I, Pencil

*My official name is "Mongol 482." My many ingredients are assembled, fabricated, and fin ished by Eberhard Faber Pencil Company, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. grievous error in which mankind cannot too long persist without peril. For, the wise G. K. Chesterton ob served, "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 miracu lousness 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 automo bile 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 re691 692 THE FREEMAN November alized 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 im possible for me to name and explain all my antecedents. But I would like to suggest enough of them to im press 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 Cali fornia and Oregon. Now contem plate 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 drinkr The logs are shipped to a mill in San Leandro, California. Can you imagine the individuals who make flat cars and rails and railroad en gines and who construct and install the communication systems inci dental 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 mak ing 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? Sweep ers 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 hy1983 I, PENCIL 693 droplant 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 from Cali fornia to Wilkes-Barre! Complicated Machinery Once in the pencil factory $4,000,000 in machinery and build ing, all capital accumulated by thrifty and saving parents of mine -each slat is given eight grooves by a complex machine, after which an other 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 graph ite 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 light house keepers along the way as sisted in my birth-and the harbor pilots. The graphite is mixed with clay from Mississippi in which ammo nium hydroxide is used in the refin ing process. Then wetting agents are added such as sulfonated tallowanimal fats chemically reacted with sulfuric acid. After passing through numerous machines, the mixture fi nally appears as endless extru sionsas from a sausage grinder cut to size, dried, and baked for sev eral hours at 1,850 degrees Fahren heit. To increase their strength and smoothness the leads are then treated with a hot mixture which in cludes candelilla wax from Mexico, paraffin wax, and hydrogenated natural fats.

My cedar receives six coats of lac quer. Do you know all of the ingre dients 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 pro cesses by which the lacquer is made a beautiful yellow involves the skills of more persons than one can enu merate! 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 car bon 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.

694 THE FREEMAN November 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 bind ing purposes. Then, too, there are numerous vulcanizing and acceler ating agents. The pumice comes from Italy; and the pigment which gives "the plug" its color is cadmium sul fide. No One Knows Does anyone wish to challenge my earlier assertion that no single per son 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 ex treme 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, infin itesimal 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: Nei ther the worker in the oil field nor the chemist nor the digger of graph ite 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 com pany performs his singular task be cause 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 motiva tion is other than me. Perhaps it is something like this: Each of these millions sees that he can thus ex change his tiny know-how for the goods and services he needs or wants. I mayor may not be among these items.

No Master Mind There is a fact still more astound ing: The absence of a master mind, of anyone dictating or forcibly di recting 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 re ferred.

1983 I, PENCIL 695 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 superfi cial terms. We can say, for instance, that a certain molecular configura tion 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 unthink able! I, Pencil, am a complex combina tion of miracles: a tree, zinc, copper, graphite, and so on. But to these miracles which manifest themselves in Nature an even more extraordi nary miracle has been added: the configuration of creative human energies-millions oftiny know-hows configurating naturally and sponta neously in response to human neces sity 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 symbol ize, 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-mind ing-then one will possess an abso lutely essential ingredient for free dom: a faith in free men. Freedom is impossible without this faith. Once government has had a mo nopoly of a creative activity such, for instance, as the delivery of the mails, most individuals will believe that the mails could not be efficiently deliv ered by men acting freely. And here is the reason: Each one acknowl edges 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 individ ual 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 men-in the unawareness that mil lions of tiny know-hows would nat urally 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 govern mental "master-minding." TestimonyGalore IfI, Pencil, were the only item that could offer testimony on what men 696 THE FREEMAN can accomplish when free to try, then those with little faith would have a fair case. However, there is testi mony galore; it's all about us and on every hand. Mail delivery is exceed ingly simple when compared, for in stance, to the making of an automo bile 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 Balti more in less than four hours; they deliver gas from Texas to one's range or furnace in New York at unbeliev ably low rates and without subsidy; they deliver each four pounds of oil from the Persian Gulf to our East ern Seaboard-halfway around the world-for less money than the gov ernment charges for delivering a one ounce letter across the street!

The lesson I have to teach is this: Leave all creative energies uninhib ited. Merely organize society to act in harmony with this lesson. Let so ciety's legal apparatus remove all obstacles the best it can. Permit these creative know-hows freely to flow. Have faith that free men will re spond to the Invisible Hand. This faith will be confirmed. I, Pencil, seemingly simple though I am, offer the miracle of my creation as testi mony that this is a practical faith, as practical as the sun, the rain, a cedar tree, the good earth. i IDEAS ON LIBERTY The Invisible Hand By directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain .... He is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. . . . By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.

ADAM SMITH,The Wealth ofNations On Improving the World A FRIEND OF oURs-call him John born at the turn of the century, was associated with big affairs as far back as college days. A natural leader , he became president of one of the coun try's most successful corporations during the early thirties. Devoted to private enterprise, he saw sooner than most men the fal lacies in NIRA and a host of other political interventions. And he ac tively participated in program after program to alter the country's lunge into political, social, and financial disaster. He contributed generously to plans designed to educate "the masses who had the votes. " Yet, nothing seemed to come of all this. John served as a director of-and helped finance-all sorts of business First published in 1960. organizations which passed resolu tions strongly condemning inter ventionist policy. But no one, least of all those in political power, ap peared to be moved by these criti cisms.