Franklin (2 page)

After a stormy voyage, the ship reached London on December 24, 1724. Benjamin soon discovered Governor Keith had not written any letters of credit. Baffled, he sought out a friend he had made on the voyage, Philadelphia merchant
Thomas Denham
. Benjamin explained the purpose of his trip. Denham laughed at the notion Keith would give Benjamin a letter of credit because, he said, the governor had “no credit to give.” Why had Keith deceived an inexperienced young man? Denham explained, “He wished to please everybody, and having little to give, he gave expectations.”

“What should I do?” Benjamin asked. He was 3,000 miles from home and penniless.

Franklin did what he knew best how to do - he went to work as a printer. Soon he was as good as his English counterparts. In fact, he worked harder and longer than most. At eighteen, he stood almost six feet tall, with muscular arms and shoulders. Most printers needed both hands to carry type up and down stairs, but Franklin carried one in each hand. The master printer, noting his speed, gave Franklin all the work that needed to be done quickly and paid him more than fellow journeymen.

Franklin tried to save money but found it difficult. A friend,
James Ralph
, who had come with him, struggled to become a writer, finding little work. Franklin fed and housed him. Although he had a wife in Philadelphia, Ralph fell in love with a woman who ran a millinery shop. They lived together, and the scandal cost her friends and her business. Franklin soon was supporting her, too. In desperation, Ralph took a teaching job in the country. His English “wife” continued to visit Franklin, who found himself falling in love with her. When Franklin suggested he take Ralph's place, the lady informed Ralph, who rushed back to London, where he denounced Franklin and informed him his debts to Franklin –£27 – were canceled.

Franklin struggled to save for his voyage back to Philadelphia. It took almost two years, and without Ralph, he was lonely and homesick.

Franklin almost gave up printing to open a swimming school. After making friends with another printer, Franklin taught him and another man how to swim in two visits to the Thames.

One day, on a trip down the river with this man and his friends, the printer told everyone that Franklin was a remarkable swimmer. Few Englishmen could swim, and everyone was curious to see Franklin perform. He removed most of his clothes, leaped into the Thames, and swam from Chelsea to Blackfriar's - about three and a half miles. He dove, floated on his back, and swam under water, all of which “surpriz'd and pleas'd those to whom they were novelties.”

A wealthy Englishman heard about this performance and asked Franklin to call on him. His sons were preparing to leave for Europe, he explained, and he would like them to learn how to swim. He offered Franklin a substantial amount, and Franklin realized he could make a lot of money teaching Englishmen how to swim. He gave up the idea, though, and told his customer he could not teach his sons. Franklin was returning to America.

Thomas Denham, the merchant who had told Franklin about Governor Keith, kept in touch with his friend. He offered to take Franklin back to Philadelphia and give him a job as his clerk in a store he planned to open. Franklin accepted. “I was grown tired of London,” he said, “remember'd with pleasure the happy months I had spent in Pennsylvania, and wish'd again to see it.”

On the voyage back to Philadelphia, Franklin kept a journal. In it, he described the towns they passed while sailing down the Channel, and once on the ocean, recorded the weather, the fish they caught, and his fellow voyagers. For the first time, he revealed one talent that would make him famous - the keen eye of a scientist.

“This afternoon we took up several branches of gulfweed,” he wrote on September 28, 1726. Gulfweed was the vegetation that grew in the Gulf Stream, the ocean river that runs from the Gulf of Mexico across the Atlantic. “One of these branches had something peculiar in it. In common with the rest, it had a leaf about three-quarters of an inch long, indented like a saw, and a small yellow berry, filled with nothing but wind; besides which it bore a fruit of the animal kind, very surprising to see. It was a small shellfish like a heart, the stalk by which it proceeded from the branch being partly of a grizzly kind. Upon this one branch of the weed, there were near forty of these vegetable animals; the smallest of them, near the end, contained a substance somewhat like an oyster, but the larger were visibly animated, opening their shells every moment, and thrusting out a set of unformed claws, not unlike those of a crab; but the inner part was still a kind of soft jelly. Observing the weed more narrowly, I spied a small crab crawling along it, about as big as the head of a tenpenny nail, and of a yellowish color, like the weed itself. This gave me some reason to think that he was a native of the branch; that he had not long since been in the same condition with the rest of those little embryos that appeared in the shells, this being the method of their generation; and that, consequently, all the rest of this odd kind of fruit might be crabs in due time. To strengthen my conjecture, I have resolved to keep the weed in salt water, renewing it every day till we come onshore, by this experiment to see whether any more crabs will be produced or not in this manner.”

The next day, Franklin found another crab much smaller than the previous one, and it convinced him his hypothesis was correct. But the weed could not survive in a small pot of water; the rest of the embryos died. The following day, Franklin hauled in more gulfweed and found “three living, perfect crabs, each less than the nail of my little finger.” He noticed one had “a thin piece of the white shell which I before noticed as their covering while they remained in the condition of embryos, sticking close to his natural shell upon his back.”

Franklin pondered his own life. He was almost twenty-one. His life had been like a poorly written play - “a confused variety of different scenes.” He decided to make some resolutions.

Arriving in Philadelphia, Franklin discovered his relationship with Miss Read had grown worse. In his first months in London, he had written her only once, implying it would be a long time before he came home. Consequently, she had married another man, a heavy drinker and potter by trade who left Philadelphia for the West Indies, leaving behind considerable debts.

