Writing Essays
Remarks before the 14th Annual High School Essay Contest luncheon
Dallas Fed
May 12, 2004

Congratulations to all of you—the top 10 finalists out of 232 submissions in the Dallas Fed’s high school essay contest. I really don’t know what to make of all of you being of the female persuasion. Do you think girls are smarter? Or just better students? I’ve given this some thought over the years. I graduated third in my high school class, behind Sheridan Thompson and Winnie Jenkins. I think maybe we should have separate categories for boys and girls.

I recall being in at least one essay contest in high school. It was a bit different from this one. We went to the district contest in Rome, Georgia; I don’t recall whether it was at Berry College or Shorter. But they wrote several possible topics on the blackboard, and we had to choose one and write our essay right there on the spot. With the clock running. The good part was they gave us some topics to choose from. The bad part was that someone could have had a stroke on the spot.

That almost happened in one of my high school debates. One of our opponents fainted dead away and required a wet rag to the forehead. I was glad for the recovery, but I thought a disqualification might have been in order. Something like a delay of game penalty.

I have some good news and some bad news for you. The bad news first: It’s not over. You’ll be writing essays for the rest of your life. Get used to it. Some of your essays may be called essays. But most will be called presentations, reports, speeches, briefs, etc. But they are all essays under the covers. The good news is that you must already be pretty good at it, or you wouldn’t be here.

The nature of work has been changing in our economy. It’s been changing since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, although the change may have speeded up lately. People never seem to learn to look at the big picture, which would help them anticipate the change and prepare for it. Or at least not be too surprised by it.

Let’s take a big-picture look. Let’s go back in time—say, to 1776, to pick a date at random. What two historic essays were written in 1776? Right. The short essay was the Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson. The longer essay was the Wealth of Nations, written by Adam Smith.

Both those essays were written about individual liberty, or freedom—political freedom and economic freedom. You can’t really have one without the other. China in the next few years will tell us how much economic freedom is possible without political freedom. But that’s another story, another essay. This essay is about the changing nature of work.

Don’t hold me to these numbers, but I think that in 1776 about 90 percent or more of our citizens were farmers. They were needed on the farm to grow food. The Industrial Revolution was still new in Britain and was newer still in this country.

But already, manufacturing was growing in both countries. And the fraction of jobs that were farm jobs was already beginning to decline even while farm output grew rapidly because of increases in productivity. Fast-forward to today, and we find only about 2 percent of our workforce on the farm, growing more food than ever.

As the percentage of farm jobs declined over the decades, the percentage of manufacturing jobs increased, along with an even faster increase in manufacturing output, also driven by rapid productivity growth. Manufacturing jobs, as a percentage of the total, peaked shortly after World War II, but manufacturing output continued to grow rapidly. Only recently, during the recession and the sluggish recovery, did the number of manufacturing jobs decline in absolute terms, although they have begun to grow again.

As the percentage of farm jobs, and later manufacturing jobs, declined, what kind of jobs took their place? Exactly—jobs in the service sector. What do people in the service sector do? Right. They write essays. But they don’t just write essays. With the exception of professional writers, journalists, college professors, lawyers and so forth, most people in the service sector do work other than writing. But writing is a big part of what they do. And speaking. Writing usually comes before speaking, and speaking starts with writing. You might even define writing as deliberate thinking—thinking on purpose.

While other aspects of service sector work may change and evolve over time, I can’t imagine that the ability to think, speak and write well ever become anything less than the core of whatever it is that you’ll be doing for a living. And living for doing. These talents—and crafts, if you will—will remain key components of success. That won’t change much. I promise.

I don’t know precisely what your jobs will be, but since you are the cream of the high school crop this year, and since you all have the good sense to go on to college, I know some things as a virtual certainty: You won’t do manual labor for a living. You won’t work in the mud. You will use your minds. Your jobs will require thinking, imagination and creativity.

Software will continue to do a larger and larger share of formulaic, or thinking, jobs. Big Blue even beat the world’s foremost chess player. John Henry, the steel-driving man, finally lost out to the steam engine. And Texas blues singer Delbert McClinton has a song describing his attempted transition from manual labor. Because he needed money, honey, he said he had to get a job using his mind.

So whether you like it or not, one way or another, you will be writing essays for the rest of your life. You will keep getting better at it, but you won’t necessarily get rich at it. But you won’t get poor either.

With that in mind, allow me to presume to offer you a few observations and suggestions. Become a student of good writing. Be on the lookout for it. Read a lot, of course, and highlight the good lines, the good advice, the well-turned phrase. Tear the good articles out of magazines and keep them. Dog-ear your books and go back often to see why.

As you begin to develop a personality over the years—you obviously have no personality now; you’re too young—you will begin to develop your own writing style. Go with it. Find writers with a similar style and see what you can learn from them. Keep a journal. Write in it often. Turn your life experiences into stories.

Don’t worry too much about originality and creativity. You are unique. There are no others like you. Anything you decide to care about and write about will be original because no one else will see the same thing from your vantage point. Collect great lines and use them.

Some of my favorite lines come from country music, especially Texas country. How could you not be inspired by Lyle Lovett lines? Lines like, “The preacher asked her. And she said I do. The preacher asked me. And she said, he does too.”

Rick Bragg is one of my favorite writers. The topic of his books—his mama and her daddy—aren’t very interesting to me. But I read them for the great writing. I was going to lend someone his All Over but the Shoutin’, and on the off chance that I wouldn’t get it back, I copied many of the underlined passages so I wouldn’t lose them. If gender matters to you ladies, I feel the same way about Peggy Noonan. I once went to her book signing and bought a book I already owned to get her to sign it. My wife went along to keep an eye on me. Her mama didn’t raise no fool.

In introducing me, Sherry mentioned the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? She told how I interpreted it for an audience in Mexico City as a movie about fixed exchange rates. Three escapees from the chain gang running down the road. None could go faster than the slowest runner. When one fell, they all fell. They were even pursuing a pot of gold—at least two of them thought so. Sherry said that my interpretation of that movie inspired her to give you the challenge of finding economic principles in non-economic writing.

Well, I’m flattered. But let me tell you something embarrassing. I had it pointed out to me later that the movie was a takeoff on The Odyssey. It even had the one-eyed giant in it. I didn’t notice that, I’m embarrassed to say. It went right by me. But do you know something? If I had gotten that, I probably would not have come up with my own version. My creativity was aided by my ignorance—probably not for the first time.

So there you have it. You can benefit from your wisdom. You can benefit from your ignorance. You can win either way. So keep writing them essays!

About the Author McTeer is president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.