Chapter 176: Prying It Loose

Ever since he realized that to vigorously develop the domestic economy, he first had to build up the handicraft industry in the Jiangnan region, using key points to drive surrounding areas toward gradual development and slowly casting off the Great Ming's current self-sufficient, backward smallholder farming economy, Zhu Youjian began pondering what methods to use to guide and participate in this reform.

There was no need for a grand, public campaign promoting the opening of the seas. Quietly joining in and pushing it forward by great strides was what mattered most; form was irrelevant.

With the court's authority steadily waning and its prestige far less than before, many of the original laws and decrees had long since become dead letters.

The court's maritime prohibition policy had long existed in name only, so there was no need to wage verbal battles with court officials over it.

If one were to raise the opening of the seas in court now, it would inevitably draw fierce opposition from the Donglin Faction.

Because the Jiangnan gentry they represented were the true beneficiaries of the maritime ban, and the ones who had beguiled the court into prohibiting sea trade were precisely the spokesmen of this interest group in the court.

The goods sold overseas and to all regions were produced in Jiangnan, and the wholesale and retail merchants of every size formed the main component of this interest group.

With an official maritime ban in place, Jiangnan merchants had grounds to exclude merchants from other provinces who wanted to profit from maritime trade.

But if the court lifted the maritime ban, they would lose their justification for shutting others out with a clear conscience. Monopoly was the source of exorbitant profits, and to maintain those profits, they would use every excuse and manufacture every incident to oppose the court's opening of the seas.

On the seas off Zhejiang, Fujian, and Guangdong, tens of thousands of vessels of all sizes plied between nations each year—if the laws were followed, such scenes could not possibly exist.

These merchant ships were in fact mostly owned by the Jiangnan gentry who opposed opening the seas.

But having more capital and personnel join in, intensifying efforts to expand markets, thereby forming a healthy competitive environment and breaking one group's monopoly—that was the kind of reasonable commercial activity that could bring more vitality to the Great Ming's economy and benefit more people.

The emergence of the Four Seas Trading Company would to a certain extent break this monopolistic behavior. Because its backing was too formidable, no one would dare erect obstacles to the Four Seas Trading Company's entry. If anyone did dare do such a thing, it would simply hand the Four Seas Trading Company a fine opportunity to expand its influence.

Only by increasing capital investment could large-scale production be organized and the scale and volume of export goods expanded. Seizing as much of the emerging overseas markets as possible was the way to bring in more real gold and silver.

Although workshops of every kind now stood thick in the Jiangnan region, their scale was very small. The large ones had several dozen workers, the small ones a dozen or so, and most were family workshops. In this way, grains of sand accumulated into towers, day after day, until merchants gathered the goods and sold them overseas or throughout the Great Ming.

This phenomenon had many causes.

Smallholder mentality, insufficiently open thinking, contentment with modest wealth; local officials who offered no support; a lack of sufficient capital to expand reproduction; and earned silver that was not reinvested in industry but converted into landholdings—these were the most important constraining factors.

The other aspects were relatively easy to change; Zhu Youjian could resolve them through investment guidance or mandatory orders.

But the shackles on thought and the narrowness of vision were the hardest things to change.

This era was unlike later ages of information explosion; people of this time were extremely resistant to new things and radical ideas.

This traditional, conservative state of affairs was mainly caused by the extremely low literacy rate, with the illiterate making up the overwhelming majority.

Only by studying books and understanding principle could a person acquire a wealth of knowledge, and their vision and thinking would change through imperceptible influence.

It was not yet possible to launch a literacy campaign across the entire Great Ming, so Zhu Youjian could only use gradual methods to slowly change this situation.

At Zhu Youjian's direction, the Embroidered Uniform Guard and the Eastern Depot took the lead in launching literacy campaigns within their own agencies.

This campaign was led by Wang Cheng'en and Luo Yangxing. The Eastern Depot and the Embroidered Uniform Guard each hired a number of old examination veterans and failed xiucai who had no hope of passing the higher examinations and made their living writing letters for others and teaching a few children, promising them several times their usual annual earnings, and forcibly began literacy instruction within their agencies.

Zhu Youjian did not require these personnel to reach the level of xiucai, but he did require them to recognize no fewer than five hundred and no more than one thousand common characters, and to be able to read and write the relevant official document content.

