This storyteller named Sun Qiye has a clever mouth, and his article on the actual value of silver is explained in simple terms, and even ordinary people who don't know anything about the economy can hear the general meaning.

Jiang Chaozong is no stranger to the way the teahouse arranges a storyteller to attract tea customers. Teahouses, a public social place where people gather to drink tea and listen to rumors in the market, originated in the Jiangnan area.

The number of teahouses in Hangzhou is not only more than in other regions, but also the refreshments and entertainment activities in the teahouses are also more abundant. For example, when the Beijing teahouse has not yet differentiated the needs of customers, the teahouse in Hangzhou has been divided into meat teahouse and vegetarian teahouse.

However, the storyteller tells the last piece of news before the official storytelling, and this new form has not yet reached Hangzhou. Jiang Chaozong was quite curious when he first listened to it, but he soon became fascinated by it.

In the Ming Dynasty, from the princes and nobles to the common people, they all knew that gold and silver were wealth, but they never really understood that gold and silver were regarded as the true value of wealth.

But today's storyteller's article explains the true value of silver and gold in another way.

The article puts forward the theory that all valuable wealth is an item created and needed by man. The value of an item is essentially the socially necessary labor invested in the item.

Silver and gold are so valuable because the labor required to produce them is far greater than the production of other man-made objects. For example, it takes about 15 working days a year to take care of an acre of paddy field, while it only takes 3 working days to take care of an acre of wheat field.

Excluding the costs of growing wheat and rice, and the proportion of raw grain processed from the two, the labor force contained in 1 stone of rice is exactly about twice that of 1 stone of wheat, which is exactly the same as the proportion of the market price between the two.

However, 1 stone of wheat flour is more expensive than 1 stone of brown rice, but the price is the same as that of 1 stone of white rice, and the fundamental reason is also the difference in the labor input of the three.

At this point, the storyteller turned to the way gold and silver were made. There has been no major change in the way of gold collection from ancient times to the present, one is to collect sand gold, and dig for gold from rivers or streams rich in Jinsha resources; The second is to collect from mountain rocks containing gold.

Although the collection difficulty of the former is small, the collection efficiency is completely dependent on the reserves of gold and sand in the river. Although the latter is difficult to collect, the gold veins are concentrated, and the collection efficiency is more stable. However, these two methods of gold mining have not changed more efficiently so far.

The way silver is collected has been a breakthrough in the past century. From the ash blowing method invented in the Tang Dynasty, it has become the amalgam method used in modern times. Its production efficiency has been more than doubled, which greatly saves capital and labor input.

The ratio of gold to silver has fallen from 1:4 at the beginning of the country to more than 1:8 today. This phenomenon is in line with the theory that labor is the intrinsic value scale of commodities.

Subsequently, the article again mentioned that although the gold and silver minerals in the Ming Dynasty were not abundant, a large number of silver mines were discovered in Japan and the American continent overseas in recent times, and these silver mines were not only rich in reserves but also of astonishing grade.

In Daming 2 stone ore to get 1 tael of silver, it is already quite a high grade, most silver ore is seven stone ore to produce 1 tael of silver. However, in Iwami Ginzan, Japan, when you pick up a stone on the mountain, about half of it may be silver, and the silver mountain produces nearly one million taels of silver a year, and after more than 100 years of mining, it has not yet seen the end of exhaustion.

As for the American continent, in Mexico, Peru and other places under the control of the Spaniards, there are countless silver mountains. The silver shipped back to Spain from the American continent every year alone is close to tens of millions of taels, and it has been nearly 100 years since the Spanish conquered the Americas.

Although the Ming Dynasty lacked gold and silver mines, it had abundant silver mountains in overseas land. Therefore, the people of the Ming Dynasty frantically exchanged the wealth they created for silver, which was not a good deal.

Because with the growth of overseas trade, a large amount of overseas silver will flow into the Ming Dynasty, and the silver produced in the Americas and Japan in a cheap way will be exchanged for the real valuable wealth of the Ming Dynasty, such as silk, cotton cloth and various handmade products. Therefore, fundamentally speaking, this is an unequal trade, and it is also the plundering of the wealth of the Ming people by merchants from other countries.

The article concludes: "Silver, which cannot be eaten by hunger, drunk by thirst, or warmed by cold, has the greatest function of being used as a general equivalent to measure the intrinsic value of various commodities, thereby facilitating trade relations."

But this function of use as a measure of the value of other commodities must be based on the value of silver, which is difficult to obtain, and easy to divide and store. The fundamental reason why silver is very valuable in my Daming is that the labor input of collecting one or two taels of silver in Daming is so much.

But if foreign merchants were to import cheap silver into the country, how could it be worth its present value? In contrast, isn't gold, which has always had the same price at home or overseas, more suitable as a measure of the value of a commodity? ”

When Jiang Chaozong was listening attentively, the storyteller stopped here. He patted the shocking wood on the table in front of him again, cleared his throat, and officially opened the text he wanted to talk about today, which is a paragraph in Journey to the West, the Monkey King made trouble in the Heavenly Palace.

