10. The Continuing Education of Ben Franklin
The Continuing Education of Ben Franklin
As George Whitefield was attending his classics classes—or skipping them to work on plays—Ben Franklin was back in Philadelphia, getting an education of an entirely different kind. For a short time, he worked for the good Quaker merchant Thomas Denham, but then Ben came down with a serious illness—pleurisy, an inflammation of the lining of the lungs. He said it “very nearly carried me off.” That doesn’t seem to be an exaggeration. In his autobiography, he indicated that, in his great suffering, he made his peace with impending death and was actually “rather disappointed when I found myself recovering,” as he remembered all the work remaining to be done.1 As it turned out, this was probably the disease that killed him more than sixty years later.
The near-death experience might have shaken young Ben spiritually. In such situations we speak of life passing before one’s eyes, and maybe that happened to Ben. But at age twenty-one (it was probably the spring of 1727 when he got sick), how much life did he have to review? A series of adventures and a string of broken relationships. He had wriggled out of a stifling apprenticeship, survived the governor’s betrayal, and avoided the snare of James Ralph’s lazy hedonism. Ben was a promising young man—everyone said so. But if he was on his deathbed, would that promise ever be fulfilled?
Franklin said that he “gave up the point” in his own mind as he considered his own death.2 It’s an interesting term, used by a man who had been in plenty of debates. It means he conceded. He stopped arguing. With God? With himself? We can imagine that he had mustered plenty of arguments as to why he should keep living, but he got so sick that he gave them up. He accepted the inevitable.
And then he recovered.
You might expect some sort of “conversion” here. Shouldn’t a trip to death’s door result in a renewed commitment to make life count? But Ben had already been very intentional about living the best life possible. He had been making commitments all along. On his recent ocean voyage back to America, he had begun to set out his personal ethics. What more could a life-shaking illness do for him, except to confirm the direction he was already taking?
Unless we’re talking about his relationship with God. It’s true that, when people prepare to “meet their Maker,” they often actually meet their Maker. Not in the afterlife, but in this earthly life. God becomes real to them, and they begin to live their lives for him. In a few years, George Whitefield would have an experience like that—not exactly from a life-threatening illness, but poor health would be a factor. Wouldn’t this be a perfect time for young Ben to give up his resistance to the Puritan theology of his youth, to realize that Cotton Mather and John Bunyan and his parents were right all along, and to rely on Jesus for his salvation?
It didn’t happen like that. In the aftermath of this serious disease, we don’t see any particular religious devotion—and yet there is a suggestion of a new . Up to that point, Ben’s life had been largely about Ben. How could he best use his own remarkable abilities? But in the next few years, he started to develop groups that would harness the abilities of a whole society. He learned to communicate with the city, with the colony, and with the movers and shakers. He swayed public opinion and worked cleverly to improve the collective life of America. How could he make the world a better place? That was the question that began to propel his activity. Skeptics, then and now, could point out that Ben never gave up his self-interest, and that’s true. He profited greatly—in terms of reputation and business—from most of these early social efforts, but he never saw it as an either/or proposition. And in a world with plenty of selfish profiteers, Ben Franklin made a name for himself by working for the prosperity of the whole community. Was this a shift of life purpose that resulted from that deathbed moment when he “gave up the point”?
Ben’s patron, Thomas Denham, also got sick about the same time, but he did not recover. The mercantile business was bequeathed to his children. The newly recovered Ben was out of danger, but also out of work (and out from under his debt of ten pounds to Denham from the ship trip home).
Fortunately, his old boss Samuel Keimer hired him as sort of a foreman at the old print shop. Ben now had responsibility over several workers and, with Keimer off managing a stationery store, he was free to improve the business. From his own account, he managed the workers well and made the shop more efficient. When the press needed new type, Ben arranged to mold the letters himself, rather than paying and waiting for a new set of press forms from England. When the shop got the job of printing paper currency for the colony, Ben fashioned a copperplate press to handle the intricate work necessary to protect against counterfeiting.
Yet Keimer and Franklin didn’t get along. Gone were the days when they would debate for the fun of it or try to think up a new religion. When Ben had first come to Philadelphia, Keimer seemed to be a father figure—or at least the kind of friendly big brother that James Franklin had never been. But now the boss seemed threatened by Ben’s ability and perhaps jealous of his convivial personality. Maybe that dated back to the situation with Governor Keith, when Keimer was surprised and humiliated that this illustrious personage was coming to call on his shop boy rather than Keimer himself. Now Keimer and Franklin traveled together to meet new clients, and it was Franklin who would dazzle them with his wit, his reading, and his travels. Keimer stewed in his jealousy. Ben suspected that his boss was just using him to train the workers, and when they could run the shop on their own, Ben would be sacked.
