The scenery in Taibaiding was as good as ever, but Huniu, who came here for the first time, was not in the mood to watch the spring scenery outside the camp. Her and Xiao Letian's eyes had been attracted by the two small blast furnaces.
The red ones are burning coals, the white ones are scattered silver, and the flowing ones are silver water that exudes a strange light. There are rows and rows of iron fans on the ground. Special cast iron pots are carried by two bare-chested strong men, and silver water is carefully poured into the iron fans.
This is Xiao Letian's real plan to make money. The so-called opening of a foreign bank and doing business with foreigners are all a cover. The superficial business is actually to cover up his real plan to make a fortune.
Privately minting silver coins and privately manufacturing Mexican eagle oceans, these were Xiao Letian's tips for amassing wealth dedicated to Taibaiding. Ordinarily, according to the thinking of the people of the Qing Dynasty at that time, privately minting coins was not a rare thing. In the history of the Qing Dynasty, there had been many major cases of privately minting coins.
There were even anti-Qing organizations such as the White Lotus Sect and the Tiandihui, which secretly minted copper coins to make money. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom also issued its own coins. But what Xiao Letian was doing was not that low-tech. What he wanted to do was to combine the two silver coins that had the greatest impact on China during the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China.
The casting process was that of Yuan Datou, while the shape was that of the Mexican Eagle. These two currencies, which had a profound impact on the history of Chinese silver coins, were finally combined in the hands of Xiao Letian.
The Mexican Eagle refers to the new coinage used by Mexico after 1821. It was minted from the 18th year. The front pattern is the shape of the national emblem of the Republic of Mexico: an eagle with wings spread and a snake in its mouth, standing on a cactus growing from the rocks in the lake. The lower part of this shape is surrounded by oak and laurel branches, symbolizing strength, loyalty and peace. Please come to more and faster chapters.
During the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, the largest number of foreign silver coins imported into China was from Mexico. According to a survey in the second year of Xuantong in the Qing Dynasty, there were about 1.1 billion foreign silver coins in circulation in China at that time, one-third of which were Mexican eagles. This shows that this foreign currency has a profound impact on China's finance. The quality of the Mexican Eagle Ocean is better than that of other foreign silver dollars, and it has remained unchanged for many years. People are happy to use it. It can be seen that stability is an important indicator of the survival of a currency.
As for Yuan Datou, people in later generations are more familiar with it. The most classic picture is that people hold the center of the silver coin, put it to their mouths, blow on it, and then put it to their ears, and you can hear an obvious buzzing sound. . This unique design process has almost become Yuan Datou's trademark.
The weight of a Yuan Datou is six cents, four cents and eight cents of Kuping pure silver. It is cast at the ratio of nine silver coins and one copper coin. The total weight after casting is seven cents and two cents. Please come to more and faster chapters. Regardless of the tax advantages of issuing currency, just 10% of copper is an incredible amount of interest.
Xiao Letian imagined in his mind that from south to north and from west to east in China, people's pockets were all forged eagle oceans. Every time the shop owner received an eagle ocean, he would put it to his mouth and blow it. , this picture is really beautiful.
"Mr. Xiao! Mr. Xiao..." Shopkeepers Shi Dakai and Fan Yan woke up Xiao Letian, who was drooling and dreaming. "This is the first Yingyang today. Sir, aren't you just good at it?" they joked.
How could Xiao Letian give up this opportunity? He tentatively touched the iron fan and found that it was no longer hot. Then he lifted up the iron fan and threw it to the ground. With a muffled snap, the two iron frames separated instantly, revealing the silver coins lined up inside.
"My precious money. With your father, I won't be bullied..." Xiao Letian really lost his composure. He knelt on the ground and broke off the silver coins one by one, holding them in his hands. Just like your own children. Beside him, there were dozens of wooden boxes filled with rolls of Ying Yang, one hundred pieces each, wrapped in red paper. It looked extremely festive.
"How many silver coins can we produce every day now? How many kilograms of silver are used?"
"Now we can smelt nine thousand taels of silver and one thousand taels of copper every day, and mint more than 13,000 silver coins. Originally, I wanted to open two more furnaces, but we don't have much silver in pieces. There are only 30 silver coins in Manshan Village. Ten thousand taels of silver is simply not enough..." Fan Jian said regretfully.
Shi Dakai was also a little annoyed now, "If I had known that sir had such a clever plan, we should have stored more silver and stopped buying so many jewelry..."
Xiao Letian shook his head, "It doesn't matter. There was nothing else in the Qing Dynasty. There was a lot of scattered silver coins. I don't believe it. If we exchange such good silver coins for their silver coins, would anyone not exchange them?" After saying this, Xiao Letian said lightly. Blowing the silver coin, a melodious buzzing sound sounded, and the people present were elated. Please come to more and faster chapters.
"We're killing pigs and sheep, and there's a big feast in the village today..." Xiao Letian roared, and the whole Taibaiding roared with joy.
Money makes a man bold. This is absolutely true. At the banquet, Xiao Letian officially explained his economic layout to Shi Dakai and Fan Yan.
The people sitting at the same table were all real elites. They didn't quite understand the secrets of Xiao Letian's coinage at first. It was only when Xiao Letian drunkenly explained all the twists and turns that they suddenly understood.
Everyone knows that you can make money by minting coins, but many people don't know exactly how to make money. First of all, it is impossible to use pure silver to cast silver coins. In order to increase the hardness of silver coins, some other hard metals must be added to it. For example, Yuan Datou added one-tenth of copper.
Compared with the price of silver, the cost of copper is almost negligible, so this one-tenth of the profit can be earned steadily.
