A family trip took us to Hocking Hills State Park in Ohio. We hiked a few caves and trails, but heavy rain sent us indoors for most of an afternoon.
Which is how we discovered the Paul A. Johnson Pencil Sharpener Museum in Logan. With 5,000 unique items, this museum is the first, largest and only pencil sharpener museum in the world.
The story goes like this: Rev. Paul Johnson retired in 1988. His wife, Charlotte, decided he needed a hobby, so she bought him two metal pencil sharpeners and thereby triggered a 20-year effort. After Paul’s death, Charlotte entrusted the collection to the Hocking Hills Regional Welcome Center, where tourists like me could enjoy it.
Enjoy it we did. Shelf after shelf of antique pencil sharpeners, featuring U.S. presidents, superheroes, famous landmarks like the Liberty Bell and the Mackinac Bridge, animals and aliens.
The collection reminded me of the classic essay “I, Pencil” by Leonard E. Read.
Read founded the Foundation for Economic Education in 1946. As one of the first free-market think tanks in the United States, FEE fostered strong associations with heavyweight economists and authors such as F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman.
Read’s essay “I, Pencil,” which he wrote in 1958, tells the story of a pencil’s family tree and its manufacturing process.
The story illustrates the beauty of voluntary cooperation in a market economy. No one person can create an object even as simple as an everyday pencil. A pencil requires components from around the world — cedar from Oregon, graphite from Sri Lanka, rubber from Indonesia, lacquer, wax and a brass ferrule. When you factor in the loggers, millworkers, transportation and suppliers, millions of people are involved in creating every pencil you’ve ever used.
No mastermind in a government agency ordered the production or coordinated the manufacturing process from on high. Rather, countless transactions worked together to assemble the materials, fashion them into an elegant writing instrument and bring the pencil to market. That simple pencil is a quiet rebuke of the government regulators who believe they can engineer society to their preferred outcomes.
Incidentally, “I, Pencil” enjoys several Michigan connections. Its author, Leonard Read, was born and raised in Michigan. In 2008, Larry Reed, the Mackinac Center’s first president, became president of FEE. Larry wrote the introduction to the 50th edition of “I, Pencil” and has helped promote the essay to generations of students.
Just as it took millions of people to deliver a pencil to a schoolchild’s desk, no one can singlehandedly change public policy. Every policy victory depends on thousands of people who talk to lawmakers, educate their neighbors and support organizations like the Mackinac Center. It takes multiple tools to turn ideas into law: solid research, communications strategy, coalitions of allies, legislative champions and lawyers to defend the law after passage. That’s why the Mackinac Center exists. Thank you for your support.
I don’t know if Paul Johnson ever read “I, Pencil,” but I sent a copy to his museum just the same.
