"The salt in Changlu Saltworks has dropped by five cents per catty again. Now the salt from Changlu Saltworks sold in various places is basically around twenty cents. Should we continue to reduce the price?"
Cheng Bo'an's most capable master, Cheng Xuan, who was also from a branch of the Cheng family, hurriedly found Cheng Bo'an and reported the latest situation to Cheng Bo'an.
"Continue to lower prices. As long as they lower prices, we will follow suit."
Without any hesitation, Cheng Boan said.
"As for the price, our salt only costs about ten cents per pound. The price we sell to various places is less than five cents. At this price, we..."
Cheng Xuan thought about it and reminded him.
To get salt from the salt field, they only need a salt guide. In the past, they had to transport grain to the border town area before they could change districts. However, since the change of grain payment Kaizhong to Nayin Kaizhong in the fifth year of Hongzhi, everyone has
You only need to pay silver to the court to get salt.
Because these salt merchants basically have people from the imperial court to local governments, so in many cases, you can get a large amount of salt by just paying a symbolic amount of silver.
It can be said that the cost of their salt is almost zero. More expenses are spent on up and down management, and the other is freight. In ancient times, transportation was inconvenient and transportation was a big problem.
In terms of transportation of grain in ancient times, a hundred kilograms of grain was transported from the Jiangnan area to the capital and border areas. At most, less than half of it could be left, because transportation in ancient times was basically carried by shoulders and hands. Only those with qualified talents could carry it.
Horse-drawn carriages and mule carts are sufficient, and water transport is the bulk of transportation, but water transport requires a place with water.
This is also the reason why these salt merchants like Nayin Kaizhong very much, because in the past, transporting grain to the border areas was too troublesome and the losses were too great, so the salt merchants often had to find ways to recruit people to the border areas.
Plant food in the area to obtain salt.
The Nayin opening is different. You only need to pay silver to get salt leads, and the operation is much more flexible and convenient. There are people everywhere.
Originally, paying 100 taels of silver could only get 100 taels of salt, but because they had connected up and down, they could pay 100 taels of silver and get 1,000 taels, 10,000 taels, or even 100,000 taels of salt.
Now it has just begun. Within a few years of the opening of Nayin, the imperial court was still receiving more than two million taels of tax silver every year. However, in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, with the corruption of the imperial bureau, the Donglin Party gradually took control of the government.
The amount of money the imperial court could receive from salt imports was so minimal that later on, after a year, the money spent on salt imports was only tens of thousands of taels, and the tax revenue was even more appalling. A large and wealthy county in the south of the Yangtze River was
The tax money for the year is not even one hundred taels.
At this time, Nayin Kaizhong had only been implemented for a few years, and the salt policy had not been completely corrupted. Therefore, if Cheng Boan and the others wanted to obtain salt quotations, they still needed to pay silver. Although they would definitely open more salt quotations, at least there was still a cost.
.
Cheng Xuan's meaning is very clear, that is, if the price is further reduced, Cheng Bo'an will lose money.
Salt is very cheap when they take it out from the salt field, but after taking into account the up and down management, transportation costs, and the money spent on buying salt, when all these are added up, a pound of salt costs almost a few pennies.
This price can be said to be quite low.
So in the past, it was very simple for them to make money. They used money to buy salt, then went to the salt field to pick up the salt, changed hands and sold it layer by layer.
A few pennies per pound of salt can be resold for twenty or thirty pennies per pound, a huge profit several times over. Then the salt merchants at the next level will repurchase it and add a few pennies and sell it to terminal sellers. These terminal sellers
Coupled with the cost of a few cents per catty, the shortage of catties, silt seepage, etc., the final sales price is still as high as tens of cents per catty.
This is normal. Sometimes, these salt dealers will increase the price according to the situation. In places like Yunnan-Guizhou, Jiangxi, Hunan, and Hubei, where transportation is inconvenient and the salt is not produced, the price of salt will be higher.
It's high, even hundreds of dollars a pound is not uncommon.
Therefore, salt merchants can be divided into three levels. The first level is the big salt merchants such as Cheng Bo'an, Zhu Benduan, and Feng Xiang. They control the salt field. Only they can get salt from the salt field. Therefore, they are in the upstream of the industry chain and have the biggest income.
profit.
If a pound of salt sells for fifty cents per pound, they, the big salt merchants, will eat up at least half of the profit. Twenty-five cents of the profit belongs to them, the big salt merchants.
Moreover, these big salt dealers often do not need complicated operations. All they need to do is to take the salt from the salt field, which is very simple.
Of course, not everyone can become such a big salt merchant. Behind these big salt merchants are extremely large backgrounds. Basically, everyone's family has someone in the court.
