Benjamin Franklin – Bound for Philadelphia and the future – Blog #9

Dear Readers,

I have taken you, dear readers, in my musings, to the point where, at the age of seventeen, I was to break the contract of indentured servitude that my father had signed for me with my brother, James.  I was, by boarding the packet bound for New York, in violation of the law.  I was, in a split second, a runaway and subject to being caught, returned and punished by the law.

You will recall that my plan for fleeing the city of my birth involved a ruse.  I had invented a yarn that I hoped would garner sympathy for me, even though there was not a jot of veracity in it.  I had told the captain of a packet boat running from Boston to New York that I had, “gotten a young maid with child” and needed to run from the city.  The man did indeed take pity on me and I was off and aboard the boat that would take me into my future.  Many adventures awaited me.

If you are interested, I have retold the tale of that journey from Boston to New York in my Autobiography, so will not enter into more details here.  I will set the scene only by saying that the ocean voyage from Boston to New York City was a bit rougher than I would have wanted, and took longer too.  The food was pretty bad, the company not in the least interested in a young lad like myself.  I had the name of a printer in New York City, a William Bradford, who I hoped would be able to employ me and it was he upon whom my fortunes rested, or so I thought.

When finally we landed in New York City, a much smaller town than Boston, I went immediately to the address I had been given for Mr.Bradford.  To my very great dismay and consternation, Mr. Bradford had no openings in his print shop for a young apprentice like me.  But he did tell me that his own son, Andrew Bradford, had a print shop in Philadelphia and that one of young Master Bradford’s employees had just died.  Perhaps, if I continued my journey…

And thus began a series of adventures as a young printer first in Philadelphia, the city that I was to call home for the rest of my life.  How I got there and my continuing story as an apprentice printer are fond memories and I will look forward to sharing some of them with you in my next entry into this journal.  Until then, I remain,

yr humble servant,

Benj. Franklin

Benjamin Franklin and Lessons from the Print Shop Part 2, Blog #8B

To my dear, faithful readers,

I beg your indulgence for the absence in these pages of an entry last week.  This lapse was not of my doing.  My erstwhile business manager had my words in hand, but having had a bit of an accident a few days earlier, thought that this gave him leave to be remiss in his duties. Pleading pain, following a hiking accident resulting in two broken ribs,  he failed to publish my pithy prose. I am quite cross with him.  His little misfortune I find no excuse for his failure to resolve to perform his duties i.e., the publication of the following, but we shall say no more on the subject for the nonce.

You who follow these musings each week will be wondering what crime I committed
and how it affected my future.  You will recall that I had resolved to flee my older brother’s tyrannical treatment of me.  There was no solution open to me but leaving Boston, the city of my birth and youth.  And so, I convinced the captain of a packet boat running from Boston to New York that I had, “gotten a young maid with child” and needed to run from the city.  This was totally untrue but the captain took me on board for less than the normal fare.  And so I ran away and at seventeen, with only a few Dutch guilders in my pocket and a roll of spare clothing, I set out to seek employment in the colony of New York.

James had left me with more than some bruises. He had taught me important lessons in the value of freedom, and those lessons taught me that liberty often comes with great difficulty but is worth fighting for.  He taught me a hatred of arbitrary power unjustly applied and how such power can stifle thinking.  These were lessons that were to inform the years that sprawled ahead; particularly my years of diplomacy in London–years begun in 1757, almost twenty years before we came to the realization that independence from Britain was a necessity for us.  And, when I did put my own name to the Declaration of Independence,  I thought of James and the lessons he had unwittingly taught me on how important freedom was, both for an individual and a society.

I will tell of other adventures I had as a young printer, but those did not take place in Boston.  They took place in Philadelphia, the city that I was to call home for the rest of my life.  How I got to that city, while originally intending to live and work in New York, and my continuing story as an apprentice printer are fond memories and I will look forward to sharing some of them with you in my next entry into this journal.

