Chapter 558 Feeling Sorry for the Crown Prince's Younger Brother (Updated 2)
The heads of the four great families are already sharpening their knives, but Lu Zexu is still worried about the food problem.
The Fifth Prince came over looking at the account book, "Our granaries can only last for three days. After three days, if the big grain merchants in the city don't lower their prices, our four granaries will have no grain to sell."
The Fifth Prince is now a good businessman, but no matter how good he is, he cannot solve the problem of insufficient food inventory.
"Your Highness, you should know that once our granaries run out of grain to sell, those big grain merchants will tear our four granaries to pieces like brutal wolves. At that time, the grain price in Gusu will return to those big grain merchants."
The fifth prince did not call the little prince His Highness easily. He preferred to call him Sixth Brother, Old Six, which was more intimate.
And once he changed the name, it was definitely a serious matter, and it was a rare serious matter.
"It doesn't matter. Replace the food in the disaster-stricken areas, riverbanks, and cement factories with potatoes, corn, and sweet potatoes. Save the rice there and supply it to the granary. The price of grain must be stabilized!"
Lu Zexu's voice was full of the immaturity of a teenager, but his tone was extremely strong and irresistible.
The fifth prince thought about the large amount of grain collected from the imperial estate and felt a sharp pain in his heart. "If these grains were used as crops for next year, how many people could be fed! Now they are wasted here!!"
The fifth prince hated the wealthy merchants in Suzhou. If they hadn't raised the price of grain and left the people with no food to buy, how could so many people starve to death?
During this period, the fourth prince had to oversee both the cement factory and the construction of the embankment, and he lost a lot of weight.
Yes, the cement factory was naturally opened by the Ministry of Commerce, but the fourth prince, the fifth prince, and the crown prince only had a share of the profits. The production process was controlled by the court, and the important craftsmen were all officials of the Ministry of Commerce. The other workers were naturally local people.
It can be said that a cement factory supported countless people in Gusu.
The little crown prince got all the people moving.
Those people who couldn't survive in the disaster area ate free minced meat and went to work on the river embankment, earning five cents a day.
The women who are good at needlework are divided into two categories. Those who are good at embroidery go to the embroidery workshop to make an embroidered handmade bag for the little prince. Then the little prince can directly supply it to the small supermarket. Last time, my sister said that the business of this kind of embroidered handmade bag is very good, and the little prince will not lose money.
Those who are not good at embroidery but can make clothes go directly to the cloth shop. The little prince did not buy a large amount of cotton cloth in the small supermarket for nothing.
Now they are directly handed over to these people. When they make the clothes, they can be directly distributed as work clothes to the people who are building the embankment on the river bank, the workers in the cement factory, the female workers in the cloth shop, and the students and teachers in the field school.
In short, there is a lot of work for these disaster victims.
The needs of the people are really very simple, just to have enough food and warm clothes.
Especially for the people who have experienced a great disaster, experienced life and death, as long as you give them a little hope of survival, they will desperately grasp it and work hard for it.
They are really tough.
And in several towns outside Gusu that were hit by the epidemic, with Shen Yi in charge, together with the imperial physician and local doctors, the situation has improved greatly.
At least, no more people are dying.
At this point, it can be said that the disaster relief has been quite successful.
Lu Zexu did it. From the first day he arrived in Gusu, no one in the city starved to death.
However, what kept these disaster relief strategies going smoothly was silver, rice, and medicine.
Lu Zexu, who was in charge of these strategies, knew very well that if any one of them was missing, this precision-operated machine would jam or even collapse.
Even though he bought a large amount of food from the small supermarket, he sent part of it to Shandong, where the situation was even more serious.
There was not much food left for the Jiangnan region.
Although he also transported potatoes, sweet potatoes and corn, he was not sure whether the people could accept such new food.
Moreover, he was not sure whether eating these foods for a long time would have any impact on the people's health.
At the most important time, he was still not sure how long the food grown in the imperial manor could supply the people.
Everything was the first time, and there was no history to be found.
Even though Lu Zexu is the prince, and even though he has a small supermarket as a backing, he is still just a 14-year-old boy, and he has no experience in disaster relief for the first time.
As a decision maker, the slightest mistake can result in the loss of lives.
To this day, the little prince still has nightmares at night, dreaming of the tragic scenes and dead people he saw on the way from the capital to Suzhou.
His ability to remember everything he saw is not only reflected in books, but also those skinny people who died miserably will appear in his dreams at midnight.
In less than a month, the little prince's face, which was originally somewhat round, has become two times thinner. He is already at a growing age, and his body looks even thinner, and his sleeves are even more empty.
It was as if a gust of wind could blow him down.
The fourth and fifth princes were extremely distressed, and their dissatisfaction with their old father Lu Chengtian grew day by day. Their sixth brother was still so young, but their father made him work. It was simply too inhumane! Are
all the ministers in the court dead?
It can be said that watching their younger brother, the crown prince, becoming increasingly thin, the fourth and fifth princes became extremely irritable, both towards the aristocratic families in Gusu City and towards themselves.
Yes, for the first time, the two princes realized that they were useless.
If they were more powerful, if they were more capable, they would not have to rely on their sixth brother for everything in the disaster relief. They could help their sixth brother share more of the burden, and he would not have to work so hard and spend so much effort.
But even though His Royal Highness the Crown Prince worked so hard for the people of Jiangnan, there were still historians in the court who impeached the Crown Prince, and there were even literati in the officialdom who criticized the Crown Prince! !
After the Fourth and Fifth Princes got the news, they really wanted to kill people.
In order to build the river embankment, the Crown Prince worked almost all night long, consulted an old gentleman who had been managing the river for many years, and personally measured and calculated, and then drew the blueprint, in order to protect Suzhou from floods for a hundred years.
Those historians who only know how to talk in the court not only did not praise him, but also impeached him?
Do they think that their younger brother is easy to bully because His Royal Highness is young, kind-hearted, gentle and generous?
The fourth and fifth princes are really angry.
Aren't they just powerful people from aristocratic families?
Do they really think they can't lift a knife?
The younger brother of the prince is too law-abiding. As the saying goes, if the king wants his subjects to die, the subjects have to die. What's the point of talking to these powerful people from aristocratic families?
What? You say that if you deal with the aristocratic families like this, you will definitely be cursed?
Haha! I am neither a prince nor an emperor, so what's the use of fame?