"Lord, isn't this salary penalty appropriate? Nowadays, the salaries of officials are not high, and people's livelihood is difficult!"
Zhu Yuanzhang chuckled and said: "People's livelihood is difficult, and officials should set an example... The matter is settled like this. Chahan will be appointed as the leader, the Yuan army will be defeated, and there are thousands of things to do. Sir, you still have to work hard!"
After Lao Zhu finished speaking, he simply rode back to the imperial tent. The moment he turned around, Lao Zhu had a smirk on his face. He was finally able to urge the marriage openly and openly. The young master of the court, the right prime minister, had not yet gotten married when he was over twenty, so he probably could at least
Deduct 80% of your salary. If you dare not get married, we will make it impossible for you to even eat Yangchun noodles.
That’s it!
Lao Zhu seemed to have won a great victory, and even Zhan Zhan Chahan did not feel this happy.
Zhu Yuanzhang was so happy that he even hummed a ditty and became so happy...
But Zhang Ximeng thought of another thing, a major event that had puzzled him for a long time.
Of course, it has nothing to do with marriage.
He was wondering why the Central Plains had not embarked on the road to industrialization. What were the constraints?
The emperor is aloof, has deep-rooted Confucianism, a small-scale peasant economy, discriminates against merchants, is conservative and introverted, does not want to be enterprising, is afraid of the ocean... or even just a bad person!
Zhang Ximeng also knew a lot of all kinds of strange talk and weird theories, as well as the conclusive statements in the textbooks.
But to be honest, it’s hard to be completely convinced.
Now we are facing the desolation of the Central Plains, and the red land is thousands of miles away.
The problem-solving methods of Zhang Ximeng and Zhu Yuanzhang seem to be able to explain some situations.
Marriage, salary, etc. are all trivial matters. If the problem at hand is not solved, the industrial development plan he has been brewing for a long time will probably be aborted by Lao Zhu.
Therefore, Zhang Ximeng immediately sent someone to call Liu Bowen and Song Lian. Both of them were originally in Jining handling military supplies and supplies. After hearing Zhang Ximeng's order, they hurried over.
"Two gentlemen, my lord and I talked about the idea of restoring the Central Plains... I mentioned the suppression of bandits, the elimination of military disasters, the control of floods, the equal distribution of land, etc. But in my lord's opinion, the most urgent task right now is to have children, you guys
Let’s see, how should we solve this matter?”
Liu Bowen and Song Lian looked at each other, almost without hesitation, and nodded together, "Prime Minister Zhang, you are wrong this time. The superior's idea is right."
Song Lian also said: "When Gou Jian was working hard to accumulate strength and take revenge for destroying Wu, the most important thing was ten years of living and learning. Cultivate a generation of young people and have enough soldiers to counterattack Wu.
What a shame!"
Zhang Ximeng lowered his eyelids and suddenly said: "Two gentlemen, do you have to have more children?"
"Then, why don't you have more children? Where do the farmers come from, and where do the soldiers come from?" Liu Bowen asked in confusion.
Zhang Ximeng took a deep breath and said slowly: "Can we invent new machines to make farming more efficient? Originally, one person could farm thirty acres, but now he can farm three hundred acres. And weaving, one person can weave
If we provide ten or a hundred men of cloth, can’t the extra men serve as soldiers and join the army to avenge the injustice?”
Song Lian and Liu Bowen kept their faces solemn and didn't speak... If anyone else said this, they would definitely fall out... Let one person plow ten times the field? Why do you want to tire people to death?
Your heart is too dark!
However, Zhang Ximeng said this, so the two of them could not refute it hastily, but had to think carefully.
Liu Bowen was very knowledgeable, but he pondered: "I heard that during the Song Dynasty, there were already looms in Jiangnan that could weave dozens of silk threads at a time. There were more than 1,800 parts alone, which was very majestic...
There are even exquisite craftsmen who use water flow to push the loom. It can be said that one person can support ten people and a hundred people."
As soon as he finished speaking, Song Lian waved his hand, "Brother Bowen, I have also read about this thing, but the threads spun are of different thicknesses, and no one wants them at all. It is just a competition between skilled craftsmen. Ordinary people, especially
Wealthy households still use ordinary looms."
When Zhang Ximeng heard this, he also became interested and couldn't help but said: "Scholar Song, tell me, dozens of threads can be spun at one time, and less labor is used, so the price is naturally lower. Are ordinary people not willing to buy it?"
?”
Song Lian suddenly laughed and said: "Xiang Zhang, why are you so confused? There is less labor, so why is the price lower? Weaving requires silk and cotton, and the raw materials are not cheap!"
Liu Bowen also smiled and said: "Xiang Zhang, you have forgotten that we are equalizing land in the south of the Yangtze River and specifically tax the mulberry fields. We are afraid of growing more mulberries and reducing food. If it is what Prime Minister Zhang wants, we must use less labor.
If the price of raw materials remains unchanged, the silk cloth produced can be cheap, otherwise, the price will remain the same!"
Zhang Ximeng closed his eyes and thought... and gradually nodded.
As long as the number of fields does not increase, there is actually a limit to how many types of grains to allocate and how much to plant mulberry and cotton.
In other words, it is stuck at the raw material level.
If you want to engage in large-scale production of factory machines, it will not work at all.
