Chapter 638: The Golden Age

A half-sized boy was the first to react, "Where did this official come from? Why is there such a big show?"

The old man next to him thought deeply, "Look at the honor guards and flags, there must be dozens of them, they are even more majestic than the prefect." Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info”

The sharp-eyed child exclaimed, "You see, the honor guard at the front is written on the military administration of the Governor of Nanzhili! This is the Lord of the Emperor's Mission, but what kind of official is this Governor of Nanzhili? I have never heard of it." ”

"Don't know, do you?"

An old gentleman with a goatee said with a shelf: "The admiral is a temporary official, one level lower than the governor, but well, this is the Qincha, then he will definitely be able to sit on an equal footing with the governor, and besides, the provinces of the southern direct subordinate are under the direct jurisdiction of the imperial court, and such a governor is too big." ”

There are 13 provinces in the Ming Dynasty, each province is under the jurisdiction of the governor, the governor, the three divisions and other yamen, and each province also has a corresponding subordinate yamen official office.

Only the north-south direct subordinate system is special, such as the fourteen prefectures of Nanjing Yingtianfu, Zhenjiang Mansion, Yangzhou Mansion, Suzhou Mansion, Songjiang Mansion and other four prefectures of the Southern Zhili are all directly managed by the six ministries of the imperial court, and the same is true of the Northern Zhili.

Although Shuntianfu and Yingtianfu are the capital prefectures, they are still at the prefecture level, and the government cannot manage other prefectures, and they cannot be called political districts, but they are only regional concepts.

For example, the boss of the Hangzhou prefect is the third division of Zhejiang, the governor, and the governor, while the boss of the Zhenjiang prefect Changtong is the household department, the criminal department, and the metropolitan procuratorate of the imperial court.

Therefore, it is simply inconceivable to suddenly send a governor who is in charge of the fourteen prefectures of Nanzhili, this power is too terrifying.

"Hey, look at those flags: Jinyi Weidu Commander, Beizhen Fu Envoy, Prince Young Master, Prince Young Master, Prince Young Guard. ”

"Look, there are flags and honor guards displayed again, the commander of the machine gunpowder and firearms bureau, and the governor of the left capital of the military capital. ”

"How many big officials are here, is there something big going on in our Zhenjiang Mansion?"

"Stupid, don't you know how to read? Don't you see that there is a big 'Chang' character under those flags?"

"Who is Chang Zi?"

"Look, the biggest guard of honor and flag is on display. ”

"Qin Guogong, sure enough, the third young master of the Chang family is back. ”

"God, how many official titles does the third young master of the Chang family have, uh, eleven titles, this one hundred and ten brocade guards are just enough to raise the flag and honor guard. ”

"Ahh ”

After the shock, a clever shout: "What are you doing in a daze? Quick, hurry up and worship Qin Guogong!"

In the past two years, under Chang Wei's management, there are many factories all over Zhenjiang Prefecture, and the small islands, small towns, and villages along the river are full of busy people. It can be said that the population of 1.2 million in the four counties of Zhenjiang Prefecture all relied on Changwei to live a prosperous life.

"Meet Grandpa Guo!"

"Qin Guogong is the great benefactor of millions of people in our Zhenjiang Mansion. ”

"Grandpa Guo, our kid has made great contributions under you, and he has done hundreds of households. ”

The worship of the people along the way made Chang Wei's heart swell with a huge sense of satisfaction, is this the popular heart and reputation that those cadres and officials have been pursuing? This feeling is really fluttering, more refreshing than several women. The point is, the reputation value is swishing upward!

