Xinshun 1730

Chapter 983 Decisive Victory Thousands of Miles Away ([-])

Under the eerie silence, some of these private salt dealers really couldn't stand it, and they said that they would die assholes if they wanted to!

"Duke, it's not that we are boasting, it's that we have the ability, and those who sell official salt have no ability. This is called occupying the latrine without shit, occupying such a good position for nothing, but can't do anything. If they If we have the ability, let’s not sell it to Xinyang, I’m afraid we won’t be able to sell it in Xiangyang.”

Liu Yu said with a smile: "Nonsense, if you sell official salt, you are like a bird. It is a cage. No matter how powerful you are outside, you will become a vulture when you go in. This is the problem of the cage. I really think you Do you really have the ability to turn rivers and seas?"

After speaking, he coughed lightly and called someone. An attendant came in with a pen and paper from outside, sat on the stool below, hung his wrists, and waited for the shorthand of the interrogation.

After a brief communication, Liu Yu began to ask these private salt dealers some key questions that gradually became serious.

Starting from the route of private salt transportation, to the sales amount, support staff, transportation cost, and extra cost of bribery in each county.

From where the private salt comes from, where is the owner of the salt well, Sichuan's salt industry policy, etc., gradually deepened.

Looking at the same problem from different perspectives, you will have completely different feelings.

From the confessions of these private salt dealers, what Liu Yu saw was the war history of the century-old Dashun.

From the tug-of-war in Sichuan that started in the Jiashen year, to the counterattack, and then to regaining the lost land and returning to the old capital.

Then began the Northern Expedition, began to use troops against Mongolia and Liaodong, and then Shaanxi and Shanxi merchants began to rise because of assisting military supplies and logistics.

Then, the north gradually settled down, and a large number of Shaanxi businessmen had experience in doing big business and dealing with the government, and also had experience in running salt in Huai to support military supplies.

At the same time, because of the war, Shaanxi businessmen have accumulated a large amount of capital.

With the end of the Dashun Northern War, Shaanxi merchants crossed the Qinling Mountains with a large amount of capital accumulated during the war, good relations with the government in the past few decades, and the advantages of salt transportation. , into Sichuan.

Those who set up saltworks in Sichuan are small handicraft industries with insufficient capital.

In addition, there is no exercise in the Lianghuai salt industry, and there is no exercise in purchasing military supplies, so it is a little slow to respond to the imperial court's policies.

The businessmen in Shaanxi, on the other hand, seized the opportunity and rose quickly, successfully monopolizing the salt industry in Sichuan.

A brand-new model has been formed, which in Liu Yu's view is full of vitality.

The land of the Sichuan gentry, the capital of Shaanxi, the labor force of Sichuan, and the silver currency of the south of the Yangtze River have successfully merged into one place here, bursting out a huge capital that is as vigorous as British wool and makes landlords and capitalists twist together vitality of doctrine.

The land-owning gentry in Sichuan were happy for the big merchants in Shaanxi to bring capital to invest, because this meant that their land rent would increase.

Some people lease land to Shaanxi capital for a long time and sign contracts for many years.

Some people wisely chose to "share with land", but also brought a part of "mortgage silver".

The so-called "mortgage silver" is a one-time income, which is mortgaged by Shaanxi capital to Sichuan landlords before renting land, so as to ensure that they will not go bankrupt during the lease operation period, and if they go bankrupt, the money will be directly given to the landlord. .

Rather than saying that this is the commercial gap between Sichuan and Shaanxi, it is better to say that it is the commercial gap between Sichuan and Jiangnan.

Because at this time, everyone in the world knows that "Shu people do not know how to trade salt, but only know how to produce salt; Qin people are more skilled in salt industry than those in Jiangnan, and their capital is rich."

It can also be regarded as the loser in the competition between the Lianghuai area and Huizhou merchants. When they came here, they won the original local small handicraftsmen and local business gangs.

And this is actually a special hidden financial transfer of Dashun.

To drill a high-quality salt well, to ensure sufficient natural gas and rich brine, the cost may be as high as 4 to [-] taels of silver.

Wells with a depth of several hundred meters are not capital that ordinary practitioners can afford.

And where did the capital of these businessmen in Shaanxi come from?
Earned from the battlefield in the north.

Where did the money spent on the northern battlefield come from?
The imperial court received it from Jiangnan.

It should be said that war and water transportation are the few means of state intervention and financial transfer in Dashun.

It's just that with the end of the Northern War, Liu Yu had to find other ways to transfer Dashun's capital to remote areas.

There are two factors in Liu Yu's intention to ask Shi Shi to go all the way to catch the private salt dealers.

The first one is Xinyang and other places, which are remote areas of the Huaibei salt area, where they are most likely to be blocked by Huainan salt merchants.

