The convoy of four carriages left the small county town and soon drove on a gravel road.
In the four carriages, Song Erniu sat alone in a luxurious carriage and was driven by his professional coachman. Two maids rode in one, the butler and his entourage rode in another. There was also a carriage containing a large number of suitcases, and the four There were three security personnel driving the car, and one person was riding in a car with the housekeeper and his entourage.
When Song Erniu returned to his hometown this time, he didn't think about keeping a low profile, but why he had such a good reputation...otherwise he wouldn't have brought so many people back with him.
If we don’t bring more people, how can we hold up the scene?
Many luggages also play the same role. In addition to daily necessities, these luggages also contain many Song Erniu's clothes and accessories.
As a respectable millionaire, you naturally need different clothes for different occasions.
To attend a traditional-style banquet, you must wear traditional silk Hanfu.
If you are attending a business meeting or other business-like occasion, you will wear professional attire made of fine cashmere.
If you normally meet guests at home, you should wear business attire or Hanfu.
I brought more than ten sets of formal dresses for different occasions...
Then there are the maids, attendants, security personnel's luggage... People also need to change their clothes, right?
Then there are some American specialties and gifts brought from America, which are prepared for parents, eldest brother, family, and many relatives.
So many things not only require a carriage to transport, but there are also a lot of suitcases tied to the rear of the other two carriages.
When there are many people and things, four carriages are needed.
Song Erniu was rich and wealthy, so he disdained the cheap carriages from car rental agencies, so he directly purchased four new carriages and eight Fengzhou horses... The prices were naturally very expensive for ordinary people, but for Song Erniu The words are nothing, and the total sum is actually only a few hundred Chu Yuan, which is trivial.
Such a convoy driving on country roads inevitably attracts the attention of many people passing by.
Through the glass window, Song Erniu saw the people around him paying attention and even giving way, and a smile appeared on his lips... He admitted that he was a very vulgar person, and he liked this scene very much.
Back then, I worked so hard in the Americas, and even took many risks such as being robbed by criminals, that I went to the gold mining area to do business. I had to carry a musket when setting up a stall... Later, when I became a little bit rich, I didn't just wait to die. , but continued to work hard to make the business bigger and stronger, and I don’t know how much suffering I suffered during this period!
When he first opened up foreign markets and went to various places to promote his canvas workwear, he was kicked out of his home countless times... He shed so much sweat and tears, and suffered so many looks and grievances.
What for?
Isn’t it just to make money?
And making money for what? Isn’t it just to fight for a breath and become a master!
So, what's the point of going back to my hometown to show off, even if it costs the boss a lot of money... the transportation tickets, the expenses of the entourage, plus the cost of gifts, and the subsequent expenses of showing off in my hometown, this plus It is estimated to be several thousand Chu yuan in value.
But Song Erniu is happy!
But now that people on both sides of the road were paying attention, Song Erniu felt that the money was not wasted.
The convoy moved forward. Although it was traveling through gravel and rural construction, it was still moving at a relatively fast pace. After all, the terrain where his hometown is located is flat and the cost of road construction is relatively low.
Over the past thirty years, the Dachu Empire has continued to build roads. Even rural roads are basically paved with gravel or cinders. The roads are relatively spacious and can easily accommodate two carriages running parallel to each other.
Therefore, the speed of the team was relatively fast along the way, which meant that there was a gentle uphill road in the middle that took a little longer.
About an hour later, their convoy appeared in a village.
This is Song Erniu's hometown, a small village called Shuangshan Village. The village is located in a small valley, with a hilltop on the left and right with a wave of no more than a hundred or two hundred meters. This is also the origin of the village's name. There are two It is a small mountain, so it is called Shuangshan Village.
In fact, there were not many people in Shuangsancun during the pre-Ming Dynasty. Due to the war and chaos, the original village had long been abandoned, the land was abandoned, and only a few families remained.
After the empire regained the nearby areas, most of the areas here and the surrounding areas were turned into official land due to factors such as desertion or confiscation. Then, people gradually moved here to settle down because they rented official land or purchased official land in installments. .
The policy of purchasing official land in installments was a very successful policy during the Unification War of the Chu Empire, because the Chu Empire confiscated a large amount of land from the officials and dignitaries of the Ming Dynasty, as well as the stubborn gentry and tax resisters.
At that time, the official land maintained by the official government of the Great Chu Empire accounted for more than 40% of the total cultivated land in the control area... This is a very terrifying statistic.
How to deal with these official fields has also become a core issue in the early agricultural policy of the Dachu Empire. At the beginning, the Dachu Empire tried the direct land allocation policy... but later found that it was unreliable... the common people who received free land allocation I am not grateful to you, I even take it for granted, and I do not stand on the side of the Chu Empire because of this. When the Ming army comes, they will run away when they should, and those who should lead the way will still lead the way...
They are not even willing to pay agricultural taxes!
People will not be grateful for something that is too easy or even available at no cost. Even after knowing the Chu people’s free land allocation policy, when the Chu people called over, they couldn’t wait to ask for it. The land is divided for free, and the land is divided in an ugly manner, showing the ugliness of human nature.
