El Avance del Trabajo Final

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RP.11

Don't overlook the ancestors present and distant who have a hand in transporting sixty carloads (full freight cars) of slats across the nation.

RP.12

Once in the pencil factory—$4,000,000 in machinery and building, all capital accumulated by thrifty (careful economic planning) and saving parents of mine—each slat is given eight grooves (long narrow cuts in the slats) by a complex machine, after which another machine lays leads in every other (every second) slat, applies glue, and places another slat (without lead) atop—a lead sandwich, so to speak. Seven brothers and I are mechanically carved from this "wood-clinched" sandwich.

RP.13

My "lead" itself—it contains no lead at all—is complex. The graphite (a soft carbon that is often called lead but really isn’t lead) is mined in Ceylon (an island nation south of India known today as Sri Lanka). Consider these miners and those who make their many tools and the makers of the paper sacks (bags) in which the graphite is shipped and those who make the string that ties the sacks and those who put them aboard ships and those who make the ships. Even the lighthouse keepers along the way assisted in my birth—and the harbor pilots.

RP.14

The graphite is mixed with clay from Mississippi in which ammonium hydroxide (the chemical NH4OH) is used in the refining process. Then wetting agents are added such as sulfonated tallow (animal fats chemically reacted with sulfuric acid). After passing through numerous machines, the mixture (combined elements) finally appears as endless extrusions (as from a sausage grinder) cut to size, dried, and baked for several hours at 1,850 degrees Fahrenheit. To increase their strength and smoothness the leads are then treated (covered or coated) with a hot mixture which includes candelilla wax from Mexico, paraffin (substance made from petroleum used in making candles, sealers, etc.) wax, and hydrogenated natural fats.

RP.15

My cedar receives six coats (layers) of lacquer. Do you know all the ingredients of lacquer? Who would think that the growers of castor beans (from the castor-oil plant) and the refiners of castor oil are a part of it? They are. Why, even the processes by which the lacquer is made a beautiful yellow involve the skills of more persons than one (anyone) can enumerate (mention or count)!

RP.16

Observe the labeling (printed letters). That's a film (very thin layer or coat) formed by applying heat to carbon black mixed with resins (organic substances used in making lacquer and varnish). How do you make resins and what, pray, is carbon black?

RP.17

My bit of metal—the ferrule (short ring of metal)—is brass (a zinc and copper alloy). Think of all the persons who mine zinc and copper and those who have the skills to make shiny (bright) sheet (thin flat slab) brass from these products of nature. Those black rings on my ferrule are black nickel (Ni2O3). What is black nickel and how is it applied? The complete story of why the center of my ferrule has no black nickel on it would take pages to explain!

Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo

Specialized English (for economists) IV

Professor Ty Hadman

RP.18

Then there's my crowning glory, inelegantly referred to in the trade as "the plug," the part man uses to erase the errors he makes with me. An ingredient called "factice" is what does the erasing. It is a rubber-like product made by reacting rape-seed oil from the Dutch East Indies with sulfur chloride (SCl). Rubber, contrary to the common notion (belief), is only for binding (to hold things together) purposes. Then too, there are numerous vulcanizing (to treat rubber with sulfur and heat to give greater strength, elasticity, and durability) and accelerating agents. The pumice (porous volcanic glass or stone used to rub things smooth, such as an eraser does) comes from Italy; and the pigment (coloring agent) which gives "the plug" its color (light orange) is cadmium sulfide (CdS).

No One Knows

RP.19

Does anyone wish to challenge (dispute or argue with) my earlier assertion (claim) that no single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me?

RP.20

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 (exaggerate) in relating the picker of a coffee berry (bean) in far off Brazil and food growers elsewhere to my creation; that this is an extreme position. 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 (how to do produce something technically and technologically). 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 dispensed with (eliminated from the process), any more than can the chemist at the factory or the worker in the oil field—paraffin being a by-product of petroleum.

RP.21

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 (operates) or makes the ships or trains or trucks nor the one who runs the machine that does the knurling (the ferrule knob) on my bit of metal nor the president of the company performs his singular task (specific job) because he wants me. Each one wants me less, perhaps, than does a child in the first grade. Indeed, there are some workers 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 of people sees (understands) 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.

No Master Mind

RP.22

There is a fact still more astounding: the absence of a master mind (no centralized