Leonard E Read - I, Pencil (1958)
Leonard E Read - I, Pencil (1958)
Leonard E Read - I, Pencil (1958)
I, Pencil
My Family Tree
as Told to
Leonard E. Read
Walter E. Williams
John M. Olin Distinguished Professor
of Economics
George Mason University
Michelle Malkin
Syndicated columnist
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I, Pencil
My Family Tree as Told to
Leonard E. Read
Introduction
B Y L AW R E N C E W. R E E D
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I, Pencil
BY LEONARD E. READ
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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 inciden-
tal 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
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No One Knows
Does anyone wish to challenge my ear-
lier 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 posi-
tion. 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 dis-
pensed 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 sin-
gular 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.
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No Master Mind
There is a fact still more astounding:
The absence of a master mind, of anyone
dictating or forcibly directing these count-
less 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 super-
ficial 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 masterminding!
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 writ-
ing, “If you can become aware of the mirac-
ulousness 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
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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 deliv-
ery 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?
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Afterword
B Y M I LT O N F R I E D M A N
Nobel Laureate, 1976
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