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Zhang Zhun really didn't have time to greet Bian Yùjing. After eating lunch in a hurry, he went to the scene. In the original Nanjing Garrison Mansion, there were dozens of business representatives, waiting for Zhang Zhun's arrival through the autumn water. They have very important things to negotiate with Zhang Zhun in person.

Most of the representatives of these merchants are from the Jiangnan region, except for those salt merchants in Yangzhou, the others are rich merchants from Songjiang Prefecture, Suzhou Prefecture and other places. The "largest number" of them are salt merchants. Other merchants, even if they were not salt merchants, had a little to do with the sale of sī salt.

This is the first time that the Jiangnan United Chamber of Commerce has held a meeting in Nanjing. This meeting was started by the Political Affairs Department of the Metropolitan Governor's Office of the Tiger Ben Army, and Zhang Zhun personally decided the time. The time of the meeting is tentatively set for half a month. Zhang Zhun has promised that in this half month, he will be in Nanjing, and discuss relevant matters with merchants at any time. Whatever questions they have, they can be generous and generous. The speaker is not guilty.

The content of the conference is mainly related to Jiangnan business, and even the national business exhibition. In the future, the new empire will definitely vigorously promote the exhibition of commerce and trade, which is inevitable. Zhang Zhun from later generations, of course, understands the importance of commercial tax. Compared with the agricultural tax, "the industrial tax and the commercial tax are the real big ones."

However, the commercial and trade exhibition of the new empire is an orderly exhibition, not a disorderly exhibition. It's all walks of life, and there are people doing it. Instead of swarming, seeing what makes money", they all flock to this industry. Therefore, Zhang Zhun felt that "it was necessary for him to make some healthy regulations on commercial trade" to prevent the occurrence of many undesirable phenomena.

The main purpose of this meeting of the Chamber of Commerce was to formulate a corresponding law "to regulate abnormal competitive behavior, and to improve a relatively standardized system as soon as possible when the new empire is established." This Jiao Yi system should be as fair as possible. "Fair competition" is the core spirit of the new Commercial Law.

Due to the rapid progress of the Tiger Ben Army, the quality of the tiger army gradually changed, from rebels to rulers, and some of the squatting under the sī were now on the table. This so-called jiao under the sī, which represents xìng, is sī salt.

There is no doubt that Zhang Zhun started his business by relying on sī salt. Now that "the Tiger Army has taken control of the power of the whole country, since the salt cannot be sold, it must be openly opened." Since it is a government run, there must be corresponding regulations, and the people who sell sī salt must not be allowed to take advantage of the loopholes" as a result, resulting in the overflow of sī salt.

Zhang Zhun's meaning is very simple, to greatly reduce the price of salt. In the past, each catty of salt required dozens of dollars. Now, Zhang Zhun has decided to lower the price of sī salt per catty to three cents. It doesn't matter how much you get for the goods, anyway, when you get to the store, you can only sell it for three cents at most. If this price is exceeded, the relevant departments of the Tiger Army "will punish you." Of course, "if you want to sell two or one penny, or even give it away without charging money", then it's okay.

Obviously, in this way, there is no room for sī salt to go sī. Each catty of salt is only sold for three cents, and a fool will go sī. There is no huge profit from going sīsī salt, and there is no need for the attack of the Tiger Ben Army" This business naturally disappeared.

Now, the Tiger Army is lowering the price of salt step by step. At present, around the Changlu Salt Farm in Beizhili, which has a huge salt production, the price per catty of salt has been reduced to about five yuan. As the policy continues, the standard price of three cents will eventually be reached.

"What?" "Sanwen? ”

"This Zhang Zhun is crazy!"

Of course, the implementation of the relevant regulations will certainly not go smoothly. Mr. Zhang's approach "was beyond the expectations of too many people." Hearing the news that Zhang Zhun decided to lower the price of salt, many people's first reaction was that Zhang Zhun's brain may be broken.

In all dynasties, salt has been the main source of huge profits for the country, and it is the most important component of the country's financial revenue. During the Tang Dynasty, the price of a catty of salt even reached more than 300 wen per catty. A considerable part of the Ming Dynasty's finances came from the salt tax. During the fiscal period, the "Jianghuai salt tax" accounted for more than 70 percent of the country's fiscal revenue. Without the salt tax, the consequences would have been unimaginable.

Now, Zhang Zhun has actually given up the salt tax!

Many people can't understand why Zhang Zhun did this.

But "Zhang Zhun has a good reason. The high price of table salt is actually heroin in disguise, which will make the rulers addicted. The more the rulers relied on table salt, the more they neglected the development of other industries. This deformed way of unfolding will eventually cause the ruler to fall off the high platform quickly.

