696 REFORM OF GOVER NMENT ORGA NIZA TION
relief, but the free grants were insufficient to provide more than "a few hand-
fuls" of rice, and the principal and interest charges on loans were so great that
the peasants were again left destitute even after the fall harvest. Furthermore,
the officials dunned the debtors endlessly or demanded that their relatives and
neighbors pay their debts for them, whipping and beating them when they delayed
payment, and in the end these brutal methods failed and the reserve system was
depletcd. Only people with personal connections with relief clerks or village
headmen had a chance to obtain a loan, another of the problems that would have
been solved by the village granary system.
Nonetheless, the Sung methods of finding all the indigent deserving of free
relief grants - the old, the weak, the sick, and unsupported women - and recruit-
ing the starving for dike and irrigation construction at wages paid by the gov-
ernment authorities would sol ve the problem of relief support by paying wages
and reducing the need for grants or loans. And if irrigation projects were not
needed, the government could put people to work on other kinds of projects.
Since the people will be recruited for work and go themsclvcs [to the job]. thcre
will be no feelings of resentment. If the wages we pay thcm for their work arc
sufficient. they wi]] have cnough to provide for the eldcrly and the young. Thus
many people will come to work and the benefits will be extended over a wide
area. Irrigation facilities will be promoted everywhere so that there will never
again be any harm from famine. The people will not be lacking food to eat, the
state will not be short of tax revenues, and we will be able to rely on this for
thousands and tens of thousands of years. This system would be as far from the
present system [of state loans at interest] as heaven is from earth.To rephrase this program in twentieth-century terms, workfare was prefer-
able not only to loans at intcrest, but to welfare as well because it would main-
tain the morale of the people, increase income and tax revenues, and receive the
material benefit of the work done.^42
Policy for Korea
Replacement ofHwanja with Ever-Normal Granaries. Yu called for the adop-
tion of a policy identical to the program of the conservative opponents of Wang
An-shih's green-shoots loan system: abolition of the present hwanja grain loan
operations, the establishment of ever-normal granaries (Sangp'yongch'ang) in
every prefecture and district in the country, and the transfer of current hwanja
funds currently located in the yamen of the district magistrates to the ever-nor-
mal granaries. The ever-normal granaries would use rice, grain, cloth, cash, and
silver as items for the purchase or sale of goods to stabilize market prices. Prices
would be stabilized either by selling or buying goods at a price one-third higher
or lower than the market price. Forced loans would be prohibitcd and violators
punished. Every dccision for purchasing or selling by the ever-normal granaries