Jinan has become a large construction site, and various factories are being built everywhere. The factories built by Li Xiao are all enterprises that can produce quick results. From breweries to paper mills to match factories and soap factories, etc.

.The factories built are all enterprises with low investment and quick results.

The Jiangnan consortium, as well as Shanxi and Huizhou merchants all liked these companies very much. The stock price kept rising, but when it came to the cigarette factory, Li Xiao stopped selling stocks. Tobacco is now a high-profit and high-value-added industry.

Li Xiao is not prepared to make the world full of chain smokers.

Just move to Jinan and produce more cigarettes to poison the big men in the capital. As for those small smokers, as long as they can afford a big front door with a hundred and ten taels of silver each, you can do it. If you can't afford it...! Then...!

I'm sorry, I'm forced to quit smoking.

Li Xiao discovered that quitting smoking is actually very simple. As long as the price of cigarettes is raised to a level that ordinary people cannot accept, the number of smokers can be strictly controlled. There is no way, if you can't afford it, you just can't afford it.

Some people take the risk of rolling leaves in paper and smoking, lighting a match and smoking. In addition to blue smoke, they also emit large flames. After two puffs, they will be defeated. Tobacco is not native to China.

Li Xiao also found that the higher the price of cigarettes, the higher the status of the smoker. The more people like to buy cigarettes, many officials obviously have a low salary and a poor family. They have to get a copper-clad one.

An exquisite cigarette case. When you meet a colleague, you can offer a cigarette to show your identity. As for how distressed you feel when you are puffing away the smoke, that is not something Li Xiao can consider.

It's a matter of face! If I can afford to smoke cigarettes, it proves that I am a rich and powerful person. So much so that a rule has been formed at the yamen gate. As long as you walk into the yamen with a cigarette in your mouth, the attitude of the subordinate staff will be very respectful.

Even if you dress like a beggar, you can still hear extremely polite words like please or you.

If you weren't holding a cigarette, motherfucker, get out of here, these words would come out loud. Some people with bad personalities would beat people up with water and fire sticks and get into trouble.

Ai Husheng is indeed a business talent. After seeing the face problem, he immediately thought of a great idea.

These days, yellow paper is used to roll cigarettes because yellow paper is cheap. Ai Husheng began to roll cigarettes with white paper. After Li Xiao's suggestion, the cigarettes were printed with two powerful words - Zhonghua.

How dare you use Dangdang Zhonghua as your trademark? These cigarettes are not allowed to be sold for two hundred taels a piece?

Li Xiao glanced at Ai Husheng with disdain, "Two hundred taels a piece, you underestimate the extremely showy ambitions in the chests of those big men. Five hundred taels a piece, and you don't even need to negotiate. Of course, five hundred taels is just the starting price."

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When the cigarette factory produced Zhonghua cigarettes, they deliberately packaged them into hard and soft boxes. The hard-box Zhonghua cigarettes cost 500 taels of silver each, while the soft Zhonghua cigarettes were even more powerful, costing 800 taels of silver each. If you dare to open your mouth to bargain, you will be kicked out immediately.

"Eight hundred taels a piece, can this... be sold? A good-looking Korean girl in the market only costs ten taels a piece, and your cigarettes are worth eighty taels. This is not smoking, it is worthy of the name.

It's a waste of money." Ai Husheng felt that Li Xiao was already very dark-hearted, and anyone who could set such a price must be very dark-hearted.

"Eight hundred taels...! I didn't ask them for a thousand taels, which is already considered a kindhearted person on my part. You have to understand their mentality. People who can spend five hundred taels of silver on cigarettes don't need three hundred taels of silver."

.You have to know what a rich person is. When rich people buy things, they don’t seek the best but the most expensive ones." Li Xiao shook his head as he walked.

Sure enough, when Zhonghua Cigarettes came out, the public opinion was inexplicably shocked. Although there were voices in the capital that accused Li Xiao of being evil, the sales of Zhonghua Cigarettes were very good. And Li Xiao guessed that Soft China Cigarettes sold better than Hard China Cigarettes.

When several colleagues meet each other, you take out a box and say "Smoke! Smog!"

"Come here, Zhonghua!" Another one took out a hard box of Zhonghua, showed it to his colleagues in a very showy manner, and then started to send it out.

The real rich man next to him looked at it with disdain, "Brother, this is Soft China!" After saying that, he took out the Soft China and handed one to each of them. In the midst of everyone's "tsk" and "tsk" praises, they were naturally ignited by their ingenuity.

Matches, light them for the rich man. I also worship this man who can afford to smoke soft Chinese!

