Gao Gong became a little impatient when he heard this. This Li Chunfang was really just causing trouble.

He didn't want to waste any more words this time, so he glanced at Zhang Juzheng, and his uncle answered for him: "Mr. Yuan has misunderstood. The principle of 'developing both rivers and seas, with grain transport as the basis' will never change. We have never planned to give up grain transport. We are just going to increase the strength of sea transport from the current two million dan to four million dan."

"The total annual grain transport output is only 4 million shi!" Li Chunfang felt like he was being played for a fool and couldn't help but raise his voice.

"That's because the canal can only transport 4 million shi a year. If we use both rivers and seas, we can transport 6 million shi a year without increasing the burden on the people!" Gao Gong responded sharply: "If we transport 2 million more shi, the north will be much better off, and the court can do a lot more!"

"There is nothing we can do about it. This year, the Yellow River burst its banks again during the peach blossom flood. The flood once again broke through the Wangjiakou area, flowing down from Shuanggou, with more than ten breaches in the north and south, silting up the river for more than 800 miles, capsizing more than a hundred grain ships, and causing a loss of more than 40,000 shi of grain." Bu Gu then sighed and said:

"The canal transportation that was just resumed last autumn has been cut off again. I don't know when it will be restored."

~~

The violent dragon of the Yellow River is obviously not so easy to tame. Even if Pan Jitun had magic weapons like cement, he still could not succeed in one battle. In fact, the most dangerous area of ​​Gaojiayan withstood the test of floods because of the use of concrete embankments.

But the production of cement is limited, and there is still a long stretch of earth embankment that needs to be replaced over several years. The place where the embankment broke was the earth embankment that had not been rebuilt in time...

However, the government and the opposition had completely lost patience with the repeated breaches of the Yellow River, and officials directed all their years of accumulated anger toward the Prime Minister of the River, Pan Jixun.

Gao Ge Lao also strongly criticized Pan Jixun for his mistakes in transporting the grain, which caused huge losses. He fiercely demanded that he immediately abandon the current plan to control the Yellow River, ignore the Yellow River, and focus on opening the Yihe River to protect the grain transport.

As mentioned before, in order to solve the chronic problem of the Grand Canal being frequently interrupted by flooding of the Yellow River, the court had three plans - opening the Jiaolai River, opening the Yan River, and restoring the original course of the Yellow River.

The Jiaolai River plan had been rejected after a field survey the year before last, so there were only two left. Gao Gong was a supporter of the opening of the Yan River, while Pan Jixun was a staunch supporter of the latter plan.

Gao Gong believed that the Yellow River had burst its banks again, proving that Pan Jixun's method was ineffective, so they had to open the Yanhe River - that is, to build a 260-mile-long canal from Xiazhen through Taierzhuang to Pizhou. This would allow the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal to 'avoid the dangers of the Yellow River' and remain unobstructed.

So he wrote to Pan Jixun with great enthusiasm, hoping that he would start planning the construction of the Yanhe River project according to his wishes, so as to add another highlight to his brilliant political achievements.

Pan Jixun received the letter but refused to cooperate, saying that the river bank was fine and the breach was caused by insufficient repairs. We should intensify our efforts and continue to repair the river bank. How can we give up halfway? Moreover, the cost of repairing the river bank is huge. Once it is completed, it will lead to the court completely abandoning the Yellow River and allowing it to flood. What will happen to the tens of millions of people along the Yellow River? It will eventually lead to a huge disaster!

Seeing that Pan Jixun had committed a serious mistake and still refused to repent, Gao Ge Lao could not help but get angry, so he drafted an imperial decree to order Pan Jixun to retire and let the Minister of Works Zhu Heng be fully responsible for the excavation of the Yinhe River.

Zhu Heng told Gao Gong that he also agreed to dig the Yanhe River. But he had calculated a few years ago that the project would cost at least one million taels of silver, 200,000 civilians, and take three years to complete.

Moreover, before the project is completed, the water transport will be completely cut off.

~~

Gao Gong then asked the Minister of Revenue Ge Shouli for advice.

During the early years of the Longqing reign, the whole court was in favor of Gao Gong, but the Minister of Revenue, Ge Shouli, remained unmoved. At that time, the subordinates of the Ministry of Revenue wanted to follow the example of other ministries and jointly impeach Gao Gong, but no matter how the two assistant ministers, Xu Yangzheng and Ma Ziqiang, persuaded him, Ge Shouli still refused to sign the memorial.

In the end, the two had to leave his name blank and handed in a white-headed petition that made people laugh. After Gao Gong resigned in disgrace, Ge Shouli, knowing that he would be attacked by Xu's party, also begged to return home to take care of his mother. After Gao Gong returned to power, he immediately kicked out the Minister of Revenue Ma Sen and restored him to his original position.

With this relationship, Gao Gong naturally took him as his confidant. Ge Shouli had no taboos when speaking. He told Gao Gong that first of all, the Ministry of Revenue had no money, and they had to find a way to raise money to open the Yihe River. Secondly, the canal transport office had been shut down for a year, and everyone was complaining bitterly. If they were to shut down for another three years, they would definitely rebel.

Gao Gong certainly knew that things were difficult to handle, because the easy things had already been done by Xu Jie and Li Chunfang, and the remaining things were naturally the hard nuts to crack.

He asked Ge Shouli if there was any solution, but Ge Shouli answered irrelevantly and told him that the emperor did not ask Taicang for money last winter.

Gao Gong could not help but be surprised. Because the palace had huge expenses, originally supported by the imperial farms and shops, it still needed to allocate hundreds of thousands of taels from the Taicang every year for its use.

