Ha Jing, the city of the womb that gave birth to the Nanzhong Army, the atmosphere over the city has become a little weird and tense.

On the sea, Li Huamei led her own warship and more than a dozen gunboats, large and small, to check all kinds of ships on the sea, check the identity documents of people entering and leaving, and immediately arrest those whose identities were unknown.

On land, from Ha Tinh, Thanh Hoa, Thang Long, Hue, to Schai Stick and Manraga, the security departments of the South Central Army, with the cooperation of all the armies, secretly arrested and interrogated people with suspicious deeds in a state of internal tightness and external relaxation.

For a while, in the eyes of discerning people, the atmosphere in Nanzhong was a little depressing.

This atmosphere even affected Xu Hongzu, who visited and traveled in the Jiulongjiang area.

Under a polished copper oil lamp, he twisted the flames, which shone softly through the polished crystal clear glass lampshade.

Unfolding the pen and paper, he began to write down what he had seen and heard and thought about the day according to his old habits.

After visiting the roads, villages, and some less important workshops around Hue and Ha Tinh, Li Huayu, who accompanied him, ordered someone to take a map of Nanzhong, which clearly marked the division of administrative regions in various places, and listed them clearly from prefectures, prefectures, counties, and towns. Please choose one or two villages according to your hobbies to experience the life of the people of Nanzhong.

And it was at this time that Xu Hongzu chose this town on the edge of the Jiulong River.

Slightly different from many villages and towns in the Jiulongjiang area, this riverside town has some farmland where vegetables are grown. Scattered around the fish ponds, there is little to do with farming. This town, its main business is another traditional business, weaving.

As Xu Hongzu from Jiangyin, he is no stranger to spinning and weaving, but he has never seen such a huge spinning and weaving field.

Every three or two days, huge ships will appear on the riverside, unloading bales of Tianzhu cotton, and various factories in the town will buy cotton in large quantities. The cotton is sorted and processed. It is spun into cotton yarn and then made into cotton cloth of various colors that is finer and tighter than Matsue muslin by a professional weaving factory. Then, someone would transport the cotton cloth to various places or send it to the printing and dyeing factory to be dyed.

Lift the wolf in your hand. Xu Hongzu felt that it was as heavy as a thousand catties. There seemed to be a lot of words to be put on paper in my heart. But I don't know where to start.

Say what? It is said that the rice here is harvested three times a year. In order to make it less difficult for the government, farmers began to gradually change the three-cropping rice into double-cropping rice to improve the taste of the rice. Increase the selling price? In order to improve the survival rate of piglets, the farmers here do not hesitate to supply a large amount of fish soup to the postpartum sows to enhance the nutrition of the sows? Or did many farmers in this earliest development of land not hesitate to divide their families in order to open up more land, and then hired a large number of native laborers to cultivate the land?

Or is it that the roads here are as smooth as a stone? The abundance of food and the low prices of food surprised him, who came from a rich land of fish and rice, and felt that he was like a countryman entering the city.

However, after thinking about it, Xu Hongzu still felt that two things had the greatest impact on him.

One is the tax system here. It's just outrageous! For farmers who simply farm, the tax is low, and the government also buys grain and oil crops at protective prices and gives subsidies to farmers in the form of industrial vouchers. However, as soon as the peasants sell their crops, meat, and oil crops to the market, they will immediately have to pay various taxes to the door.

Business tax, income tax, if those larger farms have to charge more taxes according to the scale, it is called a ladder tax system. What is even more strange is that in the face of such taxes, the peasants and the merchants and gentry in the towns are willing to eat.

"What's the matter, even the generals in the palace have to pay taxes! Moreover, according to the tax rate set by the adults themselves, his taxes are more than those paid by anyone in Nanzhong! ”

From the supreme ruler to the street vendors, they all have to pay taxes on money and grain, which makes Xu Hongzu from Jiangyin only shake his head and be amazed. This is impossible to happen in the rich land of Jiangnan, where the tide of tax resistance is continuous.

However, there is no such thing as a poll tax. The taxes here are charged according to your property and income, for example, General Li, he has more property and income, then, sorry, you have to pay more taxes. Even to the point where half of the annual income has to be taxed.

