People in the Ming Dynasty are lawless

Chapter 723 The old-fashioned people are finally convinced
The charcoal fire in the duty room of the Ministry of Revenue crackled. When Chen Han pushed the door open, several managers were arguing in a low voice around a pile of account books. Seeing him come in, everyone's expression froze. The leader, Manager Zheng, laughed dryly and said, "Master Chen, you came at the right time. We are just calculating the income and expenditure of the vouchers..."

Chen Han shook off the snow on his sleeves, walked straight to the charcoal basin to warm his hands, and said with a smile: "What, has Lord Zheng calculated the deficit again?"

"Don't dare to say anything this time!" A young clerk in the corner couldn't help but interrupt, but was glared at by Zheng Zhushi before he retreated. Doctor Wang at the next table sighed while holding a cup of hot tea: "At first, we all thought that these vouchers were throwing real money into the water, but who would have thought..." He opened the account book and pointed to the numbers circled in red ink, "The commercial tax in Songjiang Prefecture alone in the past two months has increased by 37% compared with the same period last year."

Chen Han raised his eyebrows slightly. This number was higher than he expected.

Seeing that he was silent, Zheng handed over another account book: "Master Chen, please take a look. This is the circulation of vouchers in various places that the Ministry of Revenue has just summarized."

Chen Han took the account book, lightly stroked the page with his fingertips, and his eyes fell on a few lines of key figures——

"Total amount of vouchers issued: 12 million taels."

"Commercial tax collection: 4.8 million taels."

"Trading volume of agricultural tools and grain seeds: 6.7 million taels."

"Increase in workshop orders: 3.2 million taels."

He raised his head and asked, "Master Zheng, have you done the math?"

Zheng was stunned: "This... the vouchers are printed by the court, so the cost is naturally charged to the Ministry of Revenue, but commercial taxes and workshop orders are what should be collected. How can they be counted as income from the vouchers?"

Chen Han shook his head, pulled out a charcoal pencil from his sleeve, and quickly wrote a few lines on the paper:

"The cost of the voucher: paper, printing, and anti-counterfeiting technology, a total of about 800,000 taels."

"Increase in commercial tax revenue: 4.8 million taels, minus 3.6 million taels in the same period last year, a net increase of 1.2 million taels."

"The transaction volume of agricultural tools was 6.7 million taels. Based on a 30% profit, farmers' income increased by about 2 million taels, and the court collected 600,000 taels in taxes."

"The workshop's orders increased by 3.2 million taels, boosting industries such as looms, ironware, and carpentry. The court collected 960,000 taels in taxes."

He paused with his pen and looked up at everyone: "So how much net profit did the court make?"

The duty room was silent, and several people in charge looked at each other. After a while, Doctor Wang muttered, "800,000 taels of cost, exchanged for 2,760,000 taels of tax silver... this..."

"That's not all." Chen Han flipped through another page of the account book. "After the vouchers were circulated, the stockpiling of copper coins decreased, the turnover of silver and money in the market accelerated, and the interest income of banks in various places also increased by 30%. In addition, the orders for improved farm tools reported by the Ministry of Industry increased fivefold, and the tax revenue from blacksmith shops alone increased by 400,000 taels."

Zheng, with sweat on his forehead, whispered: "But...but the vouchers are just paper after all. If the people don't believe them, then it will be..."

Suddenly there was a commotion outside the window. Everyone looked in the direction of the sound and saw the Wucheng Army passing by with several mule carts loaded with goods, with flags of the "Women's Workshop" stuck on the shafts. Chen Han smiled slightly and said, "Master Zheng, do you know how much Liaodong sable wool the Women's Workshop has bought with vouchers in the past two months?"

Manager Zheng shook his head.

"A total of eight thousand taels of goods." Chen Han tapped the table with his fingertips, "And the Guanglu Temple has already underwritten all of these brocades made of sable velvet. The price is 20% higher than the market price."

