Chapter 14: Agricultural Reform
It cannot be denied that this time in terms of land requisition, Jiangsu and Sichuan's performance was not good, and they directly offended those big landlords.
However, traditional landlords who rent out land to tenant farmers and wait for rent at home are not technical at all, but the most idle way of doing business.
These big landlords are the nation's parasites.
Jiang Yu would not care about the difficulties of those large landowners, revolution is to change the dynasty, since the revolution has taken place, the beneficiaries of feudalism - the landlord class must pay a certain price to reduce current social contradictions.
A large concentration of land will naturally lead to great contradictions, especially in an agricultural society.
Of course, Jiang Yu would not distribute land to farmers because he wanted to develop industry and must have enough workers. If farmers were allowed to cultivate with extremely low efficiency production methods, it would be impossible to extract labor to develop the industry.
These lands will be concentrated and handed over to agricultural reclamation companies for operation.
As for those landlords, they are already out of date. Jiang Yu doesn't care about them at all. What's the big deal whether he offends them or not? As for pushing those landlords to the opposite side, that is completely unnecessary worrying.
Although the land was confiscated, it was not all confiscated. The family property and houses were not touched, and those landlords would at most make a fuss.
Of course, the consequences of making a big fuss are very serious. Jiang Yu is not someone who is soft-hearted and lenient. Seeing those thugs fighting for their lives, he gathered the local ruffians and issued an order to suppress them without hesitation.
The actions of the big landlords in various places were soon ruthlessly suppressed, those who should be locked up were locked up, and those who should be taken to dig coal mines were taken to dig coal mines.
The ordinary people have no feeling about this crackdown at all, and it has not posed any risk of civil unrest.
After the policy was issued, local governments quickly reported data through land contract registration data. A total of 330 million mu of arable land were expropriated in Anhui Province and 260 million mu in Northern Jiangsu Province, totaling 590 million mu of land.
The total area of arable land in Anhui and northern Jiangsu is 1.4 billion mu, and this policy seized 42% of the arable land, which can be seen as a severe degree of land annexation at the end of the Qing dynasty.
The remaining 58% of the land is controlled by the vast majority of self-cultivating farmers and small landlords, with the latter holding no more than 300 mu of land.
Jiang Yu began to force these landlords to transform, from collecting rent to independent operation. If they couldn't operate, they would sell the land and let others operate it. So for those landlords who collected rent, first, compulsory reduction of rent was implemented, and then agricultural taxes were strengthened, making those landlords who relied on collecting rent not only unable to get money but also had to pay out of their own pockets.
According to Jiang Yu's plan, future agriculture will take the road of combining large-scale farming and family farming. Large-scale farming will be built by the China East Group, using mechanized technology for operation, while family farming will be managed by agricultural families, also adopting mechanical cultivation, but with smaller machinery. At the same time, these family farms can independently operate economic crops and raise various livestock.
Huadong Group's large farm is responsible for commodity grain production.
Those traditional landlords who rely on collecting rent for a living will be eliminated within two years. The East China Bank will provide loans to those landlords, allowing them to purchase agricultural machinery from the East China Group's agricultural machinery manufacturing plant, as well as fertilizers, to help them transform into small-scale farms.
The transformation failed, but the land was mortgaged to the bank, and the bank did not lose money.
In this way, agriculture can keep up with the development of industry, and the labor force required for transformed agriculture will be greatly reduced, which will enable more agricultural population to withdraw from low-efficiency agricultural production and enter industrial production.
At the same time, this policy direction can also bring a large number of orders to the agricultural machinery and fertilizer production of the Huadong Group. In addition, through this land acquisition, the Huadong Group has already started to monopolize grain supply.
The war of words in Shanghai is fierce and intense.
The Jiangsu and Sichuan sides showed no signs of weakness, as the top-selling Shun Pao, Ta Kung Pao, and Hsin Wen Pao all opened fire together, attacking the Minli Pao as a rotten feudal socialist running dog.
The three major newspapers pointed out that land is an important means of production, concentrated in the hands of a small number of people and cannot be operated reasonably, which will inevitably lead to chaos in national agricultural production and seriously hinder the road of industrial development.
As for the landlords, as beneficiaries of the feudal dynasty, since the regime has changed, it's already good that they are not being directly killed.
The two Huai administrative offices did not carry out killings of landlords, but only reasonable land regulation, no big deal. As for the Anqing massacre, it was just a group of vagrants and hoodlums, ordinary people were not involved.
The circulation channels of the three major newspapers are no longer limited to Tianjin and Shanghai, but have expanded to most first-tier cities in China.