"Maybe this is the way the roads, bridges, post stations, chariots, horses, and soldiers come from in Nanzhong, right?"

Recording this extremely impressive system and the parallel social phenomena in his notebook, and writing down the results of this tax system by the way, Xu Hongzu nodded with satisfaction.

However, the second thing made him a little worried.

That's the sound of spinning and weaving in this town. From the early hours of the morning until late at night, the whole town was enveloped by this sound for almost eight or nine hours out of twelve hours.

This voice made Xu Hongzu's heart tremble when he heard it.

He also once talked with several fellow villagers who opened a weaving yard at home, and it is necessary to know that the most important experience is that the same cotton is in the hands of skilled hands, in the hands of good hands, and in the hands of masters, and the woven cloth is absolutely different in quality. This spinning and weaving matter requires a high level of skill as you can imagine.

However, here, Xu Hongzu seems to have only seen some people who have just come into contact with spinning and weaving skills, and by the standards of Jiangnan, they can barely be regarded as proficient, and they have not seen many so-called good hands and masters.

A terrible thought crossed his mind, "If such a beautiful cloth can be woven by simple skilled hands, what does it depend on?" If it is the work of textile machinery, if it is Nanzhong to sell to Jiangnan, Huguang, Zhili, Shandong, Shaanxi, Xuanda, Liaodong and other places, what should I do if I rely on spinning and weaving for a living? ”

Pushing open the door, Xu Hongzu walked into the courtyard, a few points of starlight in the night sky accompanied by a cold moon, and there was a faint sound of a machine in the distant house, which made his heart beat in horror. Like a golden iron horse.

"Unexpectedly, General Li is not only powerful on the battlefield, but also powerful in this way of wealth and taxation and people's livelihood!"

However, what Xu Hongzu didn't expect was that at this moment, the incomparably powerful General Li in his heart, Li Shouhan, was listening to the reports of various departments on the explosion accident of the gunpowder factory with a blue face in Hejing.

Over the years, the gunpowder factory has relied on the old soil of the toilet to purify potassium nitrate, nitrate fields to provide potassium nitrate, corn stalks to replace willow charcoal after carbonization, and Japanese sulfur and other extremely cheap raw materials to make a large number of gunpowder to meet the gunpowder needs of the army and the people. The only difference is a few performance metrics.

In order to be able to guarantee the consumption of a large number of firearms in the army. and the consumption of rocks required for the construction of civil construction. There is also the need for self-defense firearms on those long-distance ships, and every harvest season, a large amount of corn is purchased by local governments one by one, and after simple processing. Sent to the gunpowder factory for carbonization. And in order to ensure the need for sulfur. This became an important part of the trade between the South China Army and Japan. Almost all the ships that traveled between Japan and Nanzhong carried large quantities of sulfur as ballast. The Ryukyu lord sold sulfur and sugarcane as the main products of his country. A steady stream of raw materials was transported to the gunpowder factory, where it was processed into powerful gunpowder, which ensured the huge demand of the South China Army.

But. On the day when the Qing army was ordered by the general Dolgon and the Yangwu general Yue Tuo to divide the army, and successively entered from Dongjiakou and Miyun Qiangziling, and launched a plundering operation against the Guannei, this gunpowder factory of great significance to the Nanzhong Army had an explosion in the reserve warehouse, which flattened a hill that was a cave warehouse. Tens of thousands of stones of gunpowder stored in the storehouse were reduced to ashes.

"Ladies and gentlemen, let's talk about it! What the hell is going on? ”

Shouhan's voice was not loud, but it was as cold as ice. Hearing it made several directors of Ha Jing Manufacturing and the military industry tremble.

With such a huge loss, it may be difficult to eliminate the anger in the lord's heart without killing a few heads. However, if the head of the six yangs on this head is treated well, he has to leave like this, which is really a bit unwilling.

