The True Benjamin Franklin

A story is told on the Eastern Shore of Maryland of a young man who called one evening on an old farmer to ask him how it was that he had become rich.

“It is a long story,” said the old man, “and while I am telling it we might as well save the candle,” and he put it out.

“You need not tell it,” said the youth. “I see.”

Franklin’s method was the one that had always been practised by his ancestors, and with his wider intelligence and great literary ability it was sure to succeed. The silver spoons slowly increased until in the course of years, as he tells us, the plate in his house was “augmented gradually to several hundred pounds in value.”

His newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette, was the best in the colonies. Besides the ordinary news and advertisements, together with little anecdotes and squibs which he was always so clever in telling, he printed in it extracts from The Spectator and various moral writers, articles from English newspapers, as well as articles of his own which had been previously read to the Junto. He also published long poems by Stephen Duck, now utterly forgotten; but he was then the poet laureate and wrote passable verse. He carefully excluded all libelling and personal abuse; but what would now be considered indelicate jests were not infrequent. These broad jokes, together with witticisms at the expense of ecclesiastics, constituted the stock amusements of the time, as the English literature of that period abundantly shows.

Opening one of the old volumes of his Gazette at random, we find for September 5, 1734, a humorous account of a lottery in England, by which, to encourage the propagation of the species, all the old maids of the country are to be raffled for. Turning over the leaves, we find the humorous will of a fellow who, among other queer bequests, leaves his body “as a very wholesome feast to the worms of his family vault.” In another number an account is given of some excesses of the Pope, with a Latin verse and its translation which had been pasted on Pasquin’s statue:

“Omnia Venduntur imoDogmata ChristiEt ne me vendunt, evoloRoma Vale.”“Rome all things sells, even doctrines old and newI’ll fly for fear of sale; so Rome adieu.”

In the number for November 7, 1734, we are given “The Genealogy of a Jacobite.”

“The Devil begat Sin, Sin begat Error, Error begat Pride, Pride begat Hatred, Hatred begat Ignorance, Ignorance begat Blind Zeal, Blind Zeal begat Superstition, Superstition begat Priestcraft, Priestcraft begat Lineal Succession, Lineal Succession begat Indelible Character, Indelible Character begat Blind Obedience, Blind Obedience begat Infallibility, Infallibility begat the Pope and his Brethren in the time of Egyptian Darkness, the Pope begat Purgatory, Purgatory begat Auricular Confession, Auricular Confession begat Renouncing of Reason, Renouncing of Reason begat Contempt of Scriptures, Contempt of the Scriptures begat Implicit Faith, Implicit Faith begat Carnal Policy, Carnal Policy begat Unlimited Passive Obedience, Unlimited Passive Obedience begat Non-Resistance, Non-Resistance begat Oppression, Oppression begat Faction, Faction begat Patriotism, Patriotism begat Opposition to all the Measures of the Ministry, Opposition begat Disaffection, Disaffection begat Discontent, Discontent begat a Tory, and a Tory begat a Jacobite, with Craftsman and Fog and their Brethren on the Body of the Whore of Babylon when she was deemed past child bearing.”

Franklin’s famous “Speech of Polly Baker” is supposed to have first appeared in the Gazette. This is a mistake, but it was reprinted again and again in American newspapers for half a century.

“The Speech of Miss Polly Baker before a Court of Judicatory, in New England, where she was prosecuted for a fifth time, for having a Bastard Child; which influenced the Court to dispense with her punishment, and which induced one of her judges to marry her the next day – by whom she had fifteen children.

