Chapter 1592: On Edible Salt

Although the Tuomao Tribe had already been subdued, Huaxia still could not let its guard down and place complete trust in these surrendered people; all those men were divided into several Small Teams and positioned in different parts of the formation.

The women and children were responsible for herding the cattle and sheep, and some men began to carry some of Huaxia's equipment, but the Weapons had to be carried by Huaxia's Soldiers themselves, and each person also carried at least two days' worth of Dry Rations.

What those men carried were the heaviest armor, as well as things like salt and food.

To prevent them from escaping, Huaxia's Soldiers managed them separately, and the focus of their attention was entirely on these men; the women and children were of no concern, if they ran, they ran, it didn't matter, and there was no way they could take the cattle and sheep away silently; as long as the cattle and sheep were there, the gains from this time were sufficient.

Now, the daily food for Huaxia's Soldiers had become mutton and lamb soup, but they would not slaughter too many at once, only killing six or seven sheep; after a rough count, the number of sheep here was surprisingly over three thousand, large and small, though the exact number was impossible to count because sheep move, while the number of cattle was very clear: forty-seven.

With so many cattle and sheep, the amount of Grass they would consume was quite vast, so they had to keep moving to sustain them, and these sheep were also the foundation of the lives of these Wulengebu savages, treated like treasures, and they would not kill them unless necessary.

As for the cattle, there was no intention to kill them at all, as they were a symbol of wealth; at the end of the year, some would be driven to the Shenhu Tribe to be sent over, or as Tuomao put it, to trade for salt.

Zhang and the others heard about a different Wulengebu from Tuomao's mouth; it turned out they were not as united as one, and the bond for everything was salt; the center of the Wulengebu, the wealthiest place, controlled the salt of the entire tribe, and they were wealthy and stingy.

And Zhang also showed the Wulengebu savages something that would make them completely loyal, and that was salt; Huaxia was not lacking in salt at all, and although salt was extremely precious in this era, it was a pity that the Huaxia people did not care much about it.

In the past, salt was distributed for free, and anyone could collect it at will; now, because Huaxia's population had grown, and because they wanted the salt industry to develop healthily, a very low price was set so that everyone could afford to eat salt.

Plus, since salt was a daily consumable, even at a very low price, under the support of a massive population scale, salt had become a quite profitable business.

Moreover, the cost of Huaxia's salt was not high, mainly lying in labor, mining, and transportation; after all, the salt lake was relatively far from Huaxia, and these Workers also needed wages; as for the subsequent purification step, because it had already reached a scale, there was no high cost.

The food obtained from selling salt, after deducting the Workers' wage expenses, almost all went into the National Treasury; the reason it was said "almost" and not "all" was because they had to give this department some benefits, as well as some development funds, such as improving technology, adding Workers, purchasing tools, renovating roads, and so on...

Huaxia was not lacking in salt at all; Baifeng knew that salt lake very well, and as far as their current population scale was concerned, they could not finish eating it even in another hundred years, and it was impossible for him to rely on just this one salt lake forever; later, when the territory expanded and the city construction became larger, they would have to find other sources of edible salt; well salt and lake salt were both fine.

He had no thoughts on sea salt, after all, Huaxia was too far from the sea, but that did not mean it was completely unusable; now the relationship between Huaxia and the Jiuli was becoming increasingly close, and Huaxia was also preparing to help them solve the big problem of edible salt; sea salt was inexhaustible, and after their production increased, the price of salt would naturally come down.

Now Huaxia wanted other products from the sea, but Huaxia was not prepared to completely abandon the territory of the Suiren clan; they still had to control as much as they could within their own range of control, leaving more territory for their descendants.

And the easternmost territory was closer to the Jiuli, which meant it was closer to sea salt and too far from Huaxia City; although the salt produced there could be brought over, the cost of such a round trip would be ridiculously high, and by then, Huaxia's salt would have no profit to speak of, because they would need to use the salt profits earned at Huaxia City to subsidize the salt prices in other places.

If they wanted the country to be stable, the price of salt had to be fixed; it was best if it could be cheap, and it was fine if the price was appropriately higher in places that were too far away, but it certainly could not be too high; this was not a good phenomenon.

Huaxia had already determined the policy of state-run salt and Iron; even if they canceled the state-run system in the future, they would still have to achieve national pricing; for things related to the national economy and the people's livelihood, the price had to be determined by the state; this was also the practice of later generations; for something like salt, no matter which enterprise it was, the price was almost the same because they did not have the power to set prices; the state set the prices.

Only for derived edible salt products could they set prices, such as rose salt or bamboo salt, because this no longer belonged to the category of people's livelihood; even if the price was set to the sky, it would have no impact on the lives of ordinary people.

Once it was said that the price difference of salt between two Huaxia cities was too large, the situation of reselling private salt might occur, selling from a city with a low price to a city with a high price; as long as the price was set reasonably, they would find that reselling private salt was unprofitable, or the profit was too small to be worth it, and naturally, they would not do so.

But if they did not find enough salt sources and transported salt from only one place in Huaxia, the salt price in distant cities would inevitably rise, and the further away, the higher it would rise; Huaxia could not let the business of salt, which could have been highly profitable and subsidized the National Treasury, turn into a loss.

To stabilize it, one way was to find other salt sources, and the second was to cooperate with the Xuanyuan Tribe and the Jiuli; currently, both tribes were still lacking salt, but if Baifeng intervened, they would naturally not be lacking; at least the Jiuli would soon not be lacking; Baifeng had not thought about helping the Xuanyuan Tribe yet, mainly because he did not even know the source of the Xuanyuan Tribe's salt now, but in daily contact, he could also feel that at least Qingqiu City was not lacking in salt.

The Jiuli could continue to be won over, using salt refining technology or other technologies as an agreement, so that they would conduct sea salt trade with Huaxia in the future, with the price fixed and unchanged, or only allowed to change slightly, so as to provide edible salt for the eastern territory, let them trade with the Jiuli, be self-sufficient, and reduce Huaxia's edible salt transshipment costs.

Now Huaxia City, including the Western Development Group, was not lacking in salt at all; the Western Development Group's salt storage was huge, and because it also had to be fed to livestock, they even built several warehouses to stack salt Bricks.