Chapter 1151: Business Is Business

The cloth sales in the autumn of the third year of the Tianqi reign were personally overseen by Zhou Xuezhi. Every arm of the Zhao Camp gave him their fullest cooperation, and intelligence from the Internal Guard and informants on every route flowed to him in a steady stream.

By now, even the Songjiang cloth merchants were secretly buying up Xuzhou cloth. They all believed Xuzhou was bleeding itself dry just to hold the line, and that if they could only speed up the Xuzhou cloth merchants' loss of blood, whatever they lost this year they would earn back the next. Cloth could be stored for a long time, and when only Songjiang cotton cloth dominated the market next year, they could flip that twenty percent right back by selling the Xuzhou cloth they had hoarded.

Songjiang's tactics infuriated many in the Cloud Mountain Firm. Some even advised Zhou Xuezhi directly, telling him to set fire to the Songjiang warehouses or to bare his blade — anything to spare them the disgust of this grinding struggle.

Zhou Xuezhi rejected all these proposals. This time, they were going to fight a fair and square commercial war against Songjiang. Only by winning that way could they do normal business afterward. Otherwise, the two sides would stay tangled up like this forever, and the vicious tactics would only grow more extreme.

Meanwhile, the Cloud Mountain Firm's affiliated trading houses, as well as merchants outside the Qingjiangpu cotton spinning circle, were also worried for the firm. They had weathered decades in the treacherous seas of commerce, and though they did not know the cotton cloth trade's inner workings, they could still roughly calculate the costs. The Zhao Camp's cotton cloth business now baffled every one of them — this was nothing but a constant bleeding of money.

Could it be to give those refugees a livelihood? But wouldn't farming and clearing wasteland be far more reliable? Yet whether it was the affiliated trading houses or those other merchants, no one offered any advice. Some even went along and bought a bit of Songjiang cloth and Xuzhou cloth themselves — twenty percent below market price, there was money to be made no matter what. Everyone simply watched in silence.

Because the workshops housing the cotton gins and spinning machines were kept secret, the only thing outsiders could see and hear about were the weaving sheds, which looked no different from anywhere else. So no one knew that the cost of Xuzhou cloth was a mere fraction of the other cotton cloth on the market. If you factored in the paltry wages paid to the refugee and displaced weavers, it might even be as low as one-tenth.

Every night, alone in his study, Zhou Xuezhi would take out his abacus and run the numbers. Each time, he could not help but laugh. Everyone else thought the Zhao Camp was bleeding money, when in truth, gold, silver, and coin were pouring in. The feeling of keeping such a secret was truly indescribably wonderful.

In this commercial war between Xuzhou and Songjiang, the maritime merchants were also finding things indescribably wonderful, especially the Li Family Fleet, who had just established ties with Zhao Jin. Cotton cloth at twenty percent below market price — they made a profit no matter how they sold it, and they were making twenty percent more than in previous years. What's more, in past years, Songjiang cotton cloth was always in short supply, but this year it was being sold without restriction, allowing them to earn even more.

The Yu family of Songjiang ought to have profited handsomely from this cotton cloth war, for they had laid their plans in advance and Xuzhou had placed no restrictions on them. But their home was in Songjiang, and to reap profit in the midst of a struggle that had now sparked genuine fury would certainly provoke widespread outrage. Yu Zhiyuan understood better than anyone the consequences of angering Songjiang's powerful merchant houses and great clans. Even if he had wanted to force the issue, his family and clansmen would never have agreed. This time, there was no room for accommodation.

When they learned that boatload after boatload of cotton cloth was being shipped away by sea, the Songjiang magnates did not conclude that Xuzhou cloth was selling well. Instead, they thought of Zhao Jin's connections to the rivers and seas and suspected that these maritime purchases were a charade colluded with Xuzhou — that the boatloads of cloth were being sold, only to be smuggled back at the first opportunity.

The influence and connections of the Jiangnan magnates were no joke. Even a maritime leader like the Li Family Fleet could be inquired about by the powerful merchant houses and great clans of Songjiang, who would pull strings to get the truth. And so they learned the truth: the Li Family Fleet had spent genuine gold and silver in Xuzhou, and would then earn back even more genuine gold and silver elsewhere. They even learned that Xuzhou had a great deal of stock on hand, and that the weaving workshops were still churning out cloth in an endless stream.

What followed next was the Qingjiangpu patrol team capturing over a dozen desperate men who had intended to commit arson, and a clash at a warehouse twenty li south of Qingjiangpu with river bandits who had just disembarked from their boats — over a hundred were killed or captured in total.

These men either failed in their attempts or were captured. It was also said that someone had spent silver in Huai'an Prefecture and Shanyang County, intending to entangle the Zhao Camp in troublesome lawsuits.

When the hundred-odd captured river bandits were publicly beheaded just like that, and Huai'an Prefecture turned a blind eye — even when people came forward to inform on them, the prefecture still turned a blind eye — the Songjiang merchants quickly understood something. The cotton cloth war immediately entered its final phase.

They had tried every means, open and covert, and none had worked. The Songjiang magnates promptly capitulated. Every day this price-cutting and dumping continued was another day of lost silver for the Songjiang cotton industry. Since they could not destroy their opponent, and since there was no worry about selling all the cotton cloth both sides produced, why continue this fight to the death? Especially when it was clear the other side could not be killed.

While Xuzhou and Songjiang Prefecture were locked in this open and covert struggle over cotton cloth, Yu Zhiyuan had kept a very low profile. Yet he was still viewed with suspicion and jealousy by his fellow townsmen, and there were always people keeping watch on his family home. But when the time came to make peace, Yu Zhiyuan was immediately pushed forward. People appealed to their shared hometown ties and sent him to Xuzhou to broker a truce.

