A classic.
---------

I, Pencil
by Leonard E. Read

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

Writing is both my vocation and my avocation; that's all I do.

You may wonder why I should write a genealogy. Well, to begin with, my
story
is interesting. And, next, I am a mystery --- more so than a tree or a
sunset or even a flash of lightning. But, sadly, I am taken for granted by
those who use me, as if I were a mere incident and without background.
This
supercilious attitude relegates me to the level of the commonplace. This
is
a species of the grievous error in which mankind cannot too long persist
without peril. For, the wise G. K. Chesterton observed, `"We are perishing
for want of wonder, not for want of wonders."

I, Pencil, simple though I appear to be, merit your wonder and awe, a
claim
I shall attempt to prove. In fact, if you can understand me --- no, that's
too much to ask of anyone --- if you can become aware of the
miraculousness
which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind is so unhappily
losing. I have a profound lesson to teach. And I can teach this lesson
better than can an automobile or an airplane or a mechanical dishwasher
because --- well, because I am seemingly so simple.

Simple? Yet, not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to
make
me. This sounds fantastic, doesn't it? Especially when it is realized that
there are about one and one-half billion of my kind produced in the U.S.A.
each year.

Pick me up and look me over. What do you see? Not much meets the eye ---
there's some wood, lacquer, the printed labeling, graphite lead, a bit of
metal, and an eraser.

Innumerable Antecedents

Just as you cannot trace your family tree back very far, so is it
impossible
for me to name and explain all my antecedents. But I would like to suggest
enough of them to impress upon you the richness and complexity of my
background.

My family tree begins with what in fact is a tree, a cedar of straight
grain
that grows in Northern California and Oregon. Now contemplate all the saws
and trucks and rope and the countless other gear used in harvesting and
carting the cedar logs to the railroad siding. Think of all the persons
and
the numberless skills that went into their fabrication: the mining of ore,
the making of steel and its refinement into saws, axes, motors; the
growing
of hemp and bringing it through all the stages to heavy and strong rope;
the
logging camps with their beds and mess halls, the cookery and the raising
of
all the foods. Why, untold thousands of persons had a hand in every cup of
coffee the loggers drink!

The logs are shipped to a mill in San Leandro, California. Can you imagine
the individuals who make flat cars and rails and railroad engines and who
construct and install the communication systems incidental thereto? These
legions are among my antecedents.

Consider the millwork in San Leandro. The cedar logs are cut into small,
pencil- length slats less than one-fourth of an inch in thickness. These
are
kiln dried and then tinted for the same reason women put rouge on their
faces. People prefer that I look pretty, not a pallid white. The slats are
waxed and kiln dried again. How many skills went into the making of the
tint
and the kilns, into supplying the heat, the light and power, the belts,
motors, and all the other things a mill requires? Sweepers in the mill
among
my ancestors? Yes, and included are the men who poured the concrete for
the
dam of a Pacific Gas & Electric Company hydroplant which supplies the
mill's
power!

Don't overlook the ancestors present and distant who have a hand in
transporting sixty carloads of slats across the nation.

Once in the pencil factory--$4,000,000 in machinery and building, all
capital accumulated by thrifty and saving parents of mine--each slat is
given eight grooves by a complex machine, after which another machine lays
leads in every other slat, applies glue, and places another slat atop--a
lead sandwich, so to speak. Seven brothers and I are mechanically carved
from this "wood- clinched'" sandwich.

My "lead'" itself--it contains no lead at all--is complex. The graphite is
mined in Ceylon. Consider these miners and those who make their many tools
and the makers of the paper sacks in which the graphite is shipped and
those
who make the string that ties the sacks and those who put them aboard
ships
and those who make the ships. Even the lighthouse keepers along the way
assisted in my birth--and the harbor pilots.

