I'm sure of the prosperous age of Kangxi and Qianlong!

Chapter 341 The Emperor also eats salted fish
The advent of the Jenny machine could not completely revolutionize the textile industry, and it had to be matched with the shuttle.

It can be understood that the shuttle speeds up the weaving efficiency and turns roving into fine yarn, while the Jenny machine simply provides coarse cotton yarn.

However, the shuttle structure is much simpler than the Jenny machine. Zhu Yijiong just described it to Huang Wu, and Huang Wu, who was already experienced, made the finished product in less than two days.

The cotton spinning industry of the Ming Dynasty would definitely be impacted if these two things were put into use, but they would never be violently resisted by cotton spinners like in Britain.

Without him, the national conditions would be different.

Britain was first of all a bourgeois country, and at this time it had completed its bourgeois revolution.

Moreover, its land area is small and sparsely populated.

Therefore, there is not much arable land that can be used to grow food, and it relies entirely on dumping overseas colonies and frantically plundering the wealth of the colonies to support the mainland.

This also means that the majority of the UK population as a whole are workers.

The Jenny machine can cooperate with the shuttle to greatly improve cotton spinning efficiency.

Inevitably, most of the cotton spinning workers' jobs will be lost in the short term.

It was not until Britain launched the Industrial Revolution and built a large number of cotton spinning factories that this situation eased.

On the Chinese side, not only is the political system still in the feudal imperial system, but to put it bluntly, China at this stage is indeed considered to be vast in land and rich in resources compared with other countries in the world.

The cotton textile industry was only tenable in the Jiangnan region, and due to the court's deliberate control, its actual scale was never large.

It was not until the past year that food became abundant that food was gradually released.

Moreover, due to the traditional concept that it is inconvenient for women to appear in public, there are not many cotton spinning workshops in the entire Jiangnan region.

Even if the imperial court promoted Jenny machines and shuttles, it would not have a drastic impact on the textile industry.

Compared with the improved textile efficiency and production capacity, it is not worth mentioning and is a completely acceptable price.

Today's Ming Dynasty is no better than the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and opening up the sea means a vast overseas market.

Even if they don't engage in colonial dumping, they can still obtain high profits for the Ming Dynasty.

However, it was limited to the Ming Dynasty. If it were the original Manchu Qing Dynasty, even if someone made a Jenny machine, it would be basically useless.

The country is so closed off. Is there any point in increasing your production capacity? Do you produce and sell yourself?

……

Zhoushan waters.

Now it has become the Zhoushan Fishing Ground of the Ming Dynasty, which was also known as China's Four Major Fishing Grounds in later generations.

Alongside this is the newly controlled Bohai Sea, which is temporarily on the front line and therefore is not included in the Daming Fishing Grounds.

Nowadays, in the Ming Navy, except for the ships that transport food and even fight troops on the front line, the rest of the fleet have all changed their jobs and become fishermen.

This is normal. Daming has been short of food all year round.

Fish caught along the coast can not only fill the food gap, but also take the opportunity to run in with new and old navy soldiers.

These recruits are said to be new recruits, and many of them are coastal people recruited in the past two years.

In water combat, they are no worse than the veterans of the Ming Navy. They are also proficient in fishing skills and their grasp of coastal waters is no worse than them.

In this way, allowing them to take the idle navy warships for fishing can be said to be a good use of them.

"Set up the net!"

Following the shouts of a sailor from southern Fujian, the fishing nets hanging on the ship suddenly tightened.

Many fish on the top layer were squeezed out of the water in an instant, struggling and moving due to loss of water.

There were more than thirty warships nearby, all of them tightening their fishing nets very skillfully.

"Send the order and let the whole army return!"

Seeing that more than thirty warships under his command had closed their nets, the naval officer of this fleet put out the Nangan cigar in his mouth and shouted an order.

More than thirty Ming army ships dragged the fishing nets all the way to the coast to know how many fish they had caught.From the late Ming Dynasty to modern times, winter fishing along the coast was basically like this. Trawling was used to catch fish, and the amount of fish caught was not known until it was dragged to the shore.

