Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 87.djvu/87

Tsung asked him one day, "If I were to make you chief minister of state, what would you do?" "I would change the customs and institute reforms," Wang replied.^[1] Thereupon the emperor formed a board of three officials, whose task it was to investigate the condition of the country and to suggest where improvement might be made. This board sent out officers throughout the country "to report upon the nature of the soil, where watered and where not, where it was rich and where it was poor," and to give other information that might help to alleviate the condition of the farmer. The outcome of this movement was the introduction of four reforms:

1. The first was a state monopoly of commerce. The commerce of the country was to be carried on by the state instead of by the people. The plan is briefly summed up by MacGowan as follows:

The taxes for the future should be paid in the produce of the district where they were levied, and the state should furnish funds to buy up what was left. This should be transported to different parts of the country where a good market could be found and sold at a reasonable profit. Thus would the state be benefited and the poorer classes be saved from the oppression of the rich, who had been in the habit of buying cheaply and selling at exorbitant prices.

This reform included a scheme for state advances to cultivators of the soil. The government loaned money to all farmers in the spring when the seed was sown, and a definite sum of money was returned in the fall by the farmers. These loans netted about two per cent, per month.

2. The second reform was an attempt to equalize taxation. To this end the country was divided into Fangtien, or square fields, one thousand steps on each side, and the taxes on each were appraised in the ninth moon, "according to the general average of the producing power of the soil, which was divided into five classes according to its fertility.^[2]

3. The third reform measure introduced militia organization. Every ten families were organized into a group with a headman called a Paochang; five such groups, or fifty families, were formed into a larger group with a higher commander; and ten of the larger groups formed a district. All homes having more than one son were obliged to give one in service to the state. The members of the militia were allowed to remain at home in time of peace, but when war or disturbance threatened they were called out by the headmen. Modifications of this reform were later used in the Ming and Tsing Dynasties.

4. The last of the great reforms of Wang An-shih was that of providing for the construction of public works by means of a family tax. He wished to remove the abuses that grew out of compulsory labor. His plan was to rate the tax required in accordance with the property of the fam-

1. J. MacGowan, "Imperial History of China," Shanghai, 1906, p. 383.
2. John C. Ferguson, "Wang An-Shih," an article in the Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 35, p. 72.