In the Ming Dynasty, people in the mainland had very little food because salt was too expensive.
The reason why salt is expensive is not only because of the high salt tax, but also because too much bureaucratic capital is raking in money from the salt administration.
The average price of salt from the Chongzhen Dynasty is as high as 30 to 40 cents per catty. It is cheaper along the coast, but the price in the interior is relatively high.
According to the local drying salt, the cost of one pound is enough.
Of course, Huang Yi also had to collect salt tax, and the price was 5 cents per catty. The government-run salt store in the base area sold green salt to the common people, and the price was 10 cents per catty.
Of course, the Ming Dynasty official announced that the salt tax for one salt tax was only about six cents of silver, and one salt tax was two hundred Ming Dynasty market jins. Calculated, one catty was less than five cents.
But that's official, just like the supplies in the plan, not everyone has the ability to get them.
In fact, the taxation of the Ming Dynasty was really not high. Even if the three taxes of Liao, Lian, and Suppression were included, which were criticized by later generations, they were not high.
The bad thing is that with the extra taxes at all levels, the taxes that the people have to bear in the end are even several times the regular taxes.
In the final analysis, it is because of excessive corruption. It is simply fishing in a dry lake. The high-ranking officials are arrogant and extravagant, while ordinary people are living in poverty.
The wealthy people in Jiangnan had to bear excessive taxes, so they had no feelings for the imperial court, but more resentment.
In fact, the court could only get a quarter of the taxes they paid. It was really not that the court did not care about the lives of the people, but that corrupt officials, local tyrants and evil gentry were knocking the bones and sucking out the marrow.
Who's to blame? How did this happen?
This is not unrelated to the fact that the head of the empire, Emperor Chongzhen, was unable to recognize and employ people.
This is also related to the fact that the Donglin Party controls the situation in Jiangnan and keeps saying that the court cannot compete with the people for benefits. In fact, it is to protect the Donglin Party's own interests.
Huang Yi understands the history of the late Ming Dynasty very well and knows that it is difficult to transform an old world, but it is relatively easy to break an old world.
Therefore, we chose to open up base areas outside the mouth. Starting from teaching the people in the base area how to read and write, we gradually cultivated soldiers who dared to revolution and civil administrators who could integrate with the grassroots people.
We need money and food to support soldiers and civilian officials. How can we do this without taxes?
Taxation alone is certainly not enough; state-owned enterprises must also be supported to make money.
Of course, it is too early to talk about state-owned enterprises at this time, and they can only be regarded as public-owned enterprises in the base areas.
The self-operated salt shop in the base area is this kind of public enterprise. The wholesale quantity of salt is also the same as that of the imperial court's salt quotation of 200 jins. The wholesale price is eight cents per catty, and Li Weida has a preferential price of seven cents per catty.
It was cheaper for Li Weida to get green salt at this price than to buy it with salt, and his profit could be doubled, so he bought more and more.
Among the goods his family purchased from within the customs, there was one thing that other merchants simply couldn't understand.
For hundreds of thousands of years, I have never seen anyone trafficking large amounts of moso bamboo outside of the country.
well! There is no way, there really is no bamboo outside the customs.
Steel production is too low. Unless part of the steel bars are used for important load-bearing beams, the remaining concrete parts are replaced by bamboo strips that have been baked to prevent corrosion and insecticide.
Because the base produces cement and uses concrete for pouring, it is easier to build small and medium-sized reservoirs with half the effort.
Even though it's the middle of winter and all outdoor projects have been suspended, the base area is still busy with tens of thousands of strong men and women busy.
There is no way. There are no excavators or crushers these days. Extracting stones, crushing them and transporting them to the cement factory stockyard requires too much labor.
During the slack season, farmers had time, so team leaders, squad leaders, and squadron leaders organized young adults to dig mountains and quarry stones near the base city.
This is not to initiate labor. The base areas do not dispatch labor. The large-scale production movement is organized to adopt the employment system, and wages are paid based on the amount of work completed.
Of course, revolution must be reflected in many aspects.
The base area has already launched a wheel revolution and has begun research. Oh no, it's not research, but making steel bearings, steering shafts and other components based on the drawings drawn by Huang Yi.
The base area implemented the weights and measures standards forcibly promoted by Huang Yi at the end of last year. This is of course a copy of the millimeters, centimeters, and decimeters of later generations...
What was used to make the standard was one of the auxiliary tools in the handle of Huang Yi's engineer shovel, which was a one-meter-long steel tape measure.
Even if there are unified dimensions and accurate drawings, it is impossible to succeed at the first time. Making the bearing part is a bit difficult and requires a skilled craftsman.
The material requirements are also very high, and they are all made of steel that the old master said.
Because the steel produced in the base uses air temperature technology to burn coke, the furnace temperature has increased by nearly 200 degrees, reaching more than 1,300 degrees, exceeding the melting point of steel.
So it is enough to melt pig iron and wrought iron into a fully liquid state, no longer the semi-crystal that was most common in the seventeenth century.
Therefore, the quality of steel has been greatly improved.
Then there is heavy hammer forging to remove impurities and increase the density of the steel. The quality of the steel produced by the steel plant in the base reaches the standard of steelmaking.
Experienced masters such as Lan Jinkui and Qi Dashan add fluorite to the molten steel to improve the fluidity of the melt and remove harmful impurities such as sulfur and phosphorus.
This was of course taught by Huang Yi, but Huang Yi didn't know how much to add. The final ratio was figured out by the masters.
Huang Yi not only suggested adding fluorspar, but also limestone, lime, oxide scale, iron ore, sinter, etc.
Anyway, Huang Yi recorded the relevant information and mentioned all the additives that can be identified in this era.
It is also explained that the hardness of steel is increased by decarburization and carbonization.
With Huang Yi pointing out the basically correct direction, and because they are well treated and respected, the big craftsmen who work proactively brainstorm ideas.
The quality of steel produced in the base areas is of course getting better and better, with more and more varieties.
With qualified steel blades and hammers, the flintlock gun made by Qi Xiaoshan and others finally reached a fire rate of nearly 80% and began mass production.
Of course, this quantity is not large. Thirty or forty tubes a month can increase production by about 30% every month.
After producing steel materials capable of making qualified shock absorbers, Huang Yi drew drawings and asked the masters to start making spiral spring shock absorbers.
He had an idea in his mind to build a comfortable and light carriage.
The base city pool is not suitable for designing hydraulic machinery because the water in rivers and lakes is either frozen or flowing ice for most of the year.
But the base area has a unique advantage - animal power far exceeds human power.
Therefore, the animal-powered hundred-jin and thousand-jin sledgehammers came into being.
The power-charging sledge hammer is not Huang Yi's golden finger. Qi Dashan, Lan Jinkui, Liu Han and other great craftsmen have seen and even used it before.
It's just that the animal-powered sledgehammers in the base area are much larger than what they have seen before.
The animal-powered hammer that Lan Jinkui, Liu Han and other great craftsmen thought was very big and shocking was not worth mentioning in Huang Yi's eyes.
A sledgehammer weighing 1,500 pounds in the Ming Dynasty required six horses or three oxen to pull and lift it. It looked quite powerful.
In fact, what will this mean in future generations? It's just a one-ton hammer.
