Late Tang

Tian Lingzi gave Li Jing the fat vacancies such as Liaohai salt and iron transfer envoy and coin casting envoy, but he offered to pay 300 million yuan a year. It is expected that Li Jing will not be able to complete this impossible task.The sea of ​​salt is salt, so a lot of manpower is invested, but the harvest is not much.Even if the price is increased by a hundred dollars for a bucket, 150 million shi of salt will have to be sold within a year. 150 million stones!It is the addition of all the salt factories in the Huaihe River and Huaihe River that may be able to cook so much salt, but how can Li Jing's Dengzhou such a small land produce so much salt?

If Li Jing dared to increase the price on top of the high price of salt, then the people's grievances would be boiled at that time, and it happened that he could directly participate in Li Jing's book and punish him directly.If he can't sell 300 million guan, and he can't pay the money at that time, he can also be charged with the crime. At least, the emperor will definitely not spoil Li Jing as much as before.

Tian Lingzi's calculation was very good, but he didn't expect that Li Jing's salt was not boiled but directly dried. The annual output of more than 1 mu of salt field, even if it was sold at half the price of official salt, could still make up for it. Huge amount of money.

Moreover, Li Jing now also controls the right to monopolize tea, as well as the right to manage minerals and cast money.

Li Jing invited hundreds of veteran mining craftsmen of various minerals, formed more than a dozen expedition teams, dispatched a group of soldiers and many officials, and went to Qingni City and Beisha City in Dengzhou and Liaodong respectively. Exploration of minerals within the territory.

After half a month of exploration, dozens of minerals have been discovered in Dengzhou, the most of which are gold, natural sulfur, gypsum, sandstone for glass, lead and other 8 kinds of minerals.In addition, there are many minerals such as petroleum, diamond, graphite, talc, coal, iron ore, bauxite, potassium salt, limestone, limestone for alkali use, mineral salt, and lithium salt.

There are also many minerals on the Liaodong Peninsula, five main minerals are coal, iron, copper, tin, and petroleum.

The minerals prohibited by private mining in Datang are mainly copper, iron, tin, and lead, the four kinds of minerals that are used to cast coins. The rest, such as gold, silver, salt coal, etc., can be mined privately.However, the mining technology in the Tang Dynasty was not high. Many minerals in Dengzhou have not been mined yet, and some have only been mined a little.

Li Jing carefully watched the report submitted by the craftsmen. The most minerals in Dengzhou are lead, limestone and diamond, while the most minerals in Liaodong are coal, iron, copper, tin, and oil.

However, in Li Jing's memory, the most precious mineral on the Shandong Peninsula is gold.The gold reserves on the peninsula seem to be the highest in China, and the Zhaoyuan Gold Mine is also known as China's Golden Capital.However, after looking at the map carefully, Li Jing was a little disappointed to find that the largest gold mines in Shandong Peninsula, Zhaoyuan Gold Mine and Sanshandao Gold Mine, were not in Dengzhou, but in Laizhou.The Zhaoyuan Gold Mine is even closer to the border between Dengzhou and Laizhou.

The Zhaoyuan Gold Mine is known as the largest gold mine in China, with reserves of hundreds of tons. It was still a thousand years later, and it has not undergone a large amount of subsequent mining at this time.

One ton is two thousand catties, one catty is 16 taels, and one tael of gold is worth eight pennies.A catty of gold is worth 1 coins, and a ton is as high as 25 coins. A few hundred tons means reserves of tens of millions of coins.

Li Jing specifically asked the craftsmen, and knew that the Zhaoyuan Gold Mine had been mined since the Sui Dynasty, but even now, it was only sporadic mining, and almost all of it was private mining, and the government only collected taxes.

A huge piece of fat was right next to his mouth, but he couldn't eat it. Li Jing was a little depressed.But if Zhaoyuan cannot be controlled, Li Jing is not willing to mine now.It's a stupid move to mine gold in other people's territory.

Gold mines cannot be mined for the time being, so they can only mine the minerals on their own land first.

After carefully studying the mineral exploration reports from various places, Li Jing convened a civil and military discussion of the Zhendong Army.

Li Jing pointed to the marked places on the map and said, "These places are lead, tin, and copper mines. I plan to send people to mine them in large quantities. Then make money!"

Li Jing is now concurrently serving as the envoy of making money, so he can make money publicly, and because Tian Lingzi wants to cheat him, he directly contracted these official positions to Li Jing. Mining or minting money and collecting tea tax, etc., regardless of loss or profit, the income is all his.With such an opportunity, how could Li Jing miss it, now Li Jing plans to do large-scale mining and casting money.

Zhang Hong said with some hesitation: "If you lose money by casting money, why not sell it as bronze wares?"

There has always been a money shortage in the Tang Dynasty, and the shortage of money is accompanied by the flood of privately minted money and silk.

