As a woman, she vaguely understood what was going on. After all, she already had a child.
The two lieutenants became more and more polite. They carefully helped Mrs. Gao get into the carriage. They used to occasionally make sarcastic remarks, but now they stopped and had flattering smiles on their faces. At this time, there was no need to offend Huai.
Who can say clearly what will happen next for a woman who has a dragon seed? Gao was still covering her mouth and sobbing, feeling sorry for herself, and did not notice the change in their attitude at all.
After the carriage left the palace, it drove slowly on the street. After exiting the south gate, it turned west and headed to the Jintai Hall of Linshuo Palace. But there was a bit of a "traffic jam" today...····
On the wide road, a large carriage overturned to the ground. The driver was busy cleaning up the broken tiles and red bricks that had fallen to the ground. Other carriages loaded with building materials also stopped and rushed over to help.
"Bad luck!" Lieutenant General Zhang Juhan cursed angrily, and waved his hand, asking the two little Huangmen who were guarding Gao to come up and help.
There were four knights accompanying the chariot, one of whom was Yuan Xingqin, who had been promoted to deputy general. He rode forward, made inquiries, and then came back, saying: "The Ministry of Internal Affairs will be built southwest of Jicheng.
A carriage workshop specializing in the manufacture of four-wheeled carriages."
"Could it be the carriage that the saint rides on?" Zhang Juhan was somewhat impressed.
"That's it." Yuan Xingqin said: "I heard that this time we mainly build a baggage transport truck. In fact, if this truck can be transformed into a sidecar, it will be very useful on the grassland and will be better than our original one."
One drawback of the two-wheeled carriage is that it is difficult to find a draft horse that is exactly the same height as the carriage. Generally speaking, the carriage has a certain degree of inclination, making it uncomfortable to sit or stand.
If it's a four-wheeled carriage, that's no problem at all. It doesn't matter what the shoulder height of your horse is. The carriages are all horizontal. It's much more convenient for people to stand in them and shoot arrows or fight.
"The saint is really resolute." Zhang Juhan sighed: "These bricks and tiles were transported from the west. Could it be Xishan?"
"This is Xishan." Yuan Xingqin added, "Last month I followed the saint to Xishan for hunting, but I saw thick smoke billowing. There were people from the Xiao clan building a brickyard in Xishan to bake bricks."
I don’t know when the wind started blowing. Maybe it was in the Lingzhou era, when saints liked to build kilns and burn bricks. And after the brick kiln became popular, the output of bricks increased greatly, the efficiency also improved a lot, and the price of bricks fell all the way.
, many people prefer to use bricks to build houses.
For any sergeant family with some money, their houses are basically made of brick and wood structures.
The walls are made of bricks, and the beams, doors, windows, columns, etc. are made of wood. After the wood can be burned with coal to dry it, the price of wood has also been greatly reduced. The warriors are still very grateful for this.
You guys are not stupid. If you don’t have bricks, you have to live in a wooden house or an adobe house.
The former is very afraid of insects and ants, and is also afraid of humid climate. Some places in Luoyang were originally swamps, with low-lying and humid terrain. If it rains in summer, it is no joke that some mushrooms will grow on the wooden walls.
The adobe houses are not strong enough. After all, not everyone can sift the fine sand and then ram the earth to build it. They are often dug out of large square blocks of earth, which are very afraid of rain and wind. Over time, the adobe houses will become stained.
It is full of insect holes, and some wasps have built their nests inside the adobe, which is very annoying.
Lowering the price of bricks and lumber will benefit everyone. Maybe it can only benefit some people with financial resources now, but what about in the future? Maybe it will benefit more people.
"You need coal to make bricks. There must be a coal mine over there in Xishan. Whose mine is it?" Zhang Juhan asked.
"It's still owned by the Xiao family." Yuan Xingqin said: "It used to be opened by Li Cunzhang, but it was confiscated by the court and subleased to the Xiao family." "The coal mine can make money..." Zhang Juhan chuckled.
Voice.
How can you open a coal mine without any basic knowledge? He once went to Heyang Xiuwu Coal Mine as a lieutenant. There are many ways to make money there. The washed coal is sold directly.