Liu Yu wasn't worried about the surrounding areas of the Huaibei salt area.There will be no fools who will collect unlimited income from the salt field when they play blocking salt. That is not because the family has money, but because there is a Potosi Silver Mountain in the family.

This kind of remote area is the main battlefield where "war" may occur, and he needs some "elite" private salt dealers to be "thugs".

The second is how to view the Dashun reform this time.

In Liu Yu's view, this is tinkering.

He had long thought that Dashun would end sooner or later, and tinkering would be useless.

All that he asked and did was to dig a grave for Dashun.

It's just that when digging the grave, we should consider making Dashun, the old mother, healthier, and the accumulated new era stronger, so as not to cause one dead body and two dead.

There is no doubt that the new age can only be conceived in the body of the old age.

So what does Liu Yu think of the salt government reform plan mentioned in the court this time?Basically, I feel two words: nonsense.

Since it is necessary to change, directly move the Lianghuai salt area.

Also because the canal was abandoned, it was necessary to redefine the salt areas in Shanxi, Shandong, and Changlu.

And... issues such as repairing the water conservancy of the Huaihe River.

In fact, the salt reform that Liu Yu wants is to let the Lianghuai salt area directly give up Hubei and Hunan, and give all the salt to Sichuan.

Anyway, if you want to mobilize the Lianghuai salt merchants, it is better to make more noise at once.

Water transportation, salt workers... These are not the economic pillars of northern Jiangsu in Liu Yu's plan.

He wants to directly abolish the entire canal economic belt, from Huai'an to Yangzhou, all abolished.

Northern Jiangsu still serves as a source of raw materials for southern Jiangsu, growing cotton and grain, and serving as an economic vassal and "provider of cheap labor" for southern Jiangsu.

There are several reasons for this consideration.

He is not very interested in Sichuan salt or Lianghuai salt.

But he knows that the Sichuan salt well model requires tens of thousands of taels of silver to develop a new well, which is a natural capital-gathering industry.

This also means that the steam engine can be applied in the salt well area.

At least, it can replace the horse-drawn winch. There are supporting tools in the local area. The steam engine is only a power source, replacing the power of the horse.

Taking advantage of this wave of selling Hubei and Hunan to Sichuan salt and ensuring a large amount of capital investment, the steam engine will be launched.

Who said that the use of steam engines must first focus on the textile industry?

At the same time, there is no doubt that salt well technology can be used for low-efficiency oil recovery.Wells of more than [-] meters can be drilled, and with the accumulation of technology, oil fields in Shaanxi can also develop. The development of the glass manufacturing industry, the development of the cetacean fat industry, and the labor-intensive demand for lighting in the salt well area have made the extension The oil can be put on the agenda.Gasoline and diesel are all thrown away, and now the most valuable oil is kerosene.

It is equivalent to Liu Yu's status and influence in the feudal dynasty, by cutting the meat of Lianghuai and giving Sichuan salt an opportunity to conjure up a market in the two lakes out of thin air, so that part of the new investment can be directly applied to the steam engine.

But for South Jiangsu Huaibei.

In Liu Yu's view, the canal has been abandoned. In fact, the decline of Huai'an, a city ranked in the top eight in the country at this time, is already inevitable.It is estimated that 20 years after the abolition of the canal, not to mention the top eight, the top eighteen are probably gone.

At the same time, the Huaihe River flows into the sea, and the irrigation area is being reorganized...

And the most important point is that the canal has been abolished, and the unspoken rule of protecting the north but not the south has been cancelled. Dashun already has the prerequisites for letting the Yellow River flow northward to solve the flood in Huaihe and Huaihe Rivers.

Some minor problems, such as the drainage of the canal to flush the fields during the rainy season, and the problem of water blocking the canal during the dry season, were all solved with the rise of shipping.

In other words, the agricultural conditions in northern Jiangsu are about to improve.

Huainan uses the method of boiling salt, and requires a large amount of woodland to provide firewood, which can be reclaimed as land.

The Huai River flows into the sea, and the Huai River irrigation area is directly repaired, making the conditions in the Huai River irrigation area fully capable of developing agriculture.

There are many suitable cotton producing areas in China, but many of them are theoretical, meaningless to the development of the light industrial revolution in southern Jiangsu.

For example, the Western Regions, that is really a good place to grow cotton, but what about the eggs at this time?

Henan, Shandong, is also a top-quality cotton producing area.

But the problem is that it is the main grain-producing area in the north of Dashun, and the huge population pressure, how can it be possible to encourage cotton planting?
The Northeast is sparsely populated, but cotton cannot be grown there.

Subei does not have this problem.

After the Yellow River went south in the Song Dynasty, the northern Jiangsu area has always been a food shortage area, and almost every few years needs relief, relief, and rice relief.

In this "broken place" at this time, even a county in Henan was reluctant to replace the "poor northern Jiangsu" except for salt. The court did not consider food security concerns at all.

