Wu Haogu stood there, quietly, seriously, looking at every Changgong who left.

Everyone had satisfaction, meekness, and joy on their faces, as well as a smile that made Wu Haogu feel very unfamiliar.

His soul had been in this plane for four years, and he had come into contact with many ancients, but because he was a Bianliang in this life, and he was also a wealthy merchant. As a result, he came into contact mainly with the burghers and bureaucrats, merchants, and powerful landlords, and did not have much contact with the people at the bottom, especially the peasants.

And he has little interest in going deep into the fields, going deep into the countryside, and mingling with the most bitter and actually the lowest people in the Great Song Empire.

Until today, he hadn't even paid much attention to the peasants at the bottom - the peasants of the Baibo samurai family were not the lowest, they were the Yimen samurai, the family owned large tracts of land, had the political privileges of the emperor, and had all read books. These people are already very grassroots in Wu Haogu's opinion, and they are still a bit nerd, but Wu Haogu can understand them.

They're working very, very hard to climb up! Hopefully, you can change your destiny through hard work. Just like the young people who Wu Haogu knew in his previous life who were floating in the big city...... He was certainly one of them himself.

But today, Wu Haogu saw many very poor (in Wu Haogu's opinion) but very contented peasants in the Haizhou martial arts, and they did not have a bitter expression on their faces, and they did not seem to have the numbness of the legend......

A few wages a year is probably not enough for Wu Haogu to eat a meal, but they are very happy and satisfied, and they don't look like they will rebel and kill Wu Chengchang, a local tyrant.

It seems that it is not easy to mobilize peasant uncles to carry out an agrarian revolution......

"Ouch, isn't this the patriarch?"

Wu Chengchang had already discovered that Wu Haogu was here at this time, where did he dare to be lazy, so he immediately strode out to greet him, singing and laughing: "You are coming back from Jiehe Commercial City, right?" ”

"Yes," Wu Haogu smiled and walked inside, "Seventh Uncle, those were all your family's long-term workers just now?" ”

"yes." Wu Chengchang said, "Didn't I contract 3,000 acres of paddy fields? I can't plant so many fields alone, so I hired 55 long-term laborers, and today is the day of the salary. ”

"How much for them?"

"It's more than six a year," Wu Chengchang said, "and it also includes food and accommodation, which is the highest wage in the countryside of Haizhou." ”

"That's the highest? Then you're very generous. Wu Haogu sat down on the first rose chair.

"Hey, you can't save this money." After Wu Chengchang instructed his family to serve tea and prepare a family banquet, he also sat down on a chair and explained to Wu Haogu with a smile, "I have a lot of money, but I am also ruthless in using it...... Not to mention when the farm is busy, when the farm is not working, it is necessary to repair canals, water wheels, oil mills, land improvement, and fruit trees. It's really a use of people like cattle, and it's not okay to give less.

And the farm work is not easy, if you don't give it, you can't come to a good style, the work is not good, and it's not me who loses? ”

"Why do you want to make a good style?" Wu Haogu asked a little strangely, "They won't rent a piece of land themselves?" ”

"The patriarch doesn't know," Wu Chengchang shook his head and said, "It's not easy to farm!" Farming is a business, and it will be profitable, and if you don't do it well, you will lose money. Xiao Lao'er can take care of these 3,000 acres, isn't it the patriarch to take care of you?

And I am now an official household, and my father is a dignified civil official from Jiupin, or a roll call outside the Donghua Gate. And the Haizhou martial arts family is also a first-class family, and the patriarch, your big tree, shelters me from the wind and rain. I don't dare to come to the door for all kinds of troubles! How can those bitter croppers compare?

They rented dozens of acres of land, got up early and worked hard for a year, and if they didn't do well, they would lose money and owe debts, and in the end, there were many people who sold their children, sold their daughters, and sold their wives! ”

Wu Haogu nodded, this old man Wu is really insightful! He saw farming as a business...... The big farmer has to be a businessman first and foremost! You have to be profitable, you have to go with the market, and you have to know how to operate and manage. Those "agricultural businessmen" who know how to operate and manage, know how to grasp the market, and at the same time can take risks and have a certain amount of capital are probably Western agricultural capitalists, right? It is absurd to think of the peasants and the merchants as two opposing classes.

"I heard from the eldest sister that there are a few honest uncles in our family who have also contracted land like you, how are they?"

"Most of them are good," Wu Chengchang said, "and there is one that doesn't work...... Your nineteenth uncle can't operate, he has been working in vain for a year without making any money, and he doesn't want to do it next year, and he wants to go to Jiehe Business City to find a mission. ”

"Uncle Nineteen?"

"His name is Wu Chengjiu, and the word is to the mountain." Wu Chenglan said, "He has a rough temperament, and he is not material for reading, but he has a few catties of brute strength, which can let him go to be a front and back first." ”

"You can arrange it." Wu Haogu has to take care of the people in the family, but he still has to take care of them. Anyway, it's a front and back line (followers, janitors, bodyguards, etc.), who is not arranged?

