Early the next morning, the people mentioned in Liu Xin's "Secretariat" list were notified that they "will be reused" and need to meet Gao Pragmatic tonight. Although everyone did not know what kind of reuse this was, they still made preparations based on their own circumstances.
Gao pragmatically went to the Ministry of Household Affairs as usual and received the two visiting ministers from the Ministry of Personnel and the Ministry of War.
Yang Wei, the Minister of Civil Affairs, came to inquire about the status of the pre-existing salary of hundreds of officials next year. The "Official Salary Pre-deposit System for the Next Year" is a new measure after Gao Pragmatic's "consolidation of financial power". However, in fact, similar practices have not existed before. It is just that Gao Pragmatic has institutionalized and standardized it, and added it to the national finance of the Ministry of Household Affairs. within the budget system.
Since the national fiscal budget system is a huge overall task, all ministries and agencies need to contact and negotiate with the Ministry of Household Affairs before the year to reach an agreement.
Otherwise, if you don't take the initiative to come and find me, it will have nothing to do with my household department if your office doesn't have enough money in the coming year. Our household department has no losses, whether you like it or not.
Having said that, if yamen such as the Liubu, Duchayuan and Dali Temple really don't even have enough office funds, they will definitely be able to go to the emperor to complain. However, this will be embarrassing on the one hand, and it will also show that the officials in the court are not capable enough. , everyone must not be happy for this scene to happen.
The Ministry of Personnel and the Ministry of War are the basis of the Pragmatic School, so you don't have to worry about being stuck when you come to Gao Pragmatic. However, the budgets of these two departments this year are a bit higher than in previous years, so you still have to come early to talk to Gao Pragmatic.
The reason why the expenditures of these two ministries have increased is that the Ministry of Human Resources and the Ministry of War are actually "harmed" by the Ministry of Revenue and the Ministry of War.
Let’s talk about the Ministry of Household Affairs first. Since the Ministry of Household Affairs took back power and changed it to a system of four ministers, it officially became the "Big Household Department". There were many more officials in the two departments and thirteen departments alone, and the overall number of personnel in the Ministry of Household Affairs expanded by 40%. Although these officials belong to the Ministry of Household Affairs, the responsibility for the "establishment work" of officials all over the world lies with the Ministry of Personnel, and their salaries must be approved by the Ministry of Personnel first. Therefore, Yang Wei came to explain the situation to Gao Pragmatic.
Fortunately, the Thirteen Divisions of the Two Departments are quite different from the original provincial divisions. The biggest difference is that the personnel employed by the Thirteen Divisions of the Two Departments have implemented a famous view of Gao Gong at that time: There are few Jinshi but many people are promoted, and those who are promoted have real talents but not elites. There are many people who write articles, so you should use Juren more often.
This is of course a very pragmatic point of view. Chunwei only takes place once every three years (unless it is open to Enke). Although the number of people in the pilot examination is not fixed, there are usually only about 300 people at one time. On average, only about 300 people can "become officials" every year. One hundred people.
The Ming Dynasty was so vast that the number of retired officials, those who failed in political battles, those who kept the rule, those who lost their titles for some reason...the number of various officials who left their posts could exceed this number. What use could Jinshi alone do?
The real significance of Jinshi is to become high-ranking officials, and then stimulate the people's tendency to learn. However, the officials who really work at the grassroots level are actually the so-called "officials" in the Ming Dynasty. They are not in the "official" class.
But the problem also lies in this "official". In many places, the position of official is almost hereditary. Although this to some extent allows the family to have sufficient "experience" in supervising projects, it also It will definitely cause a lot of disadvantages.
For example, a certain family is always responsible for the financial work of a certain county. No matter how the county leader changes, they will never be able to deeply "reform" the local ills. However, the family will become more and more powerful in the local area, covering the sky with one hand. , misbehaving.
Therefore, Gao Gong had always intended to change this situation during his lifetime, but it was a pity that many of his reforms were just the beginning, or he put forward "guiding ideas" before he passed away.
As the successor to his mantle, Gao Pragmatic will naturally continue to push forward many reforms, but like reforms in later generations, reforms will always move from shallow waters to deep waters.
When it comes to deep-water areas, there are specialties in deep-water areas. Any practice is constantly developing. New situations and new problems emerge one after another. No reform can be completed once and for all.
At present, Ming Dynasty's practical school reform has basically entered a critical period and a deep-water zone. The reason why some problems are difficult to advance and solve is because some are old problems left over by the system and mechanisms, and some are new problems that have emerged in the process of progress. Some are caused by ideological barriers, and some are restricted by the pattern of interests.
