Chapter 550: The Field Official

The month had entered the twelfth, and inside the First Emperor's traveling palace in Jimo City in Jiaodong, the assembled ministers were still debating the establishment of "Engineering Schools" and "Agriculture Schools" in Xianyang. A thousand li away, in Anlu County of Nan Commandery, the County Field Overseer Wei Zhong had already risen early and was leading his subordinates on an inspection of the granaries.

According to the statutes, Zhong, as an agriculture official, was required this month to "order the people to report the five kinds of seed, command the farmers to plan paired plowing, repair the plowshares, and ready the field tools"—in short, to make early preparations for the spring plowing.

Zhong knew that he owed his present position entirely to his younger brother; even his family's clan name had been earned only through Heifu. Honest and dutiful by nature, he understood little beyond farming and wanted only to do his own job well and not cause trouble for his second brother.

Fighting off drowsiness, he splashed a little ice water on his face to suppress the urge to yawn, then sat down in the government office, pointed to the map of public fields near the county seat, and began assigning tasks to the field assistant clerks under him.

"This tract will be plowed when spring begins, planted with rice and millet; these will be planted with broomcorn millet and beans; the remaining land must lie fallow."

"The field assistant clerks shall summon the field overseers of each hamlet and have them compile the field registers. Land confiscated for legal violations is to be counted as public fields. Land granted due to an increase in rank must also be recorded anew in the field registers, so that there are no errors or omissions when collecting the land tax…"

His gaze swept over his subordinates as he said sternly, "According to the law, anyone who takes bribes, conceals private fields, or falsifies field registers is to be punished the same as a thief! Do you all understand?"

The men assented solemnly, and only then did Zhong nod and move on to other matters. He counted as a person of some standing in the county, but the responsibilities he had to shoulder were not few either.

As an agriculture official, Wei Zhong not only had to manage the household-based allocation of fields and the collection of land tax and fodder tax; his daily work also had three main duties:

First, organizing production. In Anlu, whenever Zhong had free time, he would lead men on strolls through the fields around the county seat. If he spotted idlers loafing about or drinking in groups in the fields, he would go up and berate them, ordering those young commoners down to the land. If they refused, the matter could escalate to detention and penal labor.

"Wine wastes grain, which is why private brewing is forbidden among the people. In the countryside, only the hamlet overseer may brew it, and on festival and sacrificial days, a little is distributed to each household—a small sip is enough. If a man is dead drunk every day, picking quarrels and stirring up trouble, how can he go to the fields and do meticulous plowing and careful hoeing?"

The court further stipulated that even "those redeeming debts through labor"—men doing hard labor for the authorities—were to be allowed to return home for twenty days during each sowing and intertillage season to engage in farm work. Zhong still had to send men to keep an eye on these people and make sure they did not run off.

Second, managing the means of production such as plow oxen and iron farm tools. Qin's agriculture was the best of the six states, and it relied precisely on ox-drawn plowing and iron farm tools. While other states gave priority to casting iron into blades, Qin alone used virtually all its iron for farm implements…

Iron farm tools were harder, sharper, and lighter than wooden or stone tools; they could not only improve the quality of tilling but also accelerate the frequency of plowing and expand the acreage of farmland—they were a sharp weapon for agriculture.

Plowing and war, plowing and war—the status of plowing stood even above that of war. After all, when Qin soldiers grew fierce, they dared charge stark naked. If they wanted iron weapons, they could just win battles and seize them!

In ordinary times, however, the field officials who managed the iron farm tools were extremely generous toward the common people who came to borrow them!

"If a borrowed iron tool is worn out and breaks from natural deterioration, a written record shall be made, and the borrower shall be accepted without penalty."

Wei Zhong was probably emphasizing this point to his subordinates for the hundredth time: when a farmer who cannot afford to buy iron farm tools borrows them from the authorities, if the tool is damaged through normal wear, no compensation is required—he simply returns the original item, and the authorities write an explanatory note for the record.

"If a farmer who has borrowed an iron tool is afraid of damaging the iron hoe and dares not use it with force, then how would its effectiveness differ from wood or stone?"