In order to compete for better free land, they ransacked each other's homes and even fought. In the end, the strange and strange things came to blame on the Chu government...
Furthermore, at that time, the official policy of the Chu Empire was still implementing the policy of dividing military merit fields... Then the soldiers found that they were exhausted, risked their lives in battle, and had to serve for several years before they could get a share of military merit fields. Those ordinary people can get free land without doing anything... Suddenly they feel unbalanced.
In the end, Luo Zhixue personally made the decision to cancel the free land allocation policy. Only soldiers who had made meritorious services during the founding of the People's Republic of China could obtain land for free.
A large amount of official land continued to be controlled by the government and then leased to landless peasants. This was the far-reaching 'divided into tenants' policy in the early days of the Chu Empire.
Subsequently, the agricultural reform was further deepened, and a policy of purchasing official land in installments was introduced, which allowed people who rented official land to pay in installments over a number of years to purchase official land at a relatively low price. The installment payment was paid out of the grain harvested that year.
This was the more important "land purchase in installments" policy in the early agricultural policies of the empire.
Subsequently, policies were introduced that the purchased official land could not be freely transferred and could only be inherited by immediate relatives. If it was to be sold, it could only be sold back to the government at the market price and turned into official land again.
Official land accounted for a very high proportion of the cultivated land in the Great Chu Empire. The proportion of official land in the eighteen provinces within the pass accounted for more than 60%. In the future, landowners continued to choose to sell their land to the government, or to If it is confiscated, and once it becomes official land, even if it is subsequently sold in installments, this kind of land cannot be freely transferred.
This kind of official land cannot be transferred freely and can only be inherited by immediate relatives or sold to the government. After the government recovers the land, it can then be leased or sold in installments to farmers with little or no land.
This greatly limits land annexation.
This is still talking about the eighteen provinces within the Pass. If it is the Northeast, Monan, Northwest, Central Asia, Siberia and other newly occupied areas, except for a very small number of privately owned land, it is basically all government land... even if it is distributed free of charge. The new immigrants farmed it, but the immigrants actually only had the right to use the land, and they could inherit it for future generations, but they could not sell it to others!
After all, the official restrictions are not actually on inheritance rights or farmers’ ownership of land, but on land annexation.
Suppressing land annexation is the core part of a series of agricultural policies in Luo Zhixue's governance. Many measures may seem irrelevant, but in fact they are all aimed at preventing land annexation.
The purpose of preventing land annexation is also very simple, which is to give the rural population, which accounts for the vast majority of the empire's population, a final escape route: no matter what happens, they can return to the countryside to farm. Although it is more difficult to have enough to eat and clothe themselves through farming alone... You won't starve to death.
This series of agricultural policies greatly stabilized the early internal stability of the empire, and gave birth to a rural society in which the owner-cultivator group was the family unit as the absolute group!
In the contemporary Da Chu Empire, there are actually no traditional landowners anymore... Those landlords in the pre-Ming Dynasty either died in wars, at the hands of armed tax police, or in mines... and A small number of them sold their land early and used the funds to become the industrial and commercial class in the Chu Empire.
The existence of the subsequent stepped agricultural tax directly blocked any possibility of private ownership of large amounts of land... The more land there is, the higher the tax rate will be. After a certain level, the land output is not enough to pay the tax!
These series of policies greatly stabilized the rural society of the Chu Empire and made the empire's rural areas the solid foundation of the empire...
People, in fact, are not stupid. They basically know who is good to them and who is not good to them...Although many people will secretly scold Luo Laogou on weekdays, the tax bureau hawk will die a good death. Class words.
But if you say that there is a new careerist who wants to rebel and overthrow the Chu Empire, then a considerable number of people will not be happy with it, and will even oppose it...
Of course, this kind of opposition is only verbal, don't expect to donate money...whose money is not hard-earned money!
However, if the military recruits troops on a large scale to suppress the rebels, nine out of ten farmers' children will enthusiastically sign up to join the army... Of course, it is not for the Luo family dynasty, but because they can be assigned jobs after joining the army and retiring!
No matter how nice you say it, interests are just interests... and just interests!
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After Shuangshan Village was recaptured by the Chu army, it attracted a large number of immigrants to settle there. At that time, Song Erniu's parents moved to Shuangshan Village with a group of relatives, purchased a batch of official land for farming in installments, and started a new life in raising their children. postwar life.
Song Erniu was born in this remote mountain village!
There was a childhood that he couldn't remember, but he expected to be happy, and a boyhood and youth full of hunger and fatigue.
For as long as he can remember, until he went out to work in Songjiang City at the age of sixteen, he never really had enough to eat...
Song Erniu's memory is actually a common one. Although the early rural areas under the rule of the Chu Empire were much better than those in the pre-Ming Dynasty, there were no large-scale famines, and farmers could eat and occasionally eat some meat... but It has absolutely nothing to do with eating enough.
