Elder U Seong-sik (2)
Though not entirely free of hesitation, U Seong-sik took Hwi-yeom's hand.
There has to be a reason he's this sure of himself. I want to know. I truly want to know the method by which the young clan head turns the dreams he sees into reality.
If it truly came to pass, would the day not arrive when every farmer in Sichuan Province could live with a smile on his face?
Before he was an elder of the Dang Family, he was a Sichuan landowner. Born the son of a prosperous farming household, he had never needed to become the kind of vicious landlord who squeezed peasants dry and used their crises as opportunities to gobble up more land. He believed in the virtue of mutual prosperity—that if the farmers thrived, so would he.
That was why U Seong-sik had boarded the same ship with Hwi-yeom, expecting him to overturn Sichuan agriculture from the roots, and why he had gathered the landlord-faction elders into one place and brought them before Hwi-yeom.
U Seong-sik had done his best to persuade them, yet most of the landlord elders still regarded Hwi-yeom with eyes full of worry and misgiving.
Hwi-yeom opened his mouth.
"I know you're all busy people, so thank you for gathering here. Through Elder U Seong-sik, I believe you've already heard the rough outline of the agricultural cooperative. I've arranged this meeting so we can discuss it in greater detail and take your questions."
The elders still nodded with open distrust, looking thoroughly unconvinced.
"I'll cut straight to the point. Regardless of the field, the essence of any enterprise is simple. If the money you earn exceeds the money you spend, you prosper. If it's the reverse, you go under."
"That's true enough."
"In the case of the cooperative, what is the money we spend?"
"The most direct and largest sum would be the loans to the farmers. When a farmer is forced into debt, it means a bad harvest has struck. Even then he still has to eat, so he ends up consuming even the seed rice for next year's planting and still falls into debt. Recovering from that state—let alone repaying the debt—is nearly impossible. For all practical purposes, that money is thrown away."
Hwi-yeom nodded.
"Then what if, because of our loan, that farmer weathers the bad year and repays us fully from the next year's harvest? And if one year isn't enough, what if he repays in installments over two, three, or four years?"
"…In that case the capital would be recovered, yes, but we'd be forgoing whatever profit we might have earned by investing that money elsewhere."
"Opportunity cost. An excellent point—but set that aside for the moment. What else?"
"There's also the structure of buying crops from the farmers and then reselling them. That benefits the farmers, but it places the burden on us of having to move the produce we've taken on at a high enough price."
"I see. Anything further?"
"Hmm…."
When Hwi-yeom asked the question with perfect nonchalance, the landlord elders who had been glaring at him like axe-heads could only exchange glances.
Hwi-yeom spoke again.
"Very well. Now let's discuss how we can solve those problems."
He spread out a sheet of paper and began to sketch as he explained.
"First, the loan business. From the second year onward—unless a truly catastrophic harvest hits—it won't cost us a single coin."
"What? How is that possible?"
"What we lend won't be silver. It will be rice or other crops, and those crops will be supplied by the other cooperative members."
"What do you mean by—ah!"
"You've got it."
This was Hwi-yeom's point. The cooperative would buy large volumes of produce from its members and sell them on the market. By handing a portion of that same produce over to borrowers, it would eliminate any additional cash outlay.
Back when Hwi-yeom had been Jeong Pansu, in the days when the very idea of a bank was still foreign to ordinary people, every neighborhood had its rice-shop owners. Local pillars of the community who lent out a measure of rice and collected a measure and a half a month later. Hwi-yeom was saying he intended to circulate rice instead of money to solve the farmers' spring hunger and the disasters of bad harvests.
Elder U Seong-sik pushed back.
"It sounds like three in the morning and four in the evening. Instead of lending farmers silver, we buy their crops and then lend those same crops back—how is that any different?"
"First effect: we no longer have to spend silver twice—once for loans and once for crop purchases—so idle capital is freed. Second effect: from the farmer's side, borrowing silver only to watch seed prices skyrocket in a bad year and lose money is prevented entirely."
"Hmm…."
"It would certainly stop any sudden need for large silver outflows…."
"And from the standpoint of relief for the farmers, it's extremely efficient…."
"So. Can we agree that even if the loan business brings us no great profit, it at least prevents heavy losses? After all, once a farmer gets past the bad year or the spring hunger, he will farm and repay the rice he owes us. You don't plant one mal of rice and harvest only one mal, do you? And farming isn't a one-year affair that ends when the year ends.
We may not seem to gain much, but by saving a single farmer we gain a customer of the cooperative for ten years, twenty years, for generations of his descendants—borrowing and repaying rice. That cumulative income will only grow with time."
In business, such moments arise. You know that once you clear this one hurdle the enterprise will flourish; you're already in the black—yet missing a single payment date can sink a profitable company into bankruptcy. The farmers of this age were no different. If only they weathered this one bad harvest, a healthy farmer working good paddies could have produced for decades more. Instead that production turned to dust. He lost his land to local magnates, rich men, or corrupt officials, became a tenant, and the rice he grew vanished into the storehouses of the wealthy.
When goods stop circulating and a handful of rich men only hoard, the economy can never come alive.
To a man who had weathered countless crises while running businesses, the concept was obvious. Yet the sheer breadth of time Hwi-yeom was looking across sent a shudder through the elders.
This is the vision of a fourteen-year-old?
A boy who hasn't even lived twenty years is planning decades—no, a century—ahead….
Under their awed gazes, Hwi-yeom continued.
"Second problem: by buying crops from the farmers and reselling them, crop prices rise and we take losses. Correct?"
"…Yes."