Liu Yu wants to say: In order to develop industry, let Henan grow cotton.

It is estimated that it can make people spray to death. From the emperor to the officials, everyone has to spray wildly. This is the way to die.

But let’s say, let Subei grow cotton.

As long as the cotton in northern Jiangsu can be exchanged for rice in Nanyang, the imperial court has to agree with it, thinking that there will be no need for two to three million taels of relief every year.

Moreover, the special situation in the northern Jiangsu region makes it the only place suitable for large-scale capital investment in land operations in Dashun's Tianxiaguinai region if the reform continues.

Three reasons.

First, because Huainan needs to cook salt.

Therefore, large tracts of land covered with grass and trees, especially some barren beaches, were strictly controlled by the imperial court.

Reclamation is prohibited.

The purpose is to cook salt in Huainan as fuel.

And Liu Yu is using a two-pronged strategy to directly turn these lands into reclamation.

Sichuan Salt seized the two lakes and let Huainan salt decline. This is one way; the other is to promote the sun-dried salt method. The sun-dried salt method can cooperate with salt tickets, but it is not easy to cooperate with Yanyin. The system reform is regarded as a software update. Preparing for hardware updates - this is the uniqueness of Dashun, soft first and then hard, it is difficult to do hard first and then soft.

With these two tricks, even if the Huainan salt area is not abandoned, the existence of a large number of grasslands and forest areas will have little meaning.

All can be reclaimed.

Second, small agricultural areas and large-scale land reclamation areas invested by capital do not overlap and do not affect each other.

Many wastelands can only be profitable with large-scale capital investment.

Small farmers will have to run away after three years.

For example, these saline-alkali tidal flats can grow cotton.However, it is not the method of small farmers.

Planting one mu of cotton requires one mu of grass, one mu of rotation cropping, and one mu of raising land.

For example, cotton is planted in land A, grass is planted in land B, and grass from land B is used to cover land A to prevent saline-alkali phenomenon caused by sun exposure and water transpiration.

Land C is planted with alfalfa, broad beans, broccoli, etc. Don't leave it empty to prevent the land from becoming salty.

And Dingdi is the grass that will cover the cotton field in the second year.

This is an old experience in the Huaibei area, but it is obviously not something that small farmers can play around with.

It takes three years at most for small-scale farming. The land becomes salinized and loses its fertility, and nothing will grow.

Capital investment is different. Manpower is cheap, and land is also cheap. It is a barren beach. South Jiangsu is about to usher in a new wave of export peaks. It is the time when cotton is urgently needed. How can we not make money?

The third is the use of steam engines.

Water conservancy facilities also need power to lift water.

Large-scale farmland gives the owner the motivation to improve and the capital to improve.

Even if it is to dig a canal, it is impossible for a small farmer to dig a canal.Either owned collectively or owned by capital.

With the disintegration of the salt industry and the canal industry in northern Jiangsu, a large number of unemployed people can provide cheap labor.

If you don't want to go to the plantations in Nanyang, you can stay in northern Jiangsu to pick cotton, or go to Songjiang Prefecture as a bonded laborer and work in the factory until you die.

Therefore, Liu Yu's thoughts on this salt industry reform are quite different from others.

For example, the problem of "Sichuan salt invading Chu" that has been a headache for the court all day long, others always think about how to put an end to it, Liu Yu's idea is to directly transfer Chu to Sichuan, collect salt tax in Yangzhou, and in a sense another time and space What is the difference between the salt tax collected in Kuizhou, an old revolutionary base in Dashun?

Let the Chu land belong to Sichuan Salt, so there is no word "invasion"?Similar to the idea that if you don’t give money, it’s not considered a sale. Isn’t this problem solved?

Originally, the two lakes had to be allocated to the two Huaihe Rivers because of the importance of the canal and the salt industry, which was related to Dashun's finances.

Now that the canal has been replaced by sea transportation, and emergency finance has been replaced by foreign trade, it is still necessary to return Hunan and Chu to the Huaihe River and Huaihe River. Isn’t this the standard thinking of seeking a sword?

Let the salt cooked by burning firewood in Huainan flow upstream to Wuhan; to compete with the salt boiled with natural gas and the Sichuan salt left behind.Where does the confidence come from?
The prerequisite material basis for this kind of self-confidence is a ship that can carry goods even with black smoke, against the current and against the wind.But obviously, there is no such thing now.

As long as there is no thing that can swim upstream with black smoke, it is obvious that there is no salt tax.

With the end of Dashun's war with Junggar and the completion of border surveys with Russia, it was inevitable for Shaanxi capital to enter Sichuan.Jiangnan is no better than Huizhou merchants. Could it be that they invest in planting trees in Shaanxi?Where not to go to Sichuan?At this time, you need to push, not push back.

(End of this chapter)