Article from Good Housekeeping
(July 1894)
If it is true - and who doubts the correctness of the saying - that
"the pen is mightier than the sword" the claim may be justly made that
the pencil not only outnumbers both of these, but is more useful and
more used than the pen, and at once prettier, more peaceful and less
disastrous and destructive than the sword.
Before pencils were invented and used, goose quills did the work that
both of them are now appointed to do. There were lead pencils then;
something unknown at the present day, although the general speech of
the people is now as then of a lead pencil. But lead or no lead the
crude plummet and pencil of only two or three generations ago, has been
evaluted into the handy, useful and attractive looking pencil of
to-day; has gone the way of all the earth, with the wafer-box, in which
were stored the thin, round, red wafers with which we sealed our
letters; the more aristocratic stick of sealing wax; and the sand-box
that held the sand, then doing the service which the blotter pad does
now.
But it is the pencil of to-day that this paper is dealing with. In
order to treat the subject intelligently, we take for our object-lesson
text a representative establishment in this line of commercial traffic
- The Joseph Dixon Crucible Company, with works and general offices in
Jersey City. N, J. and Graphite mines and mills at Ticonderoga, N. Y.
We select this concern, as it is the oldest, largest and most
comprehensive representative of the industry of pencil making and
dealing in the world. Joseph Dixon, the founder of The Joseph Dixon
Crucible Company, was a native-born Yankee, having first seen daylight
at Marblehead, Mass. in the last year of the eighteenth century. His
greatest invention was that of the plumbago or black graphite crucible,
for reducing the finer metals, and he had also a wide and valuable
reputation as a manufacturer of Dixon's "carburet of iron" stove
polish. It is with a pencil that these lines are written, but
not a lead pencil, unless graphite may be called "lead" from its long
use in the manufacture of what are known as "lead" pencils. So are
thousands of other other sermons, addresses, editorials, reports,
business documents, political harangues, commercial memoranda, etc.,
and it is The Joseph Dixon Crucible Company's graphite pencils that are
doing the larger part of this world-wide work-day service, easily,
serviceably and satisfactorily. The graphite is mined at Ticonderoga.
N.Y. Here the Dixon Company has an immense water power, where Lake
George pours its waters into Lake Champlain, with a ninety-foot square
six-story building for the preparation of the graphite after mining.
The process of preparing the graphite is thus described in a booklet
recently issued under the title of "The History of the Lead Pencil:"
"The graphite is first reduced to an impalpable powder by grinding.
Water is then added, and the substance is run through mixers in a fluid
state, in order to combine with it whatever quantity of clay may be
necessary to give it the grade desired. The more clay, the harder the
lead, and vice-versa. After this mixing has been done, which is
performed entirely by machinery, the mass is taken from the mixers and
run through filter-presses in a war to exclude the water and reduce it
to a doughy consistency. In order to make the mixing still more
thorough, the doughy mass is then passed through dies, by which is
meant plates with numerous small perforations, under great pressure,
from which the lead - as it is called in deference to common
phraseology - issues in tiny rods or wires, in general appearance not
unlike the 1ead that is put into the pencil, but instead of being dry
and brittle, being still in a moist or soft condition. The material
receives this treatment repeatedly through dies with apertures of
different diameters, until finally, when the mixing has been
satisfactorily completed, and the mass is in proper condition, it is
passed through a set of dies of the exact diameter of the lead that is
to go into the pencil. Deft fingers take the product in this condition,
straighten out the leads, and cut them to lengths of about three feet.
At this stage it is still comparatively soft and pliable. After being
cut, the leads are allowed to dry, and are then cut to the required
pencil lengths and packed in crucibles and burned for several hours, in
order to extract the last degree of moisture that remains., and to
bring the lead to its final condition. The lead is now ready for
inserting in the wooden case."
The companion product for these graphite pencils, as fashioned and
formed for business purposes, is cedar wood, from which the wooden
cases are largely made. The source of this supply is Florida, and the
extinction of the supply of black walnut woods is being repeated in the
rapid wasting away of the once supposed to be inexhaustib1e supply of
cedar wood. So pronounced as this condition of affairs fast-becoming,
that some other source of supply will be found necessary at an early
day. The same authority above mentioned, gives the following
particulars regarding the handling of the cedar wood in preparation for
pencil cases, with a product of 30,000,000 pencils a year by The Joseph
Dixon Company alone.
"The cedar is shipped from Florida in small blocks or slabs, a little
longer than a pencil in length, a little wider than four or six pencils
in width, and of proper thickness. Notwithstanding it is carefully
assorted where milled out, the first treatment that it
receives when it reaches the Dixon pencil factory is careful selection
as to grade; and then follows the dyeing process, in case the wood is
to be colored, for certain grades of pencils, and the treatment which
takes out the essential oil, and last, but not least, the processes
which season it perfectly."
