Marcia is a shoulder on the kill floor at the beef processing plant I own outside Dodge City, Kansas. She ties the bung and splits the brisket on the evisceration line, hands moving 391 times an hour. The line was designed to run 270 head an hour. I run it 391. The extra 121 head an hour are worth $0.84 a head — the difference between the line the regulator would permit and the line I actually run. I kept the difference. I always keep the difference.
You ate her yesterday. The hamburger you grilled passed her station at 8:47 a.m. her Wednesday. The ground chuck in your freezer is the brisket she split this week. The dividend check the senator is promising you in November is, on my books, the cost I removed from the line to keep the line running at the speed that paid for the dividend. You are the shining city on the hill. She is what built it. You did not pay the build.
Here is the arithmetic.
The chain-mail glove that would keep Marcia’s hand on the wheel instead of in a triage room costs $87. I issue the rubber-coated glove because it costs $7. The sharpening rotation that would cut her injury from one shoulder tear a quarter to one a year would cost me $26.40 an hour for a sharper. I do not keep a sharper. I keep the line.
The differential comes to $0.0072 a pound of processed beef. That is the cost of the glove I didn’t buy and the sharper I didn’t hire and the rotation I didn’t build. The steakhouse in Roanoke ordered 11,000 pounds last month. The senator’s dividend check is built on the difference — on the $80 I did not spend on Marcia and every woman on the line. The small business owner calls himself the backbone. The backbone is Marcia’s shoulder. The backbone runs on $0.0072 a pound.
I want you to hold that number. $0.0072. Say it again.
The principle has a verse. It has been on the page longer than any seminar I have taught, and I have taught it to every candidate I have graded.
“The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.” — Proverbs 22:7 (KJV)
The verse was written for the lender. I am the lender. The senator is the borrower. The 4,612 small business owners I supply are the borrowers. The arithmetic is the arithmetic: keep the yield, place the upkeep on a public ledger, and let the borrower wear the halo.
Marcia will need surgery. Not today. February, the records say, though I have not put it on the calendar. The replacement cost when her shoulder gives out is, on my current ledger, $0.00, because the line does not miss a beat when a hand gives out.
Let me widen the frame.
The arithmetic is the same everywhere. The $4,200 lift-assist table I declined for Cora’s flat-fold line in Martinsville cost me $0.0031 a pound on the towel you used at the hotel in Williamsburg. The towel cost Cora’s knees. The towel brightened your stay. The same math. The same margin. The same name left off the ledger. Every small business in the supply chain believes it is the backbone. The backbone is the body I do not price.
Bren is a 1099 contractor through a labor provider I do business with named for a creek in Georgia. She processes 346 heads a day. She does not appear on my payroll. She does not appear on the steakhouse’s. She appears on the provider’s, which appears on no one’s OSHA log. Bren is Marcia with the Social Security number removed and the kneecap removed and the payroll removed. She is tomorrow’s Marcia — already written into next quarter’s production schedule, already priced, already replaceable.
The senate, the ranch, the provider, and the beef do not ask whose shoulder she is.
I have taught this arithmetic to thirty classes at the school that bears my endowment. The graduate who runs second shift on my line is, by the letter grade, a B+. I graded the paper. The graduate who will process Marcia’s worker’s comp claim in Topeka was a former pupil. The graduate who maintains the OSHA deferral in my Kansas City office took my midterm. There is a Warden University diploma on every wall I needed a man to bend, and the diploma outlasts the man. The textbook is on the shelf in the back office of the resort in Williamsburg, in the edition the owner did not buy but inherited from the previous owner, and did not read. Calibrated Deprivation: A Manager’s Guide to Employee Motivation. The chapter on labor providers is the chapter that turned Bren from a payroll line into a vendor invoice. I am the author. The author is redundant. The text has detached, and the men it trained no longer remember which shelf they took it from. The chapter propagates without me. The linen propagates without the men.
The senator offers you the dividend. I look at the line. The senator offers you the city. I own the lot the city sits on.
Reagan spoke of the shining city on the hill. The line moved 175 head an hour in Dodge City in 1984, when the IBP plant put the floor at that number and the rest of the country called it progress. Reagan offered the city. I owned the lot. The line moved 270 after the expansion. It moves 391 now. The rest of the country called that progress, too.
I’ve graded thirty classes into this arithmetic. The muscle is mine. The muscle has a name today: Marcia. The name before her was Eliza. The name after her will be Tyra. Always a woman — because the line prefers fingers. The shoulder stays. The name changes. The margin does not move.
I do not read the worker’s comp report anymore. I have not opened it since April. The April report had a number I did not want to fold into the year-end. I refiled it. I drink my coffee black. The consulting fee I pay to keep the inspection report on my desk rather than on the floor is $14,000 a year. An OSHA inspector costs the agency $48,000 to station where I keep the deferral. I keep the difference. The trucks leave the loading dock at 3:15 and 4:45. The line runs Tuesday through Saturday, second shift on Monday. It is sold out through October. I am, this quarter, handsomely kept.
The dividend check the senator is offering you in November is paid out of the muscle of my line. The cost of the sharper in 1981 was $8. The cost of a sharper today is $26.40. I have not paid it. The dividend is the difference. The difference is Marcia’s shoulder. The shoulder is up for surgery in February. I have not put her surgery on the calendar. I have put Tyra’s training on the calendar. Bench beside Marcia for 2 weeks. Marcia’s station alone for the third. First week’s wages: $620. Replacement cost when Marcia’s shoulder gives out: $0.00. The line does not miss a beat. The shine of the city is continuous. The hand is replaceable.
Reagan was the orator. I am the balance sheet. He said the city shines. I will say only that the line has not missed a shift since April.
Marcia is, by my records, still on the line. The second shoulder is, by the same records, also still on the line. I am told it may not be. I do not open that file.
The light is wrong. The light is shining just the same. I have not, in some time, looked at anything else.
Sterling A. Varice holds the Hayek-Friedman Chair and serves as Dean of Instruction at Warden University’s College of Business and Economics in Richmond, Virginia. He is the author of three textbooks: Divine Mandates for Labor Utilization, Social Obligations for Profit Maximization, and Calibrated Deprivation: A Manager’s Guide to Employee Motivation.