At the end of the year, the treasury of the Ministry of Revenue has already been in a situation where it can only go out but not go in. No one can believe that Gao Situ can generate money at this time. All the officials in the capital have already made miscellaneous calculations and will start from next year. Mental preparation for implementation.
Is Gao Pragmatism to be blamed? It seems no wonder, after all, everyone has an idea of how much money the Ministry of Finance has, and if they can't get it out, they can't get it out, no matter who becomes the Minister of the Ministry of Finance.
At least Gao Pragmatic dared to launch miscellaneous discounts and cancel this plan, which was already the first step in the 200-year-old Ming Dynasty. Even if it’s too late to do it this year, it will definitely be done next year. As for the high pragmatic financial management ability, let alone the pragmatic school and the neutral school, even if the officials of the pragmatic school do not admit it with their mouths, they are actually sure of it in their hearts.
However, strange things happen every year, especially this year. What happened next left them stunned.
Before noon the next day, as soon as Gao Situ, who had just taken the initiative to meet the Holy Spirit, came out of the palace, he announced that this year's miscellaneous discounts would be completely canceled as planned and would not be offset by rice or wheat. All miscellaneous items will be converted into silver, and the last salary of this year for civil and military officials will be paid out in fixed proportions of silver, rice, wheat, and cloth.
As soon as the news came out, the capital was shocked. All civil and military officials celebrated and congratulated each other. But after the joy, everyone had to wonder, where did this money come from?
Didn't everyone discuss increasing the rice-wheat conversion rate during the meeting yesterday to compensate? Even the emperor had to spend 300,000 shi to store food. How come things changed so much in just one day?
The emperor no longer paid for the offset and conversion, and the Ministry of Revenue seemed to suddenly have money. Well, in just one night, did Hubu discover a large golden mountain?
Hube really discovered a large golden mountain, but Hube just "had" it rather than discovered it, because according to Gao's pragmatic statement, this golden mountain was discovered by Jinghua.
Everyone has never heard of the word trona mine. The officials in the capital only know about trona, and that thing comes from the alkali lake in Tumut.
It turns out that trona actually has an ore type? The world is truly vast, filled with wonders and wonders, and it’s a great experience.
The result of Gao Jingshi's discussion with the emperor was that the Ming court priced the two "possible production areas" of Anpeng and Wucheng in Tongbai County mentioned by Gao Jingshi at a price of 250,000 taels of silver and sold them to Jinghua. If it involves the relocation of local people, Jinghua will provide appropriate funding and the local government will arrange persuasion.
At this time, the officials in the capital were speechless. The only thing that made them curious was: is this trona mine so valuable?
Two hundred and fifty thousand taels of silver, this is no joke. In Tongbai County, the land tax is less than a thousand taels a year, and the amount that can be turned over to the Ministry of Household Affairs is only a pitiful three hundred taels of silver. Now it has only sold two mining areas, and it is actually worth 250,000 taels?
Ah, this... if you pay the land tax and tax, it would be equivalent to paying more than two hundred years!
And according to Gao Qingshi, the areas that probably need to be relocated do not have much fertile farmland - because the alkali content in those places is too high, the efficiency of farming is extremely poor. Moreover, in terms of topography, Tongbai County has "seven mountains, one water and two fields", and there are not many fields in the first place.
According to the traditional thinking of the Chinese, any place that cannot be farmed is rotten land, so this is simply picking up money from rotten land!
"Serious loss of state-owned assets" is not what everyone thinks. Instead, they doubt whether Jinghua will lose money by spending huge sums of money to buy such two alkali mines, or how long it will take to recover the money. After all, Gao pragmatism has money, but you have to consider the rate of return for this thing. If it takes decades to get back the capital, it seems... not very cost-effective. It can only be said that Gao pragmatism's wave is broken again. Home is the country.
In fact, Zhu Yijun raised this concern when Gao Jingshi met the emperor. As soon as he heard Gao Jingshi's intention, he thought that Gao Jingshi was planning to "break up his family for the sake of the country" and borrowed Jinghua's help to support this expenditure without thinking about it at all. Things like return on investment and profit.
But in fact, everyone was worried that it was wrong, and Jinghua would definitely not lose money. If any other force were to engage in these two mines, they would probably lose money, or it would take a long time to recover the money, but Jinghua would not.
The amount of trona used by the people in Ming Dynasty is not too much, not too little. Before Jinghua came up with soap, the most common use was for consumption-it was necessary to make steamed buns and so on. Therefore, eating habits determined that the north used it more and the south used it slightly less.
