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Sixth, the Republic of China landlord is not good (southern chapter)

During the period of the Republic of China, the countryside in the northern provinces was always in chaos, the people were not able to make a living, bandits were rampant, and even the safety of life was not guaranteed, not to mention the interest of life, it was really not a good place for landlords to enjoy the best life with peace of mind. In Sichuan Province in the southwest, there were more than 560 large and small wars, the army swelled to 34o regiments, 840,000 people, and taxes were levied in advance until the 100th year of the Republic of China. Hunan and Hubei are flooded at both ends in three days, and the Yangtze River bursts its embankment almost every year. And once the Beiyang Army went south to attack Guangdong, or the revolutionary army went north to the Central Plains, Huguang was also the main battlefield, and it was burned and looted back and forth by ruthless people such as Wu Peifu and Zhao Yiheng, and it was choked enough, which was also not very suitable for living.

In general, in the era of the Republic of China, except for the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong, only the land south of the Yangtze River was in relatively good condition. Relatively speaking, it should be regarded as the richest region in China, the least war-torn region, the most relaxed class contradictions, and the most stable social order in China.

Because of the open atmosphere and convenient foreign exchanges, landlords can invest in businesses and industries with higher yields, such as industry and commerce, without having to rely entirely on the output of the land, so they have to be more "enlightened" and generally do not squeeze tenant farmers to death.

Although in the rural areas of the Jiangnan region, more than 50% of the nominal rent is paid, but when it is actually collected, it is often discounted. If the tenant farmer is more brutal and the landlord is weaker, then the actual rent may even be reduced to about 3o%. In some localities, the tenant peasants have been unable to pay their rents for many years, and the landlords have pinched their noses and endured them -- because the profits of his factories and firms in Shanghai and Ningbo are 100 times that of the little land in his hometown......

It is precisely because the rural exploitation in the Jiangnan region is relatively low and the class contradictions are not prominent, so as far as the whole country is concerned, the rural order is not bad, and this is also the reason why Chiang Kai-shek can take Jiangsu and Zhejiang as the core of his rule.

However, in recent years, some "brick families" have simply magnified the relatively "harmonious" rural class situation in Jiangsu and Zhejiang to the whole country by making partial generalizations, so as to prove that our party's agrarian revolution is completely unreasonable -- this is a bit excessive.

So, since the land in the Jiangnan area is fertile, there are not many wars, the peasants do not rebel much, and it is close to Shanghai, it is easy to buy industrial products such as hot water bottles and clocks, and the life of the landlords in Jiangnan during the Republic of China should be quite good?

…… This one...... It can only be said, not necessarily, it depends on what time it is.

The Jiangnan region has always been the essence of China, with large industrial and commercial cities, and the countryside rich in rice, cotton and silk, and has been quite rich throughout the Ming and Qing dynasties. Even in the early modern period, after the country was opened by foreigners with strong ships and cannons, the economic situation of Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces was not bad by exporting silk, tea and porcelain. In the early stage of the Republic of China, taking advantage of the east wind of World War I, the economy of Jiangsu and Zhejiang had a period of considerable prosperity.

However, in the middle of the Republic of China, after entering the thirties, with the progress of transportation technology, the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions, which are the most open in the country, have also been more and more victimized by the dumping frenzy of the world capitalist market -- in many cases, grain dumping is fatal to a country.

For example, in the thirties of the 20 th century, China's rural areas were in a very absurd situation -- in the first two years, the north of the Yangtze River was a thousand miles of red land, and the south of the Yangtze River was flooded, and the starving people died on the way. By 1932 and 1933, the meteorological disasters were basically over, and the Jiangnan region and most provinces in the country generally had bumper harvests, and rice and wheat were piled up, but they were hit by the ocean surface of foreign rice dumped from Shanghai (at that time, it was the Great Depression in the United States, corn rotted in the ground, milk was poured into the Mississippi River, and agricultural products were naturally cheaper), so in terms of market price, each stone of domestic rice was often 2 or 3 yuan more expensive than foreign rice, and it could not be sold at all. If they sell at a low price, the peasants will have to lose their capital.

-- Due to backward agricultural technology and heavy taxes and miscellaneous taxes, the production costs of peasants in Jiangsu and Zhejiang are far higher than those of their Western counterparts. They have no good seeds, no fertilizers, no water conservancy, no pesticides, no machinery. The yield per mu is much lower than it is now, and we can only rely on a large amount of labor input to intensively cultivate to barely increase the yield. Moreover, instead of agricultural subsidies, they have to bear heavy taxes, and it is strange that they will not go bankrupt in the face of global competition.

Seeing that they could not make money growing grain, the peasants in Jiangsu and Zhejiang began to count on cash crops, but unfortunately, the variety, quality, and price of domestic cotton could not compete with the imported Egyptian long-staple cotton, and after entering the thirties, it could not be sold at all. Silk, which has traditionally been a major export product, has been completely defeated by Japanese silk, which has been constantly improving its varieties and technologies, due to its long-term technological complacency and competition in the global market.

At that time, the Kuomintang government was engaged in the most typical comprador economy, and there was no agricultural protection and subsidy policy at all, but it also imposed heavy taxes on agriculture, raised the production costs of the peasants, and ruined the market competitiveness of its own agricultural products. In the end, the agricultural products in Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions lost both foreign markets and domestic markets, and could not find a way to improve varieties, and the trend of rural bankruptcy eventually became irremediable.

