Although Zheng Sanjun was very dissatisfied with Fang Congzhe, Wang Yingjiao, and Bi Ziyan, he could only watch as these three people wrote out the Ministry of Household Titles for carrying out infrastructure projects to benefit the people's livelihood.
"Who let the Donglin Party not be in power? There's nothing we can do about it."
Zheng Sanjun sighed in his heart.
After Fang Congzhe entered the palace, Han Xu, the second assistant to the cabinet, had the same feeling as Zheng Sanjun when he saw Fang Congzhe passing by the cabinet.
Because now he could only watch helplessly as Fang Congzhe took the Ministry of Revenue inscription book and took the sedan chair directly to Qianqing Palace.
Han Xu felt that he, the second assistant in the cabinet, had become nothing more than a decoration.
"Your Majesty! This is the Ministry of Household's inscription on how much food can be allocated for additional construction projects. Your Majesty, please read it."
After Fang Congzhe arrived at the political affairs hall, he handed the household department question book to Zhu Youxiao.
After Zhu Youxiao unfolded it and read it, he said: "We can take out more than five million taels of silver and more than seven million shi of grain. This can be a big project. We immediately drafted a decree and appointed Bi Ziyan as the right-hand man of the Ministry of Works." The minister and governor of Shuntian will immediately discuss with the Ministry of Industry what projects to build to allow these refugees to live and work in peace and contentment."
"I obey the decree!"
Fang Congzhe replied.
Zhu Youxiao then continued to ask: "Approximately how many refugees are there in the capital now? Are there many deaths from starvation this year?"
"Your Majesty, the number of people who have starved to death is no less than 300,000. The number of people who have starved to death is far less than last year. Although the water transportation was temporarily interrupted this year, the king raised food in Jin in time, so no one died of starvation. In addition, the water transportation will resume next time. , and a lot of recalled food came to Beijing one after another, so it fed a lot of refugees in the capital. And because the canals froze after winter, a lot of food could only be transported by land, which required more manpower, so there were more people along the way. Many refugees came to the capital, and these new refugees and the refugees in the capital all relied on transporting the recalled food to the capital to survive for the time being. However, now that the food transport has basically ended, these refugees have to continue to endure hunger. Starving depends on whether we can survive until the canal opens to navigation next year.”
Fang Congzhe replied.
"So, it means that there are more than 300,000 idle refugees in the capital right now? They can be used for construction projects!"
Zhu Youxiao nodded. He had to admit that the water transport in the Ming Dynasty was really an economic artery. There were so many refugees who relied on this water transport for their livelihood.
When the Jiangnan gentry cut off canals, they not only cut off military rations, but also cut off the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of refugees.
Fortunately, he, the emperor, used the Western Factory in time to stop the Jiangnan gentry's ambition to cut off the grain supply, thus preventing countless refugees from starving to death.
Next, the Ministry of Industry held a ministry meeting.
Because the main purpose of the Ming Dynasty's infrastructure project this time was to use the surplus treasury money and grain to feed the refugees in the capital, and most of the refugees in the capital gathered in Tongzhou and Tianjin, relying on water transportation for their livelihood. Therefore, the Ministry of Industry and Industry proposed to dredge the water transportation after deliberation. Rebuilt the three acropolises of Tianjin and Tongzhou City, as well as the official roads along the way.
After reading the suggestions from the Ministry of Industry, Zhu Youxiao directly ordered: "This is not enough. We must resettle these refugees, reorganize their households, and make them new households in the capital. To make them live and work in peace and contentment, we cannot just let them live and work in peace and contentment." It is enough for them to have a straw hut to sleep in if they starve to death. These refugees must be allowed to settle here, find out their family backgrounds, and no longer become refugees. Their children and grandchildren can study, become officials, and have the opportunity to become rich and have the opportunity to return to the world again. Opportunity for the court to pay taxes.”
"What your Majesty said is that I have also thought about reorganizing the households of the refugees, but there is no free land left in the capital, and they are reorganized into cities such as Tianjin and Tongzhou, and they are worried about spies sneaking into the city, so it is really difficult to reorganize all the households. civil."
Fang Congzhe replied.
"As far as I know, there are many saline-alkali lands in the Tianjin Wei area, which has led to serious desertion. I immediately issued an order that Tianjin Sanwei be renamed Tianjin Prefecture and Zhili Prefecture, and all the refugees in the capital were registered as Tianjin Prefecture households, and a saline-alkali land was selected for reconstruction. The new city is a resettlement place given by me to the refugees, and all the refugees will be resettled here. The name of the city is Tianjin City, and together with the Tianjin Sanwei City, it is the Four Cities of Tianjin Prefecture."
