Franklin, Benjamin

Benjamin (1706-1790), an eminent American. He was the youngest of seventeen children. His father was a Boston candlemaker. Both sides of the family sprang from English stock noted for good habits and common sense.

It was desired to educate Benjamin for the ministry, but family circumstances forbade. After two short years of schooling he was taught to make candles. He employed his leisure in playing ball, in fishing, and in reading such books as Pilgrim's Progress and Plutarch's Lives. At his father's suggestion he took Addison's essays in the Spectator as a literary model. He read an essay, then laid it by for a short time, and endeavored to reproduce it. By comparing his effort with the original essay he was able to note the superiority of Addison's style. An older brother was the publisher of the New England Courant. Franklin amused himself by writing essays in the Spectator style on such themes as Widows, Boston at Night, Poetry in New England, and Match Making. These he slipped under the door of his brother's printing office. He had the pleasure of seeing himself in print and of hearing the family comments made in utter ignorance of the fact that the writer was one of their own circle.

Fearing later an inclination to go to sea, Franklin's father bound him as an apprentice to this older brother for a term of years. Benjamin remained in the office long enough to learn his trade thoroughly, but differences of opinion arising, he ran away to Philadelphia. Here he landed with scarce money enough to maintain himself a week. His first meal was made of dry rolls of bread, which he munched as he went along the streets looking for work. His future wife, then a young girl standing in her father's door, remembered laughing heartily at the figure he cut. The incidents of his youth and his early struggles in establishing himself in the printing business in Philadelphia are told in his autobiography, one of the best books for boys ever written.

Franklin is considered by many our most eminent American. Though descended from ordinary working people, he was a firm believer in the adage that "a plowman on his legs is higher than a nobleman on his knees." He inherited a clear mind, a strong body, and excellent habits. When others dawdled, he worked; where others wasted, he saved; while others idled, he read. At first he worked for wages; afterward he opened a printing office of his own. Rather than disappoint a customer he would work all night. He was not above taking his printing paper to his office in a wheelbarrow. He became known speedily as the most accurate, prompt, and capable printer in the colonies. Public printing was brought to him, yielding a large revenue.

Few men have worked harder to make their own fortunes; few men have been more anxious to help their fellows to rise. For many years he owned and published the Pennsylvania Gazette. During his management it circulated from Maine to Georgia, and was the most influential newspaper in the colonies. He made it the vehicle of his thoughts on politics, business, education, thrift, economy, methods of farming, and all those homely topics that endear a family newspaper to the husbandman and housewife.

At the beginning of 1733 he embarked in the publication of what has become known as Poor Richard's Almanac. It was a small annual pamphlet filled with the usual information as to the days of the month, eclipses, and the like. It contained weather predictions and was preceded always by a preface, a sort of humorous introduction, dealing with such topics as The Bachelor's Folly, The Parson's Wine, Conjugal Debate, Men and Melons, etc. The distinguishing feature of the Almanac, however, was a budget of homely proverbs. Some of these were original. Others were borrowed from various literatures. Here are a few of them:

In the day when the Bible was often the only book in the house, the arrival of a new number of Poor Richard's Almanac was an event. The jokes and proverbs were read and discussed and laughed over. They entered deeply into the thought of the people, and contributed not a little to the shrewd, hard-headed way of looking at life for which the early colonists were noted. The old numbers were hung up by the fireplace. Franklin sold about 10,000 copies a year. Originally the Almanac sold for a few pence. The few, well thumbed, smoke-begrimed copies now preserved in eastern libraries are above price.

When he had acquired a competence Franklin retired from business. He devoted himself henceforth to his studies and to public life. He was clerk of the Pennsylvania Assembly, postmaster of Philadelphia, and deputy-postmaster-general for the British colonies. He was twice sent to England to transact business for Pennsylvania with the heirs of William Penn and with Parliament. He was a member of the Second Continental Congress, and was one of the committee of five chosen by Congress in 1776 to draw up the Declaration of Independence. During the Revolutionary War he resided as ambassador at Paris and was one of the commissioners who drew up the treaty of peace at its conclusion. The aid given the American cause by France was due not a little to Franklin. On his return to Philadelphia he was made president of the executive council of the state. He was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787. His is the only American name that appears on all four of the great documents connected with the American Revolution: the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Alliance with France, the Treaty of Peace with Great Britain, and the Constitution of the United States.

Though his long and busy life was filled to the full with business and politics, Franklin yet found time to take a deep interest in the scientific investigations of the day. Philadelphia was the center of American scientific thought. The Quakers were more tolerant of scientific ideas than were the Puritans of New England. Bartram's botanical garden on the Schuylkill, now a pleasure park of Philadelphia, was famed in Europe. Dr. Rush was the most eminent medical man on this side of the Atlantic. Rittenhouse and others had attracted attention by scientific papers and experiments. By sending up a kite during a thunder storm, Franklin established the identity of lightning and electricity. He showed that the cloud and the earth act like the two coatings of a Leyden jar. He invented the lightning rod. Though blamed by the clergy of the day for toying profanely with the lightning of the Lord, he won reputation at home and abroad. He was made a docter of laws at Oxford, a member of the Royal Society of England, and was admitted to the French Academy.

Franklin was an inventive man. He would have made an excellent machinist. His name is connected with an astonishing number of practical inventions. He devised a remedy for smoky chimneys; invented the Franklin stove; improved the printing press; told sailors how to better the rigging of their ships; introduced practical improvements in carriage wheels and windmills. He might have made a fortune by patenting his various inventions, but always refused to do so.

While abroad he busied himself sending home seeds, roots, and cuttings that he thought might be of advantage to the American gardener. He established the American Philosophical Society and the University of Pennsylvania. The city of Philadelphia owes him much. He set on foot a public library. As a citizen he was active in the matter of pavements, street crossings, the establishment of a fire company and of a police force. If we trace our public libraries, our magazines, and our postal service, to their beginnings, they will be found to have emanated from the active mind of Benjamin Franklin.

Though he lived to the age of eighty-four, we may believe readily he never knew an idle moment. His mind was occupied to the very last with plans for the improvement of his fellow men. In point of industry, shrewdness, farsightedness, thrift, inventiveness, and philanthropy, he is our leading American. It is not too much to say that no American has had a greater influence on the thought of this country. Franklin lies in a modest grave in the heart of Philadelphia. In a serious moment he once composed his own epitaph: