Chapter 183 The Shadow of the Three Armies 11

[183] Xingheying shakes the three armies (11)

The base area is operating in an orderly manner under Yao Fan's militarized management. In order to solve the upcoming food shortage, Yao Fan decided to implement the unified grain purchase and marketing policy.

Before the implementation of unified grain purchase and marketing, Yao Fan's grain sources had three aspects, one was purchased from 2012, the other was to rely on the delivered public grain, and the third was to buy from the grain merchants in the market. Considering the large food gap in the future, relying on the 2012 market to buy grain is obviously not the best solution.

As the central government considered when New China implemented the unified grain purchase and marketing policy in 1953, Comrade Chen Yun once said: "Some comrades proposed that we can buy more grain without merchants. I don't think removing merchants does not mean that farmers' grain can be sold to the country.

The leaders of New China are all sophisticated people. They know that when farmers have surplus grain in their hands, they are not willing to sell it. Farmers in the small peasant economy are very inclined to sell grain for famine or even use it to raise livestock. Moreover, the country's bulk purchase price is generally impossible to be higher than the market retail price, and once there is a famine, farmers will be more reluctant to sell. On the one hand, the country will not have food to save the disaster. On the other hand, people in some areas have a lot of food stored in their homes. Once they are not well kept, they will still be moldy, and smart farmers will still sell the moldy food after a little treatment, completely ignoring the powerful carcinogenic aflatoxin in the moldy food will be harmful to their health. After all, the world is always There are people who are greedy for small and cheap food buyers.

For Yao Fan, the best way to improve grain reserves is to implement the unified grain purchase and marketing policy. In this era of extremely low agricultural output, this is a very good food security policy. For grain farmers, their only concern is the price of unified grain purchase and sales, and a concession is formulated every year. The most important thing is the price that people are satisfied with.

Due to the local drought in 1875, the price of grain has soared, and 100 catties of rice costs seven taels of silver, but this has been much lower than the price of one hundred catties of eight taels of silver during the Chinese New Year. Due to the land reform of nearly half of the landlords in the base area and the implementation of the policy of distribution of surplus grain for poor farmers, many landlords sold a large amount of grain in panic, and the whole family fled secretly with assets.

Yao Fan did not use violent means to stop this escape, but announced that all the land of the fleeing landlords would be reformed immediately.

Today, Yao Fan's troops, workers and prisoners have added up to more than 20,000. The 5,000 tons of incan rice he purchased from 2011 are about to be exhausted. Fortunately, there are also a large number of landlords' grain reserves in the land reform, totaling 11,000 tons, plus 1,000 tons of Qing military grain captured, Yao Fan has 12,000 tons of grain in his hand. Food is enough for 60,000 troops to eat for a year.

However, according to the preliminary estimate of He Wannian, who is currently the director of the Commercial Committee of Shandong Commune, if the drought in 1876 really worsens and spreads as Yao Fan said, there will be a grain gap of 300,000 tons in the base area currently occupied by Yao Fan throughout the year. If Yao Fan liberates the whole of Shandong, grain The gap will reach one million tons.

Although Yao Fan can use space-time trade to solve the food problem, he still hopes to minimize this dependence.

At the meeting of the Revolutionary Committee of Shandong Commune, Yao Fan announced the implementation of the unified purchase and marketing policy of grain, and announced the establishment of supply and marketing cooperatives in all townships and towns under each county to completely cover the sales outlets to the grassroots countryside in the base area. In the future, through these supply and marketing societies, all workers Industrial products and grain, oil and non-staple food can be sold to the market at a unified price.

He Wannian has become a probationary party member under Yao Fan's education and mobilization. According to the treatment of the enlightened gentry, the He family retained the house and all other property after accepting the land reform. Yao Fan knew that He Wannian was essentially a businessman, and he just bet on himself. Yao Fan was very grateful for He Wannian's ability to persuade his family to carry out land reform, but He Wannian honestly said, "If the Shandong Commune fails, the Qing Dynasty will never leave him any way to live except to flee overseas with Yao Fan." In this case, what is the value of land?

He Wannian nodded repeatedly: "I agree that once we cover all the townships in the base area, then this monopolistic commercial network will bring continuous profits to the commune.

The pricing power of salt, grain, industrial products and everything is concentrated in the hands of the commune, which means that our commune will be able to support the army on its own in the future.

Comrades, the soldiers of the Huai Army of the Hunan Army pay 6 taels of silver and 260 taels of barracks a month, but our revolutionary army is paid by soldiers for ten or two months. The difference between officers and soldiers is not big, but where does this more than 200,000 taels of silver come from every month? We can only divide the land by fighting local tyrants. Once there is a military stalemate, where will we collect taxes?

According to the current law of our commune, except for customs duties, which are the same as those of the Qing government, there is no tax on small traders and hawkers in the base areas. That is to say, although we can collect public grain on grain, there has been no commercial tax and Ding tax, and the rest of the other harsh taxes are also completely eliminated. Our military expenses are all the property donated by the chairman and the floating wealth obtained from the division of local tycoons.

Now I think this supply and marketing society policy is very good, plus the unified purchase and sale of grain, which solves all our military grain and military expenditure.

