BENJAMIN FRANKLIN As Printer

SIX

“Benjamin Franklin, printer,” was Franklin’s favorite way of describing himself. He was, indeed, a printer all his life. When only twelve, he became apprentice to his half-brother, James, but quarreled with him and ran away, finally reaching Philadelphia. Here he obtained employment and the patronage of Sir William Keith, Governor of Pennsylvania and Delaware, who gave him the public printing to do. Persuaded to try his fortune in London with Keith’s patronage, Franklin set sail with high hopes; but, on arriving, he found that Keith had played him false, and that no letter of credit, as promised, awaited him. After a year and a half of struggle and adventure, he was back in Philadelphia working at his trade. Franklin was now twenty-one. In a short time he started in business with a partner, and the firm of Franklin & Meredith limped along slowly but surely until Franklin became possessed of the leading newspaper in Philadelphia, to which he gave a new title, the Pennsylvania Gazette.

This he improved in every way, making it the best and most widely read newspaper in the Colonies. By this time (1729) Franklin had a very well-trained pen, and his journalistic writings and published pamphlets had attracted much attention. He now dropped his partner, and, to help out his small income, he opened a shop, where he sold stationery, goose-feathers, soap, liquors, and groceries. About this time he printed the laws of Delaware.

The Pennsylvania Gazette grew better and better all the time; for it contained anecdotes, extracts from English newspapers and articles which Franklin had written for and read to his club, the Junto.

In Colonial days every printer issued an almanac. Franklin followed the rule; but the annual he published differed in no way from any of the others until 1733, when Franklin, having nobody to prepare his almanac, had to write it himself. He published it as the work of a Richard Saunders, called in Franklin’s genial way, “Poor Richard.” In a note to “Courteous Reader,” Poor Richard introduced himself, little anticipating the success he was to have.

“Poor Richard’s Almanac” appeared every year thereafter, for twenty-five years, the annual sale averaging 10,000 copies a year, far in excess of any other Colonial publication. “Poor Richard” is now a “classic”; even those that have not read it have heard of it. Moreover, many people quote the homely proverbs without knowing it; for Poor Richard’s wisdom became part and parcel of our English speech long ago. Sometimes it has been published as “Father Abraham’s Speech,” and “The Way to Wealth,” and it has been translated into every modern language.

Besides his newspaper and almanac printing, Franklin printed books. He brought out the first novel ever published in America—Richardson’s “Pamela” (1744). Franklin’s tremendous industry and his general thrift made him successful enough to retire at the age of forty-two. Then came a brief interval, before his political career began in earnest, during which he lived “more like a man of taste and a scholar accustomed to cultured surroundings than a self-made man who had battled for years with the material world.”

The year 1748, though marking the end of Franklin’s career as active printer, did not terminate his interest in the setting of type and issuing his writings from his own press. Even in Passy, when in the midst of his busy diplomatic duties, he had a printing-press of his own from which he issued those “bagatelles” that so charmed the French ladies of his acquaintance.

Cleverly the printer speaks in the famous epitaph:

Franklin’s grandson, William Temple Franklin, who claimed to have the original Ms, said the date upon it was 1728. This disposes of the theory that Franklin took the idea from the Latin epitaph of an Eton school-boy, published in the Gentleman’s Magazine for February, 1736. But, as writing comic epitaphs was a fashion in those days, there is no reason why both should not have been original.

PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR. VOL. 6. No. 7. SERIAL No. 155 COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.