Ang Lee had proposed to set up these workshops for labor protection and asked his wives, who had nothing to do, to take charge of them. He wanted to promote the concept that workers must be protected in the Tang dynasty. Whether it was the craftsmen who built buildings, paved roads, or other coolies, they must take the most basic protection. They could not participate in labor without protection, so as to reduce the casualties caused by labor as much as possible.
Through continuous publicity, many workers and foremen had now accepted Ang Lee's theory. They believed that some labor protection investments were cost-effective and could increase labor efficiency. Of course, some of them also wanted to please Ang Lee and take care of Ang Lee's family business. They achieved better results than bribery.
At this time, the spring plowing was very close. The landlords and homesteaders around the capital were busy preparing for the spring plowing. Since many homesteaders had sold their land and entered the workshops, there were very few homesteaders around the capital. Most of them were landlords who owned more than a thousand mu of land. Ang Lee was also a landlord, who owned at least a few thousand mu of land. There were many officials who owned more than ten thousand mu of land.
Although land was not a good thing and had been a source of turmoil since ancient times, that was then and this was now. The Great Tang had undergone a massive transformation. The harvest from agriculture had far exceeded the needs of the people of the country, and the surplus grain was so great that not even the national treasury could be filled. The granaries of the various lands were bursting to the brim, and the families of the common farmers were forced to set aside a room to store grain. Too much grain inevitably made it less valuable, and the price of staple grain on the market had dropped year after year. In just a few years, it had already dropped by half.
Although the grain output had also more than doubled, which made up for the loss caused by the price reduction, for ordinary homesteaders, as long as they worked in the workshops, their monthly income could buy the grain that they had worked hard for half a year. Their income in two months was enough to exceed the income of farming for a year. Farming was very uneconomical. In addition, they only had a small amount of land of about a dozen mu. It was not cost-effective to use advanced machinery, and it was very hard to use cattle. The more they calculated, the more they suffered.
For this reason, many farmers were angry and went to the workshops in the capital to work. At first, they could take care of the land at home and collect some grain every year to be self-sufficient. However, the workshop system became stricter and stricter. When it came to the busy season of spring ploughing and autumn harvest, there was no holiday. If they forced themselves to take leave, their wages would be deducted, and the deducted wages would be more than the harvest of ten mu of land. Therefore, only fools would collect grain at home. They could only leave this work to the old, weak, women, and children at home. But without the main labor force, how could the old, weak, women, and children support more than a dozen mu of land? They were too busy. In desperation, they could only sell the surplus land and leave a mu of vegetable field close to their home. The women and children at home could work well. They might be able to keep two or three mu of land. Any more and they would really be too busy, and it would be meaningless.
But the rich landlords were different. They easily had thousands of mu of land and could use machines to carry out large-scale farming. The cost was greatly reduced, and the profits were still good. Therefore, they were very willing to buy the land of ordinary farmers, and the court had agreed to this kind of land trade in the past few years according to the actual situation.
In addition to buying a large amount of land, these landlords were also very keen on exchanging land. The so-called exchanging land was to exchange one mu of land in their hands for one mu of land of another person. Of course, they could also exchange a few mu of land with ordinary farmers or with other landlords.
As for why they wanted to exchange land, it was naturally because mechanized farming required the land to be concentrated as much as possible. If a landlord had thousands of mu of land distributed in many places, three mu here, five mu there, it would be very difficult to form a scale, and it would also be very troublesome to use machines. In order to solve this problem, they had to do as much as possible, and the land could not be moved. The only thing they could do was to exchange land. If the conditions were good, they would exchange one mu for one mu, and if the conditions were bad, they would exchange several mu for one mu. In short, this was a matter of mutual consent, and no one would force the other. If the conditions were good, they would trade. If the conditions were not good, then they would not trade.
Through a series of cumbersome land exchanges, the land of the landlords around the capital was almost all gathered as much as possible, or in a few larger areas, not too scattered. The small amount of private land of the farmers was also basically gathered together, and not far from their own residence. This way, it would be convenient to take care of the dishes, and it would be better to save the physical strength of the land, and they would not have to run far away every time they went to the field.
This was a way for everyone to benefit, and the resistance to implementation was naturally very small, and there was not a single confrontation.
There were benefits to having more food, because there was so much food that the national treasury could not hold it. Many common people and aristocrats had enough food in their homes to last for a year and a half, and those who had less food had at least a month's worth of food. As for the common people who could not eat, after all, they were in the minority.
When the aristocrats had more food, some people would stand out to do charity, such as going to the beggar's gathering place outside the city, or setting up a few big iron pots near the temple, and cooking some thin porridge, so that the poor and beggars who came and went could drink a few bowls. For some poor and beggars who were almost unable to live on, with these alms, they could live on, which was very important in stabilizing the Tang dynasty.
The increase in food increased more and more. After all the granaries in various places were all full, the imperial court had to mobilize some manpower and material resources to build new large granaries. After all, the more food stored, the better. No empire would complain about having too much food.
Before the construction of the new granaries was completed, a lot of the surplus food could only be temporarily piled up in some open places, and the protection was very simple. Once there was a big rainstorm, it would definitely be finished.
In order to avoid losses, and because there was indeed too much food, there were gradually more ancillary products related to food processing. For example, there were more and more wine-making workshops. At this moment when food was abundant and cheap, the cost of wine-making became very low, and the common people had a rigid demand for alcohol. Therefore, the wine-making industry was bound to expand. Everywhere flocked to use the surplus food to make wine, and the intoxicating fragrance of wine could be smelled everywhere in the streets and alleys.