Its influence is thousands of times greater than that of the Minli Bao in Shanghai.
The three major newspapers launched a joint attack, instantly overwhelming the "Minli Bao" as if it had been drowned in saliva. As the newspaper of the revolutionary party, during this public opinion war, many mid-to-low-level members of the revolutionary party did not understand them and thought that the actions of the Two Huai Administrative Office were correct.
Most of the members of the revolutionary party were hot-blooded students, and in this incident, they saw that the policy of the Administrative Bureau of Huai was only striking at the interests of the big landlords, without touching the interests of ordinary small landlords and common people, so they still supported it.
At this time, Yuan Shikai had already made his move. The north and south had been fighting for half a day without achieving anything significant. Both sides were at a stalemate along the Hankou front line. Peace talks between the north and south also began under the mediation of foreigners.
Jiang Yu didn't pay much attention to Nan Feng's movements, in his opinion these were all unimportant.
The most important thing is to stand firm, as long as the whole of Anhui and Subei are digested, even if one does not obtain a position as a military governor, one will still be unshakeable.
Jiang Yu and others then directly destroyed the local ruling structure and completely replaced it with their own forces, while gaining the support of the people, making the rule stable.
This is different from the warlords of the Republic of China era, who all eyed positions such as governor or military commander. Once they took office, their footing was unstable, and once they left office, they were nothing.
Of course, setting up such an administrative system also cost Jiang and Yu a lot of money.
The salaries of administrative personnel and police officers add up to around 1 million yuan per month. In addition, the government's hardware facility construction has cost nearly 2 million yuan. Of course, everything that can be saved will be saved; for example, government buildings are relatively simple, and even the decorations are the cheapest.
This day Zhou Zi Yue arrived at Huai Yin, Jiang Yu asked him: "How much funds can we still use now?"
"There are 300 million yuan in overseas funds that can be used, and there is also 100 million yuan domestically, but this 100 million yuan must be used for industrial production and cannot be mobilized. So the funds we can use are only 300 million, and Chen Guangfu's Huadong Bank can lend at most 500 million yuan." Zhou Ziyue replied.
"This amount of money is far from enough for agricultural investment!" Jiang Yu couldn't help but get a headache, now that the land had been enclosed, but funding was a big problem.
140 million mu of land, 59 million mu were enclosed by itself, not only the 59 million mu of land needs investment, but also other lands need to increase production efficiency, which also requires funds.
"Master, I think it's not suitable to carry out large-scale agricultural production reform at present. Firstly, people have not yet widely mastered new agricultural technology, and secondly, the scale of our farm machinery factories is not too large, and the same goes for fertilizer plants. If we promote everything directly, let alone whether the funds can hold up, even if there are funds, there won't be that many farm machines and fertilizers. It's better to divide it into three years to build." Zhou Ziyue suggested to Jiang Yu, "In addition, we can take out a part of the land that has been enclosed, and call on businessmen to set up reclamation companies, using private funds to complete agricultural reform."
"Hmm! It seems that's all we can do." Jiang Yu nodded, three years later was exactly when World War I broke out, and that would be a great opportunity to make money.
These three years must seize the time for development, especially coal mining, iron and steel, textile industry, these three industries will be used to replace British important commodities in the Asian market.
The biggest export goods of the British are nothing but coal, iron and steel, and textiles which have no high technology. Once World War I breaks out, Britain will lose its market share in these three traditional export goods. These three products themselves have no high technology, once lost, it is difficult to recover.
At the same time, Japan replaced Britain's share of these three commodities in most Asian markets during World War I.
These three industries developed, first can earn a lot of capital, and also can curb Japan's industrial development.
During World War I, British merchant ships suffered heavy losses in Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare, and Britain ordered merchant ships from various countries around the world at that time. The shipbuilding industry was also one of the most profitable industries during World War I.
During wartime, the British demand for food also increased greatly, and agriculture was a very profitable industry at that time.
It goes without saying that the military aspect is also very profitable, but Jiang Yu does not want to export advanced weapons to England and France, but instead hopes to strengthen Germany's power.
The First World War Germany was doomed to lose, because the United States would not sit idly by and let their foreign debt become worthless paper. The purpose of Jiang Yu's strengthening of Germany's strength is to prolong the war time, thereby earning more benefits and gaining more development time for itself.
The available funds now are only 800 million yuan, of which 500 million is the deposit in Huadong Bank. All projects of Huadong Group and all workers' money are deposited in Huadong Bank, so Huadong Bank has developed rapidly, and its deposit scale has reached the highest level among banks in China.