Zhu Youxiao started talking and added: "The original Tianjin Tongzhi Office will remain in charge of the affairs of Tianjin's three guards, and the power will remain unchanged. Tianjin City will set up a general magistrate to take charge of Tianjin City, and then set up Tianjin Prefecture Zhili Prefecture Magistrate. , in order to coordinate and manage the four cities of Tianjin from the fourth level."
"According to the order!"
Fang Congzhe replied.
Then, after Zhu Youxiao returned to Qianqing Palace, he called Liu Ruoyu and said: "Shanggong Supervisor will also send a reliable person to Tianjin City to open wood, iron and other processing plants, some of which do not require high technical requirements. However, the manufacturing of parts that require a lot of manpower was moved from the capital to these places. Refugees who had settled down were hired to process the wooden, iron and even bamboo parts needed by the imperial court to increase the scale. These parts were then transported back to the capital for assembly. , but it should be noted that the core components still have to be manufactured in the inner court's own workshops. When ordinary components are made by refugees, they must also set up factories to let different refugees make different parts to prevent them from connecting in series and leaking the secrets of our inner court."
Zhu Youxiao intended to develop manufacturing in the north. And this is just the beginning.
"I obey the order! I will do it now."
Liu Ruoyu replied.
Next, Bi Ziyan officially began to take charge of the proposed project after receiving the emperor's order.
The first is the renovation of Tianjin's Three Guards City and Tongzhou City, the construction of Tianjin City, and the renovation of official roads.
Zhu Youxiao directly gave Bi Ziyan the establishment of sixty wailangs from the Ministry of Household Affairs and thirty wailangs from the Ministry of Works, and asked Bi Ziyan to recommend a group of scholars to serve in these official positions, and form a group with Bi Ziyan. Engineering team, and Bi Ziyan served as the general manager of the engineering team, responsible for leading these scholars to perform the task together.
According to the previous model, Bi Ziyan needed to spend money to hire staff, and then let the staff be specifically responsible for the things Bi Ziyan was responsible for.
However, in order to improve the efficiency of government affairs and the enthusiasm of the actual executors, Zhu Youxiao directly increased the number of officials.
As expected, there was no shortage of officials who wanted to be officials in the Ming Dynasty. After knowing that Bi Ziyan could give them the official position of Yuanwailang, many Jurengongsheng actively came to Bi Ziyan and begged Bi Ziyan to recommend them. Although Bi Ziyan What Zi Yan is doing now is not in the interest of the gentry class, but for many individual gentry who long for power but have been unable to become officials, this is a good opportunity for them to enter the official career.
You must know that even if you apply for a county magistrate or even a county magistrate in the Ministry of Personnel, the chance of getting an official position is very small. You usually have to wait for several years to get one. There are still many people waiting in line.
Now that Bi Ziyan had sixty official positions as a member of the Sixth Department, the gentry naturally came to sign up enthusiastically.
Because there are too many scholars in Ming Dynasty.
There are indeed not many official positions.
Therefore, Bi Ziyan quickly recommended sixty Yuanwailang, and then he took these sixty Yuanwailang and began to plan out the scope of Tianjin City, and began to recruit refugees to this area, establish households and set up workshops, and then Appoint Fang Zheng, and then organize these refugees in Fang units to start building cities and roads.
…
Located on the bank of a canal in Yinjiawan, Zuowei, Tianjin, a group of refugees live in thatched huts in this area. Their main occupation is to pull fiber for the boats heading to Beijing in the canal.
It's just that now the canal has been frozen, there are fewer and fewer ships entering Beijing, and even the canals no longer transport food. Therefore, they have little work now, and naturally they don't have much food income to earn, so they can only survive in this cold hungry in the winter.
Not far from them was the imperial palace.
The official warehouses stretch for dozens of miles, and because of the effective collection of taxes this year, the court's revenue has increased a lot, and the granaries have increased a lot.
But because there are officials and soldiers protecting these granaries, and these refugees are used to being obedient people, no one dares to rob the granaries even if they starve to death.
"Daddy, I'm hungry! I'm still cold!"
Tang Douya, a boy with no clothes on, trembled and asked Tang Youshan, who was one of the countless refugees in the capital.
Tang Youshan, who was rubbing his son's body hard to produce heat, glanced at the snow falling in the sky outside the hut and said: "My son, bear with me for one more day, and then we can drink that bowl of porridge again! The Chinese New Year is about to happen now, so there is no luck. Food is alive, if we can’t bear it, we won’t survive this winter!”
Tang Douya nodded: "Where's mother?"
"Shhh! Don't ask your mother, be careful if people hear it and hunt for your mother to eat!"
Tang Youshan quickly reminded Tang Douya.
Tang Douya nodded obediently. He was so hungry that he only looked at his father's skinny arms.
At this moment, excited shouts came from outside: "It's alive! It's alive!"
At this time, many refugees were shouting excitedly outside the hut to remind their fellow villagers and rush to tell each other.
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