422 MILITARY REFORMthese functions. The bureaus had recr'uited soldiers to perform slave service func-
tions because a shortage of slave workers had developed in recent years. Bureau
slaves maltreated by officials and destitute because of the lack of regular rations
or salaries had been running away in droves. Yu argued that all soldiers could
easily be returned to their primary function simply by providing adequate com-
pensation to the bureau slaves.^80
Guaranteeing Support for the Duty SoldierYu felt that the current Royal Division soldiers provided a good model for his
principle that the duties of soldiers should be confined to their basic tasks. Even
though he proposed to do away with the Royal Division itself, he approved that
its troops had only been required to stand guard duty and undergo training and
had never been used for service in lieu of slaves in the capital bureaus.^8! He
admired the Royal Division for another reason as well; it provided a model for
proper operation of the support taxpayer system by limiting the duties of the
support person to the payment of tax, and by guaranteeing that duty soldiers
would be provided with a rice ration during their tour of duty.
The problem with the current support tax system was that the duty soldiers
were not always able to obtain their full support allotment because some of their
assigned support personnel were too poor to make payment. Or the soldier might
squander his allotment even before he showed up for duty. In either case, the
soldier would be so poor and hungry that he had to borrow from usurers while
on duty. After returning home, he had to sell off all his land and oxen to repay
principle and interest double the value of the original loan. Thus, under the old
system, "all the rotating duty soldiers were beggars and hardly seemed human."82
In the Royal Division, however, two of the three support taxpayers were des-
ignated to provide a cloth or rice support payment per year, not to the soldier
himself but to the soldier's duty station whether in the capital or provinces. The
unit or base would then pay monthly rations to the soldier to ensure steady rations
while on duty. The other support taxpayer would be responsible for paying for
the materiel and equipment costs of the soldier.
Yu reversed the proportion: under his system only one support taxpayer would
pay twelve mal of rice per year to the capital granary. while the other two sup-
port persons would pay a cloth tax to the soldier directly for his equipment costs.
Yu anticipated that one support taxpayer's rice payment would not only be suf-
ficient to provide rations for soldiers who would serve on duty only once in a
year and a half under his system, but that there would also be a surplus over the
soldier's consumption that could be used to pay for rewards and banquets for
soldiers who performed well in the military skill contests.
Yu felt that this system could be run without corruption if there were detailed
inspection procedures for each phase of the operation. Thus, when the support
taxpayer paid rice to the capital, the local magistrate would be required to go
personally to the dock where the rice was to be loaded on a transport ship. If