For money, I even sold popsicles. Really, I am probably the first emperor in history who gave up even his dignity for money, right?
Saltpeter ice making has been around since the Tang Dynasty, but it has never been popularized among the people. The reason is simple: saltpeter ice making is expensive and cumbersome.
Therefore, the royal family and other wealthy families still used the method of collecting winter ice and storing it in ice cellars, which was low-cost and large-scale. Ordinary people used well water to cool the wine, which also tasted very cold.
But if saltpeter is used on a large scale to make ice, just like industrial production, the cost will naturally come down.
For the royal family, obtaining large quantities of strategic material, saltpeter, was not difficult. Moreover, after saltpeter was melted into water to form ice, it could be evaporated and crystallized for reuse, so there was no waste.
With this method, the ice stored in the royal ice cellars could also be sold to the outside world to supplement the palace expenses.
In order to maximize profits, the emperor also sold the method of making cold drinks to the Chinese Chamber of Commerce. He not only allocated a batch of saltpeter imported from Ryukyu, but also allowed them to use the brand of royal secrets and palace secret recipes.
This wasn't forced buying or selling; if the price was right, the profits over the summer would be quite substantial. The Chinese Chamber of Commerce had many shops in the north, even in Pidao and southern Liaoning.
The Chinese Chamber of Commerce also sees the potential of the military consumer group. Tobacco and alcohol are the most popular, followed by sugar and tea.
The imperial court did not owe them any food or wages, and military families were treated well. Soldiers had money in their hands, and in order to ease the pressure of war, they were not too stingy.
In addition, the Chinese Chamber of Commerce made a lot of money by monopolizing the border trade in the north. Since the emperor had given so many advantages, even if the cold drinks were not profitable, buying them to please the emperor would still be a good deal.
The emperor had to earn money, and this year's gold and silver were gone. He didn't even need to deposit them into the imperial treasury, instead allocating them to the southwest and Liaodong. Without money to supplement their income, are you going to let the emperor and his family starve?
Although there was still a lot of treasury left by Grandpa Wanli, Zhu Youxiao was a miser and continued to save it based on the principle of not using it as much as possible.
Over a million! Zhu Youxiao couldn't help but feel a pang of pain at the thought of all the money he'd spent without even looking at it. Eating fruit shaved ice, the cool feeling, finally gave him some relief.
In order to prepare for the winter-spring counter-offensive next year, military production will be expanded again, which will also cost money, and it is not a small amount.
Zhu Youxiao stroked his forehead gently. The court had a financial shortfall, and the emperor had to find a way to solve it. "Do you think there's an emperor who treats himself like this?"
Other emperors lived a life of debauchery and committed many crimes, but they had ministers who could amass wealth! Like that guy, Heshen, he was quite good!
"Your Majesty..." Wang Tigan entered the hall, bowed, and said, "The newly appointed eunuch Fang Zhenghua, the chief eunuch of the Imperial Household Department, comes to bid farewell to Your Majesty."
"Call him in." Zhu Youxiao put down the shaved ice, took the silk handkerchief handed to him by Fan Xiaohui, wiped his mouth, and reached out to take the documents on the table.
Fang Zhenghua entered the hall and knelt in greeting. He was from Shandong, and although he was a eunuch, he was tall and strong. If he had a beard, he would have been a tall and strong man.
Zhu Youxiao handed the document to a palace attendant, who then passed it on to Fang Zhenghua, saying, "I'm sending you to Linglong to supervise gold mining, not only because you're from Shandong, but also because you were fair and impartial when you were supervising the various supervisory bureaus."
"Gold mining is to alleviate the court's difficulties and to provide livelihoods and increase income for the people. If you do these two things well, you will live up to my expectations."
Zhaoyuan belongs to Qi area, and the rich mineral veins on the surface of Linglong and other mines have been developed since the Tang Dynasty when private mines were built.
According to the "Old Book of Tang Dynasty: Official Records", "All copper is produced in the prefectures and cities. People are allowed to mine privately, and the government collects taxes." Mining and smelting experienced unprecedented prosperity.
The poet Liu Yuxi once wrote: "The sun shines on Chengzhou Island and the river fog clears, and the river bank is full of gold-digging girls", which vividly depicts the prosperous scene of the folk gold mining industry at that time.
In the fourth year of the Jingde reign (1007 AD), Emperor Zhenzong of Song sent Minister Pan Meilai to oversee the Linglong gold mines. The History of the Song Dynasty, Records of Food and Goods, records that "during the Tiansheng reign (1023-1031 AD), gold production at Denglai increased by several thousand taels annually."
In the early Yuan Dynasty, the "Yuanshi Shizu Benji" records: In the fifth year of the Zhiyuan period (1268 AD), "the government ordered 4,000 unregistered households in Yidu to mine gold in Dengzhou and Qixia County, and each household paid an annual tribute of 4 coins."
At that time, the highest annual gold production was about 30,000 taels, which was twice as high as the Huangyou period during the Song Dynasty when gold production was at its peak.
During the reign of Emperor Shenzong of the Ming Dynasty, a large number of eunuchs were dispatched to various places to supervise the development of gold mines. The eunuch sent to Shandong was Chen Zeng, and gold mining in Zhaoyuan was booming.
The highest annual gold tax in the country was in the 21st year of Yongle, with a total income of more than 5,000 taels, which was only one-sixth of the highest income in the Yuan Dynasty.
During the Wanli reign, eunuchs were sent in to collect mining taxes. From then on, mining supervisors became rampant throughout the country, levying taxes without markets and paying silver without mines, a tyrannical regime that abused the people and brought disaster to all regions.
This doesn't mean that mining and collecting mining taxes are wrong, but rather that the methods and approaches are problematic. Wanli's use of eunuchs as mining supervisors was also due to the constraints of civil officials.
Civil officials did not advocate taxation, under the pretext of "not competing with the people for profit." But in reality, neither the court gained anything, nor did the people become wealthy, as all the money went into the pockets of powerful officials.
This time, Zhu Youxiao once again sent eunuchs to supervise the collection, which was different from the Wanli period. Officials who had obstructed the collection of commercial and mining taxes had been purged. Although it could not be said that there was a complete victory, there was much less resistance.
There are also mining regulations, which are divided into government-run and privately-owned mines (privately-owned, in fact, the big miners purchase the land from the government, and the owner then divides the land into households to be responsible for mining); another type is to set up a supervisory unit and collect taxes from gold miners.
The Linglong Gold Mine in Zhaoyuan, the Suichang Gold Mine, and the Dianzhong Silver Mine were all government-run because they were famous rich mining areas in China and were still being mined, so they should be monopolized by the state.
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