I, Pencil

I am a lead pencil—the ordinary wooden pencil familiar to all boys, girls, and adults who can read and write.

Writing is my mission and my vocation.

People wonder how I came to do the work I do. Well, first of all, my story is interesting. And I am more mysterious than a tree, a sunset, or even lightning. Yet sadly, those who use me regard me as though I were something commonplace, with no background at all. This dismissive attitude reduces me to something ordinary and trivial.

That is one of the sad mistakes that threaten the secure survival of mankind. The wise G.K. Chesterton said, “We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders.”

I, the pencil, deserve your wonder and awe simply by virtue of my outward appearance alone, and because of the point I wish to prove. In fact, if you can understand me—no, that is asking too much—if you can come to recognize the miracle I symbolize, then perhaps mankind may recover the freedom it has unfortunately lost. I have a profound lesson for people to learn. And I can teach this lesson better than an automobile, an airplane, or a dishwasher—because I appear so simple.

Simple? Yet no one on earth knows how I am made. Is that not fantastic? Especially when you consider that about 1.5 billion of me are made each year in America alone.

Pick me up and examine me. What do you see? Not very much, to the eye: a little wood, lacquer, a printed label, graphite, a bit of metal, and an eraser.

Countless Ancestors

Just as you cannot trace your family tree back very far, I too cannot identify and describe all my ancestors. But to emphasize how rich and complex my background is, I would like to introduce enough of them.

My lineage begins with a tree—a straight-grained cedar with rough bark, growing in Northern California and Oregon. Now think of all the saws and trucks and rope and countless other tools used in felling those cedars and transporting them to the railroad siding. Think of all the people and innumerable skills involved in making those tools: mining the ore, making the steel, refining it into saws, axes, and motors; planting and cultivating hemp and putting it through all the stages required to make sturdy, heavy rope; and the logging camps, with their bunks and dining halls and kitchens where all the food is prepared. Even the cup of coffee drunk by the logger includes the labor of thousands whose names go unmentioned!

The logs are loaded onto railroad cars and sent to a sawmill in San Leandro, California. Can you imagine the people who made the flatcars, the rails, the locomotive—and, beyond that, those who made and installed the communications system? These multitudes are among my ancestors.

Think of the milling operations in San Leandro. The cedar is cut into pencil-length sections and then into slats less than a quarter-inch thick. These are kiln-dried and then lightly tinted, for the same reason women put rouge on their faces: people prefer that I look pretty rather than remain a pale white. The slats are waxed and dried again in kilns. How many skills were used to make the tint and the kilns, and to provide the heat, light, power, belts, generators, and everything else the mill requires? Are even the mill’s brooms among my ancestors? Yes—and so are the people who poured the concrete for the dam at the Pacific Gas and Electric Company hydroelectric plant that supplied power to the mill.

Nor should we forget the distant and nearby ancestors who transported 60 carloads of slats across the United States.

At the pencil factory—the $4 million worth of machinery and buildings representing capital accumulated through the thrift and saving of my parents—each slat receives eight grooves from a complex machine. Another machine lays graphite into every slat, applies glue, and places another slat on top. A graphite sandwich, so to speak. My seven brothers and I are then mechanically separated from this “wood-clinched” sandwich. My “lead” itself is complex—and contains no lead at all. The graphite is mined in Ceylon. Think of the miners in the graphite mines, and those who made the many tools they use; those who make the sacks in which the graphite is shipped, and the string that ties the sacks; those who load the graphite onto ships, and those who build the ships. And there are lighthouse keepers and harbor pilots who help guide the way and assist in my birth.

The graphite is mixed with clay from the Mississippi River, and ammonium hydroxide is used in the refining process. A wetting agent is added as well—such as sulfonated tallow, made by reacting animal fat with sulfuric acid. After passing through numerous machines, the mixture finally emerges in endless extrusions from something like a sausage grinder, is cut to size, dried, and baked for several hours at 1,850 degrees Fahrenheit. To increase strength and smoothness, the graphite is treated with a hot mixture containing candelilla wax from Mexico, paraffin wax, and hardened natural resins.

My cedar receives six coats of lacquer. Do you know all the ingredients of lacquer? Are the growers of castor beans and the refiners of castor oil part of my ancestry? Yes. And the process by which the lacquer acquires its beautiful yellow color also includes the skills of innumerable people.

Look at the label. It is a thin film applied by heating carbon black mixed with synthetic resin. Do you know how synthetic resin is made, or what carbon black is?

My little metal piece—the ferrule—is brass. Think of the skills of those who mined the zinc and copper and of those who transformed these natural materials into shining sheets of brass. The rings attached to the ferrule are black nickel. What is black nickel, and how was it applied? It would take pages to explain fully why there is no black nickel in the center of the ferrule.