After all, productivity is just that…
In the Chengshun decade, the per capita food level was less than 300 kilograms... At this level of food, we were actually in a state of large-scale famine!
It was not until the 1920s that it reached the level of more than 300 kilograms. Even at this level, it was a state of general malnutrition.
After entering the 1930s, it reached the level of 3,780 kilograms. During this period, the Chu Empire could barely feed its people, but a considerable number of people were still malnourished.
Today's Chu Empire is still working hard to meet the basic subsistence line of 400 kilograms of food per capita. To this end, it does not hesitate to immigrate on a large scale, colonize the Americas, and plunder large amounts of agricultural products in India, Africa, and Europe.
Large-scale support is provided to promote the import of overseas grain into the country, just to solve the food problem!
Although the Dachu Empire was very powerful, it was actually still working hard to solve the food problem.
It was a common phenomenon for Song Erniu not to have enough to eat during his teenage years...
Such a teenage period is actually not a good memory... At least Song Erniu actually doesn't have a good impression of his hometown in the countryside.
If his parents and eldest brother's family were not still in his hometown, he would never come back to this poor place in his life.
Maybe he is still young and cannot feel the affection for his hometown... Maybe he will miss his hometown when he gets older, but now... at least for now, he has no special feelings for this so-called hometown.
So after returning to Shuangshan Village and seeing the familiar mountains, fields and houses in the village, he didn't have many special feelings, and he didn't even get off the carriage.
However, after people in the village saw such a convoy of carriages coming outside, many people ran out to watch out of curiosity... many of them even accurately guessed the identity of the person coming.
"The second son of the Song family must be back... I heard that he made a fortune in America and became a big boss!"
"He has sent a lot of money home in the past few years. Otherwise, Song Daniu would have been able to build such a big yard by digging in the soil and doing odd jobs, and he also bought a house in the county! "
"The Song family is so prosperous now that they have such a big boss like Er Niu!"
The population of Shuangshan Village is not large, only about a hundred households, and they are mainly immigrants. Over the past thirty years, everyone has already known the situation, and everyone basically knows what is going on with the Song family.
In the past few years, no one feels envious or even jealous of the changes in the Song family... This has also caused most of the young people in the village to run away to big cities outside.
After all, with Song Erniu as a successful role model, many people will naturally follow suit... Unfortunately, not everyone can have Song Erniu's luck and strength. Most people just work outside to earn a living. Just eat.
Song Erniu couldn't hear the words of the people around him, but he could see the pointing and pointing of the people around him through the window, and he could guess some of their words.
He had a smile on his face!
The motorcade continued to move forward slowly, passing by the dirt road in the middle of the village... On the way, Song Erniu's housekeeper got off the car in advance and asked the villagers about the location of the Song family's new house. What's more, when he saw that it was the real Song Erniu, he came back. He ran directly to the Song family's new residence to inform the Song family.
Song Erniu's motorcade was not in a hurry, but moved forward slowly!
When the motorcade slowly arrived at the door of the Song family's new residence, the middle door of the Song family's residence was already wide open, and many people were waiting in front of it.
Wearing a fine silk Hanfu, Song Erniu, with the help of his entourage, slowly got out of the carriage like a great gentleman. He had even practiced this move before returning to his homeland, in order to embody his greatness. The boss's pomp!
Then he looked up and saw his elder brother whom he hadn't seen for many years...
His eldest brother was standing at the door. He was as dark-skinned as before, but his expression no longer had the tiredness and vicissitudes of eight or nine years ago... When he came home nine years ago, the eldest brother he saw was only two years old. He is in his early teens, but due to long-term farm work, this man who is actually only in his twenties still looks as old as he is in his thirties or forties.
Although it is still relatively dark now, it looks a lot richer.
Behind her eldest brother is a young woman, holding a little boy of about fifteen or six years old in her right hand, and a little girl of three or four years old in her left hand.
Song Erniu knew from a previous letter from home that his eldest brother was married, and these children should be his children!
Song Erniu continued to extend his sight inward, and he saw his parents... Under the sun, his mother, wearing bright red silk and a golden cross and jade beads on her head, looked a little rich, but she seemed to have gray hair... In his memory Although my mother has gone through many vicissitudes of life, she does not have gray hair. I did not expect that just nine years later, my mother already has some gray hair.
The father next to him was the same as he remembered, except that he was dressed better, his face was still thin, his skin was dark, and he was holding a dry cigarette in his hand.
When he saw his family, Song Erniu, who was ready to show off his great achievements over the years in front of his family and show off his great achievements in the past years, found that his eyes were moist for some reason!
Even the body did not listen to the command of the brain, and passed through all the imaginary scenes before... and walked forward quickly, crossed the gate and came to be a few meters in front of the parents!
As he got closer, he could already see the tears in his mother's eyes, which were shining brightly in the afternoon sun!
The next moment, I saw him kneeling on his knees, leaning forward to salute, with a hint of sobs in his mouth: "Father, mother, the unfilial son is back!"
