In the General Office of the Canal Transportation Army and the conference hall, all kinds of gods expressed their worries.

"If they abolish the canal transportation, our Governor's Office and General's Office will definitely be cut off!" The officials of the two governments were furious. "We officials are fine, and the court must arrange a place to go. But there are more than 100,000 canal workers in the Governor's Office, tens of thousands of canal workers in the Governor's Office, tens of thousands of craftsmen in the Qingjiang Shipyard, and their families are small. Who will support them? The court or the Jiangnan Group?!"

They must have been the most impacted and the most direct.

"Yes, we counties along the river have flourished for hundreds of years with the canal." Officials from Xuzhou and Huaian, as well as officials from Linqing, Jining, Dezhou and other places in Shandong, also sighed:

"If the canal transportation stops, the canal will soon be silted. Our dozens of prefectures will probably fall into scattered cars and horses, and all industries will be in decline. The hard days for the people will come..."

The only drawback is that the officials from Yangzhou did not come, and even the officials along the river south of the Yangtze River did not show up. It is said that Jiangnan Group drew a big cake called "Jiangnan Economic Mutual Aid Zone" and bewitched the short-sighted guys.

What a group of idiots who only care about the moment. I wonder if the canal is the hardcore crop that can be eaten from generation to generation?

What, they are officials who serve every three years? Well, I wish them to be dismissed and investigated as soon as possible.

However, what does it mean that Tianjin soldiers prepare for Taoism Cao Ke not only did not come, but also did not send a representative here?

Oh, Tianjin Wei is the terminal for shipping. In the future, the grain transported by shipping will be transported at Dagukou, so Tianjin will be fully prosperous. If he dares to come to participate in the Baocai Alliance, he will have to let the Tianjin elders beat him to death when he returns...

Selfish, timid. Bah, disgusting!

~~

"Damn it, the boy named Zhao is really a fool!" After the Caohe Transport and local officials complained, it was the turn of the nobles to make their speeches.

"We marquis and uncles are so glorious, but the court does not treat us as human beings at all. We are not allowed to inherit titles at the age of 24 or 25, so we can find a reason to fine them and take their salary. A family of hundreds of people rely on the subsidies for the canal transportation. The surname Zhao also took away our income, which is to force us to death!" Nan and Bo Fang responded to each other, as if they had lost their parents.

"That's right, his Jiangnan Group is so rich that he still wants to snatch food from our mouths! Could it be that a tiger doesn't bite people, he thinks that our Nanjing nobles are sick cats?" Dongning Bo's surname is Jiao Wenyao, and he continued angrily.

The Ming Dynasty started transporting grain from the first year of Yongle, and the grain transportation system was established by nobles and has been controlled to this day.

The first general officer of the canal transport was Chen Xuan, a man from Pingjiang during the Yongle period. He governed the canal transport for 30 years and built all aspects of the canal transport in the Ming Dynasty. Later, Chen Xuan's children and grandchildren served as two general officers of the canal transport. Now his seventh generation grandson, the contemporary Pingjiang Wang Mo, also served as deputy general officer of the canal transport. After Gu Huan, the Marquis of Zhenyuan, retired, he should take over.

Before Gu Huan, the general of the canal transport was also controlled by the nobles, or to be precise, by the nobles of Nanjing, without exception.

Because of the Jingnan Campaign, the Ming Dynasty's nobles were divided into two factions: North and South. Most of the northern factions were from heroes of Jingnan, and they went to Beijing together after Zhu Di moved the capital.

The Southern School was mainly those conferred by Taizu, and the nobles who stood on the side of Emperor Jianwen during the Jingnan period. Zhu Di naturally didn't like them, but no matter how he said that they were also loyal ministers of the Ming Dynasty, and everyone was in contact with each other, so Zhu Laosi was not good at killing him.

So after moving the capital, they were all left in Nanjing, and they were invisible. The group of Nanjing nobles, led by the Xu family of Wei, lived their lives safely in Nanjing. In addition to the Governor's Office of the Five Army in Nanjing, the General Office of the Grain Transportation Army was another piece of private land that the court allowed them to settle their children and get extra money.

Now that the Jiangnan Group has reached their private areas, can the nobles not jump? Therefore, as soon as the General Office sent an invitation, they rushed to Huai'an from Jinling.

The same drawback is that her husband Xu Pengju is seriously ill, and his son Xu Bangrui refuses to come on the pretext of serving the disease. This inevitably makes them less confident.

~~

Fortunately, Fengyang garrison eunuch Qiu also came, which completely offset the adverse effects of the absence of the Duke of Wei's Mansion and boosted everyone's morale a lot.

In addition to serving the imperial tombs, he also managed the imperial city of Zhongdu and trained the troops of the eight guards of the Zhongdu, the Fengyang garrison eunuchs were also responsible for monitoring all military and political affairs within the jurisdiction of the governor Fengyang.

Therefore, the Fengyang garrison eunuchs also had the responsibility to supervise the transportation of the grain for the emperor. His authority was second only to the Nanjing garrison eunuchs outside the capital.

In fact, like the eunuchs in Nanjing, the eunuchs in Fengyang are also the heterodons in the Sili Supervisor. When eunuchs in Nanjing are vacant, they are basically replaced by eunuchs in Fengyang.

Therefore, only a famous person who can speak well in the emperor will hold this important position. Now this Eunuch Qiu, who is in charge of Fengyang, has a false position as a eunuch, and is the brother of the Eunuch Teng, the chief of the Sili Supervisor. He speaks for the Cao Transportation Office, so naturally it can be easily passed to the emperor's ears.