He knew that Concubine Li's family had taken the management rights of the Royal Farm and Royal Store from the Princess in recent years. Unfortunately, Wuqingbo Li Wei and his son were a pair of money-making idiots, so how could they support most of the palace expenses as before?

"Where does the palace get the money from?" He asked Ge Shouli in a low voice while on duty that day.

"Royal Shipping." Ge Shouli told him that the palace received a full 800,000 taels of dividends from the Royal Shipping before the New Year, which was twice the amount that Taicang allocated to the imperial treasury in previous years.

"So many?" Gao Gong gasped.

"And the palace only holds 10% of the shares of Royal Shipping." Ge Shouli also found it hard to believe, but in the Royal Shipping Supervisory Board, there was a member of the Ministry of Revenue who served as a supervisor and supervised the sea transportation of grain on behalf of the court.

As he spoke, he handed Gao Gong an annual report of the Royal Shipping Administration for him to read.

The annual report is simple and easy to understand. It only lists the main financial data of Royal Shipping, shareholder information, and some important matters that should be reported to shareholders. It is not as complicated and detailed as in later generations.

But even a glimpse of the whole thing still made Gao Gong stunned. He didn't expect that the Royal Sea Transportation Company only charged four dou of freight for each stone of grain, and half of it was collected on behalf of the Canal Transportation Office. It turned out that they could make a huge profit of 8 million taels a year!

"Isn't this too horrible?" Gao was stunned. The amount of silver that the whole country collected from Taicang in a year was only 4 million taels...

Of course, this does not mean that the Ming Dynasty only collected 4 million taels of tax revenue a year. Rather, it was because Emperor Taizu lacked economic common sense and used simple peasant thinking to formulate a stupid and destructive fiscal and taxation system for the Ming Dynasty. Since the tax revenue was mainly in kind at that time, Zhu Yuanzhang thought it was a waste to send the collected grain and cloth from the local areas to the capital, and then transport them from the capital to the borders and provincial garrisons.

It would be better if the prefectures and counties could directly deliver the goods to the nearest garrisons, royal palaces, higher-level government offices, and other financially-funded units. This would greatly save transportation costs and reduce the burden on the people. Wow, I am such a genius! It is decided, and it will be the ancestral system forever, and it will never change!

The Ministry of Revenue controls the tax revenue, which is only used to provide the capital and the nine border areas, accounting for less than 12% of the national fiscal revenue. If the local governments don't need to "run to the Ministry for money", they will naturally ignore the court. The court is so poor that it will naturally not make any noise...

Although Gao Gong did not understand what "economic base determines superstructure" meant, he knew very well that the court would have no chance of survival without money.

He scratched his head and asked, "How do they make so much money?"

"It's written very clearly here." Ge Shouli pointed to the annual report: "The first is self-operated shipping trade, which accounts for 70%. The second is the freight income from transporting goods for merchants, which accounts for 30%."

"Hiss, it really makes money..." Gao Gong took a deep breath and asked in confusion: "Why didn't the canal transportation make money before?"

"Who said that the grain transport is not profitable? It's just that all the money has fallen into the pockets of the grain transport group." Ge Shouli sneered, "They transport 4 million dan of grain every year, and they have to collect more than 10 million dan of freight. How much can they embezzle? Moreover, the court sympathizes with the difficulties of the grain transport workers and stipulates that they can carry goods on their return journey without taxation as a subsidy. According to regulations, a grain transport ship can carry 400 liang, but the grain transport workers privately modified and expanded it, and each ship can carry 1,000 liang. The extra 600 liang are all used to transport their own goods. How much income is this?"

"However, it is certain that grain transport will not make as much money as sea transport." Ge Shouli changed the subject and continued, "Grain transport ships always sail on inland rivers. There are too many checkpoints along the way, and there are too many layers of stripping. There are too many boatmen pulling the boats, and this expense is indeed huge. In addition, grain transport is too slow and takes too long. The things that can be transported are always limited, and the rotting loss is also huge. Thirdly, sea transport can also be sold overseas, and this is the biggest profit!"

"What do you mean?" Gao Gong asked, frowning and stroking his beard.

"Change all the grain transport to sea transport." Then Ge Shouli said in a deep voice: "The royal sea transport has been in operation for two years, and the routines in all aspects are very mature. We just follow the prescription - first set up a fleet in the name of transporting grain. Then engage in cargo transportation, and finally sell it overseas! We don't ask for much, four million taels a year can make it, right?"

"Well, I think it can be done!" Gao Gong nodded slowly, his throat trembling slightly, as if he swallowed saliva. What is the biggest difficulty of the Ming Dynasty now? No money!

A penny can make a hero fall. Poverty restricted Gao Ge's hands and feet, making it impossible for him to do many things he wanted to do.

If we could double Taicang’s annual income, wouldn’t all problems be solved?

"The only problem is that the money has to go to Taicang." Ge Shouli finally emphasized: "If I work so hard for so long and still end up making wedding clothes for others, I will never offend those people in the shipping group."

He shuddered as he spoke, "If you really want to do it, you have to let the Royal Guards protect me day and night, otherwise I'm afraid I'll die."

Gao Gong didn't listen to his last sentence, because the previous words made him feel troubled. If the money was to be deposited in Taicang, then the fleet would have to be managed by the Ministry of Revenue. Would the hundreds of thousands of people in the Canal Transport Office be left to starve?

How could I possibly agree to that?

But what Ge Shouli said was also true. If the grain transport office was still in charge, the income of Taicang would be reduced sharply, and it would be like making wedding clothes for the grain transport office. Not to mention Ge Shouli, Gao Gong was unwilling to stir up a hornet's nest for the royal shipping for those Nanjing nobles.

ps. Inertia is so strong that I have only just finished writing it. I will try to finish it before 24:00 tomorrow...