Chapter 45 Section 9: Solving the Problems of Clothing and Eating for the Common People

After cracking down on landlords and large-scale immigration, society in the early Ming Dynasty finally tended to the ideal state in Zhu Yuanzhang's mind.According to the statistics of the Ministry of Households in the 30th year of Hongwu: there are only large households with more than seven hectares of land in the country. At that time, the number of households in the country was 9,490,713, and the larger landlords accounted for only 0.15% of the total number of households.More than 90% of the country are small farmers. Scholar Huang Renyu said, "Obviously, Zhu Yuanzhang's Ming Dynasty has a lot of utopian colors. It looks like a big village, not like a country. Centralization can reach such a degree because all organizations and structures have been simplified. , a country spanning millions of acres has been purged into a tight and uniform system."

Zhu Yuanzhang successfully built the foundation of Utopia.On this basis, Zhu Yuanzhang began to work hard to build his ideal society. In this ideal society, everyone should have food to eat and everyone to have clothes to wear.Zhu Yuanzhang devoted a lot of energy to solving the problem of eating and clothing for the common people. In order to restore the economy, Zhu Yuanzhang took many highly planned and organized measures.For example, in order to solve the problem of people’s clothing, Zhu Yuanzhang issued a rigid order in the first year of Hongwu: “Every farmer who has five to ten acres of land shall plant half an acre of mulberry, hemp, and kapok each. If there are more than ten acres of land, the planting area shall be doubled. Officials at all levels must personally inspect, and if they do not plant mulberry trees, they will be fined to hand over one bolt of silk; if they do not grow hemp and kapok, they will be fined one bolt of linen cloth and one bolt of cotton cloth.” This regulation requires uniform implementation throughout the country.

In March of the twenty-seventh year of Hongwu (AD 1394), he ordered the Ministry of Industry to write a document ordering the people all over the world to plant mulberry dates according to the national plan.Zhu Yuanzhang's planning preferences made his economic directives unacceptably detailed and rigid.He rigidly stipulated that one hundred households should jointly plant two acres of rice seedlings, and specified the planting method in detail: each hundred households would contribute manpower, carry firewood and burn the land, plow it and then burn it, and plow and burn it three times before planting.When the seedlings grow to two feet high, they are planted separately, and every five feet wide is a ridge.For every 100 households, there are 200 plants in the first year, 400 plants in the second year, and 600 plants in the third year. "If you have planted a number, make a book and return it. If you violate it, the whole family will send it to the army."

Water conservancy is the lifeblood of agriculture, and Zhu Yuanzhang attaches great importance to it.During the Hongwu period, Zhu Yuanzhang took advantage of the superiority of centralization and concentrated his power to build many large-scale water conservancy projects.According to statistics in the twenty-eighth year of Hongwu, there were 49,987 Kaitang Weirs in prefectures and counties across the country.There are 4,162 places on the river, and 5,048 places on the embankment of the Piqu.These infrastructure constructions greatly consolidated the foundation of agriculture and had a lasting impact on agricultural production in the Ming Dynasty.In addition to the construction of large-scale projects, Zhu Yuanzhang even engaged in some popular projects.For example, in the twelfth year of Hongwu, the Tianshui Canal in Xi'an, Shaanxi, diverted water from the Longshou Canal into the city, and the residents of Xi'an have since then had sweet water to drink.

It should be said that in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, Zhu Yuanzhang made great achievements in economic construction by means of high-level planning and coercive orders, which initially demonstrated the strong governing ability of the new regime.Within a few years, the national output of mulberry, hemp, and kapok has doubled several times, effectively solving the problem of people's clothing. After Zhu Yuanzhang's various measures, agricultural production resumed within a few years, the extreme poverty was wiped out on a large scale, and people's food problems were solved.In the twenty-fourth year of Hongwu, the country's cultivated land area more than doubled compared with the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China.In the 26th year of Hongwu's year, the annual grain income was nearly twice that of the Yuan Dynasty's heyday.

However, like his forced immigration, Zhu Yuanzhang's policy of benefiting the people emphasizes a one-size-fits-all approach across the country, backed by state violence.This kind of rough planned economy has too much concentration and too much control, which has also brought certain negative effects.Given the size of China, many places are not suitable for planting mulberry and kapok, but the emperor ordered that it must be planted if it is planted, and it must be planted if it is not planted. If it is not planted, punitive taxes are necessary. The climate and land conditions in the extreme southern provinces such as Fujian are not suitable for cotton planting and mulberry planting, but they still have to hand in silk and cotton cloth.Another example is Henan, Zhongzhou, where mulberry is rare. "Emperor Taizu asked the people to plant mulberry in order to persuade the people to work hard to live, but it has evolved into a tax... Until now, this place in Henan does not grow mulberry or weave cloth. Every year, you still have to pay the silk cloth tax" ("The Collection of Ancient and Modern Books·Food Code·Department of Taxation").

"Yongchun County Chronicle" also contains: "At the beginning of the country, the most important policy was agriculture and mulberry, so the officials in the prefectures and counties all over the world persuaded farmers to plant mulberry at the right time, and planned to plant mulberry and mulberry silk. All prefectures and counties have quotas. Each place has its own conditions, Zhejiang and Zhejiang are suitable for mulberry, Shandong and Henan are suitable for kapok, for example Yongchun is suitable for hemp ramie, and they should be harvested wherever they are. Today there are lands where mulberry is not planted, and silk is transported every year, and Dingliang is obtained from Tongxian County. "