Chapter 176 The hard-working Han people
What the common people like most is the yellow land, and nothing else can tempt them.
What's more.
Those who followed Zhang Cong outside the Great Wall were all landless refugees.
What they need most now is their own land and a stable home.
Otherwise, they would not have followed Zhang Cong and traveled thousands of miles to the outside of the Great Wall, not because they could not survive and wanted to have something to eat.
Now that they have their own land, it gives them the opportunity to settle down, have children, and continue to be human beings.
As soon as they heard that the county magistrate was going to allocate land to them and re-register their household registration, they all knew that they wanted to resettle here, so they were naturally very active in building buildings in the city.
Of course, it was not only these landless refugees who followed Zhang Cong to Yulin City outside the Great Wall, but also some businessmen with gentry background.
Because Zhu Houzhao decreed that Yulin was a new city outside the Great Wall and needed to be revitalized, he canceled the heavy taxes paid by merchants in border towns in the interior, and only allowed the Ministry of Household Affairs to collect a low-rate stamp tax to encourage merchants to come. Farming outside the Great Wall and doing business.
This also attracted some far-sighted businessmen to follow Zhang Cong to Yulin despite the risks beyond the Great Wall.
Although the main reason for the inward migration of merchants was the reform of the Central Government, it was also related to the excessive exploitation by the government and the army in the border towns.
Prior to this, in order to control the economy of border towns and prevent merchants from becoming enemies, the imperial court imposed various exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous taxes in border towns to supplement military needs, which made many merchants prefer smuggling rather than using legal trade channels prescribed by the government.
After all, the profit of the latter will become very small, which will make the trade activities controlled by the government become increasingly cold, and smuggling will become more and more rampant, making it even more difficult for the court to implement economic control over the Mongols.
Now, Zhu Houzhao aims to adopt a unified tax rate and low tax collection in Yulin City outside the Great Wall, which naturally gives businessmen a profitable opportunity. Moreover, Zhu Houzhao asked Zhang Cong to tell these businessmen that the grain and minerals developed by these businessmen in Yulin will be uniformly owned by The Royal Industrial Company and Huangzhuang purchased the goods directly to avoid being exploited by the government when the merchants were transported directly back to the customs.
This also makes some businessmen more willing to go out of the customs to develop lands outside the customs. They are naturally not afraid of the risk of Tatar plunder at any time. As long as there are high profits, even businessmen who risk their lives and make huge profits will Even when the two countries are at war, they still dare to export commerce to the enemy country, let alone these.
Of course, those who were willing to follow Zhang Cong to develop Yulin City outside the Great Wall were not only the businessmen encouraged by Zhu Houzhao's low tax policy, but also businessmen with a background of bureaucratic capital who also followed in advance because they learned that the imperial court was going to restore the system of paying grain and making profits. Those who cultivated fields and grain outside the fortress were able to gain salt profits in the future.
Among them, Jiao Fang, the chief minister of the cabinet, and Liu Jin, the chief minister of etiquette, followed them to Yulin City outside the Great Wall, preparing to seize the land outside the Great Wall.
Zhu Houzhao also knew through various intelligence channels that these officials who could grasp the court's policy trends in advance would send their families to seize territory outside the Great Wall first.
But he did not stop him. He believed that after seizing the land outside the Great Wall, the families behind these court officials would definitely support powerful military forces to destroy the Tatars, and would even rectify the salt policy for themselves, because their purpose in occupying the land outside the Great Wall was not The food outside the Great Wall is about the salt exchanged for food.
In addition to landless refugees and businessmen, Zhang Cong also brought in a group of Confucian scholars who had committed crimes from Dongchang and Sanfasi.
These people were either involved in the case of rebelling against the party but were not guilty of death, or they had not been executed by the court, or they had committed other crimes;
Especially after the implementation of the Kao Cheng Law, because officials from the Procuratorate Department in various places and officials from the Central Legal Affairs Department worked hard to improve the efficiency of handling criminal and civil cases, many Confucian scholars were imprisoned for adultery, tax evasion, and incest. Part of it is a matter of lifestyle, that is, the mistakes that literati usually make. If they are not investigated, it will not matter. But if they are investigated, they can be used to punish people and add political achievements. As a result, more and more Confucian scholars are in jail awaiting execution.
However, Zhang Cong did not expect that his memorial, which wanted the court to send some Confucian scholars who had committed crimes to the border towns to educate the herdsmen outside the Great Wall and to establish schools in order to maximize the use of people, was quickly approved by Zhu Houzhao, and the cabinet voted This plan can give these Confucian scholars who are infected with bad habits and do not know the teachings of the saints a chance to go to the countryside to reform!
Therefore, there are Confucian scholars, businessmen and landless refugees in Yulin City now.
In order to prevent these people from forming a township party that would be detrimental to his rule as a county magistrate, Zhang Cong disrupted and reorganized these people. In each village, there were both poor people, such as landless refugees, and wealthy people, such as officials and gentry businessmen.
Then, Zhang Cong asked each workshop to nominate a leader.
Even if scholars are no longer shamed, they are still respected by the people in the Ming Dynasty, where the illiteracy rate is very high. Therefore, basically the heads of each workshop are still these Confucian scholars.
