After the Yantai Navy exercise, Li Guolou followed Li Hongzhang and carried out inspections in the Zhili area, holding meetings of thousands of people in each provincial capital, bringing the spring breeze of the Qing Dynasty's restructuring to various places. Li Hongzhang usually made the main report, and Li Guolou served as deputy
After the report, the local officials made concluding remarks, and the meeting lasted for half a day. At the reception banquet in the evening, Li Guolou only brought one wife to attend, which not only maintained his dignity, but also allowed the singer with ulterior motives to retreat in the face of difficulty.
More than a month of meeting at sea to discuss politics made Li Guolou miserable. Not only was he busy working, but he couldn't take care of his own business. Being an official meant there were many meetings. Li Hongzhang received documents from the court every day and had to consult with Li Guolou.
In my opinion, I almost used him as a bookkeeper.
Li Guolou complained a few times and wanted to return to Beijing as soon as possible and did not want to deal with local officials. He was severely criticized by Li Hongzhang, who warned him about the principle of caution and patience. If he wants the government orders to be smooth, he must handle the relationship with the subordinates face to face.
hand in hand
Recruiting talents is the most effective. Administrative orders should not only rely on a piece of paper. Communicating with people and properly solving various problems is the way to be an official. Li Hongzhang also said a lot of long speeches about caring for the sufferings of local people, which made Li Guolou stand.
For a long time.
Li Guolou sincerely made a thousand-word written examination, and only then did he get Li Hongzhang's understanding. Taking advantage of the break of the meeting, Li Guolou also observed the local people's sentiments, sympathized with the difficulties of the officials below, and took his four wives to express his warmth.
Activity.
There are mostly tile-roofed houses on both sides of the official road, but as long as it is a small road, there are mostly thatched houses. People begging in lively towns gather together, and the people of the Qing Dynasty are struggling to live on the poverty line. Wearing rags in the cold wind, holding a
The beggar with a broken bowl and a dog-beating stick in his hand saw that the cavalry team had already arrived. He immediately cheered up and knelt on the ground to beg for money.[
Li Guolou watched this scene all the way, and his heart became heavy. He did not make much contribution to rural construction. He only carried out disguised land reform, but it did not shake the foundation of the rural gentry class. The countryside was still poor and backward, and the poor were still poor.
His path of industrial restructuring in the Qing Dynasty did not benefit the majority of farmers, but also made the urban and rural areas more divided. This is a bad sign and will make more people have a hatred of the rich.
How to improve the living standards of farmers? Li Guolou had this idea for the first time. During subsequent inspections, Li Guolou appeared in the countryside and discussed this livelihood issue with local officials.
The territories of the nobles and nobles of the Qing Dynasty were smaller than in the previous dynasty, and the annexation of land by bureaucrats and gentry increased. The activities of merchants annexing land became a quite prominent phenomenon. After the Qing Dynasty entered the customs, there were
Converting some of the noble estates of the Ming Dynasty into renamed fields was a measure to convert the imperial estates into civilian fields. Although large-scale land reclamation was carried out in the Gyeonggi area in the early Qing Dynasty,
Enclosed land, a large number of imperial villages and banners were established, but later they were gradually transformed into civilian fields. Therefore, compared with the Ming Dynasty, the territories of the nobles and nobles were actually smaller. However, the bureaucratic gentry other than the royal family and nobles were still
Occupy a large amount of land, and as time goes by, the strength of this part of the landlord class has developed, at least there is no sign of weakening.
The reason why bureaucrats can quickly annex large amounts of land does not simply rely on their salary. The official salary of bureaucrats in the Qing Dynasty is quite low. The annual salary of a first- or second-rank official is only more than one hundred taels. During the Yongzheng period, in the official salary
In addition to salary, there is also the so-called maintenance of integrity, but on average, maintaining integrity is also
However, it is equivalent to six times the regular salary, and it cannot be completely guaranteed. Obviously, it is impossible to satisfy the bureaucrats' huge desire for land by relying solely on regular salaries and maintaining integrity. The reason why bureaucrats can concentrate a large amount of land is mainly due to the bureaucratic privileges
Status, corruption and bribery, plunder and plunder.
The officialdom has always been a place for corruption and bribery. The income from official salary can be calculated, while the income from corruption and bribery must be calculated according to law. A governor's annual salary is less than one hundred taels, and a governor's office accepts gifts from subordinates every year. In Guizhou, it is
one
There are more than 10,000 taels, and in Shandong it reaches more than 110,000 taels. If calculated on average, raising integrity is equivalent to six times the normal salary, then the rules and rituals alone are equivalent to more than 90 times the normal salary. As for the rules and rituals
Illegal income other than this is doubly so.
Feudal bureaucrats relied on their privileged status to seize land. The land that bureaucrats annexed was often within their jurisdiction.
Another feature of the distribution of land rights is that the activities of businessmen annexing land are prominent and eye-catching.
Merchants' annexation of land is closely related to the activity of commercial capital. Bureaucratic landlords rely largely on political power to annex land, while merchants mainly rely on economic power to annex land.
