Chapter 210 Ogre Tribe
After the summer grain was stored, the reserve grain in the Harland Territory increased to about 35,000 tons.
This year, 8,000 tons of grain were obtained from Baron Harden's Territory. In recent months, only about 2,000 tons were consumed to feed the indentured slaves who migrated from Baron Harden's Territory.
Adding last year's reserve grain, this year's summer grain, the huge warehouse built in the territory is not enough.
Looking at this year's year, the autumn grain may also be a good harvest.
In addition to the grain harvested by the free people, 35,000 tons of grain can be harvested by relying on the indentured slaves.
The Harland Territory now has a population of more than 100,000, and it can't consume 70,000 tons of grain at all.
Although the population of the territory has increased, the rations of the free people no longer need Richard to bear. Richard only plans to reserve 10,000 tons of grain. He also needs to leave 30,000 tons of rations for more than 80,000 indentured slaves to grow grain.
The remaining 30,000 tons of grain can be sold.
30,000 tons of grain will seriously impact the grain price in the Black River Fort market.
Richard once again found Sangji Tara to see if he could continue to exchange grain for slaves this year.
Direct transactions with the Duke of Edward can save a lot of time and procedures. It is beneficial to both parties to avoid the layers of skinning by grain merchants and slave traders.
Although the Duke of Edward had a good harvest this year, the grain reserves are still far from enough.
After Richard came to the door, Sanji Tara said directly: "This year's grain price is lower than last year, and there is no premium on grain. 30,000 tons of grain are estimated at 60,000 gold coins, which can be exchanged for about 4,000 households. Young and strong men and women can account for half, and the total population is about 12,000.
In total, the elderly and children are not worth much, they are all given away. The price of young and strong men and women is about ten gold coins on average."
Buying people from the slave market, the market price of male slaves in their twenties is about 20 gold coins.
An ordinary person has an annual salary of three to four gold coins. In addition to food, clothing, housing and transportation, the income from raising a slave for a year is two gold coins and six silver coins. It takes eight years to recover the cost of buying a strong slave. The longer the slave lives, the more profitable it is.
Therefore, normal slave owners do not treat slaves harshly, and basically allow them to eat and drink enough.
Because they buy old people and children who lose money, and buy slaves as a family unit, the price of young slaves is often about 30% cheaper.
When slave traders capture slaves, in order to prevent slaves from resisting and escaping, they usually take away their wives, children, and parents.
With family members as hostages, strong slaves will not resist.
In order to make the slaves settle down and not escape easily, many lords often buy the whole family to enrich the household registration.
In fact, even the farmers in America in the previous life, the purchase of slaves is the same operation, and they often buy a complete family of black slaves.
Farmers in the south also have to go to the slave market to buy female black slaves, give wives to male black slaves, and let the slaves reproduce more population.
Richard completed the grain delivery in Black River Fort, waited for more than ten days, and received 4,000 serfs from the Duke of Edward.
In the past two years, Richard bought 4,800 serfs from Edward's territory, adding up to 16,500 people.
If the administrator of Edward's territory is not a fool, he will definitely plant spies among these people.
After all, the Harland family is already the most powerful noble in the Geda Province, second only to the great nobles in importance.
Moreover, the Harland Territory has also developed a lot of new technologies and produced many high-value commodities.
The Duke of Edward must want to spend time to get the steel production process, hemostatic ointment formula, weaving process, and brown sugar production process of the Harland Territory.
Richard knows this very well.
The slaves purchased from the Duke of Edward are not trusted in Richard's heart.
It is impossible to recruit workers and conscription from this group of people.
For this group of contract slaves, Richard will only disperse them in the two baronies of Stopa and Diram and let them engage in agricultural planting.
Because of the decree prohibiting migration in the territory, these spies hidden among the slaves will hardly get in touch with the territory's secrets, and the territory's secrets will not be leaked in a short time.
Even the indentured slaves who moved from Baron Harden's territory were more reliable in Richard's mind than the slaves exchanged from Duke Edward's territory.
After settling the new indentured slaves, Richard immediately arranged for people to count the population of the territory.
By August, the population of Harland Territory had reached 118,000.
Because the fertility rate in Harland Territory was very high, reaching about 5%, by the end of the year, the total population should be close to 120,000, catching up with the Sisse family.
The autumn harvest has begun in August.
The autumn harvest was very busy these days. Even the students of Riverbank Primary School were mobilized by Richard to count the autumn grain harvest and be responsible for the collection of public grain.
The Harland Territory stipulates that when free people pay land taxes, they can pay coins or grain in kind.
Ordinary civilians have very little cash income. If they must pay coins, it will bring a heavy tax burden to the free people.
Merchants, gentry, professionals, bureaucrats and other middle and upper classes of society would use deflation as a means to pass on taxes, so that they could get more valuable physical goods with only a small amount of cash.
In order to exchange money for taxes, ordinary people could only sell grain, fruit, livestock, and even farmland at a low price.
