New Shun 1730

Quan Zheshen thought of some of the banned books he had seen in Incheon over the years and had a rough idea of ​​the things in them. He couldn't help but wonder: "Brother Meng, I'm new here and don't know much about it. How can we build a canal if it's abandoned?" "

Meng Songlu knew this very well and said with a smile: "It's normal to be confused. Brother Zhao doesn't understand what's going on. In recent years, the provincial finance has revolved around the word 'cotton'."

"After the imperial court abolished the canal, it built water conservancy on the Huaihe River and opened it to the sea."

"But you need to know that the imperial court is responsible for controlling water. The imperial court does not pay for local irrigation and navigation. The province still needs to pay."

"Huainan's waste salt land is being reclaimed and is in need of irrigation."

"Transporting cotton back and forth also requires canal communication."

"This is why we started the canal project from Funing to Nantong. If it is just to transport cotton, we can also build a railway. But since we also need to irrigate and remove salt, it is far better to build a canal."

"The province will provide one-third of the money, and the remaining two-thirds will be provided by various land reclamation companies from Funing to Nantong. Taking advantage of the less busy winter months, various land reclamation companies will also provide labor and coordinate the organization."

"But once the canal is built, each reclamation company will divert the tributaries to their own reclamation areas."

"Since the Beijing-Hangzhou Canal was abandoned, new canals have been built. The ones from Suzhou to Shanghai; from Funing to Nantong; from Jiaxing to the Huangpu River... In recent years, provincial finances have mostly been spent on the construction of canals. "

"Brother Zhao doesn't know something. Capital can also build canals, but it can only build profitable canals. As for Jiaxing Tonghuangpu, transportation is secondary and water conservancy is priority. Capital is not willing to spend a penny. This requires financial investment.”

Speaking of financial issues, Meng Songlu couldn't help but show a hint of pride, because one of the financial sources of Songjiang Mansion, especially Shanghai, came from their sect, and it should be the method of his uncle Wang Yuan and Wang Kunsheng. .

On the whole, Wang Yuan's thoughts support the comprehensive nationalization of land.

Although his ideas on the rural land issue are relatively nonsense - compared to Yan Yuan and Li Kuan's fantasy of thirty years of redemption and landowners voluntarily handing over their land to the state, Wang Yuan's ideas are slightly less nonsense and a little more feasible.

His suggestion is to tax state-owned land and private land separately. Taxes on state-owned land will be reduced and private land will be subject to a 50% tax rate. Within a few years, everyone will "voluntarily" turn their land into state-owned land.

Of course, it is also very nonsense, but compared to the fantasy of thirty-year redemption, it is still a little less utopian in theory.

As for the remaining ideas such as "paying taxes and conferring honors", they are too advanced and impossible to implement.

However, on the issue of urban land, Wang Yuan, who was the first person of the Yan-Li School to propose the theory of "only farmers owning land," proposed that it would be better to collect property taxes on urban land.

He believed that it would be best to nationalize rural land and impose restrictions on buying and selling. As for urban land, it is not recommended to prohibit the sale and purchase, but to collect housing tax.

Although this theory is actually different from the method adopted by the new Shanghai County at this time. But basically, taking advantage of the opportunity of capital fleeing south of the Yangtze River and pouring into Shanghai, this improved city tax was implemented.

However, the cooperation between Liu Yu and the Yan-Li School ended here.

Thinking of what happened not long ago, Meng Songlu's face showed a trace of unpleasantness.

Quan Zheshen saw a hint of pride on Meng Songlu's face, which then turned slightly unhappy, thinking that Meng Songlu was lamenting the construction of the canal.

According to his understanding, or according to his understanding in North Korea, building the canal will definitely require labor force, and it is estimated that many people will die. Now it seems that the Chinese empire is doing things like Sui Yang, Shang Zhou and others all day long?

Then he asked: "As Brother Meng said, the people are suffering a lot due to the large-scale construction and canal construction. So there are frozen bones in this city, and everyone thinks it is normal?"

However, Meng Songlu shook his head in response to this question.

There is a saying that during the salt policy reform, he was ordered by his teacher to go to Huaibei to see more, and he had a dispute with Meng Tiezhu of the new school in Dengzhou Prefecture over the issue of land equalization.