Zhong had been a farmer for thirty years and understood the common people's hardships very well. For that reason, in his few years as an agriculture official, he had treated the people with great kindness and had already been honored by the county as a man of "elder" standing; at village community sacrifices, he was always invited to carve the meat.

Yet while plow oxen were likewise items that could be lent to the common people, they could not be driven recklessly. If the whip was applied too heavily and broke the skin, or if an ox lost too much weight, both the farmer and the oxherd would also be punished.

"Each township and hamlet must report the number of plow oxen they possess and allocate them in advance, giving priority to those who hold ranks. For households that cannot get a plow ox to assist with plowing, the field overseers shall go and teach them the paired-plowing method once more."

This touched upon Wei Zhong's third major task: providing technical guidance to the farmers on production.

Beyond paired plowing, the agriculture officials even had to educate those young people who lacked farming experience on how much seed to sow per mu.

"For rice and hemp, sow two dou and six sheng of seed per mu; for millet and wheat, sow one dou per mu; for beans, sow half a dou per mu… Sown at these rates, the seeds will be neither too sparse nor too dense, which benefits the fields."

In addition, the critically important techniques of composting and fertilizer-making also had to be propagated and promoted by the agriculture clerks. Thanks to Heifu's innovations eight or nine years earlier, every township in Anlu County had already popularized public latrines and assigned a man to manage them. At Heifu's suggestion, this man was called a "Station Chief," a rank equivalent to the "Ox Chief" who specialized in tending oxen—also an unestablished public-service position.

The station chief, along with two convict laborers, managed the composting; when spring and summer came, they would haul it to the public fields.

Seeing the public-field crops flourish year after year under the nourishment of fertilizer, many commoners began to think: why should the fertile water from my household flow into a stranger's field? Thus in Anlu, some well-to-do households with the means began building latrines in front of their own gates, and they did not forbid outsiders from using them. The Bai family south of the city wall even grew rich selling night soil…

A similar situation had also emerged in the great metropolis of Xianyang, where the public latrine industry was just beginning to burgeon.

But in the other commanderies and counties, composting and fertilizer-making were still only just beginning to burgeon. Even within the Pass, habits formed over many years could not be changed in a mere two or three. To say nothing of places like Jiangnan, where even ox-drawn plowing had not yet spread and the local Yue people were still practicing slash-and-burn farming; the advanced production techniques of the Central Plains could not be transmitted in for the time being…

Wei Zhong, Director of the Anlu Agriculture Bureau, did not need to fret over such things; he only had to manage his own tiny patch of the county well. But in the traveling palace in Jiaodong, this very problem had become an important reason for the hundred officials to support the establishment of "Agriculture Schools"!

…

The First Emperor's inspection tours were not pure sightseeing. Although the entourage was constantly on the move, not a single piece of government business that should have been handled in Xianyang was dropped along the way—the Emperor himself stayed up late every night reviewing memorials, so how would his ministers dare slack off?

According to the First Emperor's habit, proposals put forward by his ministers were usually not approved on the spot; instead, he would have the assembled officials debate them, then gather the opinions and make the final decision himself.

Thus, from the eleventh month into the twelfth, in the traveling palace at Jimo in Jiaodong, the assembled ministers debated Heifu's proposal to establish "Engineering Schools" and "Agriculture Schools."

The Commandant of Justice, Ye Teng, vigorously supported this idea. Tracing Qin's history, he said that when Shang Yang carried out his reforms, the first important "Number One Document" issued was called the "Order to Reclaim Wasteland"!

The general content of this statute was to rectify all folk customs and corrupt practices that hindered agriculture, to suppress intellectuals, idlers, and merchants economically, to restrict migration, and to leave the common people with only one path—farming—taking grain as the guiding principle and agriculture as the foundation.

This was not only implemented at the central level; in order to enforce the "Order to Reclaim Wasteland" locally, many agriculture officials were also established. At the state level there was the "Superintendent of Grain and Domestic Finance"; at the commandery level, the "Commandery Field Overseer"; at the county level, the "County Field Overseer"; at the township level, the "Field Assistant Clerk"; and in the hamlets, the "Field Overseer."