"Speak! On weekdays, it's not all the sound of the chest, and it's okay to say anything. Words like the military order, now that something has happened, how can it become a sawed gourd?! ”

In the face of the thunderous anger of the guards, Ling Kun and the others could only adopt one attitude, that is, to make a fortune in a muffled voice. There was an expression of extreme pain on his face, to deal with the roar of the lord, so as not to set himself on fire.

However, there are often thorns in any group, and there are also such figures in the many stewards of Ha Jing Manufacturing and Ha Jing Chemical.

Just when Shouhan's chest was heaving and heaving by the group of stewards and shopkeepers who knelt in front of him to ask for sin, and there was a rush of impulse to kill in his chest, a voice sounded at the end of the procession.

"In fact, if there is a disaster like today, the lord and the stewards at all levels are all guilty!"

This voice made Shouhan's anger even more difficult to contain.

"Who's talking?!"

Ling Kun, who was kneeling in the front row, kowtowed like pounding garlic, "The Lord is gracious!" The Lord is gracious! ”

Two pro-soldiers had already taken the speaker out of the back of the line and dragged him to the guard.

"Chen Xuanping is a third-class manager under my Hejing Chemical Industry, responsible for supervising the gunpowder field, military factory and other places." Lin Huofeng, the big shopkeeper, saw that someone jumped out, and his mind was spinning, planning to send this unlucky guy as the head of the Shouhan to dissipate his anger.

"Tell me, why do you say that I and everyone are responsible?"

Shouhan was not so angry, and even waved his hand to let the two personal soldiers let go of Chen Xunping and let him stand up and speak.

"The lord, the big treasurer, the shopkeeper, the steward, is a steward in the next number, although the official position is small, but he also knows how to serve the lord and the money and food sent down every month. However, my lord, since moving to the north, in order to open up the roads between Liangguang and Nanzhong, he has spared no effort to mobilize people's manpower and money to build roads on a large scale, among which our gunpowder field is to provide 10,000 stones of gunpowder to Liangguang every month. And that's not even counting the gunpowder needed for the armies and armies everywhere. ”

"However, in the face of such a major mission of the main bus generation, how do officials at all levels deal with it?"

Hearing Chen Xunping say this, Ling Kun and the others all lowered their heads.

These people who were craftsmen at that time, with the smooth sailing of the Han Dynasty career over the years, most of them have good tempers, and their ways and attitudes have also changed a lot unconsciously. The stewards and treasurers only give orders and give tasks in their own signing rooms. Supervise the completion.

The will of the chief, the hall, not acting according to the technique, the exaggerated and brutal work, and many other problems exist to varying degrees.

"Rank lord, the kid is a late-born junior, but today in front of the lord dared to ask, since the lord issued an official document to increase the monthly supply of gunpowder, in addition to the official document, supervise the entry of raw materials, and urge all departments to speed up the production progress, have you ever been to the gunpowder factory one day to see the production situation there? Did you ever know that in order to catch up with the schedule? The workers quietly threw aside many of the rules set by the lord back then. As long as the yield? ”

Hearing Chen Xunping say this, Shouhan had already understood seven or eight points, and the explosion of the gunpowder factory was not so much a disaster. It's not so much an accident. There is no respect for science at all levels. This tragedy was caused by not following the operating procedures and the safety system. For this. He paid the price of tens of thousands of stones of gunpowder and hundreds of human lives.

"Alright, let's all get up!"

Shouhan's words were still not loud, but they were not as cold as they were at first.

"My subordinates have thanked the Lord for his grace!"

"Something like this happened. What a great misfortune! The dead and wounded should be given heavy compensation. I took out money from you and me to give bereavement to the bereaved families of these hundreds of people. Those who have a household registration to support the children of the elderly, and laborers and officials and slaves who do not have a household registration, ask their families what they think, as long as it is within the law, try to satisfy it. Thanks to the fact that there is no war at the moment, there is no enemy around our army for the time being, if such a thing happens when the tigers and wolves are around, you and this officer will not be able to save your lives! ”

"So this is a great blessing in the midst of great misfortune!"

"The thing is in the gunpowder factory, but what about the steel plant? And what about the military factories? What about the shipyard, is there something similar? ”

"After the subordinates returned, they immediately made an inventory in various workshops, mines, and forest farms, and anyone who had similar things was severely punished!"

