Xinshun 1730

Chapter 1099 Industrial Revolution ([-])
Quan Zheshen thought of some banned books that he saw in Incheon these years, and he knew a general idea about the things inside, so he couldn't help but wondered: "Brother Meng, I'm new here, so I don't know much about it. The canal is ruined, how can we build the canal? "

Meng Songlu knew this very well, and said with a smile: "It's normal to be puzzled. Brother Zhao doesn't understand the matter. In recent years, the province's finances have all revolved around the word 'cotton'."

"After the imperial court abolished the canal, the Huaihe River was built to connect to the sea."

"But you need to know that the imperial court is in charge of water control. The imperial court does not pay for local irrigation and navigation. The province still needs to pay for it."

"Huainan wastes salt to reclaim wasteland and needs irrigation."

"Transporting cotton back and forth also requires canal communication."

"That's why the canal project from Funing to Nantong was started. If it's just for cotton transportation, the railway can be built. But since irrigation and salt removal are also needed, it's far worse than building a canal."

"The province pays one-third of the money, and the remaining two-thirds are paid by various wasteland reclamation companies from Funing to Nantong. When winter is not busy, various wasteland reclamation companies also provide labor for coordination and organization."

"But when the canal is completed, various land reclamation companies lead the tributaries to their own reclamation areas."

"Since the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal was abolished, new canals have been built. From Suzhou to Shanghai; from Funing to Nantong; from Jiaxing to the Huangpu River... In recent years, the province's finances have been mostly used for canal construction. "

"Brother Zhao doesn't know something. Capital can also build canals, but they can only build profitable canals. For example, Jiaxing Tonghuangpu, etc., transportation is secondary and water conservancy is the priority. Capital is not willing to spend a penny. This will require fiscal funding.”

Speaking of financial issues, Meng Songlu couldn't help showing a hint of complacency, because a source of finance for the Songjiang Mansion, especially Shanghai, was derived from their sect, and it should be the method of his uncle Wang Yuan and Wang Kunsheng .

On the whole, Wang Yuan's thinking supports the full nationalization of land.

Although his thoughts on rural land issues are relatively nonsense-compared to Yan Yuan and Li Wei's 30-year redemption and the fantasy of landlords voluntarily handing over the land to the country, Wang Yuan's nonsense is slightly lighter and a little more operable.

His proposal is to tax state-owned land and private land separately.The tax on state-owned land was reduced, and the tax rate on private land was 50%. Within a few years, everyone "voluntarily" turned their land into state-owned land.

Of course it is also very nonsense, but compared to the utopian dream of 30-year redemption, it is still less utopian in theory.

As for the remaining ideas such as "paying taxes and awarding honors", they are too advanced and impossible to implement.

However, on the issue of urban land, Wang Yuan, who was the first person in the Yan-Li School to put forward the theory of "only farmers have land", proposed that it is better to collect property taxes on urban land.

He believes that the best way to nationalize rural land is to restrict buying and selling.As for urban land, it is not recommended to prohibit the sale and purchase of land, but to collect property taxes.

Although this theory is actually different from the way the new Shanghai County is doing at this time.But basically, taking advantage of the opportunity of capital fleeing across the south of the Yangtze River and pouring into Shanghai, this improved city tax was still implemented.

However, the cooperation between Liu Yu and the Yan Li School came to an end.

Thinking of what happened not long ago, Meng Songlu showed a look of displeasure on his face.

Quan Zheshen saw a hint of complacency on Meng Songlu's face, and then it turned into a little unhappy, thinking that Meng Songlu was lamenting the construction of the canal.

According to his understanding, or according to his understanding in North Korea, the construction of the canal must require forced labor, and it is estimated that many people will die. Now it seems that the Celestial Dynasty is doing things like Sui Yang, Shang and Zhou all day long?
Then he asked: "As Brother Meng said, the people are suffering a lot due to the large-scale construction and canal repairs. Is this why there are bones frozen to death in this city, and everyone thinks it is normal?"

However, Meng Songlu shook his head at this question.

There is one thing to say, although when the salt government reformed, he was ordered by his teacher to go to Huaibei to see more, and he had a dispute with Meng Tiezhu of the new school in Dengzhou Prefecture on the issue of land sharing.

