Xinshun 1730

Chapter 1121 Township Covenant Village Society ([-])

Relying on the in-depth inheritance and preaching of the Taizhou School, and the township covenant that even in the eyes of later generations, it is more positive than negative, and the people in the village are basically satisfied with all of this.

Although the previous large-scale infrastructure construction really hurt the vitality of the village community, it seems to be able to survive now.How to transform in the future, or something else, this is another matter to be done in the future.

Zhao Liben didn't know that this kind of system of township and village communes was maintained by four legs.

Baojia.

Community warehouse.

rural school.

sanctuary.Or called gatherings.

Among them, Baojia is the administrative organization of the township society.

The Holy Church, or Juhehui, is a grassroots organization. Although it has a strong religious flavor, the effect is really good.

For the rest, the national exams that had to be paid were excluded—Liu Yu did not give them special support, because he felt that this road would not work, and he did not want to set this up as an example.

Both social warehouses and rural schools need money and materials.

The Confucian scholars and gentry who organized this township society were kind and even idealistic.

It should be said that this piece of 24 mu of land has gathered Confucian scholars of idealism and practicality from the entire Jiangsu Province.

However, Jiangsu Province has 12 square kilometers, 48 square miles, and 1 million mu of land rather than arable land.

The same configuration is spread all over the province. If it is necessary for the whole world, there must be at least 200 million to 300 million squires, gentry, Confucian scholars, and students with the same beliefs, the same level, and the same true disregard for money.

In any case, the Confucian scholars who organized this township society really didn't want to make money.

They don't charge rent.

However, even if the rent is not collected, in addition to paying the national tax, the communal warehouses, rural schools, and the large-scale infrastructure construction of the Huainan reclamation area forced by Liu Yu all require manpower, material and financial resources.

10% of the land income is subject to national taxation.

Not much, but the problem is that after the reform of the tax system, silver has to be paid instead of in kind. In the context of Liu Yu’s use of Northeast and Nanyang commodity grains to impact Jiangsu’s grain prices, the actual tax payment amount is around 15%, or even higher.

And because the canal was only built, the capital contractors have not yet eaten up the iron turbines sent to the countryside. They really don't have enough silver in their hands.

12% of the land income should be put into the communal warehouse for emergency needs.

An average of 8% of the land income is needed to maintain the education system envisaged by the Yan-Li school of entering elementary school at the age of 8.

In addition to the infrastructure construction of canals and seawalls in recent years, even if you can choose to pay for it, you still need to spend it, which is almost 15% per year.

In addition, the township promised the township social security class A, and organized the people to repair rivers, press oil, dye cloth, etc., plus water control and embankment repairs, which made the average labor of the township communes about 70 days a year.

There is also the support of widows and widows, and the granting of land to some orphans before they become adults...

Even if it is suppressed to this extent, due to the kindness of the gentry, the lack of land rent and the problem of land occupation by landlords, and the fact that idealistic Confucian scholars gather here and even pay for their own pockets, and the location of the corvee is not far from their doorstep, some people are surprised. The days are still going on.

Under the Baojia System and the Holy Church Organization, based on Baojia and linked by holy learning, the farming aid associations and mutual aid associations were organized, which initially solved the problem of insufficient cattle.

Some idealistic medical students often come here to help villagers treat diseases for free, which also saves a lot of expenses.After all, Li Wei was a medical student back then. In the Yan-Li School, under the Fenzhai education and the so-called "life is the holy way", there are quite a few people who study astronomy, geography, medicine, and agricultural books.

Coupled with the strict land grant system, any form of land trading is strictly prohibited, and the mercenary farming system is also resolutely opposed to ensure that the tillers have their land and that the land will not be annexed.

But that's it.

It's not that they didn't do well, but that the outside world is developing so fast that they can no longer hold on.

They are surrounded by the germ zone of capitalism.Relying on a piece of 24 mu of land, it is impossible to achieve comprehensive self-sufficiency.

This point, Zhao Liben's wife is the deepest feeling.

These Confucian scholars are not bad. In order to reflect the idea that widows, widows, and solitary people have something to support, and also benefited from the help of quasi-religious organizations such as the Holy Church Gathering Association, Zhao Liben did not starve to death with his wife and children during the years when he was away from home.

The 25 mu of land is given to children and widows to be cultivated by others, and half of the income is collected to support the family and go to school.

His wife can only live by weaving.

But the problem is that the ultimate ideal of the village commune is still "men farming and women weaving".

What can his wife weave in exchange for?
Others are men farming and women weaving, but his wife spins and weaves the cloth by herself, so she cannot sell it.And the cotton has to be exchanged with the people in the village.

The merchants outside...the merchants outside don't buy their cloth at all.

Because these cloths are not easy to sell.

The short staples of degraded Asian cotton and the small cloths produced by old-fashioned looms cannot compete with the large cloths woven by iron wheel looms and long-staple cotton yarns in the home textile industry after the Industrial Revolution.

In the extreme perfect state of men farming and women weaving, women are completely attached to men, and widows have no way out.

Ethics and marriage laws are laid out here. The man is not dead, he was just exiled or ran away, and he cannot unilaterally divorce and remarry.

The ownership of Zhao Liben's wife belongs to Zhao Liben, not to herself or her parents.

Male farming is the main occupation.

Women's weaving is a sideline.

This is completely opposite to the situation in the surrounding villages of Nantong, where the sideline business is the main business and the main business is the sideline business.

Zhao Liben's wife really can't sell the cloth for money, and she doesn't grow cotton herself, so the cotton has to be replaced.

It can’t be sold internally, and there is no farmer in the family who can grant [-] acres of land... I can only say that I have a younger brother who values ​​​​the family, relying on the help of the church reunion, and compassion. A man full of Confucian scholars can live.

