Chapter 425 The People of Luoyang Want to Make Progress

Richard sent people to Luoyang and first checked the canal conditions around Luoyang. In order to rebuild Luoyang, in addition to manpower, the transportation of various materials is needed, so the first step in rebuilding Luoyang City is to dredge the canal.

Emperor Yang of Sui excavated the Grand Canal with Luoyang as the core, connecting the north and the south and Guanzhong. The northern line is the Yongji Canal, which enters the Yellow River from Luoyang and goes north, and finally reaches Zhuojun in Youzhou. The southern line is the Tongji Canal, which starts from Luoyang, passes through Bianliang Kaifeng, Songzhou, Suzhou, Yangzhou and finally reaches Hangzhou.

There is also the Guangtong Canal, which connects Luoyang to Chang'an.

Because of the wars in the late Tang Dynasty, the governors of various places rarely repaired the canal, so many places on this Grand Canal have been silted up and cannot be used.

The best preserved is the Tongji Canal. The line from Jiangnan to Tokyo Bianliang is repaired almost every year, and a large amount of Jiangnan wealth has been transported to Kaifeng Bianliang.

The canal in the north was seriously silted up, but now that the north is unified, the repair of the canal has been put on the agenda. The canal around Luoyang is also seriously silted up.

The officials sent by Richard began to survey the terrain near Luoyang and prepare to repair the canal again.

However, although repairing the canal is easier than digging a new canal, it still requires a lot of manpower. At this time, the Zhou Kingdom was in a state of recovery, and many places needed manpower, and it was not possible to transfer too many people to dredge the canal and rebuild Luoyang.

It would take at least 200,000 people one to two years to build Luoyang City. In order to build Luoyang City and the canal as soon as possible, Richard personally designed some engineering machinery to reduce manpower, and then allocated food and wages to recruit people to go to Luoyang to dig the canal.

In order to increase manpower, Richard even sent some captured soldiers from Ganzhou Huihe, Dangxiang, and Khitan here. And told them that as long as they served five years of labor here, they would be released without guilt.

In this way, 20,000 civilians were raised, and after adding the labor from other places to make up 100,000 people, they began to order the repair of the canal and Luoyang City.

At this time, Zhou State was developing the Western Regions while fighting against the Northern Han Dynasty. In addition, the construction of Luoyang City consumed a lot of manpower. Therefore, Richard took three to four years to repair Luoyang City and the canal.

But after the real construction of Luoyang City began, the progress of the construction surprised Richard. It was not that the construction of Luoyang was slow, but on the contrary, the construction was faster than he imagined.

When Richard saw that the progress of the construction of Luoyang was so fast, he immediately worried that the officials responsible for the construction of Luoyang City were desperately squeezing the civilians and captives to build Luoyang City in order to please the emperor. Or these people cut corners to meet the deadline.

In either case, Richard did not want to see it, so he went to Luoyang City to check it out in person. As a result, after arriving here, Richard found that the main reason why Luoyang City was built so quickly was that a large number of people took the initiative to help.

The people of Luoyang wanted to make progress so much that when they heard that the emperor wanted to move the capital to Luoyang, they immediately came to participate in the construction.

The people of Luoyang knew too well the benefits of being the imperial capital, so after Guo Rong decided to build Luoyang, the local noble families burst into great enthusiasm.

So the wealthy and powerful families, officials, and noble families near Luoyang contributed money and effort, and brought food and craftsmen to help build Luoyang City. Not only the nobles near Luoyang, but also the nobles in Hanoi, Henan, and Shandong came to Luoyang to rebuild their foundations.

These people brought a large number of craftsmen, population, food, and even self-provided building materials to participate in the construction of Luoyang City.

Originally, 100,000 people built Luoyang City, but now the population has easily exceeded 200,000. The construction speed of Luoyang City is amazingly fast.

The Luoyang City planned by Richard can accommodate one million people. In addition to the imperial city, there are also government offices. The government offices are close to the imperial city, and on the other side are the places where the nobles live. However, these places are only planned, and there is no construction.

In addition, there are markets, Luoyang Ling official offices, East-West markets, water intake and drainage facilities in Chang'an City, and even a special garbage disposal area.

In Richard's plan, the circumference of Luoyang City reached 40 kilometers and the area exceeded 80 square kilometers. It is twice as large as Luoyang City in the Sui and Tang Dynasties. The Yi River and Luo River surround Luoyang. The water sources of the two rivers provide Luoyang with sufficient water and water transportation, allowing materials from all over the world to be quickly transported to Luoyang.

After Richard took control of the court and implemented the reform, the efficiency of the court's operation has improved a lot during this period, and many local tyrants and officials have been dealt with. Next, Richard plans to increase the salaries of officials and rectify their salaries.