Anyone who failed to meet the standard was absolutely not to be promoted or given important posts, and would receive no rewards in the year-end assessment. Those who recognized more characters and were more familiar with the formats of official correspondence would be promoted and employed.

Although this requirement was difficult, it was not impossible—it just depended on whether one applied oneself.

As long as it was tied to personal interest, the officers would surely have ample motivation.

In later ages, a normal person could basically recognize more than two thousand characters, so five hundred was not really that many.

In Zhu Youjian's plan, the next step was to extend the Embroidered Uniform Guard's reach to every prefecture and county, gathering intelligence and preventing unexpected incidents while also conducting strict surveillance over local governments.

In the future, security in the capital would be mainly shouldered by the Eastern Depot, while the Embroidered Uniform Guard's oversight would target the Great Ming's local governments.

This method of literacy instruction used by the Eastern Depot and the Embroidered Uniform Guard was not suitable for rollout across the Great Ming—not in the war-torn, famine-ravaged north, nor even in the relatively prosperous Jiangnan.

The Great Ming government's organizational capacity could not be compared with later ages; the vast majority of common people cared more about food, clothing, and profit.

Better to wait until conditions were right before discussing it further.

Since this era could not move forward on its own, then I would have to push and drive it.

Although Zhu Youjian had only a smattering of knowledge about economics, he still had the most basic understanding: investment drives demand, tax reduction stimulates production—these two points were the simplest and most effective.

Since he had decided to make Jiangnan the dragon's head driving the Great Ming's economic development, he had to formulate corresponding measures and methods.

The Four Seas Trading Company would play an important role in this.

Reform, whether hidden or overt, would touch the interests of some people and draw open or covert opposition from these vested interests, who would adopt every means to defend what was originally their own.

To prevent possible unrest, using force as suppression was an indispensable measure.

On Zhu Youjian's orders, the Ministry of War transferred Guo Tai's Xuzhou Camp to garrison Hangzhou Prefecture, on the pretext of guarding against pirates raiding the Jiangnan region.

This force, which had fought in the Battle of Shouzhou, numbered only three thousand men, but it held an overwhelming advantage over the long-rotten Jiangnan guard stations.

The Embroidered Uniform Guard's Hangzhou Prefecture and Ningbo Prefecture Chiliarchies were also established one after another, and both chiliarchies were staffed with picked elite personnel from the Embroidered Uniform Guard.

The Hangzhou Chiliarchy of the Embroidered Uniform Guard administered the three prefectures of Hangzhou, Jiaxing, and Huzhou, while the Ningbo Chiliarchy was responsible for handling emergencies in Ningbo, Shaoxing, and Jinhua Prefectures, with the duty of monitoring local officials to be gradually expanded as well.

Besides each having five hundred officers and guardsmen, the two chiliarchies were also each assigned one hundred mounted agents from the Northern Provost Office as mobile armed forces. Such a personnel configuration was sufficient to suppress any small-scale popular unrest or disturbances that might arise, and with the soldiers of the Xuzhou Camp added, even a large-scale disturbance would be easily put down.

This was mainly to guard against the unexpected. In the Jiangnan region, which had enjoyed long peace and prosperity for over two hundred years, it was hard for many passionate heroes to emerge; at most there would be scholars cursing in the streets. As long as the threat of stripping their examination credentials was used, these people could not stir up much trouble.

The Zhejiang Governor had to be replaced, or he would become a major obstacle.

At Zhu Youjian's direction, Zhejiang Governor Zhang Bingzhen was promoted to Vice Minister of Rites of the Right, and Chang Ziyu, the Supervising Secretary of the Ministry of War who had submitted a bold memorial in the case that toppled Zhu Chunchen and Li Guozhen, was appointed the new Zhejiang Governor with the concurrent title of Right Censor-in-Chief.

Fengyang Regional Inspector Chen Liangmo and Zhejiang Regional Inspector Chen Zhizhong swapped positions—this was a normal personnel adjustment that no one could find fault with. Chen Liangmo and Chang Ziyu both came from the Censorate, had a good private relationship, and were both upright and outspoken men; serving in the same province would make it easier to control officials at every level in Zhejiang.