The graphite is mixed with clay from Mississippi in which ammonium
hydroxide
is used in the refining process. Then wetting agents are added such as
sulfonated tallow--animal fats chemically reacted with sulfuric acid.
After
passing through numerous machines, the mixture finally appears as endless
extrusions--as from a sausage grinder--cut to size, dried, and baked for
several hours at 1,850 degrees Fahrenheit. To increase their strength and
smoothness the leads are then treated with a hot mixture which includes
candelilla wax from Mexico, paraffin wax, and hydrogenated natural fats.

My cedar receives six coats of lacquer. Do you know all the ingredients of
lacquer? Who would think that the growers of castor beans and the refiners
of castor oil are a part of it? They are. Why, even the processes by which
the lacquer is made a beautiful yellow involves the skills of more persons
than one can enumerate!

Observe the labeling. That's a film formed by applying heat to carbon
black
mixed with resins. How do you make resins and what, pray, is carbon black?

My bit of metal--the ferrule--is brass. Think of all the persons who mine
zinc and copper and those who have the skills to make shiny sheet brass
from
these products of nature. Those black rings on my ferrule are black
nickel.
What is black nickel and how is it applied? The complete story of why the
center of my ferrule has no black nickel on it would take pages to
explain.

Then there's my crowning glory, inelegantly referred to in the trade as
"the
plug," the part man uses to erase the errors he makes with me. An
ingredient
called "factice" is what does the erasing. It is a rubber-like product
made
by reacting rape- seed oil from the Dutch East Indies with sulfur
chloride.
Rubber, contrary to the common notion, is only for binding purposes. Then,
too, there are numerous vulcanizing and accelerating agents. The pumice
comes from Italy; and the pigment which gives "the plug" its color is
cadmium sulfide.

No One Knows

Does anyone wish to challenge my earlier assertion that no single person
on
the face of this earth knows how to make me?

Actually, millions of human beings have had a hand in my creation, no one
of
whom even knows more than a very few of the others. Now, you may say that
I
go too far in relating the picker of a coffee berry in far off Brazil and
food growers elsewhere to my creation; that this is an extreme position. I
shall stand by my claim. There isn't a single person in all these
millions,
including the president of the pencil company, who contributes more than a
tiny, infinitesimal bit of know-how. From the standpoint of know-how the
only difference between the miner of graphite in Ceylon and the logger in
Oregon is in the type of know-how. Neither the miner nor the logger can be
dispensed with, any more than can the chemist at the factory or the worker
in the oil field--paraffin being a by-product of petroleum.

Here is an astounding fact: Neither the worker in the oil field nor the
chemist nor the digger of graphite or clay nor any who mans or makes the
ships or trains or trucks nor the one who runs the machine that does the
knurling on my bit of metal nor the president of the company performs his
singular task because he wants me. Each one wants me less, perhaps, than
does a child in the first grade. Indeed, there are some among this vast
multitude who never saw a pencil nor would they know how to use one. Their
motivation is other than me. Perhaps it is something like this: Each of
these millions sees that he can thus exchange his tiny know-how for the
goods and services he needs or wants. I may or may not be among these
items.

No Master Mind

There is a fact still more astounding: The absence of a master mind, of
anyone dictating or forcibly directing these countless actions which bring
me into being. No trace of such a person can be found. Instead, we find
the
Invisible Hand at work. This is the mystery to which I earlier referred.

It has been said that "'only God can make a tree.'" Why do we agree with
this? Isn't it because we realize that we ourselves could not make one?
Indeed, can we even describe a tree? We cannot, except in superficial
terms.
We can say, for instance, that a certain molecular configuration manifests
itself as a tree. But what mind is there among men that could even record,
let alone direct, the constant changes in molecules that transpire in the
life span of a tree? Such a feat is utterly unthinkable!

I, Pencil, am a complex combination of miracles: a tree, zinc, copper,
graphite, and so on. But to these miracles which manifest themselves in
Nature an even more extraordinary miracle has been added: the
configuration
of creative human energies--millions of tiny know-hows configurating
naturally and spontaneously in response to human necessity and desire and
in
the absence of any human master-minding! Since only God can make a tree, I
insist that only God could make me. Man can no more direct these millions
of
know-hows to bring me into being than he can put molecules together to
create a tree.

