Daming: I help my wife be the empress

When the three were puzzled, Zhu Wei continued: "The salt administration has so many abuses, if we want to rectify it on the basis of the original, how much time, and how much manpower and material resources will the court need to rectify? And it may not be able to rectify well.

Therefore, it is better to start anew, re-establish a new salt administration system, and then replace the original old system. "

After hearing this, Lin Jiading and Liu Zhongzao looked at each other, and they both saw horror in each other's eyes.

Neither of them expected that Auntie Zhu would have such courage and would make such a big move.

But the two of them thought about it and found it quite reasonable.

After all, it is much easier to start a new painting than to change a painting that has already been drawn.

However, thinking about it along this line of thought, the two of them had other worries.

This time it was Lin Jiading who spoke first—he used to be a doctor of the household department, and the most commendable thing in his administration career was that he received a full amount of money from the Jiujiang tax customs when trespassers and thieves ravaged Jingxiang. business tax.

It should be known that the thieves were raging at that time, which made Sichuan and Huguang impassable, and the number of merchant ships that could go to Jiujiang dropped sharply.However, the imperial court ordered an additional tens of thousands of taels of income at the Jiujiang customs office to distribute Zonglu (it should have been issued by the imperial court, but the imperial court had no money).

Lin Jiading realized that under the circumstances at that time, increasing the Jiujiang tariff would inevitably cut off business travel at this tariff, so he wrote a letter to offset the increase in consumption.

After the policy was changed, businessmen from Sichuan and Huguang, Da Yue, took the opportunity to transport goods along the east of the river. The Jiujiang Customs received a full amount of commercial tax, minus the envy and consumption, and the court made a profit instead.

Zhu Yuxi called Lin Jiading to participate in the salt administration this time because he liked his experience in the household department and his relatively excellent economic acumen.

Because he worked in the household department, Lin Jiading has a good understanding of the salt administration.

Although the Ming Dynasty’s policy on salt administration had various drawbacks and it was difficult to completely solve the salt administration problem, it was developed based on the experience of previous dynasties, and it was quite good.

If we overthrow and start over and establish a new salt administration system, how can we be sure that it will be better than the original one?

If it can't be obviously better than before, I'm afraid it will be corrupted again in a year or 20. After all, the salt industry is too big, and everyone who comes into contact with it, from officials to ordinary people, is easily tempted.

When Lin Jiading expressed this idea, Auntie Zhu smiled and said, "Since I have proposed the idea of ​​rebuilding a salt administration system, it can naturally make it better than the original one. One is in terms of system, and the other is in the production of salt. legally."

Both Lin Jiading and Liu Zhongzao showed eagerness to listen—the salt administration issue had embarrassed Ming Dynasty for more than 200 years, and it was hard for them to think of any better system.

As for the superior method of producing salt, they do believe in it.

Your Majesty is able to communicate with future generations, and with the help of the emperor, can there be an immortal method similar to "turning a stone into salt"?
Aunt Zhu said: "Previously, in the Ming Dynasty, we used the policy of inspecting the Ministry of Salt, inspecting the Imperial Envoys of Salt, and supervising and supervising in parallel. However, each had its own shortcomings, or they hindered each other, and it was always difficult to solve the problem of salt administration.

At the end of the Wanli period, the imperial court followed Yuan Shizhen's policy, abolished the "opening the Chinese law", established the "concept law" on the "salt introduction law" of the Song and Yuan Dynasties, and implemented the principles of civil system, commercial collection, commercial transportation, and commercial sales in salt administration. The government supervises the business sales system'.

This policy seems to have greatly alleviated the difficulties of the salt administration and increased the income of the salt class, but now it seems that it has made the salt merchants more powerful, and it is difficult for the court to check and balance. "

Because the salt administration is too important, the emperors and officials will try their best to solve the problems of the salt administration in the past dynasties, and the Shenzhou salt administration has also made continuous progress.

Since the Baozong period of the Ming Dynasty, the salt administration had serious problems. During the Jingtai period, the imperial court began to rectify and deal with it, and even reformed its policies.

Generations of competent officials and officials of the Ming Dynasty worked hard, and finally made an important breakthrough in the last years of Wanli, which is what Aimee Zhu called the "official supervisory merchant sales system".

Even Daiqing later, has been enjoying the dividends of this new policy. It was not until the Daoguang period that it found a way to innovate because of its accumulated drawbacks.

