Gao pragmatic has been paying attention to the salt industry for more than a year or two. As early as the end of the third year of Longqing, when he came to Beijing with Gao Gong, he was already paying attention to the salt affairs of the Ming Dynasty. However, because he was born with a crooked buttock, his mother's family was He is one of the top salt merchants, so it has been difficult for him to intervene. ,
Over the years, he has been studying how to deal with the salt issue, or in other words, how to solve some of the shortcomings in the salt issue.
Anyone who has a slight understanding of the economic part of ancient Chinese history knows that the salt industry in ancient China has always been a big piece of fat, but whether it is fat or not is not the main reason for Gao's pragmatic concern. After all, as a time traveler, he has many There are ways to make money, and it doesn't necessarily have to be a sideshow in the salt industry.
The main reason why Gao pragmatically pays attention to the salt industry is that the salt industry is a people's livelihood issue and related to the stability of the country, but the problem of the salt industry in the Ming Dynasty is particularly big and serious.
Specific to the use of salt in the north of the Ming Dynasty, the two main channels for a long time are "Lu Salt" from Changlu Salt Field and "Chi Salt" from Jiezhou, Shanxi. In particular, Jiezhou is adjacent to Puzhou to the west, which is Zhang Siwei's hometown.
Lu Yan is sea salt, and Jiezhou is Chi Salt, which is the salt of the salt lake.
The Zhang family originally produced pond salt before, but later due to changes in climate, hydrology and other reasons, the production of pond salt gradually declined. In the early Jiajing period, the Changlu salt field was undergoing reform, and the Zhang family gradually turned to Changlu for development, and eventually basically monopolized the Changlu salt.
The salt industry system of the Ming Dynasty was not static. In fact, there were always fine-tuning and reforms.
The specific reform process is limited by the length of this book. It is inconvenient to describe it in detail. I estimated that there are less than 5,000 words to describe it, so I can only describe it in a short way. ”, “buy surplus salt to supplement it”, “salt lessons can be converted into silver” and other policy changes.
The exchange of salt for silver is roughly a reform carried out in the early years of Jiajing. Later generations have a saying called "Jialong Wanda Reform", which is an affirmation of some of the reforms in Jiajing's early years. This reform in the salt industry is also part of the early reforms of Jiajing. ,
It was after this reform that the Zhang family entered the Changlu Saltworks.
In the ninth year of Jiajing, Fu Jiong, the censor of salt inspection in Changlu, confirmed that the four salt classes of Jimin, Shibei, Huimin, and Guihua under the Qingzhou branch, after changing the folding of cloth, further changed the folding of silver. For every salt you receive, you will receive a penny of silver and buy the remaining salt from the merchant’s kitchen to make up the amount.” By the 29th year of Jiajing, almost all the salt courses of the twelve salt farms affiliated to the Cangzhou branch were converted into silver.
Does this routine sound familiar to you? Yes, this reform is very similar to the whip method. So it has been said a long time ago that Zhang Juzheng did not invent the one-piece whip method at all, and he was not even the first to promote the one-piece whip method.
What are the specific methods for this restructuring?
"It was agreed that the kitchen households in Haiyingchang, Shenzhou, Cangzhou Branch, except for the 13 households near Yanshan County, who live in Hengshui County, Zhending Prefecture, will be paid one dollar each. Li Guo and others In the eleventh market year-old, rice was collected from Tianjin and other warehouses, and each stone was levied at five cents in silver. The sea surplus, etc., in the thirteenth market, the price of rice and salt was reduced to seven cents and five cents. Now it is reduced by one cent. After each collection is completed, go to the department to explain. "
It should be said that the change in salt classes not only conforms to the self-interests of the salt farm household groups, but also conforms to the overall trend of Changlu's salt policy reform.
The salt class can be converted into silver, and "the silver is paid to the transportation department to give to the merchants." It can be said that it kills two birds with one stone. It not only effectively solved the problem of Zao Ding suffering from compensation due to the melting of salt, but also complied with the businessmen's willingness to open salt farms in areas with convenient transportation, thereby playing the role of supporting Zao and subsidizing merchants.
However, this system has also given rise to some new problems: First, compared with the previous salt farm operation model, there is an extra link where kitchen households sell salt to obtain silver. In this link, kitchen households are often vulnerable to salt merchants deliberately lowering the price of salt. risks of.
During the Jiajing period, someone once pointed out: "The owner of Fuzao is Yan'er. Today, all the people are levied with discounts, and the loans are double the interest. Ten houses are empty, and they are often forced to flee and have no way to make a living."
Second, it has become inevitable for kitchen households to break free from the shackles of the salt field, leave the salt field, and switch to other industries. Especially after "the various Zaotan grasslands were invaded by powerful people or traded with each other", the poor and weak Zaotan households who lost their means of production were unable to guarantee production and were forced to flee.