Its bank assets rose rapidly, as long as there were deposits, it was not worried about investment projects, and they were all high-yield projects, so Huadong Bank did not have any bad assets.
Jiang Yu plans to invest 300 million yuan in the reclamation company first, planning to encircle 30 million mu of arable land and build a super-large grain production base.
The other 500 million yuan was used to expand the scale of mines, iron and steel plants, machinery manufacturing, shipbuilding and other factories, which can double the current heavy industry.
The industrial department of the Jiangsu and Anhui Administrative Office jointly formulated a so-called "Three-Year Development Plan", generally, an engineering project is completed in a five-year cycle, but time waits for no man, only three years.
Day and night rush work also want to get out the next plan.
This three-year plan set development targets for each project, namely to develop coal mining to 5 million tons per year after three years, increase steel production to 500,000 tons, and develop the shipbuilding industry to an annual output of 100,000 tons.
That 500 million yuan in capital is enough to build these industrial scales. The only problem is time, if day and night shifts are built, three years will be no problem.
These days, there's no overtime pay or allowance to speak of domestically, so costs won't rise by much as a result.
However, there is still a significant funding gap. For example, building railways and military development also require money, although industrial profits will make up for some of it, but there is still a gap.
Jiang Yu thought of taking out a loan again, but the Xinhai Revolution was in full swing at that time and the situation was not stable enough. Those foreign banks were obviously unwilling to provide commercial loans to Huadong Group for the time being, so it's better to wait and see for now.
The Administrative Office of the Two Huai held an agricultural development conference in Anqing, Anhui and Huaian, Jiangsu at the end of December, inviting landlords and merchants to discuss the development of agriculture in the two Huai regions.
At the agricultural association, Huadong Group showcased tractors and other agricultural machinery, as well as fertilizers and plastic film, and displayed several immaturely designed cultivators, seeders, harvesters and other machines, with the main issue still being the power aspect not being quite satisfactory.
These machines are very advanced in design. As soon as internal combustion engine technology is passed, they will become mature agricultural machinery and can be developed on a large scale at that time.
This agricultural meeting proposed the concept of 'new agricultural mechanization technology', calling on landlords and businessmen to invest in building farms. Any farm that adopted new technologies would be given preferential treatment in terms of agricultural taxes at the initial stage.
This agricultural fair has invited many well-known ethnic businessmen from all over the country, such as merchants from Shanghai Chamber of Commerce, Jiangsu Chamber of Commerce and Anhui Chamber of Commerce were massively invited to attend.
After landowners and businessmen visited the results of new technology, some still seemed hesitant.
However, many of those landlords were forced onto the stage by the revolutionaries and had no choice but to reform.
The Administrative Office of the Two Huai regions will impose a higher agricultural tax on backward landlords who do not carry out reforms. In addition, the rent paid by tenant farmers has been forcibly reduced by the Administrative Office of the Two Huai regions, so that when renting land to tenant farmers for operation, hardly any rent can be collected in a year.
For example, the great merchant Zhang Jian, after inspecting the new agricultural technology of the Huadong Group, decided to invest 3 million taels and jointly raised another 3 million taels with other merchants. With a total capital of 6 million taels, plus dozens of landlords who joined in, they enclosed 80,000 mu of land and set up a farming reclamation company.
The rise of the Huadong Group was undoubtedly a source of frustration for Zhang Jian, especially after the group entered the textile industry. The Huadong Group's textile business developed rapidly with its advanced technology, and even the foreign cotton mills were somewhat overwhelmed. His own Datong Cotton Mill was not doing well at the time, and if it weren't for the fact that the Huadong Group's weaving mill lacked cotton yarn and still purchased from Datong, his yarn factory might have gone bankrupt.
However, Zhang Yue also saw the opportunity. Zhang Yue, who advocates for monopoly, saw that Huadong Group was developing into a monopoly enterprise and actively established a good relationship with Huadong Group.
It is clear that this agricultural reform is an opportunity.
Huadong Group also invested 300 million yuan in agricultural production reform, if there is no absolute guarantee, Huadong Group would not dare to spend this 300 million.
For the Huadong Group, developing agriculture is indeed profitable, and under the condition of using tractors, the profit is not too low, it's just that there is too much land, and the Huadong Group doesn't have so much money to invest.
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Today is the first chapter!
There's still one more chapter tonight! Thanks for the support from all of you classmates! The rankings have been pretty powerful these past two days, and it was just a little bit short of exploding the book that was recommended above.
