Zhangjia Village, a small village by the sea of ​​Huai'an. Like all the small villages by the sea of ​​northern Jiangsu, these villages are villages where salt stoves live for generations.

Zhang Zhan is a stove household on the sea. The Ming Dynasty's household registration system was very strict. In the early Ming Dynasty, the people were divided into three categories: private households, military households, and craftsmen. These three categories were classified in detail, including private households, tenants, tea households, fishing households, horse households, mining households, craft households, weaving households (mechanical households), ship households, business households, shop households, salt households, military households, merchant households, etc. Each household registration is determined from the ancestors. What kind of household registration is your? The ancestors have always been this kind of household registration. If you want to change your destiny, you can only pass the imperial examination to become an official.

In addition to the above-mentioned household registration, there are also inferior household registrations such as beggar households, music households and slave households. These inferior household registrations do not even have the qualifications for the imperial examination, and can only be discredited for the rest of their lives.

As for merchants, their status was indeed very low in the early Ming Dynasty, and even the rich businessmen at home were looked down upon.

However, by the late Ming Dynasty, the merchants who were originally inferior in the early Ming Dynasty now became superior because they had close ties with scholars. Because the status of merchants in the early Ming Dynasty was extremely low, merchants desperately paid to support scholars in order to change their social status. And those scholars who benefited from merchants tried their best to help the merchants after becoming officials. What's more, many merchants even went to buy land and donated a prison student to their descendants.

As the saying goes, there are people in the court who are easy to do business, so it means that the big merchants in the late merchants are actually roles that the imperial court cannot afford. The real low-status merchants are just small vendors and peddlers who walk around the streets.

As a stove household, Zhang Zhan is actually a salt household. The stove household has a moderate status, but the sufferings are the three most painful household registrations of salt, army and craftsmen. The ancestors of the stove household, except for the descendants of the hereditary stove households left by the Yuan Dynasty, were mostly those in Chen Youliang, Zhang Shicheng's army, Chen Youliang and Zhang Shicheng, who were defeated and captured by Zhu Yuanzhang, were mostly instigated into the stove household by Zhu Yuanzhang. In fact, their status is equivalent to a work slave, a kind of slave who does handicrafts and lives a worse life than a craftsman.

The stove owners lived here for generations, boiled salt with sea water and sold the salt they had worked hard to the government. Although the salt was transported to other places, a pound of salt could be sold for dozens of cents of copper, and in some places it could even be sold for 100 cents of copper, the purchase price of the government purchased salt from the stove owner was less than a cent per pound! A stove owner had boiled salt for a whole day and boiled forty to fifty kilograms of salt, and then got 30 to forty cents. After deducting the firewood fee, there was only a few cents left. This money had to support the family's life and pay taxes.

Compared to the past when salt was used to exchange rice directly from the government, it is even harder to get money now. Back then, after the salt household handed over 400 kilograms of salt from the government, the government gave one stone of grain, more than 400 kilograms of salt, and every 200 kilograms of salt was exchanged for two dou of rice. Although the pressure was severe, at least the government could give rice so that the stove household would not starve to death.

Now it has been changed to exchange salt for money. The copper or broken silver I received was not allowed to be eaten directly, and I also had to use the money to buy grain. As a result, the stove owners were slaughtered by the profiteering merchants.

Although with the development of technology, boiling salt has become drying salt, the burden on the stove owners has not decreased, but has become heavier. They have to pay more salt. They have to stand in the sun every day and expose themselves to the sun. Their feet are soaked in the already thick salt water. The brine is filtered, stirred, and clarified, and finally collect the dried salt. This is also an extremely tired physical effort.

In addition to the salt produced by drying, the government also required the stove owners to boil salt, because with the technology of that era, the salt produced by drying was the lowest-priced coarse salt. If you want to obtain better quality salt, you still need to boil it to obtain salt.

In short, these stove households have a heavy burden and are struggling at the bottom of society. They are exploited by the government, salt merchants, and have to be exploited by the rich stoves, grain merchants, and oppressed by minor officials and salt peddlers.

"The salt owl is here!" someone shouted.

The so-called salt owls are those "legal" private salt dealers. They sell private salt but make the skin of the government. Their purchase price is lower than that of the government! At least, the government can still leave a bite for the stove owners after collecting salt. However, the price given by those "legal" private salt dealers is nothing like robbing!

These salt owls openly came to snatch the salt from the stove households. Why did the stove households dare not resist? Because the salt owls have salt cubes in their hands, and the people can't beat them at all. If they resist, they will be killed in vain.

Go to the government to sue them? What a big deal! Most of these private salt dealers are salt dealers who have collusion with the government. Where can you go to sue them? The yamen is open, so don’t come in if you have any money. What’s more, many of those private salt dealers are related to certain officials, minor officials or big salt dealers.

Wherever the salt owl passed, the villages of stove households were in great trouble. Those who could sell salt to the salt owl at low prices were considered lucky. The salt owls that many stove households worked hard to dry were snatched away by the salt owls! The salt owls even didn't even let go of the food from the stove households' homes, and they were snatched away!

In fact, these salt owls were instructed by the officials and the big salt merchants in Lianghuai.

Due to the implementation of the One-Whip Law, the government adopted a system of tax payment of silver and copper coins, and the stove owners could no longer obtain food directly from the government, and could only use silver and copper coins to buy food!

After Zhang Juzheng's death, his whip method was abolished, but the method of paying taxes in kind to paying silver taxes was not abolished because of the abolition of the whip method, because this is a good way for profiteers to make money! Both farmers and stove owners are the same. The products they have to earn from them must be exchanged for silver and copper coins before they can be paid for taxes. In this way, merchants make a fortune from it, and if the stove owner wants to eat food, they have to buy it with money, which makes another fortune by merchants.

In order to solve the problem of survival, the stove owners were forced to develop a little wasteland and grow their own food.

As a result, because the stove owners planted their own grain, the grain merchants could no longer earn money from the stove owners. So the profiteers secretly encouraged the salt owl to snatch all the grain from the people's homes when they robbed the people's salt. In this way, the people had no grain and could only work hard to produce salt and then buy grain from the grain merchants at high prices.

"Son, you're finally back! Yan Xiao entered our house just now, and they snatched all the things you can rob!" Zhang Zhan's mother immediately came up to meet her when she saw her son coming back.

"No! We can't let those salt owls who stole our food and salt go freely!" Zhang Zhan roared. He walked out of the door and opened his voice and shouted, "Lin Zhun! Yang Laoliu! Wu Gouzi! You guys come out quickly!"

Several of Zhang Zhan's kids came out. He looked around and opened his voice and shouted: "Brothers! Those salt rats snatched our salt and food. We are almost unable to survive! If you don't want the family to starve to death, then follow me and kill those salt rats!"

Wu Gouzi was shocked and quickly advised: "Brother, although those thieves are private salt dealers, one of them is the county magistrate's brother-in-law and there are many innocent faces. I can't recognize them, but I'm afraid there are people behind them."

"So what about someone behind? At worst, we can go into jail! Even if we lose our heads, it is much better than watching the whole family starve to death. If we really kill a few private salt dealers, we will be executed by the government! Then I, Zhang, do things alone!" Zhang Zhan opened his voice and shouted.

"Brother, I am in trouble! I, Lin Zhun, have sex with you!"
Chapter completed!