In order to keep the new spinning machine secret, although idlers were not allowed to approach the workshop, thousands of women came in and out of the city every day, and there was still a lot of cotton on their bodies.
In addition, a large amount of cotton has been shipped from all over Shandong in the past few months, and almost everyone has guessed what is going on in the hundreds of large workshops outside the city.
For the nobles and ordinary merchants and civil servants, they just lamented that His Majesty did not do his job properly and became more and more obsessed with the merchants.
But for the cloth merchants in Jiangnan, especially the cotton cloth merchants, and the Donglin Party officials who were inextricably linked to them, it was like a bolt from the blue.
Because just from the scale of the workshops that have been built or are being built outside the city, we can see His Majesty's ambition. He definitely wants to bring all the cotton in the world to the capital for weaving.
Although no one thinks that the cotton cloth produced by His Majesty is better or cheaper than that produced by Jiangnan, he is an emperor and does not follow the rules, so everyone is extremely nervous.
As for directly admonishing His Majesty not to seek benefits for the people, the civil servants of the Donglin Party thought about it, but the emperor did not go to court, did not receive an audience, and did not read the memorial. Even if he thought about it, he couldn't do anything.
The only way is for everyone to go to the palace gate to petition and kneel down, or to spread rumors and use public pressure to force the emperor to back down.
However, both of these methods have proved that if one does not do well, he will pay the price of confiscating his family and exterminating his family.
So everyone figured it out and had no choice but to wait and see. After all, the workshop hadn't produced the cloth yet.
It can be said that it was not until this time that Zhu Cihong touched the real interests of Jiangnan officials and businessmen.
As for the civil servants, Zhu Cixiang also adopted an attitude of ignoring them for the time being. He would not care if they did not cause trouble, and would kill anyone who caused trouble. Anyway, he did not rely on them to get things done.
As the grain harvests in various places come to an end, the reform of each military camp has also begun to advance. In fact, it is very simple. It is to send some talents to each camp, and then select some veterans from each army to serve as military attachés and flag officers at all levels.
The system is also completely in accordance with that of Datong Xuanfu.
After the Xuanfu Datong reform was completed last year, thousands more scholars and scholars were brought back to the capital to support them.
Zhu Cixiang also summoned all the remaining gentry and landowners from various prefectures and counties in Yingtian Prefecture to the capital to prepare for a meeting.
These gentry landowners all had their land confiscated or had some barren land left, but they were unwilling to leave and remained dependent on the local big families.
Zhu Cixiang knew very well what he was thinking about this group of people. He just wanted to torture him to death, or he wanted to wait until a long time in the future when his attention was no longer on this, and then slowly get the land back from the hands of the military households.
Zhu Cixiang had no doubts about their means and patience. If there was another emperor, he would definitely not last more than twenty years at most. Those military households would definitely become tenants of those big families, or become tenant farmers of hundreds of thousands of households.
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This is also the reason why Zhu Cixi did not distribute land directly to the people. If he did not improve the quality of the people themselves, they would eventually have nothing again.
As for relying on systems and supervision to restrict things, they are also treating the symptoms rather than the root cause.
You can guard against it for a while, but you can't guard against it for one lifetime. You can guard against it for one lifetime, but you can't guard against it for two or three lifetimes.
This is an ironclad example that has been proven by countless dynasties.
Therefore, Zhu Cixiang would not let these landlords and gentry just sit around and stare at the land of those military households all day long.
In the square that was still the Huangji Palace, together with those royal relatives and nobles who had been excluded from the Five Armies, the number also reached nearly a thousand people.
"The main reason I have summoned you here today is to figure out your future options. Although you all have rich financial resources, sitting on your hands all day long may not be a long-term solution!"
Everyone in the square listened to Zhu Cixiang's words, feeling nervous and a little expectant in their hearts.
Most people just thought that the emperor would treat the military attachés like him and let them work as contractors, so everyone raised their ears.
"You must have seen that I have built a very large group of workshops outside the city for spinning. I can tell you the truth that the efficiency of the spinning machine I made is three times that of the Jiangnan spinning machine.
Times, you should know what this means, don’t you need me to explain it?”
Everyone was shocked, obviously they didn't expect that the spinning machine built by His Majesty was so efficient, and some nobles were already tempted.
If others said this, everyone would naturally sneer and not believe it, but what the emperor said would never be false.
"As everyone knows, this cotton is not only spun, but also woven, then dyed, and finally sold.
So I plan to cooperate with you. The royal family will supply cotton cloth, and you will open a dyeing workshop to be responsible for the dyeing. Then you can choose to sell it to various places yourself, or you can sell it to the royal family at the price of the commercial supervisor, and the imperial stores in various places will sell it.
"
Zhu Cixiang did not intend to dye the cloth alone, but planned to tie these noble gentry together to do it.
Firstly, there is a shortage of manpower in the palace. This way, we can occupy the entire cotton market faster.
Secondly, if you want to develop industry, I am afraid that the royal family alone will not be able to go far. More people need to be recruited to join, forming a huge interest group or even a brand new capitalist class.
Only in this way can the old gentry class be replaced and the system that is conducive to the development of industry and commerce in the future be sustained for a long time and not be overthrown after his death.
Of course, this brand-new capital must be led by the royal family and only if the state holds the majority share.
Zhu Cixiang's plan is that in the future, the royal family will lead a new type of businessmen to develop industry and commerce.
However, in some hugely profitable and important industries, the court must hold a large share, but it can only supervise the distribution of accounts and cannot intervene in specific business matters.
In the future, the royal family and the country will be two concepts, just like the inner court and the outer court now.
Royal money and business are private to the emperor and the royal family, while state money is public and belongs to everyone in the entire Ming Dynasty.
Although corruption will definitely become prevalent as time goes by, at least it will not be like the current Ming Dynasty, which made the emperor and the Ministry of Households extremely poor, so poor that they could not even pay the army's salary and officials' salaries.
But all the gentry and landlords in the world are so fat that their money has gone moldy when buried in the ground.
Compared with the extremely selfish capital in the West that has no family and country, the emperor, as the master of the country, must have slightly better capital.
At least he will not care about the life and death of the country, and will put the royal dominance first instead of wealth and immediate interests.
After Zhu Cixiang finished speaking this time, discussion finally broke out in the venue. First, the nobles talked quietly, and then the gentry and landlords also boldly started to communicate.