People in the Eastern Han Dynasty, Hu and Han respected together

Chapter 171
Let's talk about the county, now the entire Jincheng and half of Longxi have a total of more than 3000 households and more than 11 people.

But with such a small population, there are 150 million mu of land. After all, all the food these people need for their families must be obtained from the land.

Now that there are new farm tools, the government will also provide farming cattle and encourage the people to reclaim the fields. Naturally, these people are desperately reclaiming the land.

The feeling of being hungry is definitely enough to make life worse than death. With such an opportunity, the people are willing to do their best.

In fact, there are wastelands everywhere. Why are those who have no fields, or only a few fields, unwilling to cultivate them?
Because these wastelands have owners, and even the mountains, rivers, and waters have owners. They usually don’t take care of them, but as long as the people go to reclaim the fields, they will come to ask you for the fields and the food that grows in the fields.

If they can't get it out, they will collude with officials and eventually turn you into a slave tenant.

In the end, both people and land were empty, so the people had no land to plant, and they were unwilling to cultivate fields.

But now Jincheng is thriving, because the government has promised that as much land as you can reclaim, you can legally own it as long as you pay the land tax, so the people are willing to reclaim the land.

And Li Yao and Zhao Xian also discussed, exempting all exorbitant and miscellaneous taxes, even money and counting taxes, although they are still retained, but reduced to the minimum, only the land tax is the main tax.

If the tax is reduced, as long as the family has enough to eat, the people will not send the elderly to the mountains to starve to death. If the income is reduced, as long as the family has a little food left, the people will not throw the baby into the river to drown.

Cang Lin knows the etiquette in reality, and knows honor and disgrace when she has enough food and clothing.

Anyone who reads will know this truth, but many people will pretend to turn a blind eye, while searching for food from the people, while insulting the people for being uneducable.

If there is less money and less money, the reduced financial revenue will naturally have to find a way to make up for it.

This method is salt and iron franchise!

Let’s talk about salt production first. The most commonly used salt production methods are boiling, frying, and sun-dried salt. However, in Qinghai, salt has to be dug.

What is the situation in Qinghai? All the salt lakes and salt ponds are natural salt fields. After tens of millions of years of wind and sun, the salt has long been precipitated and formed into lumps, so there are salt mines.

To put it simply, in other places there is salt in the lake, but in this place there is a lake in the salt, so if you want salt, you have to dig for salt.

Later generations relied on various large-scale equipment to dig salt, but now, the production capacity is very backward, so it is necessary to rely on hoes, plows... to dig out the salt mines.

After these salt mines are crushed, they are blue-black and contain impurities. This is primary salt.

It can also eat, at least not to death.

After the primary salt is mixed with salt lake water, the brine is brought into the salt pan, and after being exposed to the wind and the sun, it is re-precipitated and turns bluish white with high quality. This is regenerated salt.

This kind of green salt can be sold at a high price.

In the past, the Qiang people occupied Yanchi and produced thousands of dendrobium of salt every year, but now Li Yao occupies Yanchi, and the amount of salt produced has increased tenfold. Last year, they produced more than 8 dendrobium of salt.

Now the world is chaotic, and the price of salt remains high, with an average price of more than 800 yuan per stone.

If the more than 8 Dendrobium salt were brought to Liu Hong, he could buy six Sangong positions and twelve Jiuqing positions.

It only takes two years to buy a Taiwei. Cao Cao's father, Cao Song, spent [-] million yuan to buy a Taiwei.

In addition to meeting internal needs, these blue salts are exported and exchanged for gold, silver or livestock. This is their main financial income.

Anyway, it is said that the Central Plains is rich and prosperous, and the money Cao Song personally used to buy officials is comparable to the income of salt sales in a county in Jincheng.

And another fiscal revenue is mining, copper smelting, and iron smelting. Copper is money, and iron is armor and weapons.

The current five baht coins are copper coins, while iron is turned into long knives, spears, iron arrows, and some iron armor, mainly due to insufficient production.

Missing!

Now the county is also very busy. People are organized to plow in spring, dig salt in summer, harvest in autumn, and dig mines in winter. Of course, digging salt is not considered corvee, and they will be paid.

Those salt slaves and mine slaves work all day long without any income. They mainly come from two sources:

One is the criminals, the criminals in the county, there are no saints among the common people, some petty theft and theft are indeed unavoidable.

Except for committing the crime of mortal death, the rest are basically sentenced to labor reform, allowing them to generate income for the county.

The second is thorns, soldiers, there will always be some people in the army who do not obey discipline, and those deserters will also be used to dig salt and mines. If it is not for the lack of manpower, these guys should be used to kill chickens and respect monkeys.

But Li Yao won over, instead of directly killing them, it is better to use them to dig salt and mine, which can be regarded as waste utilization.

Human rights do not exist, as is the case in this era.

But for the common people, this kind of life is quite good now. After paying enough land taxes for spring planting and autumn harvest every year, the leftover food can still feed the whole family.

And in summer and winter, after digging salt and mining, you can still save some savings. As long as you save for two years, you can go to the government to exchange a calf or two lambs.

Jincheng is located in a border area, where livestock are very common, so the price is not too expensive.

Moreover, the government encourages the folks to raise cattle and horses. Raising cattle is naturally used to cultivate land, and raising horses is to form cavalry.

Farming and warfare are the foundation of a strong country!

Based on the prestige of the Li family among the people, as long as these people are still there, they will always be able to secure the position of Jincheng prefect.

Back to the topic, in the past five days, in a field outside the barracks, the three armies of Yi Cong have assembled, and they are all cavalry.

There are [-] people, boundless, not to mention tens of thousands of war horses, the strong shock brought to people is difficult to describe in words.

All the generals of the three armies wore armor, among them Yi Congying wore a full set of double-breasted armor, and the cavalry on the left and right wore body armor and cloaks.

After all, they undertake different combat missions, and the Yi Cong Battalion is a sharp knife, which is used to break the formation at critical times, so a full set of armor is needed to ensure that they can safely enter and exit among thousands of troops.

Cavalry troops left and right, harassed by cavalry and shooting, cut off food roads, chased and killed defeated troops... so they only wore body armor to ensure their flexibility.

Moreover, more soldiers could be armed in this way. Otherwise, everyone would wear full body armor, and the supply of cowhide would not be sufficient. Now there is so much cowhide supply, it is because they rely on green salt, go north to the four counties of Hexi, and the states of Zhangye and Juyan to exchange them back smoothly.

Three years is not enough to farm by oneself alone, and it also needs to be used to cultivate the land.

Green salt is a hard currency, but it is also easy to be slaughtered. Only when the Hexi Corridor is opened up can we fully grasp the initiative.

Li Wenhou came on horseback, he didn't say much, because the morale of the whole army was high, and they didn't need to boost their morale, they just needed to crush the past, seize the southwestern part of Longxi first, and then lead the troops northward.

So just say:
"set off!"

As soon as these words came out, the three armies all started to move...

　Thanks to the book friend Da Qin Tieying Ruishi for the reward!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)