Chapter 128
King Sejong smiled at me.
It looked exactly like the smile a professor wears when entertaining nefarious thoughts about one of his students.
Frightened, I wanted to cry out, ‘No. I don't want to. Please don't!’ But...
I restrained myself because I could not say such a thing to the King.
“What Kim Sain said was excellent, but there are a few things that concern me, so I wish to ask you about them separately.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“You said that as commerce expanded, workshops would become more numerous and the number of artisans would increase, while the growing number of merchant guilds would also increase the number of people working as laborers. You said that the more commerce developed, the more jobs there would be, so everyone among the people except those unwilling to work would be able to find employment. Thus, those who found work would gain a constant income (a steady livelihood) and escape hunger and poverty... But no matter how much I thought about it, there was one thing I could not understand.”
“What is it?”
“Among the yangban landowners, there are men who demand that tenant farmers pay as much as six tenths (60 percent), or even seven tenths, of their harvest as rent. Some also force tenant farmers to perform all sorts of odd jobs as though they were household servants, and do not hesitate to beat them when displeased. There are cruel men who pay no attention even when resentment fills the entire county. On the other hand, I have heard that there are other yangban landowners who take five tenths as rent but neither force their tenant farmers to perform odd jobs nor beat them. I hear that one major reason they behave this way is that they fear their ‘reputation in the county’ might suffer.”
As I listened to Sejong, I suddenly broke out in gooseflesh.
It was because I was astonished by Sejong's insight.
In reality, once the Industrial Revolution began, the lives of workers sank to the bottom of hell, and wages plummeted without end.
The reason was extremely simple.
In an age when it was only natural for most people to live as serfs or tenant farmers, the lord or landowner was, when all was said and done, also a person from that area. If his reputation became too bad, he could be stabbed to death with a bamboo spear at any moment, so a certain degree of restraint was essential.
Factory owners, however, could use workers from various regions as replaceable parts, so they could work them to the bone without caring in the slightest about their reputations.
They made people work 120 hours a week and sleep hanging from ropes, while paying not a single coin toward medical expenses even if their fingers were severed, their jaws melted away and killed them, or they contracted all sorts of illnesses because of the work.
Then they ruthlessly fired them simply because they had fallen ill.
Factory owners and capitalists, unlike the aristocracy, were completely unaffected by ‘the people's opinion,’ and since everyone was doing the same thing, they saw no particular problem with it.
“By nature, merchants pursue profit, so they will focus only on producing and selling goods cheaply and in large quantities. They will have no reluctance whatsoever to exploit and abuse the laborers they employ.”
“Yes, they certainly will.”
“...... If that happens, would the development of commerce not be worse for the people than having no development at all?”
“Therefore, the court must strictly supervise those engaged in commerce and prevent them from committing such atrocities. In addition, it must set a minimum wage sufficient for a person to live without going hungry and require every employer to pay at least that much. If anyone abuses their laborers, they must be severely punished to prevent such acts from being repeated.”
Merchants are the sort of people who will do anything for money.
They are blinded by the desire to make money, which must be why tens of thousands of people could embark on the India-voyage exploration project, where simply returning alive was a miracle.
And if they had no goods of their own to offer in trade, they would substitute by sending marine boiled pork—no, pirate curry.
“In the end, you are saying that the court must step in and civilize the merchants.”
Sejong gazed at me with an exceedingly intent stare.
“The Former King once told me that he heard you say this: ‘The reason precious goods are expensive is that they are scarce. But if commerce becomes active, merchants who want to make money will produce and sell precious goods in large quantities, so in time they will become common and people will be able to buy them cheaply.’ Do you remember saying this?”
“I definitely said that, Your Majesty.”
“Keeping those words in mind, I listened to what you said at the gyeongyeon and thought about it carefully. I came to this conclusion: the reason yangban landowners can set tenant rents so high is that there are so many people seeking land to farm that they are practically underfoot. There are many people who want to farm as tenants, but little land available for them, so landowners can charge high rents.”
This is precisely why highly skilled workers command high wages.
Learning advanced skills is extremely difficult, so there are already few properly trained specialists. Since demand is absurdly high, employers have no choice but to pay dearly to recruit people with advanced skills.
That is why, from what I hear, Americans are surprisingly crazy about sushi. Since there are hardly any proper sushi chefs in America, they will recruit even a Japanese chef who cannot speak a word of English and pay that chef a high wage.
Apparently, a sushi chef who could not even earn around thirty million won a year in Japan sometimes goes to America and magically ends up earning one hundred million won a year.
“When agriculture was the only way to make a living, as it had been before, every person who did not own land had to farm as a tenant. But as commerce develops and more people engage in trade, those businesses will need many artisans and laborers. Then the people will have options besides tenant farming, so they will seek employment and disperse here and there, some joining merchant guilds and others entering workshops.”
“Yes, that is correct. The development of commerce will give the people freedom to choose their occupations.”