Things were different after the soap came out. Jinghua became another big customer in addition to private demand, which was an additional sales channel for oral alkali. But even at this time, the production volume of oral alkali can keep up - after all, Alkali Lake can be loaded directly into the truck. With the current consumption of Daming, it cannot threaten the annual production volume of Alkali Lake itself. .
However, Gao Pragmatic is not worried that the development of trona mines in Henan will lead to a surplus of alkali. In addition to the needs of his planned Satsuma glass industry, there are actually many places where alkali can be used.
Trona is an important raw material for daily necessities processing and many chemical industries such as papermaking, textiles, and tanning. Jinghua obtains trona from the Central Plains region, which can not only produce soap nearby for central, south, southwest and other regions, but also give a boost to the soap industry. Derivatives - For example, it is very simple to develop washing powder. After all, the reason why washing powder has a washing effect depends on its strong alkalinity. With trona, these are very convenient.
The textile industry in Jiangnan is very developed. The alkali currently used is oral alkali, which has to be transported thousands of miles from Tumote to the capital, and then transported to Jiangnan through the Grand Canal, or first sent to Tianjin by land and then transported to Jiangnan by sea. Once we have the alkali mines in Tongbai County, it will be easier to handle. We can transport them south to the Yangtze River and then go straight down the river to the south of the Yangtze River.
In a word, with the alkali mines in Tongbai County, almost all the alkali used in the Central Plains and the entire South can come from here, and there is no problem at all in terms of output. With this amount of use in the non-industrial era, how many tons of alkali are mined in Tongbai County? He never frowned for a hundred years.
As for tanning and other industries, they have to be transported to Liaodong, but Gao Pragmatic is not very interested in this - he thinks that the northern provinces use oral alkali. Although the cost of transporting Henan alkali to Liaodong is still comparable to that of Liaodong due to water transportation, Oral alkali is lower, but considering Tumut’s special status, this business might as well be given to them to ensure that the sales of Tumut’s oral alkali will not decrease due to Henan Alkali.
After all, Ming Dynasty's control over Tumut is still mainly based on economic control. If it becomes unprofitable, then the relationship between the two parties may be shut down. Gao Pragmatic is not so greedy.
Another way to make money is papermaking. In the papermaking industry, its production is divided into two basic processes: pulping and papermaking.
Pulping is to use mechanical methods, chemical methods, or a combination of the two to dissociate plant fiber raw materials into natural pulp or bleached pulp. The final paper making process is to combine the pulp fibers suspended in water through various processes into paper sheets that meet various requirements.
In papermaking production, sodium carbonate mainly plays a role in the pulping process. For example, in the chemical pulping process, it is necessary to use soda ash as a buffer to dissolve lignin, thereby dispersing cellulose into pulp.
Daming's papermaking industry is pretty good, but from a high pragmatic perspective, the quality of paper still needs to be improved.
Historically, when Matteo Ricci and other Europeans came to China, they were surprised at first as to why Chinese paper was so much cheaper than in Europe. Later, after looking at the quality of the paper, they understood, because although European papermaking technology was passed from China, The quality of their paper is very good - because Europeans do not have brushes, the paper used as hard pens must not be like Chinese rice paper. They need paper with good texture, so the cost is high.
In addition, the paper used for printing also needs to be of relatively good quality. Only ordinary calligraphy works, letter paper, etc. that do not need to be stored for a long time can use softer and thinner paper such as rice paper.
Gaowachi is now targeting the "high-quality printing paper" segment, because this segment belongs to the "blue water industry" and the competition is not fierce. The key is that it will not have a big impact on the existing paper industry, which is in line with Jinghua's consistent practice. positioning as an “industry leader” rather than an “industry gravedigger”.
Moreover, once Jinghua enters, it will definitely strengthen the degree of "mechanized processing", which will also be helpful to improve the overall technical level of the Ming Dynasty papermaking industry.
Of course, in the final analysis, these are all so that the production of trona will not be wasted. The real most profitable one must be the glass industry. Although Gao Pragmatic arranged the artistic finishing of glass in Satsuma, this was to take advantage of the obedience of the Shimadzu family and the Japanese, who were still quite good at doing detailed work.
As for ordinary, high-volume glass production, Gao Pragmatic doesn't plan to go to Japan. He can just leave this job to Henan Province - Henan has abundant lime mines, not to mention coal, and Pingdingshan is enough for him to dig up who knows how much. years, fully capable of taking on major responsibilities.
