Chapter 49 All the top officials in the frontier began to make money to support soldiers
Chen Shuren went to Daye County and sorted out all the greedy people who might enrich their own pockets through his promotion of new crop seed loans in the future.
By the way, some grassroots officials and conscientious country squires with relatively pragmatic, down-to-earth and capable character were also selected for temporary promotion and reuse.
For example, Song Mingde from Daye County knows a little more
After this model runs through, all that's left is for each county to replicate it. Anyway, Shen Shuren has already done enough unannounced visits in the name of his extravagant leisure activities. Now, he can sort it out with a sudden "look back", and he can basically straighten everything out. .
In this process, Shen Shuren also figured out a rule for discovering talents from the grassroots level - generally, talents left behind in places where their character is relatively reliable and their talents are most available often come from being selected as a scholar, and because they hate studying the Four Books and Five Classics, I felt that hypocrisy was not here, so I went to study liberal arts.
If you are willing to bow your head for fame and fortune, and if you feel that certain knowledge is hypocritical, then you will decide not to learn it and learn what you love to learn. This kind of person can be said to have never forgotten his original intention.
No matter what your original intention is, it is better than enduring humiliation and hypocrisy. If, like Song Mingde from Daye County, your original intention is to study geography, geology, and prospecting, then that is the best, and it can be used by Shenshu people. Even if your original intention is just ancient prose, In philosophy, it is also very good to be like Gu Yanwu.
In the past, when Chen Shuren's status was not high enough, he could not use people randomly and give temporary assignments to people who did not meet the qualifications. Now that he is a Daotai, he is the censor of Qiandu, so he can be tougher. As long as the governor does not find him, Trouble, no one can question it.
More than half a month passed by in a blink of an eye, and it was October in the blink of an eye.
Shen Shuren has also thoroughly sorted out the agricultural administration work in the counties of Wuchang and Hanyang. While promoting the planting of new crops next year, with the arrival of the winter slack, he has also organized the counties to build water conservancy projects, renovate wetlands, and dig Silt up the polders and promote the cultivation of tilapia and Qingjiang fish.
Shen Shuren did not bother the two masters about the manpower to handle these tasks. He directly asked the enlightened squires and local officials who had been selected before to help him promote seed loans for new species to handle them. If there was any obstruction, they could report it directly to the department. Qiandu Yushiyamen.
These are all measures that benefit the country and the people and do not directly harm anyone's interests. Ordinarily, no one will try their best to obstruct them.
If we have to say that it hurts interests, it's just that the wealthy gentry who were originally qualified to handle these matters are now not qualified to handle them, and they have less opportunities to pass on money and food. It is inevitable to secretly resent——
Any dynasty that collects corvees will spend a lot of money and food, even if it is to build water conservancy for the people themselves.
The poor people originally had to eat only one meal a day after October when the farming season slows down. In disaster years, the only meal is usually porridge, mixed with wild vegetables to reduce the amount of food, and then they can lie down for a few more hours every day. Reduce calorie consumption.
If you are involved in digging silt and piling up polders to raise fish, you must at least ensure that you eat two meals a day, and not too thin. Food consumption will increase a lot.
You can buy grain directly from the local gentry who have surplus grain, but the money must be advanced by the government first. Then it will be shared with the surrounding gentry who benefited from irrigation after the water conservancy was built.
The newly acquired polders and fish ponds were then counted as ownerless official land and incorporated into local military camps. The military households were responsible for farming and breeding. Half of the harvest was left to the military households and half was included in the military rations of the garrison.
Generally speaking, for the part of civilian farmland where the surrounding irrigation conditions have been improved, the money and grain allocated cannot fully cover the project cost. If it can cover more than half, it is considered very good, but there will also be the problem of exploiting the people——
After the water conservancy is built, the advantage is that it will take three to five years or even seven or eight years to pay back the cost, which will help the harvest every year in the future. However, the project money is a one-time expense, and the government does not advance the funds, and the poorer gentry just turn over the money. It won't open.
