The Qing Dynasty is about to end

Chapter 603 Moore: This is the destruction of the rural petty bourgeoisie by the organizational power of industrialization!

At 3:15 on the tenth day of September, the threshing ground outside the Wang family mansion was crowded with two to three thousand townspeople and villagers from Yaocun Town and its neighboring towns. Everyone stretched their necks to see clearly the scene where the head master of the Kong family announced the division of the Kong family's land.

Moore, Friedrich, Bai Siwen, Hong Rengan and Wei Changhui were also in a corner of the threshing ground, each sitting on a chair with a table in front of them. In order not to attract attention, they all changed into ordinary robes. Moore and Friedrich also covered their hair with hats. If you don't look carefully, no one would know that they were foreign devils.

Ma Baocai sat on a makeshift wooden platform, wearing a red robe, a round hat, his hand on the hilt of a sword, looking very majestic.

Ma Baocai suddenly shouted, "Please ask Vice President Kong to make an announcement!"

Kong Fanxu, vice president of the Shandong Provincial Farmers' Association of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, also wore a red robe and walked up to the wooden platform tremblingly. He looked at the two or three thousand poor and lower-middle peasants below, and his hands shaking like sifting chaff as he unfolded the yellow silk. His voice was also a little trembling: "We, the scholars and people of Shandong, respectfully report: I have heard that the way of heaven is impartial and the virtue of earth is equal. Now that the holy dynasty has begun, we have changed the old and established the new. Although we are honored to be among the officials, how dare we defy heaven and defy fate? In the past, under the well-field system of the Three Dynasties, those who tilled the land had their own land, and the widows, widowers, and orphans were all provided for. This is truly the foundation of the great harmony of the world. We are willing to follow the will of the ancient sages and divide all the family's sacrificial fields and private fields to the tenants, and forever abolish the heavy rent and heavy debts.

In the counties of Shandong, 70% to 80% of the fertile land belongs to the powerful, leaving the poor with no place to live. Every spring when there is a famine, people selling their children and wives are seen everywhere on the road. We, the ministers, are heartbroken when we see this, and now, in response to the divine order of the Heavenly King, how dare we not give our all to the cause? All the sacrificial fields of the surnames of Confucius, Mencius, Yan, and Zeng will be measured by the farmers' association; all the bonds of previous years, regardless of principal and interest, will be burned.

I humbly hope that Your Majesty will carry on the revolutionary work of Tang and Wu, and continue the heart of Zhou Gong who spitted out food for his guests. There will no longer be the lament of starving people in the rich families in the land of Qi and Lu, and the fields will all become a paradise for the common people. Although I am sad, I dare not go against the will of heaven or the will of the people. I only hope that you can imitate the old well-field system, tax 9:1, and let the widows and the orphans get what they deserve, then the world can be united!
Your humble servant Kong Fanxu and others bow their heads and bow again."

Kong Fanxu finished reading the memorial, and then looked at Ma Baocai eagerly. Ma Baocai gently waved his hand and asked him to stand aside. Then he pointed to a group of landlords from Yaocun Town who were standing alone under the wooden platform and shouted, "Are you, the masters of Yaocun Town, willing to give up your land to be divided?"

Of course I’m reluctant to give it up!
But they loved to live too much! And they had no capital to be reluctant. As Moore and Friedrich analyzed, these Chinese landlords were not actually worthy of being called feudal. According to European standards, they were actually rural petty bourgeoisie.

The petty bourgeoisie is definitely weak! If you don’t have enough strength, you will become a poor peasant if you are not careful. How can you not be weak? If you don’t have strength, you can only rely on the big bourgeoisie or feudal lords. There is no "big capital" in China at present, and the Eight Banners feudal group that these rural petty bourgeoisie rely on has already collapsed, so how can they not collapse?

"I am willing to give it up! I am willing to give it up!"

"We are willing to give away all our land and property, and follow the Kingdom of Heaven to worship God together!"

"No, no, I don't want any of my family's land anymore."

Kong Zhaoming, Yao Wenxue and Meng Guanglu immediately started shouting - the three of them were all having a difficult time being landlords. They only had 20 to 30 acres of land at home, and they had not been able to collect the rent in the past two years. They were in a situation where they could not eat enough but were not starving to death. They had no power at all to resist the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's Farmers' Association.

As soon as the three of them took the lead, the other landlords who owned a little more land also immediately became scared and each of them insisted on dividing up their own land.

Moore, who was watching from the sidelines, wrote in his notebook: "When the Shandong Farmers' Association, which has industrial efficiency, was organized, the small number of feudal lords and the large number of rural petty bourgeoisie in Shandong had no choice but to surrender. However, the European trade unions were facing industrial capital, which also had the ability to organize industrialization."

"Fellow villagers!" Ma Baocai's shout interrupted Moore's train of thought. He looked up and found that the leader of the farmers' association had stood up from his chair, one hand on his waist, the other waving, and loudly announced: "I have good news for you all. The Heavenly Kingdom Kings Conference has approved Vice President Kong's memorial! Shandong's 'well-field equal distribution' will start from our Yaocun Town!"

"Long live the king! Long live the king!"

"Divide the land and worship God!"

"Divide the land and seek harmony!"

Immediately someone among the farmers below took the lead in shouting, and then two or three thousand farmers cheered together!
"Someone, come here! Bring up Mr. Wang, who is guilty of a heinous crime!"

With Kong Fanxu's loud shout, the second stage of the land distribution meeting in Yaocun Town - the public trial of Mr. Wang began!

