Emperor Zhengde

Chapter 176 Hardworking Han People

What the people love most is the yellow soil, and nothing else can tempt them.

What's more.

Those who followed Zhang Cong to the frontier were all landless refugees.

What they need most now is their own land and a home where they can settle down.

Otherwise, they would not have followed Zhang Cong and traveled thousands of miles to the frontier because they could not survive and wanted to have something to eat.

Now that they have their own land, they have the opportunity to settle down, have children and continue to live as human beings.

When they heard that the county magistrate was going to distribute the land here to them and re-register their household registration, they all knew that they would settle down here again, so they were naturally very enthusiastic about building buildings in the city.

Of course, those who followed Zhang Cong to Yulin City outside the Great Wall were not only these landless refugees, but also some businessmen with gentry backgrounds.

Zhu Houzhao issued an edict that Yulin was a new city outside the Great Wall and needed to be revitalized, so he abolished the heavy taxes paid by merchants from the inland border towns when they went out to trade. Instead, he only allowed the Ministry of Revenue to collect a low-tax stamp tax to encourage merchants to come to the Great Wall to settle and do business.

This also attracted some far-sighted businessmen to follow Zhang Cong to Yulin despite the risks in the frontier.

Although the main reason for the merchants' migration was the reform of the Sino-French system, it was also related to the excessive exploitation by the government and army in the border towns.

Prior to this, in order to control the economy of border towns and prevent merchants from aiding the enemy, the imperial court imposed various harsh taxes on border towns to supplement military supplies, causing many merchants to prefer smuggling to the legal trade channels prescribed by the government.

After all, the latter's profits would become very small, making the trade activities controlled by the government increasingly indifferent, while smuggling would become more rampant, making it even more difficult for the court to implement economic control over the Mongols.

Now, Zhu Houzhao's plan to adopt a unified tax rate and levy low taxes in Yulin City outside the Great Wall naturally gave merchants profitable opportunities. Moreover, Zhu Houzhao asked Zhang Cong to tell these merchants that the grain and minerals developed by these merchants in Yulin would be directly purchased by the Royal Industrial Company and the imperial farm, so as to avoid the merchants being exploited by the government when transporting them back to the interior.

This also made some businessmen more willing to go out and develop areas outside the Great Wall. They were naturally not afraid of the risk of being plundered by the Tartars at any time. As long as there were high profits, these profit-seeking businessmen would dare to do it even at the risk of their lives. Even when two countries were at war, they still dared to carry out commercial exports to the enemy country, let alone these.

Of course, those who were willing to follow Zhang Cong to the frontier to develop Yulin City were not only the merchants who were encouraged by Zhu Houzhao's low tax rate policy, but also merchants with bureaucratic capital backgrounds who, after learning that the court was going to restore the system of paying taxes and making profits, also came to the frontier to cultivate land and store grain in advance in order to gain profits from salt in the future.

Among them were the chief minister of the cabinet Jiao Fang and the seal holder of the Imperial Household Department Liu Jin, and others who followed them to Yulin City outside the Great Wall, preparing to seize the land outside the Great Wall.

Zhu Houzhao also learned through various intelligence channels that these officials who could grasp the policy trends of the court in advance would send their families to the frontier to seize territory first.

But he did not stop it. He believed that after seizing the land outside the Great Wall, the families behind these court officials would definitely support a strong military to destroy the Tartars, and would even reorganize the salt administration for him, because their purpose in the land outside the Great Wall was not to care about the grain outside the Great Wall, but the salt permits exchanged for the grain.

In addition to landless refugees and merchants, Zhang Cong also asked for a group of Confucian scholars who had committed crimes from the East Factory and the Three Judicial Departments.

These people were either implicated in a rebellious case but not guilty of capital punishment, or had not yet been executed by the court, or had committed other crimes;
Especially after the implementation of the Kaocheng Law, because the officials of the local Censors and the three central judicial officials tried their best to improve the efficiency of handling criminal and civil cases, many Confucian scholars were thrown into jail for crimes such as adultery, tax evasion, and incest. Most of them were problems with their lifestyle, which were the usual faults of literati. If they were not investigated, it would be fine. However, if they were investigated, they could be used to convict and make up for the political achievements, which resulted in more and more Confucian scholars being imprisoned and awaiting execution.

However, Zhang Cong did not expect that his memorial to the court asking the court to send some Confucian scholars who had committed crimes to border towns to educate the herdsmen outside the Great Wall and to establish schools in order to achieve the goal of making the best use of people would be quickly approved by Zhu Houzhao, who also asked the cabinet to draft a proposal to give these Confucian scholars who had developed bad habits and did not know the teachings of the sages a chance to go to the countryside for reform!

Therefore, the current Yulin City has Confucian scholars, businessmen and landless refugees.

In order to prevent these people from forming cliques that would be detrimental to his rule as the county magistrate, Zhang Cong reorganized them so that each block contained both the poor, such as landless vagrants, and the rich, such as officials, gentry and merchants.

Then, Zhang Cong asked each neighborhood to elect a neighborhood head.

Even though scholars were despised, they were still respected by the people in the Ming Dynasty where the illiteracy rate was very high. Therefore, the heads of each neighborhood were basically still these Confucian scholars.

