Chapter 545 Bad Conscience

The enthronement ceremony in Nanjing was like the bright moon hanging high in the night sky, its bright light covering the entire February sky.

All over the country, the front pages of all official privately-owned newspapers are publishing the coronation ceremony, military parade and other related or subsequent events, such as royal expenses, etc., which also covers up many people who are already faintly aware of the situation in February. conflicts arise.

The influence of the stepped agricultural tax, the last decree issued by Chen Hui before his abdication, has been showing its effect after more than a month of fermentation.

As for Wang Zhizheng, he has his previous family background and Wang Zhizheng’s income from serving in the army for many years. Although most of the latter’s military salary has been converted into acres of land, he now works in military and civilian companies in Jiangsu, Hubei, and Shandong provinces. There are shares in it, but those shares can generate money, and the shares of military and civilian companies are also hard currency in the market. Most of the dividends he received every year were used to purchase land for the Wang family, even though the price per acre in the Jiangnan market was already twice as high as the land price of the military-civilian company.

The world is at peace, and land prices in Jiangnan are rising at an alarming rate.

Therefore, the Wang family, which now owns 200 acres of mature land in Dantu, has reached the pinnacle of the small landowner class in an environment like Jiangnan.

Compared with the days during the Manchu and Qing Dynasties, the Wang family's Ansheng life under the rule of Chen and Han was not too comfortable. But just a few years after such an peaceful life, Chen Hui suddenly issued a "land restriction order", which gave Wang Zhizheng and his father Wang Zongquan a headache. However, there was nothing he could do. His small arms could not hold up his thick thighs, so he could only follow the crowd and go on his own. Became a 'farmer'.

Less than ten days after the application report was typed, Wang Zhizheng received a notification letter from the post office. On this day, Wang Zongquan went to the county town to get the operating license of the farm. On his way home, he took a turn and went to his in-laws' house to see his grandson, carrying a gift. As soon as the donkey cart stopped in front of Tian's house, before Wang Zongquan got off the car, he heard cries and curses coming from the Tian's courtyard.

"Master Tian, ​​Master Tian, ​​please, please... There are seven people in our family. I am the only one on the farm. I can feed and drink the whole family with that salary. Please take my father Counting that, you know, my father is an old master. He is only forty-five and still has enough strength. He can do it for at least another ten years. "If Tian Wanglai really lets his father go in and do it. In the past ten years, the Zhao family's life has become peaceful. Ten years later, his sons have grown up. A man in his twenties knelt at Tian Wanglai's feet and cried with snot and tears. "Mr. Tian, ​​the salary of one silver dollar and three tons of food a month is really not enough for our family. Are you trying to force me?" Kill us..."

"Master Tian, ​​please, please..."

The middle-aged man in his early forties in front of the man was Tian Wanglai. With a look of boredom on his face, he pointed at the man kneeling on the ground and said, "Zhao Si'er, let me tell you, my farm only needs a young man." , and you won’t want that cripple of your father. Just give up on this.”

"You think your wages are not enough? My money was blown by the strong wind, right? Get out of here. I haven't asked you for the usury you owe me yet. Come on, let's go! If you bother me again, I'll deduct your wages to offset the usury." "

Tian Wanglai was really annoyed by Zhao Si, and he saw Wang Zongquan and his father-in-law arriving, and Zhao Si'er was crying in his yard. He felt embarrassed. Before, I wanted to leave some room. After all, they were all from the same village, but now they were about to fall out, and Hong Guoguo was threatening. Seeing the frightened look on Zhao Si's face, he didn't even dare to cry anymore. Tian Wanglai's angry stomach felt instantly as refreshing as drinking a bowl of herbal tea. "By the way, don't you think you don't have enough money? Let me show you a way to survive out of kindness. There is a factory in Guanzhuang Bridge that integrates silk reeling and weaving. Tell your mother and your aunt to sign up as soon as possible."

"I earned more than you in that year."

Tian Wanglai was a member of the textile factory in Guanzhuangqiao. After unceremoniously rejecting Zhao Si's initial request, Tian Wanglai still wanted Zhao Si's mother and wife to come into the factory to make money for him. There is no way. In the past two years, the sales of textiles such as cloth and silk have been getting better and better.

Whether it is exported by foreigners, sold domestically, or bought by Chinese people and sold abroad, they will always sell as much as they have. Although the prices of all kinds of textiles are falling, especially cloth, with the advent of various new machines, the production cost and time of cotton cloth have been greatly reduced, but the quality is slightly inferior to the old method. But for many people, the lack of product quality is completely tolerated by the low price.