Until then, I remain your humble and obedient servant,

B. Franklin

Ben Franklin and the Real Lessons from the Print Shop – Part 1

Good Citizens, all,

I indicated in my last chat with you that the subject of “Ben Franklin, Printer,” was one that had some unexpected lessons for me.  Yes, my half-brother James taught me a good deal about printing.  But he taught me something else that proved to be far more important.

James was ten years older than I, and when I was sixteen and he twenty-six, he began beating me.  He did this regularly and without, might I say, much provocation on my part.

Note from Christopher Lowell:  Well, it’s my feeling that when he was a lad, Ben was pretty arrogant and a bit full of himself.  This doesn’t excuse the beatings, but I can imagine James wanting to put Ben a bit more in his place.

I recognized that James held all the power in this relationship and I had none.  He was my half-brother but also my employer and could treat me as he wished, even if that wish involved physical abuse. He had the power, he had the strength, he had the authority, and he certainly seemed to have the will to treat me in this unjust manner whenever it pleased him to do so.

As you can imagine, I smoldered with resentment in addition to hurting from the bruises I was now incurring with increasing regularity.  I resolved to leave his employ, even though it meant breaking the law, for I was indentured to him and had no legal right to depart.   But finally, at seventeen, I could take it no longer. And what I decided to do about this unpleasant situation will be the subject of my comments to you in this space next week.  My decision resulted in my breaking the then law as it then stood and in taking some steps which were, as I knew they would be, inevitable.  But I was a headstrong young man and once I had fixed on this plan, I was resolved to see it through.  Years later, in considering some of the important virtues to espouse as part of my life’s planning, I was to say that Resolution was one of the top values to which one should aspire.  And part of that was “Perform without fail what you resolve.”  And so I was resolved to leave my employ and began planning just how I was to perform “without fail” and get out from the yoke of injustice which my brother’s cruelty represented. I shall be happy to continue the story next week.

Until next week, then, I remain your humble and obedient servant,

Benj. Franklin

Ben Franklin, Printers Apprentice, Part 3: Silence Dogood’s Success – Blog #7C

Good Citizens,

I deliberately left you hanging until today to finish the story of my letter to the “New England Courant.”  My intent was to whet your appetite for more!  I am happy to complete this little chapter for you now.
Well, in the morning (and if you are a bit lost, you should first refer to last week’s entry entitled “Ben Franklin, Printer’s Apprentice, Part 2”,) I stayed carefully in the back of the print shop as my brother and his friends opened my letter–the one signed “Silence Dogood,” and read it.  Would they throw it into the fire? Put it aside? Even enjoy it? I waited with a much more casual demeanor than my beating heart belied.

Well, to my delight, they started chuckling and then even laughing!  James declared it worthy of publication and all began to speculate as to who the real author might be.  Of course, I kept my own “silence” and said nothing. Of course, I was exhilarated.

And indeed, my “Silence Dogood” letter was published forthwith.  Readers loved it, so I wrote a second and delivered it the same way; carefully awaiting the darkness of a moonless night, then sliding the letter under the door of the print shop and running away.

The reception of this second letter mirrored that of the first.  And my literary career, such as it was at the age of sixteen, was launched. Seeing the letter in print in my brother’s newspaper and having such a positive reaction from the readers was heady stuff indeed for me.  I continued, of course, buoyed, yay, almost inebriated by this early triumph, and wrote a total of fourteen letters from “Silence” that year.  And my anonymity continued.  My brother never knew until many years later that it was I, his little brother, who was the author of those letters.  I recall quite vividly that he did not receive the news with equanimity!

The most important lesson I learned from James, and how it affected my future, will have to await my next chat with you. It had, strange to say, nothing to do with printing.

Until that happy time, dear readers, you may be assured that you have the attention and concern of

yr faithful servant,

Benj. Franklin

Ben Franklin, Printers Apprentice, Part 2: Silence Dogood

Citizens, all,

In my last musings, I began the story of my days as a printer’s apprentice–a splendid trade for me because even young, I loved books and being around them.