"Grandpa Guo, under the rule of Brother Ling's Chang Governor's Mansion, Zhenjiang Mansion is thriving, and now it has surpassed Su Song to become the first in Jiangnan, which is all the credit of your Chang family. ”

"That's right, Mrs. Xue shares the business with us, it's really a bodhisattva's heart. ”

"Don't forget Mrs. Yan, that's a woman who doesn't let her eyebrows, a few days ago she and the second son of the Huang family led the fleet back, that ship is really a magnificent, it is said that the Dutch Franc machine people on the island of Taiwan were all swept away by Mrs. Yan, and the majesty of my Ming sailor was greatly increased. ”

Ruyu is back? It seems that not only himself, but even the second brother Chang Tong, Xue Qian, and Yan Ruyu are all famous, okay, really good!

"Hahaha!"

Chang Wei laughed arbitrarily, "Fathers and fellow villagers have lifted up, Zhenjiang Mansion can have today's prosperity, thanks to the emperor's martial arts, the court's wisdom, and the villagers' wisdom and diligence, and the father-in-law and the Chang family are only doing their best." ”

"Under the leadership of the emperor and the imperial court, the life of Zhenjiang Mansion, Nanzhili, and even the entire Ming Dynasty will be better and better in the future. ”

"As long as everyone supports the various national policies of the imperial court and supports the one-tenth tax rate, Zhenjiang Laboratory and the Machinery Bureau will contribute more and better machines to everyone to earn wealth and change their lives. ”

"Speaking of which, many people think that the one-tenth tax rate is very heavy and not cost-effective. Think about it, a textile machine with an 80 times the speed can create dozens of times the profit for everyone, and at the same time reduce the labor by 10 times. These various aspects add up, which is a hundredfold profit. ”

"Originally, you earned 100 taels a year and paid 2 taels of silver, but now, earning 10,000 taels and paying 1,000 taels of tax seems to be 500 times more tax, but you have earned 9,000 taels of silver, and your profit and net worth have become 90 times that of the past!"

"Nanzhili Zhong Lingyuxiu, the characters are prosperous, the 30 million people of Nanzhili are all smart people, everyone will settle this account, right? But why do the beneficiaries of Nanzhili, especially the Jiangnan people, strongly oppose it?"

"Because, these people only want to enjoy the benefits brought by the machine bureau and the merchant fleet, and do not want to pay taxes to the imperial court. What kind of result will this be? That is, the Nanzhili and Jiangnan regions that have made money are very rich, but the imperial court has not received any benefits, and the poor jingle rings. ”

Without money, the imperial court could not afford to raise an army, a war horse, a gun, a ship, a wall of the Great Wall, and a cavalry of the Later Jin Jiannu in Liaodong. Many people may think that it is a matter of Liaodong, at most it is a matter of Jizhou, Jingshi and Beidi border towns, we are far away in Nanzhili, far away in Jiangnan, far away in Susong, Zhenjiang, Nanjing, this matter has nothing to do with us, anyway, Jiannu can't beat it!"

"Is this really the case? If you think like this, then you are very wrong, and even infinitely harmful! This duke has been fighting in the grassland desert for a year, and has seen the power of the nomadic cavalry, and Houjin Jiannu definitely has the strength and potential to become the next Meng Yuan. If everyone only cares about their own wealth and disregard the life and death of the imperial court, then it won't be long, maybe ten years later, the Houjin Iron Cavalry will break through and enter the Central Plains, and the splendid Jiangnan will become a ruin, and your children, grandchildren, and your wives and daughters will be ravaged and slaughtered!"

"You must be scolding Ben Gong in your hearts, 'Nonsense!' But everything Ben Gong said can happen, think about it, what kind of abuse and massacre suffered by Meng Yuan more than 200 years ago?

"It's still the same sentence, if those selfish people only care about their own wealth and disregard the survival of the court and the country, the Ming Dynasty will immediately overturn!"

With a choking sound, Chang Wei pulled out the Yongle Divine Sword at his waist, "This duke returned to Jiangnan this time to implement the new policy of the imperial court and investigate the smuggling case of the Machine Bureau. This is the sword of Shang Fang given by the emperor to this duke, and those who dare to block the new policy of the imperial court will regard him as a traitor and a spy of Houjin, and he will be cut first and then played!"