The second point is to analyze the ancient fire consumption system. The word "Huo Huo" first appeared in the Ming Dynasty and was coined by the famous prime minister Zhang Juzheng. It was his whipping method that allowed Yin Liang to enter the national tax system and finally become a member of the currency family.
If there is silver, it must be minted. What is sold and circulated among the people cannot be all large silver ingots. Ordinary people are considered wealthy if they have one or two pieces of silver in pieces. As state and county governments, most of the money they collect through taxes is scattered silver. Update as soon as possible
In order to facilitate transportation and submit it to the capital for settlement, the silver taels were smelted at the county level to smelt the scattered silver into large ingots. There will inevitably be losses during the smelting process, and this loss is called fire loss.
Soon, officials in the Ming and Qing dynasties discovered the advantages of using fire expenses to gather wealth. It was entirely up to them to decide how much fire expenses they would collect for one tael of silver. According to the standards of the most honest officials, one tael of silver will cost three taels of money, let alone corrupt officials.
In ancient times, for a pound of sixteen taels, the cost of collecting fire for upright officials reached one-fifth of the principal. This was a 20% increase in taxes for the common people. Well, as for those corrupt officials who charge more than five yuan for fire expenses, they have no effect except forcing the people to rebel.
If Xiao Letian wants to mint more silver coins, he will need more silver coins. Of course, Xiao Letian has a conscience. He will not receive three coins for fire consumption, but two coins should always be collected. This is another 12% net profit.
"Shopkeeper Fan, my good prince, is there any business in the world that can get a profit of 20% without any effort? This is a business with no capital! Now you know why I want to bribe the entire Yixian County officials. Is that so? I am just preparing for us to absorb a large amount of silver taels from the private sector. With the protection of this group of people, we can’t absorb as much silver taels as we want.”
"Although Yixian County is small, it will always generate 200,000 taels of tax revenue a year, and these silver taels will be the raw materials for our coinage. Think about how much it is? Plus the silver taels accumulated by the people, I can say dozens With taxes that are twice as much as a year, don’t our Qing landowners like to bury money in warehouses and fields? Old shopkeeper, think about your brother..."
Fan Qian nodded angrily. His brother who split up the family dug ten large holes in the ground for the silver treasury and hid more than a million taels of silver. However, this time the split family only gave him one hundred thousand taels. He also said that this is taking care of his brothers. According to the rules, he should not give a cent. Bah...
"In Yixian County, the accumulated wealth of the people is no less than three million taels, while in a top-class county in Jiangnan and other places, the accumulated silver taels are more than ten million taels! Think about it, if we minted all these silver taels into silver coins, what would our country be like? How huge is the 20% interest rate?"
"What's more, in the future, when we have large ships, we can purchase silver ore directly from Japan, Mexico and even the United States. Then the cost of minting coins will be even cheaper!" Xiao Letian suddenly stood up and raised his glass.
"I wave my hand, and hundreds of millions of silver dollars will fall from the sky like rain. It depends on whether you have the courage to continue..." The gray-bearded Liu Lang and the old shopkeeper had already been encouraged by Xiao Letian, and their eyes were red. He was about to go berserk, but Shi Dakai was the only one who was calmer.
"Military advisor, even if we can mint so much money, how can we spend it outside? Such a large amount of money rushing to the people will definitely cause a sharp decrease in scattered silver, a sharp reduction in the Qing Dynasty's fire consumption, and the Manchu Qing Dynasty How could the Tatars not pay attention? Even if they are as greedy as He Shen, I am afraid they would not dare to melt the ready-made silver coins into silver ingots, right? Then they would force the people to rebel again..."
Xiao Letian shook his head and let out a wine belch, "Your Majesty, you are worrying too much. You are really worrying too much. Didn't I already tell you that I want to set up a trading house in Tanggu, and I will also bring in the American Lewis to give him 10% of the shares. Do you think people in court dare to investigate foreign companies?"
"As for our counterfeit Mexican Eagle Ocean, let me tell you the truth. There are more than tens of millions of these silver coins circulating privately in the south! There may be hundreds of millions of them. Who in the court would dare to investigate?"
"Not only that, we have other protection umbrellas. We are not misers. No matter how much money we make, we have to spend it. We want hundreds of thousands or millions to bribe grassroots officials. We want to encroach on county after county. .Yixian, Zhuozhou, Gu'an, Langfang, Xianghe... and the counties around Beijing, let's encroach on them one by one."
"If they want money, we will give them money. If they don't want money, we will kill them. Anyone who surrenders will write a letter in blood to me and have his fingerprints pressed, just like Liu Sanbian, so that they are officials of the Qing Dynasty on the surface, but secretly They are all our lackeys..."
"I don't need honest officials, can we use corrupt officials? Back then, the eighth prince Yinsu was able to create a small court under Qianlong and Yongzheng. I don't believe we don't have this ability..."
Xiao Letian was really drunk, and he actually told his plan in front of the people at the wine table. Fortunately, this was Xiao Letian's study room, and there were only Shi Dakai, Liu Lang, Fan Lian, Huniu, and Xiao Hexin. cronies. If all the brothers outside heard this, it would be a disaster!
Even so, the eyes of Xiao Hexin, Wang Huaiyuan, and Sima Yun were already shining like light bulbs. They were completely shocked by the strategist's pride, and the blood in their hearts surged up.
"It's done! It's so refreshing to follow the military advisor..." The young man stood up at that time. In the end, shopkeepers Shi Dakai and Fan Jian were more mature and restrained, telling these young people not to make any noise.
"Let sir rest. We'll talk about anything tomorrow. Huniu, please wait for him to go to bed... You bastards, shut your mouths. What the military advisor just said is top secret. If you dare to reveal it, don't blame me." Show no mercy..."
At this time, Xiao Letian was already snoring loudly.