I remember that when coal mining was first priced in Guanbei, the people below asked the sage how much the price of charcoal was. The sage only recited two lines of poetry - "A cart of charcoal weighs more than a thousand kilograms, and the palace envoy will not regret it."
"Half a piece of red gauze and one foot of silk, fastened to the bull's head and filled with charcoal."
red yarn
Because it is too light and thin, and the materials used are insufficient, it is very cheap, much cheaper than silk. Half a piece of silk costs only more than 100 yuan. The price of silk is more expensive, and the quality and fabric used in the palace may be better, but one foot
Three hundred dollars is a lot of money.
Half a piece of red gauze and one foot of damask would definitely not cost more than 500 yuan, and it was more likely to only cost 400 yuan. But to buy a thousand kilograms of charcoal, which is equivalent to a kilogram and a half penny, is indeed no different from robbery.
But the production and cost of coal are much cheaper than charcoal. Especially in Lingzhou, coal is produced when sheep's hooves are digging grass roots, and "half a piece of red gauze and one foot of silk" are used to produce coal.
One thousand kilograms of coal was priced at a certain price, but he still made a profit and contributed a lot to the shogunate.
Zhang Juhan didn't know the price of coal in Beiping Prefecture. It was probably much more expensive than in Lingzhou, so he thought it was quite profitable.
In addition, coal needs to be washed after being mined, and the pulverized coal that settles after washing can be used to make briquettes or fired bricks. Even coal gangue can be crushed, mixed with yellow mud, and burned. This is also the case.
income.
"Is the imperial court going to start collecting coal money?" Yuan Xingqin suddenly asked.
Zhang Juhan was stunned for a moment, then nodded slightly and said, "Most likely." In fact, everyone now understands the sage's tricks.
When a new thing comes out, he will not tax it, but will even do everything possible to provide convenience, care for its growth, and let more people use it, until it eventually reaches the point where it becomes inseparable.
Because when any new thing first comes out, its status is not stable and not many people understand it. If you try to catch all the water at this time, it may collapse and disappear forever.
When it enters thousands of households, more and more people use it, and more and more people are engaged in this industry, then you can slowly reap the fruits.
Just like coal, people in Taiyuan first used it decades ago. It was still called "coal" at that time. You could dig it yourself and no one asked for money. It didn't look like a business at all, so it didn't develop for a long time.
Some coal mines appeared here and there in various parts of the Tang Dynasty, but they were limited to local areas. As far as the whole world was concerned, there were very few people using them.
However, the sage forbade people to cut down trees in Guanbei and ordered coal to be used instead. Although the implementation process was greatly distorted, many people still secretly cut down trees to burn charcoal, and this is still the case even today, but the number of people using coal has increased significantly.
, is also an indisputable fact.
With the Sage's successive military victories, more and more states and counties were controlled, and coal mining began to emerge in other places, such as the Zhou Coal Mine, Xiuwu Coal Mine, Liangxian Coal Mine, etc.
Although the nobles and nobles felt that coal was not as good as charcoal, for ordinary people, the price of coal was too close to the people. Over time, charcoal was defeated and more and more people used it.
The sage said that he initially promoted coal to "protect the environment." He said that once the forests in Guanbei were cut down, they would never grow back as the weather got colder, and they would then turn into sandy areas where people would not be able to survive.
Zhang Juhan didn't quite believe it. But in any case, the saint did it.
To prevent people from cutting down trees and burning charcoal, it is useless to just talk about it, or even to impose severe punishments, because charcoal is something that people really need, and you have to come up with a substitute, right?
Sage really came up with it, and it was cheaper, so he succeeded, and Zhang Juhan admired it very much.
"The money for coal should have been collected long ago." Yuan Xingqin said: "People in the city can't do without coal for cooking and heating. The woodcutter in Youdu County has gone to the mines to dig coal. Without this thing, the rice will not be cooked.
.After collecting the tax, even if it is "1 out of 10", it is still an incredible figure, so that the court will not have any money to reward our warriors."
Zhang Juhan laughed and said: "In the past, when you Lu Longjun ran out of money, didn't you just take it for yourself?"
