I, Pencil: My Family Tree as Told to Leonard E. Read, commonly known as I, Pencil, is an essay by Leonard Read and it was first published in the December 1958 issue of The Freeman.[1]
"I, Pencil" is written in the first person from the point of view of a pencil. The pencil details the complexity of its own creation, listing its components (cedar, lacquer, graphite, ferrule, factice, pumice, wax, glue) and the numerous people involved, down to the sweeper in the factory and the lighthouse keeper guiding the shipment into port.
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.
... 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 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", 2008 edition
It was reprinted in The Freeman in May 1996 and as a pamphlet entitled "I... Pencil" in May 1998. In the reprint, Milton Friedman wrote the introduction and Donald J. Boudreaux wrote the afterword.[2] Friedman used the essay in his 1980 PBS television show Free to Choose[3] and the accompanying book of the same name.[4] In the 2008 50th Anniversary Edition, the introduction is written by Lawrence W. Reed and Friedman wrote the afterword.[5]
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I, Pencil by Leonard Read - Part 1/2
Transcription
The basic principles underlying the free market, as Adam Smith taught them to his students in this university, are really very simple. Look at this lead pencil. There is not a single person in the world who could make this pencil. Remarkable statement? Not at all. The wood from which it's made, for all I know, comes from a tree that was cut down in the State of Washington. To cut down that tree, it took a saw. To make the saw, it took steel. To make the steel, it took iron ore. This black center, we call it lead but it's really graphite, compressed graphite, I’m not sure where it comes from, but I think it comes from some mines in South America. This red top up here, the eraser, a bit of rubber, probably comes from Malaya, where the rubber tree isn't even native. It was imported from South America by some businessmen with the help of the British government. This brass feral--I haven't the slightest idea where it came from, or the yellow paint, or the paint that made the black lines, or the glue that holds it together. Literally thousands of people cooperated to make this pencil, people who don't speak the same language, who practice different religions, who might hate one another if they ever met. When you go down to the store and buy this pencil, you are in effect, trading a few minutes of your time for a few seconds of the time of all of those thousands of people. What brought them together and induced them to cooperate to make this pencil? There was no commissar sending out offices, sending out orders from some central office. It was the magic of the price system, the impersonal operation of prices that brought them together, and got them to cooperate to make this pencil so that you could have it for a trifling sum. That is why the operation of the free market is so essential, not only to promote productive efficiency, but, even more, to foster harmony and peace among the peoples of the world.
References
- ^ Read, Leonard E. (December 1958). "My Family Tree as told to Leonard E. Read". The Freeman. 8: 32–37.
- ^ Read, Leonard E. I, Pencil: My Family Tree as told to Leonard E. Read. Introduction by Milton Friedman, Afterward by Donald J. Boudreaux (1998 ed.). Irvington-on-Hudson, NY: Foundation for Economic Education. ISBN 1-57246-209-4. OCLC 271625357.
- ^ Miltimore, Jon; Jacobsen, Peter; Lorenc, Richard N. (30 October 2020). "10 of the Best Moments Ever on 'Free to Choose'". FEE Stories. Retrieved 23 November 2022.
- ^ Friedman, Milton; Friedman, Rose (1990). Free To Choose: A Personal Statement. HarperCollins. p. 12. ISBN 978-0-547-53975-1.
- ^ Read, Leonard E. (1958). I, Pencil: My Family Tree as Told to Leonard E. Read (PDF). Introduction by Lawrence W. Reed, Afterword by Milton Friedman (50th Anniversary, 2008 ed.). Irvington-on-Hudson, NY: Foundation for Economic Education. ISBN 1-57246-209-4. OCLC 271625357.
Further reading
- Glickman, Lawrence B. (2019). Free Enterprise: An American History. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-23825-9.
External links
- I, Pencil, first edition version (1964), provided by Mises Institute
- Free to Choose: Power of the Market – The Pencil, PBS television show episode with Milton Friedman
This page was last edited on 11 February 2024, at 18:54