"We still have a lot of customers, right?" Wu Haogu asked about his customers again, "How are they?" Are you all right? ”

"Okay," Wu Chengchang said with a smile, "A family of thirty or forty acres of paddy fields is planted, and the rent of fifty catties of rice is collected for one acre, which is still used to pay taxes, which is no different from not paying rent, where can I find such a good thing?" ”

The income of paddy fields is not comparable to that of dry fields, and the paddy fields here in Haizhou are usually two crops, one season of rice and one season of cold vegetables, and the economic value is still very high.

"Each of them has to send strong men to serve," Wu Hao Gu said, "Now the guards in Tianya Town are all from their families, and it is not okay not to give them some benefits." ”

"That's more," Wu Chengchang said, "Bao Ding is in rotation to serve, Tianya Town is in charge of food and housing, and the conscription of each family is also washed away in the name of the archers of Qishan County, and the money for exemption from military service is saved, and there are few household taxes for customers."

Patriarch, I know that you want to collect people's hearts, or you can charge several times more rent. ”

Wu Haogu smiled, he didn't take this stubble again, of course the people's hearts have to be bought! That's more than 600! A family is more than 600 strong men. Ximen Qing arranged for the warriors of the Ximen family to train them, and also purchased weapons and equipment for them to the extent permitted by law.

When needed in the future, they will be the reliable armament that the samurai have in Haizhou! If there are still hundreds of armed doctors in the Yuntai Academy Palace at the same time, then it is possible to take the county seat of Qishan one day......

"Uncle Seven, how many ducks do you have left to sell?" Wu Haogu suddenly asked about the duck.

"Five or six hundred more."

"I want it," Wu Hao Gu said, "tomorrow you find some people, take these ducks, and go to celebrate the Chinese New Year's Eve for our customers." ”

……

Wu Haogu guessed that the custom of landlords giving New Year's greetings to customers should have appeared in the Song Dynasty, and the Song Dynasty was no longer the world of the big families, and most of the landlords were weak scholars, and the relationship between the peasants and them also changed from the original feudal dependence to commercial leasing. In other words, the relationship between renting land in the countryside and renting out shops in the city is similar, and there is no theoretical relationship between who is attached to whom. Then it is natural for the landlord to pay New Year's greetings to the tenants, and then collect the rent and usury in a harmonious and beautiful atmosphere......

However, Wu Haogu, the landlord, is different from most of the landlords of the Song Dynasty, and he is now a typical semi-feudal and semi-capitalist existence!

On the one hand, he is a big capitalist, he has money, and he doesn't care about the income of tens of thousands of acres of paddy fields; On the one hand, compared with the children and customers of the Haizhou martial family, he is a typical feudal lord, and there is no equality between the two sides, let alone a commercial exchange.

Because what he valued was not land rent and interest at all, but the control of a part of the peasants through the land. Therefore, he adopted a similar method to the Tian clan to benefit the people and make the people love him.

"Old man......"

"Old man," Wu Dashan picked a fat duck, took a string of copper coins, and handed it to an old man who looked dry and thin, "How old are you?" Seventy years old, right? ”

"No, no......" the old man grinned with his teeth gone, "How can the little old man be seventy, the little old man is only fifty-one years old this year." ”

"Oh, oh......" Wu Haogu asked with a smile, "Your son is a bodyguard in Tianya Town?" ”

"It's Xiao Lao'er's grandson who is serving the eldest master," said the fifty-one-year-old "old" old man, "Little Lao'er has three grandchildren, two of whom are in Tianya Town, one is a baoding, and the other is an apprentice in the boat yard opened by the master. ”

Wu Haogu nodded, and said gently: "The apprentice of the shipyard is promising, you have to tell him to study hard......"

The old peasant who was talking to Wu Haogu was already grateful. In the threshing floor of a village where the samurai customers lived, Wu Haogu was handing out ducks to the farmers in the village with a hypocritical smile. According to the Confucian custom of respecting the elderly, the old farmers began to send it first, and each household issued a duck, plus a string of "New Year's money" - the "New Year's money" was given by the elders to the younger generations, and now it is issued by Wu Hao Gu, which symbolizes that he is also the elder of these farmers in front of him.

In the Confucian ethical system, the "monarch and father" are one, and the emphasis is on "the monarch and the minister, the father and the son". And these peasants who rely on Wu Haogu to have good food to eat have to regard Wu Haogu as their monarch father.

Of course, strong personal attachment is not something that can be built in a few years, or even a generation. However, Wu Haogu's vision is not focused on the present, but after twenty years.

Moreover, the personal dependency relationship cannot rely on grace alone, but also has to have authority, grace and power, and then over time, in order to obtain the effect.

So in the past year, there have been many Baoding of Wujiazhuang who have been beaten by boards and military sticks, and a few customers have fled because Baoding can't bear the hardships of training, and they have been expelled from the samurai!

However, the wicked man was not done by Wu Hao in ancient times, and he had his own sons and nephews of the Wu family and the Ximen family to pretend to be this black face.

Wu Haogu just needs to pretend to be a good man and a great master.