Chapter 229: Foundation building

Lu Fang looked up and stood aside and spoke with Hu Zun. His right hand gently brushed his long beard on his belly, and he saw a sarcastic smile on his face.

"Bold, do you think a long sword at a certain family's waist is not good?" Liu Manfu, who stood behind Lu Fang, shouted loudly. He had already pulled out half of the long sword at a waist with his right hand, and took a step forward to give the old man a little color.

Lu Fang reached out to stop him from the side and said with a smile: "Mr. Hu wants to say that he has any fault of being a poor supervisor?"

Hu Zun shook his head: "You are the defensive commander of a state. The responsibility for defending the territory is the most important. Others have their own subordinates to carry out the execution. Now they are not too late to find out. Since ancient times, I have only heard that only those who can use their abilities to govern. You sold official positions and titles before, so naturally you were a group of greedy men. Now you blame them for abuse of the people. Isn't it funny?"

The field suddenly became quiet. Liu Manfu stared at Lu Fang, and just waited for a slight hint to drag the ignorant old man down, breaking it with one knife. Lu Fang's face was as usual and smiled, "What Mr. Hu said is somewhat reasonable, or now, Japan's current state is a little more abundant."

Several people who kept kowtowing down heard Lu Fang say this and quickly thanked him repeatedly. However, Hu Zun sneered: "If you say forgiveness, you will forgive me, and if you say severe punishment, you will punish me, it is like these people are their own slaves."

Lu Fang was stunned when he heard this, and had no idea what this stubborn old man meant. He was about to ask, but he heard Hu Zun shouting: "They stripped the people of their fat to make themselves rich, and they also started mining privately. The envoys sold official positions and employed corruption, all violated the laws of the court and were punished. How could they be exempted from their punishment? "

Only then did everyone present understand what Hu Zun meant. It turned out that the old man was not begging for those people. He was going to beat fifty boards at each of them. The people who were lying on the ground begging for mercy immediately changed from gratitude to hatred. I was afraid that in their hearts, Lu Fang, the initiator, was not as hateful as this old man. When Liu Manfu, behind Lu Fang, heard this, could no longer hold back. He pulled out the sword from his waist and wanted to kill the old man on the spot.

Lu Fang reached out to stop Liu Manfu and smiled and said, "Mr. Hu is indeed just as honest and honest as Yan Jie. A family has seen it today, but it happened to be a chaotic world. If you only follow the straight path, you are afraid that you will not only not be able to make achievements, but you are afraid that you will not even be able to protect yourself. Just leave now." At this point, he pointed at the door of the tent.

Hu Zun looked as usual, bowed to Lu Fang and retreated proudly. After he stepped down, Lu Fang turned his head and knelt on the ground and said to several people: "Since you guys are willing to regret it, this province will leave you a way to reform yourself. As the head of the family, you are not strict in supervision and you have to remove your official title and confiscate your income. Are you convinced?"

The people were stunned and quickly shouted in convincingly. Lu Fang's punishment was unexpectedly light. Not to mention the house-scaping and murdering people, they just cut off their official titles and spit out the extra taxes they swallowed in. Hearing this, they felt a little more hatred for Hu Zun who had just spoken.

These people were sighing in secretly as luck, but heard Lu Fang continue: "As for those who participated in it, they dare to violate national laws, they must be punished heavily to serve as a warning to others."

The county magistrate Yu was stunned when he heard this and quickly asked in a low voice: "Empress, most of those people are servants and servants in our family, so I am afraid."

As soon as he said this, Lu Ban interrupted: "If it is your child servant and the husband, it will naturally be paid by the master. Could it be that you still have any objections?"

Those people were captured by Lu Fang's power, so they dared not say much. They all bowed their heads and said, "I'm sure to obey the orders of the envoy."

Lu Fang nodded and said, "Each person is punished to do hard labor for half a year, and the money is 150 jin. By the way, how many people are you children's servants and yin households?" Lu Fang asked the county magistrate Yu.

County Magistrate Yu was already stunned by the huge fine that Lu Fang spit out. He was stunned for a moment and didn't know how to answer. You Zhubo, who was beside him, had an idea and stepped forward and replied: "Report to the envoy, there are not many of my child servants there, most of them are recruited refugees, and they have nothing to do with my family."

The people next to him immediately heard what he meant and quickly said, "My family is the same. Those people have nothing to do with my family." They made up their minds to destroy all the contract documents of the children and servants of the household as soon as they got home. Just kidding, each person had 150 guan. In this year, we can almost buy a strong man in the market, let alone 20 or 30 people from all families participated in it. Isn't it cost four or five thousand guan? Who can take so much cash? This governor Lu is obviously trying to cheat people.

Lu Fang nodded with satisfaction and ordered the clerk to come up and write down the debate. After the people looked carefully, signed and stamped it with their handprints. After carefully putting it in place, he smiled at the people and said, "Sit down first, let's get to this case."