“While the freedom to choose one's occupation increases, the land owned by the yangban and the wealthy will remain as it is. Then landowners will try to find people to work their land, even if they must lower the rent. Leaving the land idle would be a loss the landowners would have to bear entirely. Merchants, for their part, will be unable to operate their guilds if the landowners take their laborers away, so they will try to retain workers even if they must raise wages. If this competition truly takes place, the lives of the people will become very prosperous.”
I learned this while studying in the past, but apparently the origin of the five-day workweek was Henry Ford, America's automobile king.
It was certainly not because the man took pity on poor laborers and introduced the five-day workweek.
In America during that era, factory workers usually worked on a temporary basis, like convenience-store part-timers. Because of that, the supply of labor was unstable, and securing skilled workers was also extremely difficult.
So, to secure skilled workers, he paid daily wages five times higher than those at other factories and introduced a forty-hour workweek, encouraging skilled technicians to put down roots in his factories.
‘As a result, American workers' pay shot up, I hear.’
American industrial productivity also improved dramatically.
But there was one thing His Majesty King Sejong was overlooking here.
“It certainly will. However, I have one greater goal in mind. That is to lower the price of farmland.”
“Lower the price of land? What exactly do you mean?”
“Your Majesty, the value of every object is determined by the demand of those who want it and the supply, meaning the quantity produced. To explain simply, the price of rice can rise as much as fivefold in a year of poor harvests. This is because the number of people who need to buy rice remains the same as in an ordinary year, while the harvest falls drastically, severely reducing the amount of rice placed on the market. As a result, those who need to buy rice do not hesitate to pay a high price to obtain what they need.”
The reason I was able to set my plan in motion and make a fortune by releasing rice can also be explained by supply and demand.
Uiju has so many tigers that tiger pelts are extremely cheap.
However, because the cold climate makes rice farming extremely difficult, rice is scarce.
In Uiju, rice is scarce and tiger skins are common.
“What does that have to do with the price of land...?”
Sejong stopped midway, as though he had realized something shocking, then froze in place.
At last, Your Majesty has seen the light!
Now let us move toward the path where all the people of Joseon, like me, become landowners.
“The greatest reason landowners want to possess rice paddies and fields is that they can collect tenant rents. However, if rents fall, then even with the same land, their income will decrease, reducing the reason for yangban to own land.”
“If their income decreases, they will have less reason to hold on to land as though it were gold or jade... Some will find it difficult to locate tenant farmers, and with rents no longer what they once were, they will put their land up for sale at relatively low prices. As more and more people begin doing so, the price of land overall will gradually decline as well.”
It is similar to selling apartments in the real-estate market.
If one apartment in a particular neighborhood sells for 300 to 400 million won less than the others, it is said that prices almost never return to what they were before the drop.
A buyer seeking an apartment cannot understand why they should pay more for one that someone else has already sold cheaply, so they will refuse to buy it.
“This is only the beginning.”
I have heard that Joseon merchants are actively conducting smuggling operations in the Gangnam region.
If we go further, Joseon merchants will travel to Taiwan, the Philippines, and other countries in Southeast Asia as well.
Once these sea routes are opened and the flow of trade is established, I intend to pour ‘stocks’ into it.
Then countless yangban and wealthy merchants will think, ‘There is no point holding on to this land when tenant farmers are already hard to find and the rent keeps falling.’
They will sell their land and use the money to buy stocks.
Some will lose everything, while others will hit the jackpot and realize their dream of sudden wealth.
In the process of investing to make such vast sums of money, the land that is sold off will pass cheaply into the hands of people who need farmland to cultivate.
“Mencius said that when a person has no constant income, it is difficult for him to maintain even the conscience he ought to possess as a human being. But if we put that in reverse, it also means that if all the people have a constant income, they will uphold the duties expected of human beings. To uphold the way of human beings, one must first learn and understand those duties. To understand them, I believe everyone has a ‘duty to learn.’”
“You are right. You are absolutely right.”
Sejong clasped my hand tightly.
They say his stamina had improved tremendously since he began exercising these days, and I let out a scream because my hand hurt terribly in his grip.
His grip was so strong that, if he had not been the King, I would have pulled my hand free.
A Gyeomsa-bok military officer with whom I was friendly had joked that Sejong's martial arts skills were improving by the day and that he might even be able to take down one or two assassins by himself...
‘Looks like he really could take down even a lowly assassin.’
“Your Majesty, please seek only a way for the people to learn easily. Then I shall contribute what little strength I have to helping you achieve your grand purpose.”
After saying that, I hurried my steps toward home.
If King Sejong, overcome by emotion and admiration after gaining enlightenment, were to hold me back...
I felt I might end up spending hot hours (scholarly debate) at Gyeongbok Palace until dawn tomorrow.
The gyeongyeon was overtime too, when you got down to it...
I had to escape as quickly as possible.