When they arrived at the iron prison and got off the train, Su Song and Liu Zhuo waited at the station early. After the cold noise, several people went outside together.

As soon as I left the station, I saw that it was very lively outside, and a large group of workers were noisily loading goods on the train.

Ouyang Xiu saw that most of the loaded farm tools were farm tools, and asked Su Song beside him: "The farm tools produced here are really easy to sell!" I don't know where this guest is? Such a big deal! With so many goods, I think it is a big businessman. ”

Su Song said: "Long Tu, this is the goods of Xuzhou and Chenzhou. After the Tangzhou assembly, when Yan Xianggong and Song Xianggong went back, they stayed in the iron prison for a few days, and ordered Benzhou to send officials to buy goods here. The iron superintendent's farm implements were made and sent to them first. ”

Ouyang Xiu heard this, and stomped his foot violently: "Alas, but I forgot about it!" You have a lot of agricultural equipment, but there are many people who need it, if you can't deliver it first, one is not good, and it will not be good to pass the season! I can't wait for this matter, I will stay for a few days, and let Lu Tongju send someone here! ”

What are the identities of these governors? They sent people to wait here, and no one dared to fight with them, and they sent out the goods as soon as they could. Of course, the purchase of agricultural tools is not paid by the government, but by the people under the rule of local organizations, pooling money to buy them uniformly. Particularly large households, extremely positive on this matter.

Caizhou is in the lower reaches of the Li River, directly by water, and does not compete with other states. Xuzhou and Chenzhou not only had to compete for the first delivery, but also had to compete for a number of train freight carriages, and without the support of the government, they were squeezed behind by those big merchants.

Yingzhou's general judgment was written by Lu Gong at this time, and Lu Yijian's third son, who was deeply valued by Ouyang Xiu. However, this person has many advantages, that is, he does not take the initiative to do things, and he is not good at showing off. He may have learned about the situation of the Iron Prison from other officials, but he would not take any action on his own.

How much can an official achieve at the local level? In this era, economic development is slow, technology is even more sluggish, and it is worth mentioning that people can live and work in peace and contentment. The promotion of new agricultural tools can be recorded in the history books, how can it be let go?

When he returned to the Iron Prison, Ouyang Xiu asked for a pen and paper, and asked Lu Gongzhu to immediately send someone to the Iron Prison and bring a few large households to buy new farm tools together.

Du Zhongxiao and Su Song sat on the side and said to him: "Have you tried the newly made horse-drawn sickle last year in the field?" ”

Su Song said: "Now that the wheat has just flowered, there is still more than a month before the harvest, how to try?" ”

Du Zhongxiao said: "What we try is whether we can cut wheat, as long as the wheat seedlings grow, we can try." Why wait for the wheat to ripen? ”

Su Song immediately woke up when he heard this: "What the judgment said is that it is true. - It's just that it's a bit of a waste of food. ”

Du Zhongxiao shook his head with a smile: "Compared with the success of the machine, what is that little wheat!" Try it out early, we can use the idle personnel of the iron prison to form a team and take this machine to Lianghuai to harvest wheat. There is the most wheat grown, so let them see the benefits of the machine and come to buy it without worry. Moreover, I have heard that if you harvest wheat in two Huai, you can get half of the grain. Well done, you can bring back a lot of wheat. ”

At this time, Lianghuai was the most important wheat producing area in the world, with Yangzhou and Chuzhou as the center. The wheat harvest season is the busiest, and after the wheat is harvested, we must hurry up and plant rice, and we must not delay for a moment. Every wheat harvest season, there are people in Liangzhejiang who go up the river by boat to Lianghuai to cut wheat. When they had harvested the wheat, they had half of the harvest. It is often said that the people of Liangzhejiang do not need to grow their own wheat, and half of the harvest of Lianghuai is theirs.

This is the wheat customer of this era, but because of geography, climate and historical reasons, at this time, it is the people of Liangzhejiang who go to Lianghuai to do it. In later generations, with the change of climate and agricultural conditions, it shifted from the southeast to the northwest. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, farmers in the northwest often went to the areas where the wheat was ripe to help people harvest wheat when the wheat was ripe. The wheat customer received the income, and the wheat farmer grabbed the agricultural time, and both benefited from each other. The harvester became popular, and it became a mobile province with a machine, and the scale was spectacular. Its scale is no less than the most magnificent mechanized war in history.

At this time, the wheat customers were different from the later generations, they arrived in Lianghuai, and after harvesting the wheat, they were also responsible for threshing the wheat. At the same time, the host family is racing against time to plant rice in the field where the wheat has been harvested. The wheat was harvested, and the rice in the field was planted, similar to the mechanized army of harvesters.

