These are questions which call for accurate observation and computation. 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. Business is not