Li Guodong smiled and said, "In fact, it is very simple to solve this problem. If the farmers who contributed the land do not want to, then their land will not need to be renovated and let them make it themselves. If they can't continue, they may simply sell the land at a low price. Farmers who are willing to renovate will also rent their land to rich farmers who are good at managing land, and they will receive the land rent themselves. The rent of land is naturally not enough for them to support their families, so they are willing to go to the farm to work as workers, or work in the factory, and give them priority."

"This method is pretty good." Qian Qianyi nodded while touching his beard.

Of course, the farmland transformed into a farm is not paid taxes to the court, and some of the fields are still sacrificed to the fields and school fields. Sacrifice is the public property of a family, used to worship ancestors, support the clan, etc.; the study field is rented to the academy, as a salary for teachers and subsidies for scholars, etc. The study field and sacrifice field are not only tax-free, but even if Qian Qianyi commits an incident and is arrested and imprisoned one day, the property will be confiscated, the sacrifice field and school fields will not be affected.

In fact, in addition to using fame to make farmers contribute, the most important part of land annexation in the Ming Dynasty was that some illegal merchants maliciously suppressed grain prices, causing self-cultivated farmers and small landlords to go bankrupt. They then bought land for self-cultivated farmers and small landlords at low prices; and even more, some merchants lured self-cultivated farmers and small landlords to gamble, and then lent them usury and seized their land.

The land seized by the merchants was naturally devoted to the names of people with fame and fortune, and the land rent they collected was shared with the gentry.

Those merchants helped the gentry to plunder the land, which was the worst land annexation.

The way Li Guodong guided Lu Xiangsheng and Qian Qianyi in fact has no improvement effect on solving the problem of land annexation, but will intensify land annexation. For the Ming Dynasty, it is impossible to increase the tax on a piece of copper coins, which is not beneficial to the Ming Dynasty court at all.

But he never thought of saving the Ming Dynasty. This completely rotten court was about to perish. Li Guodong needed to reshuffle the cards with the help of Li Zicheng, Zhang Xianzhong and Dorgon, at least clean up the gentry and profiteering in the north, so that it would be much cleaner. Then he used Chongzhen to implement a two-pronged approach to suppressing and transforming the Donglin Party to complete social changes.

After the negotiations on the farm to convert the farm, Lu Xiangsheng and Qian Qianyi signed an agreement with Li Guodong, and Li Guodong arranged people to renovate the farm. After the renovation was completed, Lu Xiangsheng and Qian Qianyi distributed the tenant rent of the land to Li Guodong 10%. The renovation time began after the autumn harvest and before the spring plowing of the next year.

The most important thing to guide the transformation of the gentry in Jiangnan is industrialization. The emergence of water conservancy textile machines and water conservancy spinning machines has made the factory scale larger and the output has increased significantly. It will not take long for the production of silk and cotton to keep up with the demand of the factory. At that time, driven by interests, more farmland will be turned into mulberry forests and cotton fields.

The production of mulberry leaves and cotton obviously does not require the manpower in the rice fields. By then, the gentry class will drive a large number of farmers away from the land. Farmers who have lost their source of livelihood can only enter factories to work to support their families, which is the era of silkworms eating people.

In order to allow more farmers to leave the land, Li Guodong offered a new type of plow. He wanted to let the era of silkworms eat people come early, so that it would be conducive to the early transformation of the gentry in Jiangnan.

"Please see, this is a new type of plow, and it is also a special plow in the rice fields. It is manipulated by one person, and three to four buffaloes are required to pull it, but the efficiency of arable land is five times higher than that of a person and a plow!" Li Guodong said, pointing to a design drawing of a new type of plow.

Qian Qianyi and Lu Xiangsheng looked at the strange plow, and saw that this plow was completely different from the plow they had seen before. It was a plow with a row of five wheels, with blades on it. After Li Guodong's explanation, they realized that people were sitting on the seat behind the plow and drove the buffalo forward. When the buffalo pulled the plow forward, the plow wheel rolled and automatically rolled the soil in the paddy fields and it was very convenient to plant rice.

"Okay! Good stuff! This kind of plow should be popularized. Once it is popularized, our rent will be collected higher, and there is no need for so many people to farm!" Qian Qianyi said happily.

"As soon as this thing comes out, the original family can do the work of five families. Will the other four families still have to live?" Lu Xiangsheng shook his head and said with emotion.

Li Guodong said: "In fact, it is very simple to solve this problem. It reduces the population of farming. So many people can go to the factory to do things. Silk, cotton, tea and ceramics produced in Jiangnan are very popular overseas."

"Yes!" Qian Qianyi nodded quickly.

"If the people's life problems can be solved, they will not have rebelled. Mr. Muzhai, it seems that after we set up a farm, we will build a large number of workshops so that the people who have no land to plant will work in our workshop. We will give them a bite of food." Lu Xiangsheng said. He knew the reasons for the rebellion of the farmers, but he did not want the farmers in Jiangnan to rebel.

"Yes, Governor Lu's words are reasonable!" Li Guodong praised, "This is a win-win strategy. If we make money, the people will not lose food, so they will not rebel."

As for whether the Ming Dynasty could collect taxes, this was not a question that Li Guodong considered. If he could not collect taxes, he would have to save Emperor Chongzhen and could not escape.

In this era, among the goods exported by the Ming Dynasty, although silk and ceramics had the highest profit, the one that accounted for the largest export volume was actually cotton cloth, and the cotton cloth produced in Jiangnan had monopolized the entire market.

Cotton is produced in Shandong, but the textile industry of Shandong gentry is far inferior to that of Jiangnan. Both textile workers and textile technology are far behind Jiangnan textile workshops. The high cost makes the gentry from the cotton producing area more expensive than the cotton cloth purchased from Jiangnan. Therefore, Shandong gentry simply stopped opening textile workshops, but desperately sold cotton and then purchased cotton from Jiangnan.

Not only in the Ming Dynasty, but also in Goryeo, Japan, Siam, Dayue, Jiaozhi, Luzon, Zhenla and other places, cotton cloth produced in the Ming Dynasty was used. In Southeast Asia, linens that were cheaper than cotton cloth were even more popular. Linens are cheaper and breathable, suitable for wearing in tropical areas. The hemp produced in Southeast Asia was also transported into the Ming Dynasty in large quantities and was woven into linens and then transported back to Southeast Asia. The weaving industry of the locals was completely defeated by the Jiangnan weaving industry.

Even Western colonists sold cloths to Indians for gold and silver were imported from the Ming Dynasty.

In this era, Europe's cotton spinning technology was not as good as the Ming Dynasty. It was not until the birth of the British Jenny machine that Europe's cotton spinning technology surpassed the East. Li Guodong directly developed the Jenny machine for himself and invented a new production technology of animal and hydraulic power that could drive multiple bottle machines. This caused the price of cloth to drop significantly. Europeans would not transport cloth from Europe to America, but chose to import cloth from Ming Dynasty to sell it to America in exchange for gold and silver in the hands of Indians.

The Zheng family group cannot go to America, but just taking one route in Japan has already made the Zheng family profit. Japan lacks food, iron ore, and other resources, but Japan does not lack gold, silver and brass.

Lu Xiangsheng asked with some concern: "If the textile factory is increased, the gentry in the northwest may give up the production of grain and switch to cotton. In this way, the northwest, which was already short of grain, would be even short of food. Wouldn't the court be more difficult to pacify the thieves in the northwest?"
Chapter completed!