After seeing Wang Chengen leave the room, Lu Qi reported to Chongzhen: "Your Majesty, Cui Wensheng, the eunuch who is also in charge of the river and the governor of Caoyun, and Cui Yingyuan, the hundred households of Jinyi Wei, have each been sent today. ”

Zhu Youjian didn't raise his head and said naturally: "Read." ”

Lu Qi immediately took out two copies of the recital from the hidden pocket in his sleeve and read them to Chongzhen, Cui Wensheng was a party to the Red Pill case, and he was friendly with Wei Zhongxian, plus he was canonized by the Apocalypse as the governor Caoyun and the eunuch in charge of the river, interfering with the authority of civil officials, so when Chongzhen ascended the throne, Cui Wensheng was only impeached by Wei Zhongxian and Cui Chengxiu, the two leaders of the eunuch party.

In the Ming Dynasty, the affairs of Caoyun were first supervised by military ministers, and then the governor of Caoyun was established, and there was a situation of both civil and military management. In the 40th year of Wanli, the imperial court revoked the shortage of Caoyun chief military officers, and since then Caoyun has become a situation managed by civilian officials alone.

In the era of the Apocalypse, Wei Zhongxian was unhappy with the civil officials, for fear that the civil officials would pinch Cao Yun and cause problems for himself, so he set up the post of Governor Cao Yun and the eunuch in charge of the river to supervise the affairs of Cao Yun.

The Governor of Caoyun can be said to be the first class of the Ming Dynasty, every year Caoyun plus the maintenance of the river, the Governor's Mansion handles millions of taels of funds, but the Governor of Caoyun's annual salary is low and scary, from a grade official to the Governor of Caoyun only 180 taels of silver (155 taels of the second grade).

Therefore, it is impossible for any official who is the governor of Caoyun not to be corrupt. Li Sancai, a famous member of the Donglin Party, served as the governor of Caoyun for 12 years from the 27th to the 39th year of Wanli in the Ming Dynasty, and his family wealth was counted by people with a heart, as high as more than 400 taels, of which how much came from the funds of the Caoyun Governor's Palace, it is self-evident.

It took hundreds of years for the civil officials to finally get rid of the military ministers, so as to independently supervise the affairs of the Cao Canal Road, and they were naturally reluctant to send ministers to supervise them by the Apocalypse. What's more, this supervising eunuch of the governor Caoyun still has a black history, which can be borrowed to attack.

It's a pity that Chongzhen is not a young man who is ignorant of the world, and out of the insight of later generations, he does not believe that the governor of Caoyun without supervision can manage Caoyun and river affairs well. Let an official with an annual salary of less than 200 taels manage millions of taels of funds a year, and the imperial court is not allowed to set up another regulatory agency, unless this person is Hai Rui.

But more than 200 years after the Ming Dynasty, there was also a Hai Rui. But sanctimonious hypocrites abound. Apocalypse sent a eunuch to supervise the Cao Yun and the river, which was a very normal measure. It's just that the emperors of previous dynasties sent ministers to supervise the affairs of Cao Yun and the river, which were intermittent and not a permanent position.

But for Chongzhen, he hoped to fix this position and make the Governor Caoyun and the Eunuch Mansion a permanent institution. Because the affairs of Cao Yun and the river are too important, before the sea transport has not become a climate, Cao Yun is the lifeblood of Beijing, once out of control, nearly one million people in the capital and the border towns of Liaoxi, Jizhou, and Xuanda will encounter a food crisis.

In this situation, Zhu Youzhen naturally would not deal with Cui Wensheng, and replaced him with a novice who knew nothing about the affairs of the Cao Canal Road. However, in order to appease those civil officials, he still appointed Yang Yipeng, a well-known military squire, to replace the governor of Caoyun, who was previously attached to Wei Zhongxian.

When Chongzhen was ready to open the north-south shipping line, he naturally began to conduct a thorough investigation of the transportation affairs, and was ready to make certain changes, so that the imperial court could better control this lifeblood of the north-south economy. If you want to reform Caoyun, you must reduce the importance of Caoyun in the economic life of the Ming Dynasty.

Otherwise, once the transportation is interrupted, it will be difficult to sustain the reform. One of the alternative alternatives to Cao Yun is the sea freight from Shanghai to Tianjin, and the other is the construction of a railway from Beijing to Wuhan. Both of these options will take three or five years to share the enormous pressure of transport.

During this period of time, Zhu Youzhen decided to start with Cao Ding on the Cao transportation route, 125,000 positive Cao Ding plus the coolies at the various wharves of the canal, and the Cao transportation affairs were related to hundreds of thousands of canal Cao Ding and coolies. If the imperial court reformed the affairs of Cao Yun, these Cao Ding were instigated by people with intentions, it would undoubtedly be a disaster for the Ming Dynasty.

And even if these Cao Ding are not instigated by others, they live a life of hardship and no hope, and they are basically illiterate and illiterate, so they can easily be tempted by superstitious organizations such as the White Lotus Sect, or manipulated by those civil associations.

The local government still has a deterrent effect on one or twenty Caoding, but once hundreds or thousands of Caoding make trouble, the first thing these officials think about is to settle the matter. The rampant behavior in the Jiangnan area is not a manifestation of the local officials' fear of retreating.

Between Beijing and Nanjing, large-scale transportation of personnel and materials can only rely on this canal for the time being. If there is something in the north, and Caoyun is controlled by others, it is equivalent to Chongzhen giving his life to others. Therefore, before reforming the affairs of Cao Yun, Zhu Youzhen needs to first grasp the state of mind of most Cao Ding, and it is best to be able to control it in his own hands.

