Governor please stay

However, this move can directly destroy the current largest source of wealth for aristocratic families other than field harvests, and win the widest support from the public, creating public opinion and popular support for reunification.

Otherwise, why would I write it?

Think about why the old coin Yang Jian promulgated this decree in the third year of Kaihuang, and who he was trying to deal with. Many answers are in the dark places of history books and will not be written directly.

This is the fundamental reason why Liu Dudu is the boss and everyone else is the younger brother. The height of thinking determines the status in the group.

Chapter 637

In the study room of King Wu's Mansion, even though it was already night, the lights were still on. Liu Yishou and Yang Min sat opposite each other in front of the desk, discussing the reform of the salt administration.

"My lord's idea is good, but if the matter is not done, it will damage the prestige of the lord. Do you have to do this thing?"

Yang Min asked softly.

He knew that Liu Yishou's thinking was correct, but when to do the right thing was a question that tested his governance skills.Obviously, the reform of the salt system is not just a matter of "tax exemption" as Liu Yishou's publicity.

There are more and more complex policies, involving all aspects.

All political problems are economic problems, but all economic problems are about politics.Salt tax can be a big or small thing.On a bigger scale, it is not impossible to be pulled off the horse.

"The country has not yet been unified. When we do these things, the resistance is relatively small, and there is still room for us to use our fists. If we wait until the country is unified, I am afraid that even if we want to kill thieves, we will be powerless at that time. People live forever, always For future generations, you can't leave all the troubles to them."

Liu Yishou sighed, and handed the letter on the table to Yang Min.The latter looked at it for a long time, then put down the letter, raised his eyebrows and nodded slightly: "My lord is really not aimless."

Yang Min seemed to be relieved.

"That's true, otherwise I wouldn't have rashly proposed to change the salt policy."

Liu Yishou said with a smile.Smart people know everything. When Yang Min saw what was said in this letter, he knew that Liu Yishou's keen political vision had started to play a role again.

"Hunger and cold steal the heart, forcing those at the bottom to have nowhere to go, and they can only take risks. Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty made a bad start in the salt and iron franchise, turning salt into a carrier of poll tax. As much fairness and justice, in fact, is driving them to a dead end.

The poor are at the end of the road, can this country last long? "

Liu Yishou couldn't help but let out another long sigh, he knew that Fatty Yang understood this truth.

A person with a lot of money probably doesn't feel like losing a penny, but a person with a family of four may feel sad for several days if they lose a penny.People in different classes have different feelings towards the same thing.

Can you say that eating salt is a trivial matter?

That depends on whose eyes it is!In the eyes of the world's poor, who account for the majority of the number, this is a big deal, a big deal!

"It is the great fortune of the country for the Lord to have the world in mind."

Yang Min said sincerely.

"People's hearts are basic necessities. If you control people's hearts, you will win the world sooner or later. We can't lose people's hearts, and we can't do things in a flashy way, so that people's lives can be really improved.

You need to pay more attention to this matter. If the salt administration is handled well, it will be no less than [-] new troops on the battlefield. "

Liu Yishou held Yang Min's hand tightly and said, he couldn't keep an eye on the details all the time, and Yang Min had to do it himself.

"Understood, Yang is really lucky to be able to work for someone like the Lord."

Yang Min said with emotion, also holding Liu Yishou's hands tightly.

This moment gave him a sense of mission. This may be what Liu Yishou said before, "Build a heart for the world, build a life for the people, inherit the knowledge of the past, and create peace for all generations."

Maybe a hundred years later, when history books evaluate him, he will also mention the salt administration he personally presided over.Yang Min suddenly became a little nervous. If this matter is not handled well, it will be hard to say what his reputation will be like in the future!

"Master, this matter must be done properly."

Yang Min suppressed his inner excitement and said.

"Don't be so cautious. The reform, adjustment, and finalization of the salt administration are expected to cause many problems, which may last for many years. No matter what you do, the principle of improving people's livelihood and reducing the pressure on the poor cannot be changed."

Liu Yishou said solemnly, Yang Min nodded silently.

It's easy to say, but looking at the history books, how many people care about the lives of those people?

His mood inevitably became a little heavy.

……

The new "salt policy" promulgated by Liang Guo this time is obviously not a joke.The stick that Liu Yishou beat Wang Ke seemed to symbolize that the southern aristocratic family had been hit with a stick.After that, all the noisy voices died down.

In any case, although I don't know what Liu Yishou wants to do, it is much better for the court to "not collect" salt tax than to snatch the salt pond from the aristocratic family.It seems that apart from direct action, the court can't figure out anything, they all think so.