“May it please the honourable bench to indulge me in a few words: I am a poor, unhappy woman, who have no money to fee lawyers to plead for me, being hard put to it to get a living… Abstracted from the law, I cannot conceive (may it please your honours) what the nature of my offence is. I have brought five children into the world, at the risque of my life; I have maintained them well by my own industry, without burthening the township, and would have done it better, if it had not been for the heavy charges and fines I have paid. Can it be a crime (in the nature of things, I mean) to add to the King’s subjects, in a new country that really needs people? I own it, I should think it rather a praiseworthy than a punishable action. I have debauched no other woman’s husband, nor enticed any youth; these things I never was charged with; nor has any one the least cause of complaint against me, unless, perhaps, the ministers of justice, because I have had children without being married, by which they have missed a wedding fee. But can this be a fault of mine? I appeal to your honours. You are pleased to allow I don’t want sense; but I must be stupefied to the last degree, not to prefer the honourable state of wedlock to the condition I have lived in. I always was, and still am willing to enter into it; and doubt not my behaving well in it; having all the industry, frugality, fertility, and skill in economy appertaining to a good wife’s character. I defy any one to say I ever refused an offer of that sort; on the contrary, I readily consented to the only proposal of marriage that ever was made me, which was when I was a virgin, but too easily confiding in the person’s sincerity that made it, I unhappily lost my honour by trusting to his; for he got me with child, and then forsook me.

“That very person, you all know; he is now become a magistrate of this country; and I had hopes he would have appeared this day on the bench, and have endeavoured to moderate the Court in my favour; then I should have scorned to have mentioned it, but I must now complain of it as unjust and unequal, that my betrayer, and undoer, the first cause of all my faults and miscarriages (if they must be deemed such), should be advanced to honour and power in the government that punishes my misfortunes with stripes and infamy… But how can it be believed that Heaven is angry at my having children, when to the little done by me towards it, God has been pleased to add his divine skill and admirable workmanship in the formation of their bodies, and crowned the whole by furnishing them with rational and immortal souls? Forgive me, gentlemen, if I talk a little extravagantly on these matters: I am no divine, but if you, gentlemen, must be making laws, do not turn natural and useful actions into crimes by your prohibitions. But take into your wise consideration the great and growing number of bachelors in the country, many of whom, from the mean fear of the expense of a family, have never sincerely and honestly courted a woman in their lives; and by their manner of living leave unproduced (which is little better than murder) hundreds of their posterity to the thousandth generation. Is not this a greater offence against the public good than mine? Compel them, then, by law, either to marriage, or to pay double the fine of fornication every year. What must poor young women do, whom customs and nature forbid to solicit the men, and who cannot force themselves upon husbands, when the laws take no care to provide them any, and yet severely punish them if they do their duty without them; the duty of the first and great command of nature and nature’s God, increase and multiply; a duty, from the steady performance of which nothing has been able to deter me, but for its sake I have hazarded the loss of the public esteem, and have frequently endured public disgrace and punishment; and therefore ought, in my humble opinion, instead of a whipping, to have a statue erected to my memory.”

A newspaper furnishing the people with so much information and sound advice, mingled with broad stories, bright and witty, and appealing to all the human passions, – in other words, so thoroughly like Franklin, – was necessarily a success. It was, however, a small affair, – a single sheet which, when folded, was about twelve by eighteen inches, – and it appeared only twice a week.

It differed from other colonial newspapers chiefly in its greater brightness and in the literary skill shown in its preparation. But attempts have been made to exaggerate its merits, and Parton declares that in it Franklin “originated the modern system of business advertising” and that “he was the first man who used this mighty engine of publicity as we now use it.” A careful examination of the Gazette and the other journals of the time fails to disclose any evidence in support of this extravagant statement. The advertisements in the Gazette are like those in the other papers, – runaway servants and slaves, ships and merchandise for sale, articles lost or stolen. On the whole, perhaps more advertisements appear in the Gazette than in any of the others, though a comparison of the Gazette with Bradford’s Mercury shows days when the latter has the greater number.

Franklin advertised rather extensively his own publications, and the lamp-black, soap, and “ready money for old rags” which were to be had at his shop, for the reason, doubtless, that, being owner of both the newspaper and the shop, the advertisements cost him nothing. This is the only foundation for the tale of his having originated modern advertising. His advertisements are of the same sort that appeared in other papers, and there is not the slightest suggestion of modern methods in them.

Parton also says that Franklin “invented the plan of distinguishing advertisements by means of little pictures which he cut with his own hands.” If he really was the inventor of this plan, it is strange that he allowed his rival Bradford to use it in the Mercury before it was adopted by the Gazette. No cuts appear in the advertisements in the Gazette until May 30, 1734; but the Mercury’s advertisements have them in the year 1733.