Yu Zhiyuan was only the first wave. Next, every prominent merchant in Yangzhou and Qingjiangpu who had any connection to the Zhao Camp was sought out through every possible channel and asked to come to Xuzhou to plead their case — to end this cotton cloth war that appeared to be "mutually assured destruction."

Although the Songjiang magnates had not kept it purely to business and had ultimately resorted to vicious extra-commercial tactics, the Zhao Camp did not pursue the matter relentlessly. They simply followed good advice and agreed to everyone's mediation. This was because, under the management of everyone from the magnates down to the weavers and cotton farmers in Songjiang Prefecture, the cotton cloth business had long been a mature market. From the sowing of the cotton seeds all the way to the weaving, dyeing, and export of the cloth, every link was well-established, and the people of Songjiang played an enormous role in every one of them. The Zhao Camp wanted to use this market to make money, not smash it to pieces and rebuild it themselves. And so, in the end, the Zhao Camp amiably "kept it to business."

Of course, this was also because the current cotton cloth market was far from saturated. The production of Songjiang and everywhere else under Heaven was nowhere near meeting demand, for that demand came not only from the two capitals and every province of the Great Ming, but also from Japan, Goryeo, the Southern Seas, and even places farther still. As long as you had maritime trade channels and could connect with fleets willing to buy, you could sell as much cotton cloth as you had. That was why the Zhao Camp wanted to make money through amiability. Had this market been saturated, then this time they would have fought to the death without end.

The negotiations went very smoothly. Since they could all earn more, why cut the price by twenty percent for the benefit of others? So both sides decided to adjust the price back up. Anyone who secretly cut prices to sell goods would be a public enemy. Just as both sides had judged, restoring the export price of cotton cloth to its original level did not affect sales, because the cloth traders could still make a profit at the original price. The Songjiang magnates were merely chagrined at their own recent price-cutting, and they assumed Xuzhou felt the same way and was only putting on a brave front to save face.

To outsiders, it looked like they were bleeding money, but inside the Zhao Camp, they were rejoicing at the profits the cotton cloth brought in. This was tantamount to opening up a new source of wealth beyond the distilled liquor, salt, ironware, and market trade operations. This year, they had to relocate commoners and resettle the Liao refugees. This year's expenses and next year's budget were both going to be enormous. Although their income was still substantial and their reserves still sufficient, Wang Zhaojing, Ruhui, Zhou Xuezhi, and Chen Hong had already been preparing to live within their means. But once the cotton cloth business started, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed they could spread out and get things done after all.

North of Yizhou, Ji Xiang had established a large encampment centered on Gegou Village. Personnel and supplies were being concentrated there in a steady stream. There was no water route to this location, and even if there had been one, it could not be relied upon in the winter season. They could only depend on carts and horses. Ox- and horse-drawn carts loaded with supplies took to the road, and the draft animals themselves consumed a great deal of grain. Distributing supplies this way was enormously costly, but the Zhao Camp simply carted them over, load by load. Nearly three thousand men at Gegou Village were well-fed and well-equipped.

Setting aside the elite quality of the personal retinue brigade and the imposing presence of over a dozen veteran trained-companies, the endless stream of transport and the mountains of supplies alone were enough to shock the officials and local strongmen of the region. They had already witnessed how fiercely the Xuzhou forces could fight and how formidable they were, but this kind of financial power, material resources, and operational capacity left them utterly speechless. Everyone knew that the border region between Qingzhou Prefecture and Yanzhou Prefecture was remote and impoverished, not worth expending too much effort on. If even here they could deploy such a staggering volume of supplies, the Zhao Camp's strength was plain to see.

The gentry and local strongmen of Yishui, Mengyin, Ju County, and other parts of Qingzhou Prefecture — whether they had been involved in the bloody upheavals stirred up by the Zhao Camp or not — did not prepare for the New Year as they had in years past. Instead, they sent their sons and younger kinsmen, and in some cases the family heads and clan patriarchs went in person, to travel to Xuzhou and see for themselves. Even the most obtuse among them knew that the sky over Shandong might be about to change. Were those terrifying legends of the past true or not? A trip to Xuzhou and Pizhou to look around would tell them everything.

Zhao Jin had barely even paid attention to the cotton cloth struggle. Why pay attention to a battle Xuzhou was certain to win? Had they not wanted to maintain the stability of this market, the Zhao Camp could have simply slashed their price forty percent below market rate and flooded the market with goods. Songjiang would likely have been filled with wailing and despair in an instant. Then the Zhao Camp could have taken their silver over and bought up all the cotton fields, weaving workshops, and cloth firms at rock-bottom prices. It was just that doing so would have immediately stirred up a bloody storm. But when it came to the business of killing and bloodshed, who had the Zhao Camp ever feared?

What truly piqued Zhao Jin's interest were the two bands of bandits that had been captured. Their leaders had already been sent to Xuzhou for imprisonment and interrogation. Both bands came from Lake Tai. When Jiangnan desperadoes had nowhere left to run, there were two places they could go: one was Lake Tai, the other was the sea. Moreover, the Lake Tai stockades were tangled up with remnants of former dynasties like Chen Youliang and Zhang Shicheng, so the authorities were generally loath to stir up that trouble. As a result, the lake had become the "armory" of the Jiangnan powerful families. Whenever they needed arson or murder done, they would make contact with that place. The Zhao Camp had to thoroughly investigate a force like this.

Many within the Zhao Camp were dissatisfied with Yu Zhiyuan's stance this time.

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