It may be a descendant of one's own family who serves as an official in the court, or someone who is married to one's own family, or a fellow countryman, etc. In short, each of them has a very large network of relationships.
In addition, every link of the place, including the upper and lower parts of the salt field, etc., was opened up, so they paid silver to get the salt lead, and then they were able to take out the salt from the salt field.
If it were someone else, even if they paid silver to get the salt, it would be almost impossible to extract the salt from the salt field.
Because there are many reasons to easily suppress you in the salt field. For example, you need to queue up to pick up salt, and basically every salt field queue has been queued for decades. When do you think it will be your turn?
Unless you have a big enough background, such as the emperor's relatives like Jianchang Bo and Shouning Hou, they often ask Emperor Hongzhi for salt quotations, one hundred thousand quotas or two hundred thousand quotas.
Naturally, no one dares to neglect their salt guides, and they can quickly bring out the salt. However, generally these people will not actually pick up the salt themselves, but will easily sell these salt guides and cash them out directly.
became silver.
Generally speaking, salt farms are controlled by big salt merchants or families such as Cheng Bo'an, Zhu Benduan, Feng Xiang, etc. For example, Ye Qi, who proposed Nayin Kaizhong, and the Ye family themselves are a wealthy family in the Jiangnan area and are also engaged in salt business.
, the Ye family directly occupies as many as seven salt farms, and there are also several salt farms controlled in partnership with some families, making it a big salt merchant.
Next down are the salt merchants in the middle. These salt merchants are far less powerful than Cheng Bo'an, Zhu Benduan, and Feng Xiang. Their sphere of influence may be limited to one province, and they have no way to go up to the court. Naturally, they have no way to get it from the salt field.
Salt.
So they became middlemen. When big salt merchants took salt from the salt field, they took it and resold it to terminal sellers within their respective spheres of influence. They also made a fortune.
The salt just passes through their hands, but a pound of salt will cost them at least ten cents.
The last one is the terminal sellers. These people are often powerful in a small place and can monopolize the salt sales in a place. Only they can sell salt.
Naturally, when this salt comes into their hands, they will earn at least ten cents per pound of salt. Some people with evil intentions will earn even more.
Therefore, originally, the court benefited from salt as the smallest thing. The tax money it received every year was pitifully small, and as time went by, it would become less and less. In the end, it basically lost this piece of income.
The kitchen households in the salt field are the most miserable. Due to the restrictions of the household service system, they have been kitchen households for generations and can only cook salt in the salt field day and night.
For their own benefit, the officials who manage the salt fields often try their best to squeeze these kitchen households. It is originally stipulated that the kitchen households can only work four hours a day, but in order to produce more salt, the officials may let these kitchen households work six hours a day.
Seven hours.
Naturally, this extra salt production would not be reported to the court, and it would naturally go into the pockets of officials like them.
As for Zaohu, who cares about their life or death.
Of course, the people of the Ming Dynasty were also very miserable. Originally, salt was not expensive and only cost a few pennies. However, when it came into their hands, it often cost tens of pennies per pound, with sand and soil added to it.
Who should the people turn to for reasoning?
Those who really benefited were these salt merchants, large and small, layer upon layer of salt merchants, each of them was as rich as the country, and each of them had a mouth full of oil.
Many salt merchant families were originally just one family, but because of their relationship with salt, they quickly grew and became a wealthy family.
These salt merchant families are very clear about the roots of maintaining everything they have, so these salt merchant families will continue to build private schools and support their children to study and take the imperial examinations.
Or you can marry the girls in your family to scholars or officials; or you can invest in your fellow villagers. If there are scholars in your hometown who go to Beijing to take exams and so on, they are very happy to provide money to support them.
, I really enjoy making friends with these scholars.
As time goes by, a huge network will slowly form. This is also the fundamental reason for the formation of the Donglin Party in the middle and late Ming Dynasty. The scholars in the Jiangnan area were already powerful and produced many officials. Now they have all kinds of support and fellow villagers help.
Fellow villagers and the like gradually formed party struggles, fighting to the death and fighting for power and gain, without caring about the country and the country.
As for the emperors of the Ming Dynasty, the smarter ones knew how to use the power of factory guards to check and balance these civil servants. The stupid ones like Emperor Hongzhi and Chongzhen were directly fooled to death by these civil servants.
The emperor wants money but there is no money, the treasury is starved to death by rats, and even the rats are too lazy to pay for the internal money. The power is basically controlled and restricted by the civil servants. Even if a group of civil servants are changed, it is still the same as before. If you want to do something
