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Tian Lingzi handed over to Li Jing such a fat shortage as the Liaohai salt and iron transfer envoy and the coinage envoy, but he made a condition to hand over 3 million yuan a year, which was expected to be impossible for Li Jing to complete this impossible task. The salt sea is salt, and the labor input is large, but the harvest is not much. Even if the price of a bucket is increased by 100 wen, it will have to sell 1.5 million stone of salt in a year. One and a half million stones! It's just that all the salt factories in Lianghuai add up, maybe they can cook so much salt, and Li Jing's Dengzhou is such a small piece of land, how can he get so much salt?

If Li Jing dares to increase the price of this high-priced salt, then the people's resentment will boil, and he can directly join Li Jing's book and directly punish him. If he can't sell three million yuan, and he can't pay the money at that time, he can also be asked about his guilt, at least, the Son of Heaven will definitely not spoil Li Jing as much as he sees at that time.

Tian Lingzi's abacus played very well, but he didn't expect that Li Jing's salt was not boiled but directly dried, and more than 10,000 acres of salt fields were produced in a year. Even if it is sold at half price of official salt. can also make up this huge amount of money.

And Li Jing now controls the right to sell tea. and the right to manage minerals and mint money.

Li Jing invited hundreds of veteran craftsmen of various minerals, formed more than a dozen reconnaissance teams, and dispatched a group of soldiers and horses and many officials to explore for minerals in Dengzhou and Qingnicheng and Beisha City in eastern Liaodong.

After half a month of exploration, dozens of minerals have been found in Dengzhou, the most of which are 8 kinds of minerals such as gold, natural sulfur, gypsum, sandstone for glass, and lead. In addition, there are many kinds of minerals such as petroleum, diamond, graphite, talc, coal, iron ore, bauxite, potash, limestone, alkali limestone, mineral salt, lithium salt, etc.

There are also a lot of minerals on the Liaodong Peninsula, including coal, iron, copper, tin, and petroleum.

The minerals that Datang prohibits private mining are mainly copper, iron, tin, and lead, and the rest, such as gold, silver, salt, coal, etc., can be mined privately. However, the mining skills of the Tang Dynasty were not high. Many of the minerals in Dengzhou have not been mined, and some have only been mined a little.

Li Jing carefully looked at the reports handed in by the craftsmen, and found that the most minerals in Dengzhou were lead, limestone, and diamond, while the most minerals in Liaodong were coal, iron, copper, tin, and oil.

However, in Li Jing's memory, the most precious mineral on the Shandong Peninsula is gold. The gold reserves on the peninsula seem to be the highest in China, and the Zhaoyuan gold mine is even known as the gold capital of China. However, after looking at the map carefully, Li Jing was a little disappointed to find that the largest gold mines on the Shandong Peninsula, Zhaoyuan Gold Mine and Sanshan Island Gold Mine, were not in Dengzhou. Rather, it is within the territory of Laizhou. The Zhaoyuan gold mine is next to the border between Dengzhou and Laizhou.

Zhaoyuan Gold Mine is known as the largest gold mine in China, with reserves of several hundred tons. That was a millennium later, and it hadn't been mined in a lot at all.

A ton is two thousand catties, a catty is sixteen taels, and a tael of gold is worth eight dollars. A pound of gold is worth 128 yuan, and a ton is as high as 256,000 yuan. Those hundreds of tons also mean tens of millions of reserves.

Li Jing specially asked the craftsman that the Zhaoyuan gold mine had been mined since the Sui Dynasty, but even at this time, it was only sporadically mined, and almost all of it was private mining, and the government only collected taxes.

A huge piece of fat was in his mouth, but he couldn't eat it, and Li Jing was a little depressed. But if he can't control Zhaoyuan, Li Jing is not willing to mine now. It's a stupid move to dig for gold on someone else's turf.

If the gold mine cannot be mined for the time being, then the minerals on its own territory can only be mined first.

After carefully studying the mineral exploration reports from various places, Li Jing convened the civil and military deliberations of the Zhendong Army.

Li Jing pointed to several places on the map that had been marked, and said, "These places are lead, tin, and copper mines, and I am going to send people to mine them in large quantities." Then mint money! ”

Li Jing is now also a money-minting envoy, and he can openly mint money, and because Tian Lingzi wants to pit him, he directly contracts these official positions to Li Jing, in addition to paying 3 million yuan a year, Li Jing's income is all his, whether it is selling salt or mining or minting money and collecting tea taxes, etc., whether it is losing money or making money. With such an opportunity, how could Li Jing miss it, now Li Jing plans to mine and mint money on a large scale.

Zhang Hong said with some hesitation: "It's a loss to cast money, why don't you cast it into bronze and sell it?" ”

The Tang Dynasty has always had a money shortage, and the money shortage was accompanied by a flood of privately minted money.