The above is what I meant when writing, "If you can become aware of the
miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind is
so unhappily losing." For, if one is aware that these know-hows will
naturally, yes, automatically, arrange themselves into creative and
productive patterns in response to human necessity and demand--that is, in
the absence of governmental or any other coercive master-minding --- then
one will possess an absolutely essential ingredient for freedom: a faith
in
free people. Freedom is impossible without this faith.

Once government has had a monopoly of a creative activity such, for
instance, as the delivery of the mails, most individuals will believe that
the mails could not be efficiently delivered by men acting freely. And
here
is the reason: Each one acknowledges that he himself doesn't know how to
do
all the things incident to mail delivery. He also recognizes that no other
individual could do it. These assumptions are correct. No individual
possesses enough know-how to perform a nation's mail delivery any more
than
any individual possesses enough know-how to make a pencil. Now, in the
absence of faith in free people --- in the unawareness that millions of
tiny
know-hows would naturally and miraculously form and cooperate to satisfy
this necessity --- the individual cannot help but reach the erroneous
conclusion that mail can be delivered only by governmental
"master-minding."

Testimony Galore

If I, Pencil, were the only item that could offer testimony on what men
and
women can accomplish when free to try, then those with little faith would
have a fair case. However, there is testimony galore; it's all about us
and
on every hand. Mail delivery is exceedingly simple when compared, for
instance, to the making of an automobile or a calculating machine or a
grain
combine or a milling machine or to tens of thousands of other things.
Delivery? Why, in this area where men have been left free to try, they
deliver the human voice around the world in less than one second; they
deliver an event visually and in motion to any person's home when it is
happening; they deliver 150 passengers from Seattle to Baltimore in less
than four hours; they deliver gas from Texas to one's range or furnace in
New York at unbelievably low rates and without subsidy; they deliver each
four pounds of oil from the Persian Gulf to our Eastern Seaboard ---
halfway
around the world --- for less money than the government charges for
delivering a one-ounce letter across the street!

The lesson I have to teach is this: Leave all creative energies
uninhibited.
Merely organize society to act in harmony with this lesson. Let society's
legal apparatus remove all obstacles the best it can. Permit these
creative
know-hows freely to flow. Have faith that free men and women will respond
to
the Invisible Hand. This faith will be confirmed. I, Pencil, seemingly
simple though I am, offer the miracle of my creation as testimony that
this
is a practical faith, as practical as the sun, the rain, a cedar tree, the
good earth.
----------------

Original here: http://209.217.49.168/vnews.php?nid=316

Publiuswrote:

---------

I, Pencil
by Leonard E. Read

I am a lead pencil --- the ordinary wooden pencil familiar to all

girls and adults who can read and write.

Writing is both my vocation and my avocation; that's all I do.

You may wonder why I should write a genealogy. Well, to begin with,

is interesting. And, next, I am a mystery --- more so than a tree or

sunset or even a flash of lightning. But, sadly, I am taken for

those who use me, as if I were a mere incident and without

supercilious attitude relegates me to the level of the commonplace.

a species of the grievous error in which mankind cannot too long

without peril. For, the wise G. K. Chesterton observed, `"We are

for want of wonder, not for want of wonders."

I, Pencil, simple though I appear to be, merit your wonder and awe,

I shall attempt to prove. In fact, if you can understand me --- no,

too much to ask of anyone --- if you can become aware of the

which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind is so

losing. I have a profound lesson to teach. And I can teach this

better than can an automobile or an airplane or a mechanical

because --- well, because I am seemingly so simple.

Simple? Yet, not a single person on the face of this earth knows how

me. This sounds fantastic, doesn't it? Especially when it is

there are about one and one-half billion of my kind produced in the

each year.

Pick me up and look me over. What do you see? Not much meets the eye

there's some wood, lacquer, the printed labeling, graphite lead, a

metal, and an eraser.

Innumerable Antecedents

Just as you cannot trace your family tree back very far, so is it

for me to name and explain all my antecedents. But I would like to

enough of them to impress upon you the richness and complexity of

background.

