As soon as there is a proper profit, capital is emboldened - if there is a profit of ten percent, it is guaranteed to be used everywhere; With twenty percent profit, it becomes active; With a 50 percent profit, it takes a risk; For the sake of 100 percent profit, it dares to trample on all human laws; With a profit of 300 percent, it dares to commit any crime, even risking hanging its head.

This is indeed incisive to the extreme, no wonder the sea smuggling of the Ming Dynasty has always been repeatedly banned, there are such huge profits, it is strange that it can be banned!

As for the profits of sea salt, not to mention, although salt is not expensive, it is a necessity of human life, in high demand and the market is never exhausted. Moreover, the salt drying on the seaside, the price of sea salt is so low to a frightening degree, because the salt industry has been a profiteering industry since ancient times, since the monopoly of salt and iron by Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, no matter which dynasty or generation, it is regarded as a government monopoly type of Zhu Yuanzhang-style policy - it seems to be wonderful, but in fact it cannot last long, and as time goes by, it will turn from good governance to great bad government.

In the army of merchants who transported grain according to the Kaizhong Law, there were naturally few Jin merchants, and after the Jin merchants issued salt introductions, the first place to allocate salt to them was Hedong. At this time, the scope of salt sales, where the salt was sold, where the merchants could go to the salt, and where the salt could be sold, were all delineated by the imperial court. The marketing scope of Hedong salt is mainly more than 120 prefectures and counties in southern Jinnan, southern Shaanxi, and northern Henan. Therefore, its profit margin is very large, Jin merchants seized the opportunity of policy changes, have gone north and south, thus making a fortune in the city, rapidly accumulating huge wealth, and the local economy has also been greatly developed.

Yuncheng is an excellent example, the ancient name here is Lu Village, and later that Hai Dejun moved the salt transport embassy to Lu Village, named Phoenix, to the Ming and Qing dynasties, because the salt transport embassy was set up in Phoenix, it was renamed Yuncheng. Yuncheng is named because of salt, and it is prosperous because of salt.

"Open the Chinese Law" mobilized everyone's enthusiasm, but over time, the grain was stale, too much to eat, and the amount of salt produced in Hedong was limited, and gradually merchants began to hold a large number of empty quotations in their hands, which could not be cashed in Hedong, which became a major drawback in society. This forced the imperial court to reform the opening of China and France for the second time. Merchants do not have to transport grain to the border in the future, but can pay silver in exchange for salt. For the empty quotation in everyone's hands, the government is organized into ten groups, which are cashed one by one in ten years, and one group is cashed out every year. After cashing, it can not only support salt in Hedong, but also go to the major salt farms in the country.

This is also known as the "Ye Qi Change".

Of course, this is just a high-sounding statement on the official face.

Before Ye Qi, who was the head of the household department at the time, changed the law, the Kaizhong system had been destroyed to the point of being in name only. First, the Ming court increased the amount of grain per salt introduction, which made merchants intimidated and unwilling to open the middle. Second, the powerful played to obtain salt, monopolized Kaizhong, and sold illegal salt, so that the merchants of Kaizhong were excluded. Third, the stove households could not bear the exploitation, and they fled one after another, and the salt production was greatly reduced. Fourth, based on financial needs, the Ming court always adopted a policy of collecting salt from salt merchants in advance, and arbitrarily increased the amount of salt introduced, resulting in too much salt in the hands of merchants, and even their grandson's generation could not be cashed in, which seriously dampened their enthusiasm for opening the middle school.

There are even some merchants who have in their hands the salt quotations issued 27 years ago and cannot cash them in, taking Songjiang as an example, there are as many as 600,000 salt quotations to be supported by the government during the orthodox years of Yingzong. In the fourteenth year of Chenghua, there was a shortage of grass beans in the cities and towns of Datong, and there was no one to accept the situation of opening the middle and long reeds and Hedong salt. In the second year of Hongzhi, because there was no salt to support, the Ming court allowed salt merchants to buy surplus salt outside the main class of the stove to make up for the lack of salt, which caused the flood of private salt, and the whole country fell into the embarrassing situation of "the people are poor and the wealth is scarce", so there was Ye Qi's reform.

Ye Qi's salt method reform changed the original open-center system to the open-center folding color system. The main content of the reform is to change the original grain payment in the border areas to direct payment of money in exchange for salt introduction. In other words, the difference between the folding system and the Kaizhong system is that the way of raising the side salary is different, the former is centered on silver, and the latter is centered on physical goods.

The Ming Dynasty's imperial court tax was actually really low, and the government's controllable fiscal revenue was limited. As for transporting grain to the border gates, they don't have to worry about it, and the central court spends money to organize transportation capacity to transport grain to the border gates, so as to ensure the salaries and rations of the border guards.

The establishment of this system marks that the system of raising wages has changed from barter to silver, and the size is also a progress.

But this matter, in practice, is actually very unreliable.

In the past, merchants directly transported grain to the border and handed it over to the local government, although the process was complicated and the road was long, but the burden was on the businessmen. And in such a difficult environment, they are still willing to transport grain to the border in exchange for salt, which means that it must be profitable, and the profit is not small. Otherwise, who would be so stupid? The volume of merchant transportation, at least there are no officials, big and small, officials at all levels are exploited layer by layer, and the grain at the border can also be guaranteed. After the reforms, the merchants actually spent money to buy salt, and then the government used the money to buy grain and transport it - which was of course impossible. The money went into the hands of the government and into the hands of those corrupt officials and corrupt officials, and it was even more difficult to get them to take it out. However, officials at all levels took advantage of this opportunity to make a fortune in the city. If the grain has to be transported to the border towns, it will have to go through layers of hands, and the benefits will be divided layer by layer, and the most direct consequence of this is that the soldiers at the border gates will get less and less grain in their hands. And the imperial court has more restrictions on border generals, the status of civil officials is getting higher and higher, and the status of military generals is getting lower and lower.

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