The money shortage is because the amount of money minted in the Tang Dynasty is very small, and there are 99 coinage furnaces in the world, each furnace mints more than 3,000 yuan a year, and the world mints more than 300,000 yuan a year. For a big empire like Datang, the official only mints more than 300,000 yuan a year, and the money minted is not enough to circulate. There are many reasons for the lack of official mint, the main one is that in the early days, copper mines and other minerals could be mined privately, so most of the copper mines were in private hands, and the price of copper remained high. More than 100 craftsmen are required for each furnace to cast money, and the labor cost is extremely high. The third is because copper is extremely expensive, many people privately melt copper coins and cast them into bronze objects, so that the profit is as much as two or three times. On the one hand, there is less money, but on the other hand, a large number of bronze casts are removed, and the money is naturally used less and less.

And the shortage of money has led to the proliferation of private minting.

Private money is different from official money, which is basically insufficient weight or color, so as to make profits. The prevalence of private minting has led to the expulsion of good money from bad money, and the value of the currency has continued to fall, while prices have continued to rise, and the order of the market economy has been constantly destroyed.

To deal with private casting, the court has always had only three tricks, one is to collect and ban, that is, the court uses silk and rice to collect evil money to destroy, and the other is to set up strict laws to prohibit private casting, once found, they are all severely punished. The second trick is to issue big money, the so-called big money is to use one as ten, one as twenty, and even directly issue iron money to crack down on private minting, but this is a lose-lose approach, the most difficult result is the continuous rise in prices, and the credit of coins is minimized. This method has been used several times, but has failed at the very least. The last move left is the copper ban. On the other hand, it is also forbidden to cast large bronze vessels, and it is forbidden for people to use copper as utensils, and it is forbidden to cast copper for floating temples, Buddha statues, and bells. It was even once stipulated that silk must be used for more than 10 transactions.

But now, the money shortage in the imperial court is still severe, and many times it is replaced by silk cloth, even barter, commodity trading, and flying money is used instead of circulation.

Li Jing plans to mine and mint money, in Zhang Hong's view, it is a loss-making business, and it is better to directly mine copper casting and sell it, which is still several times the profit of money.

As early as the beginning, Shamen Town also had a shortage of money, and Li Jing had to set up a money bank, issue banknotes, and circulate them in a small area. This method has achieved remarkable results and has changed the predicament of money shortage to a great extent. However, now the territory is getting bigger, and the population is getting bigger and bigger. Li Jing also planned to continue to expand the scope of the bank's business, and issue banknotes to the entire Dengzhou and Liaodong Qingnicheng and Beisha City control areas.

However, if you want to issue banknotes, you must have enough copper money reserves, otherwise once the banknotes cannot be exchanged for copper coins, the credit of the money bank will be ruined. Therefore, if Li Jing wants to expand the circulation of money and banknotes, he must increase his copper coin reserves.

However, Li Jing has also thought about the problem of losing money for a long time.

There are two main costs of minting money, one is materials and the other is labor.

There are three types of materials for copper coins, namely copper, lead, and tin. The earliest Kaiyuan Tongbao, the proportion of the three materials is copper 78.14%, lead 12.29%, tin 7.21% of the most important cost is copper, the Tang Dynasty in the past two hundred years, the proportion of copper money is constantly changing, the proportion of copper is declining, the proportion of lead and tin is rising, to this day, most of the official money cast by the imperial court is still Kaiyuan Tongbao, but copper has only 60.13%, lead has reached 26.45%, tin also has 12.32%.

At this time, the coinage process was to first cast the tin mother coin, which was formed by sand wet casting, which was only the most basic process compared to the sand casting of later generations. At this time, the official money was 21,210 catties of copper for each furnace, 3,790 catties of white tin, and 540 catties of black tin. The cost of copper, tin, and lead per consistent money is 750 Wen, and the craftsman's money is not included. A furnace mints 3,300 coins, and on average, a craftsman can mint 367 coins a day.

In this way, the copper and lead material money for casting money has always cost 750 yuan, and the labor money for the consistent money is almost 200 yuan.

However, private money has always been about half of the material money at most, and the copper material is less, so there is a great profit, and the filing and grinding processing of private money is not fine, and the labor cost is also much less, so compared with official money, private money has a lot of profits.

"Don't worry, since I plan to mint money, I will definitely not lose money." Li Jing said with a smile.

"Is the general going to mint white money?" Zhang Hong asked with some surprise.

White money, because of the excessive proportion of tin and lead, makes the whole money appear white, which is called white money. White money, that is, the general name of private money and bad money. Zhang Hong naturally thought that Li Jing was planning to mint that kind of bad money. (To be continued......)