When political power plays a leading role in land annexation, the transfer of commercial capital to land lacks necessary guarantees and therefore lacks corresponding motivation.
At this time, the nobility, bureaucrats, and gentry were still privileged landowners. However, their privileged status had been weakened in the Ming Dynasty, and the power of merchants had grown with the expansion of the commodity and monetary economy. Shanxi's votes
Shang, Lianghuai
Salt merchants, merchants from Guangdong, maritime merchants from Fujian, Huizhou merchants from Anhui, Dongting merchants from Jiangsu, etc., have all formed merchant groups with capital of tens of thousands. These large merchants used their strong economic strength to conduct large-scale land acquisitions.
merger.
The number of businessmen annexing land does not seem to be as high as that of bureaucrats. However, they are very active. The funds in their hands are highly mobile. Wherever there is an opportunity to annex land, they will get wind of it. Shanxi businessmen are far away
To Henan and
Merging land, Huizhou merchants went to northern Jiangsu to buy land, and Guangdong merchants went to Guangxi to buy land. In thirteen provinces including Shandong and Shanxi, there are a lot of facts about "buying acres of land in this city with the people of another city". Shandong alone
There are as many as sixty-one counties in the province.
Since merchant capital has greater liquidity, merchants who acquire land can buy land at lower prices when farmers suffer from famine and hunger. When droughts occur in Shandong, Jiangsu, Anhui, Hubei and other provinces, salt merchants gather in Yangzhou, Hankou, and Huizhou
, they all planned to cross the border to buy property for profit. There is no doubt that this way of annexing land has brought double disasters to farmers.
In the process of annexing land by merchants, usury is a powerful tool. Merchants who annex land, or when there is a shortage of crops and food prices are high, lend grain at a discount to farmers who are short of food, charge high interest, and exploit farmers until they go bankrupt.
Then "extract the fields and houses" to achieve the purpose of annexing the farmers' land. Or accept the farmers' land in pawn, and through the pawn,
Making money together and selling it out in the end makes loan sharks play a huge role. Shanxi businessmen are a typical example of annexing land through loan sharks. In the land buying and selling in rural Fujian, there are a large number of examples of land pawning. In Jiangsu, there is even a "
For a landowner with more pawns than land, pawn interest is both his main income and his main means of annexing land.
The annexation of land through usury was not limited to businessmen. Bureaucratic landlords and even ordinary landowners were often loan sharks who exploited farmers. Great bureaucrats such as Gao Shiqi, Xu Qianxue and He Shen all owned many pawnshops or bank accounts.
It is said that "the scholar-bureaucrats hold the bag in their pocket and ask for it."
"Fields are like those above them", and "lending money for the benefit of children and mothers", in terms of "fish and meat rural music", is "a knife and a cone competing". In the activities of loan sharks and annexing land, businessmen still play an important role.
, and there is no doubt that this method of merger will bring double suffering to farmers.
Li Guolou once made a fortune in the country, and took advantage of the wave of intrusion into Shandong. He cooperated with Wang Chengren, a large landowner in Qilitun, to enclose nearly 10,000 acres of land in Shandong without showing off the mountains and water. Although he later set an example,
Donated all the occupied land and converted the mountains
He built a large farm on the 10,000 acres of land occupied by the Eastern Circle, and recruited refugees in the form of state-owned land to gain fame and try out his land reform. However, he did not intend to serve the country and the people at the beginning, but resorted to despicable means to rely on his uncle.
Li Hongzhang's brand, making ill-gotten gains.
But now Li Guolou has made a huge leap in his ideological realm. He no longer strives for profit with the people, but feeds back the fledgling, trying to find a way out for the 300 million farmers.
At this time, the population of the Qing Dynasty exploded. In order to solve the people's livelihood, the Qing government introduced many high-yielding crops, including corn, sweet potatoes, and potatoes from South America, and spread them everywhere. It also published many agricultural books to teach farmers to grow corn, sweet potatoes,
Potatoes. It was precisely because of the outstanding contributions of sweet potatoes, potatoes and other high-yielding crops that the people were not starved to death, and the Qing Dynasty was able to survive the most dangerous era of the Taiping Rebellion.
However, high-yielding crops such as sweet potatoes also have great weaknesses, that is, they are single in nutrition, have a biased taste, and have little value for deep processing. They can be used as a temporary emergency, but long-term staple food will definitely lead to malnutrition in the human body.
It will inevitably affect the normal intellectual development of the human body.
High-yielding crops flourished from the early Qing Dynasty to the Qianlong era, but the "sweet potato boom" has already tasted the consequences. The people have become extremely weak, and the quality of the race has declined sharply. In the Qing Dynasty, adults were less than 1.7 meters tall and were thin, and rickets was common in rural areas.
Universally popular, crooked melon
Disabled people with cracked jujubes can be seen everywhere in cities and towns. This also caused the Qing army's combat effectiveness to decline. The Qing army could not defeat the Eight-Nation Allied Forces. It also had racial weaknesses. The final hand-to-hand combat was about physical fitness. The Eight-Nation Allied Forces were born with it.