So there were several run-ins between boss and foreman, and Ben began making plans with one of the workers, Hugh Meredith, to open up their own print shop. Meredith said his father could put up the capital. So when Ben finally got fired from Keimer’s shop, it was the perfect opportunity to fulfill a dream of starting his own business.
That didn’t go quite as planned.
The new partners rented a place at 139 Market Street, installed their equipment, and began taking print jobs. But Hugh Meredith had a drinking problem. Overseeing Keimer’s shop, Ben had managed to convince Hugh to keep his addiction under control. As a result, Hugh’s father considered Ben a good influence on his son, which was one big reason he was willing to put up the money for this business venture. But once they went into business with Ben, both of the Merediths proved irresponsible. The father provided only about half the promised funds, and the son returned to his drinking. Always conscious of his public image, Ben suffered on both counts. Creditors were suing his company to get paid, and townspeople regularly saw Hugh Meredith gambling and tippling at the local taverns. Neither of these factors was good for business.
Through financial support from two affluent friends who insisted Ben sever ties with Hugh, he was able to buy out the Merediths and, for the first time, run his own shop. He quickly set about repairing his public image, working day and night to meet deadlines. People took notice of the fact that he was at work earlier and later than everyone else on Market Street. Ben made a point of purchasing paper himself, returning to his shop with a wheelbarrow full of it. People would see this hardworking young businessman and be impressed enough to give him their business.
As the third printer in a two-printer town (Keimer and Andrew Bradford, son of the printer Ben met in New York), Franklin had a tough task ahead of him. He was determined to succeed on the basis of hard work and high-quality output. He was also a great writer—perhaps the best in America at the time—and this gave him an additional edge, especially when it came to newspaper publishing.
Remember that Ben had already enjoyed a brief stint as a newspaper publisher, filling in on the New-England Courant when his brother was jailed. This had clearly been the high point of his apprenticeship, and it’s no surprise that, soon after establishing his own printing business, he would want to start another paper. There was already one newspaper in Philadelphia, Bradford’s The American Weekly Mercury, but Ben didn’t think very highly of its writing, and he was sure he could find his own readership.
He made the mistake of mentioning his newspaper dream to a friend, who mentioned it to Samuel Keimer, Ben’s old boss. In response (and possibly still nursing sour feelings against Ben), Keimer quickly launched a newspaper of his own: the Universal Instructor in all Arts and Sciences: and Pennsylvania Gazette. Consisting largely of reprinted encyclopedia entries, this paper was even worse than Bradford’s. Recognizing that the town wasn’t big enough for three papers, Ben Franklin embarked upon a shrewd and cold-hearted plan to drive his old boss out of the newspaper business. Employing strategies that bring to mind modern “hostile takeovers,” Ben used the most devastating weapon available: his pen.
First he submitted a series of columns to Bradford’s paper, the Mercury. These columns, printed under the pseudonym Busy-Body, openly criticized the shoddy quality of Keimer’s rag. Of course these articles were also witty and delightful, far better than anything else in Bradford’s paper. Keimer took the bait, publishing whiny responses that reduced the quality of his paper even further. In this exchange, Franklin—still writing under pseudonyms—began to describe his idea of what a newspaper could be. This not only disgraced Keimer, but it made readers disappointed in Bradford’s paper, and it set the scene for Franklin’s entrance into the market.
Eventually Keimer lost enough business that he sold the paper to Franklin, who shortened its name to the Pennsylvania Gazette. Finally Ben could publish his brilliant writing in his own newspaper, and its quality quickly exceeded that of the Mercury.
This episode may force us to revise our image of Franklin, who could be a shark when he needed to be. One might protest that Keimer brought this on himself, with his mistreatment of Franklin, from whom he stole the newspaper idea to begin with. In a way, Ben was just reclaiming his own intellectual property. Still, he was ruthless in his response to Keimer, who ended up deeply in debt and even imprisoned for a time.
Perhaps there was even more at stake here. Ben knew what a good newspaper could mean to a society. He had seen the power of the Courant in Boston, standing up to the political and social powers of the time, even the great Cotton Mather. Unfortunately, in his view, neither of the Philadelphia newspapers was worth the paper it was printed on. They were squandering their potential status in a society that desperately needed informed citizens. By rushing into print with regurgitated encyclopedia pages, Keimer wasn’t just stealing an idea from Franklin, he was silencing the voice of a colony.
This was not the first time Ben would use a pen name to get his way. And it would not be the last time he would use the power of the press to sway public opinion. About a decade later, Franklin’s coverage in the Pennsylvania Gazette would make George Whitefield a household name. Many of the same tricks that Ben used in his early days—such as phony letters to the editor to create controversy—would be used again with Whitefield, but to build him up rather than destroy him. By 1739, Ben Franklin had become a powerful star maker. That power began to be displayed here, in 1729.