After listening to He Wannian's words, everyone looked at Yao Fan and showed more admiration.

Yao Fan said quietly: "In the future, we must do it in agriculture. We will not charge other fees except for public grain. In commerce, not collecting taxes now does not mean that we will not collect taxes in the future. The purpose of not collecting taxes now is to activate the market and let those merchants who transport materials into the base areas make benefits, as long as there is a profit. These businessmen are willing to take this risk. If we collect taxes, who is willing to take the risk? As long as these profit-hunt businessmen are there, the Qing government can't really block us. We can still buy whatever we want. Local people will not be unable to buy familiar living materials.

Look, our base has been established for so long and fought several battles. Isn't it still possible to buy all kinds of foreign goods on the market? This is because we don't have a commercial tax, small merchants and even big merchants who colluded with the Qing army will take risks to come to us.

Li Hainiu smiled and said, "That's right. Now it's April, there is a new batch of good mats produced in Jiangxi and new tea before the Ming Dynasty. I don't know how they passed the Qing army checkpoint."

He Wannian smiled and said, "Buyer, there is no other way but to bribe. The Qing army will not be able to get along with the money. If the business can't be done, he can't get bribes. Isn't it uncomfortable to ask for it?

Li Jun said, "We should be careful that there are secret agents in these people, and we can't relax the investigation."

Bai Xiaoqi said, "Since the chairman appointed me as the director of the Communications and Intelligence Committee, I have not relaxed the investigation of these businessmen for a moment. Now there are more than 150 people in our military intelligence department, and there are informants from various towns below. In addition, the peasant association is also very vigilant, and if they find criminals, they will come to sue."

............

After the meeting, Yao Fan came to the Zibo Mint. Because the Fangzi Power Plant has successfully generated electricity, and now the equipment of the Zibo Mint can also start operation. For a person like Yao Fan, who comes from the steel industry, it is really not difficult to mint coins. Compared with steel, silver is simply a dough, relying on the price of the metal itself. The production of valuable silver coins and wear-resistant and hard modern alloys* are completely different.

The small metallurgical furnace and condensation tank will soon be assembled, and the silver slab will be formed here. After the drum feeder is fed into the drum press, the silver plate is stamped to make it uniform and the surface smooth. The conveyor belt behind has also been installed in place, followed by the stamping feeder, followed by the high-speed automatic punching machine to complete the debugging. Yao Fan The 2012 customized high hardness stamping template has been installed and fixed in the punch, followed by a vibration grinder for surface polishing and sharp angle passivation.

This set of silver coin stamping equipment is originally used for high-speed stamping of high-hardness cases of stainless steel mechanical watches. 3,000 relief cases can be stamped in an hour. By replacing the mold, the size of the case and relief pattern can be changed at will. After Yao Fan asked the manufacturer to use it for stamping soft goods such as sterling silver commemorative coins, the manufacturer changed the equipment to double-headed stamping, which can stamp 6,000 silver coins per hour, which is enough for Yao Fan.

From morning to evening, Yao Fan finally mastered the thickness of the silver plate with a silver coin weighing 26 grams. After adjusting the parameters of the roller press, Yao Fan finally produced the currency of Shandong Commune, with two Chinese one-yuan characters surrounded by wheat ears on the front and four numbers 1876, and a peony pattern printed on the back.

Yao Fan wiped his sweat and told Wang Gui: "Everything is carried out in accordance with the operating rules. The waste liquid in the grinder will be deposited and retained. Later, it will be made into silver nitrate and then use caustic soda to turn silver into a smeltable oxide."

Wang Gui seemed to understand, so he chased Yao Fan to ask questions, and Yao Fan answered them one by one.

"The mint is a major place of the government. It must be bound by the strictest management process. Every silver coin must be strictly controlled, not less than one!"

"Yes! Chairman, don't worry, whoever dares to use the public money will die."

After finishing the work of the mint, Yao Fan rushed to the office of the Communications and Intelligence Committee, which was the former Weifang County Office.

When Yao Fan walked into the yard, he saw Bai Xiaoqi's son Bai Kang playing outside the yard. Yao Fan came forward and asked, "Bai Kang, is your mother there?"

"How are you, Uncle Yao? My mother is in the office."

Yao Fan came to Bai Xiaoqi's office and asked bluntly, "How is the training of telegraph officers in your communication department going?"

When Bai Xiaoqi saw Yao Fan coming in person, he hurriedly said, "There are textbooks given to us by the chairman, and young cadres who can read and break words have been sent. At present, we have trained 60 receivers and senders in a class. These people have all read books and learn Chinese pinyin very quickly. They can learn to practice by memorizing the electric code. Do. According to the situation, the worksheet that adjusts the reporting frequency has also been memorized very skillfully.

Yao Fan nodded and said, "The code must be proficient, and the technical guidance manual issued to listen to the code should be learned over and over again. Now, because we are the only army in the world that uses military radio stations and has such a unique means as pinyin letters, we don't need dark codes for the time being, but in the future we will use dark codes instead of clear codes. Of. These 40 people will be assigned to various divisions and regiments in the future, which can ensure that our army can contact the central government no matter where it goes.