national surname chiming

Chapter 139

Shen Shuren knocked on the mountain in Daye County, sorting out all the greedy people who might use him to promote new crop seed loans in the future to enrich themselves.

By the way, some low-level officials and conscientious squires who are relatively realistic, down-to-earth and capable have been selected for temporary promotion and reuse.

After this model has been successfully implemented, all the counties are left to copy it. Anyway, Shen Shuren has already made enough unannounced visits and investigations in the name of playing too much. Now that he has made a sudden "look back" to sort it out, it can basically be rectified.

During this process, Shen Shuren also figured out a rule of discovering talents from the grassroots level—generally, talents left over from places with relatively reliable character and the most available talents are often selected as a scholar, because they hate studying the Four Books and Five Classics and feel hypocritical The ambition is not here, and then I went to be intoxicated with miscellaneous studies.

If you are willing to bow your head for fame and fortune, and feel that some knowledge is hypocritical, you will resolutely refuse to learn it and learn what you love to learn. This kind of person is called not forgetting the original intention.

No matter what the original intention is, it is better than bearing humiliation and hypocrisy.If, like this Song Mingde from Daye County, his original intention was to learn geography, geomantic omen, and prospecting, then that would be the best, and he would just be able to be used by Shen Shuren.Even if the original intention is only ancient Chinese and philosophy, it is still very good to be like Gu Yanwu.

Originally, when Shen Shuren's status was not high enough, he couldn't use people indiscriminately like this, and give temporary assignments to those who didn't meet the qualifications for fame.Now that he is the censor of Daotai and Qiandu, his wrist is a little tougher. As long as the governor doesn't make trouble, no one can question him.

More than half a month passed quickly, and time entered October in a blink of an eye.

Shen Shuren has also thoroughly sorted out the agricultural administration work in the counties of Wuchang and Hanyang.While promoting the planting of new crops next year, with the arrival of the winter slack season, the counties are also organized to build water conservancy projects, renovate wetlands, dig silt polders, and promote the cultivation of tilapia and Qingjiang fish.

The manpower for these tasks, Shen Shuren, did not bother the two masters, and directly let the enlightened country gentry and local officials who were screened out to help him promote the new species of seed loans handle it by the way. If there is any obstruction, you can directly report to the capital Yushi Yamen.

These are all measures that benefit the country and the people, and have not directly harmed anyone's interests, and it is reasonable to say that no one will desperately obstruct them.

If you want to talk about harming interests, it is nothing more than the noble gentry who were originally qualified to handle these things, but now they are not qualified to handle them, and there is less opportunity for money and food to be rewarded, so it is inevitable to secretly resent——

Any dynasty would spend a lot of money and food to levy corvee, even if it was to repair water conservancy for the common people.

Originally, the poor would eat only one meal a day after October when the farms became slack. In a disaster year, the only meal would be porridge and wild vegetables to save a little food, and then they would lie down for a few more hours a day. Reduce caloric expenditure.

If you participate in fish farming in polder digging, you must at least ensure that you eat two meals a day, and it should not be too thin, and the food consumption will increase a lot.

Food can be bought directly from local gentry who have surplus food, but the money must be advanced by the government first.Then find the surrounding gentry who benefited from irrigation after the repair of water conservancy.

The newly acquired polders and fishponds are counted as unowned official land and included in the local military settlements. The military households are responsible for farming and breeding.

Generally speaking, the apportioned money and grain cannot cover the full amount of the project funds for the part of the people's land where the surrounding irrigation conditions have been improved. It is considered good if it can cover more than half, and there will still be the problem of exploiting the people——

After the water conservancy is built, the advantage is that it will take three to five years or even seven or eight years to pay back the capital, which will help the harvest every year in the future.However, the project funds are a one-time expenditure, and the government does not advance funds, and the poorer squires will not be able to make ends meet.

Therefore, half of these water conservancy expenditures have to be paid by the government immediately, and then the government will get the newly added polders and fish ponds, which will slowly pay back in the next five or six years.

With Shen Shuren's financial resources, such a large-scale construction that benefits the country and the people will be difficult to turn around.Moreover, it is impossible for him to rely on the Shen family's own money to provide financing on a large scale, and he cannot spend money as an official without restraint—

In the past two years when Shen Shuren was an official, he also lost money every year, but the scale was basically controlled at the level of 10 taels per year on the bright side, and the gray expenses of buying officials and giving gifts were not counted.

After it is clear that the subsidy loses more than 10,000+ taels per year, the Shen family will not be able to support it, and it will be easy to be attacked by others.

After being unable to continue to rely on family subsidies, at least not entirely on subsidies, Shen Shuren could only continue to use his brains from the local fiscal revenue.

Those who work on irrigation and water conservancy work during the slack season in winter may not all be local people, and a considerable part of them are troops from the guard.Let the army of the guards work, and of course the expenses must be paid directly by the government.

Shen Shuren's own [-] soldiers are following the route of elite soldiers, but the three guards that Zuo Liangyu left for him are mostly fat, and at most they can only be "relatively young and strong", and there is no guarantee of physical strength and martial arts. up.

Shen Shuren let these fish bellies idle, and instead of wasting food and directly training the military discipline, it is better to spend the same time and physical strength and let them be "engineers" for a winter, which can also exercise the physical strength and discipline of the troops.

So, Shen Shuren turned his mind to the misappropriation of "Lijin".

The income of the Wuchang-Huangzhou tax customs that he controls is less than 30 taels a year. In fact, the daily expenses of raising more than 2 troops are already stretched, and other financial resources are needed to supplement more soldiers.

