By the time the group of horsemen arrived at the hall, it was already dark.

Everyone found an inn in the town to stay together, and set off into Miaofeng Mountain before dawn the next day.

The anthracite coal of Myofeng Mountain is of the best quality, and Guangrokuji Temple purchases a lot of it every year, some of which is used for palace banquets, and some of which is given to the elders and adults of the ministry as 'charcoals'.

Several of the bosses of the Miaofeng Mountain Coal Kiln live in the town, and everything Ambassador Hou wants to do was done last night...... In fact, if it weren't for accompanying Zhao Hao, he would have called a few bosses to Beijing City directly, and he would have been able to spend all day drinking.

Along the mountain road, from time to time, I saw a foreman holding a whip and driving a group of cranes down the mountain. I saw that the flat shoulders on the shoulders of those pickers were bent into crescents, and the weight of the coal in the basket was one or two hundred catties......

"Is that how the coal is transported down the mountain?" Zhao Hao asked the boss of Miaofeng Mountain Coal who came with him in surprise.

"Elsewhere, where it's a little more gentle, you can use a wheelbarrow." The coal boss surnamed Niu replied with a smile: "No way, the road in Miaofeng Mountain is too steep...... However, they are more willing to earn more in this way. ”

Zhao Hao nodded noncommittally, and asked Boss Niu about the situation of the entire Xishan coal kiln.

"There are about four or five hundred coal kilns in the entire Xishan, this number is not accurate." Boss Niu replied: "Because the coal kiln is easy to seep water, once the water seepage is quickly filled, it can only be scrapped and dug another one, so it is often abandoned and opened, and no one has an accurate number." ”

"How many official kilns and how many private kilns are there in these coal kilns?" Zhao Hao asked again.

"More than eighty percent are private kilns, and the official kilns and the coal kilns in the palace only account for more than one percent, and they are all entrusted to us to operate, as long as the coal is sent into Beijing regularly and quantitatively, the rest does not care......" Boss Niu wanted to say that Guanglu Temple and us are in this kind of relationship, but I don't know how Ambassador Hou told this son, so he stopped talking.

"Is the tax heavy?" Zhao Hao asked again.

"Heavy, why not heavy?" Boss Niu said with a bitter face.

"Isn't it thirty taxes and one?" Zhao Haoxin said, this person is really not enough.

"Thirty taxes are true." The boss of the cow vomited bitterly and said: "But in addition to the regular payment of mining taxes, there are also various assessments in the county. If we can't find a point, we will say that we will take in the displaced people and directly seal the mine......"

Zhao Hao sneered secretly when he heard this, and said in his heart that this is out of breath? Thirty years later, when the Wanli Emperor released his mine tax collector, you will know what cruelty is.

When the time comes, you will definitely miss the ...... of Emperor Longqing, who was lightly endowed and did not toss

~~

After walking along the steep mountain road for more than an hour, Zhao Hao and his party arrived at the mining area located in the valley in the morning.

From a distance, I saw twenty or thirty small mine holes open like a hornet's nest on the hillside, hundreds of black miners coming in and out, and ants carrying baskets of coal as if they were moving. After the check-in of the accounts was weighed, the pickers waiting outside picked up the coal baskets with their flat shoulders and carried them down the hill with a twisted twist. Once they have gathered enough teams, there will be a foreman to supervise their transportation to the Yongding River at the foot of the mountain.

After just turning around the mine, Zhao Hao thought of more than a dozen ways to improve production efficiency.

However, he had already made up his mind, and today he only watched and asked without talking, so naturally he would not tell the coal boss surnamed Niu.

"This is all your coal kiln?" Standing outside a dark coal kiln, Zhao Hao asked casually.

"If the villain has so many kilns, won't he become the richest man in Mentougou?" The coal boss couldn't help laughing and said: "There are a total of six of these kilns, and only five kilns are villains." ”

"I think you're about the richest man." Ambassador Hou quipped.

In the laughter of the two, Zhao Hao suddenly remembered his name as the richest man in Caijia Lane, and couldn't help but awkwardly divert the topic, and asked the coal boss how he found this coal-rich valley in the mountains.

At this time, there was no concept of surveying and geological exploration, but the kiln owners had their own set of skills similar to the trick of finding coal in the field.

Although people would not reveal the secret of eating to Zhao Hao, for the sake of Ambassador Hou, they still showed him tools such as tape measures, compasses, benchmarks, buckets and shovels used for prospecting, as well as their hand-drawn topographic diagrams.

On that topographic map, Zhao Hao even saw the contour line, a mapping method that would only be adopted by the West a hundred and fifty years later.

On the contrary, the coal kiln itself, there is nothing surprising, the coal kiln here is very shallow, the deepest is only twenty or thirty zhang, and most of them are dug to about ten zhang from the ground and then abandoned.