After the fall of the former Tang Dynasty, the Jiedushi in various places fought in chaos, and the salary system of officials changed greatly. The salaries of the Jiedushi in various places were different, and the salaries of officials were not unified. At the same time, the way of distributing salaries was also inconsistent. Sometimes food was distributed, sometimes copper coins were distributed, and sometimes cloth or other things were distributed.

Such a chaotic salary system is not conducive to the stability of the court. Richard and Guo Rong re-determined the salaries of officials based on the prices of the former Tang Dynasty and now. The salaries of officials of each grade were formulated.

The two did not limit the salaries of officials to a very low level. This would certainly reduce the money and grain paid by the court, but it would also cause serious consequences.

Didn't Zhu Yuanzhang, the Hongwu Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, limit the salaries of officials to a very low level, and when they were issued, they were still issued in Ming Baochao. When Ming Baochao was first sold, it was still worth some money. But with Zhu Yuanzhang's excessive issuance, the Ming Baochao finally depreciated and became waste paper.

Can you give officials waste paper? Impossible. They will only transfer their losses to ordinary people. And all the methods and systems are legal and compliant.

You print the treasure notes, one for one guan, and then the officials use the face value of the treasure notes to buy various materials. Do you think the people are willing to sell them?

If they are willing to sell, it is equivalent to giving it away for free. If they are unwilling to sell, it is a violation of the "Ming Dynasty Law". Those officials do not need to engage in any trickery and robbery to force countless ordinary people to lose their homes, and these operations are still legal and compliant.

Even if Zhu Yuanzhang knew it, would he say that the treasure notes are not worth so much money?

If he said it was not worth money, would he have to make up the salaries of officials across the country? If he said it was worth money, were the officials' actions legal and compliant?

Of course, he could also take the third path and kill people, but in this way, the country's system would be completely ruined. When Zhu Yuanzhang was still alive, the Ming Dynasty treasure notes depreciated to 500 to 1.

This seemingly money-saving approach ultimately resulted in a loss of credibility for the Ming government, which was not worth the loss.

Richard would naturally not make such a mistake, so the salaries were paid in real terms. The court's salaries were settled in rice, copper coins or cloth.

At the same time, the salaries stipulated by Richard were relatively high. Richard did not believe in the so-called high salary to maintain integrity. He set higher salaries for officials for the sake of those honest officials.

Officials are not born to want to embezzle and accept bribes. Just like the officials of the Ming Dynasty, because of the low salary, they often had to embezzle in order to survive. In the past two hundred years of the Ming Dynasty, there has only been one Hai Gangfeng.

But what kind of life did Hai Gangfeng live? For a fourth-rank official, eating an egg a day was considered a luxury. How many officials could endure this kind of life?

Richard gave officials high salaries, which also allowed those honest officials to persist.

The new salary system was announced, and many grassroots officials cheered for it. For those officials who were born in aristocratic families and were rich, this little money was nothing. But for those officials who were born in humble families, these salaries could allow them to live a decent life.

In order to cope with the new salary system, Richard ordered the casting of more copper coins, Zhou Yuan Tong Bao.

Although Guo Rong confiscated a large number of copper Buddha statues, copperware and copper coins last time, after several major events such as the Northern Expedition, the Western Expedition and the construction of Luoyang. Millions of copper coins have been consumed.

The problem of the shortage of copper coins in the Great Zhou still exists, so Richard is ready to increase the casting of copper coins. At the same time, in order to alleviate the shortage of money, Richard is ready to forge silver coins.

In this era, silver was not used as a circulating currency, but was only used to make various utensils and decorations, or as rewards from the emperor to ministers.

However, with the opening of the sea and the opening of the Silk Road in the future, silver will definitely flow into the Central Plains on a large scale, so Richard is ready to use silver to make silver coins.

The technology of making coins with silver is basically mature.

In modern society, forging silver coins only requires forging, then grinding and polishing to forge good quality silver coins. However, the casting method was still used to make coins during this period.

Simply put, a mother coin is made first, and then the mother coin is used to make a mold, and then the copper material is heated and melted and poured into it. After the copper coin cools down, the copper coin is polished and carved, and a copper coin is made.

Overall, this method of casting copper coins is time-consuming and laborious, and the silver coins cast in this way will also have many pores and look very bad.

Richard is going to use the "heating and pressing" method.

The same is to heat and melt the raw materials of the coin, and then make it into a silver plate. Then use a plate rolling machine to press the silver plate. After multiple pressings, the silver plate is pressed into a suitable thickness, and then it is pressed while the temperature of the silver plate is high and the texture is soft.

Then the silver coin is properly carved, polished, etc., and a silver coin can be made.

The face value of such a silver coin is one coin, and in addition to silver, copper, zinc and other metals are added to the silver coin. Silver accounts for 90% of the total. When the amount is lower than this, the sound of the silver coin will change significantly.

Its face value is also higher than the material of the silver coin itself. In general, the profit of making a silver coin is about 15%.