But Shen Shuren paid more attention to the breakthrough of the system. After sorting out the current situation, he found that the current imperial court regulations still strictly stipulate the use of "Lijin" retained in the local area.

Lijin can only be used to directly pay military salaries, or to replace "training salaries" as "drilling expenses subsidies", but the relevant regulations of the Ministry of Households have never allowed lijin to be used for "corvée expenses for military households in local guards", let alone As "employing people to bear corvee expenses".

These clauses are not to say that they are difficult to implement. If a few more private goods clauses were included when the lijin reform was passed, Chongzhen might have passed the instructions in a daze.

But at the time, firstly, I didn’t expect so much, and secondly, I felt that it would be better to ask the emperor to allow Lijin to be a pilot first, and the others can be done slowly, so I didn’t add it.

If he wanted to make a breakthrough now, he would definitely have the absolute support of the Governor of Huguang, and Fang Kongxuan needed to nod.

After Shen Shuren arranged for the winter water conservancy corvee, looking at the shortfall in the account, he became more and more aware of the need to meet Governor Fang again as soon as possible and have a deep talk.

Even if something happens in the future and people accuse the Huguang local bureaucrats of further warlordization, it is better for Fang Kongxuan to carry the blame.

……

In mid-October, the work of persuading farmers and water conservancy parties was initially arranged, and only one problem of cash and grain turnover was left.

Shen Shuren did his part, and embarked on a journey to Jiangling County, Jingzhou Prefecture, to visit Shangguan again.He has already accumulated a lot of affairs that need to be supported by Shangguan, and he needs to solve them all at once.

The last time I came to Jiangling was half a year ago.

At that time, he had only five or six thousand soldiers available (another two thousand were restrained by Lin Chengcheng at the time), and he had to travel hundreds of miles a day and ride horses to carry ten times as many soldiers as He Jin and He Yilong arrived one after another. The inner thighs were worn out, so I hurried to Fang Kongzhang for help.

Exactly half a year later, Shen Shuren's direct army has expanded to 4000 people, of which more than 1 are well-disciplined elite soldiers, and there are at least thousands of veteran bandits who have been soldiers for many years.

In addition to the direct line troops, the three guards left by Zuo Liangyu also have a total of 5000 people. Although they are not full now, after recruiting enough in the future, Shen Shuren's total army size will reach [-].

This is about five times more troops than when they came to ask for help in half a year, which can be called a miraculous speed.

With troops at hand, Shen Shuren certainly didn't have to be as embarrassed as last time.

He directly chose to follow the Yangtze River and take a big boat from Wuchang to Jiangling.

From Wuchang to Jiangling, the straight-line distance is only four hundred miles.However, the waterway of the Yangtze River is tortuous, and it has to go south to Baling County (Yueyang), the capital of Yuezhou, and pass through the mouth of Dongting Lake. Therefore, the total mileage of the waterway is more than double that of the straight-line distance, which is more than 800 miles.

Shen Shuren should also be inspecting his territory, and by the way, deeply understand the people's sentiments in various places, and then inspect the implementation of the lijin banknote customs at Yuezhou Prefecture, and get a feel for the bottom line of his colleagues——

After the implementation of the lijin policy, all trans-provincial trades will have to pay lijin business tax, but in fact, when the pilot provinces set up banknote customs, it is impossible to really set up checkpoints on the provincial boundaries, because many provincial boundaries are remote and dangerous place.

Take the border between Huguang and Guangdong as an example, it is between the Nanling Mountains, and the cost of setting up a tax card there is too high.

Therefore, when the imperial court legislated at the beginning, it also allowed the banknotes to be moved to places with convenient transportation as appropriate, as long as it was not taxed repeatedly.

Fang Kongxuan, the governor, obviously did too poorly.He has two places on hand to set up limoguan, one is for trade with Sichuan, and the other is for trade with Guangdong and Guangxi.

There is no way to connect with Sichuan, so it can only be set up in Yiling, because Zhang Xianzhong is entrenched in Shennongjia and the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River. In the second half of this year, the income of this road will further drop sharply, and there will be a lot fewer businessmen going out of Sichuan to do business.

Therefore, Fang Kongxue’s main sources of business taxes can only be counted on Huguang and Guangdong and Guangxi in the south. However, the number of business travelers connecting Guangdong and Guangxi to the Pearl River and Xiangjiang River through the Lingqu Canal is not large, and it is difficult to collect. Set up the banknotes in Baling, Yuezhou Prefecture——

All merchant ships coming from the south and entering the Yangtze River from the mouth of Dongting Lake are deemed to be subject to tax.

This move has obviously attracted a lot of criticism and resistance. After all, Hunan and Hubei are now a province. The products from the south may not be from Guangdong, but more than half of them are from Hunan.Now that things from Hunan go out of the lake and into the Yangtze River, it is considered to be cross-provincial, and the scope of being searched has obviously expanded several times.

When Shen Shuren passed through Yuezhou, he was almost inspected by the tax office sent by Fang Kongzhang to collect taxes. After checking the seal and confirming that he was an official ship, he came to Jiangling to visit the Shangguan, and there was no cargo, so the tax officer let him go.

After passing the customs, Shen Shuren also had to sigh with emotion that the atmosphere of the end times was indeed getting stronger and stronger. The local feudal officials, one by one, had already started to use all means to make money in order to train and equip more troops.

After all, there are only two years and a few months left before Chongzhen's death.

Shen Shuren was originally afraid that Fang Kongxue was a gentleman of morality, who would be strong without desires, and would not be able to communicate well.Since he also needs to make money to expand the army, it is easy to encourage it.

(End of this chapter)