This is because it is limited by the level of the tool, and it is not cost-effective to dig deeper. Second, the Xishan area is exactly the place where Beijing's groundwater is enriched, and it is often dug down for about ten zhang that water will seep out, and if it is not drained in time, the well will soon be unable to work.

In addition, the coal resources in this area are too abundant, so that the kiln owners are too lazy to spend the cost of drainage, so it is better to find another coal nest......

And because the mine is not deep, most of it is well ventilated. In a small number of deep mines, it is enough to use hollow bamboos for exhaust air, and no ventilation machinery such as windmills, wind cabinets, and fans are used, which makes Zhao Hao slightly disappointed.

However, through conversations with several coal bosses, he found that the other party was also very dissatisfied with the current way of mining. After all, no matter how abundant the coal mines in Xishan are, it is not a great waste for them to dig a shovel and produce coal, and to discard coal nests casually.

Therefore, if there are tools that can automatically drain water and transport, they are very willing to use them.

~~

After visiting the small coal kiln, Zhao Hao's eyes were attracted by a high-walled compound full of thorns.

"This is the pot guy that our six families have built together, and it is where the workers eat and sleep." Boss Niu hurriedly explained.

"Go in and have a look." Zhao Hao said.

"Childe, don't want it, it's smelly and dirty, so many people are crowded inside......" Boss Niu showed a look of embarrassment.

Zhao Hao walked straight towards the small door.

"Alas......" Boss Niu glanced at Ambassador Hou and couldn't help but whisper: "Why does this son brought by the adult have such a peculiar hobby?" ”

"How do I know?" Ambassador Hou was almost tired, and he regretted following Zhao Hao into the mountain.

Boss Niu had no choice but to let people open the heavy iron door.

I saw more than 100 black and dirty miners squatting in the courtyard. Each of them held a porcelain bowl with only a few oily flowers floating in the cabbage soup. The miners, with two or three equally black nests in their black hands, were gobbling them up.

Hearing the door, the miners raised their eyelids and ignored them when they saw that it was not their foreman. But the leader of the pot came over and asked the boss of one of the owners, Boss Niu.

By questioning the gang leader, Zhao Hao learned that there were more than 800 miners in and out of the mine. The pot guys have limited supply capacity, so they have to come back to eat in shifts.

In fact, even if it can be supplied, in order to save time, the coal bosses will only let the miners eat one hot meal a day, and then each person will be given three nests, and then they will enter the mine with them. When you are hungry for work, you will gnaw two mouthfuls of nests, and when you are thirsty, you will drink the stagnant water in the mine.

Zhao Shizhen asked what to do if you get sick like this? The dozens of people lying on the Chase bunk in the house are injuries and illnesses caused by various reasons. The guy in the pot guy is also a doctor, whoever is sick will grab some herbs indiscriminately, it is luck to be cured, and it is normal to be cured. And although it doesn't cost money to see a doctor, it is much more expensive to get medicine than in the town......

Later, these words were not heard from the mouth of the gang leader. Instead, Zhao Hao asked Gao Wu to take out a bag of copper coins that he had exchanged in the town and distributed them directly to the workers present. Those insensitive miners finally reacted, and they could laugh and thank them, and they could talk about it.

After talking to them, Zhao Hao learned that the miners had to work in the mine until the summer of the next year before they could settle their bills and go home. Before that, they had to eat and live in the mine, and even if they only had one day off during the Chinese New Year, they were not allowed to leave the pot for a single step. The coal bosses are very self-aware, and they know that with their abuse of the miners, once they are released, I am afraid that most of them will not come back.

But the coal boss also told Zhao Hao that it was not their original intention to build the pot gang into a prison, but from the request of the imperial court.

Because Xishan was too close to Jingshi, the coal kiln recruited a large number of displaced people. The imperial court was naturally very wary of the gathering of displaced people, lest a riot might endanger the capitalists.

But the people inside and outside the capital could not bear this hardship, and the coal kilns were reluctant to use these cheap labor, so the two sides reached a compromise, and the coal boss restricted the freedom of the miners, and if the miners caused trouble, the coal boss would be jointly and severally responsible.

In order to avoid the uncontrollable number of people, the coal boss can only take the initiative to reduce the number of recruits, because the scale of production has been greatly limited. I heard a few coal bosses brag that if the imperial court did not restrict the displaced people, they could increase the scale of production tenfold, so that the entire Zhili could burn the coal of Xishan.

Although I don't know how true or false they are, combined with what Wu Kangyuan said at the beginning, it seems that the imperial court does have a negative attitude towards the homeless.

However, the East Mountain Tiger eats people, the West Mountain Tiger will not be a vegetarian, and these coal bosses will not be more merciful than the British capitalists of the 17th century.

When he left here, Zhao Hao suddenly realized that he was actually a member of the capitalists......

ps. The third more guaranteed is delivered, asking for monthly passes, recommended tickets ~~~~