After seeing the resumes of officials in Suzhou Prefecture, Yunxi realized that at this time, many local Zhengyin officials and fourth- and fifth-grade middle-level officials were also from the Imperial College, not all from the imperial examination.
Since you are from the Imperial College, you must have studied in the Imperial College, at least three years, and most of them have studied for seven or eight years. The academic officers who teach in the Imperial Academy will have some impressions. If you call an academic officer over, you can ask
It would be useful to ask these officials who came from the Imperial College about their words and deeds when they were studying.
After Yunxi finished thinking about these things, it was getting late and he was a little tired. He asked Huang Ludao who was accompanying him: "Yunzhi, have Baoqing and Xianqin gone to bed?"
Huang Lu said: "Your Majesty, Princess Baoqing and Princess Yidu (Xianqin) cannot survive and have gone to bed; Princess Huainan has not gone to bed yet."
Yunxi said, "Just go ahead. Yunzhi won't listen to you. Send someone to keep an eye on her to prevent her from causing any trouble." Yunxi was not at ease with his sister.
"Yes, Your Majesty." Huang Lu agreed.
Yunxi was also tired, so he lay down and fell asleep after giving instructions.
In the morning of the next day, Yunxi analyzed some of the most important officials in Suzhou City based on the existing information, and then summoned them at noon.
In fact, according to the usual practice, as the emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Yunxi did not come to Suzhou specifically to visit Suzhou. He only had to summon the local prefect, and there was no need to meet other assistant officials. As for the county magistrate, it was even more unnecessary.
But Yunxi wanted to do a big thing in Suzhou and needed the assistance of local officials, so he decided to interview the prefect, the prefectural magistrate and the two county magistrates one by one.
The first person to receive him was of course the prefect Xiang Bao. Xiang Bao was a veteran minister for many years. Before Yun Xi became the emperor's grandson, he had served in the Ministry of War. At that time, Xiang Bao was a member of the Ministry of War and had contact with Yun Xi.
So Yunxi first talked about old friendships, and then asked about the situation in Suzhou.
As expected, Xiang Bao was as old-fashioned as Yun Xi had expected. He was very dull when talking about old relationships, but he was very fluent in talking about the current situation in Suzhou.
"Your Majesty, since the late emperor ordered the people of Suzhou to live and work in peace and contentment in the first year of Hongwu, Suzhou has gradually recovered its vitality and is now considered a prosperous place in the world."
"In the 26th year of Hongwu's reign, Suzhou prefecture led one prefecture and seven counties, with 491,514 households, 2,355,330 inhabitants, and the largest number of fields in the world.
Although the capital of all prefectures is not as good as the capital, there is no other place in the world that is more prosperous than Suzhou." Xiang Bao said.
"What about the local businessmen? What do they do?"
Xiang Bao was extremely discriminatory against businessmen and never paid attention to what these businessmen did in daily life. He also had many slanders about Yunxi's reforms during this period. But he was not a fool and would not go against the emperor, so he understood it beforehand.
After hearing about some local businessmen, he said: "Your Majesty, most of the local businessmen are engaged in raw silk. They buy raw silk from the people and distribute it to other places. Some people also buy land and hire people to plant mulberry trees to feed silkworms, and select another person to take charge.
Reel the silk and sell it to other places."
"There are businessmen who don't care about reeling, but just buy raw silk and let craftsmen weave it into silk for distribution in other places. There are also people who set up machine rooms and hire women from the countryside to weave silk in the machine room." He couldn't help but say: "It's very inappropriate!"
"
And Yunxi was a little surprised. 'Now is the early Ming Dynasty, and the textile industry, one of the two beginnings of the industrial revolution, has begun to take shape?'
But Yunxi thought about it again and realized that this was different from the textile industry during the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution was the cotton textile industry. After the emergence of new textile machines, collective labor made the cost of cotton cloth much lower than that of each household.
The cost of homespun cloth eventually led to the bankruptcy of the rural natural economy and was involved in the era of large-scale industry.
But there are no such advanced textile machines yet, and the cost of cotton cloth is not lower than that of homespun cloth even if it is collective labor, so the lack of a machine room of that size will not affect most people.
The reason why there are machine rooms specializing in weaving silk is because silk is of high value. If each household is allowed to take raw silk home, what if some of it is stolen? Can they still go to the village to ask for it? It is basically impossible for the local government to provide services to merchants.
If you support your back, it will be in vain; so it is better to gather all the women in the machine room and knit together to put an end to corruption.
But Yunxi was still very happy. Although silk, which was originally expensive, had the dawn of modern handicraft industry, it was worth being happy. To put it bluntly, this could be regarded as the dawn of the industrial revolution!
Yunxi asked again: "Are there any local merchants doing business in Shanghai Shipping Company?"
"Your Majesty, I don't know." Xiang Bao said.
As an official who believed in Confucianism, he had always looked down on businessmen. It was already very difficult for him to understand someone reluctantly. How could he inquire in detail?
Well, Yunxi immediately realized that he shouldn't ask him this question. Yunxi managed to gather his energy and said a few words to him and let him go.
After that, Zuo Guibao, the prime minister of the government, came to see him. Yunxi only said a few words to him, and he knew that he was a submissive and kowtow-like official.
In Yunxi's opinion, this kind of official is more despicable than corrupt officials. Although the previous system of the Ming Dynasty was that the local prefectures and counties had the sole power, and the assistant officials had little power, but they did not do nothing, and they were assigned work. At this time, Yunxi
It is still not certain whether he did nothing, but if it is confirmed that he did nothing,
'You can go home and eat by yourself!'
'No, it would be an advantage for him to let him go home and feed himself. Send him to Su Fan, and Zhu Di will teach him how to work.' Yunxi thought.
Since Zuo Guibao was such a person, Yunxi let him go without asking anything.
The third official Yunxi met was Bai Wenxuan, the magistrate of Wu County.
Yunxi saw that he did not seem to be a pedantic person, so he asked him again the questions he had asked Xiang Bao.
Bai Wenxuan's answer to the first question was similar to Xiang Bao's, but the second question surprised Yunxi. He actually answered whether there were local businessmen doing business with Fanshang in Shanghai, and by the way, he also answered Yunxi's unexported question.
The third question.
He said: "Your Majesty, the most famous businessmen in this county and Changzhou County are the Li family in the west of the city. His family has thousands of acres of fertile land, but they don't plant mulberry trees. They only grow food. They also buy mulberry leaves and hire people to reel silk. Hongwu
In the 31st year, after the opening of the sea in Shanghai, we also sent people to do business in Shanghai. I don’t know what happened because we are in Shanghai.”
Although he didn't know clearly, Yunxi was already very happy. The status of businessmen in this era was not high, and Zhu Yuanzhang had cracked down on big businessmen. The richest businessmen everywhere did not have much money on the surface, and only acquaintances knew about it.
Which company actually has how much money? It is normal for an official to ignore the businessmen.
But he actually knew something about the most famous businessman in the county, which was very rare. Yunxi already had the intention of promoting Bai Wenxuan.