Math Class

Figure at the minimum
1 steer every 2 minutes
30 steers an hour
pulling 200-pound hides off each

6,000 pounds of hide an hour
48,000 pounds of hide a day
240,000 pounds of hide a week
12 million pounds of hide a year

working 30 years
that’s over 360 million pounds of cowhide
1 guy
2 hands

:: Ernie Brill, in Going for Coffee: An Anthology of Contemporary North American Working Poems (1981)