Blaming himself for her unhappiness, Franklin decided his conduct was related to his attitude toward religion. Franklin liked to say there was no such thing as morality. Now he began to think “that truth, sincerity and integrity in dealings between man and man were of the utmost importance.”

Back in Philadelphia, Franklin began practicing these principles. Bringing order into his life was only a step. A single person, though sincere and industrious, could not accomplish much. So Franklin formed a club, the Junto. He got the idea from a book by
Cotton Mather
, a Boston minister. The Junto met each Friday evening, and the rules Franklin made required every member to produce questions on some subject, such as politics, science, or morality. The group discussed these under direction of a president. Once every three months, each member had to write an essay on a subject that interested him to be debated by the group. Drawing on his experience as a debater, Franklin formulated rules that prohibited positive opinions and direct contradictions. Whoever broke the rules paid a fine.

Along with the special questions, the rules required members to produce a set of “standing queries” that others were asked to consider each week. Among them were:

“Hath any deserving stranger arrived in town since last meeting, that you heard of? And what have you heard or observed of his character or merits? And whether think you, it lies in the power of the Junto to oblige him, or to encourage him as he deserves.

“Do you know of any deserving young beginner lately set up, whom it lies in the power of the Junto any way to encourage?

“Have you lately observed any defect in the laws of your country? Or do you know of any beneficial law that is wanting?

“Have you lately observed any encroachment on the just liberties of the people?

These last two questions appeared repeatedly in Franklin's life. He never stopped thinking about how improve the world, and he never stopped worrying that government, in the name of law and order, might take away the rights every Englishman believed he inherited at birth. Among these liberties were trial by a jury of one's peers; the principle of
habeas corpus
, which forces a government to bring a person under arrest before a judge or a court; the right to petition the government for the redress of wrongs; and, above all, the right of free speech, permitting citizens to criticize the government in newspapers, speeches, and conversations.

Meanwhile, Franklin coped with surprises in his career. Denham, the benefactor who had brought him home from England, died six months after returning to Philadelphia. Around the same time, Franklin almost perished from pleurisy. When he recovered, he returned to the printing business as foreman for his friend Keimer. He soon realized Keimer only wanted him to train apprentices; after they had learned printing, he planned to fire Franklin to save money. Franklin decided to go into business himself.

He befriended Welshman Hugh Meredith, who had a wealthy father. The older Meredith agreed to set them up in business as partners if Franklin would train his son as a printer.

They opened their print shop with plans to publish a newspaper. Philadelphia had only one paper,
Andrew Bradford
's little-respected
American Weekly Mercury
. When Keimer heard about Franklin's plans, he rushed to print a rival paper called
The Universal Instructor in All Arts and Sciences and Pennsylvania Gazette. The Gazette
was a disaster: It didn't have much news; most of the text was reprinted from an encyclopedia. In articles for the
Mercury,
Franklin ridiculed Keimer and his publication, and the number of subscribers to the
Universal Instructor
dwindled. Within a year, Keimer sold his paper to Franklin and Meredith. Franklin shortened the paper's title to
The Pennsylvania Gazette
and went to work.

Franklin impressed Philadelphians with his energy, working twelve to fifteen hours a day. Meredith gave him little help. Printing bored him, and he preferred to drink with friends. Because Meredith's father had provided money for the business, Franklin never criticized his partner.

At first, Philadelphia's older merchants were sure Franklin and Meredith would fail, since two print shops were in town. But one of the city's leading doctors, Patrick Baird, disagreed: “The industry of Franklin is superior to anything I ever saw of the kind. I see him still at work when I go home, and he is at work again before his neighbors are out of bed.”

Finally, two friends went to Franklin separately and offered him enough money to buy out his partner. Franklin accepted half of each man's money and persuaded Meredith to sell his share. Meredith realized he was not suited to be a printer, and he and Franklin parted friends.

Franklin built
The
Pennsylvania Gazette
into the most successful newspaper in America. The wit Franklin displayed in his Silence Dogood letters made the paper popular. The
Gazette
was full of letters to the editor, some of which the editor wrote himself. There was Anthony Afterwit, who told stories about how his wife spent him into bankruptcy; Cecilia Single, a difficult woman who lectured the editor because, she said, he was partial to men; and Alice Addertongue, who said she was organizing a stock exchange for the sale and transfer of slander.

Franklin carried on a war with his newspaper opposition, the
Mercury
, making readers laugh at his rival. He printed a letter from a man who declared himself the author of verses published in the
Mercury.
The fellow complained the editor of the
Mercury
had printed only the first two letters of his name, BL. “I request you to inform the publick that I did not desire my name should be concealed,” wrote the supposed author, “and that the remaining letters are 0, C, K, H, E, A, D.” Another letter reported that a single cannon ball had killed two prominent European soldiers - a remarkable achievement considering one was fighting in Germany, the other in Italy.

Equally important to the success of
The
Pennsylvania Gazette
was Franklin's courage. In one of his first issues, he printed a story about a dispute between the Assembly of Massachusetts and Governor
William Burnet
. Franklin supported the stand of Massachusetts, whose inhabitants insisted on their right to pay the governor what they saw fit. He applauded its refusal to knuckle under to the “menaces of a Governour fam'd for his cunning in politicks.” Franklin said it was proof Americans still retained “that ardent spirit of liberty, and that undaunted courage in the defense of it, which has in every age so gloriously distinguished BRITONS & ENGLISHMEN from all the rest of mankind.” Later, Franklin recalled how his stand had “struck the principal people” in Philadelphia and gained new subscribers.