Energy

Abstract

A husky, young, well-fed man can exert about 0.5 horsepower per hour, or four horsepower hours per day. An office worker may expend one-tenth of that. A 400 hp automobile racing down the highway for one hour expends the energy capability of 100 laborers or 1000 office workers for a whole day. The auto would use about five gallons of gasoline, costing $7 but in the industrial nations the laborers would cost $8000, the office workers $80,000. The industrial success of the United States was the result of doing work with energy, an ever-increasing number of horsepower at the command of each worker, not an ever-increasing number of laborers.