What answer would he give for this one? Before they knew it, the elders were waiting for Hwi-yeom's solution.
Hwi-yeom said, "Two inventions we will create will solve this problem. One is fertilizer. The other is pesticide."
"You've already made the fertilizer, haven't you?"
"But is that fertilizer really as effective as you claim?"
"I stake my word on it. Compared with paddies that used the old composted manure fertilizers, yields will improve by a minimum of three to four times."
"Ohh… that much?"
Hwi-yeom had not produced research papers or hard scientific data, yet the achievements he had already stacked up, and the fact that he never spoke empty words, lent his claim weight.
"And pesticide. This pesticide may well become the way our Dang Family turns the very thing we do best into money."
"What exactly is pesticide?"
"Poison. Poison that kills only pests."
"Ah—like burning mugwort and tobacco leaves along the paddy ridges."
"Come now, comparing it to that would be insulting~."
In truth, humanity's use of pesticides against insects had a long history. Ancient Egyptian wall paintings even showed sulfur powder being used to kill locusts. Yet to Hwi-yeom, who carried a modern sensibility, those "pesticides" were too pathetic to deserve the name—weak against insects while often killing the crops themselves. The closest thing was a decoction of pyrethrum flowers, and even that fell far short of the efficacy he envisioned.
He looked at the doubtful elders.
"What family are we? Are we not the Sichuan Dang Family of poisons and hidden weapons?"
"That's true."
"No one under heaven makes poison better than we do. Isn't it time we put our specialty to work?"
His explanation was simple: feed the martial artists and researchers trained in the Dang Family's Poison Arts into the project, and they could produce a pesticide that spared the crops while killing only the pests.
"Heh heh. Young Clan Head, I know you've accomplished astonishing things so far, but even so—using our poisons for something as trivial as killing bugs… One could call it an insult to a family famous as the Poison Masters and not be far wrong. Frankly, if anyone but you had said it, I would have been furious."
It was exactly the reaction Hwi-yeom had expected.
The reason they never made such medicines before may have been a failure to see the commercial potential, but far more likely it was pure martial-artist temperament and pride. Men who dream of breaking through immunity to a hundred poisons and surpassing immunity to ten thousand poisons are never going to sit down and brew a special toxin just for rice planthoppers. But if they put their minds to it, a pesticide-grade poison could be ready in no time—especially with Dang Family martial artists who can create every kind of chemical compound through the Green Dragon Divine Art.
"Think about it. This is not merely killing bugs. How much crop is lost every year to insect damage? This is righteous research that rescues people from hunger—and further, it elevates the name of the Dang Family."
Hwi-yeom had struck at the pride of the murim men. Warriors who staked their lives on honor could not help but react to the words "the family's name."
"Hmm…."
The gambit landed. After pondering, the elders soon nodded as if convinced.
"You're right. Looking at it again, I was being narrow-minded."
"Now then—this remarkable fertilizer and pesticide will be sold exclusively to our cooperative members."
"!"
"That means our members will be able to produce crops in enormous volume. We will buy those crops cheaply. Thin margins, high volume. In a bumper year rice prices fall; when cabbages do well, people plow the fields under. Common sense, yes?"
The same things already happened throughout the Central Plains.
"We will release those large volumes of cheaply purchased crops onto the market at the same prices as our competitors. We lose nothing, do we?"
"Well… that's true, but—"
"And once we start buying and selling crops in bulk, another advantage appears. Places that need large, steady rice reserves will far prefer dealing with us than haggling with countless small farms and landlords. For example—His Excellency the Provincial Governor?"
"?!"
The suggestion that they would not only flood the market but also neatly sell the surplus to the Provincial Governor made the elders' beards tremble. No one present was ignorant of Hwi-yeom's relationship with the man.
"His Excellency may stockpile relief grain, and there are the government troops, the official slaves, and the countless laborers in the state ironworks and other offices. For their sake alone, the Provincial Office needs large quantities of rice supplied stably and continuously. In other words, from our perspective we have a client who will steadily consume vast amounts of rice year after year."
When Hwi-yeom grinned like a mischievous child, U Seong-sik nodded again and again in admiration.
"I see! The problems have vanished. Magnificent, Young Clan Head! To have looked that far ahead!"
Every elder nodded, satisfied. They had reached the conclusion that Hwi-yeom's plan was realistic and commercially sound.
"Then before we introduce these things across Sichuan, our landlord faction will take the lead and test them first."
"We're of one mind. Keep meticulous farming logs and submit them as reports. We'll need them later as material to persuade His Excellency the Provincial Governor."
"The Provincial Governor?"
"You're not planning to sell fertilizer and pesticide to the government offices? That market won't be small either…."
"Hahaha! What a foolish thing I just said!"
"It happens! Hahaha!"
"You rascal! Hahahaha!"
While everyone laughed in high spirits, Hwi-yeom received the landlord elders' renewed pledges of loyalty and thought to himself:
Once a business reaches a certain stage, money is no longer the point. Do work that benefits the world and the money follows of its own accord. The true essence of this enterprise is that the Sichuan Dang Family will seize the unshakable popular support of the farmers who make up eighty percent of Sichuan's population and stand in a position to control them.
In a Confucian world that holds agriculture as the foundation of all under heaven, who would dare touch a great local clan that protects and coexists with the farmers, remains loyal to the government offices while monopolizing information, and is armed with new weapons?
Hwi-yeom's lips crooked into a crooked smile.
Whether it's the Qingcheng Sect, the rest of the Nine Sects and One Gang, the unorthodox factions, some powerful official in the bureaucracy—or even the Emperor himself—I will create a price so high that none of them will dare lay a hand on us.