"Fathers and fellow villagers can pass on the words of this father, which feudal official, which family, what Donglin Party and Fushe, what town guards eunuchs and nobles, as long as you want to try the edge of the Yongle Divine Sword, this prince will be killed on the spot, and there will be no mercy!"

This, what is the situation? Why did he say it well at the beginning, but in the end, he turned out to be full of emotion, with a posture of fighting with a sword and killing people? This is the Duke of Qin, no wonder he dares to deal with eunuch officials in the court, this courage is really unique in the world!

Chang Wei's casual speech immediately shocked everyone!

Listen, what feudal officials, family members, Donglin Fushe, town guards eunuchs, lords and nobles, all don't pay attention to him, who dares to go against him, that is, against the court and the emperor, he will directly use Shang Fang's sword to kill him on the spot?

The imperial court sent this murderous Duke of Qin back, and he was going to move it seriously!

I'm afraid that no one can stop the one-tenth tax rate, and the Shen family's reselling of steam engines must also be concluded, but I don't know if this Qin Guogong can enforce the law impartially?

After everyone digested it for a while, Chang Wei put the sword into the sheath and said with a smile: "By the way, I also heard about an important thing. Roughly speaking, after the large-scale application of the machine, the original craftsmen had no way to live. This word has spread very widely, and there are even craftsmen who try to destroy the machine and take back their jobs, and under the instigation of a large force such as those officials who are unwilling to pay taxes, such as the nobles, the noble family, and the Donglin Restoration Society, things are a little out of control. ”

Now, in my capacity as the founder of the laboratory, the organizer of the factory, the developer of the steam engine, and the profiteer of the machine, I would like to explain to you that in fact, in my book The Wealth of Nations, I explained it in detail. You may not have seen it, but it doesn't matter, now I'll make it clear. ”

"In the earliest times, our ancestors drank blood, drilled wood for fire, and used stones to produce and live. ”

Later, the invention of the sword work and the invention of bronze tools, as a result, a small country like Xia, Shang and Zhou appeared. Later, iron tools appeared, the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States War fought for hundreds of years, Qin Shi Huang unified the world, and since then clothing, food, housing, transportation, textiles, ceramics, and weapons have developed rapidly. ”

"Now, it is a very special time, the Europeans have discovered the New World, discovered that the earth under our feet is a ball, and discovered that the place where Zheng He used to be called America, where there are peppers, corn, peanuts and potatoes and other high-yield crops, and there is also gold and silver all over the ground, which is very suitable for growing crops. ”

"So, their technological innovation is a lot faster, but we are even better. Our steam engines and all kinds of machines are magical, and steam engines can drive all the machines that are known. Now we are working on a steam locomotive and a railroad, and in about next year, this kind of thing will be available, how amazing is it? I tell you in advance that you can travel without the help of cattle and horses and other animals, and you can travel with the powerful power of a steam engine, and the carrying capacity is comparable to that of a large ship. ”

"The steam engine can replace manpower to weave, can replace manpower to make guns and cannons, can replace manpower to blast wind and make steel, can replace cattle and horses to pull carts, can replace sails to sail ships, can also replace hoes to dig the ground, clothing, food, housing and transportation can be replaced in all aspects, in the future we need to no longer hammer the blacksmith to beat the iron, nor shake the loom to spin a little bit of female workers. Rather, thousands of workers who make steam engines, make steel, build ironclad warships, make guns and cannons, and build trains and railways!"

"Ladies and gentlemen, the development of technology is continuous, and now the technological system of the steam-machine age has been formed!"

With the development of "Changwei industry-industry-revolution-life", science and industry began to combine rapidly, and many technical inventions became the application of science in industry.

The invention of the working machine was the starting point, freeing both hands, and the power engine used the steam engine as the power source, and transmitted the power to the working machine through a complex transmission mechanism. In this way, an epoch-making transformation of the production of machines with machines has been achieved.

