Zhang Jia shook his head and said: "This slave doesn't know! But those salt merchants have been rich and powerful for hundreds of years, so I think they are about the same!"
Emperor Wanli nodded repeatedly and said, "That's right! So I was thinking about letting him copy a few more salt merchants?"
Zhang Jia's face turned pale when he heard this. He hurriedly stepped forward and said, "Long live Lord, this can't be done! Wu Ninghou has already made it clear in the memorial. This time, we have reached the limit. If you go down, people’s hearts will wander, which is not beautiful! And..."
At this point, Zhang Jia shut up. Emperor Wanli saw this and said, "And what? Go on!"
Zhang Jia glanced at Emperor Wanli, then lowered his head and summoned up the courage to say, "Besides, Emperor Wan live has an agreement with Mr. Zhang, and all the money must go into the national treasury!"
After hearing this, Emperor Wanli suddenly remembered the gentleman's agreement between him and Zhang Juzheng. For a moment, his face turned pale and he began to sway in his chair! For a moment, I felt extremely heartbroken! Then he was silent for a long time before murmuring: "Why did I agree to this condition in the first place? I didn't expect these salt merchants' families to be so rich!".
As soon as Zhang Jia saw Emperor Wanli's appearance, he knew that the old Zhu family's money-grabbing disease had recurred again! He couldn't help but feel angry and funny! However, in order to comfort Emperor Wanli, he still said: "Long live Lord, don't worry. With Wu Ninghou's ability, he will definitely leave a share for the inner treasury!"
When Emperor Wanli heard this, he immediately became energetic, nodded his head like a chicken pecking rice and said: "Yes, yes, yes! Wu Ninghou understands my thoughts best, and he will definitely leave a share for me! Those are the I will definitely have a share of the rare treasures!"
At this point, Emperor Wanli clasped his hands on his chest and said with a fierce look: "There are many officials in the court who don't share my heart! If we copy them, how much money can we get?"
Zhang Jia had been serving Emperor Wanli for too long. He could tell by looking at Emperor Wanli's expression that he was really interested this time! So he hurriedly said: "Long live Lord, you really can't rush this matter! You really can't do this! Wu Ninghou made it clear in his memorial that the turmoil caused by this time is too great and it will take several years to calm down! And you must not let those officials think that you are making money by confiscating homes, otherwise it will cause big trouble!"
Emperor Wanli thought for a while, then slumped down on his chair unhappily and said, "Okay, I know! I won't do anything wrong! But sooner or later, I will deal with those disloyal bastards!"
At this point, he sat up straight and said: "Zhang Jia, please quickly reply to Wu Ninghou and ask him how much silver he can get me, and how many pieces of these treasures can he get?"
Seeing that Emperor Wanli finally changed his mind, Zhang Jia breathed a sigh of relief and agreed! To be honest, he was also looking forward to seeing these people in bad luck, but he didn't have enough time!
Just when rumors were flying in the capital, Liu Haojia was inspecting salt fields along the coast! It took a lot of effort for him to take over the salt field this time, because the structure of the salt field was extremely complicated at this time!
The first part is the salt field opened by the inner treasury, and the eunuchs of the inner court are in charge here! These salt farms are generally not large and can only be considered medium-sized! The income is also very average. The reason is very simple. The manager sells part of the salt produced in the production department as official salt and records the rest privately to the salt merchants!
There is also a part of the salt field opened by the imperial court! The problem is almost the same as that of the salt farm opened by the inner court! And the strangest thing is that with the support of the government, these salt farms have never been profitable! The reason is probably just personnel corruption! After all, it's all public business. It's true that you take advantage of the opportunity to use money to enrich yourself. How can you have the mind to do official business!
So all the really big salt fields on the seaside are privately owned! Moreover, in addition to producing their own salt, these salt farms also have dedicated personnel collecting scattered salt produced by each family in the fishing villages on the seaside. This practice of gathering and harvesting has greatly supplemented the production of salt. Therefore, these private salt farms are the main force in the production of salt in the Ming Dynasty!
Now Liu Haojia is standing at the top of a salt field! In his opinion, the saltworks was poorly planned! There are only a long stretch of pools near the coast where you can dry out the sea water. The seawater in these drying pools is exposed to wind and sun, and after the water evaporates, brine of a certain concentration will be formed. Then the kitchen households will use large shallow iron plates to fill the firewood for brine.
Boil! For this reason, a large number of reeds were specially planted around the salt farm.
The dilapidated houses behind those drying ponds are where the kitchen households boil salt! After years of smoke and fire, the house has long been dilapidated! A little further away is where the kitchen households live! Although Liu Haojia didn't go deep, he could see clearly that the houses were dilapidated and the roads were uneven! Looking at the families of those kitchen households, they are almost impoverished!
But the funny thing is that in these private salt farms, the lives of the kitchen households are much better than in the government salt farms! At least we can barely keep up with the food supply! And the kitchen households in the government salt farms not only have to boil salt, but also go out to do odd jobs to barely make ends meet for their families!
This time Liu Haojia found that the problems in these salt fields were all the same! The salt production efficiency is low, too much firewood is consumed, the labor cost is high, the quality of the salt is too poor, and there are too many impurities! But after unified planning, these problems will probably be solved!
At this time, two rows of people were kneeling in front of Liu Haojia. These people were the stewards of the salt farm, the accountants and the thugs! They just reported the entire salt field situation to Liu Haojia!
Now there are more than 800 households with stoves in the entire salt field, and there is also a dedicated salt collection team led by thugs! Every once in a while, they go to surrounding villages to collect salt. The salt was accumulated by the villagers by boiling sea water while farming and fishing! But these thugs offered very low prices and repeatedly withheld money, and the villagers dared not speak out!
After listening to the reports of these people, Liu Haojia waved to the Jin Yiwei behind him to come forward and lecture. This Jinyiwei is just a school captain. He will interrogate them in the future about how much salt they sold and how much silver they withheld! And Liu Haojia doesn't care about these little minions, he just wants them to spit out some dirty money to subsidize the kitchen households!
Seeing Liu Haojia waving, a military captain in Jinyi stepped forward and said loudly to these people: "I will settle the past things with you slowly! But you can rest assured that your lives will not be taken. At most, you will lose some money. You can pick it up." Got a bargain! But from today on, I will be stationed at the salt farm! You can do whatever you need to do. I will only watch and listen! As long as you work hard, I can keep you safe, but if someone If you cause trouble, you will not be lenient! Do you understand?"