Therefore, under the auspices of Yang Min, the "Hongwu Salt Administration" that will deeply affect the next few hundred years was born. In addition to tax exemption, related supporting measures are also gradually introduced, step by step!The policy has been very solid from formulation to implementation, and has withstood the pressure of all parties, with strong policy continuity.

At this time, everyone including Liu Yishou did not expect that the impact of this policy would be long-lasting and violent in units of a hundred years.The basic appearance of the country's economy and politics has been completely disrupted!

Liu Yishou's idea of ​​salt administration reform is "to restore people's livelihood, survival of the fittest; multi-pronged approach, Huaiyan is king".If there is no last sentence, the first three sentences are all empty words, and they are all trees without roots.

Utilize the incomparable powerful productivity of Haiyan, vigorously support Lianghuai Haiyan, which is firmly controlled by the government, and then use various ostensible schemes to bankrupt the salt ponds and salt wells in the hands of wealthy families, or put them in a low-profit state. , forcing them to let go of using salt to make a profit.

Liu Yishou is very confident, because Lianghuai salt has great potential. Before the Yellow River diverted to Huaihe, Lianghuai salt accounted for nearly half of the country's largest salt production.What is the basic disk, this is the basic disk.Of course, this is potential, not current strength.

To put it bluntly, his ultimate goal is to make the big family lose the ability to collect "disguised poll tax" and block their way of using salt as a tool to make money.

The means serve the ends.

The imperial court does not collect salt tax, but strictly regulates the "salt administration".Not only will the Salt Transportation Department be established independently to manage salt farms across the country and the transportation and storage of salt in various places, but also a temporary "Enke" will be opened to recruit talents related to salt administration across the country, and have skills in salt production and sales. will be hired as officers.

Since the promulgation of the new salt policy, statistics and declarations of large and small salt ponds in various places have been gradually carried out across the country.

The production of "special salt" (refined salt) is classified as Class A, the production of ordinary edible salt is classified as Class B, and the production of inedible salt is collectively referred to as "black salt". Regardless of grade, it can only be used in handicraft industries.

The specific grades are divided according to the appearance of the salt.

At the same time, surveys were carried out on salt fields all over the country, and an access permit system was implemented, and those who were not granted an access permit were not allowed to start work.The access certificate has to pay a relatively fixed "operating fee" to the imperial court every year, which has nothing to do with production.

The higher the type of salt production and the better the quality, the higher the operating fee, which is levied according to the area of ​​the salt field.

Once the access takes effect, regardless of whether salt is produced or not, operating fees will be levied.That is to say, as long as the saltworks of a large family are "listed", they must produce, otherwise they will lose money.In this way, they are forced to adjust their production capacity and shut down low-quality salt farms.

If the salt farm does not start construction for one year, the operating fee will be doubled for the next year, and if it is not started for two years, it will be directly nationalized!What Liu Yishou needed was the rules, and he didn't expect the big family members to abide by the rules.

Those who are disobedient naturally have a reason to deal with them. Liu Yishou is just about to test whether the knife in his hand is fast or not.

Salt from all over the world can be freely traded, and there is no restricted sales area.For example, Huai salt can enter Sichuan, and vice versa.This is preparing for a possible price war in the future.

Many of the saltworks owned by wealthy family members practiced the serf system in essence, bullying these saltworkers for not owning their own land.The imperial court gave the standard of treatment for salt households, and the aristocratic saltworks must guarantee the basic treatment of salt households.

Governments from all over the country will come forward to verify and guarantee that once the saltworks of a large family cannot meet the basic needs of the salt households and the pressure is too high, they will all be shut down and not allowed to produce salt.

This move is to prevent the big families from competing with the official salt by squeezing the salt households, so that they cannot fight the price war.

Of course, Liu Yishou didn't expect these people to be obedient, there would definitely be someone who didn't take it seriously.At that time, the imperial court will have enough excuses to attack them, and under the banner of making decisions for the people, they will kill them as an example!

At the same time gain both fame and fortune.

Liu Yishou is just using the state apparatus correctly, making up for the deficiencies and destroying the excess.

The knowledge of more than a thousand years has allowed him to see through the essence of the so-called "salt tax" as a poll tax.Treating salt as a poll tax is extremely unfair to the people at the bottom, and it fundamentally reduces their living space.

A similar salt tax is nothing more than hollowing out the foundations of the country.If things go on like this, there will be great chaos, and the country will fail.Liu Yishou worked so hard to unify the world, is it just to provide those moths with a better petri dish?