In short, the policy of folding cloth in the salt class, matching the high and low levels of the salt field with each other, purchasing supplements for surplus salt, and discounting silver in the salt class were the Ming court's response to the problem of heavy accumulation of salt in some salt fields in Changlu and the problem of untraded cash withdrawals. measures. However, in the late Jiajing period, some saltworks ended up with a situation of "there is a field but no stove", and the saltworks were just in name.
So in the third year of Longqing, before Gao Gong returned to Beijing and resumed his career, Fu Mengchun, the imperial censor of Zhili, approved that the Ming court merged Yiminchang into Fucaichang, Haifuchang into Hairunchang, and Runguochang into it. The market for enriching the people and the selling market of the Three Han Dynasties were merged into the market for wealth. As a result, the number of Changlu Salt Fields was reduced from 24 in the early Ming Dynasty to 20, of which 17 were actually controlled by the Zhang family, basically completing the monopoly.
According to Gao Pragmatic, this time the merger of the salt fields actually means that the operation model of the Changlu Salt Field has deviated from the development path set by the state.
That is: Zao households produce salt in the salt field and sell the salt produced in exchange for silver. The salt field ambassador urges the Zao household to collect salt tax silver. It develops into: Zao household leaves the salt field, no longer produces salt, returns to the state and county where it is originally located, and switches to other industries. Salt field ambassador Urging kitchen households to collect salt and silver.
The problem it brings is that it is easy to cause disadvantages in the actual process of urging teachers to collect lessons. The salt field ambassador is incapable of multitasking, so he will inevitably delegate the task of urging the collection of cooking classes to the kitchen leader or the general supervisor. This can easily lead to abuses such as overtaking the cooking class, arbitrarily adding more classes, and arbitrarily delaying the collection.
State and county officials, on the other hand, "were attached to the Zao household by official registration, and had their own dedicated personnel, without any restraint, to the extent that they harbored traitors and acted arbitrarily, which was inevitable due to circumstances."
All in all, it is not good for kitchen households, field officials, and the country. Therefore, the restructuring before Gao Gong returned to Beijing in the third year of Longqing failed to solve this problem.
As for the period when Gao Gong was in power, firstly, because Gao Pragmatic had previously persuaded him, please see Chapter 020 "Discussing Salt and Iron" in the first volume of this book, "Xiao Ge Lao". Secondly, because Zhang Siwei was the core ally of Gao's party, Thirdly, due to the lack of effective means to reform salt affairs at that time, we were unable to make any achievements in this matter.
During the subsequent period of Guo Pu's administration, one word can be used to describe Xiao Gui and Cao Sui. Since the iron-fisted reformers like Gao Gong did not touch the salt affairs, Guo Pu, the chief minister who was more striving for stability, obviously would not act rashly.
What's more, the relationship between him and Zhang Siwei is not as close as Gao Gong and Zhang Siwei. In many cases, Gao Pragmatic is even needed to lubricate it, so naturally he is even less likely to interfere with the salt affairs, causing Gao's party to split.
It stands to reason that after Zhang Siwei became the first assistant and took charge, there should be no chance to change the salt issue, because Zhang Siwei himself is a so-called vested interest.
However, the fact is that Zhang Siwei himself is dissatisfied with the current status quo of the salt industry, and precisely because he is the first assistant of a salt merchant family, he has a clearer view of the problems in the salt industry, and because he hopes to leave a name for future generations, in fact He was more willing to further reform the salt industry.
When Gao pragmatically visited Zhang Siwei last time, Zhang Siwei tentatively mentioned the salt industry issue to Gao pragmatically for the first time. Of course, he did not directly say that he wanted to reform the salt industry, but asked Gao pragmatically in a roundabout way if he had any good investment channels. , so that the Zhang family will not hang themselves on the tree of salt industry.
It was then that Gao Pragmatic discovered that Zhang Siwei might have the intention to reform the salt industry, but he might not have made up his mind yet.
But intention is the best news, because the rest is just a matter of means.
I'm afraid that Zhang Siwei insists that the salt industry is the core interest of the Zhang family, and it would be annoying if Gao Pragmatic is not allowed to touch it. Because with his highly pragmatic identity and personality, he would have to wait until Zhang Siwei passed away before he could free up his hands and feet to reform the salt affairs.
After all, in this era, it is important to treat uncle like mother, not to mention that Zhang Siwei gave Sanshen Garden to Gao Pragmatic, which was actually his first pot of gold. If he ignores Zhang Siwei's objection and reforms the salt affairs now, regardless of this reason No matter how adequate it is at the national level, it will inevitably give him a reputation of being unfilial.
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