Absolute advantage.[
The quality of race is also the key to victory or defeat. When the Han people defeated the Southern Barbarians, they relied on their own strength. In order to make the country rich and powerful, Li Guolou must of course consider the combat effectiveness of the soldiers. At this time, there was a big gap between the yellow race and the white race.
, the yellow race has become synonymous with inferior ethnic groups, regardless of the issue of national self-esteem, which is related to height, body shape, and complexion. Similarly, if a normal Qing Dynasty and a foreigner stand together, the two will immediately distinguish their superiority and inferiority.
The common people have two meals a day, half of which is rice. Even if they are rich farmers, most farmers eat sweet potatoes and potatoes as their staple food. When Li Guolou was in the countryside, he looked at the rice vats of the farmers and was concerned about the yield per mu. When he saw the big vat at the door of the farmhouse, that
It is the main source of fertilizer for farmers, relying entirely on human and animal excrement. Li Guolou knows how to help farmers get out of poverty.
Li Guolou stayed up late at night and wrote an article "The Urgency of Building a Fertilizer Plant in the Qing Dynasty", which discussed the reason why the yellow race became an inferior race, not by victory on the battlefield, but by the improvement of the race and the transformation of the people.
Only by improving the staple food structure can a country have a completely new look. Only when chemical fertilizers are applied to fields on a large scale can crop yields be increased. As for the pros and cons of chemical fertilizers, we will also analyze them to make people abandon their fearful thoughts.
Laws, reasonable fertilization will not produce adverse consequences. Finally, he denounced the evil consequences of land annexation by government and businessmen, expressing the ideal of land to the tiller, but did not talk about practical plans. The ideal society of governance is the central idea of his discussion
.Li Guolou did not dare to raise the idea of "equalizing the rich and the poor", then wouldn't it cause a civil war? Knowing that it would not work, he advocated an idealized society and used high-sounding empty words as a conclusion.
Li Guolou knew that Li Hongzhang had the habit of reading the brochures in the morning, so he left the hotel early in the morning and went to Li Hongzhang's Baoding Zhili Governor's Mansion. Li Hongzhang lived in the backyard. Li Guolou did not need to report it and handed the brochures directly to Li Hongzhang.
He called out, "Uncle, aunt, I'll do it myself." Li Guolou sat down to drink porridge and said, "Uncle, I haven't slept all night, so just look ahead. I can only contract to build the fertilizer plant.
In the subordinate areas, the main raw materials are phosphorus and potassium as well as some insecticides.
This can increase the yield per mu by 30 to 40%, or even double it. The transportation costs will go up any further, and ordinary people will not be able to afford it. We need to build fertilizer plants in various places, which is beyond my reach. Don’t let me do it.
I don’t want to make this money, let it benefit the people.”
Li Hongzhang was only interested in industry. He read Li Guolou's brochure, and after reading half of it, he closed the brochure and said: "Xiaolou, regarding agricultural issues, I am a layman and have no say in the court. You can
Discussing the pros and cons with Zuo Zongtang
, first hand over the information to the Ministry of Household Affairs and ask Shangzhen of the Ministry of Household Affairs to study it. But don’t be discouraged, Zhili, you will try it out in the Liangjiang area. I will give some advice and use administrative means to let the people use chemical fertilizers so that they do not lose money.
, as long as it’s worthy of your conscience.”
"Master Fu Xiang, the fertilizer factory is related to people's livelihood. I will run it exclusively. I will divest the investment when the investment is recovered. From now on, I will let Jingshu run it. This industry is a thousand times better than the silk and satin factory. The money earned can buy a Baoding mansion." Li Guolou told the truth.
To be honest, he is not a three-headed and six-armed Nezha. There is always a limit. Foreign investment is familiar with this area.
He could ask the French Minister Luo Shuya in the Tianjin Concession or even the British Minister Wade to compare prices. In the future, if the trust monopolizes the fertilizer industry and earns 300 million farmers' money, it is better to give Li Hongzhang a big gift, so that Li Hongzhang will
Only by being attentive and not taking things for granted can people's lives be significantly improved.
Sure enough, Li Hongzhang immediately took the bait and picked up the coupon again. He read it carefully this time and nodded frequently: "Well, who else would you rather build a fertilizer plant with an annual output of 400,000 tons than me? Xiaolou, I can rest assured that you will do the work. I will go there before the new year."
Next time in Tianjin, you will be the most reliable when negotiating business with foreigners."
Li Hongzhang was most assured of Li Guolou, because he was the only descendant who would not accept kickbacks from foreigners and harm the interests of the Qing Dynasty. The "Yantai Treaty" was signed. Although Li Guolou accepted bribes from the British, he took a building located in Yantai.
The garden house, this is outside the officialdom
He could not hand it over to the treasury due to the unspoken rules of negotiation, but Li Guolou truthfully told Li Hongzhang that he was aboveboard and worthy of the conscience of heaven and earth. As for Li Hongzhang letting him accept it, it was also in line with the trend. Everyone was in the same pond.