New Shun 1730

After the fierce tug-of-war between Sichuan, Shaanxi and Hubei in the late Ming Dynasty, Sichuan's population dropped sharply, leading to the emergence of the "like a peach land" atmosphere that the emperor had previously told Liu Yu.

This can be seen from the fact that the baby girl is not drowned at this time. Later generations have learned from a text that the marshal's mother also drowned her children and the marshal was from Sichuan. Obviously it is unreliable to talk about morality and customs regardless of the economic foundation. It can only be said that the contradiction between man and land here is not Very big.

Therefore, Sichuan is no better than Northern Jiangsu.

In northern Jiangsu, Liu Yu wanted to arrest people and take them to Nanyang, but they were not even as valuable as a black slave.

At this time, in Sichuan, it is unlikely that many people would go to Nanyang to receive the same treatment as Northern Jiangsu.

Sichuan is called the Land of Abundance.

Although there is no real heaven these days.

But it depends on who you compare with.

Compared with northern Jiangsu where there are strong winds in May, yellow floods in June, water releases from Gaojiayan in July, sea tides in August, and salt surges in September, not to mention Tianfu, it deserves to be a paradise.

Therefore, labor costs here are quite expensive, at least much more expensive than in northern Jiangsu. The money given is low, and with the same conditions as Liu Yu deceiving people to go to Nanyang, I guarantee that no one will come here.

Simple truth.

The current thermal efficiency of steam engines is only about 5%, which may not be enough.

If the cost of burning coal is actually more expensive than hiring people to do animal work, why burn coal?

Of course, hired laborers and tenant farmers are not the same.

As long as there is a leader, the hired workers can organize themselves instantly and demand wages and meat. Historically, as early as the middle and late Qing Dynasty, salt well workers in Sichuan were able to organize into societies and organize large-scale activities during the Chinese New Year and festivals. They used reasonable festive activities such as lantern dancing to demonstrate the martial ethics of the hired workers.

But well salt is not boiled salt at the seaside. It is really not enough for a family to provide an iron pot. It has to build a large-scale handicraft factory, a salt well of 600 to 700 meters. Not to mention that at this time, even with the technology of later generations, ordinary families cannot afford to build it.

Wherever the wage-labour system is necessary, machines will flourish.

In addition, due to the influence of the Lianghuai Salt Industry Group in the imperial court, Sichuan salt could not theoretically enter Xiangchu, and only private salt was allowed to go. It is in the dawning stage where big development is about to happen but not yet.

The great development of Sichuan salt promoted by this salt policy reform will not conflict too much with the old production system.

It was nothing more than the chaebol group supported by the imperial court. Through high capital and advanced technology, they quickly destroyed those old salt wells and completed their monopoly. The old handicraft factories either sold their wells and merged into the monopoly group, or they went bankrupt.

Coupled with the end of the Dashun Northern War, the money from the Shaanxi Capital Group, which had previously made money in logistics, had nowhere to go. After all, this is not Songjiang Prefecture. All kinds of hype can make capital blindly invest with nowhere to go. There is no place for blind investment here.

It can be said that the combination of steam engines and Sichuan Nanjing Salt Industry is really the right time, the right place, and the right people.

After the businessman who invested in Sichuan Salt Industry told Liu Yu about Liu Yu's "ignorance", he sighed: "I don't know how much this thing costs? What is its lifespan? I don't know if it will be sold? Will it be troublesome to repair?"

Since Liu Yu brought them to see it, these merchants also knew that it must be for sale. Otherwise, why would he bring them to see it?

Now the businessman wanted to buy, but Liu Yu didn't answer. He just said: "You might as well continue to look at it first, and then we can discuss it together. Although I am tight on time, I can always squeeze out some time. Everyone, come here and take a look. ”

He also led these Shaanxi businessmen to look at things like railway tracks and roads. These Shaanxi businessmen were in a very stable mood. There is no longer the urgency after seeing the steam engine before, nor the surprise that the mountain people have when they see novel things.

No wonder.

After the development of the Yanjing area, in fact, there were already more than ten kilometers of brine diversion pipelines and several miles of original natural gas pipelines before Yi Ya.

Coupled with various water lifting tools and drilling technology that can drill down to a depth of 1,000 meters.

