FRANKLIN 



2315 



FRANKLIN 



WHEN HE ENTERED 

 PHILADELPHIA 



ing the others under his arm, while a young 

 girl, whom fortune destined to be his future 

 wife, stood in a doorway and laughed at him. 

 Beginnings of Success. Franklin's knowledge 

 of printing soon secured him work, and so able 

 did he prove to be that in the next year Sir 

 William Keith, the governor of the colony, 

 sent him to England to buy a printing outfit. 

 Keith did not live 

 up to his promises, 

 however, and Frank- 

 lin worked for a year 

 and a half in Lon- 

 don, acquiring new 

 skill. Shortly after 

 his return to Phila- 

 delphia he found a 

 partner who had 

 money, so he opened 

 a printing shop for 

 himself, and in 1729 

 bought the Penn- 

 sylvania Gazette, 

 which he edited and 

 printed so ably that 

 he became known 

 through all the col- 

 onies. His public 

 i-r i j . A statue of Franklin, at 



life had now begun, the age of seventeen, mod- 



and his influence be- eled b y McKenzie. 

 came stronger and stronger, especially on the 

 questions of frugality, industry and temper- 

 ance. Poor Richard's Almanac, which ap- 

 peared yearly from 1732 to 1757, carried into 

 thousands of homes his practical wisdom and 

 made his quaint, pithy sayings part of the 

 national speech. On every tongue were to be 

 heard such of his proverbs as "God helps 

 them that help themselves"; "Never leave 

 that till to-morrow which you can do to-day"; 

 "Silks and satins put out the kitchen fire"; 

 "Lying rides upon debt's back"; "Tis hard 

 for an empty bag to stand upright." It is 

 difficult to estimate the actual effect which 

 they had in promoting thrift. 



Public Services. But Franklin's part in 

 American life did not consist merely in preach- 

 ing ; he performed momentous services, as well. 

 In Philadelphia he founded the first American 

 public library and a magazine, initiated the 

 postal service, fire companies and a police sys- 

 tem, and introduced so many improvements 

 that the city stood as the metropolis of the 

 colonies. Politically, too, he was active. Be- 

 ginning in 1736 as clerk of the Pennsylvania 

 Assembly, he rose steadily, serving as post- 



master of Philadelphia, as a member of the 

 Assembly, and in 1753 as postmaster-general 

 of the colonies. In 1754, in the Albany Con- 

 vention, he brought forward a plan for colo- 

 nial union, but neither the colonies nor the 

 mother country favored it, and it was rejected. 

 He did not fight during the French and Indian 

 War, but he did something just as important 

 guaranteed transportation and supplies to 

 Braddock's forces, and paid for such out of his 

 own funds, which by this time amounted to 

 a considerable fortune. 



From 1757 to 1775 he spent most of his time 

 in England, attempting to avert the struggle 

 between that country and the colonies. He 

 detested war; "There never was a good war 

 or a bad peace," he wrote, but when it really 

 came he returned to his home and stood shoul- 

 der to shoulder with the other patriots. He 

 was one of the framers and signers of the 

 Declaration of Independence, and it was on 

 the occasion of the signing that he remarked 

 with his quiet humor, "We must all hang to- 

 gether, or assuredly we shall all hang sep- 

 arately." During the war he was sent to 

 France ; there his extreme popularity did much 

 to win for the colonies immediate concessions 

 and later a definite treaty of alliance with 

 France. Nothing shows more clearly the es- 

 teem in which he was held than the fact that 

 he was the only American to sign the Decla- 

 ration of Independence, the treaty with France, 

 the Treaty of Paris with which the war closed, 

 and the Constitution of the United States. 



Service to Science. It might seem that these 

 activities were enough to demand all of a 

 man's energy and time, but there was another 



HIS BIRTHPLACE 

 In Milk Street, Boston. 



side to Franklin's genius. In 1746 he saw per- 

 formed in Boston some electrical experiments 

 which interested him greatly, and six years 

 later he proved by an experiment with a kite 

 in a thunderstorm that lightning and electric- 