Franklin made no sudden or startling changes in the methods of journalism; he merely used them effectively. His reputation and fortune were increased by his newspaper, but his greatest success came from his almanac, the immortal “Poor Richard.”

In those days almanacs were the literature of the masses, very much as newspapers are now. Everybody read them, and they supplied the place of books to those who would not or could not buy these means of knowledge. Every farm-house and hunter’s cabin had one hanging by the fireplace, and the rich were also eager to read afresh every year the weather forecasts, receipts, scraps of history, and advice mingled with jokes and verses.

Every printer issued an almanac as a matter of course, for it was the one publication which was sure to sell, and there was always more or less money to be made by it. While Franklin and Meredith were in business they published their almanac annually, and it was prepared by Thomas Godfrey, the mathematician, who with his wife lived in part of Franklin’s house. But, as has been related, Mrs. Godfrey tried to make a match between Franklin and one of her relatives, and when that failed the Godfreys and Franklin separated, and Thomas Godfrey devoted his mathematical talents to the preparation of Bradford’s almanac.

This was in the year 1732, and the following year Franklin had no philomath, as such people were called, to prepare his almanac. A great deal depended on having a popular philomath. Some of them could achieve large sales for their employer, while others could scarcely catch the public attention at all. Franklin’s literary instinct at once suggested the plan of creating a philomath out of his own imagination, an ideal one who would achieve the highest possibilities of the art. So he wrote his own almanac, and announced that it was prepared by one Richard Saunders, who for short was called “Poor Richard,” and he proved to be the most wonderful philomath that ever lived.

As Shakespeare took the suggestions and plots of his plays from old tales and romances, endowing his spoils by the touch of genius with a life that the originals never possessed, so Franklin plundered right and left to obtain material for the wise sayings of “Poor Richard.” There was, we are told, a Richard Saunders who was the philomath of a popular English almanac called “The Apollo Anglicanus,” and another popular almanac had been called “Poor Robin;” but “Poor Richard” was a real creation, a new human character introduced to the world like Sir Roger de Coverley.

Novel-writing was in its infancy in those days, and Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress,” Addison’s character of Sir Roger, and the works of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett were the only examples of this new literature. That beautiful sentiment that prompts children to say, “Tell us a story,” and which is now fed to repletion by trash, was then primitive, fresh, and simple. Franklin could have written a novel in the manner of Fielding, but he had no inclination for such a task. He took more naturally and easily to creating a single character somewhat in the way Sir Roger de Coverley was created by Addison, whose essays he had rewritten so often for practice.

Sir Roger was so much of a gentleman, there were so many delicate touches in him, that he never became the favorite of the common people. But “Poor Richard” was the Sir Roger of the masses; he won the hearts of high and low. In that first number for the year 1733 he introduces himself very much after the manner of Addison.

“Courteous Reader,

“I might in this place attempt to gain thy favor by declaring that I write almanacks with no other view than that of the public good, but in this I should not be sincere; and men are now-a-days too wise to be deceived by pretences, how specious soever. The plain truth of the matter is, I am excessive poor, and my wife, good woman, is, I tell her, excessive proud; she cannot bear, she says, to sit spinning in her shift of tow, while I do nothing but gaze at the stars; and has threatened more than once to burn all my books and rattling traps (as she calls my instruments) if I do not make some profitable use of them for the good of my family. The printer has offered me some considerable share of the profits, and I have thus begun to comply with my dame’s desire.”

There was a rival almanac, of which the philomath was Titan Leeds. “Poor Richard” affects great friendship for him, and says that he would have written almanacs long ago had he not been unwilling to interfere with the business of Titan. But this obstacle was soon to be removed.

“He dies by my calculation,” says “Poor Richard,” “made at his request, on Oct. 17, 1733, 3 ho., 29 m., P. M., at the very instant of the ☌ of ☉ and ☿. By his own calculation he will survive till the 26th of the same month. This small difference between us we have disputed whenever we have met these nine years past; but at length he is inclinable to agree with my judgment. Which of us is most exact, a little time will now determine.”

