Not long after, Yuan Keli, Xiong Tingbi, Qin Liangyu, Xu Guangqi, and Bi Ziyan arrived at Damingyuan.

"His Majesty!"

"No gift!"

As Zhu Youxiao said that, he walked out of the hall with his hands behind his back: "You go to the General Administration of Ordnance Manufacturing with me, and talk about things while inspecting."

"Abide by the order!"

The ministers followed Zhu Youxiao to the General Administration of Ordnance Manufacturing.

Zhu Youxiao took them straight to the workshop where the steam engine had used the steam engine to forge the iron blocks of gun making. After arriving here, he watched these working steam-powered forging presses while saying to his important officials:

"According to Song Aiqing, who is responsible for the manufacturing of ordnance, the past, even skilled craftsmen took one month to manufacture gun barrels. Now with this steam power, the construction period has been shortened to a much less than half of the original ones. The efficiency has been improved very quickly. Various types of firearms, swords, guns, arrows, and even armor have already been overproduced. You know this better than me, but you also know that from the capital to Tianjin, millions of people are already living on these military industries. Many powerful people in the court have invested in it, so it is naturally not possible to reduce production. You can only exchange these things for things we need more, such as land, ore and even people, otherwise it will be just a pile of scrap iron when it hits us!"

"Your Majesty is wise! I realized this before, but I didn't think of the best solution, and it involved a lot, so I didn't dare to report it."

Bi Ziyan said at this time, and then said:

"In the past, in order to completely stabilize hundreds of thousands of refugees in the capital, the court not only provided relief for a period of time, but also allowed them to continue to live hungry by the canal, so they opened a large number of official workshops to make a living. Otherwise, if they wanted to use the fields for them to plant, they would not be able to get such fields for a while."

"That's right, if it's cold today, the production of northern fields has long been insufficient. Even with so many fields, it is impossible to support so many people. It is the only way to make these refugees work as workshop workers and make a living by working. This is also the wise point of your Majesty. But this has also caused the industry to be too large and the goods produced are too many to sell them out. In my opinion, it is better to stop using the steam engine first so that the production capacity will not increase."

Xu Guangqi suggested at this time.

"If you do this, the profit will not increase again. But more and more people will live a wealthy life. If the steam engine is stopped, the existing powerful and powerful gentry will have to share a portion of the profits for the upstarts."

Zhu Youxiao replied.

"What Your Majesty said is that once this steam engine is used, it is impossible to stop again. It is better to exchange some land. It is better to return the ore and even the population. Otherwise, you have to undergo another internal reform. It will not be that all the powerful and powerful can return the official shares occupied by their family to the court like Gong Wenzheng."

Yuan Keli said at this time.

Xu Guangqi and others were all silent.

Zhu Youxiao also laughed.

In order to make the empire's cake bigger, he built the official industry, and thus cultivated a group of new powerful people and formed his own ruling foundation.

But now if he continues to make a bigger cake without promoting the application of the newly invented steam engine, in order to allow the newly added population to live a prosperous life, he will indeed go through internal reforms again to crack down on the new powerful people who emerged due to the official industry.

Unless these new powerful people can take the initiative to spit out the benefits they have obtained and return them to the court.

However, this is so difficult that even if I am willing, the clan and in-laws behind it will not be willing.

"Yuan Aiqing said that without a steam engine, it is equivalent to a family with only ten acres of land that refuses to use a hoe at home to reclaim land. However, the population of the family is increasing. If you want to support the people born later, the people born before can only eat less. Instead of doing this, it is better to use this hoe to reclaim land. This steam engine is the more hoe in my Ming Dynasty. Since we have this steam engine, we are destined to have to reclaim land in the Ming Dynasty. We can no longer be the same as before, just guarding the three-part land of our own family to take care of it."

Zhu Youxiao said something at this time.

"I will remember it!"

Yuan Keli and others immediately replied.

"Now you can tell me how to change it. Our General Administration of Ordnance Manufacturing produces so many firearms and so many arrows and crossbows every day, so what do you have to change it."

Zhu Youxiao said.

"Sell to the outsider?"

Xu Guangqi asked.

"You can sell it, but you have to keep it. The latest firearms cannot be sold, otherwise it will be a strong enemy to cultivate oneself."

Zhu Youxiao said.

"In this way, we can only expand the army first, and then mobilize the soldiers to open up territory for the Ming Dynasty, let the soldiers consume the firearms and exchange the land and population for the court."

Yuan Keli said.

"There are minerals!"

Zhu Youxiao added a sentence.

Then, Zhu Youxiao asked Yuan Keli and other ministers: "How is the new commercial tax now levied, and the tariffs?"

Yuan Keli replied: "Your Majesty, the commercial tax collected now has reached more than 50 million yuan in silver coins. In terms of tariffs, due to the addition of five new Maritime Traffic Divisions in Goa, Nagasaki, Taiwan, Haojing and Jeju, and there are many merchant ships traveling between these three places, all of which are stuck on the main routes of each route. Therefore, the tariff has now increased to more than 15 million yuan in silver coins per year. The two together have long been twice the current land tax."

Xiong Tingbi's main energy is now on military affairs, so he didn't pay much attention to the income of the Ming Dynasty's treasury. After hearing Yuan Keli say this, he couldn't help but smile and said with an excitement: "I really didn't expect that one day, the income from commercial tax and tariffs was twice that of land tax."

Qin Liangyu also said in confusion: "Yes, I didn't expect so many!"

"It's normal for those Western families to move mountains of gold and silver to their own country in a place called America, and then bring a lot of silver to our Ming Dynasty to exchange for all kinds of goods. No matter how high the taxes we earn, they all have money to give them, and after they take them back, some people can afford them! These silver coins were considered to be what we forced them to give us, or exchange them for goods."

Zhu Youxiao was in a good mood, so he personally explained it for Qin Liangyu, who didn't understand these things very much. However, in order to motivate the enterprising spirit of the powerful and wealthy in the Ming Dynasty, he spoke more exaggeratedly. After all, the Americas cannot be filled with mountains of gold and silver.

But Qin Liangyu heard this and asked, "Since that's the case, Your Majesty, why is there no one in the Ming Dynasty who transports these gold and silver?"

Zhu Youxiao said: "This is a long story, I will go there in the future!"

Then, Zhu Youxiao said: "In the past, the income of the Ming Dynasty was mainly based on land tax. However, if the land did not increase, the land tax in the world would be limited. Even if the weather was good in a year, it would only be tens of millions of stone land taxes, but the population was increasing. It was difficult to just feed the newly increased population, let alone expanding territory;

Therefore, after several generations of the dynasty, it will lose territory, but now the main income of the imperial court is no longer land tax, but commercial taxes and tariffs. Then the more places to open territory and have enough population, we can sell more Ming goods and collect more commercial taxes and tariffs. Therefore, we have to change our minds and take the initiative to open territory and open territory, rather than as before, in order to save people's wealth, we have to collect their power and abandon the land and lose the city;
Chapter completed!