Doctor Wang took a deep breath and said, "This...coupons can actually revitalize the trade route like this?"

Chen Han closed the account book and said calmly, "Vouchers are not silver, but they are more active than silver. They allow farmers to buy farm tools, workshops to accept large orders, and merchants to stock up on goods. The court may have spent 800,000 taels to print vouchers, but in fact it earned back several times more."

As he was speaking, hurried footsteps were heard outside the door, and a clerk from the Ministry of Revenue rushed in, clutching an urgent report in his hand: "Sir Chen! Urgent news from Songjiang Prefecture! The Xu family cloth shop used vouchers to order 300 improved looms in one go this morning!"

The duty room suddenly exploded.

Manager Zheng stood there for a long while, and finally sighed, "Master Chen, this voucher... is truly amazing."

Chen Han smiled without saying anything, but his eyes had already passed the window lattice and were looking at the bustling street in the distance.

The afterglow of the setting sun shone through the carved window lattices of the duty room of the Ministry of Revenue, casting mottled light and shadows on the blue brick floor. Chen Han tapped the table with his fingertips, and the charcoal pencil drew the last vertical line on the abacus paper.

"Have you ever seen the newly built drainage canal beside Xuanwu Lake?" he suddenly asked, pointing his pen out the window. Everyone looked in the direction he was looking, and in the distance, on the newly paved bluestone road of the Ministry of Industry, several old women wearing red armbands were pushing a garbage sorting truck slowly.

Manager Zheng twisted his beard, not understanding what was going on: "What does this drainage ditch have to do with the voucher?"

"The workers who built the canal received vouchers." Chen Han dipped ink and drew on the paper, "When they exchanged the vouchers for rice and flour, the grain shops paid more commercial taxes; the rice merchants had to use the newly built roads to sell grain, which in turn supported the road workers; the road workers' families got jobs in the women's workshop, and the cloth they wove was sold to..." The pen suddenly turned and drew a complete circle on the paper, "Have you taken these interlocking benefits into account?"

The charcoal fire in the duty room crackled. Doctor Wang tilted the teacup in his hand, and the tea spread all over the account book, blurring out the word "annual income".

"For example..." Chen Han shook out a silk map from his sleeve. The streets and alleys of Jinling City glowed in the twilight. "Last year, when the land was surveyed, 38 poor families in the north city had no land to farm. Now they have used vouchers to jointly open a tofu shop..." His fingertips slid along the ink line to the West Market. "Every day at noon, the carriages and horses delivering tofu to various government offices have rutted the loess road in the west of the city." The young clerk suddenly exclaimed, "No wonder the Ministry of Works suddenly allocated funds to repair the roads in the west city last month!"

"Road construction requires stones, so quarries hire more miners; miners' families need clothes, so cloth shops do good business; cloth shops make money to pay taxes..." Chen Han's charcoal pencil drew a spiral on the map, and the ink gradually connected into a spider web. "Which account book can record all these layers of profits?"

Suddenly, a clear bell rang outside the window. Everyone turned around and saw several peddlers using vouchers to exchange cotton yarn at the stall of the Women's Workshop. The brand new six-spindle spinning wheel was shining coldly in the sunset.

"The best part is here." Chen Han suddenly opened the window, and the sound of looms blew in the spring breeze. "The Xu family ordered 300 looms, each of which needs six gears. The apprentices of the School of Physics worked day and night, forcing the blacksmith shop to improve the blast furnace—" He picked up a piece of charcoal and ground it into fine powder on the inkstone. "Do you know how much charcoal can be saved in smelting a furnace of iron now?"

The beads on Zheng's abacus suddenly broke, and the sandalwood beads rolled to Chen Han's feet. When the old official bent down to pick them up, the wings on his official hat trembled like leaves in the wind.