In this case, the skills of the individual craftsman are no longer sufficient. In the course of the industrial age, machine labor made a further division of labor necessary, giving rise to the division of labor between craftsmen and engineers. In the future, it will mature rapidly and play a huge economic and social benefit.

At the same time, the relative decline in the status of skills made the original craftsmen hostile to the machine, which must go through a process, of course, the first to awaken and accept all this will become the winner, and the person who rejects and hostility will inevitably become the loser.

This is also the core of the struggle between the Industrial Party and the Donglin Party!

"Do you need to worry about not having a job? No, if you don't believe it, look at Zhenjiang Mansion, where people used to farm, row, do small business, and work in workshops to make money, but now, everyone works in factories with hundreds or thousands of people, and earns several times or dozens of times more money than in the past. ”

"Who doesn't have a job? Who doesn't have food? Even, because of the lack of manpower, my father has migrated more than 30,000 people from Shandong to make up for it!"

"In the future, you don't need to do those manual, inefficient, and unprofitable things, you need to make machines, and then use those machines to make more machines. ”

"The future is the age of machines, the age of industry, and the age of gold!"

This speech shook people's souls, and it takes them a long time to digest these things, and of course some people will not accept them.

However, it doesn't matter! The new era will always weed out those who cling to the remnants and rest on their laurels, and the same is true for the country and the nation, if they fail to keep up with the pace of the times, they will be crushed by the ruthless wheels of history!

On the way to Zhenjiang City, there are rows of brightly lit factories with loud rumbling noises, and the factory is working with its powerful kinetic energy. Thick black smoke, spewing flames from the towering chimneys, scattered bunches of sparks in all directions, just like lit fireworks.

Beneath the raging black clouds, there are dense factories and shadows of many open sheds scattered within sight. Like a huge steel monster, it tried its best to extend Chang Wei's line of sight.

Now Changjia's factory in Zhenjiang has occupied an area of thousands of acres, with more than 10,000 workers. From the side of the road, Chang Wei can see that there are dense steel-making furnaces like bees, and next to the blast furnace of dozens of zhang, there is a row of cannon barrels that have just been baked, and after cooling, the workers will send them to the machine shop to process the gun chamber and rifling.

At the top of the line of sight, it is also the most eye-catching huge chimneys, chimneys of different sizes are like towering trees in the forest, obscuring people's vision, the difference is that they grow in the steel jungle, they are so savage, with a strange beauty!

When the soot is mixed into the dark clouds on the horizon, many small exhaust pipes in the factory regularly send the white vapor like clouds into the sky with bursts of sharp sounds, and these dust and steam that are constantly spit out are like the breath of a monster.

And the tremor of the machines in the factory, the loud tone of the wrought iron hammer, and the loud sound of the steam hammer, were the noisy crash and roar of the steel behemoth, and the earth was roaring.

Walking further, Chang Wei saw a small river in the factory, there was a hydraulic hammer at work, it was jumping in a unique rhythm, reciprocating, endlessly, constantly forging the sparkling steel below, it looked like it was a guide rail?

The sky above the factory was filled with soot and oily air, and the steam engine in the factory made a trembling roar, and the workers with red faces went in and out of the gray factory buildings in this roar, like industrious ant colonies.

In the cold of winter, the high-pitched cries of the workers were heard continuously, and the shouts of excitement pierced the cold air, but there was a different sound blowing in front of themβ€”the low roar of machines and the hissing of steam.

Anyway, everywhere you can see are tall black chimneys, like thick sticks, towering over the factory area, looking gloomy and stern. Although the workers were covered with dirt, fumes, and the smell of engine oil, they revealed a spirit that had never been seen before in this era, which was the spirit of pioneers and creations!

Looking at the savage factory full of steel's unique beauty, Chang Wei let out a dream-like voice in his mouth: "The golden age, this is the golden age I created, hehe......" (To be continued. )