In Heifu's understanding, these were equivalent to a later age's Ministry of Agriculture, Provincial Agriculture Department, County Agriculture Bureau, Production Brigade, and Production Team.

Zhong occupied his post and attended to its duties, but he was muddled about the deeper reasons behind these things; Heifu, however, understood them all too clearly.

Ever since political regimes had existed, governments had directly or indirectly intervened in the social economy. Depending on the intensity of intervention, later ages would distinguish between market economies and planned economies.

But nothing pioneered the tradition of a command economy more than Shang Yang's "Order to Reclaim Wasteland."

During the Western Zhou and the Spring and Autumn period, feudal lords, fiefs, and clan organizations stood as barriers between the state and the laborers, making it impossible for the state to intervene in the agricultural activities of the broadest mass of laborers.

Qin, however, had either destroyed or weakened all of these intermediate organizations. After Shang Yang's reforms, Qin's control over laborers reached an unprecedented degree. As could be seen from the work of the agriculture officials, the court wished it could guide and manage every single link in the farming process.

This big-government mindset was extremely advantageous for spreading advanced production techniques. The only problem was that among the vast numbers of agriculture officials, quite a few were half-baked, or of humble origin and narrow vision; they could not immediately grasp the benefits of new things like composting and fertilizer-making or napa cabbage.

The agriculture official system was good, but it lacked precisely the guidance of specialized professionals.

Therefore, Heifu's proposal to establish "Agriculture Schools" was not a sudden whim; rather, he felt that, building upon the Qin dynasty's emphasis on agriculture and its agriculture official system, taking the further step of establishing agricultural colleges—with the government providing the funds and the agricultural experts providing the techniques—to train agricultural technicians and send them to serve in various regions, so that agriculture officials at every level would gain the additional function of an "agricultural technical station," was simply a matter of course!

Heifu was not wrong. While the ministers still held some disagreements over the "Engineering Schools," the "Agriculture Schools" won the unanimous approval of nearly all the high officials.

In the end, the First Emperor himself gave the final decree on the matter: "That which fills the granaries is the fundamental task of plowing and farming. Qin established its state upon agriculture; establishing Agriculture Schools is permissible! It must be done so that officials and commoners alike can emulate the deeds of Shennong and Houji!"

"Your Majesty is sagely and enlightened!"

The assembled ministers fell silent, prostrated themselves, and sang his praises.

Heifu, meanwhile, was silently doing a calculation in his mind: "The realm has forty commanderies and nearly a thousand counties; at least a thousand agricultural technicians will be needed. If this group carries the agricultural experts' techniques to the localities, how great an improvement could they bring to the farming of the entire nation?"

If they could also take in Heifu and Zhang Cang's private agenda of "understanding nature, utilizing nature, and transforming nature" and spread it across the whole country, the prospects would truly be limitless.

With this base number, in the future, even if Heifu himself were no longer in this world, who could say that China would not produce an ancient Yuan Longping?

This was the "lifelong plan" that Heifu was devising for this state and this people.

"Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime!"

…

The First Emperor stayed in Jiaodong for over a month, and it was not for the cabbage and tofu, nor did he do only one thing.

Just as the assembled ministers in the Jimo traveling palace were debating and deciding to establish "Agriculture Schools," causing the practical sciences to march toward flourishing vitality in this cold twelfth month, the residence of the Jimo Tian clan outside the city was shrouded in gloomy misery.

The wind and snow had just ceased. The servants of the Jimo Tian clan opened the main gate as usual, only to be stupefied to discover that a dense, dark column of Qin soldiers had already surrounded the place! Powerful bows and taut crossbows were aimed at the lintel; they were so terrified that they dropped the door panel and ran into the courtyard to report.

The official Cao Can of the Commandery Military Office, together with a detachment of the Imperial Guard Corps directly under the emperor, brought over a thousand men and surrounded the Tian clan residence in Jimo, then read aloud the First Emperor of Qin's edict:

"The Tian clan of Jimo shall relocate their entire lineage to the Great Plateau in Beidi Commandery, to populate the frontier!"

PS: Chapter 2 in the afternoon

(End of chapter)