New Shun 1730

Killing is the simplest thing in the whole thing, without any technical content.

Just after the summer solstice, the memorials and secret memorials of officials in northern Jiangsu have all arrived in front of the emperor, as well as the "Huai'an Evil Gentry Records" involving more than 800 lives.

The emperor just flipped through the "Huai'an Evil Gentry Records" casually. There were no ministers around, and he didn't even pretend to be angry.

He just glanced at it twice and threw aside the document that involved more than 800 lives, and not ordinary lives, but the lives of gentry.

It took about half a minute to read this evil gentry record of about 200,000 words, and it took 30 minutes to read the estimated confiscation of official land acres that was handed over at the same time, which was about 10,000 words.

Then, before going to bed today, the emperor had been reading the "Memorial to Request Salt District Reclamation" presented by Liu Yu.

There are two copies of this memorial.

One copy can be taken outside and to the court.

The other one is an internal version, which cannot be taken to the court.

In recent years, Liu Yu has rarely submitted such serious memorials. The emperor only read a few pages and found the long-lost feeling of "seriousness".

With the help of the bright kerosene lamp presented by Tianbao Prefecture, which was purely hand-made and could only be used as tribute, he read this serious "Memorial to Reclamation of Salt Area" with pictures and texts.

Minister Yu said:

Before the Tang and Song Dynasties, the Fangong Dike in the north of the Yangtze River was all sea.

Since the Song Dynasty, the Yellow River took over the Huai River, silted up, and the coast moved eastward. The Fangong Dike was the coastline in the Song Dynasty.

The land of vicissitudes of life, from Chenjia Port in Guanhe in the north to Lushi Port in Nantongzhou in the south, with Fangong Dike as the boundary in the west and the sea in the east, has a total area of ​​45,000 square miles, equivalent to 16.54 million acres.

See Figure A for details.

At the beginning of the siltation, the soil was all salt brine, and no grass grew, but it was good for salt, so the Huainan salt industry benefited.

However, with the erosion of rainwater, the water in the Yellow River and Huai River became fresher, the sea air receded, and the brine became more and more pure.

Therefore, Huainan is a salt field, and its natural conditions are far inferior to those in Huaibei.

In addition to nature, there are other traditions.

Due to the system of the previous dynasty, this dynasty inherited it, and the two Huai Rivers mostly used the method of boiling salt. Why? In my opinion, in the early days, it was a last resort for recuperation and sparse population during the Hongwu period of the previous dynasty; however, later, the method of drying salt became popular, but it was easier to control salt households than drying salt, so it was inherited.

If the method of boiling salt does not change, salt cannot be cultivated without selecting salt, and salt cannot be cultivated without selecting.

Before reclaiming wasteland, your majesty must first make a holy judgment on whether Huainan will be positioned as salt production or grain production in the future, and then the method of reclamation can be determined.

Therefore, I will first discuss the disadvantages of Huainan's salt industry.

There are three in total.

First: The method of extracting brine in Huainan is too old.

Before boiling salt, you need to extract brine first.

However, extracting brine is not directly taking seawater, because firewood and grass are needed to boil salt, which are scarce at the seaside and difficult to transport, so you can only choose a place with more firewood and grass nearby. And because the Yellow River, Huai River and Yangtze River flow into the sea, the seawater in Huainan is pale, unlike other places.

The method used to extract brine in Huainan is the "spreading ash and sprinkling brine method" of the Song Dynasty, which is to extract brine on the land.

The method is as follows:

Choose a sunny day and dig a saline-alkali land. Then compact the foundation, expose it to the sun on a sunny day, and the water vapor rises, so that the salt below rises to the compacted surface.

Then, take the wood ash and spread it evenly on the landmark, and use the wood ash to absorb the salt in it.

When the absorption is almost complete, pour water into it.

Then put in stone lotus seeds, and rely on buoyancy to determine whether the salt content is high enough and whether it is worth boiling.

If it is worth boiling, these salty grass ash water can be considered brine.

Your Majesty, please forgive my crudeness. If the salt can be dried in places, the method of soaking in brine alone is just a waste of time and effort, which increases the cost for nothing.