In the next issue “Poor Richard” announces that his circumstances are now much easier. His wife has a pot of her own and is no longer obliged to borrow one of a neighbor; and, best of all, they have something to put in it, which has made her temper more pacific. Then he begins to tease Titan Leeds. He recalls his prediction of his death, but is not quite sure whether it occurred; for he has been prevented by domestic affairs from being at the bedside and closing the eyes of his old friend. The stars have foretold the death with their usual exactitude; but sometimes Providence interferes in these matters, which makes the astrologer’s art a little uncertain. But on the whole he thinks Titan must be dead, “for there appears in his name, as I am assured, an Almanack for the year 1734 in which I am treated in a very gross and unhandsome manner; in which I am called a false predicter, an ignorant, a conceited scribbler, a fool, and a lyar;” and he goes on to show that his good friend Titan would never have treated him in this way.

The next year he is still making sport of Titan, the deceased Titan, and the ghost of Titan, “who pretends to be still living, and to write Almanacks in spight of me;” and he proves again by means of the funniest arguments that he must be dead. Another year he devotes several pages of nonsense to disproving the charge that “Poor Richard” is not a real person. He ridicules astrology and weather forecasting by pretending to be very serious over it. At any rate, he says, “we always hit the day of the month, and that I suppose is esteemed one of the most useful things in an Almanack.” He and his good old wife are getting on now better than ever; and the almanac for 1738 is prepared by Mistress Saunders herself, who rails at her husband and makes queer work with eclipses and forecasting. Then in the number for 1740 Titan writes a letter to “Poor Richard” from the other world.

Besides the formal essays or prefaces which appeared in each number, there were numerous verses, paragraphs of admirable satire on the events of the day or the weaknesses of human nature, and those prudential maxims which in the end became the most famous of all. As we look through a collection of these almanacs for an hour or so we seem to have lived among the colonists, who were not then Americans, but merry Englishmen, heavy eaters and drinkers, full of broad jokes, whimsical, humorous ways, and forever gossiping with hearty good nature over the ludicrous accidents of life, the love-affairs, the married infelicities, and the cuckolds. It is the freshness, the sap, and the rollicking happiness of old English life.

“Old Batchelor would have a wife that’s wise,Fair, rich and young a maiden for his bed;Not proud, nor churlish, but of faultless size,A country housewife in the city bred.He’s a nice fool and long in vain hath staid;He should bespeak her, there’s none ready made.”

“Never spare the parson’s wine, nor the baker’s pudding.”

“Ne’er take a wife till thou hast a house (and a fire) to put her in.”

“My love and I for kisses play’d,She would keep stakes, I was content,But when I won, she would be paid,This made me ask her what she meant:Quoth she, since you are in the wrangling veinHere take your kisses, give me mine again.”

“Who has deceived thee so oft as thyself?”

“There is no little enemy.”

“Of the Eclipses this year.

“During the first visible eclipse Saturn is retrograde: For which reason the crabs will go sidelong and the ropemakers backward. The belly will wag before, and the – will sit down first… When a New Yorker thinks to say THIS he shall say DISS, and the People in New England and Cape May will not be able to say Cow for their Lives, but will be forc’d to say KEOW by a certain involuntary Twist in the Root of their Tongues…”

“Many dishes many diseases.”

“Let thy maid servant be faithful, strong and homely.”

“Here I sit naked, like some fairy elf;My seat a pumpkin; I grudge no man’s pelf,Though I’ve no bread nor cheese upon my shelf,I’ll tell thee gratis, when it safe isTo purge, to bleed, or cut thy cattle or – thyself.”

“Necessity never made a good bargain.”

“A little house well filled, a little field well till’d and a little wife well will’d are great riches.”

“Of the Diseases this year.

“This Year the Stone-blind shall see but very little; the Deaf shall hear but poorly; and the Dumb shan’t speak very plain. And it’s much, if my Dame Bridget talks at all this Year. Whole Flocks, Herds and Droves of Sheep, Swine and Oxen, Cocks and Hens, Ducks and Drakes, Geese and Ganders shall go to Pot; but the Mortality will not be altogether so great among Cats, Dogs and Horses…”

“Of the Fruits of the Earth.