My family tree begins with what in fact is a tree, a cedar of

that grows in Northern California and Oregon. Now contemplate all

and trucks and rope and the countless other gear used in harvesting

carting the cedar logs to the railroad siding. Think of all the

the numberless skills that went into their fabrication: the mining

the making of steel and its refinement into saws, axes, motors; the

of hemp and bringing it through all the stages to heavy and strong

logging camps with their beds and mess halls, the cookery and the

all the foods. Why, untold thousands of persons had a hand in every

coffee the loggers drink!

The logs are shipped to a mill in San Leandro, California. Can you

the individuals who make flat cars and rails and railroad engines

construct and install the communication systems incidental thereto?

legions are among my antecedents.

Consider the millwork in San Leandro. The cedar logs are cut into

pencil- length slats less than one-fourth of an inch in thickness.

kiln dried and then tinted for the same reason women put rouge on

faces. People prefer that I look pretty, not a pallid white. The

waxed and kiln dried again. How many skills went into the making of

and the kilns, into supplying the heat, the light and power, the

motors, and all the other things a mill requires? Sweepers in the

my ancestors? Yes, and included are the men who poured the concrete

dam of a Pacific Gas & Electric Company hydroplant which

power!

Don't overlook the ancestors present and distant who have a hand in
transporting sixty carloads of slats across the nation.

Once in the pencil factory--$4,000,000 in machinery and building,

capital accumulated by thrifty and saving parents of mine--each slat

given eight grooves by a complex machine, after which another

leads in every other slat, applies glue, and places another slat

lead sandwich, so to speak. Seven brothers and I are mechanically

from this "wood- clinched'" sandwich.

My "lead'" itself--it contains no lead at all--is complex. The

mined in Ceylon. Consider these miners and those who make their many

and the makers of the paper sacks in which the graphite is shipped

who make the string that ties the sacks and those who put them

and those who make the ships. Even the lighthouse keepers along the

assisted in my birth--and the harbor pilots.

The graphite is mixed with clay from Mississippi in which ammonium

is used in the refining process. Then wetting agents are added such

sulfonated tallow--animal fats chemically reacted with sulfuric

passing through numerous machines, the mixture finally appears as

extrusions--as from a sausage grinder--cut to size, dried, and baked

several hours at 1,850 degrees Fahrenheit. To increase their

smoothness the leads are then treated with a hot mixture which

candelilla wax from Mexico, paraffin wax, and hydrogenated natural

My cedar receives six coats of lacquer. Do you know all the

lacquer? Who would think that the growers of castor beans and the

of castor oil are a part of it? They are. Why, even the processes by

the lacquer is made a beautiful yellow involves the skills of more

than one can enumerate!

Observe the labeling. That's a film formed by applying heat to

mixed with resins. How do you make resins and what, pray, is carbon

My bit of metal--the ferrule--is brass. Think of all the persons who

zinc and copper and those who have the skills to make shiny sheet

these products of nature. Those black rings on my ferrule are black

What is black nickel and how is it applied? The complete story of

center of my ferrule has no black nickel on it would take pages to

Then there's my crowning glory, inelegantly referred to in the trade

plug," the part man uses to erase the errors he makes with me. An

called "factice" is what does the erasing. It is a rubber-like

by reacting rape- seed oil from the Dutch East Indies with sulfur

Rubber, contrary to the common notion, is only for binding purposes.

too, there are numerous vulcanizing and accelerating agents. The

comes from Italy; and the pigment which gives "the plug" its color

cadmium sulfide.

No One Knows

Does anyone wish to challenge my earlier assertion that no single

the face of this earth knows how to make me?

Actually, millions of human beings have had a hand in my creation,

whom even knows more than a very few of the others. Now, you may say

go too far in relating the picker of a coffee berry in far off

food growers elsewhere to my creation; that this is an extreme

shall stand by my claim. There isn't a single person in all these

including the president of the pencil company, who contributes more

tiny, infinitesimal bit of know-how. From the standpoint of know-how

only difference between the miner of graphite in Ceylon and the

Oregon is in the type of know-how. Neither the miner nor the logger

dispensed with, any more than can the chemist at the factory or the

in the oil field--paraffin being a by-product of petroleum.

