In the seventh year of Shaofeng, it was the third day of the third month.
This is the first Shangsi Festival after it is set as a legal holiday. Officials, wealthy businessmen, and even ordinary people in the capital all go to the countryside for an outing.
Wengshan (Longevity Mountain), Yuquan Mountain, Xiangshan, Marco Polo Bridge... many scenic spots are very lively, especially those in the west and east of Beijing, where trains can pass and rich people can travel long distances.
Zhang Cong and Yan Song lived close to each other, and both were given residences by the young emperor. Naturally, they had to travel together during the Shangsi Festival.
Zhang Cong's wife has died of illness, leaving only his eldest son and his eldest daughter-in-law to take care of him.
Zhang Cong's three sons were all only able to pass the imperial exams. The competition in the imperial examinations in Zhejiang was so fierce that the sons of cabinet ministers could not even pass the exams. The eldest son, Zhang Xunzhi, went to the Imperial Academy to study, and is now serving as the eighth official in Taipu Temple.
Pin Xiaoguan, the eldest daughter-in-law, Cheng, is the daughter of Zhang Cong's old classmate, who had been living in seclusion in the mountains and refused to take the imperial examination.
Yan Song's family was also very simple, with his wife Ouyang, his son Yan Shifan, and his daughter-in-law Lu. He had never taken any concubines, and his wife Ouyang was still a pockmark (he recovered from smallpox). His son Yan Shifan was not the Yan Shifan in history, he was five years younger.
There was more than enough, but because Yan Song went to Beijing early to resume his duties, he did not have time to get his wife pregnant.
Both families took their third generation, including several grandsons and granddaughters, to the western suburbs in two carriages.
Butterfly wings flap very interestingly. Zhang Cong is now regarded as the "Grand Master of Etiquette", while Yan Song is known as "the most pure person in the world." The two of them live close to each other and have become close friends over time. They also discovered that they had written about each other when they were children.
"Chanting the Frog".
Zhang Cong's "Ode to the Frog": "Sitting alone in the pond is like a tiger roosting, nourishing the spirit under the shade of the tree. If I don't speak first when spring comes, where will the insects dare to make a sound?"
Yan Song's "Ode to the Frog": "Sitting alone by the pond like a tiger, playing the piano under the green poplar tree. If I don't speak first when spring comes, who dares to make a sound?"
These two poems were adapted from Li Shimin's "Ode to the Frog" and were written by young people to express their ambitions. As a result, Zhang Cong and Yan Song became even more close friends.
The men rode in a carriage, and the women and children rode in a carriage, each talking about topics of interest.
Zhang Xunzhi and Yan Shifan both opened the curtains to enjoy the spring scenery along the way, chatting and talking nonsense. They were more than ten years apart in age, so they had nothing in common when they sat together, and Yan Shifan had passed the Jiangxi examination.
Unlike Zhang Xunzhi, who was born as a scholar and could only be a favored minor official.
Yan Song was only five years younger than Zhang Cong, so the two were of the same generation. The former asked casually: "Brother Bing Yong, have you read Taifu's "The Wealth of Nations"?"
The Li Jing Jing Factory was still engraving plates. What Zhang Cong read was a handwritten copy. He nodded and said, "I have already read it. This book is deviant and deviates from the classics. It actually relegates the country and people's livelihood to the affairs of merchants. But after reading it carefully, it makes me realize that
It is indeed the knowledge of managing the world and benefiting the people that makes people enlightened. Every word in Taifu's book talks about profit, but it also reveals a great fear of 'profit'."
Yan Song said: "I once heard the Taifu say that merchants are like tigers, and they should lie in cages. But tigers are tigers after all, and they cannot be caged. They should be guarded, driven and defended, and they should not harm the people.
. Last year I returned to Jiangxi. My hometown, Fenyi County, actually learned from Jingdezhen in making porcelain, and a large area of the mountainous area was replanted with tea trees. In this profit-seeking move, porcelain and tea can be sold overseas, which is beneficial to the country and the people.
"
Zhang Cong smiled and asked: "It's also harmful, right?"
"Indeed," Yan Song nodded, "Jiangxi has already suffered from serious land annexation. In the past, land was annexed by nobles and officials. Now that merchants have suddenly become rich, the price of rice in South Zhili and Zhejiang has soared, and Jiangxi grain merchants have harvested rice and transported it to other provinces.
Trafficking has led to a shortage of food in Jiangxi every year. People in Jiangxi are short of food and cannot afford the increasingly expensive food, so they can only borrow money from merchants as pawns. Once the money is not paid, the land of the small people will be taken away, and the wealthy merchants will have their fields.
Qianmo. Landless people were forced to become tenants, and many became vagrants and were hired by merchants to work."
Zhang Cong shook his head and sighed: "Jiangxi is pretty good. An old friend said in a letter that in my hometown of Wenzhou, there is not much farmland left for ordinary people, and it has all been bought by wealthy businessmen. And because of the high price of rice, The quotas and miscellaneous items of the whip method were all handed over to the tenants by the landlords, making it very difficult for them to be tenants. The tenants took their families to the sea one after another, far away from their homeland and went to Nanyang to seek a living. If they did not go to Nanyang, they would also work in the city or on the docks. , the landlords in Wenzhou were unable to recruit all their tenants. Such a situation is a strange thing that has never happened before."
