The Warning Voice by Cao Xueqin Page B

you added them all together the total annual saving would be well over four hundred taels.’
    â€˜There you are!’ said Bao-chai. ‘Four hundred a year, eighthundred in two years: you could buy a small house for letting with that or add half an acre of poor farm-land to your land-holdings. But though there should be quite a lot left over after they have covered the expenses we are assigning to them, we want them to have a little something to spend on themselves after working hard all through the year; and though, from our point of view, the main object of these operations is economy, we don’t want to overdo it. There would be no point in saving an extra two or three hundred taels if it meant resorting to undignified methods in order to do so. What we are now proposing means that Accounts will be paying out four or five hundred taels a year less than they do now without anyone outside feeling the pinch. And as for inside, the women doing these jobs will be getting a little extra for themselves, the ones not doing them will be able to relax a bit, the Garden’s stock of trees and flowers will thrive and increase through being better cared for, and
we
shall be better off when we have this regular supply of the produce for our own use – all this without any loss of dignity. Whereas if we went all out to economize with no other consideration but making money in mind, no doubt we should have little difficulty in squeezing more out, but the effect of paying everything back into the common account would be wails of protest from everyone, both inside the Garden and out, and a consequent loss of dignity that in a household like yours would be quite unacceptable.
    â€˜Altogether there must be several dozen old women working in this Garden. If you give the money-making jobs to these few here and leave the others out in the cold, the others are going to complain that it isn’t fair. Now as I said, there’s still going to be quite a lot of money left over when they’ve finished paying these various expenses for you, and I think we should be letting them off a bit too lightly if we let them keep
all
of it. Why don’t we say that every year, no matter how much or how little they have made, they are to pay so many strings of cash into a common pool which will be shared out among all the other women? Although those others won’t any longer have anything to do with the upkeep of the Garden, they are responsible, day and night, for keeping an eye on theother servants; they have the responsibility of opening and closing the gates, which means that they have to get up earlier and go to bed later than everyone else; and whenever any of us go out, whatever the weather, even if it is raining or snowing heavily, they have to carry sedans, punt boats, draw sledges – in fact do any heavy work that needs to be done. Since they work so hard in the Garden from one year’s end to the next, it seems only fair that if any money is going to be made out of the Garden,
they
should have a share in it. And there’s another reason for this, if it doesn’t seem too petty-minded to mention it’ – Bao-chai turned to the women to explain – ‘If you think only of how much you can make out of this for yourselves and don’t let the others have a share, they are sure to feel resentful even if they don’t like to say anything and will try to make up for it by misappropriating what they can for their own use – filching a fruit here and a flower there whenever they have the opportunity. Whereas if they know in advance that they are going to get a share of whatever you make from your produce, they will be as anxious as you are that none of it is stolen and will even keep an eye on it for you when you aren’t able to watch over it yourselves.’
    The women were quick to see the force of this argument – no control by the Office, no settling of accounts with Xi-feng, only