896 FINANCIAL REFORM AND THE ECONOMY
Since the economy should depend primarily on the production of food and
textiles, cash should be kept small in quantity and high in value to function as
a medium of exchange; it should function as a lubricant for trade, but never
thought of an object of real wealth.2x The ambivalence of Ui's attitude toward
cash was that it had become an indispensable medium for the Chinese econ-
omy, but that the medium could not become the message lest the desire for money
undermine production of basic necessities. To achieve this end, K'ung I's pre-
scription for minting a solid penny cash close to the intrinsic value of the metal
was the only guarantee of success.
Yeh Meng-te: Cash as an Object of Value. Despite Lii Tsu-ch'ien's admoni-
tion against treating money as an object of wealth, it was apparent that many
Chinese had been doing that since the Han dynasty. Yu felt it was worth quot-
ing the views ofYeh Meng-te of the Sung dynasty (ca. T 090s) on this point. Yeh
complained that in his dynasty the accumulation of cash fortunes had become
so commonplace that the apparently astronomical personal fortunes of the Han
dynasty in the first century B.C., which reached as much as ten million pieces of
cash for some noblemen in particular, was now attainable by even middle or
lower-class households. Yeh's reaction to this situation, however, was not one
of pride in the accomplishment of his age in spreading the wealth of kings to
the common man. Instead, he reached the same conclusion that Emperor Hsien-
tsung of the T'ang dynasty had reached: that the concentration of cash in pri-
vate hands had left the Sung government desperately sh0I1 of funds for its own
expenses.
The government, unfortunately, decided that the only way out of that prob-
lem was to mint multiple denomination coins manufactured with a tin alloy of
copper and a face value of ten cash to make up the deficit. Unfortunately the
tactic had proved futile because the public lost confidence in the coin. In an age
when the public valued cash as an object of wealth, the accumulation of money
in private hands forced the state to abandon a sound coinage policy.
Like Lii Tsu-ch' ien, Yeh much preferred the subsistence economy of the well-
field system of the ancient Chou dynasty where cash was used only in small
amounts. He quoted Li K'uei of the Wei dynasty, who provided statistics to prove
that very point. According to Li each peasant family under the well-field sys-
tem consisted of five individuals who shared in the cultivation of its plot of 100
myo, producing 1.5 piculs (s()k) per myo or a total of 150 piculs. The 10 percent
tax cost 15 piculs, the five family members ate 90 piculs/year, leaving a surplus
of 45 piculs, worth 30 pieces of cash per picul, or a surplus of 1,350 pieces of
cash. Annual costs for shrine and ritual expenses cost 200 cash/year, leaving
1.150 pieces of cash or enough to buy clothes for the entire family. In that sit-
uation of perfect agrarian equality there had never been problem because of the
insufficiency of cash in circulation.^2 ')
Now Yeh Ming-te, a subject of perhaps the most prosperous commercial age
in Chinese history, was advising his readers to look back to the frugal model of
well-field subsistence when cash, to be sure, was used. but never too much to