Of course, Dai Qing's innovation of the salt administration is completely incomparable to that of Daming. If the reform strength of Da Ming's salt administration is 5, Dai Qing's is 0, duck's egg.

Even in the late Qing Dynasty and modern times, productivity has been greatly improved, and many advanced concepts from abroad have been introduced, and the Qing Dynasty is still the same...

However, Dai Qing's experience also shows that the "official supervisory business sales law" also has a big problem in salt administration, that is, the salt business is very difficult to control.

This point was actually quite obvious in the late Ming Dynasty.

On the surface, allowing salt households (also known as stove households, fried households) to trade with merchants not only solved the difficulties of the previous Daming salt households, but also made the salt trade more flexible and free.

But in fact, the existence of the "Guangfa" has enabled a group of merchants to monopolize the salt industry-in this case, the salt households in a certain area often become the vassals of a certain merchant, so even if the treatment of salt households is good, they are not too good to be true.

If you encounter a strong and unscrupulous "boss", the situation may be similar to that of a miner in a black mine.

But the salt merchants monopolized the salt industry. For the sake of Lilan, they never estimated whether the common people could afford to eat salt.

Therefore, this method barely increases the country's income from salt lessons, which is actually of great benefit to the people.

In addition, salt merchants often mixed private salt with official salt to seek violence, which in turn made private salt rampant.

Even if the country can control the salt merchants through the guidelines, and even the later generations can rely on the "guidelines" to get a large amount of money from the salt merchants to replenish their blood whenever they are short of money, it actually transfers the financial pressure to the people.

If you ask the salt merchants for money, won’t the salt merchants raise the price of salt and take money out of the pockets of the people?
Therefore, the "government-supervised merchant sales system" seems to be beneficial to the country and the people (Yanhu), but in fact it does not solve the fundamental shortcomings of the salt administration.

Aimee Zhu naturally didn't intend to learn from the belt, but practiced this method and perfected it.

She wants to learn from Daxia where Hao Guangming is.

"Therefore, I do not adopt the 'government-supervised commercial sales system', but plan to implement the policy of 'domestic official approval for commercial sales'."

Domestic official approval commercial sales?

Lin Jiading and Liu Zhongzao couldn't help chewing on these words when they heard the words.

Auntie Zhu explained: "As the name suggests, this strategy is divided into three major joints, the first is domestic production, and the Ming court directly controls the production of salt farms in various places."

Hearing this, Liu Zhongzao thought to himself: Isn't this the same as the previous system of opening Chinese and French kitchen households?
But he refrained in the end - he knew that it was impossible for Auntie Zhu to propose the abolished Chinese law and the Zaohu system.

"That is to set up salt factories in each salt-producing area, and operate in the mode of state-run factories under the Ministry of State. The key point is to adopt new technologies to industrialize the production of table salt.

In this way, not only the efficiency of salt production is greatly improved, but also the cost of salt production will be greatly reduced. At the same time, workers in salt factories will no longer suffer from the hardships of frying salt in the past.

In addition, the court will give relatively high wages to salt workers.Moreover, these salt workers all signed employment contracts with the imperial court, not for life. "

Hearing this, Liu Zhongzao still couldn't hold back, and took advantage of Zhu Yu's pause, and asked, "Your Majesty, won't this lead to the leakage of the new technology of salt making?"

Liu Zhongzao was a little unnatural when he said "new technology", and he was not proficient in using this new vocabulary.

Aunt Zhu laughed and said, "Since the salt workers are hired through a contract, the imperial court will naturally prevent such situations from happening in the contract.

If it involves workers involved in the core production process of new technologies, they not only have to sign confidentiality regulations, but their employment period will last for decades, which is actually similar to lifetime employment. "

Hearing this, Liu Zhongzao nodded his head in contemplation.

Aimee Zhu continued: "In terms of domestic production, or the matter of the salt factory, you can go to Huai'an Mansion later and visit the experimental salt factory of the imperial court, and you will know everything about it.

What I want to talk about next is the two major joints of 'official approval' and 'commercial sales'. "

Auntie Zhu has long intended to take action against the Yanzheng, so naturally she would not wait for Xu Zhihu and others to arrive in Nanjing to start—in terms of production, she had already selected candidates to handle it after the Northern Expedition ended last year.