This is not his original intention, nor is it his goal.

Regardless of whether the family is large or small, the amount of salt needed by each person is basically certain.Even the poor often cannot eat fresh food, especially meat, and need preserved food for many years, so the demand for salt is more than that of the rich!

If the salt tax is a poll tax, wouldn't it push these poor people to a dead end?A penny of the poor is equivalent to a penny of the rich, but does it mean the same thing to them?

In other words, the state treats "salt" as an indirect tax.But in the current situation, both the aristocratic family and the country are collecting this tax, and the aristocratic family collects more than the country, but they don't need to bear any social burden caused by indirect taxes. How can this continue?

The people at the bottom have suffered the biggest losses, the country has borne the biggest infamy, the aristocratic families have made a lot of money, and they still pretend to be good people by watching jokes.

The good thing is that the aristocratic family takes the big head and is not responsible, and the state is responsible for the accident. Can Liu Yishou bear such a thing?If most of the benefits of the salt tax are taken away by the aristocratic family, is the country still a country?If yes, whose country is it?

For this matter, Liu Yishou decided to give an explanation to the people of the world, and he will never be taken advantage of!

In addition to relevant decrees, Liu Yishou also asked the imperial court to allocate special funds to expand the scale of more than a dozen large salt farms in various places in the Jianghuai area, and relocate those "salt households" who are unwilling to farm, have no land to grow, and have lost their original salt wells and ponds. Edge settled.

Of course, these small tricks are not enough to make the big families kneel down and sing conquest.

A single policy cannot perfectly solve all practical problems.

Liu Yishou seemingly "hastily" resorted to the big move of the salt government to reduce the economic dimension of the Southern Dynasty family. If he didn't have something to suppress the bottom of the box, he would definitely not dare to use the knife.

Liu Yishou's killer move was the letter he showed Yang Min.

He ordered Jia Sixie to personally take a group of capable officials from the Ministry of Industry to the largest salt field in Sheyang County (Yancheng, Jiangsu Province), and also the largest official salt field in Liang State, to update and improve the facilities related to the salt pool there.

It also introduced the "salt drying method" that Yuwentai found used in some small places when it inspected Fujian and Zhejiang, but did not attract large-scale attention.This kind of salt is extremely poor in texture, it is just bitter and it is easy to lose teeth after eating it, and the wealthy folks never touch it.

Stones from other mountains can be used to attack jade. Yuwentai has a very high political quality. At that time, he felt that this thing does not need to be burned, which greatly saves manpower. .

So he wrote the method of drying salt in detail into a booklet and sent it to Jiankang, and finally came to Liu Yishou's desk.

Simply put, this method is to build the salt pond in the place covered by the high tide of sea water and exposed by the low tide. The inside is full of easy-to-digging silt, which has long been artificially ground.After the tide ebbs, the silt inside is raked out and exposed to the sun for three days, and then put into the filter tank for filtration.

At the same time, replace the original salt pond with new silt.

This kind of soil that can be recycled and reused is called "lime soil" by them.

Using these dusty soils, through steps such as sun exposure, wind blowing and filtration, the power of nature is used to dry out "raw salt" crystals on a large scale (long-term consumption is harmful to the body).

After some people in the local area get these, they go through processes such as filtration and crystallization to obtain sea salt with acceptable texture.It's just that the purification process is very laborious and the effect is not good.

The information on the origin of the sun-dried salt method is occluded, and only "raw salt" is known to be produced, but the process of purifying table salt is very simple.Moreover, although the method of drying salt is simple, it depends on the weather. Only June to September is the golden period for producing coarse salt.

At other times, it is either too cold or often rains and typhoons, making it impossible to dry the salt.

Therefore, Liu Yishou proposed to combine the core steps of the sun-dried salt method with the superior technology of the popular "salt boiling method" to purify table salt. In terms of removing impurities, it is incomparable to the existing sun-dried salt method.

To sum up, this method is the so-called "sea brine decocting salt". High-purity brine containing various salts is obtained by drying in the sun, and table salt is obtained by heating with fire to precipitate crystals.

By accurately controlling the difference in the saturation required for the precipitation of sodium chloride and magnesium chloride, table salt is precipitated before the precipitation of magnesium chloride, which can greatly reduce labor intensity and resource consumption.

The salt is dried first to obtain "brine" rich in salt, and then the brine is put on the table to precipitate table salt.This method does not seek to be in place at one time, but for the purpose of improving productivity and combining the advantages of various salt production methods.