"There are even more invisible ones." Chen Han stepped on the bead. "Now that the widows of Northern Xinjiang have learned to read, they can read deeds by themselves. Last year, there were 17 cases of them being cheated. How about this year?" He flipped through the documents transferred by the Ministry of Justice. "Zero."

As dusk deepened, the sound of abacus in the duty room stopped. Doctor Wang stared at the "Hongwu Territory Map" on the wall and suddenly found that the location of Songjiang Prefecture was circled with charcoal pencil - the newly added port there was being expanded with the help of vouchers.

"I am stupid." Zheng, the chief official, suddenly bowed deeply. "This voucher is like running water, moistening wherever it flows."

Chen Han smiled but did not answer, he just placed the charcoal pencil horizontally on the inkstone. The words "Produced by the Institute of Physics" on the pen were stained with ink, like a dragon awakening in the twilight.

The sound of clappers from the street cleaning department came from afar, startling the sparrows perched under the eaves. As the birds fluttered over Jinling City, under their wings were countless points of light connected by vouchers - newly opened dyeing factories, expanded docks, improved farm tools, and paper lanterns lit by female workers while reading at night.

"Tomorrow morning court..." Before Zheng Zhushi finished speaking, cheers suddenly broke out outside the window. It turned out that a group of craftsmen were carrying a newly made copper mold of the "Hongwu Treasure Certificate" and the metal was shining with a cyan-gold light under the reflection of the torches.

Chen Han looked at the bronze models and suddenly remembered what Zhu Youwei said under the lamp last night. She was embroidering dark patterns on the sample cloth with gold thread, and the wooden hairpin in her hair was stained with fine scraps of Liaodong sable velvet.

"Do you know, my husband?" Her eyes lit up as she cut the thread. "The women workers now call the vouchers 'wife money', saying that these pieces of paper understand their thoughts better than copper coins."

The night wind blew through the window lattice of the duty room, blowing away the abacus paper on the desk.

The crooked numbers on the paper glowed in the moonlight, looking very much like the exercises written by the female workers in the workshop on the sand table.

Further away, the lights of thousands of homes in Jinling City lit up one after another.

Under every lamp, there may be a figure checking the voucher account - they don't know how these pieces of paper will change the fortune of the dynasty, they only know that they can use them to exchange for a new bag of rice tomorrow, or buy a red pen for their children.

This is the real achievement.

The charcoal basin in the duty room of the Ministry of Revenue was burning brightly, but the teacup in Zheng's hand had already gone cold. He stared at the ink lines drawn by Chen Han on the paper, his Adam's apple rolling up and down, as if he had swallowed something indigestible. There was a smell of rice outside the window, it was the street restaurant selling freshly steamed pancakes, but no one was thinking about eating at the moment.

"Master Chen..." Zheng's throat tightened, and his fingers unconsciously rubbed the patch on the cuff of his official robe - it was burned by the candlelight when he stayed up all night to check the accounts last month. He suddenly remembered how he slammed the table and cursed the vouchers as "a piece of paper that would bring disaster to the country" that night, and his cheeks suddenly felt hot and painful.

There was a "click" sound from the corner. The young clerk's brush fell on the account book, and the ink spread into a dark cloud. He hurriedly wiped it off, but the record of "three hundred and twenty-five taels" became a black lump. If it were usual, Zheng Zhushi would have scolded him loudly, but at this moment he just stared at the ink, vaguely feeling that it was just like his short-sighted mind.

"Your humble servant... Your humble servant is really..." Doctor Wang's voice trembled. He suddenly stood up and bowed deeply to Chen Han, and the ivory plate on his waist hit the corner of the desk with a dull sound. "Last year when the land was measured, your humble servant wrote a letter saying that the vouchers would make farmers abandon farming..." When he stood up, his eyes were red, "But now the wheat in northern Zhili, using the new plow, produces two more bushels per mu than the old plow!"

