Nan Ming Sun Never Sets

Chapter 295 Census
In the villages around Shuntianfu, the honest farmers were gathered together timidly, feeling uneasy.

In the eyes of ordinary people, it doesn't matter if bandits or officers and soldiers come to the village. They will take away a lot of living materials from the villagers.Last year's harvest was not good, everyone was already hungry, many children were malnourished, and there was very little food to eat.The Yaman who bought and sold children came to the village several times and took away the children of several families.

The villagers were very worried that they would not be able to hand over the food and had nothing of value, and they were afraid that the military men would take their anger out on them.

The soldiers standing in line here stood up straight, motionless, like sculptures, this kind of majesty was still very intimidating.

On the contrary, the officer standing in front of the soldiers had a very gentle expression.

"Folks, Ming is back! The Tartars have been expelled by us, and everyone will be a citizen of Ming again." The political commissar said with emotion.

Not far away, Li Wan and Gao Ning were leaning on a carriage, looking at their political commissar, Li Wan shook his head and said, "This political commissar is really real."

Gao Ning analyzed: "Ordinary ordinary people are actually not too sensitive to the name of the emperor on their heads. For them, the most important thing is to be able to live."

The political commissar obviously knew this too, and he said to the villagers: "My Ming Dynasty is a country based on the people. It is the top priority for the crown prince to supervise the country and all Ming officials to live a good life for the common people. His Royal Highness I know that all the folks are exploited by the Tartars, and this year is not good. So His Royal Highness announced that this year and next year will be exempted from taxation."

The common people were still quite impressed by this thing, and they were extremely happy when they heard it, and they knelt down and kowtowed in emotion.

The political commissar hurried up, helped everyone up personally, and said: "Not only that, Daming will implement new management methods in the countryside in the future. In order to allow everyone to make a living, now we need to conduct household registration statistics for this village, and then according to this Each household is allocated land. In addition, each village will set up an agricultural cooperative, and everyone will elect a prestigious elder and capable person as the president..."

The political commissar introduced a lot of things, such as common labor, work points, state support of agricultural technology, distribution of grain seeds, and individualized cultivation of economic crops in each village. Anyway, the farmers did not understand these things. I am still more interested in how much land is divided.

Li Wan also strolled over at this moment, holding a stack of blank land deeds, and said: "Okay, this land deed is to be issued to you. It is agreed, we count the number of households and divide the land according to the pair A family like husband and wife plus children, the kind of big family members, cousins ​​and uncles are counted, there is nothing to share, so you have to dismantle it. Comrade Comrade Political Commissar just now has another thing that I didn’t talk about, that is, if anyone I held too much land before, such as more than [-] mu, and the excess part is subject to land tax, which is very high."

Li Wan felt that Bai Mingxiu's series of policies were very good, and said: "Those landlords, in the future, you must have a labor contract signed with the farmers in black and white when collecting rent, and there is an upper limit stipulated by the national law for the distribution of harvest. The tax-free period in your village has passed, and the land tax will be collected by the cooperative.”

The land rent has been fixed at a fixed value by the state, which is tantamount to squeezing the profit-making space of the landlords.The most serious thing is that farmers themselves have been allocated land, and by participating in cooperatives, they can also cultivate collective fields from cooperatives and earn according to work points.More importantly, the power to collect taxes was stripped from the landlords and gentry and unified into the rural cooperatives, so that the peasants had a clear idea of ​​how much land tax they paid.According to the new method formulated by Bai Mingxiu, if the Ming tax authorities have funds from the tax authorities to operate, the Legislative Council adopts the tax laws of the modern country, and the state monopolizes the formulation of tax laws. In addition, the tax formulated by the local government or any individual is irrelevant. is illegal.If you raise the Metropolitan Procuratorate, you will be severely punished.

The trembling but joyful farmers, together with the sad-faced gentry, have not yet realized that this country is undergoing an earth-shaking change—it is not just as simple as the change of dynasty, or the rejuvenation of the Ming Dynasty.

The opposition of Zhili gentry was much worse than that of Jiangnan and other places.On the one hand, compared with Jiangnan where the land concentration is serious, many provinces in the north have a high proportion of self-cultivating farmers, some places have more than [-]%.Moreover, the economic strength of the northern gentry is often not as strong as that of the southern gentry, and they are also severely suppressed.

After the Manchu Qing Dynasty took over the Central Plains, it completely overturned the tax policy of the previous Ming Dynasty that was beneficial to the famous gentry group, and due to successive years of wars, the apportionment was also extremely serious.This return of the Ming Dynasty, although there are various indications that the support for the poorest class is greater, but at any rate, the gentry found that apart from the abhorrent land tax, the land tax they should have paid has been reduced.

People in the village lined up to accept the household registration statistics conducted by the soldiers of the Ming Dynasty's Restoration Army. This was actually a census. Bai Mingxiu basically occupied a place and would conduct a thorough census of the local area.It is also a change from the previous census that only counted the number of households. The current census of the Ming Dynasty will record the population situation in detail, including the number of people registered in the household, name, age, education level, professional income, etc.

The extent to which a country can mobilize its own strength depends on how much tax it can receive, and then it depends on the extent to which it can understand its own national conditions.

Thanks to Bai Mingxiu's sufficient manpower, a large number of soldiers of the Restoration Army who were summoned for participating in the dungeon were used as clerks when they were not fighting.The mercenaries recruited in the system are all literate and able to write and count, so they can at least do some basic work.And the next step is to carry out literacy campaigns in the countryside.

The common people know that it is for the purpose of dividing the land, so their willingness to participate in the census is very high.Moreover, those who belonged to the non-registered population before, even escaped persons and slaves, could request naturalization in the place of origin or the resettlement place arranged by the government as ordinary civilians, and be given land.

In the early Qing Dynasty, there was a very strict and cruel "Law of Escaping People", which was to allow the Eight Banners to have stable serfs, deprive them of personal freedom, and allow trading.Bai Mingxiu uprooted the fugitives, and even revoked their humble status. All the people are equal.Even the slaves of wealthy families, the government does not recognize their status as servants, but requires them to be limited-term employment contracts with wages in return.

Under such a system, many slaves and maidservants escaped from the original owner's house and chose to defect to the government office, requesting naturalization and obtaining allotment of land.Even if the gentry complained, it was useless, because Ming Dynasty did not recognize any employment with personal restraint in law.

(End of this chapter)