Xinshun 1730

Chapter 1041

"Duke, there is something I still want to say. Whether it's reform or reform, even if it's something the Duke himself said, you have to take it easy."

"I support the reform, but I forgive you for not supporting the transfer of all the salt industry in Huainan to Huaibei."

"Changing from cooking salt to sun-dried salt is true. It is true that the salt households who originally boiled salt with firewood may not be disadvantaged. However, in addition to them, those who pack, bundle, carry salt, transport, and those who rely on Huainan salt merchants Cooks, gardeners, and garden workers who make a living, as well as literary societies, associations, and Confucian scholars who were born attached to salt merchants."

"These are real people. Moreover, the salt in Huainan is ten times that of Huaibei. Doesn't the Duke consider their livelihood for these people?"

"In short, the lower officials support cooking salt instead of drying salt."

"However, the lower officials believe that the benefits of rain, heat, coal, beaches, etc. in Huaibei may not be greater than the livelihood of those in Huainan."

"In addition... the Duke should also consider the influence of Confucian scholars in Yangzhou. They rely on the salt industry to survive. Without wealth, they cannot be supported. Jiangnan Wenhua will be abolished by the Duke."

"Opera, poetry, storytelling, novels, calligraphy, painting... To put it bluntly, these people are all raised on salt."

"And they are intertwined. The clan, in-laws, and old officials are so involved that it is really not easy to move. The Duke can abolish the contractor of Dayanyin, and they will not strongly oppose it. But the Duke wants them to survive. If the foundation of the foundation is abolished, this matter will inevitably shake the mountains."

"The Zhang family sells salt, and he is a guest of the Zhang family; the Wang family sells salt, and he is a guest of the Wang family. The Duke abolished the Zhang family, it's okay, you can change the door and go to the Wang family."

"But the Duke directly dismissed the matter of 'selling salt'. Then we really have to consider the raging public opinion."

Lin Min was very clear in his heart, which ones could be thrown away as "sacrifices", and which ones he dared not easily throw away as sacrifices.

Salto can be sacrificed.

Scholars are not easy to sacrifice.

The difficulty of the Huainan issue does not lie in changing cooking to drying.

It lies in the ethos of Huainan's enfeoffment system similar to that of the feudal princes in the Warring States Period, except that at that time the land was enfeoffed, but now the salt is enfeoffed.

A large number of literati survived by relying on salt merchants.

The standard of living of the literati is very high, and the culture naturally prospers.Salt merchants are also willing to spend money to make friends with these literati and celebrities, and they will give more help when they are short of money.

Clan, disciple, all over.

That is the soul of Jiangnan.And the soul is also based on the economic foundation. Without the money of salt merchants and big landlords, there would be no such prosperous culture.The literati have to serve them, otherwise they have no money to eat, drink and play.

Lin Min also understood that Huainan's salt policy reform must of course be changed.But you can't take such a big step.

Jiangsu is already chaotic enough. The reason why it is not chaotic now is because the imperial army is stationed nearby, and there are more than 2 elite field troops stationed in the southern Jiangsu camp.

Of course, it cannot be said that only scholars are vested interests.

After all, there are too many directions involved in the reform. For example, the salt industry workers in Yangzhou, who do packaging and transportation work, have a long relationship with literati.But if the Huainan Salt Industry is moved, they will definitely be dissatisfied.What about scholars?

So Lin Min hopes to make a compromise, maintain Huainan's main industry, but improve the method of producing salt.

After all, I still feel that the complete decline of these two rich places, Yangzhou and Huai'an, is something that sounds creepy.

After he expressed his opinion, Liu Yu just hummed, and did not express any radical views on this opinion.

He just said: "Master Lin thinks that Huainan can only rely on the salt industry to prosper? I think Huainan is really not suitable for the salt industry."

"The Huainan salt industry in the previous dynasty did not reform at all, and still retained the method of boiling salt. This is really a great thing for this dynasty to be grateful to the previous dynasty."