But as in the case of the destruction of the whale, and of the complete
abandonment of the whaling fields, when Pennsylvania first poured its
oceans of oil out of the earth, so will some other material be found
for the pencil wood, when the present source of supply has become
exhausted.
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country," and it may as surely, if
not patriotically, be said, where paper dwells, there is the pencil.
The connection between these sayings is in "the application on't." and
in recognition of the solemn fact that liberty would not be worth much
without paper, and the country, nowadays, of much account without the
pencil. The evolution of the old-time lead plummet, and the omnipresent
pencil of to-day may well furnish foundation material for a brief but
interesting, story illustrated with sketches of a schoolboy, and a
school-girl at well, with "plummet" and "ruler," drawing the lines for
a forthcoming writing lesson, on a sheet of foolscap paper; when the
scratchy tracing of a "gray goose quill" was all the sound we heard,"
save now and then the often dolefully and long-drawn exclamation of
"Master, please to mend my pen." Looking at the then and now of these
things, as it appears to us at present.. we have a dissolving view of
dropping easily from the ridiculous to the sublime, instead of "from
the sublime to the ridiculous," a more often quoted saying. The flat
plummet, in turn, was fashioned into a somewhat crude, oval-shaped
pencil, then into a round one, the slate pencil doubtless furnishing
the pattern or form to work from.
In brief, the plummet has gone, and is almost forgotten. The crude lead
pencil has been fashioned into comely, graceful shapes of graphite, at
once useful and ornamental, easy to handle, convenient to carry, often
poised on the ear, where it shou1d never be found; serviceable to the
household, counting room, restaurant, schoolroom, and domestic and
social as well as business life; the studio of the artist, the workshop
of the mechanic, and indoors and out, everywhere. With the pencil we
make memoranda of what we are to do, and records of what we have done;
with it we write our orders for the marketmen, and keep the run of
things in the home life; note down headings for sermons, speeches,
addresses and "talks;" put on paper suggestions, reminders, conclusions
and data of the times, of when and where we came into the world, what
we do while in the world, and make mention of what we are intending to
leave behind when we go out of the world. So on, and on. These are some
of the things we do with pencils, and after a recital of this bit of
history, the inquiry comes without effort, "What should we do without
the pencil?" If any wiseacre is wise enough to inform us, will he or
she please rise and "communicate."
Oft and often valuable improvements are the result of no special effort
or circumstance - are not "born," but, like Topsey, they "growed," and
came to maturity by means of the elements they fed upon. The pencil,
once a luxury, is now a necessity, and to-day is in every man's hand,
and every woman's pocket - whenever her pocket can be found - and on
every school teacher's and every child's school desk. Without it,
commercial life would be brought to a standstill; domestic doings would
be paralyzed, and social, political and religious circles and arenas
would be but barren fields of human activity.
The most gratifying feature of this pencil industry is the fact that
the American make is found vastly superior to the foreign or imported
article. The Dixon pencils were first introduced into our schools in
1872 and their superiority over those of other manufacturers has been
remembered during all the years that these school-day little ones have
been becoming "children of a larger growth," until it is only truth to
say, that not only everybody uses pencils, but that everybody uses the
Dixon American graphite pencil.
There is such a variety of these that time and space would fail to
enumerate them. In brief, there is the ordinary black pencil, the red
pencil, the blue pencil, the green pencil, the yellow pencil, the
terra- cotta pencil and the most dreaded of these among literary
contributors to journalism is the little blue pencil, which the editor
sometimes wields so unmercifully. There are soft, medium and hard
pencils, draughtmen's pencils, architects' and artists' pencils, lumber
pencils, black and colored crayons, prominently listed, to which many
other names might be added; all of the best quality of material and
finest make and finish.
The comprehensive finale of this story may best be told by a paraphrase of Leigh Hunt's "Abou Ben Adhem, something like
this:-
Abou Ben Adhem - may his
tribe increase! -
Awoke one night from a sweet dream of peace
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel, writing in a book of gold.
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the Presence in the room he said,
'What writest thou? And with what kind of pen?'
The Vision raised its head, and quickly then
Replied, 'With pencil, and the very best,
And the Dixon Graphite leads all the rest!'"
There is probably no illustration quite so humorous and catching as the
above, which has been for years a leading feature of the company's
advertisements, and, we suppose, indicates the pleasure of the coming,
men and women at having a pencil so satisfactory.
From Good
Housekeeping, published by Hearst Corp. (Jul
1894), pages 46-48.
(source)
Links:
- Today
in Science History web page
for Joseph Dixon's day
of birth, 18
Jan 1799.
