Late Ming sea owl

Chapter 330 Linchuan Salt Field (Part )

With the silver paving the way, the two guys who came to investigate the situation immediately believed that Lin Hai and his companions were not pirates. The man who took the silver said, "Since you want to buy food, you can go to the village to buy it."

Lin Hai mainly wanted to learn about salt drying, so he smiled and waved his hand: "I will buy food and leave. You can ask the villagers to send food to the boat to sell."

The other young man then returned to the village to report the news, and also asked everyone to come to the salt fields to continue production. It is now mid-March, at the end of the dry season, the temperature in southern Hainan is high, and there is less rain. It is the best time of the year to dry salt, just like the busy farming season cannot be missed.

After the young man left, Lin Hai continued to chat with the young man who took the silver and roughly figured out the functions of the two pools in the salt field.

The high pool is called the filtration pool, with thatched grass at the bottom. The salt mud is raked and exposed to the sun, then rammed onto the thatched grass, usually by foot, and then poured with seawater. The seawater slowly seeps through the cracks in the stone at the bottom of the pool and flows into the brine pool below the ground, thus obtaining brine with a higher concentration.

After the brine accumulates to a certain amount and settles and becomes clear, it is scooped up with a bucket and poured little by little into a small salt trough carved out of stone. Finally, it is exposed to the sun to crystallize into salt.

The above is the salt-drying technology of the Ming Dynasty. Not to mention the construction of infrastructure such as salt fields, water diversion channels, seawater storage pools, brine pools, and salt troughs, the raking, tamping, water carrying, and salt scraping in the production process alone would continuously consume a large amount of manpower.

"How many salt farmers are there here, and how much salt can be dried every year?" Lin Hai frowned after listening. He knew that the cost of drying salt was lower than that of boiling salt, and he originally thought that it did not consume too much manpower. Unexpectedly, it was also a labor-intensive industry.

How could he know that in the early Ming Dynasty, the number of salt workers in Qiongzhou Prefecture was as high as more than 1.5, accounting for more than % of the official registered population. This only counted the regular workers. In fact, other members of the salt households' families might also be involved in salt production.

"There are about 40 salt factories in total, and we can produce about 20,000 kilograms of salt every year." The young man said, "I heard from the old people that our salt field used to produce more than 80,000 kilograms of salt every year, but now there are too few people."

Lin Hai's heart sank when he heard this. A family can only produce 500 kilograms of salt a year, and from what the young man said, the salt production in Linchuan Field is not limited by the area of ​​the salt fields, but by manpower. In other words, the per capita output value can only be this high.

Taking the salt price in Fujian as an example, 500 kilograms of salt is worth only 5 taels of silver, which is the terminal market price. The majority of the profit is the profit of the salt merchants, and the income of the salt households accounts for only a small proportion. In terms of cost performance, salt drying is not as good as farming. No wonder Zhu Yuanzhang wanted to use the household registration system to force some people to produce salt in the early Ming Dynasty when land annexation was not serious. Otherwise, who would be willing to do this hard job?
It should be noted that drying salt is heavy physical labor, and it has to be exposed to the scorching sun. After all, salt cannot be dried in places where the sun is not strong. So people at that time said, "The salt workers are the most miserable people in the world," which is by no means an empty statement.

The current situation of Jinhe State is similar to that of the early Ming Dynasty. Every household has farmland, and it is almost impossible to let free people engage in salt production. It seems that the only solution is to rely on slave labor...

Lin Hai was also helpless about this. He used high land taxes in Jinhe Kingdom to prevent capital from flowing into the land, but this brought another problem - there were not enough cheap labor to invest in industry and commerce.

It should be understood that when capital came into this world, every pore was bleeding. Without cheap labor, it would be difficult for industry and commerce to develop. This is why the largest slave group in human history appeared in the capitalist era.

A large number of bankrupt farmers who lost their land, or a large number of slaves who had no personal freedom, you have to drink one of the two cups of poison, otherwise capital cannot complete primitive accumulation. Lin Hai did not want to go the sheep-eating-man route, which would oppress his own compatriots. He wanted to solve this problem by importing slave labor from overseas.