"Since you also agree that the purpose of Xu Guangqi's salt industry reform is to open up wasteland, why don't you think that Huainan can be transformed?"

"Didn't Mr. Lin also go to inspect the wasteland reclamation company? In the future, don't you need people to plant cotton, pick cotton, peel cotton, and rub cotton? Are you really afraid that they will be unemployed?"

Hearing Liu Yu talk about the problems of the reclamation company, Lin Min could only sigh, not knowing how to characterize this matter.

Since spring, the land reclamation company has started small-scale land reclamation.

And this land reclamation also made Lin Min feel that it will become more and more difficult to be the Jiangsu Jiedushi in the future.

Land reclamation is no problem, he also supports the capital enclosing land reclamation on the whole.

But the purpose of reclamation is beyond his comprehension.Although the people from the reclamation company had explained it to him, it was precisely because of this explanation that he lamented that the Jiangsu Jiedushi in the future would become more and more difficult to handle.

The place where the people of the reclamation company took the lead in reclaiming the wasteland is in the area near the sea in Nantong Prefecture. It is still a barren place with few people living there.

Reclaiming wasteland is not so easy. It seems that there are so many vacant lands in the imagination.
However, in fact, cultivating wasteland in a barren land is far from what ordinary people can afford today.And the transportation is not developed at this time.

If you can still live at home, who will leave your hometown to cultivate wasteland?

If you can't survive at home, how can you survive the time it takes from reclamation to harvest?If he has a year's worth of food in reserve, will he not be able to survive at home?

Lin Min, as Jiangsu Jiedu envoy, naturally supported this kind of wasteland reclamation.

But the land reclamation company said that it will grow cotton in the future.

Because the Tianzhu cotton planted now has too short lint and average quality, and it is actually difficult for this thing to become a raw material for future mechanical textiles.

Who told them?Of course it was Liu Yu.

So before the Academy of Sciences was able to show the impact of saline-alkali land on cotton growth, and measure the promotion or inhibition of cotton growth in a reasonable range of salinity, it is because Liu Yu has already started to introduce Mexican cotton from the Americas. Cotton seeds have begun to be planted and cultivated.

Now, if Dashun wants to be the first country, it is impossible to follow the existing path.

Historically, at least in terms of cotton, Dashun has no way to go.If we do not promote Mexican cotton by ourselves, the modernization of Dashun's cotton textile industry will be impossible.

Indigenous cotton is not suitable for mechanized spinning.Even the most advanced mule machine in the early 19th century could not weave Asian cotton.

The current cotton textile industry in Songjiang Prefecture is based on the technology spread by Huang Daopo and the cotton planting that Zhu Yuanzhang forced to promote.

Now, if Dashun wants to move forward, it needs not only a new "Huang Daopo" but also a new "Zhu Yuanzhang to promote cotton".

New Huang Dao Po is a new mechanical textile technology.

The new Zhu Yuanzhang is promoting Mexican cotton.

In the original historical path, the early development of the local national capital spinning industry relied on the cotton promoted by the United Kingdom in India.

Now, since we want to be a first-mover country and finish this road by ourselves, we have to think about it and finish the cotton planting by ourselves.

Does Dashun have the control at the grassroots level in the early years of the Ming Dynasty?Apparently, not now.

Moreover, it is easy to go from 0 to 1, but it is difficult to turn all 1 into 2.Historically, the reason why this local cotton improvement movement failed continuously in the early stage was an unexpected word-poor.

As the new cotton seeds were promoted, small farmers planted cotton and squeezed the cotton seeds for oil.

Then in the second year, dig out some old cotton seeds and scatter them, or simply mix them. In at most three years, all the new cotton seeds will degenerate.

As for the sterilization of cottonseed oil, the smoke of cottonseed oil, and the fact that cottonseed oil is not suitable for practical use, etc., are these all minced meat? At that time, it was good to eat with oil, so much?

