Zhang Tianlin's estimate was still wrong. Of the 40 million taels of silver spent by Chongzhen in six years, the court only recovered less than 20%. This is of course not that Zhu Youcong and Chongzhen could not recover the silver, but that they could not.
Don't dare to accept it. Otherwise, let alone these two scourges, even if a traitor is randomly found in the court, there are tens of thousands of ways for the people to take out the money that they have finally put into their pockets, and then
They must also express gratitude to the imperial court for doing great things for them.
The people of the Ming Dynasty have suffered too much, and even the word "houses with bare walls" is not enough to describe their poverty. Although the Ming Dynasty has produced the evildoer Zhu Youcong in recent years, the people have not been deprived of food and clothing, but this is only a solution to the problem.
The most basic problem of survival was solved. Judging from the fact that most of the people lived in poor houses, the Ming Dynasty still had a long way to go before it could truly hide wealth among the people.
But the money left among the people, and the people exchanged it with their hard work and sweat, is not given in vain. The traitors in the court did not let the people hide such a large amount of money at home, but they wanted to find ways to let them use it to improve things.
one's own state of existence.
It's just that this matter is relatively difficult, so that the traitors in the court are so busy that they can no longer even take care of the New Year's Day gathering that according to tradition the court has to start preparing for after the twelfth lunar month. Although this extremely spectacular court meeting is just for the emperor.
He came out to show to the civil and military officials and the envoys from other countries to prove that he was still alive and well, without any disaster or illness, but no one could spare the time. In the end, Luo Yangxing, the commander of the Jinyiwei who had been helping torment the prisoners in Zhao Prison, took over.
Got this unfortunate mission.
Gu Xichou, who was in charge of the Ministry of Personnel, was very worried. Since the Imperial College was unable to train enough talents to replace the old bureaucracy in a short period of time, the stubborn old man could only focus on establishing a new supervisory agency to provide services to the officials.
There is another sharp sword hanging above the head.[
However, whether it is to recruit people from Bailian secret agents or to select cool officials who borrow their names from various places, they all need to undergo strict training before they can take up the post. But now all the officials in the Ministry of Personnel are responsible for three people, so how can they still do it?
Can enough teachers be mobilized? Moreover, this huge supervision organization requires a lot of expenses. He originally didn't have this item in his budget, but it took a lot of jle quarrels to get 70% of it. Now the gap is
Bigger.
The new Minister of Industry, Wang Zheng, also had a headache. He finally built factories all over the place, but new troubles kept emerging. Everywhere he went, someone would always whisper in his ears that he could buy it with a loan at court interest.
The machines are easy to use, and the workers who came out of the small workshops are basically qualified for the current work after more than a month of training.
But if the imperial court had not said that the first few months were in the trial production stage, mainly to make products with cut corners to fool those Western allies, the raw materials that were originally planned to be used for more than half a year, let alone a month like now, would have been used for two months.
You have to take it easy for ten days. If you really wait for everyone to be recruited and everyone's skills are perfected, then why don't you have to work for ten days and rest for half a year? And these iron lumps are not that good-tempered, and they like it from time to time.
Just be a little naughty. But they can't fix it. Every time something goes wrong with the machine, you have to wait for several days.
After some weighing, the two ministers decided to do simple things first. They had contributed a lot when establishing the Imperial College. Now it is time for the Ministry of Education to reciprocate and help them solve the talent problem. As for What about the money and raw materials? After finishing this work, I can shamelessly go to the Ministry of Finance.
It should be said that Kong Yanzhi's life has been really good recently. Colleges of all sizes have been built, and the emperor has withstood the pressure from all parties to give priority to meeting his needs. He has fully allocated the free education funds for all required by Chongzhen for seven years. After learning about his colleagues' difficulties, Yan Shenggong immediately agreed to help without saying a word.
Gu Laozui couldn't handle the matter of teachers. He was reluctant to give them to either teachers or students. But the Imperial College is so big. It has only recruited less than 10% of the students. As long as the staff can bring people over, what will Teng Teng do? It is also possible to hold a short-term training class for them in the two empty rooms. Maybe by then we will find a few more good seedlings, and we can also take advantage of them.
The problem of Wang Zheng, a fake Taoist priest, is easy to solve. Don’t we just need skilled workers? There are currently no people who meet the requirements at the college, but didn’t the institute lend out an after-sales service team of more than a hundred people? Why not take advantage of this opportunity? Years of time are spent to build the technical college mentioned in Fan Thief's suicide note. Is it better to be treated like a fish than to be treated like a fish? Go to government schools in various places to select a group of people who are full of knowledge and not so hard-headed to learn and practice at the same time. There is no need to look at other people’s faces for daily maintenance of civilian machines.
