Jiajing Chengming

One day in November of the twenty-fifth year of Jiajing.

The area around Thang Long in Jiaozhi Provincial Government.

It was a sunny day with blue sky and white clouds.

A large number of people are picking cotton in this cotton field that is as white as white clouds.

Snapped!
At this moment, a whip cracked, causing Zheng Ren, a man from Annan who had just become a tenant of Bawang, to jump up in the cotton field in pain. He cried and begged for mercy in broken Chinese:
"Don't hit me, don't hit me, I don't want to sleep anymore, I don't want to sleep anymore!"

Bawang just snorted coldly and walked towards him, and gave Zheng Ren another whip: "If you are lazy again, I will not only beat you, but also cut off your ears!"

"Don't dare!"

Zheng Ren replied quickly, and had to endure the burning pain in his back and quickly started picking cotton.

Bawang stared at the other tenants.

If anyone was lazy, he would go up and whip him.

Because these cotton fields were granted to him by the Jiaozhi Provincial Government based on his military merits.

He also bought some landless Annan natives as tenants and asked them to grow and pick cotton for him.

Since Zhu Houcong issued an edict to increase the population during the prosperous period and never raise taxes, the country's population has exploded, solving the labor shortage problems in large infrastructure projects and the service industry. The demand for cotton cloth has skyrocketed again, and the demand for cotton has also increased significantly.

In addition, Zhu Houcong issued an order to halve the cotton tax in Jiaozhi Provincial Administration and Xinzhou Direct Control Area. Therefore, the Han and Tatar officers and soldiers who were allocated local land turned their own fields into cotton fields and turned many local people into tenants in their cotton fields.

As for why these locals were servants and not tenants.

That is because the imperial edict, "Increasing the population in prosperous times and never raising taxes," clearly stipulates that this edict is only temporarily implemented in the Han area.

As a result, the locals would rather become tenants than become citizens with independent household registration, because then they would not have to pay the capitation tax.

The new military landlords here would rather turn them into tenants and then dispose of them at will.

Bawang is now happily watching the cotton from his own fields being exchanged for silver dollars by merchants who bring ships to buy cotton. This allows him to also buy many good goods on the ship that are not available in Jiaozhi, such as ginseng from Changbai Mountain and white sugar from Suzhou.

After being brought to Jiangnan by merchants, the cotton from Bawang was sold to cotton cloth weavers in Jiangnan at a very low price.

Many large cotton farmers in Jiangnan who had been growing cotton for generations suffered heavy losses as a result.

They had to watch their own cotton go unsalable, or even had to sell it at a loss, or even go bankrupt and lay off a large number of cotton pickers.

"Since the imperial court strongly supported the development of cotton fields in Annan, the large cotton growers in Jiangnan have suffered heavy losses. Our Xu family's 100,000 acres of cotton fields alone are almost equivalent to more than 30,000 acres of cotton fields that have not earned a penny."

"Brother, you are now the second assistant of the cabinet. Can you bear to watch our Xu family suffer such a heavy loss?"

Xu Jie's younger brother, Xu Zhi, went to Beijing to meet Xu Jie and complained to him about the matter.

Xu Jie couldn't help but smile and said, "Although the loss is heavy, it is also an opportunity. What you should do now is not to cry to me, but to go back and borrow money to buy land! Buy the good land from those big families who have suffered heavy losses and have to sell their land at low prices, so that you can grow grain in the future. In the future of the Ming Dynasty, there will be more and more people who eat grain instead of growing grain. The benefits here cannot be earned only by the imperial supply and marketing shops and the big families in Huguang!"

"Borrow money?"

Xu Zhi stood up in astonishment. Xu Jie smiled slightly, "That's right, not only do you need to borrow money, but you need to borrow it quickly. The country's fortune is rising, and imperial decrees will continue to be issued. Everyone will have more confidence in the future, including the common people and the gentry who are not mainly land-based. More and more people will borrow money to make and spend future money. If you don't borrow now, do you have to wait until the court forcibly raises the interest rate of Xingming Bank to a very high level before you can borrow?"

"The Ministry of Finance is already discussing whether it is time to increase the interest rate of the Gaoxing Ming Bank, because many gentry have begun to borrow large sums of money to buy bonds of the Ministry of Revenue!"

"The slow-reacting big households are still crying over the heavy losses in their cotton fields, while the quick-reacting big households are already thinking about borrowing money from the court and earning interest from it."

After Xu Jie said this, Xu Zhi thought about it seriously, then stood up and said to Xu Zhi: "I understand. I will go back and borrow money to buy land and bonds!"

Xu Jie nodded and smiled: "That's right. Since we can no longer go against the court, we should work with the court to reduce the wealthy families who are not enterprising."

"You all suffered heavy losses, and our Xu family also suffered heavy losses."

"My brother also asked me to express my apologies to everyone. For the sake of loyalty, although he knew that Your Majesty wanted to support the new cotton fields in Jiaozhi, he did not dare to let anyone know."

"But this does not mean that our Xu family does not care about the lives of our fellow villagers. If any of you have to sell your land, our Xu family will buy it! Moreover, for the sake of friendship, our Xu family is willing to buy your land at a price that is half the market price!"

After returning to his hometown, Xu Zhi gathered together the large cotton growers in Songjiang and expressed his family's intention to help them overcome the crisis.

"Your Xu family has already suffered heavy losses, so where do you get the silver dollars to buy our land? And you're offering a price higher than the market price?"

At this time, a wealthy man named Gu asked.

Xu Zhi smiled and said, "My brother said that even if we have to mortgage all our Xu family's assets to borrow money, we must help the villagers get through the crisis! To prove that the Xu family has not forgotten its roots!"

After hearing this, the wealthy man surnamed Gu could not help but praise: "Your family is indeed a benevolent family!"

"Yes, Lord Xu was not willing to give in to personal interests for the sake of the country and disclosed the secrets. We can understand that and we can't blame him for not revealing the secrets. Now that he wants to save us, we can only be grateful!"

A wealthy man named Gong followed suit.

"Mr. Xu is loyal to his country and kind to his neighbors. He is admirable!"

"Mr. Xu is worthy of being a local celebrity, and he is also worthy of being a leader of the world's clean officials!"

……

Other wealthy families also followed suit and praised Xu Jie.

As a result, the Xu family obtained a lot of land from these wealthy families and suddenly became the largest landlord in Songjiang Prefecture.

Then, following Xu Jie's instructions, Xu Zhi used these fields as collateral to borrow money from Xingming Bank, bought a large number of bonds, and asked all the tenants of these fields to switch to growing rice.

Zhu Houcong naturally found out about these things very soon, so when he came to the imperial study and saw Xu Jie, he couldn't help but take a look at Xu Jie.

But it was not just Xu Jie who bought a large number of bonds from the Ministry of Revenue and borrowed a lot of money from Xingming Bank. Even Yan Song and Wang Hong did the same.

However, they did not directly use their own account names, but asked many merchants to act as their own gloves. Therefore, if we really want to check the evidence, we can only prove that many merchants who have dealings with them are actively buying bonds from the court.

Zhu Houcong did not directly question Xu Jie, nor did he directly ask Yan Song and Wang Hong. Instead, he just smiled in front of them and said, "I didn't expect that more and more people would be optimistic about the prosperity of my Ming Dynasty." (End of this chapter)