warring states careerist

Chapter 58

A few days later, before the significant gathering of the Mo family, Shi's reputation was once again spread among the Mohists as it was a month ago.

The last time it was spread, it was because he was not a Mohist, but he was doing the righteousness of a Mohist alone.

This time it spread because of the wheat flour incident that caused a sensation in Shangqiu City.

Most of the conversations between Mohists in the past few days started like this.

"220 gold!"

In just a few days, only the merchants in Shangqiu City brought 220 gold to the Mohist, and it was neither unrighteous nor plundering, but just selling knowledge for money.

A suitable saying began to spread among the Mohists: Xiao Tian Zhi has power and money.

Applying practical actions has practiced this sentence and verified this sentence.

Mozi said, this matter is suitable for sharing the first contribution with Shi Jiatun, but there is nothing to reward, since you are willing to do justice, then help you do it.

220 gold, seems like a lot, enough to make these Mohists happy.It's not just a question of money, but also that the method of doing justice according to Shi's words can really be implemented, not just a fantasy.

220 gold is actually not much, compared to the benefits that can be obtained in the few big cities that have absorbed wealth in the past few years, and the price of gold at this time is really a bit... at a loss.

At this time, copper was used in wars, and the grain output was not much. Excluding the food and taxes for farmers, the amount put into circulation was not much.

As a precious metal and ceremonial metal, the price of gold and food is somewhat out of balance. It is not the price of gold in the later feudal dynasties, which is much lower, so low that it is hard to imagine.

If it is calculated by grain, it has to be exchanged for various strange weights and measures.

It has not yet been unified, the weights and measures are also very chaotic, and the copper coins in different places are different.In Qilu Song Dynasty and other places, there are more than 20 kinds of weights and measures.For these three countries alone, there are five types of quaternary, pentary, hexal, octal, and decimal, and there are various permutations and combinations of these five types.

It would be fine if there were only bases like four, four, ten and ten, but what was even more damning was that there were extremely strange bases like four, five, four, and sixty.

Taking the country of Qi, which is rich in products and has the highest purchasing power of gold and slightly normal weights and measures, one bell is 190 three liters, which is equivalent to about [-] catties of grain. When grain is cheap, ten bells of grain can be exchanged for one gold.

In other words, one piece of gold can be exchanged for four thousand catties of grain.

The seventy gold in Shi Jiatun's hand also seemed amazing, but it was nothing.An average of three or four hundred Mozi, each of them can share [-] catties of grain, which is enough for these people to eat for two years-if there is no other income in these two years, Mozi will have to sell the chariots and horses that pull the bamboo slips, and then take them with him. Inkers make money by making wheels and carriages.

It can be determined that with the development of agriculture, the exchange price of gold and grain will become higher and higher, but at this time gold is really not worth much. There are fewer coins around the gram.

However, in the prosperous feudal dynasty promoted by ox farming and ridge farming, it is almost impossible for 20 taels of gold to be exchanged for four thousand catties of grain without disasters.

But this is the reality at this time, the cruel reality of lack of agricultural production and very little margin.Before the large-scale promotion of ironware and winter wheat in the Han Dynasty, the price of one mu of fertile soil was also recorded in the Han Dynasty.

Four thousand catties of grain and four thousand catties of grain that can be exchanged in the market are definitely not the same concept, they are far apart.

A family of nine can produce five to six thousand catties of grain a year, but after food and taxes, the remaining is only one or two hundred catties, and they have to deal with conscripts or natural disasters.

The remaining one or two hundred catties are the goods that can be exchanged with gold and circulated in the market, and this is the origin of the exchange economy.The five or six thousand catties harvested in autumn cannot be counted in the exchange at all.

In Shi's view, this not only reflects the low level of agricultural productivity at this time, but also reflects the high level of gold smelting at this time.

Since it is an equivalent, it is necessary to measure the average labor time in it. Even if the gold diggers are slaves, they still need to eat and drink.

