Lead-Pencil

a well known convenience used by accountants, mechanics, and artisans in laying out work and in writing on such materials as paper, wood, and leather. The so-called black lead of a pencil makes a mark like that of a slug of lead. It is not lead at all, but graphite, a form of carbon akin to coal and the diamond. The graphite of American lead-pencils comes chiefly from Ticonderoga, New York. It is pulverized thoroughly and sifted to remove coarse particles. It is then ground in water with a fine, gritless clay from Austria and Bohemia. The grinding continues for a week or two. The paste thus formed is forced through small holes or dies, coming out in soft, wire-shaped threads. These are cut into pieces the length of a lead pencil, and are heated for several hours in an oven at 2000 deg. F. to make dry, tough, and durable leads.

The wood in use is cedar from the swamps of Florida; 730,000 cubic feet are required annually. This cedar is cut into thin slats half the thickness of a pencil. They look much like shingles, only they are of uniform thickness. The slats are received in bales at the pencil factory where they are planed and grooved. The leads are laid in the grooves by hand. Two slats are then glued together and sawed into strips, each strip containing a lead. These strips are turned in a lathe, polished, varnished, stamped, cut smooth at the ends, and put up in proper bands and boxes for the trade. The rubber used for erasers comes chiefly from the forests of the Amazon, and is obtained by coagulating the sap of the rubber tree. Millions and millions of dollars are invested in mining and in shipping graphite and clay; in buying and refining rubber; in logging, sawing and carrying cedar; and in providing expensive mills, furnaces, and machinery for making pencils; and yet a complete pencil is sold not infrequently for a penny.

One of the large pencil companies, the Dixon of Jersey City, New Jersey, advertises 700 different kinds, shapes, and qualities, and spends $20,000 a year merely for gold used in stamping. All this is possible and reasonably profitable to the maker by reason of the enormous number of pencils made. The output of the one company mentioned is 50,000,000 pencils a year, enough, placed end to end, to reach 5,100 miles, or from Boston to San Francisco and back to Chicago again. This is only about one-fifth of the total output from American factories. The people of the United States use, whittle away and lose 315,000,000 pencils a year. The lead-pencil industry originated in Germany. Nuremberg is still a center of manufacture.

See Pen