Perhaps there is no one item connected with our economic life that would
surprise us more than a knowledge of just what burdens the day's work.
It is perhaps possible accurately to determine--albeit with considerable
interference with the day's work itself--how much energy the day's work
takes out of a man. But it is not at all possible accurately to
determine how much it will require to put back that energy into him
against the next day's demands. Nor is it possible to determine how much
of that expended energy he will never be able to get back at all.
Economics has never yet devised a sinking fund for the replacement of
the strength of a worker. It is possible to set up a kind of sinking
fund in the form of old-age pensions. But pensions do not attend to the
profit which each day's labour ought to yield in order to take care of
all of life's overhead, of all physical losses, and of the inevitable
deterioration of the manual worker.
The best wages that have up to date ever been paid are not nearly as
high as they ought to be.
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