Today, China is importing large quantities of Indian cotton, and on the other hand, it is using textiles that are much cheaper than similar European products to squeeze out similar British products from the Chinese market. Although the sales volume of British cotton cloth in China is originally very low! On the other hand, China's imports of woolen textiles from the UK have been increasing rapidly.

Although Chinese merchant ships rarely cross the Andaman Islands, they frequently travel between Nanyang, Siam, Annan and Japan, greatly consolidating their influence in the Nanyang region and greatly opening up the market!

Although Jiangnan is the place where literary style flourishes, it is also the most economically prosperous region, and the local business atmosphere is also very strong. There are very few pure landowners. Although land is the foundation of many wealthy families in Jiangnan, it is just like the role of agriculture in a country. Without agriculture, it is unstable, but it cannot rely purely on agriculture for its entire livelihood. Shifting and developing into business is the choice made by many Jiangnan gentry for thousands of years!

This kind of choice did not only appear in the Qing Dynasty, but counting forward, it has been true since the Song Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty.

Therefore, Suzhou and Hangzhou became mature enough for the world, and Huguang became mature enough for the world. Cash crops replaced grain and became the theme of agricultural production in Jiangnan.

So now a large number of textile factories and silk reeling factories are blooming all over the south of the Yangtze River, and the profitable Jiangnan landlord class is flocking to them. The Tian family is also one of them.

Because of this, labor has become a very significant factor.

The textile industry is not a slaughterhouse. The small-scale peasant economy in which men farm and women weave has a strong influence in the country. There is no need for textile factories to use all male weavers, or if they want to use all male workers, there are not so many people to give. They use.

Although the official craftsmen of Jiangnan Sanzhi Mansion were all male workers on the surface, in reality? It would be better to talk about the small foremans. Each of them mostly had his or her own loom before he was assigned to work for the government bureau. They received raw materials and ICBC from the government bureau, and hired workers to use the official machine to weave fabrics, thus ensuring the government bureau's weaving. In addition to successfully completing the task, you can also start your own weaving business. The female weaver in that family definitely held up half the sky.

In this era before silk loom innovation, China's silk weaving industry has always used very traditional production methods. One machine uses three people, one for winding, one for weaving, and one for twisting. The loom is entirely made of wood and is pushed by hand and pedaled. The jacquard weaving does not use a faucet and requires one person to carry it, which is very clumsy. The silk weaving industry also offered a large bounty. The big players in the silk weaving industry were almost red-eyed when they saw the production capacity of the cotton textile industry soaring under the stimulation of new machines. However, due to the particularity of the silk weaving industry, looking at it now, let alone the mature power silk loom, even the improvement of the silk reeling machine has no clue.

In history, the power silk loom did not appear until the second half of the 19th century. It is not known how long it will take for it to appear in the time and space that has changed throughout history.

After Zhao Si heard Tian Wanglai's words, his face turned blue and white. For ordinary people, in this era, letting a woman go out and show her face is the greatest denial of a man. Although there are already many female workers in society.

The main thing is that men and women work together in the textile factory. Gossips and pornographic jokes often leak out. The textile factory in Guanzhuangqiao is not the first in Dantu County. Zhao Si has heard about it before, and he doesn't want it to happen. My wife and I jumped in...

Wang Zongquan heard such words from the side, why didn't he understand what Tian Wanglai wanted to do. This guy has to do things according to the farm management manual. I don’t want fame anymore!

When the imperial court promoted the word "farm", it also issued a farm management manual, which used specific data and examples to demonstrate the huge gap between the farm economy and the tenant economy. To develop the farm in the form of "hired workers", Wang Zongquan thinks that the so-called "hired workers" are no different from permanent workers. Based on a hundred acres of land as a unit, the farm's income is indeed much greater than that of tenants.

I can’t say it’s just doubled, but it’s close. The only difference is that the former requires a lot of care.

Wang Zongquan also got the farm management manual, but he threw it into the bottom of the box in a flash. He doesn't make money that is unconscionable, and he doesn't lack this little money.

Taking Wang Zongquan's family's 200 acres of land as an example, generally speaking, there are twenty to thirty households. This number refers to all tenants of his family. It does not mean that one family rents ten acres of land, five acres for the east family, and five acres for the west family. The kind of acres. In this era, there were still a certain number of homesteaders in the rural areas of Jiangnan, or some common people still held some land in their hands, with three or four acres of land at home. Of course, these three or four acres of land are not enough for their family, but they do not need to completely rent the land from the landlord.

The court stipulated that the land rent could not exceed 30%, so that would be considered 30%, and the remaining 70% of the income would be enough to feed and drink a family of five or more as long as there were no natural or man-made disasters. In the past two years, not only did military families like the Wang family have a better life, but ordinary people also had a better life.