Chen Han said nothing, but tapped the charcoal pencil lightly on the inkstone. The debris from the tip of the pencil swirled in the firelight, just like the vitality that they ignored and drifted among the people.

Suddenly, there was the sound of wheels rolling over bluestone outside the window. Zheng Zhushi turned his head subconsciously and saw that the truck escorted by the Wucheng Army was piled with sable fur from Liaodong. The fur shone with a noble luster in the sun, but the "Women's Workshop" flag on the shaft was wrinkled - it was obvious that it had been running back and forth many times.

"Did you know, Lord Zheng?" Chen Han suddenly asked, "that the Xu family in Songjiang secretly sent people to Liaodong last month to buy this batch of sables with cash?" He tapped the table lightly with his fingertips. "But the hunters in Liaodong would rather have vouchers - because they can exchange them for the best iron plows at the government-run farm tool shop."

Zheng Zhushi finally lost control of the teacup in his hand. The lukewarm tea spilled on the Hongwu Account Book, soaking the word "annual income". He remembered what he had said in the court three months ago, "How can a piece of paper be eaten?" He wished he could bite off his tongue.

"Your subordinate... Your subordinate..." His lips trembled, and he suddenly took out a crumpled draft of a memorial from his sleeve. It was the memorial he was going to use to impeach Chen Han for "shaking the foundation of the country", and it looked so ridiculous under the reflection of the charcoal fire. "Your subordinate will burn it now!"

"Wait a minute." Chen Han pressed his wrist, not hard but irresistible. He took the memorial and gently flattened it in front of everyone's astonished eyes. "Keep it, Lord Zheng. When the autumn tax comes in, you can compare it with the original." He smiled, but his eyes were sharp as a knife, "See if the 'paper that scourges the country' you wrote is effective, or the moldy old account books in the Ministry of Revenue's warehouse are real."

The duty room was so quiet that one could hear the crackling of charcoal fire. The young clerk suddenly knelt down with a plop, and banged his forehead heavily on the blue bricks: "I am guilty! When I checked the accounts of Songjiang last month, I secretly recorded an extra 30% loss under the 'voucher consumption' item..." When he raised his head, his face was covered with tears and snot, "But those 'wasted' vouchers were actually used by farmers to exchange for grain seeds! Now... now the seedlings in the field have grown to knee high!"

Doctor Wang suddenly started to cough violently. With shaking hands, he pulled out an oil-paper bag from his bosom, which contained half a dry and hard pancake - he bought it with a voucher from the street this morning. The old man's mottled fingers stroked the red "10% discount" mark on the pancake, and suddenly tears streamed down his face: "Master Chen, my useless nephew... is working as a clerk in the farm implement shop you mentioned." He choked, "The child sent someone to send a message the other day, saying that the wages have increased by 50% this month... Because there are too many people buying plows, the boss has given bonuses to every clerk..."

There was a crisp sound of bells outside the window. Everyone looked in the direction of the sound and saw a few old ladies wearing red armbands pushing a modified garbage truck passing by. The waste paper sorted and stacked in the truck bed shone green in the sun - they were all the leftovers of badly printed vouchers, now being recycled by the Street Cleaning Department.

Zheng Zhushi suddenly felt that it was difficult to breathe. His undergarment under his official robe was soaked with cold sweat, and the third-grade peacock patch was stuck to his back, like a dying bird. Memories came flooding back like a tide: he had smashed a teacup in the duty room and cursed the voucher as "a trick played by Chen Han to fool His Majesty"; he had warned his clansmen in a letter home "never accept that piece of paper"; he even secretly asked the housekeeper to lock the farm tool voucher he received in the bottom of the box, for fear that it would bring bad luck...

"Your humble servant...your humble servant..." His throat rolled, and he suddenly turned around and knelt heavily in the direction of the imperial palace, "Your Majesty! This old servant...this old servant is confused!" His gray head hit the blue bricks, making a dull sound.

(End of this chapter)