Four thousand catties of grain requires six young and strong laborers plus a year's work on one hundred acres of land.In other words, every light and strong laborer who pans for gold needs to mine at least four taels of gold every year to be profitable. Otherwise, the nobles would rather use these slaves for planting and reclamation.

Over the past six months, I have compared the prices of various general equivalents, and I have a rough calculation in my heart.

He is not the kind of person who borrows money to do good, and he is not the kind of person who doesn't care about gains and losses. It's just that the things he spends money on are not what ordinary people are willing to spend money on.

Calculated according to the equivalent at this time, even if there is a gold mine in Peidi Pengcheng, it is worthless to mine at this time, and it will only pay for death.

According to the current price of one foot eight to ten yuan for linen, one bad money can be exchanged for one catty of grain. If a woman wants to obtain an independent status, she needs to weave at least thirty feet of linen every year to ensure that she does not starve to death and has a living. Clothes to wear, so no longer need to be attached to the land.

At this time, hemp spinning required a one-stop process from soaking hemp, tearing the skin, weaving, and weaving. It was difficult for ordinary women to weave [-] feet of cloth, and their status in the village community was not too high.

If cotton is to be popularized in Peidi, the method of collectively cooperating in ginning and rubbing strips and individually contracting for weaving is adopted.

Not counting the price premium caused by the novelty of cotton cloth, and the reduction in food prices caused by agricultural and planting technology innovations, a woman only needs to weave 45 feet of cotton cloth per year to be able to have an independent economic status, and she can go beyond this if she can spin [-] feet of cotton cloth. status of the family farmer.

Similarly, if we can plant various new crops, promote ridge farming and cattle farming, increase the yield per mu, and deduct the food consumed by each farmer every year, as long as each person can produce [-] catties of grain for market circulation, it will be quite Because each farmer can have five taels of gold left at this time.

How to calculate, at this time, it is cost-effective to exchange the means of grinding wheat flour for gold to buy cattle and make reserves.

Subcontract spinning and weaving to earn the value of women's surplus labor; let farmers buy those cattle in installments in the form of metal currency to deal with deflation and price increases of precious metals caused by increased productivity but no increase in metal currency.

Calculated in this way, within a year, the sum of Peidi's remaining wealth can exceed the purchasing power of these gold at this time, and the wealth can be hidden among the people.

Within three years, he could use hidden means to receive the money from Mo Zhe with interest, and everyone would clap their hands and praise Mo Zhe for his righteousness.

There are also some things that cannot be bought directly with money-the hearts of the people in Peidi, the economic liberation of women, and the attached female teachers to support the training needs of grassroots officials who will succeed in the rebellion more than ten years later.

This is not counting the profiteering industries such as iron ore mining and glass beads luxury goods after winning people's hearts.

Therefore, although the money sold is not too much in Shi Jiatun's view, and Shi Jiatun believes that if he sells wheat flour within ten years, he can earn more, Ke Shi still thinks that this is a long-term business that he can be complacent about.

What's more, the recognition and admiration of the Mohists who are close at hand, and Mozi's recognition of his own ability.

My heart of righteousness and understanding of heaven and mind have been shown to Mozi in the village community, and what is needed now is to demonstrate my ability one after another, especially the demonstration of organizational ability.

This kind of recognition makes Shizao Mohist no longer a person, but a small organization called the Secretariat.

He told Mozi that the reason for setting up the secretariat was very simple: to record the righteousness and daily discussions of the Mohist school, a large number of bamboo slips were needed.There is no time to make grass silk now, but it won't take long, so you can directly use bamboo chips that don't need to be greened and dewormed to record, and you can copy it on grass silk soon.

But even if there is no need for greening and deworming, the peeling, numbering and sorting of the bamboo slips cannot be done by one person, so some additional manpower is needed.

This reason is very good, and Mozi also agreed to Shi's request because he wanted to solve many problems in the upcoming gathering of Mohists.

As the secretary of Mo Zhe, he finally has three or four "soldiers" under him, and the organization called the Secretariat is officially established.

Lu Hua and Liu Zhi are the first batch of people in the secretariat, there is also a young ink artist, and another older ink artist who can recognize seal script.

