Back to the end of Ming Dynasty to be a warlord

Chapter 492 Let the Right Person Do the Right Thing
The content of these assessments was formulated last year. After several months of discussions with Huang Fengfu and other civil officials, I explained to them the method and purpose of my selection, so that each of them can clearly understand, and after a thorough understanding, this year It will be implemented as soon as the new year is over, and relevant decrees have been announced in Shandong, Jiangnan, Jiangxi and other places. The exam will be held in March, and those who meet the requirements are encouraged to actively participate in the registration and prepare hard.

After these notices were sent out, the response was extremely intense. First, the gentry class lashed out at it, feeling as sad and angry as if the country had been subjugated. However, businessmen, craftsmen, and old masters responded enthusiastically. There were so many people who signed up, and the selection work was very hard , According to the current statistics, the number of people who participated in the examination for the Li Ke has reached 8000, and the Li Ke has as many as [-] people.

Obviously, the level of knowledge and self-confidence of the merchant class and old masters is higher than that of the craftsman class.

As a businessman, especially a big businessman, except for the group of self-made people, they basically have the conditions to receive education, reading and writing are essential, and they also know some business knowledge.And they also have a strong desire for power. Whether it is the collusion between government and businessmen, or Huizhou merchants vigorously train their children to study for the imperial examination after making money, it is all caused by this plot.

Not to mention those old masters, all of them teach for a living. Except for a few masters who are indifferent to fame and fortune, in fact, most of them have been teaching because of helplessness. Who doesn’t want to be an official if they have the opportunity? The scene of the students walking into the examination room together is full of emotion.

The illiteracy rate of the craftsman class is still very high. Yang Chao's father, Yang Yong, was an illiterate blacksmith. It is obviously impossible for such a person to meet the examination requirements, but like Bai Lei, he has been the water department of the Ministry of Industry for generations. The craftsmen who want to master some water conservancy knowledge obviously have to read books, at least literacy is not a problem.

Therefore, although the vested interest groups, the gentry and the gentry, lashed out at Yang Chao's imperial examination system, and many people were brave enough to slander Yang Chao's imperial examination system, but in the cheers of the three classes, especially businessmen and old masters, these slanders were not justified. Let's make waves, not to mention wealthy and powerful businessmen, if those gentry really dare to obstruct the imperial examination, these old masters may eat them alive.

As for the craftsman class, they are much weaker. They are not confident. They have never held power for thousands of years. They themselves don't think that they are a class that can hold power, and they are only satisfied with being able to rely on craftsmanship.

This hurt Yang Chao a little.

You must know that Yang Chao's most important thing is actually the craftsman class. This class will differentiate into the industrial bourgeoisie in the future. That is the class that can truly strengthen the country and the next class that represents the most advanced productivity. But this class obviously has no confidence at this time. .

As for the commercial class, it is also the source of another industrial bourgeoisie, but this class has been a vassal of a subordinate power class for thousands of years, and they themselves do not represent advanced productivity. It's just a vassal.

But Yang Chao also knows that it is not so easy to cultivate a new class, so now he will loosen these classes first.

The ancient Chinese management method has an advanced side. Chinese society is called a super-stable society by later generations, and it is successful to a certain extent. However, times have changed. The era of great voyages has opened up the era of global competition. Westerners take advantage of this heat wave It is developing savagely ahead of time, and it is too late to catch up at this time. It is a crime to maintain stability, and the humiliation of later generations is the price paid for falling behind at this time.

Therefore, Yang Chao always wants to break this super stable state and inject vitality into the lifeless society. First of all, he must break the past management method, or start from the past talent selection method.

In the past, the way of selecting materials, starting from the Tang and Song Dynasties, became the imperial examination, and the talents selected by the content of the imperial examination only had strong writing ability and talent. Of course, to a certain extent, it also represented that the selected talents had higher intelligence. But it can't be used according to its ability.

Yang Chao is trying his best to let suitable talents manage the country, that is, let the right people do the right thing, let old masters manage education, let craftsmen (project managers) manage construction, and let businessmen (managers) manage human resources.

Throughout March, the heat in the Jiangnan area continued to rise. From Shandong in the north, Zhejiang in the south, Jiangxi in the west, and the sea in the east, every prefecture and county was extremely lively.

Because the imperial examination was held.

Unlike the old imperial examinations, which were all held in one place, Yang Chao considered that it would cost a lot of money for old masters, businessmen and craftsmen from all over the world to travel to Nanjing. It's cheap, but it may be stressful for the old master and craftsmen.

So Yang Chao set up the examination room directly in various counties.