But now, do we really need to hire workers according to the methods in the manual? Did 200 acres of land require 20 long-term workers? Nowadays, throwing rice seedlings is used in farming, which is much easier than transplanting rice seedlings. At most, we can hire a few more day laborers during the rice harvest.

But how can the wages of twenty long-term workers in a year be enough to support the livelihood of twenty families?

The court's method was to force large families to be scattered.

In Jiangnan, and throughout the world, the clan's sustainability relies not only on bloodline, but also on visible and tangible economic benefits. If a wealthy member of the clan or the clan leader rents acres of land to people of the same clan, the rent will be half a percent lower than that of tenants with a different surname. This is the most basic source of cohesion of a clan. This is also the reason why many wealthy landlords have a strong say in the clan, and is even the reason why many landlords have "basic power".

But now?

If the land of the big households is not divided into small households with less than 100 mu, then in order to avoid huge losses, they can only register farms. After seeing the manual, it is easy to know which kind of "economy" is more beneficial to the landlords. Even if "reason" temporarily suppresses the greed of the rich landlords in the clan, they will continue to divide their land to the same clan or outsiders in the same village to cultivate, just in the guise of a "farm", just as Wang Zongquan intends to do.

One year, two years, three years, four years, in a short period of time, they can continue this ancient tradition and maintain the cohesion of the clan. But if time is too long, or news of farms making a lot of money keeps coming...

Take Wang Zongquan as an example. If Wang Zongquan heard the news that Tian Wang came to run a farm to make a lot of money, if Wang Zhizheng was not behind him to support him, could Wang Zongquan resist this temptation? Then the question is, how long can the leaders of each clan endure?

When they can't endure it, a clan will be finished. Even if they first absorb the interests of outsiders and then eat the flesh of their own people, it will only delay the time of their separation. The conflict of interests between the two sides has already determined the final fate of the "ancient clan"...

Perhaps the "clan" of the new era will be resurrected on the corpse of the old, but the clan at that time is completely different from the clan in the past. It may be more appropriate to say that it is a big family!

Tian Wanglai was very happy to see Wang Zongquan's visit. He quickly let Wang Zongquan go to the hall.

"My dear, I don't want to do things to the extreme. But isn't the situation of my family different from yours?" Tian Wanglai knew that Wang Zongquan was just putting old wine in a new bottle, and he just wanted to pretend. Wang Zongquan's reputation will definitely not be damaged at all, and he will be greatly praised, while he is the typical one who is stabbed in the back by the villagers.

If Tian Wanglai had other ways to go, he would not want to do so.

"I still have three sons and two daughters. My dear, you have read the Inheritance Law of the imperial court. The eldest son can only keep half of the family property. When I die, if our family's property is divided like this, the Tian family will only be a wealthy family in the countryside." Of course, there are many loopholes in the inheritance law, but that is not what Tian Wanglai can see.

Tian Wanglai envied Wang Zongquan, his relative, very much. He had a son who was very ambitious. Not only was he a military doctor, but he also married a daughter-in-law who was very well-known. He earned more than the Wang family every year. He also told Wang Zongquan early on that all the family property would be left to his brothers.

Wang Zongquan had a lot of property, but he only had two sons. I have little property, but I have four sons. "My dear, I have four sons." Is my own interests more important or my reputation more important? There must be many people in China who chose the latter, but there is always a "Tian Wanglai" who chose the former.

In this way, the annual income of the family's fields will not double, but at least increase by half. This is a lot of money for the Tian family.

Chen Ming certainly knew that some people would choose "Tian Wanglai", so that a group of laborers could be squeezed out. These proletarians would either enter the factory or be recruited by the reclamation company.

It's spring, and the large troops in Lanzhou and Beijing will start fighting in a few days. The entire northwest and the entire northeast need immigrants. China still has vast land to be developed and utilized, and the latter is the pressure relief valve of the entire system.

Wang Zongquan had a meal at Tian's house, hugged his grandson and talked to his daughter for a while, and returned home in silence.

Wang was surprised to see her husband return in a depressed mood. Her son Wang Zhizheng's identity as a military doctor was not ordinary, and the whole Dantu County knew that his daughter-in-law had a background. The county magistrate had to be polite to his own man. Where did her husband get angry?

"Our relative, Tian Wanglai, wants to build a farm. When I came back today, I complained to the Tian family. His tenants were kneeling in the yard crying."

"What? The Tian family really wants to build that "farm"? Isn't he afraid of being criticized?"

"What else? The Tian family has less than 150 acres of land, but they have four sons."

Wang curled her lips and said contemptuously: "No matter how many sons, it is still a bad conscience."