"Only big-headed soldiers like to take it upon themselves." Yuan Xingqin spat and said, "I have a family and a business. If chaos breaks out and the women in the family are carried away by warriors, who can I ask for explanation?"
Zhang Juhan was overjoyed.
The generals really don't want to cause trouble, but sometimes they are forced to resist when a big soldier holds a knife to their neck. "As for the coal money, considering the current consumption, we can get tens of thousands of dollars a year."
Zhang Juhan said.
"That's it?" Yuan Xingqin was a little surprised.
"If you want to receive more, you have to let more
People use it." Zhang Juhan said: "As for taxes, the former Tang Dynasty relied on it, and the emperor Xia did the same. If we discuss coal, the money will gradually increase."
The tax was actually the commercial tax of later generations. In the late Tang Dynasty, it was an important source of fiscal revenue for the imperial court. Especially when the vassal towns were divided, the imperial court received less and less revenue from the two taxes and relied more and more on commodity taxes.
The largest revenue from the tax was salt tax, which was the income from salt tax. At most, the court could receive several million yuan.
In addition to the salt tax, there was a tax on tea, and later there were taxes on various commodities such as iron and paint. At one time, a liquor fee was also levied, but it was not persisted because there was too much opposition.
The tax was collected directly by the three departments of the imperial court.
For example, the Guzhu Tea Farm in Huzhou was run by the imperial court. It hired a large number of seasonal workers when picking tea, sometimes tens of thousands of people. The Third Division specially sent people to stay stationed at the tea farm to count the output and sales, and then collect taxes.
Private teahouses are also subject to tax, which is the same as government-run teahouses, initially 10% and then rising slowly.
Historically, Emperor Zhaozong of the Tang Dynasty still had money to reorganize and train 100,000 new troops after the destruction of the Shence Army. He relied on the abundant commodity tax revenue from various towns and commercial tax revenue from various checkpoints.
The feudal town is yours, you collect two taxes, and then pay part of it. But the commodity tax belongs to the court, and you cannot interfere. This is an ideal situation. In fact, there is a certain game, but it is also true that the court can collect a large amount of commercial tax, at least it can
Negotiate conditions with local feudal lords and towns and share income.
To put it simply, the late Tang Dynasty was a period of great commercial development in Chinese history, and it was the first time that commercial taxes accounted for such a large proportion of central fiscal revenue.
In fact, the commercial tax in the late Tang Dynasty was quite acceptable. The tax was absorbed into the price of goods, and the final sales price was not outrageous.
In the Northern Song Dynasty, this was really exaggerated. The Northern Song Dynasty court had a very bad habit of having a hand in everything that made money. Some were even exclusively run by the government, instead of being both government-run and privately owned like in the Tang Dynasty.
Take coal as an example. People began to use it on a large scale during the Mid-Tang Dynasty. In the late Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties, signs of industrialization appeared. In the Northern Song Dynasty, it developed greatly. So the Song Dynasty directly took over it and exclusively operated it, without any private intervention.
In the twelfth lunar month of the fifth year of Dazhong Xiangfu, Emperor Zhenzong of the Song Dynasty, "It snowed and was bitterly cold for days, and those who sold charcoal in the capital paid two hundred yuan per weigh (15 kilograms)." That is, after the government-run coal was wholesaled, terminal merchants sold it for more than ten yuan per kilogram in Kaifeng.
People expressed that they could not afford it.
Seeing that many people were freezing to death, the Song court "ordered the Third Division to produce 400,000 pounds of charcoal, reducing the market price by half to help the poor."
The Song Dynasty sold 400,000 pounds of coal to the people for the winter at half price, that is, one pound cost seven cents. Although it was still expensive, almost twice the price of grain, it was an urgent need during the cold winter and had to be bought.
As a result, "little people came together and trampled on the dead." It also led to a stampede and people died. Of course, this is what the people in Kaifeng city can afford.
A pound of coal cost seven cents, so why not rob it? So the trees in the Imperial Tomb of the Northern Song Dynasty were secretly cut down for warmth, and they deserved it. After three moments, the overturned carriage was finally cleared away, and the road was open again.
Yuan Xingqin and Zhang Juhan guarded the crying and absent-minded Gao family, and hurriedly and slowly returned to Linshuo Palace.