Hearing Lin Ze's reprimand, the group, who had been about to kowtow again, immediately stood up obediently.
They had kowtowed to show their submission, hoping the nobleman would let them continue as tenant farmers. Their very lives depended on it.
Since the nobleman didn't like them kneeling, they naturally had to obey and do as he wished.
"Is what they said true?"
Lin Ze asked Shi Shanbao, who stood beside him.
As the manager of the brokerage, Shi Shanbao knew all about the tenant farmers working the land and who owned it. Lin Ze went straight to him to verify whether the villagers were telling the truth.
Shi Shanbao nodded. "Yes. The land you bought, young master, has usually been worked by these three families as tenant farmers. They own no land of their own and all make a living by farming as tenants and doing odd jobs for others."
Shi Shanbao couldn't tell what Lin Ze was thinking at the moment, so he simply stated the facts without a hint of emotion.
Hearing this, Lin Ze began calculating in his head.
The more than two hundred mu of land he was about to buy yielded around seventy-one thousand four hundred jin of grain a year, fluctuating within that range depending on the harvest.
As tenant farmers, they had to pay half their harvest as rent, which meant they would be left with thirty-six thousand jin of grain.
After setting aside a little over twenty jin of seed grain per mu, they would have around thirty thousand jin to use. The three families had forty-two people between them, which meant each person would get a little over seven hundred jin on average.
Seven hundred jin of grain might seem like a lot, but in this ancient era, with little sugar or oil, people did heavy labor every day and relied on staple foods for energy. An adult could easily put away two or three jin of grain a day.
To eat their fill for a year, each person would need at least a thousand jin of grain.
Since the families had both adults and children, that average of seven hundred jin per person might just barely be enough.
And that was before accounting for the money they needed to buy daily necessities, pay the Poll Tax, occasionally perform corvée labor, and avoid falling ill.
By the end of the year, they wouldn't have any money left. They might even have to tighten their belts to get by.
In that situation, if Lin Ze didn't rent the land to them, their whole family might starve to death in less than a year.
"By comparison, the villagers of Clear River Township can even afford sugar. Their standard of living is much higher than the people in this village."
"In an age of Dynastic Prosperity, as long as people aren't starving to death on a massive scale, I suppose it really is prosperous."
"But if I don't change the tenant farmers, then I've bought this land for nothing. How am I supposed to carry out my plan to win loyal followers? I need to think of something..."
Lin Ze muttered to himself.
As his mind raced, Lin Ze began talking to the villagers before him, keeping them calm.
"Don't worry. I'm not unreasonable. Even though I've bought the land, I won't leave you with no way to make a living."
At Lin Ze's words, the tenant farmers were overjoyed and wanted to kneel and kowtow in gratitude again.
But when they saw Lin Ze's face darken, they hurriedly stopped themselves from kneeling and instead bowed at the waist, repeatedly thanking him.
"Got it!"
After thinking for a little while, Lin Ze came up with an idea.
One important factor in winning loyal followers was making sure their families earned their living under him, so that they would struggle to get by—or see their quality of life plummet—if they left him.
When both sides shared the same interests, Lin Ze prospered and the servants under him prospered too. That was how he could ensure their loyalty.
Starting from that principle, he had come up with the idea of buying farmland and having his servants' families work it as tenant farmers to win their loyalty.
The idea itself was sound. In the agrarian society of the Great Zhou Dynasty, it was the tried-and-true path by which many aristocratic clans had risen to power—and even now, remained at their height.
But Lin Ze had the Gates to Heavens. He wasn't limited to the methods of this agrarian society when arranging work. He could also look for ideas in the industrial society of the Main World, where productivity was far more advanced.
"In the early stages of a feudal dynasty's development, years of war caused the population to plummet, bringing the number of people into balance with the amount of land and reducing deaths from starvation."
"By the middle stages of a feudal dynasty's development, the population gradually grew, and the price of land—the resource people depended on to survive—rose year after year. Once the population exceeded what the land could support, people began to starve to death."
"By the late stages of a feudal dynasty's development, the population exploded. Many people couldn't get enough to eat, so social order collapsed, land lost its value, and war broke out. The population was cut down, a new dynasty was established, and the cycle began all over again."
"The solution in an industrial society is to increase food production, then develop the service and industrial sectors to absorb the surplus population."
"In other words, I don't need to limit myself to finding a solution through farmland."
Lin Ze recalled what he had learned years ago about the historical cycles of dynasties, and from it, he found a solution.
"If I want to arrange jobs but can't buy land, I can build a factory to produce goods and create jobs that way."
"If the families of my servants all work in factories under my control, with stable, respectable jobs that pay well, I can win their loyalty just as effectively."
"And factories wouldn't just be able to employ my servants' families. They could also absorb the surplus population from all of Fengping County and the surrounding areas. With the people on my side, I'd have a much wider pool to choose from when recruiting loyal followers."
"If I had hundreds or even thousands of loyal followers I could call upon, my two-world trading business could naturally snowball and grow."
After thinking this through, Lin Ze calmed down.
"Let's go. Buy this land first, and leave the tenant farmers as they are for now."
Lin Ze didn't have the spare energy to keep haggling with the tenant farmers. He left them with those words, boarded the carriage, and prepared to leave.
"Thank you, noble sir! Thank you, noble sir!"
Amid a chorus of thanks, Lin Ze climbed into the carriage and returned to the city with Shi Shanbao.
"But what kind of factory should I set up?"
On the way back to the city, Lin Ze fell into thought once more.
The technology of the Main World was an overwhelming advantage in this agrarian society. In theory, he could make a fortune selling practically anything.
But Lin Ze needed to follow a few principles.
First, he couldn't let the authorities think he was gathering so many people for some nefarious purpose. If they cracked down on him, his plan to win loyal followers would come to nothing.
Second, the technology couldn't be too far ahead of this world's. If he brought out something that seemed like it came from the future, that wouldn't do either.
At this stage, Lin Ze was only just beginning to build up his strength and influence. He didn't want to attract too much attention.
Third, the factory couldn't make too much profit. If the income became so great that any passerby could see he was scooping up money by the sackful, then even his status as a first-rate expert wouldn't be enough to protect him from colluding with the County Magistrate to do business.
Before you continue