still no taxes on land, no taxes on business, and nothing at all.

Only agriculture has to pay taxes, and only the people who dig in the fields have to pay taxes.

The others are uncles!

Historically, the Wanli Emperor, who reigned for forty-seven years, could not move this, he reached out to the mines, but the result was still unable to collect taxes.

In order to increase revenue, the mine superintendent was sent to collect taxes, and the result?

Many mine supervisors were killed, and the mining tax was forced to be abolished.

Occupy the country's mines to make money, the state is not allowed to collect taxes, and the eunuchs who collect taxes are killed, this kind of thing has only existed in the Ming Dynasty for thousands of years!

Well, Emperor Wanli has no choice but to hold back on them.

The problem is that these people are very arrogant and start to buckle their hats, what eunuchs are tyrannical, what eunuchs make the people's livelihood miserable, and what emperors compete with the people for profit.

This is where and where, it's just a reversal of black and white.

The big eunuchs collect money, can they look at the money in the hands of the common people?

It's not much money if it's squeezed out, isn't it!

It's like running a hundred places and charging 10,000 families, it's better to go to Papa Ma's company and take care of the autumn breeze!

Everyone understands this.

Therefore, Wanli and the eunuchs collected taxes, and they were still these big households.

The question is, who is the big family in Daming?

Can it be offended?

Therefore, it is not surprising that Wanli was scolded.

Thinking of these, Emperor Chongzhen couldn't be calm anymore, he couldn't even sit down, he got up with his hands and paced square steps, his mind kept turning, what should I do?

"Wen Aiqing, what's the way, hurry up?"

Walking around, Emperor Chongzhen found that something was wrong, the old man Wen Traitor lowered his head, tightened his eyebrows, and looked like he wanted to speak and couldn't make a choice, and immediately spoke.

"Your Majesty, the minister thinks that it may be necessary to carry out the reform of the salt law, cancel the opening of the Chinese law, and ban the root nest in the hands of Hui merchants, which is the long-term solution.

Kechen is worried, I don't know if the timing is right? Who can replace the abundant funds in the hands of Hui merchants? ”

Wen Tiren was still thinking about it, and slowly expressed the worries in his heart.

Speaking of which, the Ming Dynasty's salt law reform is not the first time, and it has been advancing with the times for a long time.

At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, Lao Zhu, who was good to the people, strictly forbade the merchants of Shilu to sell salt in order to avoid monopolizing salt profits by the powerful and powerful.

In the twenty-seventh year of Hongwu, Lao Zhu issued an order to prohibit the family members and slaves of public officials and officials above the fourth grade of civil and military affairs from trading salt and embezzling people's interests.

In the fifth year of Jingtai, it was stipulated that officials should pay more than 3,000 catties of salt each, and officials should pay more than 500 catties of salt each, so as to prevent officials from interfering in salt administration.

After the enactment of this law, the salt affairs were in order, and the state benefited greatly.

Later, as the war progressed, the opening of the Chinese law was launched.

The Kaizhong Law refers to the opening of the border newspaper, that is, the government promulgates regulations to summon merchants to transport grain and other goods to the border areas, and salt is used as compensation.

The purpose of the implementation of the Kaizhong Law was initially mainly to increase the military reserves on the border and enrich military salaries, and later expanded to hoard grain and grass for relief of floods, droughts and famines.

Whenever there is a shortage of military salaries at the border, or when there is a flood or drought disaster, the household department will make a list and call for businessmen to lose.

Or order the merchant to transport grain at the designated place, and the household department shall prepare a survey and base book, in duplicate, one to the grain distribution agency, and one to the various transshipment and lifting divisions.

After the merchant pays the grain, the grain collection agency fills in the amount of grain and the amount of salt to the warehouse, and the merchant takes the warehouse money to the various transfer and lifting divisions.

After the comparison of the transshipment and lifting division is consistent, it will be introduced according to the amount of grain paid by the merchant and sent to the field to support salt.

Merchants get salt and sell it themselves.

Exchanging grain for salt, using merchants to transport grain nanometers, and enriching border storage, this is the main content of the Ming Dynasty's salt opening method.

After the implementation of the Kai-Zhong Law, the state has saved a lot of transit freight, and the grain and salary in the border areas have also been guaranteed.

Due to the remarkable effect of the opening method, not only grain millet, but also all materials urgently needed by the country made merchants lose Chinese salt.

As a result, many new systems were derived, such as Nama Salt, Na Money Salt, Na Iron Salt, Nabu Salt, and so on.

In short, whatever the country needs, it will open it, and salt will become a medium for the state to trade with merchants anytime and anywhere.

However, since the formation of the constitution, the rule of officials has become more and more corrupt, and the salt law has become more and more disorderly.

In the last years of Chenghua, the eunuchs of the powerful men bought Huai and Zhejiang salt cheaply and sold them to make big profits, resulting in the inability of official salt to be sold.

In the fifteenth year of Hongzhi, the profiteer requested through his cousin Zhang Heling to introduce 170,000 yuan to be exempted from the salt chasing class, and each silver was quoted five cents, and the surplus salt from each field was bought at another price, and he listened to his sale, and he was agreed.

As a result, the salt law was corrupted in the middle of the Ming Dynasty, and the key was that Emperor Hongzhi was too soft-hearted and favored the powerful.

The eunuchs used their power to seek rent, resell the approvals, and reap huge profits, and it was the common people who suffered.

In the later period of Wanli, the Gang Salt Law was implemented, that is, from the civil system before Wanli, the system of official collection, commercial transportation and commercial sales was changed to the private system of commercial collection, commercial transportation and commercial sales.