Jiang Chaozong listened to it well, but the above one talked about Journey to the West, which suddenly made him feel a little dissatisfied. However, when he looked at the expressions of the tea customers at the adjacent tables on the left and right, he found that these tea customers didn't seem to care much about the previous news. It was only then that it was considered that for these ordinary people to discuss the value of silver and gold, it was too far away from them.

Jiang Chaozong held back his temperament, waited for this Sun Qiye to finish finishing this book, and when he came down from the stage, he got up and stopped him, and asked Sun Qiye for advice: "Dare to ask this Mr. Sun, who wrote the article you just said?" Can you tell me one or two? After listening to it just now, I have some questions in my heart, and I really want to ask the gentleman who wrote this article. ”

After Sun Qiye glanced at him, he said calmly: "The author of this article is called Su Changqing, as for how to ask him for advice, you might as well buy a copy of today's Daming Times." There is the address of the newspaper on it, you can write a letter to ask, but it is difficult to guarantee whether they are free to reply to you. ”

After finishing speaking, this Sun Qiye nodded at him and walked away. Although Jiang Chaozong still had some things to ask, he saw that he was in a hurry and seemed to have something to do, so he didn't continue to stop him.

After returning to his seat, Jiang Chaozong asked the guy in the teahouse to settle the bill, and asked him where the Daming Times was for sale. This guy was quite eye-catching, and immediately offered to buy it for the guest.

A moment later, Jiang Chaozong took the newspaper from his man's hand, and he stood there and hurriedly flipped through it. Sure enough, as the storyteller said, this article was written by a person named Su Changqing. Although the newspaper does not have the address of this Su Changqing, there is an address for the mailing of readers' opinions.

When Jiang Chaozong was about to go back to write a letter, he found that under Su Changqing's article, there was also a news about the establishment of the gold futures market.

Jiang Chaozong looked at the article written by Su Changqing above, and his heart couldn't help but move. He gathered up the newspaper in his hand and sent the two servants back to the inn first. He himself went out and called a carriage and went to No. 148 Wangfujing Street, where the gold futures market was indicated in the newspaper.

After hearing or reading this article in the Daming Times, there are not a few businessmen like Jiang Chaozong who are interested in the value ratio of gold and silver.

At this time, Chongzhen, Hubu, and the three banks were also nervously paying attention to the changes in the exchange ratio of gold and silver in the market. In the past few days, Chongzhen has even shirked most of his official work and spent all his energy on this matter.

After the announcement of the gold bill, although the ratio of gold to silver in the market continued to rise, when it reached the 1:12 mark, it began to slowly fall, and even returned to the 1:10 exchange ratio for a time.

The reason for this is that both the Ministry of Accounts and the directors of these banks have underestimated the amount of gold reserves of the private sector. When the gold bill was announced, the three banks aggressively absorbed gold, pushing up the ratio of gold to silver. But soon some people decided that the price of gold was too high, and they sold their gold in exchange for what they thought was undervalued silver.

Taken together, these bits and pieces of gold became a huge number, which immediately suppressed the price of gold. At this time, whether it was Chongzhen or the shareholders behind the three banks, they were all forced to the cliff.

If gold is allowed to fall like this, their gold reserves will soon collapse. But in order to raise the price of gold through unlimited purchases, it seems that the three banks are still underfunded.

Originally, everyone was very optimistic that the gold reserves of the Ming government and the private sector were at most 3 or 400 tons, and as long as the three banks could purchase more than 200 tons of gold, then the price of gold could be manipulated.

The purchase of gold at a cost of 1:8 is only 51.2 million taels of silver, and the three banks have already prepared 70 million taels of silver for this purpose, and the household department and the internal government have also borrowed 20 million yuan in reserves from various public bonds.

But now the three banks, plus the imperial court and the inner government, have collected more than 250 tons of gold, but the gold in the market is still being sold. This shows that everyone's previous estimates were wrong, and the latest data shows that Daming's gold reserves are at least nearly 1,000 tons, while silver reserves are more than 15,000 tons.

That is to say, the Ming Dynasty has between 4.5 and 5.5 billion taels of silver, and the three banks, plus the imperial court and the inner government, can use less than a quarter of the total amount of silver. At this time, what determines the exchange ratio of gold and silver has become the capital of the people.

In the final analysis, this is because the worship of silver by the people of the Ming Dynasty is too deep-rooted. They couldn't believe that the ratio of gold to silver could exceed 1:10. Therefore, after the introduction of the Gold Act, not only did not keep the gold and sold silver, but also took the initiative to sell the gold in the cellar to balance the price of gold in the market.

By this time, Zhu Youzhen also had to start mobilizing all means to crack down on the common people and merchants who had illusions about silver. The gold futures market was opened to ease the pressure on the spot market, and began to publicize the theory of silver depreciation and the essence of the currency with great fanfare, in the hope that some people would join in the bearish position of silver.