When Zhao Xu woke up, he saw Queen Mother Xiang sitting in front of him.

"Queen mother, why are you here?" Zhao Xu asked.

"My son..." Queen Mother Xiang handed the text written by Li Ding in her hand to Zhao Xu: "Let's take a look..."

Zhao Xu took it and looked at it carefully.

Except for slight exaggeration in a few places, it is basically true!

"The ministers from the three provinces have just written letters about this matter..." Queen Mother Xiang observed Zhao Xu's expression and said: "Secretary Zhang all said that what Wu Juhou and others did was definitely not the original intention of Emperor Daxing.

It was he who deceived Emperor Daxing!"

Zhao Xu nodded: "Shilang Zhang is right!"

"How much do you love the people, my father? If you had known about the deeds of these rebellious ministers, you would never have forgiven them!"

But Zhao Xu himself didn't believe these words.

On Jingdong Road and Jingdong West Road, salt and iron commercial taxes have increased several times in just a few years. Last year, they even topped the list in the world.

Zhao Xu's father, the Emperor, was known for his emphasis on intelligence acquisition and his love for micromanaging.

How could he not know what Wu Juhou and others were doing?

impossible.

He must know something, but Wu Juhou did too well.

No emperor would look closely at a minister who has a clean sleeve, wears a piece of clothing for a year, and works conscientiously in the local area to make money for the emperor.

Even if he makes a small mistake occasionally, it doesn't matter.

But what Wu Juhou did was indeed too much!

Therefore, in Zhao Xu's previous life, when Shaosheng Shao Shu was in charge, he originally wanted to recall Wu Juhou back to the court and enter the three provinces and two prefectures.

However, Zhang Dun and Zeng Bu, two enemies, rarely joined forces to stop and persuade Zhao Xu: Wu Juhou defeated the people in Jingdong in the past, and the people in Jingdong are still eager to eat his flesh.

Zeng Bu even bluntly said: Wu Juhou cannot be an important minister! If he is, the world will be in disaster!

They are still too young.

I don’t know, there are talented people from generation to generation.

In modern times, Zhao Xu saw Cai Jing's ability to make money under Zhao Ji - he was amazed.

Then, he saw He Shen's ability - he was stunned.

Compared with Cai Jing, Wu Juhou is just a pure and kind-hearted little white rabbit. Compared with He Shen, Wu Juhou is nothing more than a character.

Even so, what Wu Juhou did to make money on Jingdong Road should be ranked among the top ten cruel officials in history.

So how did he make money?

The answer is the same as the method of protecting armor and horse.

There is a saying that you should not be afraid of old tricks, as long as they are useful.

For example, if you want to eat salt, you can't eat salt on Jingdong Road in the past.

It is a three-point transaction between kitchen households, merchants, and common people. The people can get cheap salt, the kitchen households can also get reasonable profits, and the merchants can make a lot of money.

However, the Song Dynasty Chaotang has always been coveting this piece of fat.

As early as the Xining period, Zhang Dun and Zeng Bu proposed to explore salt in Jingdong.

It was only Su Shi, Wen Yanbo and Han Qi who strongly opposed it that made them give up.

Until the first year of Yuanfeng, when Han Qi died, Wang Anshi also went to Jiangning to plant flowers and meditate on Zen.

The Great Song Dynasty once again paid attention to Jingdong Road Yanyan.

Richard was promoted to the position of Deputy Transport Envoy of Jingdong Road, responsible for presiding over the salt review work.

However, his boss, Jingdong Road Transport Envoy Liu Yu, resolutely obstructed the implementation of Yanyan, so he was dismissed.

As a result, Richard had the authority to send a transfer envoy to Jingdong Road.

Immediately, the salt review method was fully promoted. Richard's salt review method was the source of many disadvantages of the new law after Yuanfeng.

It was also the starting point for all Wu Juhou's subsequent actions.

Its reform methods no longer focus on the convenience of the government and the people, as they did during the Xining Reform Period, and they no longer pay attention to the reaction of the people.

There is only one general principle: make money!

Zhao Xu has read countless relevant studies in modern times.

So he understands even better than Wu Juhou how his style of play works.

In the case of Yanyan, it means breaking the connection between kitchen households and merchants in the past.

Kitchen households were prohibited from selling salt to merchants.

Instead, through government monopoly, the salt produced by kitchen households was deliberately reduced to less than half of the original amount.

The salt is then sold to merchants to make a profit.

Is this the end?

No!

Don't forget, there is also a market exchange method and an equal loss method next to it.

Richard relied on the law to force the salt merchants to borrow money from him, thus generating salt interest money.

You don't want to borrow it?

Then don’t sell salt on Jingdong Road!

Therefore, relying on this move, Richard made a profit of more than 200,000 yuan from salt and salt interest money that year!

One salt can equal the total commercial tax revenue and other miscellaneous tax revenue of the entire Jingdong Road in a year.

Therefore, Richard was transferred to Fuyan Road and served as a transshipment envoy to prepare for the Five-Road Expedition to Xia.

Wu Juhou, who succeeded Richard, went further based on Richard's experience.

In the first year after Wu Juhou took office, the salt interest alone exceeded Richard's annual salt income that year - reaching 240,000 yuan.

When the news reached Bianjing, almost no one believed it.

Until Wu Juhou moved more than 360,000 copper coins to the packaging warehouse in Bianjing.

In the face of real money, even those who don't believe have to believe.

How did Wu Juhou do it?

The answer is the same as the method of protecting the armor and protecting the horse, adding more weight layer by layer!

He set extremely strict tax targets for his subordinates, and if they achieved them, they were rewarded heavily and promoted quickly.

Because of this, some people jumped from selection to Beijing officials in one year!

This is so exciting.

Therefore, the income from salt from Jingdong Road and Jingdong West Road continues to increase every year.

Therefore, Wu Juhou began to rely on path.

Later, the same method was used in both Qie Tie and Qie Jiu.

Especially Qie Ti!

In order to increase income and sell more ironware.

Wu Juhou directly ordered that the people of the prefectures and counties under the jurisdiction of the entire Jingdong Transshipment Envoy were not allowed to repair ironware privately, nor were they allowed to buy or sell ironware privately.

Even so, the money still comes too slowly.

So, he forced his subordinates to go back and distribute the shares of iron iron to various places.

It’s still adding layers of code.

In the end, people from all over Jingdong Road, and up to four households, had to buy an ironware from the government regularly!

This was not the end, Wu Juhou later thought, where can you make money faster?

So I planned to use the pig iron produced on Jingdong Road to forcibly cast money, and once I cast it, I would get a large iron coin that was worth two!

But the problem is that Jingdong Road itself did not have the habit of using iron money. In the Song Dynasty, it was Shaanxi Road and Sichuan Road that used iron money.

So he needs to transport the cast iron money to Sichuan or Shaanxi.

However, transportation costs are very high - if not for this reason, how would Jiaozi appear?

The second is that the pig iron produced on Jingdong Road is too brittle, and the loss rate when casting money is too high!

But Wu Juhou doesn’t care about this!

Forcibly mount the horse, force the mine owners and blacksmiths who contracted the mines to cast money, increase the amount at each level, allocate quotas, and those who fail to complete will be fined to the end!

Among the many policies implemented by Wu Juhou, the only one that had no public complaints was the liquor ban.
To be continued...