Although, both he and his teacher Cheng Tingzuo criticized Liu Yu's many policies implemented in Jiangsu and his brutal suppression methods.

But I have to admit that the overall life of the people has generally improved in recent years.

Just a few years ago, a sea tide drowned more than 40,000 salt workers in the Huainan salt area. Every year, there are floods, tidal disasters, the Yellow River bursting, floods in the upper reaches of the Huaihe River, and deaths while working on the reinforcement of Gaojia Weir, etc. It can be said that it is a good year with good weather.

Although the direction of the reform is indeed a bit unkind and unjust in the eyes of their school, the effect is really remarkable.

The Huaihe River has been restored to the sea, and the water level of Hongze Lake has gradually decreased, closing the Qinghe River mouth in Huai'an. The risk of Yellow River breaches and backflow has been reduced.

Capital reclaimed wasteland, government investment plus capital investment, and built seawalls and improved river channels.

The most important thing is the situation in rural areas.

Indeed, Su, Song, Chang, Tong and other surrounding areas were greatly affected.

With the crazy introduction of Korean rice, Nanyang rice, Northeastern beans, and Liaodong wheat, the price of grain has basically remained at eight dollars per stone.

After the reform of the mu tax, the lives of tenant farmers became even worse and they all quit their rents.

But the advantage is that in recent years, infrastructure construction has been carried out crazily, such as digging canals, building water conservancy projects, etc., which has accommodated a large number of people.

And these people, along with the intensification of land reclamation in Huainan, are constantly being digested by the reclamation companies.

As for the nearby homesteaders, their lives are really better than before.

The biggest beneficiaries of the land tax reform are the self-cultivating farmers.

The looms going to the countryside have prevented this local village, which is famous for cotton cloth, from being severely impacted by the new machinery.

The lower grain prices are bad for self-cultivating farmers.

However, the land tax reform has compromised this disadvantage.

Even after the compromise, even if capital went to the countryside and grain prices were lowered, many self-cultivating farmers intuitively felt that their lives were better than before.

In the past, taxes, levies, additional levies, county taxes, gentry tax avoidance, labor, grain transport, loss, and fire consumption were all in a circle.

Now, it is a real one-whip, with a unified fixed land tax.

One positive and one negative, plus the capital looms led by Liu Yu going to the countryside, made the collapse of the small peasant economy, just in the southern Jiangsu region, really not painful.

Of course, from January to April, there were people who starved to death or froze to death almost every day in Shanghai.

And the periodicity of dock work made armed fights frequent and there were indeed many deaths.

Of course, from the abandonment of the Grand Canal to the decline of Yangzhou and Huai'an, tens of thousands of people died.

Uprisings, resistance, suppression, massacres, exiles, and deportations are all well documented.

And those who died silently because of the decline of the city are countless.

Huai'an, which claimed to have a population of 800,000, saw its population drop sharply to 70,000 in ten years from the abandonment of the Grand Canal to the completion of the salt administration reform.

In any city, a sudden and rapid population drop means countless sufferings.

It is worth being happy that the violent turmoil ended last year.

With the brutal suppression of Liu Yu, the policy of weaving first and spinning later, and the markets and economic vassals of Northeast China, Korea, Japan, Southeast Asia, and Europe, and the salt industry profits of Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui, Jiangsu, and Henan, they survived.

More than 20 years of preparation, plus the two major pressure relief valves in the Northeast and South China, the legacy of the Huainan salt industry left by the previous dynasty, two crucial foreign wars, and the military suppression after the military reform finally made the transformation of half of Jiangsu Province not painful.

Even if Meng Songlu could not see through so much, he knew that since last year, the chaos had gradually subsided, which he could indeed feel personally.

As for the living standard, from the perspective of self-cultivating farmers, the living standard must have improved compared to before.

Cheap bean cakes at least increased the amount of fish and meat eaten by the people in southern Jiangsu.

It would definitely be difficult for Meng Songlu to evaluate the entire reform.

But Meng Songlu still easily gave an answer to Quan Zheshen's views on large-scale construction and engineering projects.

And the answer he gave was exactly what Quan Zheshen could not understand.

The people of North Korea think they are a small China.

But the land system and tax system of the real China are completely different from this country that thinks it is a "small China".

