The Zhang family's business was not managed by Zhang Siwei personally, but by Zhang Sijiao. Therefore, Zhang Siwei did not talk too much with Gao Pragmatic at that time about how the Zhang family's business would be transferred from the salt industry to the entire forest.
However, Zhang Siwei still mentioned to Gao Jingshi some developments in Changlu Salt Field in recent years, one of which particularly attracted Gao Jingshi's attention.
In recent years, the Changlu Saltworks has shown an obvious trend of "short-term decline in the south and prosperity in the north".
When Zhang Siwei mentioned this situation at the time, he did not seem to be clearly aware of the reason for it, but Gao Pragmatic was different. He discovered the root cause very keenly.
The root cause lies in Tianjin Port, or in other words, the development of Tianjin Port affected the development of Changlu Saltworks.
Changlu Salt Field is not a separate salt field. The reason why it is called "Changlu Salt Field" is because the Ming Dynasty established the Capital Transport Department in Changlu, Cangzhou, hence the name of Changlu Salt Field.
As mentioned before, there were a total of 24 salt fields in the Changlu Salt Fields in the early Ming Dynasty. Four were later merged to form the current complex of 20 salt fields, of which the Zhang family actually controlled 17.
Among the 17 salt fields controlled by the Zhang family, it is obvious that the salt fields closer to Tianjin Port are developing better, while the salt fields farther away from Tianjin Port are showing signs of decline.
This situation can be summed up in the simplest way: traffic conditions are crucial to the development of saltworks.
After that, Gao Pragmatic began to collect some information about the traffic conditions in the Changlu Salt Field area. After summarizing, he was convinced of this.
From a historical point of view, Nanchang, which was originally located in Cangzhou, has achieved great development thanks to its superior maritime and river transportation geographical environment. The southern material shipping port is located at Huanghua Qikou and Dahekou (later Huanghua Port) in Cangzhou. After unloading, it is
Inland waterways transport goods to various places in the north. Among them, the inland waterways in Cangzhou are mainly the Wudi River and Majia River in the south, and the Liuhe River in the north.
By the end of the Yuan Dynasty, sea transportation was diverted to Dazhigu (that is, Tianjin Port). From then on, only river transportation remained in Cangzhou. After the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the Yellow River changed its course and migrated southward to the Huaihe River, resulting in the water sources of the Wudi and Maji rivers.
After drying up, the river gradually became silted up. Although it was dredged many times, the siltation continued as usual. The Liuhe River became the only important river, connecting the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal and various salt fields in Cangzhou, supporting the continued development of Cangzhou's salt industry.
At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, specifically after the Huitong River was dredged and repaired, the Grand Canal, which had always been running from east to west, turned to run in a north-south direction. As a result, all east-going rivers in Cangzhou lost their transportation function. "The (Huimin) river course runs vertically,
The east side of Fan'an and across the river were destroyed."
As a result, "Nanchang's transport road was cut off, while Beichang had Ji transport, and the rivers transporting it to the south felt that it had been lost, and their transportation was dwindling day by day. The salt industry in Nanchang declined greatly, and all the kitchen households returned to their hometowns and changed their businesses. Not only the beach was deserted, but the stoves were abandoned.
There are too many Bingzao classes and no way to follow them?"
Therefore, the Cangzhou salt industry changed from inland river shipping to land transportation. Land transportation was more expensive than river transportation and lost its competitiveness. Since then, most of the salt farm households in Cangzhou "abandoned the beach and changed their business" and returned to their native states and counties.
But at this time, the South Field was only unable to develop, but it could barely be maintained. Until Gao Pragmatic built Tianjin Port into shape, the radiation capacity of Tianjin Port increased significantly, and the part of Changlu Salt Field near Tianjin began to obviously show huge transportation costs.
Advantage.
It’s all the same salt. The cost of getting the goods in Tianjin and transporting them out of Beichang is 20 to 30% lower than in Cangzhou, Nanchang. Only fools and businessmen who can’t get the goods in Tianjin will continue to fight against Nanchang.
From this, Gao Jingshi discovered a trump card in his hand - even if it was a big salt merchant like the Zhang family, if Gao Jingshi refused to cooperate, their costs would increase significantly and their profits would decrease significantly.