Although the principle is simple, the technical details are not at all simple.Jia Sixie stayed in Sheyang until winter was about to enter. After several months of experiments and repeated improvements, she successfully launched the "new" sun-dried salt method, which greatly increased the production of salt!

Not only is the quality competitive, but it can also be mass-produced!

This method was later promoted by the imperial court, and coastal counties and counties followed suit one after another. It has been continuously improved for a hundred years, forming a very stable and efficient method of salt production, which is widely popularized, even in places with sufficient sunshine such as Guangzhou and Yazhou. better.

As long as it is near the sea, as long as the climate is suitable, you can play.

In the following decades, with the opening of the North-South Canal, cheap sea salt poured into all parts of the country through water transport, which greatly reduced the scale of inland well salt.

Almost all small salt wells that cannot produce "specialty salt" have been shut down.The amount of money that ordinary people need to buy salt is constantly shrinking, but the quality is much higher than before!

A wave of industry reshuffle that has lasted for many years has greatly changed the distribution of salt farms in various places.Some salt farms near the sea are constantly expanding in size, while some inland salt wells are being shut down continuously, because there are not many big families who have suffered heavy losses.

The imperial court also asked Cui Xian to lead a team to inspect Danyang, Guangling (Yangzhou), Sanwu and other places, and urge the local government to publicize the salt tax exemption policy, so that people of different classes can understand the imperial court's policy, resulting in a "salt price will inevitably fall" "Psychological expectations, and at the same time broadly win the hearts and minds of the people.

Yang Min was instructed by Liu Yishou to take the lead in formulating standards for table salt, subdividing the grades, and promulgating detailed rules to determine what kind of salt is "tribute salt" (special salt) that needs to be heavily taxed, and what kind of salt cannot be sold or eaten.

At the same time, the imperial court also implemented a new taxation system at the location of the large saltworks, paying taxes in the form of currency or even salt, and did not collect land rent from the saltworks workers who lost their fields, so that they did not have to exchange grain and cloth for rent, and even provided "fixed-point exchange for grain" In some places, salt is exchanged for food, which greatly weakens the attachment of these people to the local rich and powerful families.

On the one hand, we strive to improve the quality of the overall table salt and weed out low-quality salt, and on the other hand, we strive to provide high-quality salt with acceptable quality, so as to run and suppress the table salt of Shijia Saltwell.

This series of combined punches that have lasted for many years has far surpassed the scope of "salt" with its power and deep influence.Even in the future, when people are going to add salt when cooking, they will subconsciously think of Liu Yishou, a person who stirred up the situation by himself.

……

At this time, Liu Yishou, who was in the center of the storm, was not enjoying Li Zuyi's soft and graceful body, nor was he watching the exaggerated scene of Wu Wangfu's selection of "Beautiful Girls" in a certain courtyard in Jiankang City. Duan Shao who defected came here to discuss important matters!

As for what the two are discussing, it is naturally about how to attack Hebei next!If anyone knows the inside of Gao Huan's forces, Sun Teng may be ranked behind Duan Shao!

After all, Duan Shao is the general in charge of the army, so his opinions naturally represent authority!

Chapter 638 Ping Beice

In the study room of Prince Wu's Mansion, Liu Yishou and Duan Shao sat opposite each other at the desk, drinking tea and chatting.If you really want to say, the two sides have dealt with each other on the battlefield many times, but this is the first time that they have formally met to discuss major issues.

Duan Shao's younger sister is only 14 years old. Liu Yishou is under a lot of psychological pressure to accept such a girl into the house. It must be a few years before he can talk about it. Up to now, he has not seen what she looks like.

But for Duan Shao, Liu Yishou not only appreciates it very much, but also plans to listen carefully to Duan Shao's insights now.

At this moment, Duan Shao had already groomed and tidied up well. Although the gloomy look on his brows was puzzled, he looked dignified, very much like his father Duan Rong back then.

It's just more heroic and less bookish.

"The filial piety is famous outside. When I got acquainted with your father in the early years, he said that there was a unicorn in the family. When I saw it today, I really lived up to my reputation."

Liu Yishou said with a smile, acting like an elder.

A lot of words can't stand up to scrutiny, Duan Rong is a humble and low-key person, so it is naturally impossible for him to break the taboo of "communicating in a shallow way", telling Liu Yishou at that time how awesome his eldest son is.

However, this does not prevent Liu Yishou from making up a harmless lie to get close.Duan Shao felt comfortable listening to it, and it didn't take much trouble, so why not do it?