And this method of soaking in brine requires a lot of grass ash.

Grass ash is made by burning grass.

Therefore, a lot of grassland is needed.

Cutting grass, drying grass, burning ash, spreading ash, and drawing brine are all expensive.

This is one disadvantage.

Second: Huainan’s method of boiling salt is too old.

Changlu, Yingkou, Fujian, Taiwan and other places all use the method of drying salt.

Because it is not a place with heavy salt tax, the court is unable to supervise, so it blooms and bears fruit. It is not that the previous dynasty did not want to manage it, but it was unable to manage it.

In Huainan, because the court wanted to control the salt tax, the salt officials were all ignorant and conservative, so they did not know how to manage the salt drying method or how to collect taxes on the basis of the salt drying method, so the salt drying method was not allowed.

This means that Huainan has to go through a boiling process to turn the brine extracted with wood ash into salt.

Boiling... Since the area east of Fangong Dike was flushed out after the Song Dynasty, how could there be shallow coal mines?

Therefore, since it is necessary to boil salt and there is no coal, it is necessary to use wood.

Boiling salt requires a large number of grasslands and forests.

Not to mention that places where trees and grass can grow can basically be reclaimed, just the two processes of pouring brine and boiling salt require a large amount of wood, which makes the cost of Huainan salt extremely high.

This is the second disadvantage.

Third: Huainan salt has high production and transportation costs.

Since the previous dynasty, Sichuan salt invaded Chu and Fujian and Guangdong entered Jiangxi, which was a difficult problem to solve, especially in this dynasty.

Why?

From Huainan to Hankou, it is a boat against the current all the way, how can it compare with Kuizhou salt going downstream?

Huainan still uses the salt boiling method, while Fujian and other places have already used the salt drying method. How can the production costs be compared?

The transportation cost is also high, and the production cost is also high. As a result, even if the official salt price does not have the disadvantages of those salt merchants, how can it compete with Fujian salt and Sichuan salt?

Official salt is becoming increasingly expensive, while private salt is becoming more abundant. The population of this dynasty has more than doubled, but the salt tax in Huaihe and Huaihe has not increased. This is all because of this.

Your Majesty is also aware of the Yinggui Li tea tax, and the same applies to this.

Due to these three disadvantages, I believe that Huainan should waste salt and cultivate it.

The matter of abolishing Huainan salt can be divided into three directions.

Generally speaking, there must be official salt from elsewhere to supplement the Huainan salt market.

The development of Sichuan salt is supplemented by Xiangchu.

First, our dynasty is already familiar with the Yangtze River route due to coining money and transporting lead. Although the sinking rate is now 10%, your majesty is wise and should know that the 10% of sunken copper ships are actually at least half They all pretended to sink and then sold the copper privately.

Second, with the end of the Northwest War, Shaanxi merchants had abundant financial resources and were able to develop Sichuan salt, making southern Sichuan the bridgehead for unifying the southwest.

The minister guarantees that within three years, Sichuan salt will be able to make up for the needs of Xiangchu.

This is the first direction.

The second direction is Huaibei, especially Haizhou Salt Industry.

The difference between Huainan and Huaibei lies in the salt issue. Huaibei is more suitable for the sun salt method than Huainan in terms of precipitation and climate conditions.

I have mentioned the benefits of the salt-drying method many times, so I won’t go into detail here.

This salt policy reform started in Huaibei and ended in Huainan.

The third direction is the Fujian and Cantonese dialects. This matter can be said in the same way as the second direction.

That is: using salt from Huaibei, Fujian and Guangdong to supplement the Huainan salt market except Hunan and Chu.

In all parts of the Huaihe River and south of the Yangtze River, His Majesty's sage, benevolent and majestic emperor has eliminated the disadvantages of the canal and promoted the benefits of maritime transportation. Now that maritime transportation is booming, the Jiangnan market does not have to worry about the salt transportation from Haizhou, and it can completely fill the vacancy in the Huainan salt market. .

This matter cannot be dealt with slowly and should be resolved within five years.

