Chapter 14 Jianghuai Salt Case

With the support of Zuo Zongtang, Hu Chuyuan gradually felt that life had become better again, and the pressure on his body was much less.

Although it is inevitable that he must participate in the political struggle of the late Qing Dynasty, but... If the risk is high, he will have more opportunities. He not only has the opportunity to save the country and strengthen the country, but also has the opportunity to fulfill all his wishes.

For example, the mystery of wringing a wrist with Li Hongzhang and fighting a business war with Sheng Xuanhuai.

For example, stroking the Japanese version and defeating Russia.

Of course, Hu Chuyuan is not a pure 18-year-old teenager. He also has his own experience. Whether it is success or failure, everything in the past is his experience and experience.

The idea of "Jiangnan Commercial Bank" has also been brewing in his mind for a long time, and it did not really come out suddenly.

His idea is to take the Hu family's current industry as the foundation, merge the Hu family's silk line and rice line, so that Liu Chengxiang is responsible, try to choose the best shop in every government and every county in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and choose a good warehouse. The warehouse must be large enough, convenient enough, and conducive to transportation.

On the other side, he asked Tan Yiyun to hang up the signboard of Jiangnan Commercial Bank and run the rice market to prepare to transport rice to the north.

Because there are only three roads, the disaster in Shanxi is the most serious. It is necessary to go to one road, and the remaining two roads. After discussing with Tan Yiyun, Hu Chuyuan concentrated the two routes in Shandong, one from Yantai to the port, developing in Yantai and Weihai, and the other from Qingdao and the day to the port, to Laiwu and Weifang.

He also asked people to dig people in tea houses and salt restaurants of other businesses in various places, and wrote some very simple manuals for the tea industry, salt industry, rice industry and silk industry, but everyone who is literate has one set.

Just as he was preparing for these things, an amazing news suddenly came from Zhejiang Salt Industry - Zhejiang Governor Mei Qizhao thoroughly investigated the salt affairs, arrested more than 40 salt officials at a time, more than 10 salt merchants who illegally bribed, and more than 60 salt merchants were seized in Taizhou, Wenzhou, Ningbo and Jiaxing. Countless accounts have closed down.

Zuo Zongtang also heard the news. In fact, he knew it before the news spread all over Zhejiang.

This incident was not only unexpected, but also reasonable.

He wanted to use salt tax to make up for the military pay of the Hunan army, which spread throughout the officialdom of Jiangsu and Zhejiang for a long time. Huang Libin, the salt transport envoy of Jianghuai, was Li Hongzhang's fellow village. Wu Yuanbing, the governor of Jiangsu, did not dare to move without permission, but after all, Wu Yuanbing was a faction, and Zuo Zongtang was not willing to touch him easily.

This is exactly the difficult place for Zuo Zongtang to do. He stayed in Hangzhou for a long time, just to let Wu Yuanbing move his place and give him space to deal with this matter.

Zuo Zongtang didn't expect that Mei Qizhao, the governor of Zhejiang, started first and gave him a very good opportunity.

On the night of the news, Zuo Zongtang wrote a memorial in person. First of all, he praised Mei Qizhao for doing a very good job. Secondly, he asked for a comprehensive investigation of the salt affairs of the two rivers.

Political things have never been achieved overnight. If you want to deal with the whole salt government in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, even Zuo Zongtang has to go step by step.

By the middle of August, after several rounds of court discussions, the court decided to transfer Wu Yuan Bingping to Jiangxi governor to fill the vacancy. Tan Zhonglin, the governor of Shaanxi, was appointed as the governor of Jiangsu, and Xichun, the minister of the Ministry of officials, jointly investigated and dealt with the Jiangsu salt government.

Tan Zhonglin is from Hunan, and he is reused because of Zuo Zongtang's recommendation.

Xichun, the servant of the official department of the imperial envoy, is full of people. "Coincidentally" is that he and Tan Zhonglin are both born in the second-class scholar of Xianfeng for six years. They not only have the friendship of the same year, but also have a good personal relationship when they were fellow editors in the Hanlin Academy.

When the two arrived in Yangzhou, they began to inspect the salt government. The salt officials in Huainan, Huaibei were killed and injured, and the investigation was even more ruthless than Mei Qizhao. Huang Libin, a salt transporter from Anhui, neglected government affairs, accepted bribes, and was dismissed on the spot.

