Cui Shi
Merchants engaged in a multitude of private trades and industries. A single merchant often combined several trades to make greater profits, such as animal breeding, farming, manufacturing, trade, and money-lending. Some of the most profitable commodities sold during the Han were salt and iron, since a wealthy salt or iron distributor could own properties worth as much as ten million cash. In the early Western Han period, powerful merchants could muster a workforce of over a thousand peasants to work in salt mines and marshes to evaporate brine to make salt, or at ironworks sites where they operated bellows and casted iron implements. To curb the influence of such wealthy industrialists, Emperor Wu nationalized these industries by 117 BCE and for the first time drafted former merchants with technical know-how such as Sang Hongyang (d. 80 BCE) to head these government monopolies. However, by the Eastern Han period the central government abolished the state monopolies on salt and iron. Even before this, the state must have halted its employment of former merchants in the government salt and iron agencies, since an edict of 7 BCE restated the ban on merchants entering the bureaucracy. However, the usurper Wang Mang (r. 9–23 CE) did employ some merchants as low-level officials with a salary-rank of 600 bushels. Another profitable industry was brewing wine and liquor, which the state briefly monopolized from 98 to 81 BCE, yet relinquished its production to private merchants once again (with alcohol taxes reinstalled). The official Cui Shi (催寔) (d. 170 CE) started a brewery business to help pay for his father's costly funeral, an act which was heavily criticized by his fellow gentrymen who considered this sideline occupation a shameful one for any scholar. Cinnabar mining was also a very lucrative industry.