Struggle!
Of course, there must be an object of struggle. Kong Fanxu, a top Shandong family, has united front value, is soft-hearted, and is most likely to surrender, so of course he got a new life. Wang Juren from Yaocun Town is neither good nor bad. He is not qualified to be united fronted, and wants to be like Kong Zhaoming, Yao Wenxue, and Meng Guanglu. But he is reluctant (he has more land), and he has blood debts on his hands, so he can only fill the knife head.

"Bullshit!"

Mr. Wang was tied up with his arms behind his back and pushed onto the stone millstone. Yellow water was still dripping from the crotch of his silk pants, but he still refused to accept the challenge: "Mr. Kong, what qualifications do you have to judge me? Was it me who had to collect rent during the flood in the fifth year of Emperor Xianfeng? If it wasn't for you, the third master of the Kong family, forcing us to pay the militia donation, would I have brought people to collect the rent? If I don't, you will come and kill my whole family."

"Shut up!" Kong Fanxu shouted, his face full of fear. "Wang Shouren, I want to kill your whole family, but I didn't ask you to kill the peasants. Your family has plundered the people's blood and sweat for so many years, can't you give us a little bit of your wealth?" He waved his sleeves and pointed at the property piled up on the threshing ground. "Look. There are twenty baskets of copper coins alone, hundreds of debt deeds, five hundred taels of silver, and so much silk and cotton cloth. Can't you give us some?"

"Your family has 10,000 times more wealth than mine, why don't you take it out?" Mr. Wang cursed, "How dare you be called Kong? You have brought shame to the people in Duke Yansheng's Mansion." Bai Siwen translated the conversation on the stage into English, and then said to Moore and Friedrich, "Duke Yansheng's family is feudal. The entire county of Qufu is their territory, but they have no backbone and surrender to anyone who comes!"

Moore smiled and said, "Perhaps it is because his family has no fighting power that the Chinese emperor placed him in Qufu as a vase? This is not true feudalism, it is just the royal power supporting the divine power. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom obviously intends to continue to support Confucius' tablet."

"Vice President Kong, is what he said true?" On the podium, Ma Baocai questioned Kong Fanxu with a smile.

In fact, he had long known about what Kong Fanxu had done on the Qing side, but as long as they would surrender, this would not be a problem. He asked now just to give an explanation to the people below.

"I am guilty!"

Kong Fanxu suddenly knelt down and kowtowed: "The Duke of Yansheng is willing to offer 630,000 acres of land and cancel the debt of 908,000 taels!"

"Six hundred and thirty thousand mu of land and more than nine hundred thousand debts are enough to atone for the sin!" Ma Baocai asked again, "Then how should Mr. Wang be dealt with?"

Kong Fanxu gritted his teeth and said, "Kill!"

The executioner raised his sword, a cold light flashed, and a huge head rolled to the ground!

Kong Fanxu sat slumped on the ground, looking at the body lying in a pool of blood, his whole body soaked with sweat. Suddenly, thick smoke came from the direction of Qufu City, and then a horseman came galloping over: "Report - Kong Fanxun opened the city gate to welcome the Hunan bandit Wang Xin!"

This shout almost scared Kong Fanxu to death. Kong Fanxun was his biological brother! He had knelt with him before, and he was also the chief priest of Shandong Dafang. He could get a salary just by reading Confucian classics every day, and he could continue to live in the Kong Mansion. What was wrong with that? He actually rebelled.
Ma Baocai suddenly laughed: "Okay, okay, we'll just wait for them to rebel. Otherwise, the 30,000 Shandong Farmers' Association militiamen I mobilized will be useless!"

Bai Siwen suddenly grabbed Moore's sleeve and said, "He not only has 30,000 peasant soldiers, but also Zuo Zongtang's 1,000 guards, who are elite troops who have fought against the Petropavlovsk Fortress on the Kamchatka Peninsula!"

At this moment, the sound of gunfire like popping beans was faintly heard from the southeast - that was the Tianli Three Years rifle announcing the arrival of a new era!

"This is not anti-feudalism," Moore wrote in his notebook. "This is industrial organization crushing the pots and pans of the small producer."

Friedrich flipped through the Fish Scale Book: "The largest landlord in Yaocun Town only owns 70 acres, which is not even as good as a manor steward in Europe." He opened his notebook and made a division draft on it, " acres per capita. Isn't it too little?" He calculated in his notebook again: "The per capita food ration in Yaocun Town is kilograms per year, which is only about % of the standard of Berlin slums."

Bai Siwen on the side sneered: "We still have to squeeze out some land to grow cotton!"

"But they have no choice." Friedrich closed the notebook full of data. "They can either smash this cage of 500 million people, or they can only..."

He didn't know what to say for a moment?

Bai Siwen lit a cigar, looked at the bustling scene of "dividing the land" (actually, receiving the new land deeds of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom) in the threshing ground, and said calmly: "Perhaps the famous religion in Xi'an can find a different path?"

"Mingjiao? Xi'an?" Moore became interested. "Is it the remnant of the Qing Dynasty? What do they want to do?"

Bai Siwen whispered, "They don't want to do anything. They just want to maintain the status quo of neither life nor death, and spend their extra energy on studying useless Confucian classics."

"Interesting." Moore laughed, "They want to build a cage and lock themselves in it!"

"Yes!" Bai Siwen nodded, "But the British smashed this cage!"

Moore thought for a moment and said, "After I've been to Tianjing and Shanghai, I must go to Xi'an again to take a good look at the cage of the orthodox religion!"

(End of this chapter)