In the whole reform, the crucial part of "corvée" and the basis of the reform are precisely the development of commodity economy and the disintegration of the old system.

The reason why Li Xinghu, the teacher of Quan Zheshen, was so painful and pioneered practical learning is precisely because Li Xinghu witnessed the disintegration of the old land system, land trading, and the emergence of commodity economy around Seoul.

Take the development of handicraft industry in southern Jiangsu in the early Ming Dynasty as an example.

Because the tax system in the early Ming Dynasty levied in-kind taxes, some places used things to exchange cotton cloth and silk in southern Jiangsu.

This promoted the disintegration of official handicraft industry in southern Jiangsu and the development of family handicraft industry. Finally, after waves of uprisings and resistance by weavers in the late Ming Dynasty, the package purchase system was basically implemented by Dashun.

Except for some special clothes, such as dragon robes and other things, professional official craftsmen are still needed.

In addition, after the weavers' resistance in the late years of the previous dynasty, the official handicraft industry and the artisan household system have all disintegrated.

What stage is the Joseon Dynasty in?

It is in a stage similar to the early Ming Dynasty to the middle Ming Dynasty, or even worse. In terms of land system, it may even have to go back to the middle of Tang Dynasty.

The reform of tax system promoted the development of private handicraft industry in Korea; the emergence of commodity economy gave rise to land trading; land trading led to rapid differentiation between rich and poor, and the self-cultivating peasant class became tenant farmers.

It has only come to this point, and there is no crazy inflow of silver that began in the middle of Ming Dynasty - there was a little chance to be a middleman between China and Japan. However, Liu Yu's war against Japan did not hurt Japan the most, but Korea, which made Korea's precious metals empty directly, and the currency was completely occupied by Dashun paper money.

This is the problem that Korea has to face at this time.

Therefore, even if Li Ik, Quan Zheshen and others run forward and think faster than others, the economic base determines the superstructure, and at most they can only think of the step of full reaction in the late Ming Dynasty back to the early Ming Dynasty.

The economic base is here, and people's thoughts are not dropped from the sky. If you don't want to go back, you have a problem with your brain.

Therefore, historically, the Xinghu leftists finally chose to embrace Christianity and tried to retreat completely, because they were in the most painful stage of "suffering from the collapse of the old system, but the old system was not collapsed enough".

This stage is the most uncomfortable time for the ideological world, and almost the whole world at this stage will make the idea of ​​"regression" become the mainstream.

And it should be said that at this stage, the most reactionary group of people in the economic sense are precisely the group of good people who truly love the people and sympathize with the people's suffering.

Dashun inherited the economic foundation of the late Ming Dynasty, walked forward normally for another 80 years, and was dragged forward by Liu Yu for more than 20 years.

At the same time, Dashun also inherited many ideas of the late Ming thinkers, and developed on the basis of those thoughts.

The economic foundations of the two countries are three hundred years apart from the normal timeline.

Three hundred years ago, Liu Yu's reforms were bound to fail; a hundred years ago, the mainstream thoughts of the late Ming Dynasty were all economic reactionary to the early Ming Dynasty, opposing silver currency, opposing the one-whip system, and opposing tax monetization. At that time, reforms like Liu Yu's would die faster.

When the official handicraft industry in southern Jiangsu began to disintegrate, private handicraft industry developed, and private ownership of land became the mainstream again and overwhelmed official land, the battle of Tumu Fortress began.

The Kingdom of Korea has only reached this point now, and it is almost inevitable that the reactionary and retrospective thoughts dominate the mainstream.

If there is no gap between the rich and the poor, no land annexation, and no industrial and commercial development, what is the use of the conscription law? Without so many "poor and free" laborers, how can the canal be built without labor?

Without food that is so cheap that it hurts farmers, how can these poor and free laborers not starve to death and rise up?

If food is so cheap that it hurts farmers, how can the original rural economic system not collapse, and a large number of tenant farmers flee to the city and become "poor and free" laborers?

So, simply build a canal.

Both sides are talking at cross purposes.

Under the condition of assuming that their respective economic bases are the basic, Meng Songlu is simply unable to explain to Quan Zheshen how these canals are built and why they do not hurt the people.

Quan Zheshen cannot understand, because Meng Songlu assumes that Quan Zheshen understands the economic base, land system, and tax system of Jiangsu at that time.