New Shun 1730

Among the industries and commerce developed by various capital demands, there is another very special thing, that is, the sorghum wine in the Northeast.

The hitchhiker who was preparing to return home did not like this kind of highly distilled wine. But in the months when he was waiting for the ship to sail in Yingkou, he did not have the opportunity to drink the rice wine in his hometown.

It's not that there is no rice wine, but it is relatively expensive. And this kind of highly distilled wine is relatively cheap.

Although he has a big piece of gold in his hand, he is from a poor family after all, and he is still thinking about buying land and becoming a landlord, so he is reluctant to spend this money.

When he was panning for gold, he was already used to drinking this kind of highly distilled wine. Now thinking of the taste of his hometown, he feels that he can only taste the wine of his hometown after returning to his hometown, finding his younger brother, wife and children.

This is his personal microscopic feeling. At a more macro level, this highly distilled wine is also a symbol of Dashun's initial industrialization in Jiangsu.

As a byproduct of the capital planting soybean industry - this originated from the agricultural technology inherited by Dashun two years ago, it was impossible to adopt the three-field system and fallow system, but adopted the ridge system and rotation method - and the popularization of sorghum and sorghum wine brewing developed in the Huanghuai region from the mid-Ming Dynasty for water control and river embankment, there is a significant difference from soybean products.

The capital investment in soybean planting is simply derived from the demand in northern Jiangsu.

The sorghum wine industry is derived from the demand in the initial industrial revolution area; it is also because the reverse effect after production squeezes out the market of other competing products.

The reason is also very simple.

The initial industrialization of Jiangsu Province in recent years has created a large number of lower-class people.

This is not the same as before.

Originally, that is, more than ten years ago, seven or eight years ago, it was really the golden age of small handicraftsmen in southern Jiangsu.

If you work hard for a few years, or have skills, such as weaving well, it is really possible to achieve class leap.

However, take the textile industry as an example.

When the capital monopoly group headed by Liu Yu controlled long-staple cotton and cotton yarn, and when the pedal iron wheel loom began to become popular, it was no longer possible to jump from a weaver to a machine owner.

The initial industrialization and the southward migration of Yangzhou capital gradually solidified the identity of the lower class.

The lower class, such as weavers, spinners, dock workers, cotton combers, degreasing workers, dyers, etc., basically had no possibility of class advancement.

But at the same time, because of Dashun's external expansion, capital enrichment, and food control, the problem of food and clothing in the initial industrialized areas was basically solved, especially in the cities.

But that is, food and clothing were basically solved, and it was unlikely to climb up.

In addition, a large number of retired sailors from the navy poured into the city, and 60% to 70% of the sailors with mental illness basically had the habit of alcoholism. Dashun developed Nanyang, and a large number of sugarcane plantations were equipped with sugarcane residue winemaking, which also made this habit of strong liquor quickly popular in the initial industrialized cities.

The lower class basically relied on cheap alcohol to numb themselves and relieve daily fatigue.

On the other hand, sorghum, a byproduct of soybean cultivation, cannot be used as a bulk commodity grain. People who cannot afford rice and have to eat sweet potatoes, pumpkins and wild vegetables cannot afford sorghum; people who can afford sorghum are unlikely to eat this broken thing, and will eat rice and flour.

The sugarcane wine industry brought by the sugarcane plantations in Southeast Asia has already laid out the market habit of strong liquor consumption, and sorghum wine quickly squeezed out the sugarcane wine that is not very suitable for the taste of Dashun.

The despair and self-anesthetization of the lower class in life, and the severe crackdown on opium and other things, naturally a large number of strong liquors filled the lower population of the initial industrialized cities.

And alcohol, here, also plays the role of a "scapegoat".

With the initial industrialization, cities have also had problems of all sizes. More are the reforms such as Liu Yu's in Jiangsu that made the tenant farmers miserable, which led to a large influx of people into the city, deteriorating public security, theft and robbery, gang fights, etc., and the standard common problems of early industrialization appeared one after another.

Dashun is not a serious religious country, and there is no scripture that prohibits drinking.

But, wine is not a good thing after all.

After all, the fall of the Shang Dynasty was due to the drinking problem of "hearing the order of Yin, only the border of Yin Hou Tian, ​​Yue Yin Zheng Bai Bi, all of them drank wine, so they lost their army".

So new contradictions, new problems, despair of the lower-class urban population, and the surge in urban population under drastic changes, etc., wine has become a good scapegoat.

The literati could not find the essence of the problem, nor could they understand how society really works, and they did not understand how to solve the current urban problem in this fantastic state where productivity has increased but morality has been corrupted, and people's income has increased but hope has begun to despair.

So some people put the problem, or in order to insinuate that Liu Yu was carrying out the Yin Shang politics and Dashun was in danger of restoring the Yin Shang and destroying the country, many problems were attributed to the proliferation of strong liquor.

