The Great Industrial Ming Dynasty Started from Beiping

Chapter 99 The Beginning of a Great Era

Wansan was disappointed, he didn't wait for the little nobleman today.

Zhu Gaochi and Zhu Di went to inspect the engineering team in the morning, and received high praise from the leaders of the guards.

Zhu Di had a bright face and was very pleased, smiling all the way.

Of course Zhu Gaochi would not miss such a good opportunity.

Followed Zhu Di back to the palace and put forward new ideas.

"In the future, the coal mines in Fangshan and Xishan can directly lead to Beiping City and the briquette workshops around Beiping Prefecture, without the trouble of transportation."

"The coke refinery is on the right track, and the output is gradually increasing, which solves the problem of industrial coal use."

"The prosperity of the coal mining industry is about to enter the fast lane, but coal mine owners cannot be left alone and need to be controlled."

Hearing this, Zhu Di immediately had a headache.

Zhu Di is no stranger to the boss' routines. Today, after finally being happy for a while, he smelled the familiar smell again.

Although he is a prince, he did not open the Beiping Mansion.

He also has a lot of rules and regulations.

"Boss, do you know anything about the Chief Secretary?"

"Compete with the people for profit and occupy the land." Of course Zhu Gaochi knew it, and said the two biggest things.

"Do you have someone in the chief secretary?" Zhu Di was not surprised that the boss had never heard of it, but he said it so clearly, Zhu Di guessed.

It's not something that needs to be concealed, Zhu Gaochi told it bluntly.

"Su Guan, the former ambassador of the Metallurgical Institute, his son got along well with him. He was recently transferred to the Experience Department of the Chief Secretary and told his son something."

"This person has some vision."

Zhu Di praised.

His news is naturally the most well-informed group of people. It won't be long before the imperial court will officially issue a decree to cancel the official railway.

From now on, only Mintie Railway will be available in Ming Dynasty.

Unless there is an urgent and important situation that requires a large amount of iron, the imperial court appoints full-time officials to conscript civilian iron for centralized production.

In ordinary years and months, according to the proportion, in the form of taxation, the objects are collected from the civil railways.

Not to mention the rest, the Iron Smelter will become Qingshui Yamen.

The seven-rank ambassador of the Iron Smelter will be reduced to the low-ranking ninth-rank official, which is equivalent to going to the end. On this kind of eve, being able to jump out in advance is equivalent to escaping a catastrophe.

Zhu Gaochi didn't tell Zhu Di, but he revealed something to Su Guan.

Su Guan thought that he had learned the news in advance relying on the news from the palace, but Zhu Di naturally knew that he knew the shitty news.

Zhu Gaochi only knew it based on what happened in history.

He couldn't explain the source of the news to Zhu Di, so he didn't mention his role.

But after all, they are ordinary officials of the Experience Department, and Zhu Di will not pay attention to them. The difference in status between the two is too great to get along with each other.

"It's not just about the ironworks, but also about the chief envoy. The entire Beiping Third Division will be mobilized, and people's hearts will be unstable, so we dismissed it easily without causing any trouble."

"But you have to know that the owner of the coal mine, one or two people can't make a big deal, but the relationship inside is complicated. If they are really combined, they are not a small threat."

Zhu Gaochi nodded.

He knew what Zhu Di meant.

Zhang Dehui, for example, naturally has connections behind him.

These relationships will definitely not be able to touch the Yan Palace, and even if the Yan Palace stretches out its hand, it can crush them to death.

But many ants kill elephants.

One or two can't threaten the Yanwang Mansion, but if the owners of the coal mines all resist and the networks behind each family work together, it will be hard to say.

Although the vassal kings are all princes, their strengths are as different as cloud and mud.

Zhu Di was able to say the same thing in Beiping City, and he was able to speak loudly in the guards, because Zhu Di had the right.

If you have the status of an empty vassal king, no one can do anything about it, but people can ignore it, ignore it, or ignore it.

Qin Wangfu is a lesson from the past.

In the past, he was the No.1 feudal lord, able to intervene in everything, with power over personnel, finance, and military.Now he is nothing more than an idler bearing the title of King Qin.

Without real power, what is the use of being an emperor.

"Although the matter of the chief secretary has been suppressed, it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. If new things are added, it may become more serious. In the end, the gains outweigh the losses, and we have to make concessions."

"But the coal mine has a complicated relationship and involves people's livelihood, and the profit is not big. That's why the imperial court allowed the people to open mines and was unwilling to be governed by the government."

Zhu Di taught.

Zhu Gaochi did not deny Zhu Di's statement.

In the early Ming Dynasty, the coke industry was not prosperous, and coal was not fully used by the people, and the traditional fuel for heating and cooking was still maintained.

Therefore, the imperial court does not intervene very much, and the mountain farms and coal yards are all controlled by the people.

The imperial court is also tax-free.

This policy has favorably promoted the development of the industry.

In the middle and late Ming Dynasty.

With the prosperity of the market in all walks of life, the coal industry has also developed by leaps and bounds, so Emperor Wanli set his sights on this industry.

Officials from the landlord class have long eaten up this industry, so they are naturally unwilling to give up profits.

Of course, Emperor Wanli would not admit defeat. The officials disagreed, so they sent eunuchs to collect mining taxes.

The eunuchs acted violently, and the merchants had the support of officials, so they transferred the conflict to the miners.

Don't you collect taxes?Then I will increase the workload of the miners, reduce the wages of the miners, etc., and make a lot of trouble.