It was based on this consideration that Chongzhen ordered Cui Yingyuan, who had been demoted to 100 households, to go to Linqing to assist Cui Wensheng in the Mid-Autumn Festival last year, and to establish a wharf shipping workers' association at the main land and water wharves along the canal, so as to organize the coolies and caoding of the canal wharves.

And today, although Cui Wensheng and Cui Yingyuan's recitals arrived in front of him separately, the content is almost the same. From Tongzhou to Hangzhou, 12 of the largest 72 water and land wharves have established dock workers' associations, with nearly 3,000 members.

These 12 wharves are at the key point of the Grand Canal, and as long as these 12 wharves are controlled, the canal route from Tongzhou to Hangzhou will basically be unimpeded.

Although Zhu Youzhen has been enriching the strength of the capital army since he ascended the throne, he is not sure whether this army can block the elite of the Eight Banners of Houjin. Zhu Youzhen didn't care about his life and death, until now he was still full of doubts about the resurrection on Chongzhen.

He thought that maybe after falling asleep one night, he wouldn't be able to wake up again. In this uneasy mentality, he can't wait to push forward the process of reform, and wants to know what kind of impact his actions will have on the current world. As for whether the reform will succeed or not, and whether the gentry and bureaucracy of the Ming Dynasty will turn their backs on him because they are too stimulated, he actually doesn't care at all.

Compared with the ending of killing his wife and children 17 years later, and then being abandoned by his ministers, only one eunuch hanged himself on the coal mountain. Su Changqing felt that no ending would be worse than this ending.

However, although he didn't care about his life and death, and he didn't care about the fall of the Zhu Ming Dynasty, he couldn't help but be responsible for the women in the harem. Su Changqing is not Chongzhen after all, he has no idea of letting these harem women be martyred for this dynasty.

After taking control of the Caoyun Wharf, in an emergency, he hoped that the women of the harem could use this safe passage to go south and leave the land of right and wrong in the north. As for the affairs after going south, he estimated that he would not see it, and he did not want to see it.

Although he has been on the throne for less than a year, he has already seen it clearly. As the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, he has almost no way out. After he protected most of the eunuch members, he had already stood in opposition to the Jiangnan gentry class. The reason why the Jiangnan gentry dare not attack him in public opinion now is because he has the support of some northern gentry, and he still controls the nine-sided border town with the strongest force in the Ming Dynasty.

Once he was forced to give up Beijing and go south, how could a toothless tiger continue to let these Jiangnan gentry continue to be wronged. In the history that Su Changqing knew, even if the Manchu Qing Dynasty was about to hit the Yangtze River, these Jiangnan gentry were still crowding out the scholars in the north and pursuing any adverse cases.

It was Zhu Youzhen who didn't think that after he moved the capital to Nanjing, these Jiangnan gentry would be able to become good babies. The deeper his understanding of Da Ming, the more indifferent he became when he wanted to go south.

After listening to Lu Qi's report, Zhu Youzhen only thought for a moment, and then instructed him: "Let Cui Yingyuan arrange to convene the principals of these 12 dockworkers' associations to hold a meeting together to discuss the preparation for the establishment of the canal wharf shipping workers' federation."

After the establishment of the General Trade Union, its main tasks were threefold: first, to safeguard the legitimate interests of dock and shipping workers and oppose excessive oppression by profiteers and the government;

The second is to advocate the spirit of solidarity and mutual assistance among workers, help the families of disabled and deceased workers, and relieve the families of workers who are too difficult. Where conditions permit, night schools for workers should be set up to disseminate cultural knowledge and dispel superstitious ideas in workers' groups. Every month, 50,000 yuan is allocated from the internal government account to the Federation of Trade Unions for this purpose.

The third is to ensure the purity of the workers' organizations and reject the oppression and control of the local underworld forces over the dock workers. Trade unions were allowed to set up workers' pickets as a force to defend them.

In addition, with regard to the management and penetration of trade union organizations, a new department could be added under the Social Survey Institute. In this way, the Social Investigation Institute was upgraded to the Social Investigation Bureau, and the following departments were upgraded to divisions. The trade union management office was to manage not only the canal dock workers, but also the workers in the coal industry, iron smelting industry, and the various workshops in the capital.

I do not require you to have complete control over the actions of these workers, but at least let me know what their living conditions and mental conditions are, and what their main needs are. Without my orders, the members of the trade union management office who are placed in the trade union must not interfere with the workers' movement organized by the trade union. Their main task is to gather information about the trade unions and to monitor the thoughts and speech of the workers..."

After listening to this, Lu Qi asked in puzzlement: "Why does this union still oppose the government?" Wasn't the purpose of His Majesty's establishment of the trade union in the first place to enable the workers to better submit to the management of the imperial court? ”

Zhu Youzhen replied disapprenosingly: "A trade union that stands on the government's position in everything, do you think it will get the sincere support of those dock workers?" What is the value of a union without workers' support?

Following the instructions of local officials does not necessarily protect the interests of the imperial court. Forcing these local officials to turn to the imperial court for help to make them realize that their power depended on the support of the imperial court, not the support of the local gentry and wealthy merchants, was also to maintain the authority of the imperial court.

Those merchants complained every day that the commercial taxes collected by the imperial court were too high, and the root cause was that the imperial court gave these merchants too much convenience, making them think that everything they were enjoying now was taken for granted. We need to make them understand that without the help of the imperial court, even the dock workers with low status on weekdays will not be able to settle down..."