"Are the rumors true? I thought the Jiangnan newspapers were exaggerating." Yan Song said in surprise.
Zhang Cong said: "Almost every family in the coastal counties and counties of Zhejiang goes to sea. Some people are buried in the belly of fish, and some are buried in Southeast Asia, but there are also many people who survive and bring silver coins home every year. What's more, some people are buried overseas. To develop property and buy property, the whole family will be sent overseas to live. The common people are ignorant and cannot see the people dying overseas. They only see people who have suddenly become rich overseas. In pursuit of profit, they are even more eager to go overseas to make a living."
Yan Song sighed: "Everything in this world is only about profit."
Zhang Cong said solemnly: "The common people should speak for themselves, and in our eyes, we should have the world's commonwealth."
Yan Song asked with a smile: "The world's sheji, the country's sharp ears, will never be able to escape the word "profit"."
The sprouting of capitalism in the Ming Dynasty was actually relatively mild. Britain was historically full of blood.
At that time, Spain obtained a large amount of gold and silver and bought it throughout Europe. How did British industry and commerce stand out among other countries?
Enclosure movement.
The first is to enclose public land. Although farmers have no ownership rights to public land, they have substantial rights to use it. The land is encircled and all farmland is converted into pasture. Only a small number of farmers are retained to raise sheep, and the remaining farmers are left to fend for themselves. .
All public land was enclosed, as well as land rented by tenant farmers and allotments held by farmers in the public register.
Peasants who disobeyed the enclosure would directly burn their houses, tell them to leave with swords, and even kill them on the spot or throw them into prison. The enclosure movement lasted for three hundred years. More than half of the land in the UK was turned into pasture, and a large number of landless farmers poured into the cities and became The proletariat - at least in the Ming Dynasty, no one dared to play this way, and could only buy land through legal or illegal means.
After British farmers flocked to the cities, dozens or hundreds of people competed for a job. Factory owners took the opportunity to lower wages, making Britain's labor costs lower than those in other countries.
Capitalists are still not satisfied. As machinery becomes more and more advanced, they will never hire female workers if they can hire child workers, and they will never hire adult male workers if they can hire female workers. This is because the wages of child workers are only one-eighth of adult male workers, and the wages of female workers are The wages are only half of those of adult male workers.
The minimum age of child labor in the UK is recorded as only three years old, and they can do some simple work, while the average age of child labor is eight years old.
Due to the death of a large number of child laborers, the British government stipulated that the age of child labor should not be lower than nine years old in order to protect children. However, even the British patent officials opposed the government and even allowed inventors to indicate "even five or six years old" when applying for a patent. Even children can operate the machine.”
Children of several years old work 14 hours a day, and some even work 16 hours, and can only eat a piece of bread a day, and the working environment is extremely poor.
After British children enter the factory, they are basically disabled within two years, either dying of illness or becoming disabled.
Child laborers who work in factories for more than four years are bound to die without exception!
Some people joke that the reason why Britain became an empire on which the sun never sets and has always been able to suppress the major European powers is because British child laborers can only live an average of two years, while child laborers in France and Germany can live more than three years.
At that time, a large number of adult men in the UK were unemployed because the capitalists were unwilling to hire them, so they had to rely on their wives and children to work to support their families. Children became consumables. They entered factories at the age of five or six and died two or three years later. During this period, men had nothing to do, and they still had to work.
I can continue to have babies.
In a society where a large number of men are unemployed, public security will inevitably deteriorate.
So the UK enacted various laws. At that time, if you stole a piece of bread, you might be exiled to Australia to alleviate the endless security problems in the country. Later, Australia was developed, and the exiled prisoners sent letters back to the UK, asking their wives and children to come by boat.
Reunion. People discovered that Australian exiles actually had a better life than British workers, so a large number of workers took the initiative to commit crimes and specifically targeted those who were exiled to Australia.
Marx said that from the day it was born, every pore of capital has been dripping with blood and filth. This does not refer specifically to the colonial movement. The blood and tears of British workers are the original accumulation for the rise of Britain.
I just hope that the Ming Dynasty in this time and space will not be as crazy as Britain.
Yan Shifan suddenly pointed to the roadside and turned around and said, "Father, those Thai and Western students are also here for an outing. They are so funny with their Han buns."
Yan Song looked through the car window and saw a large group of European nobles.
Men and women were riding horses, whether they were bought or rented. There were also a group of European servants and maids, following the nobles carefully and looking at everything around them with curious eyes.
Those traveling with the European nobles were actually a group of noble descendants of the Ming Dynasty, and the two parties seemed to have become very familiar with each other.
(The current monthly ticket, the author can draw a lottery. If you still have a monthly ticket in hand, just vote, and you can draw another prize if you still have dozens of votes. There will be one update today, and then two updates will be resumed every day.)