In other words, this is an experimental field for Confucian scholars, but the normal outside world... or in the budding area of ​​capitalism, go to work in the factory; or, die.

Therefore, Dashun’s industrial revolution, the resilience of the textile industry, or the fact that the squeeze rate can be higher, stems from the fact that Nantong’s side business has changed from a side business to a main business, and from a main business to a side business.

The ones who are most similar to the textile families in Nantong are not the workers in London or Paris handicraft factories, but more like the farm laborers in Ireland—planting potatoes in small plots, and earning wages mainly by growing wheat for noble enclosure farms. Once the potatoes get sick, they will die on a large scale-this is the case in Nantong, where men farm and women weave, but the cultivated land is about the same size as the Irish, or even worse.Plant some food, and most of the monetary income comes from labor.If you are in a hurry, you can do it with some money, and the squeeze from the contractor can be more ruthless.

But since this is the case, if you don’t want to do it, people rush to do what you have. It is naturally difficult for widows who have no land, have children, and cannot accept continued lower wages to support their children.

It's the same all over the world. When British and French factories and factories rose, they gave priority to recruiting people from the surrounding area and owning their own houses to work.Only when manpower is insufficient, workers who need to provide additional expenses for housing are recruited.

Therefore, no matter from which point of view, people like Zhao Liben, who were affected by Liu Yu's reforms, committed crimes, and exiled in a mutant manner, can survive with their wives and children. No matter what, they should thank these people who organized the village association.

This cannot be denied.

According to Liu Yu's method, in the case of Zhao Liben, it is normal for his wife to sell and die, the child was arrested and sent to the reformatory for wicked children, and the second and third younger brothers signed a contract of sale to Nanyang or Ceylon.

Now two of Zhao Liben's original three children are still alive, and his wife is still alive. This is not normal at all.

When Zhao Liben ran away, he had three children.

The eldest is the eldest son.There are two girls left.

When I returned now, the youngest girl died of diphtheria.

The eldest son and eldest daughter are still alive.

As long as the son is alive, he will have 25 mu of land granted.

According to the Three-Character Classic of the Yan-Li School, one enters school at the age of eight, and one must live in a rural school at the age of ten, in order to cultivate "classmate affection".

Food and lodging are all supported by the township education funds collected from the township community, which relieved a lot of pressure on the family.

But Xiangxue's money certainly didn't come out of thin air.

Theoretically, in this situation, we can learn from the early Ming Dynasty, or from the current North Korea.

Township communes generally expropriated cloth and folded colors, so that those who cultivated the land could exchange them for those who specialized in weaving in order to pay "taxes", which promoted the development of commodity exchange.

But after all, this is just a small community, not a country.

There is no need to raise soldiers, nor national defense, and it is useless to expropriate cloth, so widows who can only spin and weave do not get money for their little skills.

This time Zhao Liben came back, and with the money he had exchanged for his life from the riot in the gold mine, he bought some wine and meat, and the family of the former widow had a good meal.

There is no meat, and this is not the surrounding area of ​​the city. Even if pigs are slaughtered, they will not be foolishly chosen to kill pigs in spring and summer when the wild vegetable hogweeds start to sprout. Isn't that a brain problem.

But there is wine, and some salted lard, which is regarded as "canned food" for later generations.

The second brother killed another chicken and got a piece of fish. With the delicious lard, it was a hearty meal.

Picking up the wine bowl and taking a sip, Zhao Liben couldn't help laughing and said, "This is sorghum wine from Kanto. I'll drink this stuff over there. When I come back here, I'll drink this."

The second brother took a sip, wiped the corners of his mouth and said, "How can anyone make wine here now? All they drink is Kanto wine, sorghum wine over there, and sugarcane wine from Nanyang. Lucky this way."

"The reclamation farms in the south are all planting wheat in autumn and cotton in spring, and there is nothing to make wine."

"Hey, I said, brother, I heard that in the Kanto area, you have to hit it with a stick to pee? Is it true?"

Zhao Liben picked up a fish with chopsticks, and skillfully squeezed out the fishbone with his tongue. Thinking that he would take them to Kanto, he couldn't help spit: "Don't listen to their nonsense. How can it be so scary? It's really cold, but if you go to the oil workshop It is not difficult to change a pair of cotton trousers after half a month of working in a pot, burning pot, or on the Liaohe River."

"I'm talking about the second child. When I came back from Songjiang, I saw that people were busy harvesting wheat and growing cotton. Don't you gentlemen don't know agronomy and can't grow cotton? Let's talk about planting some cotton. Isn't cotton better now? Is food expensive?"

His second brother let out a hey, shook his head and said, "It's hard. It's hard. Cotton eats the land. It's not like it hasn't been planted before, but at that time, the old cotton was planted, and now the old cotton is worthless. People come outside to collect cotton , are all newly planted cotton."

"It's not that you can't learn, but that they don't accept ours at all. Because... because something happened."

Speaking of this, Zhao Liben's second brother gritted his teeth.

"Someone used to mix cotton peaches from old cotton seeds and sell them, but they were caught. What they said made sense. They said they wanted to improve cotton seeds, and mixed cotton peaches from old cotton seeds into them to be used as new cotton seeds. The cotton peaches from the cotton seeds are sold. When the time comes, the cotton seeds will be plated out and replanted to make them new or old. It is said that it will directly affect the improvement and replacement of cotton seeds in the world, but we will not accept the cotton here.”

"When the collected lint was ginned and deseed, old seeds and new seeds were mixed together. Xing Guogong said that he had wasted many years of effort and offended a million people, just to change cotton seeds. New seeds , Old seeds were mixed together, and that batch of cottonseeds was all wasted. I heard that because of this, I was furious. I even sent people to the township commune to scold our township chief."

(End of this chapter)