But from a more macro perspective, the proliferation of strong liquor in cities is precisely a landmark event of early industrialization.

In the early days of the First Industrial Revolution, almost all developed countries launched a prohibition movement caused by the resurgence of traditional morality.

And the alcoholism movement triggered by this industrial revolution, in a broad sense, from the gin ban in the UK at that time, to the subsequent tea party prohibition movement, to the fake alcohol death problem in China in the 1980s and the fake alcohol death problem in India in the 21st century, can also be regarded as the continuation of the alcoholism problem in the transition period of industrialized society.

In the short term, there is basically no solution.

Workers do want to have a slightly more elegant lifestyle and spiritual life, but their wages do not allow it. Even if they are addicted to reading novels, they have to learn to read first, right?

In Dashun, this problem may be more serious. After all, whether it is sugarcane wine or sorghum wine, it is capital-oriented.

To a certain extent, in Dashun, a country with a weak religious tradition, if there is a prohibition and anti-prohibition movement.

In fact, it is part of the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the feudal class; part of the struggle between traditional society and spontaneous modernization.

Liu Yu certainly does not support the prohibition movement. At this time, he stands on the side of capital, and believes that this matter can only be solved by the continued development of productivity, the growth of the working class, and the armed struggle for their own rights and interests, and finally balanced distribution, popularized compulsory education, increased urban public spending, and the birth of cultural entertainment, etc., to solve it.

Otherwise, it will only cause a lot of problems, which is completely a temporary solution.

So this deformed industry has developed more and more rapidly.

On the one hand, due to underdeveloped transportation and weak logistics, people in some areas are still eating grass, while some areas have begun to brew wine and use bean cakes to fertilize the fields on a large scale.

On the other hand, more capital is pouring into the barren land with relatively convenient transportation and sea transportation, planting more profit-oriented crops, which greatly promotes the number of immigrants in the Northeast.

There is even a problem that early immigrants were forced by financial capital to cross the Songliao watershed and spontaneously enter the Songhua River Basin.

This is a "good thing". Capital is unwilling to cross the Songliao watershed, so it will squeeze out all the areas south of the Songliao watershed, allowing those small farmers defeated by capital to migrate to more northerly and more remote places, to places that could not be commercial grain bases before the emergence of railways.

The spontaneous emergence of the Industrial Revolution also changed some historical proverbs.

For example, the original three treasures of the Northeast were ginseng, mink fur, and deer antlers.

At this time, the three treasures of the Northeast in Dashun were soybeans, strong liquor, and tussah silk.

The former corresponds to the needs of the scholar-official class in feudal society.

The latter corresponds to the needs of capitalist development in the new era.

The only small problem is that the original Northeast Three Treasures gradually became the "Goryeo Three Treasures" in Dashun at this time, and even seemed to become part of the historical tradition, and might even be considered to have existed since ancient times.

Of course, judging from the import and export customs records of Dashun at this time, the original Northeast Three Treasures in history, the Goryeo Three Treasures in Dashun's colloquial language, can also be called the "French Three Treasures" based on import and export data alone.

Even in history at this time, the Second British-French North American Colonial War within the scope of the War of the Austrian Succession was called the "Ginseng War".

It was not until a few months later that the ice and snow melted, and the hitchhikers who wanted to return home took a boat and stayed in Incheon for a transfer. To some extent, this was also a problem caused by the "Goryeo Three Treasures".

Or, at least, this "Goryeo Three Treasures" was also a fuse event for the opening of Incheon.

After the ice was opened in April, large sailing passenger ships set sail, and after a short stop in Weihai, they turned east to Incheon.

The ticket that the hitchhiker bought for his return trip came with a hammock, which was much better than when he was transported to the Northeast like a slave to dig for gold.

In the hammock next to him was a small trader who had boarded the ship from Weihai.

Because when the hitchhiker was digging for gold in the black gold mine, there were also many people with Jiaoliao accents, so the two had no problem communicating.

The two accidentally got into a conversation because of a simple problem of the hammock shaking and colliding, and they started chatting.

The small trader who claimed to be doing some small business accidentally met the hitchhiker. After apologizing, he also offered a piece of chewing tobacco, because matches and cigarettes were not allowed on the ship.

The hitchhiker took the chewing tobacco from the other person and started chatting, and asked the other person what business he was doing in North Korea.

The small trader said that he was doing some small business, and he couldn't do the ginseng business himself, because that was done by big businessmen; he couldn't get involved in the paper trade and rice business.

So I mainly went there to do some fish maw business, a marginal industry, to make a little money.

I have a small shop there, and this time I went there to solve some small business problems.

The hitchhiker was not very unfamiliar with North Korea. When he worked in the black gold mine, there were also a few Koreans there, and he had a good impression of them. When he fled during the riot, these Koreans were very fierce.

With this as the reason, the two talked about the opening of Incheon Port, and the small vendor lamented the business done by the big businessmen now, and talked about the "Three Treasures of Goryeo".