However, Kong Yanzhi finally made a small request. These two things were not within his budget, so it was not difficult to ask the Imperial College to help train talents, but it had to be paid! You must know that Ming Dynasty now has an audit office. If If he dared to misappropriate one or two taels of special education funds, he would not need to go through the Ministry of Punishment's judgment or go to Zhao Prison to be beaten. Instead, as long as the evidence is solid, he would be dragged out of Lingchi directly.
Well, since everyone is short of money, let's go to the Ministry of Finance together, and then come back to discuss how to sort out the dirty things. But when they saw Zhu Zhiyu's bitter face, they realized that they seemed to be looking in the wrong place again.
The problems in the Ministry of Household Affairs are more serious than theirs. Although the land policy that the imperial court has implemented in the north for many years is good, it has many loopholes. In the long run, this imperfect land nationalization policy is very harmful and may even cause A new model of land annexation controlled by law. Over time, due to serious social unfair distribution, those people who have been completely decoupled from the land but have mastered advanced knowledge will be forced into the old path of rebellion. If we want to solve this problem at that time, But it is not as simple as Zhu Youcong's quelling the Shaanxi rebellion. But this problem cannot be solved with money right now, and it is not something that he, the Ministry of Revenue, can consider thoroughly. Other departments must also participate. Come in and help me come up with ideas.
In the short term, the harm is not small, as land rents of nearly 10% have firmly tied the people to the land, leaving them without much enthusiasm to participate in the upcoming industrial revolution.
In order to get the people of the Ming Dynasty out of the fields without affecting people's livelihood, Zhu Zhiyu made a damaging move. He purchased grain at high prices in the most strictly controlled Liaodong area to protect the large landowners who had just begun semi-mechanized operations. While enthusiastic about farming, they were preparing to sell at low prices in the original grain production areas of the Central Plains and Jiangnan. The grain that originally cost one tael of silver and one stone was sold by the government for as low as two taels. Such a huge price difference not only quickly It can completely destroy the self-sufficient small-scale peasant economy in the Ming Dynasty, and also allow money from the national treasury to move out like running water.
The Ministry of Finance has no money? Then continue to expand the team. The four ministers go to the emperor together! You know, the last batch of silver transported back from the Japanese island is still in the royal treasury and has not had time to enter the treasury. Chongzhen, that foolish emperor
Whatever you say, get this thing done quickly and come up with tens of millions of taels.
But as soon as they reached the Meridian Gate, they bumped into Wang Chengen, who was about to go to look for someone according to the order. It turned out that the emperor also encountered a trouble that made him anxious, and it was also seriously related to the national destiny of the Ming Dynasty. If this problem could not be solved,
Even if the reform achieves certain results, all previous efforts will be wasted soon.
There are many hidden households in the Ming Dynasty. Although the policies in recent years have attracted many people to come out, this problem has not been fundamentally solved. For this reason, Han Xu, the Minister of the Ministry of the Interior who has not yet taken office, put forward a new suggestion, which is to spread the country's
A census was conducted within the Ming Dynasty and a household registration system was implemented. Of course, his household registration system was still very imperfect. It did not even divide regions into a time and space yyng. The people of the Ming Dynasty all received yellow notebooks, except for the family.
Apart from the population size, gender and age of the members, there is only a description of the characters before the advent of cameras, plus a particularly thick stack of blank pages. This is to avoid repeated receipts after enjoying the preferential treatment. It is specially set aside for the official seal.
Used.
In order to cooperate with the implementation of this policy, Han Xu also proposed to implement a rationing system in the short term. All people of the Ming Dynasty who hold Huangbenben can purchase seventy kilograms of government-priced grain per month. Of course, if they are particularly edible, there will be high prices.
Food can be bought, but since the price is high, I'm afraid most people can't afford it. This is done to cooperate with Zhu Zhiyu's damaging tactics and prevent looting. Secondly, it is a step closer to forcing out the hidden households. Meat these days
The intake is small, and the people's appetites are relatively large, and seventy kilograms of grain is just enough to eat.
The special thing about that yellow book is that although the court will not actually distribute it, it has registered two acres of land in each person's name. Although this is just a number, it has practical benefits. The court will announce every year.
The income from the acres of land is then distributed to the corresponding people. As for enjoying free education for all, bearing the lowest taxes, and being bullied when doing business abroad, the Ming army will stand up for them regardless of whether they have it... and a series of other benefits
There are so many that it is dazzling to see.