Therefore, half of the expenditure on water conservancy needs to be paid by the government immediately. Then the government will get the new polders and fish ponds, and the money will be recovered slowly in the next five or six years.
With Shen Shuren's financial resources, it would be difficult to turn over money to carry out large-scale construction projects that benefit the country and the people. Moreover, it is impossible for him to really rely on the Shen family's own money to provide financing on a large scale, let alone to do so uncontrollably. Paying money to become an official——
It turns out that during the two years that Shen Shuren was an official, he also lost money every year, but the standard was basically controlled at the level of one hundred thousand taels per year, excluding gray expenses such as buying an official position and giving gifts.
It is clear that after the subsidy loss exceeds more than 100,000 taels per year, the Shen family will not be able to sustain it, and will be easily attacked by others:
Officials all over the world are greedy for money, but you are the only one who gives money back. Even more than a hundred thousand taels of money every year is not enough. What is your intention? Is it true that 'there is nothing to gain from wealth, and women have nothing to live for, so this is not a small ambition'?
No longer able to rely on family subsidies, at least not entirely, Shen Shuren could only continue to use local fiscal revenue.
He also felt for the first time the hardships of local governments in the 2020s that were unable to sell their land and even had to cut the wages of civil servants and public institutions.
Without land finance, we really can’t afford large-scale demolition and construction!
It's not like he hasn't thought about it, he can directly sell the ownership of the newly built polder fields and the newly dug deep fish ponds to the people in exchange for funds. But even so, it requires a turnover.
On the other hand, those who work on water conservancy projects during the winter break are not necessarily local people, but a considerable number of soldiers from the garrison. For the troops from the garrison to work, the expenses must of course be directly funded by the government.
Chen Shuren's own force of 20,000 soldiers was an elite one. However, the three guards left to him by Zuo Liangyu were mostly weak. At most, they could only be "still young and strong", but their physical strength and martial arts skills were completely lacking. There are no guarantees anymore.
Shen Shuren let these fish belly idle. Instead of wasting food and directly training the military discipline queue, it is better to use the same time and physical strength to let them be "engineers" for a winter, which can also exercise the physical strength and discipline of the army.
Therefore, Shen Shuren turned his mind to the misappropriation of "lijin" again.
The Wuchang-Huangzhou customs office he controls only earns less than 300,000 taels a year. In fact, the daily expenses of raising more than 20,000 troops are already insufficient. Other financial resources are needed to supplement them in order to support more troops. .
But what Chen Shuren paid more attention to was the breakthrough of the system. After sorting out the current situation, he found that the current imperial laws are still very strict on the use of local "lijin".
Lijin can only be used to directly pay military pay, or to replace "training pay" as a "subsidy for training expenses." However, the relevant regulations of the Ministry of Household Affairs have never allowed the use of Lijin for "expenses for corvee service for military households in local guard stations", let alone As "employing civilians to bear the labor expenses".
These clauses are not difficult to implement. If there were a few more private goods clauses when the Lijin reform was passed, Chongzhen might have passed the instructions in a confused way.
But at that time, I didn’t expect so much, and secondly, I felt that one more thing was not worth it, so I asked the emperor to allow Lijin to be piloted first, and the rest could be done slowly, so I didn’t add it.
If we want to make a breakthrough now, we must obtain the absolute support of the governor of Huguang, and we need Fang Kongzheng's nod.
After Chen Shuren arranged all the winter water conservancy corvee work, he looked at the deficit in his accounts and realized more and more that he needed to see Governor Fang again as soon as possible for a deep talk.
Even if something goes wrong in the future and someone accuses Huguang local bureaucracy of having a tendency to further become warlords, Fang Kongzhen will still be able to shoulder the blame.
…
In mid-October, after preliminary arrangements were made for promoting agriculture and water conservancy, the only problem left was the turnover of money and grain.
Chen Shuren did his duty and went on a journey to Jiangling County, Jingzhou Prefecture, to visit Shangguan again. He had accumulated a lot of matters that needed Shangguan's support and wanted to solve them all at once.
The last time I came to Gangneung was half a year ago.
