Daming Town Haiwang

Chapter 367, salt this thing

Nanjing, Cheng Bo'an's Cheng Mansion.

"The salt in Changlu Salt Field has been reduced by another [-] Wen a catty. Now the salt sold in Changlu Salt Field is basically around [-] Wen. Should we continue to reduce the price?"

Cheng Bo'an's most capable master, Cheng Xuan, who also came from a branch of the Cheng family, hurriedly found Cheng Bo'an and reported the latest situation to Cheng Bo'an.

"Continue to drop, as long as they drop the price, we will follow suit."

Without the slightest hesitation, Cheng Boan said.

"In terms of price, our salt is only about ten yuan a catty, and the price we sell to other places is less than five yuan. At this price, we..."

Cheng Xuan thought about it and reminded him.

They only need Yanyin to get salt from the salt field. Yanyin used to need to transport grain to border towns to change districts. You only need to pay silver to the court to get Yanyin.

Because these salt merchants basically have people from the imperial court to the localities, in many cases, they can get a lot of salt by just paying some money symbolically.

It can be said that the cost of their salt is almost zero, and more costs are spent on top and bottom management, and the other is freight. In ancient times, transportation was inconvenient, and transportation was a big problem.

In terms of ancient grain transportation, if one hundred catties of grain were transported from the Jiangnan area to the capital and the border areas, at most, less than half of it could be left, because the ancient transportation was basically carried by shoulders and hands, and those who had the conditions could Horse-drawn carts and mule carts are enough, and water transport is the bulk of the transportation, but water transport requires places with water.

This is also the reason why these salt merchants like Nayin Kaizhong very much, because it was too troublesome to transport grain to the border area in the past, and the loss was too great, so salt merchants often had to find ways to recruit people to the border area Areas to grow food, in order to obtain salt.

Nayin Kaizhong is different, you only need to pay silver to get Yanyin, and the operation is much more flexible and convenient, and there are people everywhere.

Originally paying 100 taels of silver could only get 100 yin of salt, but because they got through the upper and lower sides, they might pay 100 liang of silver, and they could get 1000, 10000, or even [-] yin of salt.

It has only just begun, and within a few years of the opening of the Nayin Bank, the imperial court can still receive more than two million taels of tax silver every year. However, in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, with the corruption of the imperial court, the Donglin Party members gradually took control of the imperial government.

The money that the imperial court can receive in terms of Yanyin is very small, and even later, after a year, the silver used to buy Yanyin is only tens of thousands of taels, and the taxation is even more appalling. There is not even a hundred taels of tax silver for the year.

At this time, it has only been a few years since the opening of the Nayin Bank, and the salt government has not been completely corrupted, so Cheng Boan and the others still need to pay money if they want to get Yanyin. Although they will definitely open more Yanyin, at least it will 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 get it from the salt field, but if you add it up and down, the transportation cost, and the money to buy the salt, if you add it up, a catty of salt costs about a few pennies.

The price can be said to be quite low.

So in the past, it was very simple for them to make money. They used silver to buy salt, and then went to the salt field to extract the salt, and then sold it layer by layer.

Salt worth a few pennies a catty can be sold for twenty or thirty pennies a catty, which is several times the huge profit. Adding a few pennies per catty, and then methods such as short catty and two, seepage of sediment, etc., the final sales price is still as high as tens of pennies per catty.

This is still a normal situation. Sometimes, these salt merchants will increase the price according to the situation. In places like Yunnan-Guizhou, Jiangxi, Hunan, and Hubei, where the transportation is inconvenient and they do not produce salt themselves, the price of salt will be even higher. It is not uncommon to have hundreds of pennies per catty.

Therefore, salt merchants can be divided into three levels. The first level is Cheng Boan, Zhu Benduan, Feng Xiang and other big salt merchants. They control the salt field, and only they can get salt from the salt field. profits.

A catty of salt sells for fifty renminbi a catty, and these big salt merchants have to eat at least half of the profits, and twenty-five renminbi of the profits belong to them, the big salt merchants.

Moreover, these large salt merchants often do not need complicated operations. All they need to do is to take the salt out of 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 huge backgrounds, basically everyone's family has someone in the court.