In desperation, some farmers defied the ban and began to grow opium poppies, trying to make money from opium. However, the land price and labor costs in Jiangsu and Zhejiang are second to none in the country, and Shanghai is the country's largest logistics center, so the price of local opium cannot compete with the tobacco soil of Northeast China, Yunnan and India, and the climatic conditions in Zhejiang are not suitable for growing opium poppies, and as a result, even drug trafficking has to lose money.

-- A similar situation has occurred in opium-producing areas in the west. During the Anti-Japanese War, Xikang Province killed 7 county magistrates and thousands of security guards to eradicate opium. After entering the period of the War of Liberation, Chairman Chiang announced that smoking would no longer be banned, shoveled cigarettes, and no tobacco taxes would be levied in order to concentrate his efforts on investigating the turmoil. As a result, opium became a common commodity, the price plummeted, drug trafficking became unprofitable, and drug dealers were greatly reduced. The opium harvested by the peasants could not be sold, so they had to reduce the amount of opium poppy cultivation, but because the opium was so cheap, the local people soon became addicted to the opium.

As a result, the peasants in Jiangsu and Zhejiang in the thirties were infinitely sad to see that they were starving to death due to a poor harvest, and they would lose money on a bumper harvest, and they could not earn money by planting anything, and the fertilizers and farm tools were bought with debts, and as a result, the debts on their bodies could never be paid off, and they had no way to live.

Mr. Ye Shengtao's famous short story "Three or Five Buckets Overcharged" tells the tragedy of a group of farmers in the south of the Yangtze River in old China who had to endure the loss of rice because of the dumping of foreign rice and hit the market. It vividly reveals the terrible reality of the sudden bankruptcy of the entire countryside in old China under the oppression of the three mountains of feudalism, imperialism, and bureaucratic capitalism -- despair in the famine year, and even more despair in the bumper year!

In order to survive in this desperate situation, the peasants either flocked to the cities and ventured into the world, or they had to embark on the road of rebellion and revolution.

It is clear that after the general bankruptcy of the countryside in the Jiangnan region, the life of the landlords will not be easy.

First of all, if the land rent is collected for rice, because the price of rice is low, it is equivalent to shrinking a lot, and if it is collected for cash, the peasants cannot pay it; Second, the money previously lent to the peasants to buy farm tools, fertilizers, and rations could not be recovered, and became one bad debt after another. In the end, the anti-rent movements in the countryside were extremely frequent, and the peasants who had no way to live became hob meat one after another, simply growing their own rice and eating it themselves, without paying taxes or rent, and living one day at a time. In case the landlord comes to the door to ask for it, he will either cry, make trouble and hang himself, or hold a knife and claim that he will die together.

However, many landlords now hire thugs with too high labor costs, and the cost of litigation is not low. What's worse is that after spending so much money, at most they can only receive some worthless rice, and even if they often kill people, they still can't receive anything, and forcibly collecting rent by force is always a loss. Even if the peasants were sold as piglets, the gains still outweighed the losses - so in the end they had to be allowed to pay rent arrears.

Once the rent collection received the Cheng dù of the loss of the book, the landlord was too tasteless.

During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Jiangnan became the main battlefield, and the government army, the Japanese army, the puppet army, and the New Fourth Army repeatedly fought and saw, and the original little prosperity disappeared. During the War of Liberation, he was plundered by the Kuomintang "robbers" and was left poor and white, and the last bit of surplus wealth was gone.

Therefore, if anyone wants to travel to the local lord of the Jiangnan area in the Republic of China era, it is best to travel earlier, that is, in the first ten years of the Republic of China era, before the rural areas in the south of the Yangtze River are generally bankrupt, they must change their investment channels in time, otherwise they will definitely not be able to live a rich life just by collecting land rent.

In fact, in the era of the Republic of China, many landlords in Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions had already lived in prosperous cities such as Shanghai, Nanjing, and Hangzhou, and handed over the land in the countryside to the "second landlord" (agent) to be responsible for collecting rent. After deducting the heavy tax burden and the commissions of the "second landlords" and their helpers, even if the wind and rain are smooth, the "second landlords" are more conscientious, and they can get an average of one silver dollar per mu of land every year.

If you live entirely on such a meager land income, it is obviously difficult to maintain the high cost of urban life.

Taking the masters of Chinese culture mentioned before as an example, Professor Hu Shi's monthly income in 1919 was 24o silver dollars, and it rose to 5ooo silver dollars in the 3o years, and the annual income was 6ooo silver dollars, plus manuscript fees and other incomes, I am afraid that it is more than 10,000 oceans per year. At that time, there seemed to be no concept of levying personal income tax on salary, and these coins could actually fall into Professor Hu Shi's pocket. If you put this income level in the countryside, it is already a miniature warlord level with tens of thousands of acres of fertile land and dozens of guns!

It can be seen that the "brick family called the beast" during the Republic of China period was really a genuine "uncrowned nobleman"!

In fact, even the low salary of 8 yuan per month for the Mao administrator can only be earned with 1oo acres of land in the countryside in some barren places.

Therefore, these landlords who settled in the cities often did not rely on the land of their hometowns to make a living, but only left a way back for themselves.

-- Since a long time ago, the more discerning landlords and gentry in Jiangnan have already put their investment channels in a metropolis like Shanghai, and have been engaged in finance, commerce, industry, and real estate, in order to seek higher returns. The flow of wealth from the countryside to the city was also a general trend during the Republic of China. While the rural economy as a whole is declining, it is accompanied by the abnormal prosperity of some coastal cities.

Therefore, after talking about the situation in the rural areas of the Republic of China, let's focus on the typical representative of the big cities in the Republic of China, the paradise of adventurers, the "Oriental Magic Capital" Shanghai, and see what kind of modern life the Shanghainese people lived in that era.