A pack of cigarettes has become a watershed in the status of bureaucrats. This is really a new thing in the official culture! So much so that the ministers of the imperial court, the ministers and even the emperor felt a little embarrassed if they did not smoke soft Chinese when smoking.

Get rich, damn get rich.

During this period, Li Xiao walked with wind, and the smile on his face never broke. Every time he built a factory, he earned ten times the money to build the factory. At this point, Li Xiao still holds absolute control. Every year

The dividends alone are a huge amount of income.

The contract signed with Shi Kefa last year has now begun to be delivered one after another. Mr. Shi is a real person, and he has paid both money and goods. He pulled dozens of ships full of arms back to the south of the Yangtze River at Penglai Pier. Of course, the money left behind also allowed Li

The owl was amazed.

Because the transaction volume was so large, there was not only silver but also gold. Looking at the dozen or so large boxes filled with gold ingots, Li Xiao's eyes turned red. He secretly put two ingots into his pocket, but Sun Chengzong took them out unceremoniously.

came out.

There is no way, country people have never seen the world. When they see gold, they always yearn to put it in their pockets, and no matter whose it is.

From extremely tight funds to extremely abundant funds, it only took Li Xiao four months, and the speed at which he became rich was miraculous. Sun Chengzong always said that Li Xiao was the reincarnation of the God of Wealth. Compared with fighting, Li Xiao's greatest skill was economics

.

In August, when the Mid-Autumn Festival was approaching, Mr. Yu’s grandson Xiaoyu came. He brought Mr. Yu’s latest research results—a loom! Of course, the power of this thing came from a steam engine. So construction started again in the suburbs.

.This time, not only was a factory built, but there was also a towering chimney in the rendering. In terms of height, it is the tallest man-made building in Jinan.

Due to the large amount of steam engine work, the planned construction time of the weaving factory is as long as two years. There is no way to do it. Construction in the north will basically be impossible by the end of October. No matter how powerful Li Xiao is, he can't solve the problem inside the cement.

The problem of water freezing.

The idle laborers in Jinan City have disappeared. As long as they are from a good family and can get a certificate from the Yamen that they have no criminal record, they can go to the factory to sign up. These are jobs with little technical content and only require a lot of effort.

When entering the factory, you are not required to shave your head, but you are required to take a shower and wash your body clean. Then each person is given two sets of work clothes before going to work. The work clothes are blue, not very pretty but very thick. I heard that these are summer work clothes, and they are not used in winter.

It's much thicker.

The workers had no choice but to endure the supervisors' perverted demands for hygiene. A month or two ago, two taels of money were worth nothing. It is not easy to find a job like this in Jinan City! The supervisors are all from the army.

The killing talent, the mother-in-law's curses when you open and shut your mouth, the whip crackling but it doesn't hit anyone very much.

At first, I was skeptical about the two taels of silver wages, but at the end of the month, all the twenty taels of silver wages were actually paid to everyone. There was no deduction from the foreman, and no one took a commission. Everyone just lined up like that. The long queue asked for wages. Those who worked overtime after get off work actually got more money. Those who worked more and worked harder actually got bonuses.

With this beginning, when the next factory recruits workers, it can only be described as an unprecedented event.

Many people dug holes in their homes to find connections, just so that their children could work in factories. In these days, Jinan City had a population of only five to six million. It recruited more than 20,000 workers, almost covering the entire city.

More than half of the youth labor force has been withdrawn.

If he were not afraid of strong opposition from public opinion, Li Xiao would even consider hiring female workers.

For a time, the idle people wandering on the streets disappeared. After the last severe crackdown, there is now a large-scale recruitment. As a result, the security of Jinan City has improved unprecedentedly. People who go to work every day strictly follow the rules of working at sunrise and resting at sunset.

.When it’s past nine o’clock in the evening, no one is wandering around on the street. You really don’t pick up things on the street and don’t close your door at night.

Everyone has a job, and everyone has a career. However, there is always some noise in the good days, and the time has entered August. The gloomy sky has never been sunny, and the heavy rain for a week has made the entire Shandong soak in

In the water.

The Mother River is about to cause trouble! This is Li Xiao's biggest headache. If the Mother Yellow River changes its course again and a dragon wags its tail, I don't know how many people will die.

Newspapers from the imperial court said that Henan, adjacent to Lankao and other places in Shandong, had become a land of marshes. Soon Li Xiao received the news that Heze was also in the water. Dongming County, which is closest to the Yellow River, had become a land of marshes.

Wang Yang. Not only did the food harvest fail, but the population also suffered heavy losses.