This older Mohist was in charge of reading out those classics and organizing them into official script, because Shi could not read, but he could write.

The younger one is called Qisui, who was born as a bamboo strip maker for the industrial and commercial food official, so it can also be called Zao Mi Qisui.

The old one is called Xiaosheng, who was born with a smile around the time of his birth. His family thought it was ominous, so he was not welcomed in the family.He must also be from a branch of noble family, but he didn't mention his own family, so Shi didn't ask much.

These four people, together with the person in charge, made the entire secretariat a total of five people, which was considered to be the weakest organization in the entire Mohist organization.

He doesn't care about money or punishment, let alone weapon manufacturing and city defense, but Shi thinks this is a good start.

With the means of making money in the past few days, and the simple breakfast that he invited the Mohists to eat, he has really taken root among the Mohism, and some people joked with him, calling him "Secretary Shi" .

He didn't care, but was willing to be called that.

After getting the money in Shangqiu, the noodle shop and tofu shop in Shangqiu City were all handled by Shi Jiatun, so he calmed down and cut bamboo with the few people in the secretary's office every day.

There are not many words written on one page of bamboo slips. It is said that someone copied a copy of "Compendium of Materia Medica" with bamboo slips, and half a catty of books copied into bamboo slips became 250 catties.

Fortunately, these temporarily used bamboo chips do not require too many processes, just record them and copy them on paper later, so it is not too slow to make them. No scraping, just write it inside when you use it.

Zao Mie Qi Sui is very fast at handling bamboo, and he can be seen as an old hand. A piece of bamboo can be split and scraped in a short time in his hands.

Xiaosheng was slow to do it. He had managed the bamboo slips of ancient books, but he hadn't done any specific work on cutting bamboo.

When the five people were working, Xiaosheng asked, "Shi, what kind of grass and trees are you talking about?"

Holding a piece of bamboo in his hand, he thought about how to describe it, and Zao Mie Qisui, who lowered his head and quickly peeled the bamboo, had already taken the sentence.

"Xiaosheng, you are so stupid. The silk of vegetation, first of all it is a kind of silk. It is like a white horse, first of all it is a horse, hasn't Mr. taught you? Have you never seen a silk book? Of course it is like that , a sheet can write a lot of characters. But it is made of vegetation, which is much cheaper than silk. Of course, the silk here is the silk of the silk book, not the silk of wearing, although the two It is the same, but not the same. Just like the wooden bird, it got the part of the name that the bird can fly rather than eat, so you say the wooden bird can..."

Zao Mie Qisui said that these Mohist disciples talked about things all day long, but the work in their hands did not slow down at all, and he continued to babble: "So this is a good thing. You don't know, it is easy to cut your hands when you cut bamboo. You see my hands are so fast, I don’t know how many times I was scratched when I was a child. It will be fine when I have grass and silk, and I don’t have to cut bamboo. Shi, you should teach me that kind of official script, so that in the future we will not need to cut bamboo Now that the bamboo is gone, I can do something..."

Xiao Sheng only asked one question, Zao Mi Qi Sui had already talked about the future.

Xiaosheng clicked his tongue helplessly, bowed his head and stopped talking, thinking that fortunately you are not good at debate, otherwise Bian 54 would have a partner.

Shi smiled and replied a few words. It seems that these people think that this secretariat is a place responsible for copying.

Of course, this is the reality today.He thought, let's borrow Shi Jiatun's words... Unknowable.What exactly this secretariat will do in the future is really unknown.There is ample time.

　The price of gold is deduced in reverse according to some questions and discussions in Chapter Nine and Guanzi.Judging from the level of productivity at this time, it may be a little lower. The price of gold in it is about the corresponding to the agricultural output before the unification of Qin Dynasty, and it is not so high now. ...Of course, the premise is that if a piece of gold is a piece of gold, if not, then it's all wrong.It is also unknown whether the gold-to-copper exchange ratio in it is Qi State's forty-gram knife coin.But basically it should be true that the more social labor and wealth, the more valuable gold is.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)