In September, Tan Zhonglin wrote a book and proposed to replace the existing salt ticket law with the unified sales price limit method. Governors from all over the country took this opportunity to agree one after another, and the governors dared not say anything.

Although the salt ticket law is good, it has always been controlled in the hands of the governor and salt transport envoys. The governors are in charge of the military administration of two or three provinces, but they can't get the real power of salt administration. Of course, they are anxious.

In the fourth year of Guangxu, in early October, the court's deliberations were over, and it agreed to implement the unified marketing law in the five provinces of Liangjiang, Fujian and Zhejiang, and the governors of the two places decided to supervise by themselves.

At this time, Jiangnan Commercial Bank had already officially opened. A large number of rice were transported to the north from Huguang, Anhui, Jiangxi, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and sold grain in the areas of Zhizhao, Qingdao and Yantai. If they had no money, they would exchange land deeds for grain.

After changing to the land deed, the merchant distributes grain through the joint stock rich gentry found in the place. It must be too late for grain and sorghum. It can only distribute corn, otherwise it will directly plant spring wheat.

In fact, the famine is not terrible. The fear is that farmers will eat up all the grain in the coming year, and there will be no food seeds next year. Even if the climate improves, it will still be barren.

The risk of this business is very great. The situation in Shandong is not bad. It can be regarded as making a lot of money... There is no money, and the field is calculated on a million mu.

The commercial bank has sent a shopkeeper in each county. Due to lack of manpower, it is basically temporarily hired from the local government. These shopkeepers who are familiar with the local situation select the prosperous small and medium-sized rich farmers and co-share with them to run grain cooperatives and rice villages.

The situation in Shanxi is very bad. There are hungry people fleeing and exile everywhere. After six million catties of grain were transported to Jinzhong County, the Hunan army and the green battalion did not dare to go out of the city... There were hungry people waiting to rob the grain outside, and it was chaos to go out.

Mi Xing's business may still be profitable, and Hu Chuyuan fell down in the acquisition of Xia Si.

Because there are too many people speculating raw silk in various places and the price is ridiculous, Hu Chuyuan took out most of his funds to do business in the rice market, but reluctantly acquired 210,000 catties of summer silk in Hangzhou and Jin Qu Basin, which is less than 1/10 of the total output of Jiangsu and Zhejiang summer silk.

For a while, the whole Jiangsu and Zhejiang were talking about this matter. There were rumors that the Hu family was afraid that the family would fall, and the eldest son Hu Chuyuan was timid and incompetent, and his ability was much worse than Hu Xueyan.

There were rumors everywhere, and Hu Chuyuan did not explain.

He only knows one thing, that is, various foreign banks and mainland silk merchants have been unable to reach an agreement for a long time. The acquisition war of Xia Si is extremely fierce. The average price of many silk merchants is as high as 7 taels of silver per catty. In addition to freight and excessive taxes, the acquisition price of foreign banks should not be lower than 8.5 taels of silver at least.

However, foreign banks are still only willing to buy at last year's price, and adopt the method of breaking one by one, and only negotiate with each silk merchant separately.

Let them go. Hu Chuyuan is too lazy to care about these things. The average purchase price of his summer silk is 5.8 taels of silver per catty, which is 1.21 million taels of silver. He is backlogged in the warehouse in Hangzhou City, waiting for the results of the negotiation between the foreign bank and the silk merchant office.

Because his quantity is not large, and they are all second-class goods, Yanghang can't come to him to negotiate, and Tang Yanshu's big silk merchants did not find him to unite, deliberately diluting the Hu family's position in the Zhejiang silk industry.

After living in the Hu family compound for three months, Zuo Zongtang was ready to leave and returned to Jiangning Prefecture to officially serve as the Governor of Liangjiang and Minister of Nanyang Trade.

That night, he called Hu Chuyuan over and specially asked Yang Changjun to order Hu Chuyuan to change into a clean and neat dress.

The outfit is clothes, toys, such as jade, wrench and so on.

Hu Chuyuan has a lot of these things.

He picked out a plain white gauze silk coat and found an emerald wrench. Hu Chuyuan got up and went to the winter courtyard. Yang Changjun accompanied him all the way, and the bad smile on his face made Hu Chuyuan feel guilty.

Entering the flower hall, Hu Chuyuan looked up and was stunned. Looking over, he felt that he had seen at least two governors and two governors.

Dizzy.

Two governors and two governors, what kind of big deal do we need such a lineup... Do you want to rebel?