After these people sat down, Lu Fang said to everyone: "In the past few months, our province has inspected Anji and Great Wall counties and found that the people lacked oxen and iron tools, and the land could not do their best. Therefore, he wrote to King Yang to request tax reduction and exemption and to support the people's strength. Moreover, Huzhou is adjacent to Zhenhai Army. If there is no strong army, there is no way to protect itself, but the state is poor and cannot support the army. What should we do?"

Those people were already frightened birds, so how could they dare to speak too much? Seeing that this was the case, Lu Fang continued to speak on his own. It turned out that his idea was to let the villagers of each village form mutual assistance groups, and the ox households and ox households form groups. People with ox borrowed ox and ox people, and people without ox used work hours. The tyrants of each family reported the number of their families' soldiers to the county, and participated in the training together after the autumn. They were usually managed by each family. The head of the family was granted the title of official title according to the number of family soldiers and arrived. A certain amount of labor was deducted, and in the war, they followed the war in the name of "Yi Zong" soldiers. Lu Fang was preparing to use this method to absorb the local powerful forces in Huzhou who were willing to join his group. Anyway, through this attack, most of the largest child servants of the powerful clan had been seized. Although they had land, no one was farming. At that time, as long as they were forced to separate, they could completely disintegrate their strength and the rest would no longer be in any climate.

After hearing Lu Fang say that, everyone in the tent said that this matter is of great importance and they have no choice but to make a decision here. They have to go home to discuss with the elders of the clan before they can make a decision. Lu Fang smiled and said that it was natural, so the hunting ended in anxiety among the crowd.

As soon as Lu Fang returned to Anji City, he ran to Shangongli next to Longweili outside the city. There was the place where the craftsmen who moved from Danyang were placed in the place where Lu Fang moved from Danyang. Because the long marshal built during the siege of Zhenhai soldiers before, Lu Jian built a small town at the former site of Zhenhai Bing Camp, and placed his old ancestry from Danyang. Shangongli was close to the riverside and convenient transportation. Lu Jian prepared there as his own iron factory, coke factory, weapon factory, and ceramic factory. Now it is the day to start furnace and smelter from the first batch of ores that were searched for iron ore, so Lu Fang is coming to take a look for it himself.

The ironmaking process in the Tang Dynasty was very developed. Lu Fang was not professional in that aspect in his previous life. However, he still vaguely remembered from high school that he should try his best to remove harmful elements such as arsenic, sulfur, and phosphorus from steel. The method should be to use limestone, etc. After asking the craftsman leader, he realized that there was a similar craft method at that time. He had to start with a large system. First of all, the ore must be crushed and then ore dressed. Simply put, the ore will naturally be heavier due to the different specific gravity of the iron content. Lu Fang sent his subordinates to dig a tributary by the river to lead a water flow, and then pour the ore into the water flow. Under the impact of the water flow,

Heavier ores naturally move shorter distances. Using this method, you can obtain iron ore with much higher iron content than mined raw ore. Secondly, you need to coke the coal, which can increase the calorific value, and secondly, you can remove harmful elements such as sulfur and arsenic contained in the coal. The rest is nothing more than making refractory bricks with higher refractory resistance and better blowing equipment to achieve the purpose of increasing the furnace temperature, encouraging craftsmen to exchange technology, give official land and other rewards, organize more efficient assembly line production, establish a craftsman grading system, and link it to material treatment. I believe that in the near future, these methods will achieve good results.

At the same time, Lu borrowed money from the rich households and gathered to buy oxen from Xuanzhou Tianwei, and then purchased it to the Moyedu military households. With a period of five years, 20% of the annual interest, he took out 1.5% of the annual interest and returned it to the rich households. The remaining half of the remaining amount was used as the handling fee. After all the military households had oxen, he was also ready to promote it to the state. In ancient China, private lending interest rates were extremely high, often forty or even fifty percent. As for donkeys rolling, the profits were even more familiar to modern people. Lu Fang did this to reduce the burden on the people, and the loaned money was guaranteed to improve the production level and ensure that farmers had the ability to repay the funds. Due to the natural instability of agriculture, small farmers may go bankrupt once they encounter natural disasters. With the government in the middle, they can give them the ability to recover by suspending repayments. Lu Fang was also ready to wait until the money they had been richer and then go to that.

Some large households with many fields and few people purchase land, and organize people with little land or no land to open up land. Then, starting from the military households, promote good varieties to the whole province, and strive to achieve 80% of the population of the two counties in Anji Great Wall are self-cultivated farmers with an average of more than 60 acres of arable land in three years. They have their own oxen and their annual grain savings. In this way, they have good soldiers and financial and tax resources to be prepared to launch a war of expansion in the future. Of course, these methods of Lu Fang must be based on sufficiently capable and trustworthy administrative officials. If the executor does not have the right person, the result will often be counterproductive. The first step in all this is to concentrate on training the group of clerks in their hands, and then promote them from the six-house military households in their hands as the starting point to the whole province. Lu Fang believes that there will be repetitions in the implementation process, but within a few years, his own goals will be achieved.
Chapter completed!