prosperous age

Wei Guangde escorted them out of the mansion, watched them get into their respective sedan chairs, and left leisurely.

It is impossible to say that Wei Guangde had no dissatisfaction with their attempt to acquire shares in the Northern Chamber of Commerce, but at that time Wei Guangde had to understand that there was no end to making money.

Compared with the profit from that little bit of silver, Wei Guangde was more concerned about getting these nobles to give up their obsession with land and instead invest the silver, or what should be called "capital" at this time, into industrial production.

The reason why Wei Guangde was so obsessed with this matter was naturally because he knew the development of society in later generations.

In an era when productivity was underdeveloped, land was the root of everything, and the saying “where there is land, there is wealth” was absolutely true.

However, when productivity developed, especially after the West took the lead in the Industrial Revolution, the wealth effect of land was replaced by industry. Only industry became the most profitable, and even eventually forced the land to lose value.

This is how the "sheep eat people" mentality in the West came about. The prosperity of textile companies requires a large amount of materials such as wool and cotton to meet society's demand for textile products.

As a result, the prices of these raw materials skyrocketed.

In order to obtain better profits, landlords naturally gave up growing food on their land and instead planted forage, cotton and other economic activities.

Wool spinning is the main force of the British textile industry, so British aristocrats began to graze sheep on the land, harvesting large amounts of wool and selling them to textile factories, and the phenomenon of "sheep eating people" began to emerge.

However, what Wei Guangde thought would happen decades later is actually already happening on the British Isles, which means his plan to get rich is bound to face huge resistance.

However, because a portion of the shares were distributed this time, it was a good idea in some ways and some risks were avoided.

Wei Guangde turned around and went back home, and along the way he was still thinking about the matter of salt permits that had been discussed during the previous conversation among the others.

In fact, the most important financial income of ancient dynasties mainly came from two sources: one was natural resource, and the other was salt tax.

Except for the Southern Song Dynasty when commercial taxes gained attention and became the main source of revenue, other dynasties did not pay enough attention to them.

It’s not that officials did not pay attention to it, but commercial taxes became private interests, especially in the Ming Dynasty.

The industries under Wei Guangde were scattered all over the place, but the taxes they paid each year were very small.

It's not that he doesn't want to pay, but the government simply won't accept it. He can only keep quiet. He can't ask the Chamber of Commerce to send the money to the government on his own initiative. That would make all the businessmen hostile and he would become a public enemy.

In other words, only the chambers of commerce doing business in Yuegang will pay taxes to the local customs office, but compared with the huge overseas trade, the taxes they pay are actually not much.

However, Wei Guangde still made up his mind.

Since Zhang Juzheng had already started to take action on the land tax and was preparing to collect taxes, he had also been studying the salt law these days to see if he could revive the Ming Dynasty's salt tax revenue.

After returning to the backyard, Xu Jianglan had not yet gone to bed. She was still waiting for Wei Guangde to come back, wanting to know what they had talked about before.

It wasn't a secret that couldn't be told, so Wei Guangde told them that the three dukes came here to take a stake in the Chamber of Commerce.

"They represent most of the nobles in the capital. If we don't allow them to invest, we don't know how they will make things difficult for our caravan."

Xu Jianglan knew the money-making abilities of those chambers of commerce and knew that they wanted to invest in them, so naturally she was not very willing.

Wei Guangde could not say that his main consideration was not to make money, but to induce the nobles to turn their attention from land to workshops, or industrial production, so he could only give a vague answer.

Even though everyone is keeping their eyes on the land in this era, how many people will own land in the future?

Whether at home or abroad, all land is owned by big capitalists and landlords. It is impossible for ordinary people to have much land, except in China.

Those were all bought with the lives and blood of our revolutionary predecessors. At the very least, the land in the rural areas is still owned by the farmers. Although a collective is added to it, it still belongs to the farmers.

The vast majority of people did not have land. It was because they lost their land and became free people that they were able to enter the city, work in workshops, and become the earliest workers.

Therefore, although land annexation affects social stability, it is also a way to promote social development.

Let them annex the land. As long as the landless people are guided to work in workshops and solve their livelihood problems in the process, society will still be stable and there will be no major turmoil.

This is also the reason why Wei Guangde never thought of restricting land annexation. As long as the industry is developed and this part of the population is absorbed, the Ming Dynasty may be able to lead the West in entering the Industrial Revolution.

By then, there would be no need to worry about China's door being opened by the West with its powerful ships and guns a hundred years later.

Don’t think that just because they are all peasants, they may not be able to learn to operate the machines. Nowadays, whether in the East or the West, the equipment is actually very simple. All you have to do is teach the workers how to use it.

In fact, most people in the East and the West are illiterate and know nothing. Everyone starts from the same starting line.