Zhang Ximeng pondered for a while and then said: "Two gentlemen, think about it again. Even if the raw materials remain unchanged, each person's clothing material will remain the same every year. Is it feasible if we all switch to looms and save the number of weavers?"
Song Lian shook his head directly, "Xiang Zhang, you obviously have good ones, why do you need to wear bad ones? Isn't this not fun?"
Liu Bowen also followed: "Yes, Prime Minister, even if we don't recruit weavers, they still have to spin threads all day long at home... How many peasant women knit at home and go blind, just to exchange for some money?
Supplement household expenses. After all, the more you use your strength, the more you have, but the more you spend, the more you spend!"
When Zhang Ximeng heard this, his heartstrings were touched... He could finally write a more or less answer to his question.
It's not that the Central Plains couldn't lead other regions in developing industry first, but that the path of industry goes against the nature of this huge agricultural country. It's even completely inconsistent with economic laws. It's like walking with your hands and using chopsticks with your feet.
The restriction of raw materials proposed by Song Lian is a premise.
In other words, so much can be produced in one year.
If high-efficiency textile machines are used to weave silk cloth of poor quality, the people will not recognize it.
When supplies are scarce, manpower becomes worthless... Even if a bowl is broken, you must find a way to repair it and continue to use it. A small piece of cloth cannot be thrown away casually, it must be used to mend clothes and make insoles.
People are more willing to spend countless energy to increase their harvest a little bit.
In farming, the performance is intensive cultivation.
In terms of craftsmanship, they are exquisite crafts that cannot be made by later generations.
Just like the Qiangong Machinery mentioned earlier, in the final analysis, it is the crazy involution under the competition of stock... It has been involved to an extent that cannot be further increased, and has been involved until the end of the world.
Compared with large machines that are slightly more efficient and have no other merits, people are more willing to use traditional looms and use their own hands to carefully create more exquisite things.
Another question arises here. Didn’t the Ming Dynasty in history see a boom in overseas trade, exporting tens of millions of dollars every year and earning one-third of the world’s silver?
Isn’t that enough to promote the machine?
Sorry, it's really not enough.
At that time, there were tens of millions of people in Jiangnan, and there were more than millions of ingenious weavers!
You must know that for a long time, the Central Plains has been densely populated, and its proportion of the world's population has usually been around 30%.
Only aristocratic and wealthy businessmen can enjoy silk. They sell one or two million pieces of silk every year for tens of millions of taels of silver. Only female workers in Suzhou and Hangzhou are enough.
For less than a tael of silver, hire a female worker...and then you talk to me about machines?
Want me to spend hundreds of times the price on a loom with an uncertain future?
Are you sick or am I sick?
Even if the loom comes out, can you provide me with raw materials? Can you provide me with a market? Can you make foreign mud-legged people wear silk?
Don’t you understand that silk and porcelain are all luxury goods... Look at which luxury goods in later generations are not advertised as purely handmade? Of course, some of them are not luxury goods and can be used by both hands and feet...
Zhang Ximeng, who has the habits of later generations, encountered the decline of the Central Plains and the hardship of people's livelihood. He wanted to improve technology, set up appropriate technology trees, develop industry and commerce, and then enrich the country and strengthen the army.
However, in Lao Zhu's view, the easiest option is to encourage births, fill the Central Plains with population, and then recovery will occur naturally.
Not only did he think so, Liu Bowen, Song Lian, and many other knowledgeable people also saw it this way.
Can you say that they are ill-informed and unreliable?
Zhang Ximeng suddenly discovered that the sick person might be himself.
Is it necessary to torture the people of the Ming Dynasty now for the sake of things that will happen hundreds of years later?
Isn't it a bit selfish to do this?
Zhang Ximeng fell into deep thought, and Song Lian and Liu Bowen could not give Zhang Ximeng the answer he wanted, so Zhang Ximeng's interest waned for two or three days.
Until Lao Zhu issued an edict, asking him to follow him into Kaifeng and rule over the old capital of Zhao and Song Dynasties.
Zhang Ximeng then cheered up and followed the victorious Ming army towards Kaifeng... The army passed Chenqiaoyi, and more soldiers and civilians greeted them on both sides.
The young and old came to watch this unique army.
The people whispered that in the past half month, the Ming army had provided Kaifeng with 200,000 kilograms of grain every day...Liu Futong went crazy and slaughtered the loyal ministers of the Song Dynasty. When the Ming army took over Kaifeng, he distributed a lot of grain and real estate to the people...
…
Ten years of fierce fighting, coupled with the previous floods, continued to ravage the poor people. Floods, droughts, and locust plagues came one after another. Not even a tenth of the people in the Central Plains survived.
Now, we finally have an army that is willing to care about people's livelihood.
The people took the initiative to greet the new monarch and walked out of their homes.
Amidst the chants of "Long Live the Blessing", Zhang Ximeng's eyes swept across the crowd. He saw the fair-looking, half-clothed people, including the old, weak, women and children, but not many men.
Some children are even naked buttocks, shaking their big heads, staring round eyes, looking around... They urgently need to improve their lives and urgently need abundant material supplies.
Developing industry and commerce and improving technological levels are not just about how much money we can make, nor can we just calculate simple economic accounts. We must focus on improving people's livelihood.
Zhang Ximeng had a flash of inspiration. He gave the fundamental principle, which is called people-oriented. If economics is added to people-oriented... wouldn't it be people-oriented economics?