The ruthless emperor in the late Ming Dynasty forced Chongzhen to abdicate at the beginning

Chapter 135

The reason why the Ming Dynasty's treasured banknotes were rotten, and the sky was angry and hated, was mainly because they could not be exchanged for silver, nor could they be used to pay taxes. To put it bluntly, Lao Zhu himself didn't quite believe in this stuff.

I still want to convince others, isn't this a fool's dream?

Coupled with the random issuance and lack of restraint, Daming's productivity simply couldn't keep up with the number of treasure notes issued, and it's no wonder that it turned into waste paper in the end.

And this kind of issuance of banknotes based on national credit was something that only the modern society dared to do in the previous life, but Lao Zhu was more than 600 years ahead of schedule, directly crossing the gold and silver standard.

Although Zhu Cihong didn't know much about finance in his previous life, he also knew that the gold standard would not be abolished until the end of World War II, and paper money would no longer be exchanged for gold, so for the time being, he only planned to use the silver standard honestly to issue banknotes.

For the time being, it is impossible to count the productivity of Ming Dynasty. They also plan to print as many denominations of banknotes as there are honestly, and always link the banknotes with silver, so that inflation will not depreciate the banknotes.

When the vitality of the north is restored and the world is completely calmed down, it should not be a problem to print three or four taels of silver for one tael of silver.

Sure enough, things went as Zhu Cihong expected, and the run on only lasted for four or five days, and some people began to exchange silver for treasure notes and buy things in the royal shop.

And those who haven't had time to exchange the banknotes into ingots are no longer like a few days ago, staying up late at night and queuing at the door of the bank. Obviously, everyone understands that the bank will not be closed, and the emperor has plenty of silver. When to change, when to change.

In the end, out of the more than 100 million banknotes issued this time, the bank only recovered nearly 90, and the royal store recovered about [-].

Most of them are less than five taels of denomination, and they don't want to go to the bank to exchange silver with others, so they keep it in their hands for emergencies.

And other shops and merchants in the city also began to accept treasure banknotes, but at the beginning, one tael of silver could only be regarded as five renminbi, and then it slowly increased to eight renminbi, but everyone is obviously not a fool. Don't agree anymore.

Instead of losing money and spending it, it is better to go to the royal shop to buy some food and salt, or wait for the next salary payment, and collect enough five taels before exchanging for ingots.

Regarding this situation, Zhu Cihong did not intervene forcefully, neither ordered the merchants in the city to accept the treasure banknotes, nor ordered them not to deliberately depreciate the value of the treasure banknotes.

It is better to let this kind of thing take its course. With the increase in the circulation of precious banknotes and the strength of banks, merchants will naturally choose to accept precious banknotes for convenience.

And Zhu Cihong also put his energy on the development of industry and the training of royal children.

This time he brought a total of [-] children aged six to ten to Xuanfu Datong and Shanxi, and selected [-] children from the military households in the Fourth Army's fields. A total of [-] children were sent to The unified education of Guozijian was established.

He plans to first let [-] young children learn patriotic education for four years, while learning words and writing, while working hard.

Four years later, [-] people will be divided into martial arts halls, and the other [-] will be used as royal government officials to study law and so on.

In order to prevent the [-] young children from being polluted by traditional literati, the Imperial Academy not only adopted closed management, but also taught them literacy and hyphenation by court ladies and soldier instructors.

These young children signed a ten-year contract with the royal family and compensated their families with a sum of money.

At this moment, in the creation prison, looking at the improved loom, Zhu Cihong couldn't suppress the excitement in his heart.

He didn't expect that in just two or three months, these five hundred craftsmen and women who weaved would make a lot of progress.

It can be seen that as long as the principle of this textile machine is understood, it is not difficult to improve the efficiency, but no one has specialized in research before, or someone made it, and it was buried.

The spinning machine is still operated by one person, and it has been increased from one spindle to three, which is just a simple mechanical structure modification.

However, in the absence of bearings to reduce friction, one person can spin three spindles at their limit, and if there are more, they will not be able to step on them, and their hands will be too busy.

The loom has not made much progress, even though Zhu Cihong has reminded that the key lies in the weaving shuttle, but the craftsmen and court ladies who know how to weave still don't know how to improve it.

Obviously, the loom is much more complicated than the spinning machine, and it may be the most complicated machine in ancient times.

But Zhu Cilang didn't care, the looms could be built slowly, and the efficiency of the anti-yarn machine was almost doubled, and it was already able to compete with Jiangnan cotton cloth.

After all, he mainly focuses on the lowest-end cotton cloth, and his target is ordinary people. It doesn't matter if it is rough, the key is to improve efficiency and keep the price down.

Therefore, the personnel who transformed the spinning machine were rewarded, and they were ordered to continue the transformation, and they were also pointed out the idea of ​​using a water wheel to drive the spinning machine.

Then they carried the remodeled spinning machine and a loom to the manufacturing supervisor, and ordered them to build these two machines with all their strength, and they must each build [-] units within a month.

For this reason, tens of thousands of carpenters were removed from the Ordnance Supervision to join. Anyway, the carpentry work of the Ordnance Supervision has almost been done, and the main ones are blacksmiths.

He also asked the procurement supervisor to send people to Shandong to buy cotton in a big way, collect as much as possible, and then transport it to the capital. Obviously Zhu Cihong wanted to do a lot.

The construction of the industrial zone in Xicheng is also urgent. More than 40 military households have been working for two months, and all the land in the west has been leveled. The moat has not been filled, and they plan to keep it.

