830 FINANCIAL REFORM AND THE ECONOMY
not be met even though it takes a hundred sam of expenses in the remote dis-
tricts. Isn't it a thousand times worse when corrupt officials and clerks take
advantage of the situation to work their corruption?3!Yu urged that all allocations of tax quotas among districts (punbae) and all
construction of temporary hostels or thatched huts to house imperial envoys in
the districts be abolished. If financial responsibility were placed only on the dis-
tricts where government hostels (ch 'am 'up) were located, total expenditures of
labor and revenues for envoys could be reduced to one-tenth of current levels.
Further savings could be achieved by building some permanent, tile-roofed hos-
tels for envoys and travelers. Any local district was not to have more than one
hostel, and any hostels located other than where the district seat was situated
would be assigned to a nearby district for its financing. All costs of these hos-
tels were to be estimated in advance and paid for from regular tax revenues. If
there were not enough regular runners (sahwan) available, then members of "idle
households," or those without other responsibilities, would be required to do the
work and be compensated by a fair deduction from their tax obligations. In an
extreme labor shortage, the hostel could then hire workers at wages of .5 mal/day
(15 mal/month) and the magistrate could deduct the cost from taxes that were
to be transmitted to the capital, or recruit men on military service for the work
and reduce the time of their military duties by an equivalent number of days.
Yu stipulated that a shortage of labor or funds could not be used as an excuse
for issuing arbitrary orders to other districts, and in extreme emergencies the cen-
tral government could ultimately allow all district magistrates to keep their tax
revenues in the district or supplement their funds with some revenue allocations
from adjacent districts. Although some objected to abolishing the traditional dis-
tribution of such costs among all provincial districts because a single district town
could not afford to pay for the costs of a hostel, Yu countered with the argument
that all revenue should be considered as national revenue, not just the revenue
of one district, and any costs could be deducted from the national account.
Despite the objection that fish, meat, fruit, and vegetables needed to feed trav-
eling imperial envoys could not be predicted and budgeted in advance but would
require ad hoc levies, Yu responded that if officials paid for the purchase of food
and drink, there would be no reason for any ad hoc levies of goods in-kind. For
that matter, if the people were suffering from famine and destitution, even the
king would not be justified in mobilizing peasants for a royal hunt for food, let
alone paying the expenses for traveling imperial envoys.
Nor could labor shortages be used as a legitimate argument to defeat Yu's
reform, since wage labor could be hired by funds saved by tax quota reductions
on the hostels, and by exemptions from other forms of labor service by towns
with hostels in them. In addition to using all the town's tax revenues and taking
some from neighboring towns, the quotas of runners, slaves, and workers for
hostels and post-stations could be increased, so that there would be sufficient
funds and personnel in each hostel to provide room and board for an imperial