Yes, salt should be monopolized by the state. As the most basic commodity of people's livelihood, the state must firmly control the price of salt. However, this price must not be high. As for the right to operate salt, Zhang Zhun heard some university professors talk about it in his later life. Among them, there is an example, Zhang Zhun's impression, very deep scratch "everyone no longer has the idea of salt." ”

Zhang Zhun said unmistakably.

"I'm going to tell you a case of xiaoxiao." After a moment of silence, Zhang Zhun swept the audience with his eyes and said eloquently.

The case that Zhang Zhun wants to talk about was born in the Jiaqing period of the Qing Dynasty. However, now, the Tartars are all gone, and the Qing Dynasty is definitely gone. However, this does not prevent Zhang Zhun from telling the story. Replacing the background of the Qing Dynasty is still a very philosophical story.

At the beginning of the eleventh year of Jiaqing in the Qing Dynasty (that is, the year of phenol in the Common Era), there was a "floating price sick case" involving the four provinces along the two Huai coasts.

The cause of this case was that Wang Bingtai salt shops in Wuxi and Jinkui counties in Jiangsu Province lowered the price of salt by 2 cents per catty.

Some economists and historians in later generations also humorously called it "the bloody case of Erwen Qian". It is precisely because of this strange name that this case will attract Zhang Zhun's attention. You must know that at that time, "a bloody case caused by steamed buns...... and "people can't be shameless to the point of ......" were very famous.

Briefly describe the case. In that year, "the sī salt flood in Jiangsu Province made the official salt unsalable. Wang Bingtai, a salt merchant in Huizhou who specializes in Wuxi and Jinkui counties, "had a lot of pressure on inventory, so he thought of a way" to reduce the official salt from 3o wen per catty to 28 wen to sell it, so as to shorten the price gap with sī salt.

Wang Bingtai Salt Shop originally wanted to temporarily reduce the price: "Residents see that the difference in the value of official salt and sī salt is not very large, and if the salt is unsalable, the sī salt dealers will be hesitant." Without profit, there would be no salt barons. When the salt barons all changed their careers to other trades, when "sī salt disappeared", official salt naturally sold well. At that time, the official salt will be sold again at the original price.

Since it is a temporary expedient measure, it is estimated that the government will not prohibit it, so Wang Bingtai only asked the magistrates of Xi and Jin counties to issue notices, and did not report to the salt transport envoys. But he didn't expect that the notice of price reduction on his side was posted high, and Zhang Yingji, the envoy of the two Huai salt transportation, urgently posted a notice to stop the price reduction action in these two counties. As a result, it is naturally conceivable, and the people can only rejoice in vain. Of course, the price reduction of two pennies is actually not a joy.

However, such a loose and tight, one wants to reduce the price, and the other does not reduce the price, after all, it is a very unpleasant thing to play the people as monkeys! As a result, this incident aroused the reluctance of the people in Xi and Jin counties, so Zhang Jiangmei, who had donated the ninth rank, as the plaintiff, sued the salt merchant and the salt transport envoy on the charge of "salt merchant Wang Bingtai and other floating price patients, and salt transporter Zhang Yingji and the merchant were not allowed to reduce (salt price)".

After the pleadings are handed over, there is no need to elaborate on the detailed process of the interlocutory judgment. Anyway, the end result is that a group of officials have their black gauze hats taken off" or demoted. The price of salt in this meagre area actually caused all the two Huai salt merchants to be punished with fines, and the two county orders involved in the birthplace of this case, Zhang Yingji, the salt transportation envoy, and Yanzheng Yanfeng were all punished in different ways, and what is even more surprising is that Zhang Jiangmei, the plaintiff in this case, was punished with a three-year sentence of 100 rods, and the final fate of the judge of this case, Na Yancheng, was not very good. The only winner was Emperor Jiaqing, who received a fine of one million taels of silver.

The case of the confused monk breaking the gourd is not justified in the first place. However, there is no doubt that the most wronged in this case were the salt merchants, who obviously wanted to sell at a lower price, but in the end they were fined by Emperor Jiaqing for the trumped-up crime of "floating price patients". They all felt very aggrieved, I did this, obviously to maintain the official salt market, why did I suffer such a cruel punishment?

In fact, some smart officials have already felt something when they see this. Emperor Jiaqing's seemingly fair punishment was for the purpose of killing a hundred people and putting an end to the possibility of salt merchants selling at lower prices. The Hui businessmen couldn't figure it out, and they only had a stomach full of grievances.

As a result, after the case, the price of salt continued to rise, and the people suffered more and more heavy inventory for the necessities of life. After this crackdown, the Huizhou salt merchants no longer dared to stand up for the price of salt, and the Huizhou salt merchants completely lost their pricing power in the salt industry, and became a tool for the Manchu rulers to loot the wealth of the world.