Or the children who went out from their own family, who are officials in the court, or people who are married to their own family, or their fellow countrymen, etc., in short, each of them has a very large network of relationships.

In addition, every link of the place, the top and bottom of the salt field, etc. have been opened up, so they paid the silver to get the salt, and then they were able to take the salt out of the salt field.

If it was someone else, even if they paid the silver and got the salt, it would be almost impossible to extract salt from the salt field.

Because there are many reasons in the salt field to easily suppress you, such as the need to line up to extract salt, and basically every salt field has lined up for salt extraction for decades, when do you think it will be your turn?

Unless your background is large enough, such as the emperor's relatives like Jianchang Bo and Shou Ninghou, they often ask Emperor Hongzhi for salt quotations, and they usually ask for [-] or [-] quotations.

Naturally, no one dares to be negligent about their salt quotations, and they can raise salt soon, but generally these people will not really extract the salt themselves, but will transfer the salt quotations to sell them in a very convenient way, and immediately cash them out became silver.

Generally speaking, the salt farms are controlled by Cheng Boan, Zhu Benduan, Feng Xiang, etc., big salt merchants or big families. For example, Ye Qiye’s family, who proposed that Nayin was opened, is a wealthy family in the Jiangnan area, and they are also in the salt business. , the number of salt farms directly occupied by the Ye family is as many as seven, and there are also several salt farms controlled by some families in partnership, which is a proper big salt merchant.

The next ones are the salt merchants in the middle. These salt merchants are far less powerful than Cheng Boan, Zhu Benduan, and Feng Xiang. Their sphere of influence may be limited to a province, and they have no way to go to the court. Salt.

So they become middlemen. The big salt merchants take the salt from the salt field, and they resell it to the terminal sellers in their respective spheres of influence, which is also a profit.

The salt is only in their hands for a while, and a catty of salt will at least make them ten coins.

The last ones are the terminal sellers. These people are often powerful in a small place, and they can monopolize the sale of salt in a place. Only they can sell salt.

Naturally, when the salt came into their hands, a catty of salt would cost at least ten renminbi, and if they had a dark heart, they would earn even more.

So originally, the imperial court benefited the least from salt, and the annual tax received was pitifully small, and as time went by, it would become less and less, and in the end it basically lost this piece of income.

The kitchen households in the saltworks are the hardest. Due to the restrictions of the household service system, they have been kitchen households for generations, and they can only boil salt in the saltworks day and night.

For their own benefit, the officials who manage the salt farms often squeeze these kitchen households desperately. Originally, it was stipulated that the kitchen households can only work for 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 prolific salt would not be reported to the imperial court, and it naturally went into the pockets of officials like them.

As for the stove households, who cares about their life and death.

Of course, the common people in Daming were also very hard-pressed. Originally, salt was not expensive, and it cost only a few pennies, but in their hands, it was often tens of pennies a catty, and the sand and soil were also infiltrated. Who should the common people turn to for reasoning?

The real beneficiaries are these salt merchants, large and small salt merchants, layer after layer of salt merchants, each of them is rich and rich, and each of them is 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 root of maintaining everything, so these salt merchant families will continue to build private schools to support their children to study and take the imperial examination.

Or marry the women in your own family, marry those scholars, marry officials from top to bottom; and invest in your fellow villagers. There are scholars in your hometown who go to Beijing to catch exams and so on. They are very happy to give money to support , I really like to make friends with these scholars.

Over time, a huge network will gradually be formed. 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 originally powerful, and there were many officials. The villagers and the like gradually formed a party struggle, fighting to the death, fighting for power and profit, regardless of the country and the country.

As for the emperor of the Ming Dynasty, the clever ones knew how to use the power of the factory guards to check and balance these civil officials. Those who were as stupid as Emperor Hongzhi and Chongzhen were directly fooled to death by these civil officials.

The emperor wants money but there is no money, the treasury starves to death rats, even the rats don’t bother to patronize the internal funds, and the power is basically controlled and restricted by civil officials. Things are simply impossible.

　The words of the family, just take a look~
　　
　
(End of this chapter)