"No, you are a civil servant, are you afraid of them?"

Xu Jianglan was silent for a while, and suddenly realized that she was not marrying into a humble family. Wei Guangde had connections in the palace, so why should she be afraid of these nobles in the capital?

"Haha, I'm not afraid of them, but the purpose of doing business is to make money, and harmony brings wealth. There's no need to ruin the relationship over a small matter."

Wei Guangde laughed cheerfully and said, "Besides, the woolen cloth business may be easier to do in the north of China, but there are still few people who can afford it.

Letting them participate in the investment can also help share some of the risks. When have you ever seen your husband do a business that lost money?

I've calculated that in the first two years, very little of the money earned by the Northern Chamber of Commerce could be distributed as dividends, and most of it had to be used to expand the workshop.

With the participation of these nobles, their money can be directly invested in building new workshops, and our share of the money will be even greater.”

After comforting his wife, Wei Guangde asked someone to prepare hot water so that he could wash up and go to sleep.

The next morning, Wei Guangde returned to the cabinet, and the first thing he did was to ask Lu Bu to ask someone to find the documents on the salt administration of officials in recent years.

Yes, Zhang Juzheng had already taken action on the land tax issue, and Wei Guangde felt that there was no need for him to get involved.

As for what he had proposed at the beginning, the miscellaneous taxes levied locally should also be included in the Single Whip System, and the whole country should collect taxes from the different grades of land set by the province.

When the tax revenue comes in, the local government will take its share of the tax silver according to the allocated silver, and the rest will be given to the court.

Wei Guangde didn't know whether he would do so now, but he had asked for permission before this time, intending to measure the farms of the nobles and royal family and levy a unified tax.

Since the imperial court could not restrict those people from annexing land, it would set a fixed tax. No matter who the landlord was, he just had to pay the tax.

Now, Wei Guangde has to consider the issue of salt tax and find a way to collect it.

In this way, the imperial court would have enough silver to fill the treasury in a short period of time.

As long as there is money, the affairs of the court are no big deal.

In fact, there are only two points to governing a country. If you do them well, you can achieve long-term stability.

One is governing officials, and the other is the economy.

Governing officials does not mean severely punishing corrupt officials. That was Gao Gong's idea. We should punish every corrupt official we find and ensure clean governance.

But punishing corrupt officials is not the goal, the fundamental goal is to get officials to do their jobs and handle public affairs well. Is it interesting to arrest a corrupt official and then promote another corrupt official?

When scholars say "cultivate oneself, manage the family, govern the country and bring peace to the world", it's just talk.

“Books contain golden houses and beautiful women.” In fact, the purpose of reading is to find these two things.

The scholars of the Ming Dynasty had already turned bad during the imperial examinations, and were proficient in eating, drinking, whoring and gambling, so very few of them could control their hands after becoming officials.

Even if they can do it at the beginning, those who can still keep their original intentions after being immersed in officialdom for several years are rare.

Hai Rui was very capable and was able to prevent himself from taking money that he shouldn't have, but he also offended everyone in the officialdom because of this.

Of course, as I said before, when Hai Rui was governing the local area, he would not impose miscellaneous taxes or embezzle money to fill his own pockets, but he would not have missed out on the "benefits" of the officials.

Otherwise, the salary set by Zhu Yuanzhang would have to be reduced. He could not even support himself, so how could he support his family?

In recent years, Wei Guangde has long noticed the problem of reduced salt tax revenue.

It was just that because it was an assignment from the Ministry of Revenue and had little to do with him, Wei Guangde had never considered intervening in the matter before.

Since the Spring and Autumn Period, when Guan Zhong of Qi State made the salt industry a state monopoly, successive Chinese governments have regarded it as the economic lifeline and strictly controlled it, with its monopoly income accounting for a high proportion of fiscal revenue.

If we consider the annual tax revenue of the Ming Dynasty in terms of silver alone, salt tax is obviously ranked first.

According to the documents from the Ministry of Revenue that Lu Bu had found, Wei Guangde made a simple calculation and roughly estimated that the annual income from salt tax was more than one million taels of silver.

However, not all of the salt taxes were transported to Taicang. In addition to the sea salt, the tax silver of about 300,000 taels of silver from well salt and pond salt was transported to the nine border towns, including Ningxia, Yansui, Xuanda and other border towns.

After all, they are all in Hexi, where transportation is inconvenient, so there is naturally no need to transport them to the capital.

As for the number of salt permits issued, it is around 2.5 million per year.

According to the weight of salt permits at that time, a large permit held 400 kilograms of salt, and a small permit held 200 kilograms of salt. The official salt permits issued by the Ming Dynasty now amounted to 1 billion kilograms of salt each year.

