Nov

24

The world in your breakfast

November 24, 2025 |

An earlier and more illuminating version of I, Pencil from The Marvels of Modern Industry by William Norman Mitchell 1940:

Have you ever thought of all the work and plans and endless pains in far distant places which were necessary to supply so simple a thing as your breakfast? If you have, you doubtless found that even to enumerate these services constituted a lesson in world geography. There were, perhaps, grapefruit from Texas, sugar from Cuba, syrup from Vermont, toast made from flour milled in Buffalo, possibly from wheat from the valley of the Red River of the North. Butter and cream came from Wisconsin farms, bacon from Iowa, and coffee from distant Brazil. If you looked farther you may have found that this simple meal was served with plates of Bavarian make, on a cloth which was the product of Belgian skill, covering a table fashioned in Carolina hills from Honduras wood, with varnished finish made from gum brought from Algiers. Fork and spoon came from New England where they were fashioned from silver from Nevada's mines, while the knife blade possibly was made of Sheffield steel from iron ore mined in Sweden or war-torn Spain, and by its silvery and stainless sheen indicated that it had drawn upon the nickel from Canadian mines and the chromites of Rhodesian Veldts. And so on, in ever widening spread, until the whole world is drawn into a tangled web and bound on the common mission of serving you your breakfast!

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