However, the merchants were still the first group of people to arrive, and some even arrived a month in advance.The old master is the second group of people. They usually arrive at the test center ten days and a half months in advance, and rent a place nearby.The craftsmen were the last group to arrive. Most of them were local craftsmen, or from nearby villages and towns. Many of them got up in the middle of the night, and then embarked on the journey of the exam with a sense of hope and apprehension.

As soon as the exam date arrives, a large number of vehicles and boats, under the escort of Yang Chao's personal soldiers, arrive at various county governments at the same time. This kind of operation itself is a kind of high-precision management. There is a three-day error, basically as long as there is no accident, they can arrive three days ago.

If there is an accident and some vehicles and ships do not arrive, then the examination papers for that place will be used for assessment, so as to prevent the leakage of the examination questions as much as possible and achieve fairness and justice.The examiners are also the strictest military judges in the army. These people will only open the papers a moment before the start of the test, and they will stay with the test papers all the time before.

After the exam, the examiner collected the papers again, sealed them, affixed their names, and then loaded them into trucks and ships and shipped them back to Nanjing, where they were uniformly graded. Theoretically speaking, the entire process was kept absolutely confidential, unless there was malpractice for personal gain. Otherwise, there will be no unfair situation. Of course, any system has flaws, and Chinese people who are good at drilling can definitely find loopholes, but this time they obviously can't find them.

The admission rate is quite high. Out of [-] merchant candidates, [-] are admitted. This rate is much higher than that of the scholar examination.

Among the 1000 old masters, [-] were admitted.

The knowledge level of the artisan class is indeed a little lower. Yang Chao gritted his teeth and admitted [-] students, and a small half of them were proficient in writing and ink, and could barely express their ideas clearly.

The list of admissions has been released, and the whole Jiangnan and other provinces are erupting immediately. The merchant class burst into cheers, the old men wept with joy, and the craftsmen were also in a daze. They became officials so easily!
Fireworks in several provinces were sold out almost at the same time.

Many merchants held a grand feast, and passers-by forced them to eat and drink, but some beggars reported their meals beautifully for several days.

The old masters offered sacrifices to the Confucius Temple one after another, crying and laughing in front of the Confucius Temple.

The craftsmen still find it difficult to accept this change of status, and feel a little awkward in front of some local dignitaries who came to congratulate them.

Immediately after the admission, the position is assigned, of course, it is still basically a grassroots position, and the command is still assigned to the prefecture and county. At least one old master in a county will be an education officer, with a seven-rank official position, which is higher than the county magistrate.A county also has at least one head of the official department, who will be responsible for evaluating the officials of the state and county officials.A county must also have a superintendent of engineering, responsible for dredging roads, canals, and maintaining utilities, such as city drainage systems.

These three subjects naturally improved the status of many merchants and craftsmen, but the gentry did not really rebound, because the final result made everyone find that it was the gentry who benefited the most.

This result also made Yang Chao very helpless. He could only lament that the power of the gentry in this country was far beyond his imagination. He did not expect that the children of the gentry would be killed in his reserved area, which obviously had a businessman and other three classes. Come in.

No way, apart from craftsmen, the gentry class has been integrated into the merchant class too much. Big shopkeepers with experience in managing 100 people can be found everywhere among the children of gentry, because many gentry themselves are big businessmen.As for the class of old masters, this is the class of scholars. Many families and private schools in the countryside of wealthy families are actually educated by scholars of their own clan, and these people naturally meet the requirements of old masters.

According to the final statistics, in the Li Ke and Ri Ke, more than [-]% are gentry or have a background of gentry, and less than [-]% are pure businessmen.

Of course, the craftsman class, who has always been a gentleman but does not use his hands, and the gentry class who has always disdained to do what he does, can't get in, but they don't care much about this engineering. After all, even the imperial court's Ministry of Industry is ranked last in the six departments. It is the department with the least status and power.

On the contrary, there are criminal divisions, military divisions, and household divisions that are not limited to status. The participation of the gentry in these three divisions is less, because these three divisions require you to have served as a soldier, and in fact it is limited to selection in the army. Although there are also seniors in the army There are tens of thousands of children of gentry, but compared to a million troops, it is still too few.

In these years, Yang Chao has cultivated a large number of scholars with his perseverance. These people start from literacy and study step by step. There are always some talented and intelligent people who take this opportunity to stand out. They insisted on snatching more than six floors from the hands of the gentry's children in the army.

"It is not so easy to change the composition of the ruling class in this country. Let alone cultivate a new class."

Yang Chao can only sigh, but he already has a follow-up plan. With the officials of these new classes in place, the next step is to strengthen the power of the new class.

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(End of this chapter)