[Farmers are free to collect seeds, mix up good and bad, and allow natural hybridization.The flower collection and ginning are also mixed.The promotion of fine varieties, less than a few years, all mixed and deteriorated]

This is the organizational capacity of the small peasant economy.

The final experience is also cruel and proves that governance is incompetent.

[Only in places where there is no smoke for hundreds of miles, where the people are in dire straits, after a catastrophe, and where soldiers and bandits devastated, is it possible to promote new cotton species]

Because the grassroots control ability is incompetent.

Therefore, the only choice is to annex the land after the catastrophe, forcibly draw hundreds of thousands of mu of isolated areas, and force cotton to grow. In the end, it succeeded, stabilizing the cotton seeds and improving the cotton seeds.

This experience is the same for Dashun.

Is Dashun's grassroots organization capable of distributing cottonseed to farmers and guaranteeing that it will be recycled in autumn?

No.

If Dashun's ability to organize and control the village reaches this level, building the Huaihe River into the sea will not require the whole country to spend years of savings in the national treasury.To have that kind of organizational power, this is obviously something that a province can do by itself. How can it get the power of the whole country?

Is Dashun's control at the grassroots level capable of ensuring that those who collect cotton do not mix old cotton together, and that seeds are mixed during cotton ginning?
Of course not.

If there is this level of control over small traders, Dashun's commercial tax could have directly abolished the salt tax, and it is estimated that the commercial tax would have already crushed the [-]-tax-[-] agricultural tax.

Can the level of poverty at the grassroots level in Dashun ensure that small farmers do not eat cottonseed oil?

This is even more impossible.

If he is so rich, Liu Yu has nothing to do, so he has to go out to grab overseas markets?This consumption power and market will definitely crush today's Europe and America, so let's go directly to the internal cycle of light industrialization.When the whole country stopped eating raw cottonseed oil, the Soviet Union was fucking disintegrated.

Fortunately, Da Ming left a very great legacy to Da Shun, as if it was the fate of the country in the dark.

That is to say, the Ming Dynasty did not carry out the reform of the sun-dried salt method in Huainan, and retained the most primitive and backward small-scale salt-boiled method.

This allowed Dashun to directly enclose land in Huainan and reclaim the waste salt.

This is a natural open space where there is no smoke in a hundred miles, and the people live in dire straits. There is no need to wait for the catastrophe before consolidating land to ensure cotton seeds.

Similarly, wasteland reclamation companies have much stronger organizational and technological promotion capabilities than individual small farmers.The capital is also strong, so there is no need to kill chickens to extract eggs, at least not to squeeze out the cottonseed that is so easy to cultivate in the early stage.

It should be said that until the completion of this matter, that is, the replacement of Asian cotton with American cotton, and the addition of mechanical spinning and weaving machines, Dashun has all the pre-technology of the light industrial revolution.

Steam engine... After the steam engine has a boring machine, it is really the simplest of this series of front-end technologies.

And it should be the most inconspicuous one for the time being. This is a driving force, and the waterwheel can drive the largest textile factory in the early 19th century.

Since we want to take the initiative to move forward and become a first-mover country, we have to make a lot of preparations.Indispensable.

Without the legacy of the salt cooking method left by the Ming Dynasty, the promotion of long-staple cotton would have been difficult.

There is really no land suitable for growing cotton in China.If it is far away, luck will not come; if it is not close, if it is not for the Ming Dynasty to maintain the boiling salt law to facilitate the control of taxation, how can there be such a large open space to build a large land farm?

These were the reasons why Lin Min lamented that it would be more difficult to be a Jiangsu Jiedu envoy in the future. He could understand all the reasons that could be told to him, and he also believed that they all made sense.

However, which Jiangsu Jiedu envoy can think so much spontaneously?He just felt that it was no wonder that he, the Jiangsu Jiedushi, was just an empty air, because he really didn't understand these business matters.To take the lead in national industry and commerce is not just about managing the struggle between employees and employers.

(End of this chapter)