Although, both he and his teacher Cheng Tingzuo complained about the many policies implemented in Jiangsu and Liu Yu's brutal suppression methods.

But I have to admit that the overall life of the people has really improved in recent years.

Just a few years ago, a sea tide drowned more than 4 salt workers in the Huainan salt area.Every year, floods, tidal disasters, Yellow River breaches, floods in the upper reaches of the Huaihe River, deaths in hard labor on the reinforced Gaojiayan, etc., can be said to be a good year for tens of thousands of people every year.

Although the current direction of reform, in the eyes of their school, is really a bit inhumane, the effect is really remarkable.

The Huaihe River was built to flow into the sea, the water level of Hongze Lake gradually decreased, and the Huai'an Qinghe Estuary was closed, so the risk of the Yellow River's breach and backflow was reduced.

Capital land reclamation, government investment plus capital investment, built seawalls and improved river channels.

The most important thing is the rural situation.

Indeed, surrounding areas such as Su, Song, Chang and Tong have been greatly affected.

With the crazy introduction of Korean rice, Nanyang rice, Northeast beans, and Liaodong wheat, the price of food has basically remained at eight coins a stone.

After the reform of mu tax, the life of the tenants was even worse, and the rent was withdrawn one after another.

But the advantage is that in the past few years, we have been crazy about infrastructure construction, digging canals, repairing water conservancy, etc., to accommodate a large number of people.

And these populations, along with the intensification of land reclamation in Huainan, are constantly being digested by reclamation companies.

As for the owner farmers nearby, their lives are really better than before.

Owner farmers benefited the most from mu tax reform.

The sending of looms to the countryside made this local village, which is famous for its cotton cloth, not be seriously impacted by the new machinery.

Lower food prices are bad for self-cultivating farmers.

However, the mu tax reform has compromised this disadvantage.

Even after a compromise, even if capital goes to the countryside and food prices are lowered, many self-cultivating farmers intuitively feel that life is better than before.

In the past, taxes, taxes, additional distributions, taxation by county, gentry avoidance of taxes, labor, rice, loss, fire consumption, circle after circle.

Now, the real whip, the unified collection of fixed land tax.

One positive and one negative, coupled with the capital looms led by Liu Yu to go to the countryside, made this disintegration of the small peasant economy not so painful for the southern Jiangsu area alone.

Of course, from the first month to April, people starve to death or freeze to death almost every day in Shanghai.

The periodicity of the dock work also makes the fights frequent and the dead are indeed quite a lot.

Of course, starting from the dismantled canal to the decline of Yangzhou and Huai'an, tens of thousands of people died.

Uprisings, revolts, repressions, massacres, exiles, deportations, these are all well documented.

And those who died silently due to the decline of the city are unknown.

Huai'an, which claims to have a population of 80, has dropped to 7 people in ten years since the dismantling of the canal and the completion of the salt administration reform.

In any city, a sudden and rapid population drop means countless sufferings.

The good news is that since last year, the violent turmoil is over.

The brutal suppression of Liu Yu; and the guidance of the policy of weaving first and then spinning; and relying on the markets and economic vassals of Northeast, North Korea, Japan, Southeast Asia, and Europe; and the salt of Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui, Jiangsu, and Henan With the help of business profits, I survived.

More than [-] years of preparation, plus the two major pressure relief valves in the Northeast and Southeast Asia, and the legacy left by the previous dynasty in Huainan, two crucial foreign wars, plus the military suppression after the military reform, it is finally The transformation of the half province of Jiangsu has not been painful to the marrow.

Even though Meng Songlu couldn't see through so much, he knew that since last year, the chaos had gradually subsided, and he could really feel it personally.

As for the standard of living, from the point of view of the owner farmers, the standard of living must have improved compared to before.

Cheap bean cakes have at least increased the amount of fish and meat eaten by the people in southern Jiangsu.

Asking Meng Songlu to evaluate the whole reform is definitely not a good evaluation.

However, Meng Songlu still easily gave the answer to Quan Zheshen's views on large-scale civil engineering and large-scale engineering.

And the answer he gave was precisely what Quan Zhe himself could not understand.

People in North Korea think they are a little China.

But the real China's land system and taxation system are completely different from this country that thinks it is "Little China".

In the entire reform, the crucial "corvement" part, the basis of the reform, is precisely the development of the commodity economy and the disintegration of the old system.