The Gang Salt Law is a system in which merchants monopolize the transportation and distribution of salt.

In the forty-fifth year of Wanli, Mingshenzong adopted the salt method and Yuan Shizhen's suggestion that the salt quotation received by each merchant was divided into ten outlines, compiled into an outline book, and each year was introduced by one outline and nine outlines.

The compendium allows all merchants to be regarded as a "nest book" forever, and every year according to the old number of factions in the book, and no one is allowed to join.

From then on, the official did not collect salt, and the merchants and salt households traded directly, and after the purchase, the right to transport and sell them belonged to the merchants, and they were hereditary.

Since then, the inland salt merchants have been liberated, and the distribution and sales of salt have flourished.

The Gang Salt Law did play a considerable role in dredging the backlog of salt introduction, which played a somewhat supportive role in saving the collapse of the salt administration.

However, in the process of implementation, new problems also arose, that is, power and money were traded, and powerful eunuchs also took the opportunity to extort.

The powerful monopolized the salt profits, and the government wantonly looted and increased frequently, so that the price introduction increased day by day.

In the first year of the Apocalypse, the price of salt per official was three taels and eight yuan. The maximum price of illicit salt is only five yuan per quotation, and even if the cost of bribing officials and officials is included, it is still less than half the price of official salt.

Merchants sold illicit salt one after another, and in addition to the change of salt tax, stove households changed salt to silver, and levied non-products, and stove households were not smugglers and could not get silver, resulting in the prevalence of illicit salt.

In the Chongzhen period, not to mention.

It's corrupt to the extreme.

And this is also the original intention of Wen Shoufu to decide to reform the salt law.

Of course, he only moved his mind after seeing Emperor Chongzhen's thunderbolt methods during this time.

Otherwise, he simply couldn't afford to have this thought.

Without the support of a strong emperor, what can he do as a first assistant?

Especially when the imperial court is crumbling.

"Suitable, what's not suitable? As long as you can get money, you can do whatever you want! ”

As soon as Wen Traitor finished speaking, Emperor Chongzhen's eyes lit up and he immediately spoke.

However, for the second question of the traitorous minister, who can replace the abundant funds in the hands of the Hui merchants, Emperor Chongzhen did not have any idea.

Because, this is not something that ordinary people can do.

Moreover, the scale of this fund is staggering.

Nowadays, the salt production of the imperial court has reached a considerable scale, and there are eleven large salt pans in the country.

The largest one is the Lianghuai Salt Field, located at the confluence of the Grand Canal and the Yangtze River near Yangzhou, followed by the Tianjin Changlu Salt Field.

The Lianghuai Yantian includes 30 large and small salt factories, employing more than 670,000 workers, and the salt production is responsible for supplying the entire Jiangnan and exporting to Mongolia and other places.

During the Apocalypse, when the Ming Dynasty's military spending increased greatly due to the invasion of Jiannu, the imperial court tried to force merchants to buy salt permits for the next two to three years in advance to increase their additional income.

But the Jiangnan salt merchants expressed their silent protest by refusing to buy these pre-sold salt quotations.

They will not compromise unless salt officials promise to expand the shipping quota and let them use their existing salt to direct transportation.

Among them, some of the more speculative salt merchants, that is, Hui merchants, even took the opportunity to buy the old salt quotations of their peers in order to increase their value and make a profit.

Of course, salt officials can break the monopoly of salt merchants by invalidating the old salt import permits.

However, the officials found that the salt trade was too large, and only the merchants in front of them had enough capital to purchase salt in advance.

Therefore, at the request of the salt officials, the imperial court made significant concessions.

Anyone who buys a new salt quote will have access to a permanent shipping option in the near future.

As a result, this compromise of the imperial court finally formed a monopoly, and twenty-four Hui merchants monopolized the sales of the two Huai salt works.

Soon, they converted this option into a family heirloom licence – the "root nest".

This privilege amassed a great fortune for their descendants.

The number of merchants in the salt pans is decreasing, but their personal wealth is increasing.

But this trend of concentration was also recognized by the imperial court: only the richest merchants could afford to take the capital risk of hoarding salt for a year.

This is because there is always the possibility of deterioration of the stored salt.

Salt officials must make sure that the salt merchants have enough cash to survive the damage to the storage that would ruin the small traders.

The trend towards a centralized economy inevitably involves the size of the economy.

In such a large trade activity, it is true that only a small number of people have the ability to operate a national market compared to the large number of merchants who trade in the local market.

To put it like a complicated feeling, in fact, in the heart of Emperor Chongzhen, this is clearly the general agency system of later generations.

These 24 agents monopolized the two Huai salt farms, obtained pricing power, and then found secondary and tertiary distributors to subcontract layer by layer.

It's just that the strength of these Hui merchants is really strong, and the capital of contracting the two Huai salt fields is as high as 80 million taels of silver every year.

Emperor Chongzhen didn't know how much profit they had, he only knew, and it must be indispensable.

Because they also have to go around with officials at all levels.

A portion of the total profits was automatically appropriated for gifts, entertainment, and bribes to the officials who had overseen the salt works.

In order to be able to continue to contract the two Huai salt farms.

Just ask, the investment is so high, who wants to do it without high profits?

Isn't this stupid?

As for the imperial court, these 80 million taels of silver have to supply more than 670,000 workers in the Lianghuai Salt Works, and in addition to the operation of the Salt Transportation Division in Yangzhou, less than 1 million taels of silver are handed over to the household department a year.

What the fuck is this ratio?

It's all about working for people!

How can this work?

PS: I solemnly recommend a copy of the Tang Dynasty's "Tang Dynasty Blood Blade", which is already two million words, hurry up and start slaughtering!