This case clearly shows that under the surface of the rich salt merchants of Huizhou, what is hidden is the humiliation of being dependent on power and at the mercy of others.

The business of Huizhou merchants focuses on the salt industry. Salt is a commodity that does not have much value in itself, "look at the long coastline of China, and know that "where there is a sea", you can open up salt farms to dry salt.

But salt is a special commodity that people can't live without. Therefore, it naturally became the best tax carrier for the feudal society with low productivity, so since the Han Dynasty, salt has been franchised by the government. From the beginning, the Hui merchants, who focused on the salt industry, did not follow the path of independent exhibition, but played the role of the spokesperson of the government, which was attached to the bureaucratic system, and was also a merchant and an official.

The salt merchants of Huizhou, who were dependent on the bureaucratic system, operated the salt industry and made huge profits. Salt industry operations are hereditary monopoly, that is, the franchise of the salt industry can be passed from father to son, son to grandchild, under the premise of huge profits, with the increase of population, the growth of salt consumption, the accumulation of wealth of the Huizhou salt merchant family is unimaginable to ordinary people, such as Bao Zhidao, Jiang Com these salt industry general merchants "family wealth converted into modern currency to be counted in hundreds of millions, at the level of productivity at that time" with "rich rival country" to describe their wealth is not an exaggeration.

Through their inextricable ties with the Manchu government, the salt merchants of Huizhou were even able to obtain credit from the state treasury as start-up capital, and they could almost make a million profits, or even no profits. At that time, Yangzhou, the base camp of Huizhou salt merchants, could only be described as poor and extravagant, and the biggest trouble of those rich merchants was how to get rid of the silver that poured in like comg.

The salt merchants in Huizhou didn't know that their poverty and luxury were already "infinitely good at sunset, but just near Huangbi". In order to maintain their status and wealth, the top priority of the Huizhou salt merchants outside of the salt industry was to take care of the backers behind them, that is, the Manchu rulers. Despite repeated efforts to increase the power of tribute, the Manchu rulers were still not satisfied.

As the number of the Manchu privileged class increased exponentially, far faster than the wealth accumulated by the salt merchants, the extortion of the salt merchants by the banner people became more and more severe. By the end of the Qing Dynasty, the original face of the Tartars had been vividly expressed, and even the last fig leaf was torn off without hesitation.

During the Jiaqing period, "the two Huai salt farms, which were dominated by Huizhou salt merchants, imposed as many as 92 kinds of miscellaneous taxes. According to the statistics of Jiaqing's "Lianghuai Salt Law Chronicle", from the tenth year of Kangxi to the ninth year of Jiaqing, the two Huai salt merchants donated a total of more than 10,000 taels of silver, more than 20,000 stones of rice, and 330,000 stones of grain. Each time a businessman donates, it can be millions of taels, hundreds of thousands of taels, and the rest of the ordinary donations are difficult to enumerate.

Among the two Huai salt merchants, the Huizhou salt merchants had an advantage, so "most of the burden of donations fell on the heads of the Huizhou merchants." Jiang Com, a big salt merchant in Shexian County, who used to be one of the two Huai general merchants, every time he donated money, "the million-dollar fee refers to Gu Liban", and finally ended up bankrupt.

In the ninth year of Jiaqing, due to the financial difficulties of suppressing the White Lotus Rebellion, the Qing government began to frantically raise the price of salt in order to cope with this situation. The higher the price of salt, the less salt will be sold, and the more tax sources will be depleted. Because the higher the price of official salt, the greater the profit of taking sī salt, the more sī salt dealers, and the less people buy official salt.

In order to pass on the financial difficulties caused by the depletion of tax sources, the Qing government stipulated that salt merchants must pay the corresponding taxes before obtaining a license to sell salt. In the context of large profits and fast sales in the salt industry, it is not a problem for Huizhou salt merchants. But when the profits of the salt industry were diluted by heavy taxes and various extortions, and the salt was overflowing*, it became a fatal problem.

For example, the Changlu Salt Field, the salt area is in the Yellow Flood Area, where today's Anhui-Shandong-Henan Jiao boundary is the place of the four wars in history, and the Yellow River is often diverted, with serious natural disasters and fierce folk customs. The sī salt dealers were most rampant here, and the sī salt dealers were highly armed, well-organized, and even dared to confront the government head-on.

It is often the salt that is sold this year that is often backlogged five or six years ago, "but the capital of five or six years ago has not been fully recovered, and the new salt has been pressed down again, and with the new salt comes a heavier tax." The entry of the salt industry is monopolistic, and the corresponding exit is also monopoly.

This means that when the hereditary privilege becomes an obligation, even if you lose the capital, you can only pay it head-on, otherwise you will be guilty of deception. In such a desperate situation, many Huizhou salt merchants have tried their best to escape under the pretext of illness and filial piety, and even more, they chose to escape "overnight, people go to the empty building, and they don't know where they are."