The shortage of money is due to the fact that the amount of money minted in the Tang Dynasty was very small. There were 99 coin furnaces in the world, and each furnace minted more than 30 guan of money a year, and the country minted more than [-] guan of money a year.For such a big empire as the Tang Dynasty, the official minted only more than [-] guan coins a year, which was not enough for circulation.There are many reasons for the lack of official coins. The main reason is that early copper mines and other minerals could be mined privately, so most of the copper mines were in private hands, and the price of copper remained high.However, casting coins requires more than a hundred craftsmen per furnace, and the labor cost is extremely high.The third reason is that because copper ware is extremely expensive, many people privately melted copper coins and cast them into copper ware, which earned two or three times as much profit.While casting less money, a large number of copper castings are melted away, and the money is naturally used less and less.

The shortage of money has led to the proliferation of private casting.

Private money is different from official money. Basically, it is of insufficient weight or quality to make a profit.The prevalence of private minting has led to bad money driving out good money, causing the currency value to continue to decline, while prices continue to rise, and the market economic order is constantly being disrupted.

To deal with private casting, the imperial court has always had only three methods, one is to collect and ban, that is, the court uses silk and rice to collect evil money and destroy it, and the other is to establish strict laws to prohibit private casting.The second method is to issue big money. The so-called big money is to use one as ten, one as twenty, or even directly issue iron coins to crack down on private casting. Credit is minimized.This method has been used several times, but in the end it all failed.The last remaining trick is the copper ban.The right to exploit copper mines is owned by the government, and private mining is prohibited. On the other hand, it is also prohibited to cast large-scale copper wares. No one is allowed to use copper as a vessel. It is forbidden to cast copper for pagodas, Buddha statues, and bells. Anyone who casts money and thinks it is something else is guilty of an unforgivable crime.It was even stipulated at one time that transactions of more than ten strings must be made of silk.

But nowadays, the money shortage in the imperial court is still serious. In many cases, silk cloth is used instead, and even barter, bulk commodity transactions, and flying money are used instead of circulation.

Li Jing planned to mine and make money. In Zhang Hong's view, that was a loss-making business, and he would lose as much as he made. It would be better to mine copper and sell copper wares directly, which would still be several times the profit.

As early as the beginning, there was a money shortage in Shamen Town. In the end, Li Jing had to set up a bank to issue banknotes and circulate them within a small area.This method has achieved remarkable results, and has changed the plight of money shortage to a large extent.But now the territory is getting bigger and the population under the rule is getting bigger.Li Jing also planned to continue to expand the business scope of the bank and issue banknotes to the entire Dengzhou and the control areas of Qingni City and Beisha City in Liaodong.

However, in order to issue banknotes, there must be sufficient reserves of copper coins, otherwise, if the banknotes cannot be exchanged for copper coins, the credit of the bank will be ruined.Therefore, if Li Jing wants to expand the circulation of banks and banknotes, he must increase his reserves of copper coins.

However, Li Jing also considered the issue of making money at a loss for a long time.

The cost of casting money is mainly two, one is material and the other is labor.

There are three kinds of materials for copper coins, namely copper, lead and tin.In the earliest Kaiyuan Tongbao, the ratio of the three materials is 78.14% copper, 12.)% lead, and 7.21% tin. The most important cost is copper. During the more than 200 years of the Tang Dynasty, the material ratio of copper coins has been changing. The proportion keeps decreasing, while the proportion of lead and tin continues to rise. Up to now, most of the official coins cast by the imperial court are Kaiyuan Tongbao, but copper has only 60.13%, lead has reached 2**5%, and tin has 12.32%.

The coin casting process at this time is to cast tin mother coins first, and then wet cast sand to form them. Compared with the sand casting of later generations, it is only the most elementary process.At this time, the official money used in each furnace was 210 jin of copper, 790 jin of white tin, and 540 jin of black tin.The cost of copper, tin and lead per penny is 750 Wen, not including craftsman's money.A furnace casts 367 coins. On average, a craftsman can cast [-] coins per day.

Calculated in this way, the copper and lead materials used to cast money always cost 750 Wen, and the labor cost of the usual money is almost 0 Wen. If charcoal burning is included, the cost of casting [-] Wen has actually reached [-] Wen. This counts.

However, private money is usually about half of the material cost of the money, and less copper is used, so there is a huge profit, and the filing and grinding processing of private money is not fine, and the labor cost is much less, so compared with official money , Private money has a lot of profits.

"Don't worry, since I plan to mint money, I will never lose money." Li Jing said with a smile.

"Is the general planning to make money for nothing?" Zhang Hong asked in surprise.

White money, because of the excessive proportion of tin and lead, makes the whole money appear white, so it is called white money.White money is a general term for private money and evil money.Zhang Hong naturally thought that Li Jing was going to make that kind of bad money.

(To be continued)