He didn't know how far he could go on this road, or whether he could reach the end, but he really wanted to try his best... After chatting with the young man for a while, the salt workers returned to the salt fields to work one after another. The head of Linchuanli brought food and fresh water to Lin Hai, and the price he asked for was not low. It seemed that this was not the first time he had done business with the passing sea merchants.

These foods were mainly coarse grains such as sweet potatoes, millets, and soybeans, with less rice. The soil in Qiongzhou Prefecture was originally brick red soil formed by tropical monsoon forests, which had low fertility and high acidity, so it was not very suitable for rice growth.

Lin Hai bought all the food and fresh water, and took the opportunity to chat with the head of Linchuan Village. The head of the village was named Zhong, and he was Zhong Shi, the stove master who founded the Linchuan Salt Field in the early Ming Dynasty. His family had been the treasurer of the salt field for generations, but since the salt tax was converted into silver, the officials of the salt field were dismissed, and the salt tax of Qiongzhou Prefecture was managed by the Tongzhi of the Coastal Defense.

From Zhong Lizheng, Lin Hai learned that Linchuan Salt Field was the smallest of the six major salt fields in Qiongzhou Prefecture. Originally, there were 167 salt households. When the salt tax was first converted into silver, they only had to pay 76 taels, 8 coins and 2 cents of silver to the court every year. However, since the salt tax in Qiongzhou Prefecture was converted into rice first and then into silver, the government used the excuse of rising rice prices to more than double the amount of the salt tax.

The salt fields in Linchuan Field could only produce more than 8 kilograms of salt each year. The salt farmers could only rely on farming and fishing to make ends meet, and gradually they all fled. Now there are only 40 salt farmers left in Linchuan Field, and they often fail to pay the original amount of 70 taels of salt tax, and the court can do nothing about it.

"Mr. Zhong, where did all the escaped salt farmers go?"

"Where else can I go? Either I can go to sea and become a pirate, or I can go to the mountains and become a commoner..."

Lin Hai was speechless after hearing this. He finally understood why the number of Li people in Qiongzhou Prefecture increased with each suppression during the Ming Dynasty. In addition to what Hai Rui said about not being able to establish a prefecture or county in the core area of ​​the Li people, the continuous influx of Han people along the coast into the Li people was another reason.

In fact, by the Ming Dynasty, there was not much difference between Han and Li people. Most Li people could speak Chinese, and many Li people paid taxes and served as officials like Han people. During the Southern Ming Dynasty, Li people also resisted shaving their heads like Han people. The two ethnic groups cooperated sincerely and launched an epic anti-Qing struggle in Qiongzhou Prefecture. The last volunteer army persisted until the 57th year of Emperor Kangxi's reign...

After returning to Yulin Port, Lin Hai informed Li Zhongguo, Cai Ping and others of what he had seen and heard in Linchuan Field, and urged them to get along well with the salt households in Linchuan and not to rob other people's salt for a tiny profit - that would be like the imperial court draining the pond to catch fish. Of course, corrupt officials would just walk away after making enough money, and would not care about the mess after leaving office.

Since the salt tax was converted into silver in the Ming Dynasty, salt workers could sell salt freely. As long as they could pay the salt tax in full, the court would not even care whether they were still drying salt.

Lin Hai hopes that with Li Zhongguo's troops as a major customer, the Linchuan field can be maintained and even gradually attract the escaped salt farmers to return, restoring the salt production to 8 jin, while also producing more grain.

This is good for the development of Yulin Port. After all, 8 kilograms of salt can solve the salt problem for 8000 people, and there is no need to go to great lengths to buy salt from other places.

However, Lin Hai's idea is to employ tens of thousands of miners at the Tiandu Iron Mine, plus the charcoal factory, iron smelting plant and Li Zhongguo's troops. The total number of people near Yulin Port will be more than 100,000 in the future.

In this case, the development of Yingge Salt Field seems to be imperative, otherwise we can only go to Guangdong or even Fujian to buy salt. Of course, food supply can only rely on imports. Qiongzhou Prefecture was the first to popularize sweet potato planting in the Ming Dynasty. Before that, the island had not been able to achieve food self-sufficiency because the land was too barren.

(End of this chapter)