Here is an astounding fact: Neither the worker in the oil field nor

chemist nor the digger of graphite or clay nor any who mans or makes

ships or trains or trucks nor the one who runs the machine that does

knurling on my bit of metal nor the president of the company

singular task because he wants me. Each one wants me less, perhaps,

does a child in the first grade. Indeed, there are some among this

multitude who never saw a pencil nor would they know how to use one.

motivation is other than me. Perhaps it is something like this: Each

these millions sees that he can thus exchange his tiny know-how for

goods and services he needs or wants. I may or may not be among

No Master Mind

There is a fact still more astounding: The absence of a master mind,

anyone dictating or forcibly directing these countless actions which

me into being. No trace of such a person can be found. Instead, we

Invisible Hand at work. This is the mystery to which I earlier

It has been said that "'only God can make a tree.'" Why do we agree

this? Isn't it because we realize that we ourselves could not make

Indeed, can we even describe a tree? We cannot, except in

We can say, for instance, that a certain molecular configuration

itself as a tree. But what mind is there among men that could even

let alone direct, the constant changes in molecules that transpire

life span of a tree? Such a feat is utterly unthinkable!

I, Pencil, am a complex combination of miracles: a tree, zinc,

graphite, and so on. But to these miracles which manifest themselves

Nature an even more extraordinary miracle has been added: the

of creative human energies--millions of tiny know-hows

naturally and spontaneously in response to human necessity and

the absence of any human master-minding! Since only God can make a

insist that only God could make me. Man can no more direct these

know-hows to bring me into being than he can put molecules together

create a tree.

The above is what I meant when writing, "If you can become aware of

miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom

so unhappily losing." For, if one is aware that these know-hows

naturally, yes, automatically, arrange themselves into creative and
productive patterns in response to human necessity and demand--that

the absence of governmental or any other coercive master-minding ---

one will possess an absolutely essential ingredient for freedom: a

free people. Freedom is impossible without this faith.

Once government has had a monopoly of a creative activity such, for
instance, as the delivery of the mails, most individuals will

the mails could not be efficiently delivered by men acting freely.

is the reason: Each one acknowledges that he himself doesn't know

all the things incident to mail delivery. He also recognizes that no

individual could do it. These assumptions are correct. No

possesses enough know-how to perform a nation's mail delivery any

any individual possesses enough know-how to make a pencil. Now, in

absence of faith in free people --- in the unawareness that millions

know-hows would naturally and miraculously form and cooperate to

this necessity --- the individual cannot help but reach the

conclusion that mail can be delivered only by governmental

Testimony Galore

If I, Pencil, were the only item that could offer testimony on what

women can accomplish when free to try, then those with little faith

have a fair case. However, there is testimony galore; it's all about

on every hand. Mail delivery is exceedingly simple when compared,

instance, to the making of an automobile or a calculating machine or

combine or a milling machine or to tens of thousands of other

Delivery? Why, in this area where men have been left free to try,

deliver the human voice around the world in less than one second;

deliver an event visually and in motion to any person's home when it

happening; they deliver 150 passengers from Seattle to Baltimore in

than four hours; they deliver gas from Texas to one's range or

New York at unbelievably low rates and without subsidy; they deliver

four pounds of oil from the Persian Gulf to our Eastern Seaboard ---

around the world --- for less money than the government charges for
delivering a one-ounce letter across the street!

The lesson I have to teach is this: Leave all creative energies

Merely organize society to act in harmony with this lesson. Let

legal apparatus remove all obstacles the best it can. Permit these

know-hows freely to flow. Have faith that free men and women will

the Invisible Hand. This faith will be confirmed. I, Pencil,

simple though I am, offer the miracle of my creation as testimony

is a practical faith, as practical as the sun, the rain, a cedar

good earth.
----------------

Original here: http://209.217.49.168/vnews.php?nid=316