Faced with this situation, the shrewd and sophisticated Weizhou salt merchants recognized that the only way to save the salt industry was to reduce prices, but as soon as they tried, they were hit hard. The authority of the Manchu government was unquestionable, and lowering the price of salt was a provocation to the imperial power in the eyes of the Manchu government, and this was more intolerable than anything else.

The salt merchants in Huizhou finally came to the end of the road: the higher the price of salt, the less sales were sold, and the more the tax source was depleted.

In this environment, the best outcome for Huizhou salt scoop is to be able to get out of the salt industry. For example, the cannon of the Tangyue Cannon family, after inheriting the general merchant status of his brother Pao Zhidao, was sent to handle the Huaibei salt transportation, when the official salt of Huaibei was "tired for a long time", and the unsalable was unprofitable, and the tax was still very high, resulting in many salt stoves have been closed down.

In order to cope with the government's taxes, the few surviving salt factories had to sell salt at a high price, which was of course unprofitable for the salt merchants engaged in salt transportation. Bao Qiyun knows this well, how can he open his eyes and make a loss-making transaction?

Therefore, he "said that he was sick and retired", and would rather bear the big crime of "resisting and missing class", rather than lose the family business in his own hands, fortunately, he got the amnesty of Emperor Jiaqing, and the big crime of "resisting and missing class" was only fined 50,000 taels of silver.

After recovering the capital, he no longer had the idea of commercial salt, and returned to his ancestral home to "purchase fertile land" to build a large number of buildings. The Tangyue archway group we see today was built and repaired in his hands.

This grand building complex proves the glory of Weizhou salt merchants, and also contains the helpless fate of the inevitable decline of Weizhou salt merchants. History tells us that only an independent personality can have an independent businessman and a strong era.

Through this case, Zhang Zhun wants to emphasize two key points: first, the new empire "will not rely on salt to provide state revenue, like any previous dynasty." Second, no businessman, or family, should want to make a huge profit from salt, you should do something else.

He didn't want the new empire to be as rotten as the Qing Dynasty. It is even more desirable that the merchants of the new empire, like the salt merchants of the past, rely only on privilege to make money. The merchants of the new empire "should be self-made, through their own skills, through their own vision, through hard work to get rich" honest business.

"All necessities that belong to the people's livelihood" will be monopolized by the state and will not be transferred to anyone. The price of the franchise "will certainly not be high, and after deducting the expenses of each item, the profit should be very thin." So, don't expect me to make any openings in the management of salt. ”

"And I can tell you that don't expect anything to be opened in the future. Even if I die, I will leave a strict order not to allow the price of salt to rise, let alone allow salt to be sold to the sī people. If you want to make money, you still want to think of other ways. ”

"Everyone's eyes" should be a little more long-term. Your eyes "should be on the foreign side." I'm sure you've all seen my map of the world. As you have seen, the world we live in is really big, and there are many ways to make money. After the case was finished, Zhang Zhun said slowly.

The merchants here, all of you look at me, "I look at yours" all bow their heads a little gloomily. Apparently "they all believe that Zhang Zhun is definitely not joking this time." If he said so, he would do it. In the future, everyone wants to make money from salt, "that's absolutely impossible."

It's a pity, it's really a pity. The way to make money from salt is really too safe, and it is simply to collect money while lying down. They all couldn't understand why Zhang Zhun would take the initiative to give up this way of making money that has been passed down for thousands of years. Perhaps, Zhang Zhun stepped out of the consideration of the long-term stability of the new empire. For ordinary people, it is indeed an unprecedented happiness to be able to buy a pound of salt for three pennies.

"Lord Governor, we are firmly in favor of your proposal.

After that, we will not be in the salt business. It's just that I also ask the Governor to point out a clear way, "It's good for us to have hope!" As for overseas trade, the farthest we have gone is to the Nanyang area, and we have never been to any further places. Please also ask the Governor to give you the advice one by one.

A merchant representative stood up and said.

"Yes!"

"Yes!"

"Yes!"

Other business representatives seconded the proposal.

In addition to the vigorous removal of obstacles by the Tiger Ben Army and Navy, we must have a considerable understanding of the customs and folk conditions of various places. Only by understanding what the market needs and what can you buy, can you better organize your business. If you are blind, you must only lose money. And when it comes to being the most familiar with the world, there is no one more than Zhang Zhun. The world map was drawn by Zhang Zhun himself. All the merchants are eager to dig out everything that Zhang Zhun knows in his mind.

"I know what people are going to ask."

"I've got a gift ready for you."

Zhang Zhun smiled confidently, and then clapped his hands gently.

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