As I indicated last week,  I admired good prose and often ran off a sheet or two on the press from one of my favorite authors–men like Addison, Swift, and some of the Roman orators–and I’d “play” with this writing.  For instance, I’d cut a page into sentences, put the pieces in a drawer for a few weeks, then take them out again and try to rearrange them in the “best” order.  Or I’d try putting a few lines into poetry and then back into prose without looking at the original.  It was here, in my brother’s shop, that I came to be curious as to whether I, myself, might write anything worthy of inclusion in my brother’s paper.  There was an obvious problem though; James was ten years older than I and certainly not about to print anything in his paper that he knew came from his sixteen-year old brother, the apprentice! Those of you who have older brothers will readily understand my predicament.  I solved this dilemma however.

I decided that I would disguise my identity behind the most unlikely persona I could imagine; that of a young Boston widow, whom I crowned with the absurd and patently false name of “Silence Dogood.” Silence, I decided, was a young widow with some strong opinions–opinions she wanted to share with the readers of the “New England Courant.”  Although humorous and meant to please, my letter to the editor contained a few serious ideas, too.  Not the least of these was that women should be educated and had as much to contribute to society by their brains as by their physical labor in the home.   Apparently this idea is one you have accepted in your time but it was usually ridiculed in mine.

Note from Christopher Lowell:  Dr. Franklin always enjoyed the company of intelligent, educated women.  His relationship with the fair sex was complex and, today, oft misunderstood.  He will, at my prodding, write a good deal about all this in the future.

And so, “Silence Dogood” wrote a letter to the editor of the “New England Courant,” whom I knew to be none other than my own brother, James.   Under the cover of darkness, when there was no moon, I slipped quietly down the cobblestoned street and, making certain no one was observing, slid the letter from “Silence” under the door and ran away.

And in the morning? My brother’s reaction?  Ah, for that, dear readers, you will have to await the next posting of these reminiscences.

Until then, I remain your humble and obedient servant,

Benj. Franklin

Ben Franklin, Printers Apprentice, Part 1

Greetings again, Citizens, and thank you for your comments and questions.  Nothing is more pleasurable to me than to know that after all these years, many Americans are still interested in such topics as Ben Franklin’s quotes, Ben Franklin’s inventions, Ben Franklin and Electricity and so forth.  Very flattering.  Well today, as promised, I’ll begin the story of my life as an apprentice to my half-brother, James.

In my times, apprenticeship was a legal agreement, a formal contract, and not at all a question of choice.  My father signed me over as an indentured servant, or apprentice to James, when I was eleven.  I was to stay with him learning the trade until age twenty.  I was an eager pupil, and, as a lad, strong, often running up and down the stairs carrying heavy trays of lead type with ease.

James taught me much about setting type, using printers ink, how to read backwards (a useful skill many years later when sitting across from members of the House of Lords and being able to read the papers on their desks!), and how a newspaper was arranged.  James and his friends got out a rather cheeky paper called “The New England Courant,” and his irreverence in tweaking the noses of some of the more important personages of Boston was to land him in prison for a month when I was sixteen.

Note from Christopher Lowell:  Ben actually ran the print shop himself during that month that James was in prison, making editorial and other decisions at the tender age of sixteen!  It was the foundation for his own years as “Ben Franklin, Printer,” as I call them–years of business growth and profit.

I got to be a real wordsmith during my years there.  I’ll tell you how and also the story of how I first became an author (or sorts) and got my words into publication; all in the next entry of these musings, which will be next Friday.

Until then, I remain your humble and obedient servant,

Benj. Franklin

Ben Franklin writes of how he became a printer, Part 2

Dear Readers,

Note from Christopher Lowell:  Dr. Franklin will finish up this tale, but I’ll begin today by continuing from last week’s entry on just why his father thought him ill-suited to the serious contemplation required of a preacher. There is a rather delicious story that illustrates this, I think you’ll agree. 