At that time, he only had five or six thousand available troops (another two thousand were held back by Lin Chengcheng at the time). To hold He Jin, He Yilong had ten times the number of troops arriving one after another, and had to travel hundreds of miles a day, riding on horseback. The inner thighs were worn out, so he urgently sought help from Fang Kongzheng.
Exactly half a year later, Chen Shuren's direct troops had expanded to 23,000 to 23,000 people, of which more than 10,000 were elite soldiers with strict disciplines, and at least several thousand veteran bandits who had been soldiers for many years.
In addition to the direct troops, the three guard posts left by Zuo Liangyu also have a total of 12,000 people. Although they are not full now, after full recruitment in the future, Chen Shuren's total army size will reach 35,000 people. .
This is an increase of about five times in strength compared to when we came to ask for help in six months, which can be called a miraculous speed.
With troops on hand, Chen Shuren certainly doesn't have to be as embarrassed as last time.
He directly chose to go along the Yangtze River and take a big boat slowly upstream from Wuchang to Jiangling.
The straight-line distance from Wuchang to Jiangling is only four hundred miles. However, the Yangtze River waterway is tortuous. It must first go south to Baling County (Yueyang), Yuezhou Prefecture, and pass through the mouth of Dongting Lake. Therefore, the total mileage of the waterway is one full mile longer than the straight-line distance. times, more than 800 miles.
Chen Shuren should also inspect his own territory, and gain a deeper understanding of the people's sentiments in various places, and then inspect the implementation of the Lijin Chao Pass in Yuezhou Prefecture to get a feel for the background of his peers——
After the implementation of the Lijin policy, all inter-provincial trade will have to pay Lijin commercial tax. However, when pilot provinces set up banknote checkpoints, it was impossible to actually set up checkpoints on provincial borders because many provincial borders are remote and dangerous. place.
Take the border between Huguang and Guangdong and Guangxi as an example. It is between the Nanling Mountains. It would be too expensive to set up a tax card there.
Therefore, when the imperial court first legislated, it allowed the banknotes to be moved to convenient locations as appropriate, as long as there was no duplication of taxation.
Fang Kongzhen, the governor, was obviously too poor. He had two quotas for setting up lijinchaoguan, one for trade with Sichuan and the other for trade with Guangdong and Guangxi.
There is no choice but to set up the checkpoint with Sichuan in Yiling. Because Zhang Xianzhong is entrenched in Shennongjia and the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River, the income of this road will further drop sharply in the second half of this year, and there will be many fewer businessmen going out to Sichuan to do business.
Therefore, Fang Kongzhen's main sources of business tax could only be counted on Huguang and Guangdong and Guangxi in the south. However, Guangdong and Guangxi connected to the Pearl River through the Ling Canal, and the number of business travelers in the Xiangjiang River was not large, so it was difficult to collect taxes. Fang Kongzhen did not stop doing anything, directly Set up Chaoguan in Baling, Yuezhou Prefecture——
All merchant ships coming from the south and entering the Yangtze River from the mouth of Dongting Lake are deemed to be subject to tax.
This move obviously attracted a lot of criticism and resistance. After all, Hunan and Hubei are now one province. Goods from the south may not be from Guangdong, but more than half are local goods from Hunan. Now things in Hunan leave the lake and enter the Yangtze River. Even if it spans across provinces, the scope of the raid has obviously expanded several times.
When Chen Shuren passed by Yuezhou, he was almost inspected by the customs officer sent by Fang Kongzhen to collect taxes. After checking the seal, it was confirmed that he was an official ship and came to Jiangling to pay a visit to the superior. It was confirmed that there was no cargo, so the tax official let him go.
After passing the customs, Shen Shuren had to lament that the atmosphere of the apocalypse was indeed getting stronger and stronger. The local frontier officials had begun to make money at all costs in order to train and equip more troops.
After all, there were only the last two years and a few months left before Chongzhen's death.
Chen Shuren was originally afraid of Fang Kongzheng, a moral gentleman who was strong without desire and difficult to communicate with. Since he also had the need to make money and expand the army, it was easier to encourage him.