And then there is what I proudly wear—though some crudely call it a “plug”—the part that erases a mistake made by the person using me. The erasing compound is called “factice.” It is a rubber-like product made by reacting rapeseed oil from Indonesia with sulfur chloride. Contrary to what is commonly thought, rubber is used only for binding purposes. Here too, numerous vulcanizers and catalysts are employed. Pumice comes from Italy, and the pigment that gives color to the “plug” is cadmium sulfide.

No One Knows

Will no one challenge my earlier claim that no one on earth knows how I am made?

In fact, millions of people have had a hand in making me. But with only a few exceptions, none of them know each other. And you may say that I have drawn the relationship too broadly by extending it all the way to the picker of coffee berries in Brazil and to food growers wherever they may be. You may say that is an extreme position. But I must defend my claim. Among all those millions of people—including the president of the pencil company—not one has contributed more than a tiny fraction of the know-how involved. In terms of skills, the difference between the graphite miner in Ceylon and the logger in Oregon is only a difference in kind. Neither the miner nor the logger, neither the factory chemist nor the oil field worker—for paraffin is a byproduct of petroleum production—is dispensable.

There is a remarkable fact here: the oil field worker, the chemist, the digger of graphite and clay, the makers of ships and trains and trucks, the operator of the machine that cuts grooves in the metal ferrule, even the president of the pencil company—none of them does his work because he needs me. Most of them probably need me less than a first-grade child does. Indeed, among these millions are some who have never sharpened a pencil and do not know how to use one. Their motivation is not me. More likely, each of them knows that he can exchange his small skill for the goods and services he wants and needs. I may or may not be among the items he desires.

No Master Mind

There is something even more remarkable: there is no leader forcing or directing the countless actions that brought me into being. No such person can be found. Instead, we find the Invisible Hand at work. This is the mystery to which I referred earlier.

It has been said, “Only God can make a tree.” Why do we agree with this? Is it not because we realize that we ourselves cannot make one? Can we explain a tree? Beyond superficial description, we cannot. We can say, for example, that there is a certain cellular arrangement in the tree that manifests itself. But can anyone record, much less direct, the ceaseless changes in cells that occur throughout a tree’s lifetime? Such a feat is utterly unthinkable.

I, Pencil, am a complex combination of miracles: wood, zinc, copper, graphite, and so on. But these miracles only demonstrate that still more extraordinary miracles have been added to the natural miracle. That is the arrangement of the creative energies of man. Millions of bits of know-how have been arranged naturally and spontaneously in response to human need and desire, without any leader! That is why only God can make me. I insist that only God can make me. Man can no more direct the millions of bits of know-how that bring me into being than he can gather cells together and make a tree.

What I have just described is what I meant when I said, “If you can come to recognize the miracle I symbolize, then perhaps mankind may recover the freedom it has unfortunately lost.” For if one comes to recognize that these skills arrange themselves naturally and automatically, in creative and productive ways, in response to human need and demand, without government or any other coercive director, then one will acquire “faith in free people,” an essential element in winning freedom. Without this faith, freedom is impossible.

Once government monopolizes a creative activity—for example, mail delivery—most people come to believe that mail delivery cannot be performed efficiently through the free actions of individuals. The reason is this: each person knows that he himself cannot know everything that goes into mail delivery. And he knows that others cannot know it all either. This assumption is correct. Just as no one can know all the skills that go into making a pencil, no one can know all the skills that make national mail delivery possible. So without “faith in free people”—without recognizing that millions of small skills naturally come together and cooperate almost miraculously to satisfy such demand—an individual is almost bound to reach the false conclusion that mail delivery can be accomplished only through government “direction.”

Abundant Evidence

If I, Pencil, were the only item that could offer evidence for what free people can achieve, there might be little cause for faith. But the evidence is abundant. It is in all our hands. Mail delivery is astonishingly simple compared with the manufacture of countless goods such as automobiles, calculators, combines, and flour mills. Delivery? In fields where people have been left free to try, they can deliver a human voice around the world in less than a second. They can send moving pictures instantly into people’s homes. They can transport 150 passengers from Seattle to Baltimore in four hours. They can deliver gas from Texas to a boiler in New York at unbelievably low prices and without government subsidy. They can deliver four pounds of oil from the Persian Gulf to our East Coast—halfway around the world—at less cost than government can deliver a one-ounce letter across the street!

The lesson I have to teach is this: Do not suppress creative energies. Simply let society harmonize with this lesson. Remove from the legal machinery of society the obstacles that hinder creative energy from exerting its full force. Allow these free skills to flow freely. Have faith that free people will respond to the Invisible Hand. That faith will be confirmed. I, Pencil, though I appear simple, offer evidence through the miracle of my creation for a practical faith. It is as practical as the sun, the rain, the cedar tree, and the good earth.

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The author, Leonard Read (1898–1983), founded the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) in 1946 and served as its president until his death. This piece is his most famous essay and was first published in the December 1958 issue of The Freeman.

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Original title: 저는 연필입니다(I, Pencil)

Author: Leonard E. Read

Date: 2017-09-05

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=column&pn=17&idx=10646