Ben, impatient with his father’s long, drawn-out prayers over each meal, suggested, at age 10, when gazing into the cellar where the winter’s supply of meats and fish were salted away, that his father should “say Grace over the whole lot”, as it would be “…a great savings of time.” Josiah, his father, was not amused and soon thereafter decided to end his schooling and have him learn a trade instead.  But what trade?

Well, for once, dear readers, my annoying business manager, Mr. Lowell is accurate in his reporting.  I even recall the incident and particularly the look on my father’s face when I made what I thought a perfectly good suggestion. But my father decided that a trade, and not a collar, was to be my lot and, having other children to educate, took me out of the Boston Latin school and my formal education, for which I had a natural inclination. My father took me around to various coopers, silversmiths, harness makers and although I was only 10, I remember this quite well.  From those visits, I retained a respect for craftsmen who made useful things–a respect that has lasted all my life.  I also gained a pride in my roots, for we were a family of people who worked with their hands.  In fact, I’m the only “Founding Father” with such a background, which I believe you call today “blue collar.”

Now my sister Jane said I read from the age of three, and it was certainly true that I loved to read.  Every little copper that came into my hands as a boy was spent on books.  So it was a logical step for my father, casting about for a trade for me, to decide to apprentice me to a printer.  And this was an even more logical idea in that my own half-brother, James, was a printer, with his shop within walking distance of my home on Milk Street in Boston.  I’m sure it sounds to  you, even today, like the perfect match between natural ability, inclination, and opportunity.  Well, it was…and it wasn’t.  James taught me a good deal in his shop.  But he taught me a few things he hadn’t counted on as well.   I’ll speak of my beginnings as an apprentice in our next session together.

Until next week then, I remain your humble and obedient servant,

B. Franklin

How Benjamin Franklin almost became a Minister

I’m delighted to be speaking with you again, Citizens.  I’m often asked to talk about my life and times as I travel around different parts of the country, which I very much enjoy doing, except for the unpleasantness of that modern horror you call “air travel.”  Now I am no stranger to difficult conditions for traveling. Each of my eight transatlantic trips was made in very cramped quarters on ships with terrible food and other conditions and each voyage took a minimum of five weeks.  And I won’t begin to go into the horrors of that bumpy carriage ride from Nantes to Paris in December 1776.  But despite the rapidity of your modern transport via your “airplanes,” the difficulties abound.

Now I guess you modern Americans would call me a “motivational speaker,” or a “keynoter,” as I’ve had the privilege of addressing many conventions and business gatherings in that capacity.  I love doing this, answering your questions in person, and talking with you about those “times that tried mens’ souls” I lived through.   But writing these reflections is enjoyable too, and takes less effort than travel!  And I love hearing from you and encourage you to ask me whatever question about my life and times is on your mind.

I had promised you some comments on how I became a printer.  Well, that trade had not been the intention of my father, Josiah for me.  Because I was the 10th son (counting all the children from his two marriages,) and the tradition was to “tithe” each tenth son to the Church, my father intended that I become a minister.  To achieve this goal, he had enrolled me, at age eight, in the Boston Latin School, to prepare me to attend Harvard College, which would have prepared me for the Ministry.  But he soon recognized that I was, as he put it, “far too saucy a lad to make a good preacher,” and took me out of school at age ten.  So I only had two years of formal education, which I deeply regretted. I left school unfulfilled, desiring only to learn more.  Fortunately, I had reading as a way to do this. My own life-long interest in and contributions to education came from my feelings of having received far too little formal learning when young.

Note from Christopher Lowell:  Ben was indeed “saucy.” In his blog next week, I’ll begin by telling a story about him that he might not really wish me to tell.  But it explains a bit of his lack of piety.  

Until next week, when I can get Ben back to the task, we both thank you for your interest in his life.

B. Franklin and Christopher Lowell

Benjamin Franklin on Fitness and Health -  Blog #5B

To my faithful readers of these reflections,

Inasmuch as my last musings had to do with how some of my beliefs resulted in entries in my “Poor Richard’s Almanac,” I thought that this week, I’d give you an example.  And that example has to do with health.