Miners are originally a vulnerable group. Wherever they have suffered a blow, they will lose their source of life all of a sudden.

Under the impetus of all parties, the rebellion rose.

The results are well known.

The emperor was so disgraced by defeat that he even invited cabinet members to say that he regretted it face to face, which was to expose the matter.

Later Wanli's grandson, Emperor Tianqi.

he is very smart.

Originally, he relied on the officials to govern smoothly, so he trusted the officials, but soon found that something was wrong with the officials.

Compared with his father, Emperor Tianqi had a darker belly, and he created a group of thugs, and brought out the eunuchs to deal with officials.

Among them is the matter of the mine.

The eunuch party did not collect taxes, directly occupied the coal yard, and sent the owner of the coal yard to prison and ransacked his home.

Part of the money obtained was given to Emperor Tianqi, and part of it was divided among the eunuchs, and the losers were the mine owners and officials.

The method was much more violent than that of Emperor Wanli, but no miners rebelled.

In short.

In the early Ming Dynasty, no tax was collected because the coal mining industry really shouldn’t be taxed.

but.

Zhu Gaochi has changed the coal industry in Beiping, and the situation has changed.

Not collecting taxes now is not only a bad thing, but it will also create an uncontrolled interest group.

With the scale of industrial development, the strength of this interest group will become stronger and stronger, and no one can deal with it.

Because the core of the first industrial revolution was the coal industry.

The victory of the industrial revolution is also the victory of the coal industry.

The owner of the coal mine in Daming was also a landlord in the first place.

When they combined, Zhu Gaochi felt that if he didn't control him in advance, he would have to be controlled by them in the future.

"Does father know how many loads of firewood the people in the city use every year?"

"Forty to fifty loads."

Zhu Di said lightly, trying to control the complacency on his face.

Zhu Gaochi touched his nose.

As expected of a monarch who proposes to make the people live a well-off life, he really knows the people's livelihood, and he underestimated Zhu Di.

According to Zhu Gaochi’s understanding, a family uses firewood for cooking and heating every year, and uses two to three tons a year, with an average of 45 dan, and each tan is 590 catties. However, the calculation method of Daming is different from that of later generations. More than 120 grams, and the weight of future generations is [-] catties per load.

"A load of firewood is 120 catties, and it is estimated to use 45 loads of firewood a year. There are three to 40 households in Beiping Prefecture. Based on 35 households, it is nearly 19 million catties a year."

"Boss, a load of firewood is one hundred catties." Zhu Di reminded.

Zhu Gaochi did not change his words, and still said: "The population of Shandong is six times that of Beiping."

"What's the matter with Shandong?" Zhu Di somewhat understood the eldest son's thoughts, but the eldest son suddenly mentioned Shandong, which made him a little surprised.

"Because my son has already started laying commercial roads to Shandong."

"When did you start selling firewood?"

Zhu Di laughed.

Shandong is adjacent to Beiping Mansion. The seventh younger brother Qi Wang was originally granted to Qingzhou, Shandong, and later left the town of Kaiping. The tenth younger brother Lu King died of illness, and the youngest son inherited the throne.

He knew that the eldest son was eyeing Shandong, so he deliberately joked.

Such an attitude also showed that Zhu Di didn't think there was any difficulty in Shandong, and that someone would offend the business of King Yan's Mansion.

Zhu Gaochi ignored it, but continued to speak seriously, which made Zhu Di feel very boring, and the boss became more and more serious.

"Last year, Beiping levied 35 catties of iron, a 240-to-[-] levy, and the folks' iron production was roughly more than five million catties."

"One catty of iron needs seven catties of charcoal, and one catty of charcoal needs five catties of firewood, which is more than [-] million catties of firewood a year."

"However, many people in Beiping are still reluctant to use iron, and the farm tools they use are mostly wooden."

"Why? Not because of insufficient iron ore production, but because of insufficient fuel, so production is bottlenecked."

"The 19 catties of firewood used by the people every year deprive iron factories of the fuel they need, and iron ore in many coal yards is piled up like a mountain, so that there is nowhere to put it, and it is regarded as a pest."

"That's why the price of ironware remains high. A catty of iron is as high as one cent and six cents. Iron is only used for a plowshare, and ten catties costs one or two or six cents. How can the common people afford it?"

"The appearance of the steam engine pump solved the bottleneck of coal mine output."

"The emergence of briquettes has promoted the large-scale use of coal among the people."

"The success of the coke smelting plant has broken through the fuel limitation of the iron smelting industry, and will not fall into low production due to being trapped by fuel. With the high production and the accompanying decline in iron prices, Beiping is about to usher in a big explosion. .”

Zhu Gaochi said firmly.

If he develops soap, it just replaces the traditional saponin, earning only the market that originally belonged to saponin, and the market size has not changed.

But coal is different.

Fuel constraints, beyond the quadrant of people.

The importance of fuel is even more related to the progress of civilization.

Since people learned to use fire, in the long history of thousands of years, it has always belonged to the firewood era, that is, most of the firewood.

Until the advent of coke technology.

Not only the West began to switch to coal as fuel, but also used coal in large quantities, including the late Ming Dynasty, and several major historical events occurred around coal.

So call it the age of coal.

Then came the age of oil and gas, the age of electricity.

It can be seen that the progress of civilization has changed around the change of fuel.

Beiping City is Zhu Gaochi's pilot.

The prelude has already begun, and it is natural to control this power in our hands, and then spread it to the surrounding areas to gradually industrialize Beiping.

(End of this chapter)