Moreover, the reason why Tianjin Port can bring about cost reduction is not only the advantages of the port itself, but also the reason why Tianjin Port has a strong transport fleet.
(Team part) will occupy about half of the capacity.
This situation gave Gao Pragmatic a thought: Should the salt fields in the past be gradually transferred and the salt fields across the country gradually move closer to large ports?
His idea was not to target Zhang Siwei or the Changlu Salt Farm alone. In fact, his focus was mainly on the Yangzhou salt merchants.
It is not easy for Gao Pragmatic to attack the Zhang family, but that does not mean that it is inconvenient for him to attack the Yangzhou salt merchants.
Of course, some of the current Yangzhou salt merchants are Shanxi businessmen. For example, Zhang Sijiao went to Yangzhou more than ten years ago for the purpose of developing business in Yangzhou - after all, Changlu is almost surrounded by the Zhang family, and there is no longer any
There is room for development.
However, Shanxi merchants are not the strongest in Yangzhou. Nanjing's noble forces have many agents among Yangzhou salt merchants, such as Huizhou merchants, Zhejiang merchants and local Yangzhou salt merchants, etc. These people are highly pragmatic and dynamic.
It won't hurt when you get up.
However, Gao Pragmatic didn't really want to use political means to do this, because political means were more likely to suffer backlash. He had been thinking about using economic means to solve this problem.
Producing salt in Liaodong was his first step in carefully exploring the salt industry.
What he just said to Zhu Yijun about selling to North Korea, Jurchens and even Mongolia was not a lie, but it was not complete. In fact, Zhu Yijun was worried that Gao Pragmatism would offend people, but Gao Pragmatism was not very worried about offending people, at least leaving aside the Jin Party.
Afterwards, he did not worry about offending the salt merchants in the south.
These people were almost all the backstage financiers of the Donglin Party in history. From Gao Pragmatic's point of view, if you offend someone, you will be offended. Anyway, it will happen sooner or later.
Gao Pragmatic has long been quietly hoarding land in Shanghai because the market around Nanjing is not easy to penetrate. The purpose is to suddenly launch the Shanghai Port when the time is right, so as to leave Nanjing and even Suzhou alone and seize the commercial initiative in South Zhili.
.
Now that the land at Shanghai Port is almost ready, the staffing may be insufficient, but Gao Pragmatic is not worried - he has several big ports at hand, so it is not a problem to recruit some people. With the advantage of the port, Yangzhou salt merchants have to worry
High pragmatic pressure.
In this case, if you want to continue to increase the pressure, there is only one thing left that is most critical: goods.
Make a worst-case scenario: Gao Pragmatic owns the Shanghai Port with the most advantageous transportation conditions in the future, but the Yangzhou salt merchants and the Nanjing Xungui and Jiangnan Shilin behind them are unwilling to compromise. The final result may be that the Yangzhou salt merchants would rather cost
If the price is 20 to 30% higher, we won’t go to Shanghai Port—this is a lose-lose situation.
Therefore, if you want to strangle the Yangzhou salt merchants, Gao Jingjing also needs to have a supply source, and this supply source must be strong enough to force the Yangzhou salt merchants into complete bankruptcy!
Is the Changlu Salt Farm okay? Not really. Even if Zhang Siwei is willing to fight head-on with the Yangzhou salt merchants, the output is probably not enough. After all, the Changlu Salt Farm supplies most of the north. If these goods are used to start a price war in the south, the north will be short of food.
Food?
Therefore, Gao Pragmatic almost volunteered to express to Zhu Yijun today his willingness to go to Yuanmasi Temple in Liaodong to be the minister. What he values is not just a military preparation road, but the area under the jurisdiction of the minister of Yuanmasi in Liaodong - the Liaodong Peninsula.
As we all know, one of the four major salt areas in China in later generations was the Liaodong Bay Salt Area. As a traveler, Gao Pragmatic knew some ideas for improving the salt-drying technology.
Although the idea does not represent direct technology, as long as the position of Liaodong Yuanmasi Qing falls on Gao Pragmatic, he will have enough capital to conduct experiments, not to mention that he can also ask Changlu Saltworks to help - just use "
The whole forest" in exchange.
Anyway, Gao Pragmatic has long hoped to bring the Zhang family and even more northern "conglomerates" into new channels, rather than sticking to the old trades that have been in place for thousands of years.