Don’t think that this number is large. In fact, people’s demand for salt is huge.

These days, each person needs about 12 kilograms of salt a year. Even if a family of five eats frugally, they still need 50 kilograms of salt a year.

Moreover, one catty in the Ming and Qing dynasties was equivalent to 1.2 catties later, or in more common terms, 600 grams per catty.

The figure of one billion jin is only the food consumption of 30 million adults, which is not enough to meet the needs of the Ming Dynasty.

However, even if the imperial court really wanted to continue to increase the supply of salt permits, it would be fraught with difficulties. The fundamental reason lay in the salt law.

Although the annual investment is about 2.5 million tonnes of salt, the Daming Salt Field is actually unable to supply so much salt.

Yes, the biggest problem facing the Ming Dynasty's current salt law is the backlog of salt permits, which means that the salt fields are unable to deliver salt.

This has also led to a sharp drop in the price of salt permits in several "exchanges" in Yangzhou in the south.

The output of salt fields in the Ming Dynasty continued to increase as the country stabilized, but the actual population increase was even greater, but it was not reflected in the court's "Yellow Book".

In the Ming Dynasty, salt was mainly sea salt in the east, and mainly pond salt and well salt in the west. Sea salt was the main way to obtain salt, and there were a large number of salt fields for drying salt in coastal areas.

However, due to the uneven distribution of benefits between the salt farmers and the salt collectors, the annual salt output of the Ming Dynasty could not be fully collected by the salt fields, but was secretly sold to private salt dealers by the salt farmers.

Many of these private salt dealers were also employed by salt merchants.

After all, it is too difficult to obtain official salt through formal channels, so it is better to get some official salt and mix it with private salt to sell for profit.

In later generations, some people suspected that the scale of private salt in the Ming Dynasty might be several times that of official salt, which was largely due to speculation about the population of the Ming Dynasty.

Because the amount of official salt issued each year was limited and could not supply enough, private salt production was rampant among the people.

If the supply and demand are sufficient, how could there still be salt merchants purchasing salt permits at high prices?

The fundamental purpose of salt merchants buying salt permits is actually to cover up the private salt they have purchased.

It is worth mentioning that since the collapse of the Sino-French alliance during the Hongzhi period, the imperial court allowed direct payment of silver without the need to transport grain and fodder to the border towns. Although this quickly enriched the national treasury, it also led to the abandonment of military farms in border towns.

At this time, the salt permit became a certificate for conducting transactions in an open and aboveboard manner.

Wei Guangde was not very interested in salt permits, his attention was more focused on the salt fields.

Yes, as long as enough salt is produced, there is basically no problem selling it.

At this time, the Ming Dynasty was still following the system of the early Ming Dynasty, with salt farmers responsible for salt production and the salt fields responsible for the purchase and sale.

Of course, this is only in name only.

The salt farmers all had tasks to do. As long as they completed their tasks at the salt fields every year, they would mostly sell the extra salt privately to pay taxes.

Wei Guangde naturally still used the thinking of later generations, thinking about whether to set up a salt chamber of commerce and directly produce sea salt.

However, this conflicts with the current stove system of the Ming Dynasty.

Most of the coastal mudflats were distributed to the cooks.

Over the years, the stove households have begun to polarize, with some becoming wealthy and more falling into poverty.

Moreover, over the past hundred years, the salt flats of the Zaohu have been severely occupied by local tyrants, and just like the farmland, there has also been a situation where rich Zaohu have annexed the salt fields of poor Zaohu.

Household registration system

Wei Guangde knew that if his Chamber of Commerce really wanted to get involved in salt field production, it would have to buy salt fields from the rich kitchens and hire the poor kitchens to carry out production. However, there was an unavoidable restriction, which was household registration.

Putting aside whether the imperial court will allow the Chamber of Commerce to participate in the salt fields, what identity will the Chamber of Commerce use to do this business?

Once the Chamber of Commerce gets involved, it will certainly find ways to increase the number of salt fields. At that time, a large number of workers will have to be hired, and private households will have to be introduced to participate, especially those who have lost their land.

Otherwise, relying solely on stoves may not be enough to meet the needs.

What Wei Guangde was considering at this time was that because the tidal flats were occupied, the cooks had lost the place to chop firewood, so salt boiling had basically disappeared, and the coastal areas could only rely mainly on salt production by drying.

If we find a coal mine on the coast and mine the coal to make salt, I don't know if it would be possible to make a profit.

Even if there is private salt, as long as it can increase salt production, there is no need to worry about selling it. Just hand it over to the salt field and they will naturally deal with it.

The increase in salt supply will naturally affect the price of salt, and people will be able to eat cheaper salt.

The imperial court could also increase the issuance of salt permits and obtain more salt tax. (End of this chapter)