After Zhu Houzhao learned about this phenomenon, he did not reject it. After all, intellectuals are always easy to become leaders and are suitable to become leaders. Zhu Houzhao could not prevent them from becoming exploiters again outside the Great Wall. He only asked to rule those areas. The people who own a piece of land are the people of Ming Dynasty.
The people living in that land are also people of the Ming Dynasty, and they must have basic rights. Only in this way can these people know that being a citizen of the Ming Dynasty is better than being a citizen of other countries. Once the Ming Dynasty falls into crisis one day, they will feel the huge pain caused by the subjugation of the country.
While building the buildings in Yulin City, Zhang Cong began to take his assistant officials, staff, subordinates, heads of various workshops and heads of households to divide the cultivated land outside Yulin City.
Because the First Division of the Guards was camped nearby, and the cavalry of the Guards had already been posted a hundred miles away, Zhang Cong and others were not worried about the sudden appearance of Tatars and would not be able to return to the city in time. Just do the work of dividing the fields with peace of mind.
According to the regulations, the Cabinet and the Ministry of Household Affairs, taking into consideration factors such as Yulin's historical geographical location and the minimum living needs of each household, preliminarily formulated the land allocation rules for Yulin City: each adult male and female family is divided into 40 acres of land and 10 acres of permanent land.
The former can be cultivated for fifty years and then returned to the government. The government will then re-divide it or let you continue to cultivate it.
The latter is one's own private property that can be passed on to descendants or sold.
Before the orthodoxy, Yulin City was the land of the Ming Dynasty, and it was the place where the military garrison was located. But now that the military garrison has moved inward, these places have become ownerless fields. It is easy to divide the fields, without worrying about affecting the border areas. The interests of the town's military landowners.
However, because the area around Yulin used to be the military garrison of the Ming Dynasty, there was a lot of fertile land. Even after the thousands of soldiers and civilians were divided, there were still tens of thousands of acres of fields and a large amount of pasture land and woodland left.
Zhang Cong assigned all these lands to the government, that is, the imperial court, but encouraged the scholars and people to contract, whether they contracted these lands for farming, grain harvesting, mining, or even just forest land for hunting and logging. Except for the different contract prices, County Magistrate Zhang Cong will not restrict contractors' business activities on these lands too strictly.
As a result, the merchants who came to Yulin with Zhang Cong all contracted the fields and mining lands that the government was still unable to develop, making Yulin City's industries diversified from the beginning.
Of course, people from the Royal Industrial Company also came to contract a mine and the largest iron ore here to provide more iron ore raw materials for Ming Dynasty's increasing demand for iron ore.
The first social science school in Yulin City was also built.
However, as a graduate of the Capital University, Zhang Cong changed the sociological enlightenment education method of reading only the Three Character Classic, introduced simple arithmetic and common sense classes, and hired specialized people to teach them.
The reason is that the current social studies in Yulin are for the children of common people, and it will be difficult for most of these children of common people to be admitted to the imperial examination in the future. When they are taught the way of saints, they should also be given the way to make a living. Even if they are successful in the imperial examination in the future, Being a Jinshi is also beneficial to oneself.
Because Yulin City was a newly built city and outside the Great Wall, and Zhang Cong was a student of the Capital University who was personally trained by Zhu Houzhao, naturally he could do whatever he wanted.
Lu Zimin did not expect that he would take root outside the Great Wall. At first, he had to accept the request of a county magistrate named Zhang Cong to help him work so that the whole family could have enough to eat. Just eat.
But he didn't expect that he would follow the county magistrate to the outside of the Great Wall. Not only did his family survive, but he also received land.
As a Lu citizen who has been a farmer for generations, he has no idea about other things, but he knows the preciousness of land. He also knows that in his hometown of Huaiyang, an acre of land is worth ten taels of silver.
And he now has a hundred acres of land, which is equivalent to the court giving him nearly dozens of taels of silver. Therefore, he is now particularly grateful to the county magistrate Zhang Cong and the court, and will willingly kneel down and kowtow when he sees Zhang Cong.
Because Zhang Cong had received a new education from the Capital University, he could not stand being worshiped by the people of the Ming Dynasty like a Bodhisattva every day, so he forcibly ordered the people of Yulin not to kneel and worship except when they were summoned to the court and given a grand ceremony. The reason was that the cloth in the border town was expensive. To avoid getting your clothes dirty, washing them frequently will cause them to get damaged quickly.
As a result, Zhang Cong gained a reputation as someone who loved the people and received awards from the court. Officials in other places also followed suit to show that they also loved the people.
The most important thing for Lu people now is the newly acquired land for their family. In order to plant food as soon as possible, like many people, they even ignore the Yulin Magistrate Zhang Cong's prohibition that people must return to the city at night to prevent Tatar night attacks. Sometimes they go straight to the city in the middle of the night. They quietly leave the city or stay overnight outside the city in order to pull out the grass in the fields and plant their own crops as soon as possible.
Even if they were whipped for violating the ban, they were willing to do so.
The diligence of the people of the Ming Dynasty was astonishing. In order to provide themselves with their own food as soon as possible, the barren fields around Yulin City were plowed at an alarming rate.
The weeds seemed to have been pulled out overnight, and countless paths were even created, laying the foundation for future official road construction.
The tens of thousands of people in the previous chapter have been changed to thousands. It feels more reasonable. I hope everyone knows
(End of chapter)