I had much to say about health and what you call today “wellness.” As a boy I became interested in many aspects of maintaining a hearty body, and, as a young printer’s apprentice, was at the height of my physical powers.  Running up and down stairs many times a day with heavy lead type in trays will do that rather quickly for a lad.   Later, I remembered those stairs and advocated that older people use staircases in the winter to increase their heart rates or lift dumbbells to keep fit. I became quite interested in diet, recommending in my “Poor Richard’s Almanac” for instance that, “To lengthen thy life, lessen thy meals,” (I had trouble in following that one, actually, but it was good advice even so!), and “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.”  By the way, I’ve heard an insidious but TOTALLY FALSE rumor that I had said originally that… “an apple a day keeps the doctor away…if aimed right!”  Slanderous! I had no such animosity towards doctors; in fact, one of my closest friends, Benjamin Rush, was a doctor.  But I admit enjoying poking my physician friends with a bit of humor from time to time. “God heals, and the doctor takes the fee!”, as Poor Richard says!  But all in all, I rarely called for the doctor, for his methods often involved blood-letting and leeches, which I didn’t think all that highly of.

Note from Christopher Lowell:  “An apple a day…” may be the very best known of all the “Ben Franklin Quotations,” but he really believed in the importance of eating fruit as a means to good health.  He particularly loved Pippin apples, writing his wife to send him a barrel when he was in England (which she did.)

While we are discussing health, I would certainly like to share with you via an entry or two into these weekly reflections, some of the specific contributions I was so happy to make to wellness.  My ideas, I’m happy to report, were well received then and seem to be still practiced in today’s America.  But more of that, anon.  Until next week, then, I remain,

Yr humble servant,

Benj. Franklin

Ben Franklin on the Ideas Behind Poor Richard’s Humor, Blog #5A

Again my greetings to you, Citizens.  You’ll recall I promised you a discussion of how some of my “Poor Richard’s Almanac” expressions were not fluff at all, but rooted in more serious and deeply held beliefs.   One of those beliefs I learned quite young–the importance in joining with others of a like mind to affect positive change.

I learned this first in an essay on doing good by the Puritan orator and theologian Cotton Mather, a family friend.  The idea that working with others towards a common goal was more effective than the same number of people working individually was a relatively new one in the early 1730‘s, but I adopted it at once, later having Poor Richard echo the idea by saying, “he who drinks his Cyder alone, let him catch his horse alone.”  In this aphorism, I combined the human instinct for enjoying others’ company with the necessity of working together.  Rev. Mather and I had very different points of view on religion, but on this matter we were in absolute agreement.

Note from Christopher Lowell:  Ben really invented the concept of the professional association and I’ll get him to talk of the “Junto,” the association he founded, in future blogs.  He is in great demand to speak before associations of all kinds today and to affirm their worth and effectiveness.  He greatly enjoys doing so.  

Many of my expressions came from my belief that frugality and hard work were prerequisites for obtaining wealth.  “Keep thy shop and thy shop will keep thee, “ I wrote, for I believed that if one kept one’s eye on one’s work, the future would be a rewarding one. I also believed in getting up early to get an edge on your competitors.  “Early to bed, early to rise…” I recommended, and that’s one I don’t need to finish for I understand it’s well known even today.  With similar sentiment I wrote, “The sleeping fox catches no poultry,” and later, “lost time is never found again.”  For many years I got up early and made sure that other shopkeepers knew that I was hard at work early in the day and stayed at my printing presses well into the evening.  I wanted no “lost time.”

Note from Christopher Lowell:  Again, Ben’s “time management” skills are but one of the reasons he’s so in demand as a speaker for business meetings.  

Some of you have been asking how I came to be a printer in the first place.  Ahhhhhh, that’s an interesting story.  I’ll begin it next week.

Until then, I remain your humble and obedient servant,

B. Franklin