If nothing else, at least in the window glass industry, the rate of return will definitely be extremely high. The only issue that requires high pragmatic and serious consideration is whether the production technology needs to be kept secret.
European glass production technology, or more specifically, glass mirror production technology, has always been highly confidential. Venetian glass mirrors are the most famous example.
There is a famous saying in China since ancient times: "Use copper as a mirror to correct your clothes; use ancient times as a mirror to see the ups and downs; use people as a mirror to know gains and losses." The "mirror" referred to in this sentence refers to the bronze mirror. Of course, the figure reflected in the bronze mirror is dim and cannot be very clear.
The world's first glass mirror was born in Venice. The Venetian mirror caused a sensation in Europe and became a very fashionable thing. Princes, nobles, rich men and wealthy businessmen were all proud to own a Venetian mirror, and the mirror was suddenly worth a hundred times.
There was once a French queen who got married, and the gift from Venice was a small mirror. It may seem funny now, but at the time it was a very expensive gift - worth 150,000 francs.
At that time, mirrors were made by placing a piece of tin foil on a piece of glass and pouring mercury on top. Mercury dissolves tin. It forms a "tin amalgam" that adheres tightly to the glass and becomes a mirror. Since it takes a full month to coat an entire piece of glass with a uniform layer of tin amalgam, it is indeed troublesome to manufacture, and it is understandable that the cost is high - of course, in fact, the premium rate is still extremely high.
In order to ensure that the technology is not leaked, according to the order of the Venetian government, all glass factories must be moved to the isolated island of Murano, and foreigners are not allowed to go there. When the mirror-making industry was booming, there were 40 large factories on the island, with thousands of workers working in these factories. France alone produces 200 boxes of mirrors every year.
Of course, it’s not just mirrors that are made here. All kinds of precious utensils made of glass are famous all over the world. For example, the exquisite craftsmanship of Venetian wine glasses and vases is also amazing. It was hard for people at the time to believe that all those intricate petals, leaves and stems were made of a material as fragile as glass.
The skilled craftsmen of Murano are highly respected in Venice, and the title of glassmaker is as glorious as the title of noble. The parliament that manages the island is elected by the glass craftsmen themselves. The police, who are feared by all Venetians, have no power to control the residents of Murano.
The secret of the Venetian mercury glass mirror would not be revealed until 1667, and it was mastered by France. It is still a "unique skill". This made Gao Pragmatic feel that he shouldn't have leaked this technology in advance - who in business doesn't want to monopolize trade?
Therefore, Gao's pragmatic mentality is that glass manufacturing technology can be transferred to outsiders, but mirror-making technology needs to be kept secret, at least for the time being. However, he was not very interested in the mercury glass in Venice. After all, mercury was poisonous. People who had been engaged in making mercury glass mirrors for a long time were likely to suffer from mercury poisoning. Gao Pragmatic always felt that making this money was a bit uneasy.
Moreover, this production method is too cumbersome and costly. Gao Pragmatic is even worried that using so much mercury will make people think that he wants to make elixirs and become immortals... This is too retarded.
So he planned to get it right in one step, using the silver-coated glass mirror later invented by the German scientist Liebig, which was the "silver mirror reaction" method introduced in ordinary middle school textbooks in later generations. The production process of this method is relatively simple. It uses a reducing agent to reduce the silver ions of silver nitrate into metallic silver, which is precipitated on the glass wall. Then a layer of protective paint is applied to the silver coating, and a bright mirror is created.
Of course, there are difficulties. For example, reducing agents, silver nitrate, etc. are all chemical technologies. Gao Pragmatic only knows the general principles and has never done it. It will definitely take some time to leave it to Jinghua to conduct experiments according to his "technical theory". It also takes time to move from the technical stage to process arrangement and so on.
Fortunately, the trona ore in Tongbai County needs to be dug underground, which also takes time. Generally speaking, this time difference should be reasonably utilized.
In the afternoon of the same day, Gao Pragmatic announced on behalf of Jinghua that the cash was in place - Jinghua's headquarters is in Jingshi. To get the cash in place, all he had to do was transport the money from Jinghua's bank to the household bank. It was done in two hours. How difficult was it? ?
As a result, Wang Xijue's reason for thinking that he could stop Cao Yu from sending troops no longer existed. The rest depended on whether the emperor wanted to fight for real or use strategic intimidation.
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