Problems encountered during reform can only be solved through further reform. At this time, the two most critical points are: first, a clear-cut stand and a resolute attitude; second, appropriate measures and a measured advance and retreat.
Specifically, at a high-level gathering of the Practical School a few days ago, Gao Pingxi mentioned the "four essentials" of the current Practical School reform: the direction must be correct, the measures must be precise, the advancement must be orderly, and the pace must be consistent.
The direction must be correct, which means that the reform of the pragmatic school must always remember its own purpose. The reform was not for the benefit of the Practical School and its officials, but to ensure that the country of Ming Dynasty could benefit from the reform, which would be beneficial to the country and the people. It cannot harm the public and enrich private interests, nor can it favor a certain class of people, farmers, industry, and commerce, leading to instability in the country and disordered governance.
Measures must be precise, which means that officials from the practical school must be targeted in their specific work measures and be able to actually solve problems. Gao Pragmatic attaches great importance to this point and believes that this is a great difference between the practical school and the heart school.
He emphasized at that time that officials who joined the practical school must have the ability and attitude to solve problems. They should not just do Tai Chi when encountering problems, muddle along and pass the problems to their successors.
Advancement must be orderly, which means that the advancement of reform must be planned and cannot be blind. In reform, we must know what to do first and what to do later. What we do first must provide a foundation for what we do later.
He gave an example, just like now everyone knows the importance of customs duties, but without the previous switch, without Jinghua investing heavily in building seaports, building a fleet to combat pirates, and forcing coastal private merchants to give up smuggling into the country and become "good businessmen." If so, the amount of money that can be collected in a year now may still be the same as before. How could it have increased nearly thirty times?
The pace must be consistent, which means that the real school must maintain unity and work together when implementing policies, rather than arguing with each other and holding back each other.
This seems a bit like Gao Pragmatic's desire to establish personal authority, but in fact his starting point is really not here. When the entire faction unites to do something, officials from other factions other than the Heart School or non-faction officials must think carefully even if they have different opinions.
Even the Heart School is usually not willing to have a fierce conflict with the Practical School. This was very obvious during the period when Shen Shixing was in power. Of course, after Wang Xijue returned to Beijing, the style of the Xin School became increasingly hardened, but it did not completely change.
Closer to home, except for the two assistant ministers and the chief and deputy chief officers of each department in the two departments and thirteen departments, the rest of the officials who are specifically responsible for handling affairs are all filled by alternate officials with judicial status. They are basically junior officials of the eighth or ninth grade.
Although the number of these officials is large, their salaries are not high. When the officials come to Gao Jingshi for discussion, it can only be regarded as a formality. After all, it is impossible for the organization established by Gao Jingshi to ignore his job.
The situation at the Ministry of War is a little more troublesome, because compared to last year and this year, their financial budget for next year has increased a lot. Liang Menglong personally brought three of the four ministers with him, so that the three The Minister explained separately that the Minister of Rongzheng did not need to come, because the production and construction corps in Beijing was now responsible for providing money and effort, and the Ministry of Household Affairs did not interfere in that matter.
The Ministry of War came to discuss the budget, and the specifications were very high and comprehensive. But in the final analysis, the reason for the increase in spending was mainly due to three aspects that Gao Pragmatic had already predicted.
The first aspect is, of course, pre-war reserves. The Ming Dynasty has made it clear that it wants to destroy Can Yuan in one fell swoop. This has been going on for several years. Due to the previous emperor's firm attitude and excessive use of force, the Northwest Rebellion even broke out.
However, after Gao Pragmatic put down the rebellion, the emperor simply handed over the financial work to him. Letting him take charge of finance is of course not asking him to veto this national policy, but rather allowing him to better implement this national policy.
In the Yongle Dynasty in the past, when Emperor Chengzu made the Five Expeditions to Mobei, such a strong national power still had to carry out pre-war reserves, let alone now? What's more, the purpose of Ming Dynasty this time is not to expel the Chahar Mongols, but to directly connect the pot, which will obviously require more reserve power.
Although there were already firearms troops during the Yongle Dynasty, the firearms at that time were not comparable to those of today, and the proportion of firearms troops in the army was also not comparable, so the consumption was naturally even more incomparable.
Another important point is that since Anda paid tribute, the Ming Dynasty has purchased more and more war horses from Tumote, and the imperial court's stock of war horses has increased year by year. The consumption of war horses is different from that of horse horses. Although they do not need to feed concentrated feed every time during non-war times, they still have to feed them every now and then to avoid losing weight or deteriorating their physical condition.