To say that people in this field would be shocked looking at these mechanical things is to underestimate the ancients.

Even for transportation, they also built a coal river with a diversion ship lock system in Rong County, and cinders were piled up across a river plain.

If this can be considered the bud of capitalism, it certainly does. A large handicraft factory with tens of thousands of people, the perfect combination of industrial capital and commercial capital has driven a whole set of surrounding industrial chains.

But the seeds are always similar: after making money, they buy and hoard land, and then a large amount of capital is not invested in reproduction, but in buying land and lending money at usury.

The same goes for the Netherlands.

The Netherlands just buys land without making money, but the essence is the same. Industrial capital quickly slides into commercial capital, and capital is added by collecting rents and lending instead of investing in industry.

Historically, the same was true for these Shaanxi businessmen. They built large factories with tens of thousands of people and built more than ten kilometers of brine pipelines, which directly stimulated a business center worth 300,000 to 400,000 yuan.

Then, the proportion of income, profit and land rent of each family changed constantly. At the most, it was called a "salt industrial capitalism sprout", and the land rent could harvest 4 million kilograms of grain a year. Just like how the Netherlands went from being a coachman on the sea to becoming the financial center of Western Europe, it is really not as comfortable as making money by collecting rents and lending money because of the exhaustion of industry.

Although Liu Yu understands very well, the land yield is so high and the land in Dashun can be bought and sold freely, so only fools would not buy the land.

This reflects the profit-seeking nature of capital and is driven by the invisible hand of the perfect free market.

But just like what he did in Songjiang Prefecture, to develop industry and commerce, the first step is to solve the characteristic problem of "capital flows to land after accumulation" in Dashun, and of course also in the former Ming Dynasty.

So after leading these people to visit the new technologies related to the development of salt wells, Liu Yu was not in a hurry to just promote these new technologies.

If he just promoted new technologies, it would be at most at the level of the Westernization Movement, which would be useless.

Without solving some institutional problems, the only role of the steam engine is to allow mergers that originally took 200 years to be completed in only 30 years.

Now for Liu Yu, the important thing is not to let these Shaanxi capital groups accept new technologies, which is obvious and very easy.

The important thing is how to guide their profitable money to where he wants the money to go.

Use the visible hand to forcibly reverse the flow of capital, instead of flowing to land and usury.

This is the real key to the reform in southern Sichuan.

And now, the first step Liu Yu can do is to separate the "production, transportation, and sales" of salt.

That is, Shaanxi capital production, official organization operation, and small and scattered merchants elsewhere are responsible for sales.

If this step is not taken, once the Southern Sichuan Capital Group develops, the first step will definitely be to invest in business, especially to control the production, transportation and sales of salt.

Because the profit is high.

But Liu Yu did not allow them to do so.

So he told the emperor many benefits of "official transportation and business sales", in fact, the essence is for this.

Rather than the reasons he told the emperor.

The reasons he told the emperor were all for the survival of Dashun, so the emperor was willing to listen.

However, he did not want to survive Dashun at all.

For this reason, after leading these Shaanxi merchants to visit the new technology today, Liu Yu was not in a hurry to promote the new technology, but hosted a banquet for these merchants in the evening.

Some insignificant words were said during the banquet.

Rest at night, and start meeting one by one in the morning the next day to talk to people.

The merchants were waiting outside, and they could only go in when their names were called.

The name of the first person Liu Yu called was not surprising to everyone. This was the leader among the merchants, and he had a close relationship with the court. When he recovered the Western Regions, he also worked with the army.

It's just that Liu Yu took the northern route, while these Shaanxi merchants took the route through Xingxing Gorge into the Western Regions. The two had never met before, but they were on friendly terms.

After the merchant leader went in, Liu Yu first told some old stories about the recovery of the Western Regions many years ago, and then asked about the health of the old man who helped with the transportation of military supplies at that time.

After saying these polite words, Liu Yu said: "Now the war in the north has been settled, the Western Regions have been recovered, and the Russians have surrendered. But the southwest has been unstable in recent years."

"The court also remembers your contribution to the transportation of military supplies when the Western Regions were recovered. This Xijing is the birthplace of our dynasty, unlike other places."