That is: within five years, Sichuan salt, Huaibei salt, and Fujian and Guangdong salt will completely replace the Huainan salt market on the premise of ensuring sufficient production, no shortage of people, and more official salt sales than before.

Let’s not mention Sichuan salt.

Regarding the Huaibei salt policy, I believe that the goal should not be just to "change quotas for votes", but to comprehensively replace the salt industry in Huainan. Change of quotas for votes is only a means and should not be the goal.

This matter can be divided into three steps.

The first step is to change the quotation into a ticket, which needs no further explanation.

The second step is to prepare for the establishment of Huaibei Salt Industry Corporation.

In Haizhou, by taking advantage of the strong sea brine and abundant sunshine in the Haizhou area, I can guarantee that within three years, Huaibei salt production will be able to fully meet the needs of the people after Huainan salt and Changlu smuggled salt are withdrawn.

for a period of five years.

The first year is this year.

Change the salt stamp law in Huaibei and attack the counterattack of Huainan salt merchants in Hankou and other places to destroy their capital.

At the same time, it attracted investment to open the Huaibei Salt Industry Corporation, taking advantage of the climate to popularize the sun-dried salt method in Haizhou and increase salt production.

Next year will be the second year of Weixin.

Taking advantage of the fact that official salt sales increased significantly due to the crackdown on salt smuggling in Changlu, the voices of those who opposed the salt reform in North Korea and China were suppressed.

At the same time, if the Huainan salt merchants compete with the imperial salt merchants in Hankou, their financial resources will inevitably be weak next year and they will be unable to resist.

With this, the Xiangchu Salt Market is required to return to Huaibei.

The Huaibei salt field is vigorously developed to fill the gap in the Xiangchu salt market.

The next few years, maybe three, maybe five.

The salt production in southern Sichuan is enough to supply the Hunan-Chu market, so the salt from the Huaibei market will be withdrawn from Hunan-Chu and used to replace the remaining Huainan salt market.

The key to this is to transport officials to business and turn lords into businessmen.

For example, in Hankou, those responsible for the official salt sales were all Xiangchu merchants.

Because it is official luck, they do not need to consider whether it is Sichuan salt, Huainan salt or Huaibei salt.

There is no impact on the sales side.

If there is no impact on the sales side, there will be no impact on the people.

In this way, the imperial court could control the salt production in Huaibei and southern Sichuan in a planned way, and withdraw the salt from Huaibei when the salt from southern Sichuan could supply the Xiangchu market.

The production of salt in Huaibei has also developed due to the needs of the Xiangchu market, and is enough to completely replace the salt market in Huainan.

In this way, in three to five years, the imperial court can completely abolish Huainan salt.

And because of the characteristics of official transportation and commercial sales, neither ordinary people nor merchants could feel the turmoil of the salt industry reform.

The key point is that the Xiangchu market serves as a buffer and reservoir.

In the second year of Weixin, the Xiangchu market was established to boost the salt production of Huaibei Sun Salt Corporation, ensure profitable capital, and expand production.

In Weixin 35, the Xiangchu market was still a buffer, and the already developed Sichuan salt was introduced. With the output of Huaibei sun salt already boosted by this buffer market, it fully invaded the final market of Huainan salt.

Huainan salt, in terms of cost and quality, cannot be compared with Huaibei salt, and after previous attacks on the capital of salt merchants, it has become powerless and will surely lose.

If Your Majesty decides on this policy of major reform of the salt administration, the land reclamation industry will be greatly prospered.

Sage said: Look at it dialectically, everything in the world has its two sides, good things can turn into bad things, and bad things can turn into good things.

We must learn to look at problems comprehensively, not only to see the positive side of things, but also to see their negative sides.

Under certain conditions, bad things can lead to good results, and good things can also lead to bad results.

Lao Tzu said: Misfortunes lie on the back of blessings, and blessings lie on the backs of misfortunes. That's the reason.

As a human being, you should look at things comprehensively, find out the laws in them and make use of them, turning bad things into good things.

Therefore, I also say: the disadvantages of developing salt in Huainan are the advantages of developing reclamation.

In Huainan, salt is disadvantageous and reclamation is beneficial, this is the two-sided nature of things.

Happy 128th birthday!