In the history that Richard knew in his previous life, Zhang Juzheng of the Ming Dynasty carried out tax reforms, which required people to pay taxes with silver and money. As a result, the burden on the people was increased and the speed of land annexation was accelerated. Although silver was obtained in a short period of time, it had a counter-effect and actually accelerated the pace of the Ming Dynasty's demise to a certain extent.
The tax system of the Han and Tang dynasties was to collect both in kind and money, and there was no problem of fire consumption. Even at the end of the dynasty, the burden on the people was lighter than at the end of the Ming Dynasty, and the treasury had more income.
In the Qing Dynasty, after the implementation of the land tax and the return of the surplus to the public, the burden on the people was also reduced, and the government had more tax revenue.
The fall of the Tang, Song, and Qing dynasties was not due to tax issues.
Even in the later republics, the land tax was still mainly paid in public grain.
It was not until the 1990s that cash was mainly collected.
However, if the cadres who collected taxes went to the countryside and had no money, they could still use grain to offset the tax.
Therefore, in the era of deflation, taxes must be collected in kind and money.
By the autumn of this year, there were more than 8,000 freemen whose five-year contracts had expired.
However, they did not receive land this year and did not need to pay taxes for the time being.
After they were freed, Richard distributed houses, farmland, farm tools, rations, seeds and clothes to them on a family basis. These materials would be converted into coins and they would be allowed to repay them slowly in the form of low-interest loans.
The interest rate on this loan was very low, about 3% per year.
Now this money is included in the installment payment for buying a house, and in a year, it would bring in about a few hundred gold coins.
After the beginning of next spring, the city hall will also rent them oxen.
From the perspective of land tax, the tax increase this year is relatively small, and it is only about 4,200 gold coins when converted.
By next year, the land tax will increase to more than 6,000 gold coins.
The land tax of 6,000 gold coins a year ranks third in the territory's fiscal revenue, second only to steel and wool spinning, and is already an important income for the territory.
As the number of freemen increases, more and more land is distributed.
If all the contracted slaves in the territory became freemen and were given land, the land tax could reach an income of 30,000 gold coins a year.
Although the tax is low now, Richard has actually severely exploited the labor of the contracted slaves and can obtain more physical goods every year.
The grain sold this year exceeded 60,000 gold coins. It's just that Richard exchanged 60,000 gold coins for 12,000 people.
If the 120,000 people in Harland Territory were converted into money, it could be exchanged for 600,000 gold coins in cash.
Richard has been operating the territory for eight years, accumulating 120,000 people, more than 500,000 acres of farmland, more than 20 mines, more than 10,000 acres of orchards, thousands of acres of brown sugar plantations, and hundreds of acres of medicinal plantations. Hundreds of thousands of sheep, thousands of cattle, thousands of skilled workers, and 4,000 well-equipped troops.
These assets added up, two million gold coins can't stop.
He has been operating the territory for eight years, and has caught up with the accumulation of three generations of the Xisai family.
Such an achievement can be called shocking.
Even the bigwigs in the capital began to pay attention to Richard, knowing that there was such a young hereditary noble in the northern border area who was good at invention, management of territory, and brave and good at fighting.
Before the autumn harvest was completed, Richard received intelligence that more than a dozen people were missing in the Harland Valley.
More than a dozen people were missing, and Richard did not dare to neglect it. He immediately selected elite soldiers from the territory and set up an investigation team.
The investigation team had more than 100 people in total. In addition to the experienced demon hunters, Richard also selected 30 people from the Warcraft Cavalry.
In order to ensure that everything was foolproof, Richard and Sofia personally participated in the investigation mission.
There were also special talents such as Powell, Ruiz, and Luciano in the investigation team.
Through Powell's extraordinary sense of smell, the investigation team carefully searched the Harland Valley and soon found something unusual.
It turned out that a tribe of ogres had migrated near the Harland Valley.
Ogres are the two overlords of the Eagle Mountains, and they are mainly active in the west of the Eagle Mountains.
There are some ogre tribes in the north of the Duke of Edward. Every year before winter, they go down the mountain to capture some humans as food.
There are occasionally some ogres in Gascoigne Province, but they are not common.
Ogres appeared in the Harland Territory, and Richard did not dare to neglect it and immediately reported it to the Dawn Church.
The ogre tribe has a powerful backer behind it and cannot be killed easily.
Eliminating the ogre tribe will provoke the revenge of the legendary ogre.
Richard was also unsure whether the Grant Kingdom had signed a contract with the legendary ogre. If the younger one was killed and the older one was provoked, the Starlight Necklace would have to be exposed in advance.
Exposing the Starlight Bottle would definitely attract the prying of the great nobles, and the Harland Territory would inevitably be in trouble.
Richard would not let things develop to this point unless it was absolutely necessary.
After receiving the news, Sanders rushed to the Harland Valley with two priests.
Ruiz had extraordinary vision and personally carried out the reconnaissance mission. He quickly figured out the size of the ogre tribe and found that the tribe had twenty male ogres, sixteen female ogres, nine ogre cubs, and a two-headed ogre magician, who seemed to be a high-level professional.
Although the number was small, the strength of this ogre tribe was quite impressive.