"You rose to prominence in the previous dynasty and opened up the Chinese law. After hundreds of years of ups and downs, what have you figured out? What are you talking about with me about farming and reading to pass on the family tradition? If you really understood farming and reading to pass on the family tradition, you would not have been driven back to Shaanxi in Jiangnan."

The businessman also smiled helplessly and said: "What the Duke said is very true. My ancestors made their fortune in the previous dynasty. During the Hongwu reign of the Qing Dynasty. At that time, the Border Law had just been implemented. My ancestor contracted the logistics and fodder for 1,000 soldiers and 400 horses in the Tianbaofu military camp in exchange for salt permits. Later, the family branched out, one branch went to Lianghuai and the other returned to Xijing. "

"Originally, Shaanxi and Shanxi were inseparable. After the Jiashen Incident, Shaanxi and Shanxi separated and joined the light and joined the dark. The Holy Dynasty rose, and later conquered the north and Liting. After all, the Shanxi merchants were dead but not stiff, and finally rose again. We Western merchants have to wait until the Holy Dynasty recovers the Western Regions and conquers Qinghai before we wake up. "

"This is what I have figured out over the years. "

It sounds like a complaint in this sentence, but in fact there is no complaint.

It is just a sigh that doing business not only depends on one's own efforts, but also considers the course of history.

In the Jiashen year, the Shaanxi merchants and the Shanxi merchants actually made their own bets.

Now the Shaanxi merchants have won, but the subsequent historical process destined the Shanxi merchants group to revive after being purged, because the military operations of the Dashun for a long time after the founding of the country were all Liaodong and Mongolia in the south of the desert, and they had no intention of taking care of the northwest. And there, after all, is closer to Shanxi.

The Shaanxi merchants won the bet, but the benefits they got were not really great. It was not until Dashun used troops to the northwest and recovered Qinghai and the Western Regions that the Shaanxi merchants ushered in the spring.

Originally, these Shaanxi merchants were also very interesting in history.

After they were defeated by the Hui merchants and left Lianghuai to enter Sichuan, they wrote such a sentimental couplet on the Shaanxi Guild Hall in Sichuan.

Respecting the Tang, Song, Yuan and Ming dynasties, their hearts actually only know the Han Dynasty

The emblem may be a marquis, a king, a monarch, or an emperor, but they are only worthy of being a minister on that day

Of course, this must be hung in the Guan Laoye Temple, but what it actually says is clear at a glance

But later, with a series of policies such as Sichuan salt entering Guizhou, military operations in the northwest, and rebellion suppression in western Sichuan, their mentality changed, and they had long forgotten the original intention of the couplet.

In this time and space, because of the process of the founding of the Dashun Dynasty and the subsequent military operations, the merchant in front of him, whose family had been ups and downs since the Hongwu period of the previous dynasty, understood one thing.

That was the words he and Liu Yu lamented.

Whether it was Hui merchants, Shanxi merchants, or Shaanxi merchants, in fact, their prosperity was nothing more than compradors of the court.

The court's policies directly determined the rise and fall of the consortium.

The imperial court went north to Li Ting and established the capital in Beijing, so the Shanxi merchants who had stood on the wrong side could revive.

The imperial court recovered the Western Regions, and the Shaanxi merchants who were defeated in Lianghuai could prosper again.

The imperial court went to the ocean, and a new Songjiangfu capital group emerged in just 20 years.

The imperial court attacked Japan, built a navy, and abandoned the canal, so the Fujian-Guangdong trade center, which had been prosperous since the middle of the Ming Dynasty, moved directly north to the mouth of the Yangtze River. The old comprador merchants who did not understand the transformation collapsed directly, and everything was just a simple "Order to Move Merchant Ships of All Countries to Songjiang".

The wind outlet, only by keenly grasping the wind outlet, is the foundation of the prosperity of the business family.

However, where does the person who knows the world in three parts without leaving the cottage exist?

Understanding this truth is almost equivalent to understanding nothing.

But Liu Yu was quite pleased with this statement and praised: "You are a businessman who really understands Dashun."

"There are too few people who can understand this truth. They all think that they rely on their unparalleled abilities, but in fact they are just scraps of the wheel of history."

Don't forget the hatred of the past