“I find that this will be a plentiful Year of all manner of good Things, to those who have enough; but the Orange Trees in Greenland will go near to fare the worse for the Cold. As for Oats, they’ll be a great Help to Horses…”

“Lend money to an enemy, and thou’lt gain him; to a friend, and thou’lt lose him.”

“Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.”

“It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright.”

For twenty years and more “Poor Richard” kept up this continuous stream of fun, breaking forth afresh every autumn, – sound, wholesome, dealing with the real things and the elemental joys of life, and expressed in that inimitable language of which Franklin was master. In this way was built up the greater part of his wonderful reputation, which in some of its manifestations surprises us so much. Such a reputation is usually of long growth; one or two conspicuous acts will not achieve it. But the man who every year for nearly a generation delighted every human being in the country, from the ploughman and hunter to the royal governors, was laying in store for himself a sure foundation of influence.

The success of “Poor Richard” was immediate. The first number of it went through several editions, and after that the annual sales amounted to about ten thousand copies. For the last number which Franklin prepared for the year 1758, before he turned over the enterprise to his partner, he wrote a most happy preface. It was always his habit, when a controversy or service he was engaged in was finished, to summarize the whole affair in a way that strengthened his own position and left an indelible impression which all the efforts of his enemies could not efface. Accordingly, for this last preface he invented a homely, catching tale that enabled him to summarize all the best sayings of “Poor Richard” for the last twenty-five years.

“I stopt my Horse lately where a great Number of people were collected at a Vendue of Merchant Goods. The Hour of Sale not being come, they were conversing on the Badness of the Times, and one of the Company call’d to a plain clean old Man, with white Locks, ‘Pray, Father Abraham, what think you of the Times? Won’t these heavy Taxes quite ruin the Country? How shall we be ever able to pay them? What would you advise us to?’ – Father Abraham stood up, and reply’d, ‘If you’d have my Advice, I’ll give it you in short, for a Word to the Wise is enough, and many Words won’t fill a Bushel, as Poor Richard says.’ They join’d in desiring him to speak his Mind, and gathering round him, he proceeded as follows:

“‘Friends,’ says he, ‘and neighbours, the Taxes are indeed very heavy, and if those laid on by the Government were the only Ones we had to pay, we might more easily discharge them; but we have many others, and much more grievous to some of us. We are taxed twice as much by our Idleness, three times as much by our Pride, and four times as much by our Folly, and from these Taxes the Commissioners cannot ease or deliver us by allowing an Abatement. However let us hearken to good Advice, and something may be done for us; God helps them that help themselves, as Poor Richard says in his Almanack of 1733.

“‘It would be thought a hard Government that should tax its People one tenth Part of their Time, to be employed in its Service. But Idleness taxes many of us much more, if we reckon all that is spent in absolute Sloth, or doing of nothing, with that which is spent in idle Employments or Amusements, that amount to nothing. Sloth, by bringing on Diseases absolutely shortens Life. Sloth, like Rust, consumes faster than Labour wears, while the used Key is always bright, as Poor Richard says. But dost thou love Life, then do not squander Time, for that’s the Stuff Life is made of, as poor Richard says. – How much more than is necessary do we spend in Sleep! forgetting that The Sleeping Fox catches no Poultry, and that there will be sleeping enough in the Grave, as Poor Richard says. If Time be of all Things the most precious, wasting of Time must be, as Poor Richard says, the greatest Prodigality, since, as he elsewhere tells us, Lost Time is never found again; and what we call Time-enough, always proves little enough. Let us then be up and doing, and doing to the Purpose; so by Diligence shall we do more with less Perplexity. Sloth makes all Things difficult, but Industry all Things easy, as Poor Richard says; and He that riseth late, must trot all Day, and shall scarce overtake his Business at night. While Laziness travels so slowly, that Poverty soon overtakes him, as we read in Poor Richard, who adds, Drive thy Business, let that not drive thee; and Early to Bed, and early to rise, makes a Man healthy, wealthy, and wise.