Title: I, Pencil

Author: Leonard E. Read

Genre: Free Markets

Published: 2006; Original 1958

Format: eBook; 41 pages

This is the family tree story of a pencil as told by the pencil.  Well at least from the point of view of an ordinary wood and lead pencil.  Actually it is a lesson in economics.  Specifically the wonders of the free market.  The invisible hand in Adam Smith’s Wealth Of Nations.  It demonstrates how the price system coordinates labor of all kinds and in all parts of the world.  This is spontaneous order.  There was no top down government plan to make pencils.  Yet we have millions of the inexpensive, reliable pencils year after year.  No single person on earth knows how to make a pencil from the earth’s raw materials.  This story demonstrates how the division of labor leads to great prosperity for the masses.

The pencil starts with a supply chain of cedar trees from Oregon, the heavy equipment involved which required such things as mining and smelting.   Then off to a mill in California on rail cars.  The pencil reminds us of all the capital equipment involved in each task.  And of the skilled labor.  Don’t forget the power.  Other supply chains start or go through Mississippi, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Mexico, Brazil, Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), and oil fields.  Very few of these diverse, skilled people know of each other.

Through the point of view of the pencil is a testimony of what men and women can accomplish when free to try.  The lesson from this book is to leave creative energies uninhibited.

This is a classic and innovative economics book written for non-economists.  There is no math, LOL.  It’s very appropriate for teenagers on up.  I read it on my lunch hour in 2015.  I had also read it years ago.  When four of my grand kids visited me in 2015 we took turns reading it to each other.  It’s inexpensive.  Get your copy from http://www.fee.org now.

Yours in Liberty, Thomas Freese