However, even large-scale wine-making could not consume all the surplus food, and there was still a lot of food that could not be stored in the warehouse. Moreover, because the imperial court's granaries were full, they could not continue to buy food from the common people, so many people could only pile up food in their homes, often occupying an entire house, or even several houses. Some grain farmers, because they did not expect this in advance, had to pile up most of the food harvested from their thousands of mu of land in their yards. Rain and snow were ruthless, and as long as it happened once, all the food that they had painstakingly planted would be finished.
When the granaries were full for the first time, this kind of loss was quite big. Later, the grain farmers learned to be smart, and they all built their own grain warehouses to prevent the food that could not be sold temporarily from being destroyed by the rain and snow, causing economic losses to themselves.
In the past year, most of the major grain growers had their own granaries. This allowed them to sell their grain without being in a hurry. They could take their time or choose a time when the price of grain was slightly better. Some of the major grain growers couldn't even sell all the grain in their hands in a year.
The advanced planting technology of the Tang Dynasty did not spread to the surrounding countries so quickly, so in fact, there was still a shortage of food around the Tang Dynasty. The surplus food of the Tang Dynasty could be sold to these small countries, but long-distance transportation required freight. If the cost of transporting the cheap food of the Tang Dynasty to the destination sharply increased, it would be meaningless. Therefore, only the merchants who were not too far away from the Tang Dynasty or who were connected by railways would choose to buy food from the Tang Dynasty. Otherwise, they would not buy. Even if many people in their own country starved to death, as merchants, they would not do business that lost money. This was the essence of a merchant.
The spring plowing was coming, and at this time, the land of Guanzhong had already carried out two crops a year. That was to say, the two-crop wheat had been popularized. The varieties planted in spring could be harvested in autumn, and the wheat planted in autumn could be harvested in the following spring. In this way, the grain harvest could be doubled. Coupled with the popularization of fertilizers and irrigation works, the yield was even greater. In addition, the popularization of high-yield crops made it easy to obtain the grain yield of three to five years in a year. It was even not difficult to obtain the grain yield of ten years in a year. In this way, it would be strange if the granaries were not full.
Because many crops could not survive in winter, only the cold-resistant wheat could resist the bone-chilling cold. Therefore, after the autumn harvest, only winter wheat could be planted. In the following spring, these winter wheat could be harvested. After the harvest, the land would be plowed again, and then the spring crops could be planted. As for what to plant, it was up to the landlords and farmers to decide. Spring wheat, corn, sweet potatoes, potatoes, highland barley, millet, millet, and other crops could be planted. Among these crops, sweet potatoes and corn had a higher yield. But at this time, the Tang dynasty was not short of food, so planting these crops was no longer a requirement of the imperial court. Everyone could choose freely.
However, many people would still choose sweet potatoes, because sweet potatoes contained more starchy substances. After extraction, they could be made into very delicious noodles and crystal clear starch jelly. These were all ingredients that people liked very much. When there was demand, there would be a market. Since the people liked to eat vermicelli and starch jelly, there were naturally more people planting sweet potatoes, especially homesteaders. Because other crops required more energy to take care of, and as the main laborers in the family went to work in the workshop to earn money, there were too few laborers in the family, so they were not able to take care of crops. But sweet potatoes did not require too much energy to take care of. In addition, they could pick sweet potato leaves and stir-fry them at any time and place, which could be said to be killing many birds with one stone. Therefore, it naturally won the favor of many homesteaders.
Therefore, as long as one or two months after the spring plowing, walking on the field ridge in the suburbs of the capital, one could definitely see a large number of sweet potato sprouts. That green patch was spectacular.
At this moment, the fields in the suburbs of the capital were full of yellowing winter wheat. These winter wheat had matured and could be harvested soon. After harvesting, the straws were burned first. Then, crops such as sweet potatoes could be planted. But before planting sweet potatoes, the originally flat land needed to be plowed into a ravine state to form a circle. This was because sweet potato vines needed to be planted on the circle to achieve high yield. If they did not do so, it would be difficult to achieve high yield of sweet potatoes. If they were flooded, it would cause a failure.
It was very difficult to dig sweet potato ridges by manpower. It did not matter if it was a few acres of land, but it was certainly unrealistic to do so for thousands of acres of land. Moreover, the Tang dynasty had developed machines that could dig directly. After driving over, three to five circles had been formed, which was extremely convenient and fast. When it was time to harvest, there were also special tools that could easily harvest sweet potatoes. Then, the sweet potato ridges could be easily flattened, which was convenient for the following winter wheat planting.
In short, with the machines, not only could large-scale farming be easier and cheaper, but also the crops to be planted could be quickly changed. For example, sweet potatoes and wheat needed different terrains, and the machines could quickly change the terrains to meet the different planting needs.
The spring harvest and spring plowing were about to begin. The relevant imperial court departments and large farming families began to be busy. They had to act as soon as possible to harvest all the winter wheat when the weather was good. Otherwise, it would be very bad when there was continuous spring rain. Only when the wheat was dry could the harvest be carried out. If the wheat was harvested during the rain, the harvested wheat would definitely be moldy, and the moldy wheat could not be eaten. Eating it would cause diarrhea and even endanger one's life. Therefore, all the large farming families had to rush to harvest before the spring rain came on a large scale, and then quickly plant the next season's grain.
Whether it was harvesting or farming, it could not be done without manpower. Although the large farming families could rent machines, machines could only do most of the work. There were some details that could not be done by machines and could only be done by manual labor. And manual labor required protective equipment. For example, gloves were a very practical protective equipment that could protect the workers' hands as much as possible, prevent the workers' palms from being injured, and prevent the workers' efficiency from being affected.
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