I, Pencil; L. E. Read

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 under stand 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 un happily 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, be cause I am seemingly so simple.

Simple? Yet, not a single person on the Leonard E. Read (1898-1983) founded FEE in 1946 and served as its president until his death. "I, Pencil," his most famous essay, was first published in the December 1958 issue of The Freeman. 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 complex ity 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 *My official name is "Mongol 482." My many ingredients are assembled, fabricated, and fin ished by Eberhard Faber Pencil Company.

274 275 L eonard Read's delightful story, "I, Pencil," has become a classic, and deservedly so. I know of no other piece of literature that so succinctly, persuasively, and effectively illustrates the meaning of both Adam Smith's invisible hand-the possibility of cooperation without coercion-and Friedrich Hayek's emphasis on the importance of dispersed knowledge and the role of the price systemin communicating information that "will make the individuals do the desirable things without anyone having to tell them what to do." We used leonard's story in our television show, "Free to Choose," and in the accompanying book of the same title to illustrate "the power of the market" (the title of both the first segment of the TV show and of chapter one of th~ book). We summarized the story and then went on to say: "None of the thousands of persons involved in producing the pencil performed his task because he wanted a pencil. Some among them never saw a pencil and would not know what it is for. Each saw his work as a way to get the goods and services he wanted-goods and serviceswe produced in order to get the pencil we wanted. Every time we go to the store and buy a pencil, we are exchanging a little bit of our services for the infinitesimal amount of services that each of the thousands contributed toward producing the pencil.

"It is even more astounding that the pencil was ever produced. No one sitting in a central office gave orders to these thousands of people. No military police enforced the orders that were not given. These people live in many lands, speak different languages, practice different religions, may even hate one another-yet none of these differences prevented them from cooperating to produce a pencil. How did it happen? Adam Smith gave us the answer two hundred years ago." "I, Pencil" is a typical leonard Read product: imaginative, simple yet subtle, breathing the love of freedom that imbued everything leonard wrote or did. As in the rest of his work, he was not trying to tell people what to do or how to conduct themselves.He was simply trying to enhance individuals' understanding of themselves and of the system they live in. That was his basic credo and one that he stuck to consistently during his long period of service to the public-not public service in the sense of government service.

Whatever the pressure, he stuck to his guns, refusing to compromise his principles. That was why he was so effective in keeping alive, in the early days, and then spreading the basic idea that human freedom required private property, free competition, and severely limited government. It is a tribute to his foresight, persistence, and sound understanding of the basis for a free society, that FEE, the institution he established and on which he lavished such loving care, is able to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. -MIllon Friedman Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution persons had a hand in every cup of coffeethe 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 276 THE FREEMAN • MAY 1996 on their faces. People prefer that I look pretty, not a pallid white. The slats are waxed and kilndried 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 Com pany 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,OOO,000in machinery and building, all capital accumu lated 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 refiningprocess. Then wetting agents are added such as sulfonated tal low-animal fats chemically reacted with sulfuric acid. After passing through numer ous 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 smooth ness 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 filmformed 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 prod ucts 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, inele gantly referred to in the trade as "the plug,"

the part man uses to erase the errors he makes with me. An ingredient called "fac tice" 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 pur poses. Then, too, there are numerous vul canizing and accelerating agents. The pum ice 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 singleperson 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 com pany, 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 byproduct of petroleum.

Here is an astounding fact: Neither the worker in the oil fieldnor 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 mayor may not be among these items. No Master Mind There is a fact still more astounding: The absence of a master mind, of anyone dictat ing 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 tran spire in the life span of a tree? Such a feat is utterly unthinkable! "I, PEN elL" 277 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 extraor dinary miracle has been added: the config uration of creative human energies-mil lions of tiny know-hows configurating naturally and spontaneously in response to human necessity and desire and in the ab sence 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 miracu lousness 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, automati cally, arrange themselves into creative and productive patterns in response to human necessity and demand-that is, in the ab sence of governmental or any other coercive master-minding-then one will possess an absolutely essential ingredient for freedom: afaith infree 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 acknowl edges that he himself doesn't know how to do all the things incident to mail delivery.

He also recognizes that no other individ ual could do it. These assumptions are correct. No individual possesses enough know-how to perform a nation's mail deliv ery any more than any individual possesses enough know-how to make a pencil. Now, in the absence of faith in free peoplein the unawareness that millions of tiny know hows would naturally and miraculously form and cooperate to satisfy this necessi ty-the individual cannot help but reach the erroneous conclusion that mail can be delivered only by governmental "master minding."

278 THE FREEMAN • MAY 1996 TestimonyGalore 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 de livery is exceedingly simple when com pared, 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. Deliv ery? 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 passen gers 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 sub sidy; they deliver each four pounds of oil from the Persian Gulf to our Eastern Sea board-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. 0 THEFREEMAN IDEASON UBERTY Education and the Free Society by George Roche O n the verge of a new century, one of the most important questions we must ask ourselves is: "On what does the free society depend?" There are, of course, many an swers, but I would offer this one: The free society depends on successive generations of citizens who understand what freedom is all about and who are willing and able to defend it. But today our young people are growing up in an environment that is, at best, lukewarm and, at worst, hostile to ward the basic precepts that have served as the foundation ofour nation and the bedrock of our civil liberties .