After learning about this phenomenon, Zhu Houzhao did not reject it. After all, intellectuals are always easy to become leaders and are suitable to be leaders. Zhu Houzhao could not organize them to become exploiters again outside the Great Wall. He only required that the people who ruled that land must be from the Ming Dynasty.

The people living on that land are also the people of the Ming Dynasty, and they must have basic rights, so that they can know that being the people of the Ming Dynasty is better than being the people of other countries. Once the Ming Dynasty falls into crisis one day, they will feel the great pain brought by the loss of their country.

While constructing the buildings inside Yulin City, Zhang Cong began to divide up farmland outside Yulin City with his assistants, staff, clerks, village heads, and household heads.

Because the First Division of the Imperial Guards was camped nearby and the cavalry of the Imperial Guards had already been on sentry duty a hundred miles away, Zhang Cong and others were not worried about the sudden appearance of the Tartars and not having time to return to the city, so they just focused on dividing the land.

According to the plan, the Cabinet and the Ministry of Revenue referred to Yulin's previous geographical advantages and the minimum living needs of each citizen, and initially formulated a land distribution rule for Yulin City, which was 40 mu of land for each adult male and female, and 10 mu of permanent land.

The former can be cultivated for fifty years and then the land will be returned to the government, which will then redistribute it or allow you to continue cultivating it.

The latter is one's own private property and can be passed on to descendants or sold.

Before the Zhengtong period, Yulin City had belonged to the Ming Dynasty and was a military settlement. But now that the military settlements had moved inland, these places had become ownerless, and it was easy to divide the land without having to worry about affecting the interests of the military landlords in the border towns.

However, because the Yulin area was once the military garrison area of ​​the Ming Dynasty, there were quite a few fertile fields. Even after thousands of soldiers and civilians were divided up, there were still tens of thousands of acres of farmland and a large amount of pasture and forest land left.

Zhang Cong assigned all these lands to the government, that is, the court, but encouraged scholars and common people to contract them out. They could contract these lands for farming, storing grain, mining, or even just for forestry for hunting and logging. Except for the different contract prices, County Magistrate Zhang Cong would not strictly restrict the contractors' business activities on these lands.

Therefore, the merchants who followed Zhang Cong to Yulin contracted the farmland and mines that the government was currently unable to develop, making the industry of Yulin City appear diversified from the very beginning.

Of course, people from the Royal Industrial Company also came and contracted a mine, and contracted the largest iron mine here, in order to provide more iron ore raw materials for the Ming Dynasty's increasing demand for iron ore.

The first community school in Yulin City was also built.

However, Zhang Cong, who graduated from the Imperial University of Peking, changed the enlightenment education method of the community school which only read the Three Character Classic. He introduced simple arithmetic and common sense classes and invited specialized people to teach them.

The reason is that the community schools in Yulin are now for children of common people, and most of these children of common people will find it difficult to pass the imperial examinations and become Jinshi in the future. When teaching them the way of sages, they should also be taught how to make a living. Even if they pass the imperial examinations and become Jinshi in the future, it will be beneficial to them.

Because Yulin City was a newly built city outside the Great Wall, and Zhang Cong was a student of the Imperial University trained by Zhu Houzhao himself, he could naturally do whatever he wanted.

Lu Zimin never thought that he would settle down here in the frontier. At first, he had to accept the request of a county magistrate named Zhang Cong to work for him so that his family could have enough food to eat because his family was extremely hungry.

But he didn't expect that by following the county magistrate to the frontier, not only did his whole family survive, but they also got land.

As a citizen of Lu whose ancestors had been farmers for generations, he had no idea about other things, but he knew the value of land and that in his hometown of Huaiyang, an acre of land was worth ten taels of silver.

Now he owns a hundred acres of land, which is equivalent to nearly dozens of taels of silver given to him by the court. Therefore, he is particularly grateful to the county magistrate Zhang Cong and the court. When he sees Zhang Cong, he will willingly kneel down and kowtow.

Because Zhang Cong had received a modern education at the Imperial University of Peking, he could not stand being worshipped like a Buddha by the people of the Ming Dynasty every day, so he ordered the people of Yulin not to perform the kneeling ceremony except when they were summoned to court or at grand ceremonies. The reason he gave was that cloth in border towns was very expensive, and the order was to avoid getting the clothes dirty, as frequent washing would cause the clothes to be damaged quickly.

As a result, Zhang Cong gained a reputation for loving the people and was rewarded by the court, which led officials from other places to follow his example to show that they also loved the people.

The most important thing for the people of Lu now is their newly acquired fields. In order to plant crops as soon as possible, some people, like many others, even ignored the ban issued by Zhang Cong, the magistrate of Yulin, which required the people to return to the city at you time to prevent night attacks by the Tartars. Sometimes they would sneak out of the city in the middle of the night or stay overnight outside the city, just to pull out the weeds in the fields as early as possible and plant their crops as soon as possible.

Even if they were whipped for violating the ban, they were willing to do it.

The diligence of the people of the Ming Dynasty was astonishing. In order to have their own food as soon as possible, the barren fields around Yulin City were reclaimed at an astonishing speed.

The weeds seemed to have been pulled out overnight, and even countless narrow paths were trampled out, laying the foundation for future official road construction.

The tens of thousands of people in the previous chapter were changed to thousands, which feels more reasonable. I hope everyone knows

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(End of this chapter)