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Show ism1 Se Kail, Don't rick It Up. Mr. William Garrett made reoently the statement that wire nails are now sold so cheaply that if a carpenter drops a nail it is cheaper to let it lie than to stoop and pick it tip, and it is claimed that one keg out of five is never used, but goes to waste. A statistician figuring figur-ing this out, and assuming that it takes a carpenter ten seconds to pick up a nail, and that his time is worth 30 cents an hour, remarks that the recovery of the nail he has dropped would cost .088 cents. The money value of the nail is .0077 cents that is, it would not pay to pick up ten nails if it took ten seconds sec-onds of time worth 30 cents an hour. Ordinary men who are not very quick can, however, pick up a nail on a mod erately clean floor in five seconds. Assuming As-suming that this is a better average than the ten seconds, and that we are paying the carpenter only 25 cents an hour, it will still cost to recover the nail .0347 cents, which is nearly five times the value of an individual nail. Theryis therefore a considerable factor of safety in the original calculation, and we are bound to believe that It will not pay to pick up nails. Such a calculation brings out clearly the marvelous reduction in prices due to inventive genius. The lurking fallacy is that while it may not pay to stoop for each nail it still may bo worth while for an economical man at the end of his work to stoop down once and sweep up in a single handful the nails ho has been -dropping all day St. Louis Glob-Democrat |