"Severe punishment? It's just a palliative. Can you guarantee that you won't relapse in a few months, or this time next year? ”

Shouhan's words, every word is like an awl pierced into the heart of the group of stewards and shopkeepers in front of him. Many people have such an idea in their hearts, and when the gunpowder factory is restored, the lord's anger has passed, and everything is naturally calm and everything is as usual. Tea is drunk, music is heard.

"Ladies and gentlemen, many of you are old people who followed me when they were guarding the Mansion, and now when I see you, I can't help but think of the scene at the beginning of your business with this official, what kind of energy is that? In order to make the artillery better and faster, there were one or two more guns every day, and everyone ate and lived in the workshop, and some people did not even wash their faces and change their clothes for several days, let alone go home to reunite with their families. But why now? ”

Seeing Shouhan mention the years when he started his business, Ling Kun, Lin Huofeng, Feng Mofeng and others all lowered their heads. As they grew older and their living conditions improved, they had long since stopped working in the workshop, but were accustomed to signing paperwork in the signature room.

Those sweaty, tired days seem to be very long, and they can't even remember them for a long time, as if they have lived like this from the beginning.

Thinking of this, Ling Kun and the others fell to their knees again.

"The subordinates forgot this! I hope that the lord will punish him! ”

"It's okay, some things are left for a while, let's just get him back!" Shouhan is still quite satisfied with the performance of his group of managers and technicians, at least, they can be shameful and courageous.

"From tomorrow onwards, you will take turns to return to your old business in your respective factories, mines, forestry farms, carpentry mills, and shipyards. In the process of work, if you find any unreasonable rules and regulations, backward technology, potential safety hazards, and the implementation system is not in place, you will rectify it on the spot! In addition, workers who work in the front line and engage in production, whether they are serious workers or those official slaves and laborers, as long as they have a reasonable view of technology, craftsmanship and management, can be promoted and rewarded. Workers with household registration are promoted to be foremen and foremen, and those laborers, official slaves and the like are rewarded with household registration! You stewards and shopkeepers go down and work with the workers to meet, and maybe you can come up with something new! ”

"Stewards and shopkeepers participate in labor, workers participate in daily management, unreasonable rules and regulations are reformed, backward technology is transformed, and workers are not divided into officials and slaves, and laborers work together with the shopkeeper and craftsmen?"

Ling Kun repeated the core tenet of Shouhan's speech.

"My lord, what should I do if I am so humiliated?"

"In front of the technique, there is no condescension and inferiority! When it comes to metallurgical forging, can I be better than you, a veteran craftsman? When it comes to building weapons and houses, who can I be better than those who build factories and military factories? ”

The next day, in the workshops all over Ha Tinh, among several large manufacturing and metallurgical factories filled with the smell of soot and sparks, a sight appeared that the workers, laborers, officials and slaves who were fighting for their lives on the front line could not believe it. In the past, many of the treasurers, who were high up in the sky like gods, took off their silk and satin, changed into cotton jackets and coarse cloth overalls, and appeared by the blast furnace to work with them.

Many managers and shopkeepers of the construction plant gathered on the ruins of the original gunpowder factory, surveyed the site, calculated the materials, and prepared to start building the gunpowder factory again.

Soon, Shouhan put forward the system of "managers and shopkeepers participating in labor, workers participating in daily management, reforming unreasonable rules and regulations to transform backward craftsmanship and technology, and workers working together with stewards and craftsmen regardless of official slaves".

Immediately the factories became enthusiastic, "Once the initiative and enthusiasm of the workers are brought into play, they will do things that you don't expect." ”

Lin Huofeng, Ling Kun, Feng Mofeng and others chewed on Shouhan's words when he left, and felt more and more tasteful.

However, Shouhan can't take care of this side.

Wang Dehua had rushed from Guangzhou to Hue in the dust. (To be continued......)

PS: There are some things at home that have delayed the update these days. This chapter hides some good things in our country back then, but unfortunately, the walls bloom and the walls are fragrant. After the export turned to domestic sales, it became a treasure again. Alas!