However, for Daming, there is a more troublesome thing: Although concentrated feed is expensive, if you eat grass, you will also need more horse farms. The former can be solved with money, but the latter is a bigger problem. Because there are not many horse farms in Ming Dynasty.
If the Nine Sides were just like before, with only tens of thousands of cavalry in total, then the pressure on the grassland would not be too great, and they would basically be able to get by. But the current situation is no longer what it was then. It has been 18 years since the tribute was granted. There are almost hundreds of thousands of cavalry on all sides of the Ming Dynasty, and the stock of war horses is as high as more than 300,000. What racecourse can withstand it?
Even if Gao pragmatically captured Daning last time and obtained part of the racecourse outside the pass, and then obtained the Liaohe Hetao racecourse after the Battle of Southern Liaoning, he still could not afford to supply more than 300,000 war horses - let alone all the cavalry. Put it in these two places!
As a result, the gap in feed has increasingly become a headache for the court. It was not until Gao pragmatically promoted corn in Liaodong and succeeded that he finally saw a solution.
But then, the problem turns back again. The cultivation of corn is not done by the military, but by the local war-torn refugees and ordinary people. A large part of it is obtained from land reclamation. According to the policy given by Gao Pragmatic at that time, the income from land reclamation belongs to the land reclamation people themselves and is exempted from taxes for three years.
In other words, although the court could use corn to feed horses, and corn itself was extremely suitable for feeding horses, all of this required money and had to be purchased from the cornfield owner.
The three-year tax exemption period for most corn fields has not yet passed. If the Ministry of War wants to feed the horses with corn, it will have to allocate more money. The Ministry of War itself has little financial power left, so everything has to go to the Ministry of Household Affairs. Pay the bill.
The money was pragmatic and he didn't intend to save it, but after looking at the price, he still frowned a little. Later, he made a suggestion, that is, the Ministry of War came forward to suggest that the emperor issue an order to Liaodong, requiring Liaodong to open up more corn fields.
Anyway, there are too many saline-alkali lands in Liaodong, and the yield of grain grown in those lands is really daunting. Although the advancement of rice in Hokkaido is accelerating, the cultivation of refined grains such as rice is more difficult, and it is not as easy to promote as corn.
In addition to Liaodong, he also suggested that all northern regions can use idle land to grow corn, and even some places that are not idle land but have unsatisfactory wheat yields can also be replanted.
According to his opinion, although the current price of corn is cheaper than rice and wheat, it is only so cheap that it should still account for the "fresh food". As long as corn cultivation continues to be expanded and the total output increases, the price of this stuff will definitely drop accordingly, making it a grain product whose commercial nature is not as important as maintaining stability.
Originally, he did not introduce corn to improve the taste of the people of the Ming Dynasty. He introduced it as a life-saving food during the Little Ice Age. The price of this thing is almost as high as that of rice and wheat. How can it be done?
When the Ministry of War saw that he had approved the money, they naturally responded loudly to his suggestion. Liang Menglong immediately said that he would write an inscription when he returned to the Yamen and must patiently persuade the emperor.
The second place to spend money is that training funds have increased. Gao Pragmatic knew this well, because in detail it was brought up by him when he was at the Ministry of War.
Muskets and artillery are not as good as swords, and they are not something that some people are born with and know how to kill. Although comparatively speaking, the time required to train a qualified musketeer is much shorter than training a swordsman, the characteristic of muskets is that they consume gunpowder, and the barrel itself is also worn, so the cost of training is far higher than that of a cold swordsman. Weaponry Corps.
But it definitely won’t work without training. For someone who doesn’t know how to use firearms, no matter how good a gun is, it’s just like taking a fire stick on the battlefield. So what’s the Wanli Second Style? Just take out the previous three-eyed blunderbuss. Wouldn't it be more appropriate to use it? It's just about hitting people.
So although the money was quite large, with the incremental portion alone reaching more than 200,000 taels, Gao Pragmatic signed and pledged it without saying a word.
The last sum of money was a little unexpected: the Ministry of War actually "discovered its conscience" and believed that the life of the frontier troops was too difficult, so it planned to give the frontier troops a slight increase in pay - really just "a little", because on average each person only received about RMB 5 in pay per year. Money.
However, Gao Pragmatic hesitated this time. The reason is not complicated: How many soldiers are there on the Nine Sides now? Nearly 900,000, each person gets five more silver coins a year, which is 450,000 taels of silver.
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