Betrayal
In these crucial years, not only was Ben getting an education in business, but he was also learning more about relationships. He must have had remarkable social skills. With his wit, awareness, and humility, he made friends wherever he went. But with the Meredith fiasco, not to mention the implosion of the relationship with Keimer, we begin to see a pattern. People betrayed Ben. They used him. His closest friendships ended in bitter disappointment.
We could start with his brother James. As a precocious apprentice, Ben surely wanted more of a collegial relationship there, especially after he proved himself with the Silence Dogood letters and by taking over the paper while James was in jail. But this wasn’t to be. Ben himself sabotaged the future of this relationship when he returned to Boston in show-off mode. Of course James would turn a cold shoulder.
Another relationship from Ben’s Boston days later turned sour. John Collins had been a boyhood friend. A “bookish lad,” Collins used to debate social issues with Ben. It was Collins who arranged Ben’s escape from Boston on the sloop to New York. Later, Collins came to Philadelphia and stayed with Ben for a time, borrowing more and more money, which he spent largely on liquor. That friendship sank on a rowboat ride with several other friends, when Collins refused to do his share of the rowing. After asking several times, Ben finally threw Collins overboard. He knew the guy could swim, so there was no danger there, just inconvenience and humiliation. When Collins finally dried off, moved out, and got a job elsewhere, he refused to repay the money he had borrowed.
Ben suffered through the James Ralph years and the Governor Keith disappointment, as well as the dismanthng of once-promising working relationships with Samuel Keimer and Hugh Meredith. Was Ben a bad friend, or did he attract the wrong kind of people?
In his autobiography, Ben admitted to errors (“errata”) with his brother and with Ralph, though each of them used Ben in his own way. Perhaps Ben was naïve in trusting the governor and entering into business with the Merediths. Perhaps Ben’s affable manner, along with his desire to present a pleasing image, sent out the message, “Use me!” People seemed to appreciate what Ben could do for them, but when he demanded a reciprocal relationship, things fell apart.
There may be a hint of the passive-aggressive in Ben’s behavior, the personality model commonly depicted in the phrase “I don’t get mad; I get even.” Ben put up with a great deal of mistreatment from all of these people without getting mad. Then he got even in a big way—running out on an apprenticeship, throwing this guy out of a boat, trying to steal that guy’s girlfriend, and destroying someone else in print.
Things didn’t get much better for Ben throughout the rest of his life. He had a lot of friends, but few soul mates. A lot of people tried to use him, and eventually he learned to recognize that. His affability remained, but he had some dark undercurrents that occasionally surfaced. Everybody liked Ben Franklin, except those who didn’t. His friendships ran broad but shallow. He seemed to follow Poor Richard’s advice: “Let all men know thee, but no man know thee thoroughly.”3 There are a few names that recur in his letters, people he seemed to connect with on a deeper level—a sister, some scientific colleagues, and for a time his son—but that’s a rather small circle.
How close a friend did George Whitefield become? The easiest answer is at least as close as most other friends. If Ben had five people in his inner circle, then George was at least tied for sixth. If Ben was wary of people using him, then perhaps he could relax with a man who eventually matched him in fame, influence, and moneymaking ability.
Parenthood
At some point around 1730, Ben had an affair with a woman that resulted in the birth of a son, William. He never denied paternity and took William into the home he set up with Deborah Read. Historians have debated both the timing of William’s conception and the identity of the mother. Franklin was strangely silent on the matter considering his attention to detail in the rest of his autobiography. He never divulged the woman’s name.
This leads some to think it was Deborah herself. She had gotten married when Ben was in England, but her husband had run off in 1728. Divorce laws were strict, so Ben couldn’t officially marry her until there was proof of the husband’s death. Also, adultery standards were unfair to women, so Deborah would suffer socially for bearing a child out of wedlock, while Ben could get away with fathering an illegitimate child. As it turned out, Deborah raised William as her own child, which he might have been.
That theory has some holes, however. Why would Ben keep the secret all his life, even after Deborah’s death? Why did Deborah show such resentment toward William? And there was a letter from a friend of the family, claiming that William’s birth mother was someone else, a woman of low class and low morals, later sustained by occasional financial support from Franklin.
As for the timing, in a letter to his mother in 1750, Ben mentioned that William was nineteen, requiring a birth date of 1731—but he might have been fudging the data to make the boy seem legitimate. Other records show William serving in a militia in 1746. If he had been born in 1731, he would have only been fifteen then, too young to serve. Most likely William was born around 1728 or 1729, before Ben settled down with Deborah. Since they didn’t know the whereabouts of her first husband, or whether he was still alive, they entered a common-law marriage in September 1730.
As he turned twenty-five early in 1731, Ben Franklin was a successful printer, editor of one of two Philadelphia newspapers, and now a family man.