The Ministry of Rites was a prestigious and leisurely office that already had Left and Right Vice Ministers, so the sudden addition of another Right Vice Minister astonished court officials. When puzzled people asked the Emperor, the answer they received was that in order to better educate the realm, it was deliberately decided to strengthen the Ministry of Rites' strength.

This answer was hard to find fault with.

Surely you weren't opposing the great cause of educating the realm?

Zhu Youjian knew the purpose of this move: Aren't you the Donglin Faction's spokesman? Then come to my side—I'll find a place to hang you up first. In the future, more important Jiangnan officials would come to the capital under this pretext; this was the court's promotion of you, its affirmation of you, and the great responsibility of educating the realm belonged to none but you.

It wasn't just Jiangnan's high officials; the transfer of prefectural and county officials was also part of Zhu Youjian's plan. In the future, exchanges like the Fengxiang Prefecture and Suzhou Prefecture Prefects swapping posts would happen from time to time. The relevant regulations the Ministry of Personnel had issued last time were born precisely to prevent defiance of court orders.

Since Jiangnan was the Donglin Faction's stronghold, why not dismantle it from the roots?

"Empty the cage to change the bird"—that was about the meaning of it, right? That phrase felt somewhat familiar.

Chang'an Town was located northeast of Hangzhou Prefecture, a prosperous large town under Haining County's jurisdiction, more than sixty li from Hangzhou.

This obscure little Jiangnan town now had over ten Battalion Commander, of which weavers made up more than half; the town's Silk Market Street had several dozen shops devoted entirely to purchasing and selling the silk produced by the town's weaving households, and the locally produced long-gauze small cloth and silk satin were famous far and wide and in great demand.

Huang Bin was a native of the place, born and raised there. Just past twenty years old, he had a wife and two sons at home, and both parents were still alive. From the time he could remember, Huang Bin had followed his parents in raising silkworms and reeling silk, and at fourteen he entered a workshop in town to learn the craft of silk weaving. Two years later, the quick-witted Huang Bin's skill matured day by day, and he conceived the idea of starting his own workshop. After much persuasion, the family used silver saved over many years to purchase a loom, and Huang Bin quit his job at the workshop and went home to weave silk on his own.

Huang Bin's family owned five mu of mulberry fields and raised more than ten baskets of silkworms at home, so there was no worry about the source of raw silk. Add to that his talent for weaving silk—the bolts he produced were smooth and lustrous, and they became hot commodities the moment they hit the market. Several merchants who dealt in silk year-round scrambled to buy up his cloth, and one fairly large firm even paid him a deposit in advance, contracting his entire output.

At eighteen, Huang Bin used the silver he'd earned from weaving silk to marry his current wife, and with the leftover money he bought another loom. He and his wife—who had known how to use a loom since her maiden days—each worked one, from the hour of Chen in the morning until the hour of You in the evening. Apart from meal breaks and trips to the privy, they spent nearly the whole day at their looms.

Though working hands and feet all day was exhausting, whenever he saw the silver his silk brought in, all his weariness vanished in an instant.

As his initial capital accumulated, and with his wife becoming pregnant and giving birth one after another, Huang Bin gradually added several more looms and hired a number of workers from town to help him. He himself wore many hats—helping his parents raise silkworms and reel silk, filling in at the loom when a worker had family matters and couldn't come to work, repairing the looms himself when they broke down, and buying raw silk in advance to stock up when the household supply ran short. He was busy from morning to night, yet his little life grew ever more prosperous, and the whole family, young and old, was full of hope for the future.

While content with the income of several dozen taels of silver his five looms brought him each year, Huang Bin also harbored a vague ambition in his heart—if he could buy a piece of land, build a larger workshop, install several dozen looms, and hire a hundred workers to weave silk for him, how much silver would he earn in a year?

Unfortunately, that notion only stayed in his head. Buying land and building a house, purchasing looms, stockpiling raw silk, and paying workers their daily wages plus providing two meals—how much silver would that take? Without several thousand taels, it simply couldn't be done.

"A-Bin! There's a guest looking for you!"

His father's shout broke Huang Bin's train of thought.

A guest? Should be a merchant coming to buy silk, right? Our silk is already all contracted to Squire Zhang—Father knows that. Just turn them away.

Huang Bin set down the handful of raw silk in his hand and turned to walk outside.