However, later generations improved the trawling technology and combined it with seine nets to increase the amount of fish caught.

Zhu Yijiong didn't know these things, and he didn't even understand fishing techniques at all, so these warships still followed the methods taught by the Dan people.

Even during the winter flood fishing season, they only knew about it after the recruits Pao Ze told them.

More than thirty warships dragged huge fishing nets back, and encountered many private offshore fishing boats also fishing on the way.

Moreover, most small boats use fishing, while large boats basically use fishing nets.

The reason why these fishermen and common people are so keen to go fishing is not only due to the winter flood season, but also because Zhu Yijiong issued an order to cancel the fishing tax.

There were fishing taxes in both the Ming and Qing dynasties, which can be divided into head tax, fish tax, fish salt tax, fish fry tax, etc.

In the Ming Dynasty, the Ming court's annual income included business tax, fish tax, wealthy households, calendar days, etc., and the fish tax directly ranked second.

These are only those shipped from the capital treasury and border areas, not including those remaining in the treasury, which fully shows its important status.

However, important is important, but the fishery and salt tax is a heavy tax shackles for coastal fishermen.

In the early Ming Dynasty, the fishery and salt classes were actually not bad, and they were mainly used to prevent the proliferation of illegal salt.

But in the mid-term, local governments often create more names and increase taxes in order to increase fiscal revenue (corruption).The tax burden on fishermen is getting heavier and heavier, and the phenomenon of desperate escape is becoming more and more serious.

However, the government concealed the problem and instead distributed the penalty to the surviving fishermen, which accelerated the flight of fishermen and formed a vicious cycle.

The most important thing is that due to the government's actions, private salt has become more and more prevalent. Because the fishery and salt classes are too heavy, it is obviously not cost-effective to use official salt.

For example, during the Chongzhen period, the imperial court actually required fishermen to pay tribute to mink skins and other taxes that had nothing to do with fishing.

It's so outrageous.

The Qing Dynasty inherited the Ming system and naturally inherited the fishery and salt courses from the previous Ming Dynasty.

Now Zhu Yijiong's Ming Dynasty has a new salt policy. The existence of fishery and salt classes not only squeezes fishermen, but also gives private saltmen room to breathe and survive.

How can this work?

As soon as the policy came out, the heavy taxes on fish and salt were no longer squeezed, and the fishermen and people along the coast responded one after another.

Many maritime merchants even found it profitable, hiring people and boats to fish, and then hauling them back to sell.

In this way, the number of fishing boats increased, the scale of fishing became larger, and even maritime merchants joined in.

Most of these caught sea fish are salted and dried on site to become salted fish, and fishing boats dock almost every day.Not only does it provide a large number of jobs along the coast, it can also greatly alleviate the food gap.

Once the salted fish from the coast is salted and dried, inland merchant ships will come regularly to purchase it and then sell it to various provinces and places.

This kind of pickled salted fish, due to the cancellation of fishing salt tax and the reform of the new salt law, fishermen can go directly to the salt factory to buy salt for curing.

Therefore, even after several hands of trafficking and reselling, it is still much cheaper than fresh fish.

What's more, this cured fish is also rich in salt.If you are a living person with a living certificate, you can use it directly for cooking without cleaning it, and even save money on buying salt.

Zhu Yijiong's Northern Expedition caused food prices in the south to fluctuate to a certain extent, although they did not rise so much that the people could no longer afford to buy food.

But during this period, cooking with these cheap pickled salted fish and eating it with old rice and grains was a rare delicacy for the people at the bottom.

There is a saying that if soldiers in ancient times were allowed to eat white mustard porridge every day, not only would the soldiers not rebel against you, but they would also rebel against you.

Autumn has just passed and early winter has arrived.

Zhu Yijiong, the emperor, would also serve a carefully cooked salted fish dish every now and then in his winter meals. The method was basically to mix it with chili and steam it.

These salted fish are not tributes, but purchased from the navy with funds from the inner treasury.

Although he didn't buy much, he was showing his attitude to the officials and the people. The emperor also liked to eat salted fish.

In this way, what goes up works and what goes down works.

(End of this chapter)