In the Song Dynasty, there was no law or order. Chapter 286 of the main text took Zhang Yuan as a scapegoat on December 8, the fourth year of the Qingli period.
Heavy snow fell in Bianliang, and large-scale snow-clearing work was organized in all streets of Kaifeng Prefecture.
Funded by the government, some unemployed elderly and young people were hired in the outer city at a price of 90 coins per day to clear the snow.
This salary is definitely not high.
Because before the Qingli period, the daily wage level in Bianliang had reached more than 100 wen.
According to the "Dongjing Menghualu", at that time, the dock porters earned two to three hundred coins a day, a chicken butcher at the street corner earned one hundred and fifty coins a day, and the tea shop clerk earned four and a half strings of coins a month, about one hundred and twenty coins a day.
Basically, the average salary was around one hundred wen. Except for the soldiers whose average daily salary was only fifty wen, the salary level of ordinary people remained at one hundred wen.
Now the salary level of ordinary people has increased slightly, averaging about 120 wen, which is about 20 wen more than before.
This is because since the great reforms in the first year of the Qingli period, the business environment in the Song Dynasty has been getting better and better.
The commodity economy took a step forward, and because commodities were sold through the five major trade routes, they were not only sold to neighboring countries, but even as far as Central Asia and sold to Europe by Arab merchants.
The economic and business environment has improved. Countless new businesses, or companies, are registered by the Ministry of Industry and Commerce every year, and workshops are opened every day inside and outside the city.
Not only textile factories, but also various paper mills, tea processing factories, iron processing factories, agricultural tool factories and countless other workshops, capital began to gradually sprout.
After the workshop was established, it was natural to recruit people on a large scale. However, in the ancient society with underdeveloped information, Bianliang could only attract workers from Jingji Road and surrounding areas. It was impossible for people from far away to come to Bianliang to work.
For example, people from Hebei who want to go to the city to work will definitely give priority to Damingfu, and people from Huainan and some Henan people close to Yingtianfu will definitely give priority to Yingtianfu, and so on, resulting in a shortage of workers in Bianliang.
This is a normal market fluctuation. The normal increase in wages, and continued increase, is what the court most wants to see, because this will inevitably lead to the continued relocation of workshops.
Later, in the steam engine era, a large number of factories moved to coastal cities, which also drove the development of coastal cities such as Guangzhou, Guangxi, and Fujian.
Therefore, the imperial court will also try to find ways to regulate the market and force employers to raise wages.
However, Kaifeng Prefecture employed people who were unemployed or lacked working ability, and this salary was basically at a normal salary level, which to a certain extent could be considered as care for the poor.
The organizing personnel are the street offices under the jurisdiction of Kaifeng Prefecture.
Now that the Song Dynasty is moving towards urbanization, Kaifeng Prefecture, as an official agency, must have a certain degree of control over the grassroots.
Therefore, the court officially established the street office. Except for the director of the street office who was a ninth-rank official, the rest of the staff were clerks, and the main affairs they managed were household registration, health, community management and other work.
For example, this year the court wants to comfort the elderly and widows and distribute rice, oil and grain. From now on, it will not be handled by Kaifeng Prefecture or the Imperial City Bureau, but by the street office.
The superior leaders are mainly responsible for supervising the implementation of the work and ensuring that various grain and oil supplies are distributed. The court is now building low-rent housing, and the street office will also give priority to poor households to move into low-rent housing in the future.
There will definitely be corruption, such as the street office not carrying out its work seriously, or embezzling money and distributing low-rent housing and supplies to rich people or even their own relatives instead of poor people in need.
Therefore, Zhao Jun ordered Kaifeng Prefecture as the superior leadership department to supervise, and asked the Imperial City Bureau to conduct secret visits, investigate at all times, and hold people accountable in real time, which was considered double supervision.
Let’s do it this way for now.
Even if problems arise in the future and need to be rectified, at least now that the street office has been established, the workload of Kaifeng Prefecture will be greatly reduced.
At the call of Kaifeng Prefecture, the entire prefecture was cleaned up.
In the morning, Zhao Jun, accompanied by Bao Zheng, inspected the clearing work in the inner city, outer city, and even outside the city.
Kaiyuan Gate, also known as the West Water Gate, is the entrance to the Bian River. Because the canal brought back a large amount of steel, cattle and sheep fur and other raw materials from the north, many Liao workshops gathered here.
The imperial court is now gradually moving official workshops in the city to outside the city, such as textile factories, forges, iron processing factories, etc. The relocation began two months ago.
The official workshops also led to the relocation of many private workshops. It is expected that by the year after next, most of the workshops in Bianliang will be moved outside the city, forming an urban-rural fringe area.
Therefore, the land prices here have gradually increased, which is naturally a good thing for the people living in the slums outside the city.
Because the court's current household registration work is to allow people to settle in Bianliang and allow them to purchase the land and houses they currently live outside the city.
Perhaps decades later, the earliest group of migrant workers who came to Bianliang to work would transform themselves into the old Kaifeng people of the Zhenghongqi Banner by owning properties in the urban villages outside the city.
But that was decades later. At least for now, the land prices outside the city are still relatively low, and they are basically in the hands of the imperial court. There are also sales restrictions, and those with ulterior motives are not allowed to hoard them on a large scale.
Zhao Jun planned to wait for two years until the military reform was completed, incorporate the Xiang Army into the Construction Corps, establish a state-owned construction enterprise, and hand over all real estate development outside the city to them.
At that time, the Song Dynasty would suck blood from foreign countries, no, trade. Internally, it would develop large-scale infrastructure, stimulate the economy with real estate, allow the development of the banking and financial industries, open Jiaozi shops across the country, and allow private lending.
With all four measures in place, won’t the economy soar?
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