The reason why Li Xinghu, Quan Zheshen's teacher, was so painful and pioneered practical studies was precisely because Li Xinghu witnessed the collapse of the old land system, the emergence of land trading, and the commodity economy around Seoul.

Take the development of handicraft industry in southern Jiangsu in the early Ming Dynasty as an example.

Because the tax system in the early Ming Dynasty imposed taxes in kind, some places used things to come to southern Jiangsu in exchange for cotton cloth and silk.

This promoted the disintegration of the government-run handicraft industry in southern Jiangsu and the development of the cottage handicraft industry. Finally, after wave after wave of uprisings and resistance by weavers in the late Ming Dynasty, the contract purchase system had basically been implemented in Dashun.

In addition to some special clothes, such as dragon robes, professional official craftsmen are still needed.

In addition, after the weavers' struggle in the last years of the previous dynasty, the official handicraft industry and the artisan household system have all collapsed.

What stage is North Korea in?
It was in a stage similar to the early to mid-Ming Ming Dynasty, or even worse.In terms of the land system, it may even go back to the middle of the Tang Dynasty.

The reform of the tax system promoted the development of private handicrafts in North Korea; the emergence of the commodity economy gave birth to land sales; land sales led to the rapid polarization of the rich and the poor, and the full-scale tenant farming of the self-cultivating farmers.

It has only come to this point, and there is no such thing as the crazy inflow of silver that began in the middle of the Ming Dynasty - but there was a little chance to be a second-hand businessman between China and Japan.However, Liu Yufari did the most damage not to Japan, but to North Korea, which made North Korea's precious metals directly empty, and the currency was completely occupied by Dashun banknotes.

This is the problem that North Korea has to face at this time.

Therefore, even if Li Xuan, Quan Zheshen and others are running hard and thinking faster than others, the economic base determines the superstructure, and at most they can only think of the step of the full-scale reaction in the late Ming Dynasty and return to the early Ming Dynasty.

The economic foundation is laid out here, and human thoughts do not fall from the sky.If you don't want to go back, you have a brain problem.

So in history, the Xinghu leftists finally chose to embrace Christianity and tried to retreat in an all-round way, because they were in the most painful stage of "suffering from the collapse of the old system, but the old system was not disintegrated enough".

This stage is the most difficult time for the ideological world, and almost the whole world at this stage will make the idea of ​​"regression" become the mainstream.

And it should be said that at this stage, the most reactionary group of people in the economic sense is precisely a group of good people who truly cherish the common people and sympathize with the suffering of the common people.

Dashun inherited the economic foundation of the late Ming Dynasty, went forward 80 years normally, and was dragged by Liu Yu to leap forward for more than [-] years.

At the same time, Dashun also inherited many ideas of thinkers in the late Ming Dynasty, and developed and developed on the basis of those thoughts.

The economic foundations of the two countries are 300 years behind the normal timeline.

300 years ago, Liu Yu's reform was bound to fail; 100 years ago, the mainstream thought in the late Ming Dynasty was economic reactionary back to the early Ming Dynasty, opposing silver currency, a whip, and tax monetization. At that time, people like Liu Yu Reform, die faster.

When the government-run handicraft industry in southern Jiangsu began to disintegrate, private handicraft industry developed, and private land ownership became the mainstream again and overwhelmed official land, civil forts began to be built.

North Korea has only come to this point now, and it is almost inevitable that the reactionary backtracking trend of thought will dominate.

If there is no gap between the rich and the poor, no land mergers, and no industrial and commercial development, what is the use of the labor law?Without so many "poor and free" labor forces, how can we build the canal without labor?
There is no food at such a low price as to hurt farmers, how can these poor and free laborers not starve to death and revolt?

How can the low price of food that hurts farmers prevent the original economic system in the countryside from collapsing, and a large number of tenant farmers flee to the cities and become "poor and free" labor?
So, simple canal building.

Both sides are completely talking about chicken and duck.

Meng Songlu and Quan Zheshen could not explain to Quan Zheshen exactly how these canals were built and why they did not hurt the people under the condition that their respective economic foundations were acquiescing.

Quan Zheshen couldn't understand, because Meng Songlu acquiesced that Quan Zheshen understood Jiangsu's economic foundation, land system, and taxation system at this time.

(End of this chapter)