The land is vast and sparsely populated, and the human resources are scarce, and the income of the wheat customers is not comparable to that of later generations, and they generally take half of the harvested wheat.

The two seasons of rice and wheat in a year did not appear for a long time, and it was very rare in the Tang Dynasty, and it was only promoted in the two Huaijiang and Zhejiang after entering the Song Dynasty. The Song Dynasty did not establish a field system, and the tax collection was based on the old practice of the previous dynasty, and the two taxes were only collected for one season, and the wheat was not collected after the rice was collected. Most landlords lease their land and only receive rent for one crop. Wheat is easy to grow, columbs do not require much manpower, and field management is convenient. For large households, it is regarded as renting out the land, and half of the harvest is rented locally.

With the newly made farm tools made by the iron supervisor, he went to Lianghuai to work for a month or two, and the grain received was extremely considerable. The greatest use of the horse-drawn harvester is not to plant more land, but to achieve two crops a year in a wider area.

From south to north, the two Zhejiang regions are relatively warm, and the time for wheat harvesting and rice planting is relatively abundant. When I arrived in Lianghuai, the time was very tight, and I had to hire someone to cut the wheat. If you go north to Jingdong Road, you can only have one season a year, and it is too late to plant other wheat after harvesting it. The same is true in the central part of the country, there is plenty of time to harvest wheat and plant rice south of Dongting Lake, and the area around Xiangyang in Nanyang begins to be tense, and after Fangcheng Mountain, it is impossible to have two seasons a year.

Su Song listened to Du Zhongxiao's words and said, "What the judgment said is that when you go to Lianghuai, you can go down the Bianhe River and harvest a season, and you can get a lot of grain." Last year, most of the grain and rice in the Iron Prison were transferred from other states by the Transshipment Division, and this year, when the Iron Prison made money, all of them were counted as loans. The money we are earning now is not only to buy grain and rice, but also to repay the principal and interest to the Transit Division, and there is a severe shortage of food. ”

Du Zhongxiao smiled and shook his head, if he didn't do this, he wouldn't be a transshipment division. You can't blame them, they helped when it was difficult, and now that the iron prison is developed, it is also appropriate to collect some interest and go back. There is a tradition in the three-division system to do this kind of thing, as long as the place does not starve to death, it will try to receive money and food in their own hands. Now most likely, the 500,000 yuan started by the iron supervisor and the iron supervisor will also be taken back. Although the money came from the inner treasury, the account was in the hands of the three divisions, and they only needed to change the 500,000 guan into the inner treasury and allocate it to the three divisions with a stroke of a large pen.

After the Taizong Dynasty, the three divisions have always been short of money. One is the increase in expenses, and the other is the Taizong Quanshu, which has put a lot of the original income of the Zuozang Treasury into the Inner Treasury, and all the newly minted money in the world has been put into the Inner Treasury. Don't think that the whole world belongs to the emperor, and the emperor will not matter, they are actually very clear. The inner treasury is your own money, and the left treasury is at public expense, so you don't spend it the same. The money of the three divisions was never enough, so they had to borrow from the emperor, and they accumulated more and more every year, and the dead pigs were not afraid of boiling water, so they simply did not pay it back. Every few years, the emperor is gracious and writes off the accounts to the three divisions, and he can calmly spend the money in his inner treasury. Foreign officials are short of manpower and can only endure for a while. If not, the officials will gossip about spending the money of the inner treasury.

The same is true for the iron supervisor, if there is more money in the account, it will inevitably be taken away by the third division. At the beginning, I would find an excuse, like the 500,000 yuan to make you pay off the principal and interest, or raise taxes. If you get used to it, you won't find any excuses, and you will just set up a name to get money.

Du Zhongxiao knew this, so as soon as the iron supervisor had a profit, he would either recruit people, or expand the scale and increase assets, and there would not be much money left in the account anyway. In addition to taxes, the money and grain left over from the local government are called envy surpluses, and those who pay more can be promoted. But if you hand over the surplus, you will inevitably loot the place and end up with the name of a cool official. It's just a bad name, as long as you are promoted, the problem is that it depends on the mood of the emperor and the prime minister. It is not a good official to carve off the people, if you are not careful, the official will not be promoted, and you will be belittled. When Empress Dowager Liu was in power, this kind of thing happened and continues to the present.

Du Zhongxiao will not do anything that touches the head, and the relationship between the construction of the iron supervision and profits has always been just right. There is a little surplus in the account, and once there is a large amount of income, it is invested in infrastructure construction.

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