In theory, the king did not see the king, and Eunuch Qiu usually stayed in Zhongdu City and would not easily come to Huaian. This time he arrived rarely, and it was obviously transported by the grain and was greatly affected by the sea.

This is not difficult to understand. After all, Fengyang, Fengyang is a good place. Since the emergence of Emperor Zhu, there has been nine years of waste in ten years. Looking at the jurisdiction of the eunuchs in Fengyang, the most oily and water-water can be found in this canal. The inputs of this place alone each year are almost as close to the sum of the rest.

Although Eunuch Qiu has always been silent, just like Zhenyuan Hou, as long as he sits there, he will have great support for the Cao Party.

~~

In addition, there are seven or eight big businessmen, most of them made their fortunes through the canal.

Although the cost of the canal transport can be three or four times the amount of regular grain received, the transport troops still complained and fled seriously. For the safety of the canal transport, the court could only provide pension to the transport troops, and permitted the canal ships to carry soil and exempted from tax money... That is to say, the canal ships are allowed to carry commercial goods, and they are tax-free.

Mr. Zhao said that he wanted it too, but it was from the sea.

So the canal ships played the role of a merchant ship, and later even developed to the point where it mainly operates cargo and grain, putting the cart before the horse. With the support of its terrifying transport capacity of thousands of canal ships, the Grand Canal became the most important commercial circulation trunk line in the Ming Dynasty, and the canal transport yamen became the largest logistics group in the Ming Dynasty.

In fact, the world has been suffering from the grain transportation for a long time, and the world's merchants have also suffered from the grain transportation for a long time. Year after year, not only does the freight continue to rise, but also the additional delivery of soldiers and filial piety is also necessary, otherwise the goods will be thrown and beaten and lost, and the water will be lost.

If this is done by sea, merchants can have an extra choice of freight from north to south, and of course they will not be able to find it. So at least most merchants are willing to see this situation.

But these big merchants here are different from those in the traditional sense of business and business, but are unique canal transportation contractors.

The so-called canal transportation merchant is a merchant who represents the right to distribute the capacity of the canal shipping.

Later, because the profit in this area was too high, it soon exceeded the oil and water of the canal itself, and the canal yamen simply included all the ships on the canal in jurisdiction.

The canal transportation yamen is extremely domineering. Without their permission, you can't even ride on the canal by yourself. If you want to get the right of passage, you still have to find these contractors to buy it.

Those who can become "Caobao" are all people with great hands and eyes, and belong to the core level of the Caoyun interest group. The difficulty of becoming a "Caobao" is no less than becoming a general salt merchant in Lianghuai.

So even if it is Wu Ji, the business has been in the north and south for goods over the years, but it still has to be honest and spend a huge amount of money every year to seek the right of canal access from "Caobao".

Although most of this income has to be paid to the canal transportation yamen, the canals still accumulated huge amounts of wealth. They also relied on the great power brought by the "contracting rights" to build industries along the canal, and their interests are spread throughout the important commercial cities along the river such as Tongzhou, Tianjin, Jining, Linqing, Huai'an, and Yangzhou.

If the canal is marginalized, their losses will be too great. Even the subcontracting rights to settle down will become worthless. This is absolutely unacceptable to them.

~~

The leader of these Caobao merchants was named Song and was named Song Xiaoming. The detailed information about Jiangnan Group just now was provided by him.

Even this alliance was carried out under his strong encouragement. Otherwise, with the tyranny of these officials and eunuchs, even if they felt the threat of shipping, they would not have come together to discuss countermeasures so quickly.

The reason why Song Xiaoming is so active is that he has another identity besides Caobao - the largest money house in the Ming Dynasty, the shopkeeper of "Hengtongji".

Hengtongji has a history of a hundred years. The main shareholders are Caoyun Yamen and Nanjing nobles, and Caobao also has shares in it.

The Grand Canal runs through the most prosperous area of ​​the Ming Dynasty's economy. Hengtongji is backed by the two governments of the canal and transportation, and has unique advantages in doing foreign exchange and savings business. However, he has been doing it half-dead, and scandals often break out, and his reputation is very poor.

If it weren't for the compulsory regulations of the canal merchants, all the money transactions of the canal merchants had to be recorded from Hengtong. This money house would have gone bankrupt long ago.

This is not surprising. It is only with those canal transport officials and nobles who can increase the cost of transport to four times the urinary properties of regular grains. It would be strange if they can do it well in a business like a money house with oligopolistic competition and extremely professionalism.

Finally, after Hengtong suffered serious losses thirty years ago, the general of the canal transport and the governor of the canal transport finally made up his mind and spent a lot of money to dig up Song Xiaoming, the shopkeeper of the Huaian section of the "Wanyuan" at that time, to take the helm of Hengtong.

This shopkeeper Song is a decisive business genius. Before taking office, he made three decisions with his shareholders.

1. If you don’t like yourself, you can withdraw yourself at any time. But as long as you use yourself for a day, you must give yourself absolute business decision-making power. You must not interfere with the use of capital and the stay or departure of personnel.

2. Shareholders cannot borrow money from Hengtongji. The previous loans must be converted into loans and settled within one year. After one year, they will go to the market and collect interest.

Third, the "Three Master" is not allowed to go to Hengtong to manage the business. The so-called "Three Master" is the "uncle", "son-in-law" and "young master" of the shareholders. In any business run by the shopkeeper, these three masters are not good to mix in.
Chapter completed!