I, Pencil: My Family Tree as Told to Leonard E. Read

“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.”

Read wants the reader to stop taking for granted not just the existence of the pencil, but the process through which it was produced. A pencil is a simple, everyday object, but its supply chain is anything but simple, requiring the assembled know-hows of countless individuals around the globe. He wants the reader to respect “the Invisible Hand” that assembles these know-hows.

“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 miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind is so unhappily losing.”

No individual could possibly assemble all of these know-hows on their own; this is what Read means when he says that no reader is capable of “understanding” the pencil. The pencil symbolizes the “miraculousness” of “the Invisible Hand,” and people need to understand its logic to avoid the erroneous belief in the necessity of government intervention. The “freedom mankind is so unhappily losing” is the individual’s freedom to make economic decisions without government interference.

“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, because I am seemingly so simple. // Simple? Yet, not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me.”

Read is again emphasizing that even the simplest commodity is the product of a complex, geographically dispersed supply chain. He maintains that it is beyond the capacity of any single individual to efficiently manage the entire chain. This concept develops the theme of The Advantages of