When the embankment of Dongming County collapsed, the magistrate of Dongming County had already disappeared with his family. The magistrate of Heze was even more awesome. He had moved his family property to a higher place before the first rain. When the Yellow River burst its embankment, this guy was busy moving.

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Li Xiao was so angry that his head was smoking, and he immediately ordered the arrest of two guys and escorted them to Jinan. Li Xiao was going to hold a public trial, chop the people with a knife, and then report it to the court. He was the governor, and not only did he have the royal flag in his hand

The card also has the Shangfang Sword (one specially approved by Emperor Chongzhen Zhu Youjian), and it is no problem to kill two low-level officials of the sixth or seventh rank.

At this time, Lord Lu Xiangsheng, the inspector sent from the capital, arrived.

It is really not easy to talk about this inspector, because he came to Jinan with troops to take office. After getting the news, Li Xiao was almost angry. I am just a governor, I have never heard that an inspector can lead

If someone else dared to do this, eight heads would be chopped off. But Lu Xiangsheng came here in a big way, and there was no trouble at all.

But what is unreasonable is that in the imperial court, from the many ministers to the ministers of the six departments, they are selectively blind to Lu Xiangsheng's obvious violation of regulations. On weekdays, when Li Xiao farts, the ministers can't wait to write a memorial. Now,

But collectively they became mute.

The person who came here is not kind!

"See the Governor." As a subordinate, Lu Xiangsheng was still somewhat aware. He came to visit Li Xiao the same day he arrived in Jinan. Of course, as the highest judicial official in the province, Lu Xiangsheng also brought hundreds of subordinates, all of whom stood in bright armor.

A courtyard of the governor's Yamen. In contrast, Ao Canghai and Man Gui, who were wearing short-sleeved military uniforms and training caps, did not look like soldiers at all.

"Thank you for your hard work, Mr. Inspector!" Li Xiao looked at Mr. Lu Xiangsheng Lu up and down. This guy was very tall, probably more than 1.9 meters at most. Ao Canghai Mangui was as tall as Lu Xiangsheng.

Gotta look up.

His face is a bit sickly pale, with thin eyebrows and big eyes, a high nose bridge and prominent cheekbones. His facial features alone are not very outstanding, but when combined together they are very harmonious. Although he is not handsome, he has a heroic air. Especially between the eyebrows,

He seems to have the spirit of killing. No wonder he was sent as the envoy. It is said that when this guy was in Daming Mansion, he managed Daming Mansion, the most rampant banditry in Zhili, into a very stable place. In just one year after taking office, the entire Daming Mansion was wiped out.

The bandit won a commendation from the court!

It was probably because of this that he was selected by those guys in the imperial court and sent to Jinan to compete with Li Xiao in the ring.

"Serve the country, serve the Holy One, it's not hard work!" Lu Xiangsheng straightened his waist and saw that Li Xiao was not nervous at all. He also looked Li Xiao up and down with his eyes.

"Mr. Lu has just arrived in Jinan after a long journey. It's better to rest for two days before opening the office." Li Xiao responded casually. These are all official words. Almost every official who comes to take office will say a few words like this.

Conversations tend to become more formatted.

"Thank you very much, Governor, for your concern, but the court's official affairs have been backlogged too much. I can go to work today!" Lu Xiangsheng refused Li Xiao's kindness, which made Li Xiao stunned.

Boss, if you talk so out of line, I can't accept it!

"When I passed by the city gate, I saw that your Excellency had issued an announcement. It stated that a public trial would be held in Jinan City tomorrow to trial the Dongming County Magistrate and the Heze Prefecture. I don't know if this matter was approved by Your Excellency." Li Xiao did not speak.

Lu Xiangsheng asked.

"Exactly, I am planning to put these two derelict officials on trial tomorrow who do not care about the lives of the people and only care about their own interests."

"My Lord Governor, according to the law, this matter should be handled by my office. Then it will be reported to the Governor and the imperial court, and it can only be dealt with after approval by the court officials. Your holding a public trial meeting like this is not in compliance with the imperial court regulations and the laws of the Ming Dynasty. Please, Lord Governor, please

The relevant prisoners were handed over to our Yamen, and after being interrogated by the lower officials, they were reported to the Lord and the Ministry of Civil Affairs and Criminal Affairs of the capital, and they were dealt with after the approval of the court." Lu Xiangsheng clasped his fists at Li Xiao.

"They...!" Just as Li Xiao was about to speak, Sun Chengzong suddenly stood in front of Li Xiao.

"Since the Chief Inspector has said so, let the matter be handed over to the Yamen of Zhensi for trial according to the law. Then, the matter will be handled in accordance with the regulations of the imperial court."

"You are...!"
Chapter completed!