PROVINCIAL AND LOCAL ADMINISTRATION 689
would lose half his salary ifhis granary lost five ships, and he would he stripped
of his office walTant if he lost ten ships in a six-month period. If a sailor was
injured, he had to be replaced by one of his support taxpayers, and any unau-
thorized private substitution was forbidden. He belicved that these arrangements
would alleviate the CUlTent burden imposed on the maritime workers and sailors
because they had also been subjected to demands for miscellaneous expenses
and outright bribes by officials of the granaries.
Yu set up strict deadlines for the payment of tax grain to the granaries and the
departure date for all vessels, and in upland regions, taxes could be paid in cloth,
ramie, or silk instead of grain at fixed rates of conversion. The northern two
provinces would be exempted from the system because they would keep tax grain
on reserve for military expenses. GalTison commanders along the coast wcre
responsible for stationing boats to guide and aid the transport vessels and keep
a record of the time of aJTival of those vessels to prevent any captain from embez-
zling the cargo as if the ship had sunk. Contact or trading with private merchants
along the way was also to be forbidden, and violators would suffer confiscation
of the merchandise. Any captain who transported private goods would suffer
confiscation of the goods and assignment to the border as a frontier solJier. All
grain that arrived at the capital had to be calculated and recorded by an official
of the Ministry of Taxation and a royal secretary along with the granary admin-
istrator (P'an'gwan) if he happened to he on hoard the ship. If the cargo was
short, the sailors would have to make up the loss, but the captain would have to
pay twice as much as a sailor.^11
PRICE STABILIZATION AND GOVERNMENT LOANSThe Choson state used two methods inherited from China to provide loans and
relief to tide peasants over the planting season or to save them from starvation
in time of famine. There were state loans in grain for the spring season or for
famine relief, and ever-normal purchase and sale of grain stocks to stahilize the
price of rice hy halancing short-term fluctuations in the supply of grain. Right-
eous Granaries (Oich'ang) stationed in each prefecture or district, run by the
district magistrate and his clerks, provided for state interest-free grain loans to
pcasants. They were calTied over from the Koryo dynasty in 1392, and grain
reserves in Military Provisions Granaries were also loaned for the samc pur-
pose. In 1423, the Righteous Granaries werc refunded and a 2 percent interest
charge was added to help replenish the stocks, but when the income was not
sufficient to maintain the reserve, interest rates were raised later in the century.
Between 1451 and 1470, Chu Hsi's village granary (sac!J'cmg) system was
introduced in ten districts on an experimental basis. A 20 perccnt interest rate
was charged on loans from the village granaries because Chu Hsi had adopted
an interest charge of 2 tOll/shih (20 percent) to pay hack the district magistrate
for the original capitalization and accumulate an independent reserve fund for
future loans. After the reserve was accumulated, rcgular interest charges were