The area of ​​the Xicheng Industrial Zone is very large, with a length of twenty miles from south to north and a width of nearly ten miles from east to west.

Zhu Cilang plans to divide it into three parts. The northernmost area is used to build spinning workshops, cloth dyeing workshops, etc., the middle area is used to produce other things, and the southernmost area is used as a manufacturing base for ordnance inspection.

At this time, the weather turned cold, and the military households lacked cotton clothes, and they could only work for one or two hours a day, so they had to hide in the shacks to keep warm.

Looking around, there are not only a large number of military shacks outside the west city, but also many neatly fenced mud houses in the south, and each mud house has earth walls outside.

But what is strange is that the people living inside are all ladies in brocade clothes.

There are tens of thousands of people in this group, all of whom are military officers from thousands of households and hundreds of households who moved here from Xuanfu Datong.

Zhu Cihong would not arrange a place for them to live in. Although there were spare houses in the inner city, they were not affordable for them, and even if they could afford it, they would not sell them.

The slightly better houses in the outer city were also bought by landlords and gentry who moved from nearby counties and counties.

The buildings in the four fields outside the city had already been demolished by thieves, and private people were not allowed to build houses indiscriminately, so Queen Zhou set aside an area for them to hire those military households to build a temporary habitat.

These military officers all came with tens of millions of wealth. Their arrival also strongly stimulated the merchants in the capital. Every day, countless small merchants came here to sell food.

In just over a month, a lively market has formed outside.

Although these military officers have rich family backgrounds, even if it is not a problem to sit and eat for decades, everyone is still worried about the future all day long.

Many people just came here, they were running around to give money, and they wanted to find a job. After all, they all have official positions, but these people have been ordered by His Majesty long ago, and no department will ask for them. On the contrary, they have been deceived a lot money.

Among them, he cheated the most with Duke Dingguo. Without the competition with Duke Ying, this guy is now in the Five Armies Commander's Mansion.

It's a pity that the Dudu's Mansion of the Five Armies has long existed in name only, not to mention that even the Datong Xuan Mansion is now directly under the control of the inner court.

Except for the five empty yamen and a bunch of scary titles, there is no power or luxuries at all.

Almost everyone knew that the military governor's mansion was probably in danger. After realizing this, those military officers were not doing useless work.

This day, thousands of military officers finally waited for His Majesty's summoning, one by one hurriedly changed into brand new official uniforms, carrying knives, and excitedly rushed to the palace to have an audience.

On the square outside the Emperor Palace.

The small stools had long been filled, and the military officers sat on the small stools one by one under the guidance of the eunuch after they arrived.

"His Majesty is here!"

"Long live my emperor! Long live!"

Thousands of people stood up and kowtowed with extra effort.

"Pingshen, sit down!"

After Zhu Cihong came to the high platform in the middle and sat down, he waved his hand.

"Thank you, Your Majesty." Everyone hurriedly thanked them, then got up one after another, and sat down carefully on the small stool, only half of their buttocks were touched.

"The purpose of calling everyone here today is to arrange for everyone's future. You don't need to think about leading the army. You can't inherit your official status after death..."

When everyone heard this, their hearts were filled with chills. They couldn't lead troops, their land was gone, and the hereditary official positions passed down from their ancestors came to an abrupt end. What should they do in the future? Could it be that they can still do business?
"Presumably you also know that I want to expand the three outer cities in the northeast and west. In order to coordinate the planning, I will set up another construction supervisor in the inner court. I plan to let you become contractors under the construction supervisor and be responsible for specific construction matters. "

Zhu Cihong didn't hesitate and said directly.

"Contractor?"

Everyone was confused for a while, but they didn't dare to ask aloud, so they had to secretly communicate in low voices.

"This foreman, as the name suggests, is that I will split up the construction work of the outer city and contract it to you to build it. For example, a large workshop, the construction supervisor's evaluation cost is 1 taels of silver, then you can complete the construction according to the requirements. , and after passing the inspection, you will be paid 1 taels of silver, and if you actually spent only 8000 taels for the construction, then you will earn two thousand taels."

After Zhu Cihong finished speaking, the audience exploded with a bang.

Everyone was ashamed, and they didn't think it was a good job, one that could make money.

This is definitely an errand that kills people.

Apparently, no one believed that His Majesty would really pay them money then, and if he did, it would be a fraction at most.

What is the way out here?
It is clear that they are cheating their money by changing the law.

"Of course, I know that you will doubt it. The construction prison will not pay you any money at that time. You don't need to worry about this. You can first get a loan from the bank to build it. If the construction prison does not pay the money by then, you can rely on it." loan.

However, I would like to make two requests here. First, cutting corners is never allowed. Once it happens, all the expenses will be borne by myself. If the construction period is delayed, fines will be imposed.

Second, the young and strong craftsmen recruited must not be abused. They must be provided with food and accommodation according to the standards of the imperial court, and their wages will be paid every month. "

Zhu Cihong didn't care what they thought, whether they were willing or not, and explained the specific regulations and rules.

It's not a one-shot deal. In the future, many projects in Daming will be undertaken by these contractors, and the mode of bidding and bidding will be adopted at that time.

As for the Ministry of Industry, it is responsible for checking and accepting the quality of the project.

Immediately, Zhu Cihong ordered people to move out the model of the Xicheng Industrial Zone made by the Ministry of Industry, and began to subcontract to them. Yarn and dyed cloth, two workshop areas.

The construction price has already been assessed, most of which are around 1000 taels. This time there will definitely not be much profit, but if these contractors have built their own brick and tile factories and skilled workers, it will still be profitable of.

(End of this chapter)