ABSTRACT
Energy slaves were first measured satisfactorily in 1806. The unit — horse power — looked backward in name but forward in implication. It was devised for the steam engine — 550 foot pounds per second — then making possible in the hurried expansion of a wartime economy the rationalized production techniques of the factory. The hurry was reflected in the reck-less consumption of human beings, so reckless that the Gentleman's Magazine described one factory as ‘the accumulation of human corrup-tion’ and as ‘undergoing a kind of fermentation which sublimes it to a degree of malignity not to be exceeded out of hell’. 1
