Essay, Research Paper: Ben Franklin

Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin, next to George Washington possibly the most famous 18th-century American, by 1757 had made a small fortune, established the Poor Richard of his almanacs as an oracle on how to get ahead in the world, and become widely known in European scientific circles for his reports of electrical experiments and theories. He invented a stove, still being manufactured, to give more warmth than open fireplaces; the lightning rod and bifocal eyeglasses also were his ideas. Grasping the fact that by united effort a community may have amenities which only the wealthy few can get for themselves, he helped establish institutions one now takes for granted: a fire company, a library, an insurance company, an academy, and a hospital. In some cases these foundations were the first of their kind in North America. One might expect universal admiration for a man of such breadth and apparent altruism. Yet Franklin was disliked by some of his contemporaries and has ever since occasionally been attacked as a materialist or a hypocrite. D.H. Lawrence, the English novelist, regarded him as the embodiment of the worst traits of the American character. Max Weber, the Germansociologist, made him the exemplar of the "Protestant ethic," a state of mind that contributed much, Weber thought, to the less admirable aspects of modern capitalism. Those who admire Franklin believe that his detractors have mistakenly identified him with Poor Richard, a persona of his own creation, or that they have relied too largely upon the incomplete self-portrait of his posthumously published Autobiography.
Franklin was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on Jan. 17 1706, the 10th son of the 17 children of a man who was both soapmaker and candlemaker. He learned to read very early and had one year in grammar school and another under a private teacher, but his formal education ended when he was 10. At 12 he was apprenticed to his brother James, a printer. His mastery of the printer's trade, of which he was proud to the end of his life, was achieved between 1718 and 1723. In the same period he read tirelessly and taught himself to write effectively. Failing to find work in Boston or New York City, Franklin proceeded to Philadelphia. One of the dramatic scenes of the Autobiography is the description of his arrival on a Sunday morning, tired and hungry. Finding a bakery, he asked for three pennies' worth of bread and got "three great Puffy Rolls." Carrying one under each arm and munching on the third, he walked up Ma rket Street past the door of the Read family, where stood Deborah, his future wife. She saw him "& thought I made as I certainly did a most awkward ridiculous Appearance." A few weeks later he was rooming at the Reads' and employed as a printer. By the spring of 1724 he was enjoying the companionship of other young men with a taste for reading and he was also being urged to set up in business for himself by the governor of Pennsylvania, Sir William Keith. At Keith's suggestion, Franklin returned to Boston to try to raise the necessary capita l. His father thought him too young for such a venture, so Keith offered to foot the bill himself and arranged Franklin's passage to England so that he could choose his type and make connections with London stationers and booksellers. Franklin exchanged "some promises" with Deborah Read and, with a young friend, James Ralph, as companion, boarded the London Hope in November,expecting to find the letters of credit and introduction that Keith had promised. Not until the ship was well out at sea did he realize that the governor had not kept his promise. A fellow passenger, a Quaker merchant by the name of Thomas Denham, told him that Keith was unreliable; eventually Franklin could write charitably: "He wish'd to please every body; and, having little to give, he gave Expectations." In London Franklin quickly found employment in his trade and was able to lend money to Ralph, who was trying to establish himself as a writer.
By 1726 Franklin was tiring of London. He considered becoming an itinerant teacher of swimming, but when Denham offered him a clerkship in his store in Philadelphia, with a prospect of fat commissions in the West Indian trade, he decided to return home.
Denham died, however, a few months after Franklin entered his store. The young man, now 20, returned to his trade and in 1728 was able to set up a partnership with a friend. Two years later he borrowed money to become sole proprietor. His private life at this time was extremely complicated. Deborah Read had married, but her husband had deserted her and disappeared. One matchmaking venture failed because Franklin wanted a settlement to pay off his business debt. A strong sexual drive, "that hard-to-be-govern'd Passion of Youth," was sending him to "low Women," and in the winter of 1730-31 he had a son, William, whose mother has never been identified. Franklin must have known that the child was expected when, his affection for Deborah having "revived," he "took her to Wife" on Sept. 1, 1730. Their common-law marriage lasted until Deborah's death in 1774. They had a son, who died at age four, and a daughter, Sarah, who survived them both. William was brought up in the household. Franklin and his partner's first coup was securing the printing of Pennsylvania's paper currency.
In the 1740s electricity was a novel and fashionable subject. It was introduced to
Philadelphians by an electrical machine sent to the Library Company by one of Franklin's English correspondents. In the winter of 1746-47, Franklin and three of his friends began to investigate electrical phenomena. The Philadelphia weather favoured them, as did the availability of talented instrument makers. Ingenious experiments and machines were devised and described in personal letters to England, which were relayed to the Royal Society of London or the Gentleman's
Magazine. These papers were collected in 1751 as Experiments and Observations on Electricity and were translated into French, German, and Italian.
Franklin's fame spread rapidly. The experiment he suggested to prove the identity of lightning and electricity was first made in France before he is believed to have tried the simpler but dangerous expedient of flying a kite in a thunderstorm. He and his associates concluded early that the "Electrical Fire" was "an Element diffused among, and attracted by other matter, particularly by Water and Metals." When a body with an overquantity approached one with an underquantity, a discharge equalized the electrical fire in the two. This "one fluid" theory accounted for more of the observable phenomena than had any previous hypothesis, and his suggestion that buildings be protected from lightning by erecting pointed iron rods proved both practical and dramatic. Franklin may not have been as original as some admirers have thought, and his collaborators may not have received their full share of credit, but he invented many terms still used in discussing electricity and described the experiments with lucidity.
At 79, with a large stone in his bladder that made travel by carriage an agony, Franklin was carried to the port of Le Havre in a litter. Back in Philadelphia he lived quietly but continued to take some part in public life. His most important service was as a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1787. There he failed to convince his associates that an executive committee would be better than a president as head of state and that there should be a unicameral legislature. On the last day of the convention, a colleague read for him a plea that objections to the new form of government, his own among them, should be forgotten and that delegates should unanimously support the instrument that they had hammered out. Franklin's motion was promptly carried. For the last year of his life he was bedridden, escaping severe pain only by the use of opium.
He died on April 17, 1790, aged 84. Philadelphia gave him the most impressive funeral the city had ever seen, and in France, where Louis XVI was imprisoned, eulogies poured forth to the man who, to the French, was the symbol of enlightenment and freedom. All Europeans remembered the epigram of Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, the French economist: "He snatched the lightning from the skies and the sceptre from tyrants."