Although Han Xu's ideas are not very good, they are still pretty good. With so many good policies, even fools will line up to register with the government, which saves the government officials from going door to door to do statistics.
.However, this happened to be heard by Qiao Yunsheng, the Minister of Punishment who was holding a new bill for Chongzhen to review. The bad old man immediately asked two questions without doing his job.
The hidden households have been forced out, and coupled with the policy of encouraging childbirth that Ming Dynasty is implementing, the population of Ming Dynasty will soon experience explosive growth. How will there be so many extra mouths to feed? Even if Liaodong is turned into
Fertile farmland can last for ten or twenty years, but what happens after that? One or two hundred years later, the Ming Dynasty, which has completed the industrial revolution, will find another way to trick people into returning to farming? Then it is better not to reform and continue doing what we are doing.
Okay, forget it.[
And the suggestion that each person should be given a minimum living allowance of two acres of land became even more ridiculous in Qiao Yunsheng's mouth. Even if no food was provided, and one acre of land was converted into one tael of silver, the eight in the Ming Dynasty's account book would
A population of 10 million will cost 160 million taels of silver. The imperial court has been very wealthy recently, but it will have to wait at least several years before it can see the achievements of the Industrial Revolution and rely on commercial taxation to solve its financial problems.
.And the existing silver deposits in the national treasury can be squandered like this for at most two years, and it will be difficult to survive after this?
Therefore, Chongzhen’s current trouble is not only a lack of money, but also a lack of land. It’s easy to talk about the money issue, and in the worst case, it will be delayed for a few years before implementing those good policies. But the land issue cannot be delayed. There is not enough land to build large state-owned farms.
If the common people provide cheap food, how can we dare to completely liberate them from land labor?
When the six ministers gathered behind Jinshen Hall, these two problems became more prominent. They all wanted to leave their names in history. Han's policies gave them this opportunity, but they could only watch helplessly being shelved and left to future generations.
People continue to improve and then show it off. In the final analysis, this is because Ming Dynasty, which has just begun to rise again, does not have enough capital.
Capital? When this word flashed through everyone's heads, they suddenly remembered a sentence in Fan Thief's suicide note. Capital came into this world, from head to toe, and every pore of it, was flowing with blood and filth.
It obviously has the characteristics of ruthlessness, greed, plunder, bloodthirst, and affection are its nature.
Thinking of this, Chongzhen's mouth showed a smile, and the six ministers also felt their eyes light up. The Ming Dynasty did not have much capital, but there was a monster in the Ming Dynasty who was the most troublesome. Greedy, plundering, bloodthirsty, ruthless... When that
After the evildoer steps out of the Ming Dynasty, he will perfectly interpret the inner meaning of these words. What makes them feel more fortunate is that the evildoer has nothing to do recently and is staying at home to draw eyebrows for fun.
As long as that damn fat man is released, what kind of money and what kind of raw materials will still be a problem? He doesn't know how to produce, but he is very good at robbing. And after robbing these things, will he let other people's land and people go? By then
Not only can the problems of the six ministries be successfully solved, but the land that the emperor wanted has also been secured, and a large amount of free labor can be obtained by the way.
"Everyone, please tell me, how can you think of a way to get Brother Cong to take action this time?" Chongzhen, a foolish king, never knew how to write the word "shy", but this time he used a trick to bring Zhu Youcong back.
I've suffered enough.
Now Zhu Youcong will appear outside the imperial dining room on time every day when it is time to eat. Without saying a word, he will start eating and drinking, then he will ride on his mule and run home to sleep. If you want to talk to him about something serious, he
He could close the door of his small courtyard, and then let someone tell him that he was creating a human being according to the order, so it was inconvenient to see him. Even if Chongzhen broke in on the basis of his status as emperor, the little fat man could lie on the bed and pretend
Die and continue his protest.
"Your Majesty, could you please allow me to discuss this matter first?" The fat man has been in a bad mood recently. If he just provokes him casually without making complete preparations, even if he is forced to help, he will not be able to help him afterwards.
They will definitely be retaliated against. The six ministers are not stupid. Even the emperor dare not take the blame, and they are even less capable of taking the blame.
"Let's discuss it! Discuss it slowly! I'm here today to discuss this matter with you all." Chongzhen was very anxious. If the current problems could be solved, Ming Dynasty would be able to smoothly start drastic reforms in all aspects.
, even if he is still a fool, he is still the most accomplished fool. As for the little thing that deceived his younger brother, as long as the ministers present don't tell it and the eunuch in charge of recording doesn't write it down, who can know? (To be continued...)