FRANKLIN 

 AS PRINTER AND PHILOSOPHER 



By Charles William Eliot, LL.D. 



[Address delivered in The American Academy of Music, Friday, April 20] 



THE facts about Franklin as printer are simple and 

 plain, but impressive. His father, respecting the 

 boy's strong disinclination to become a tallow-chandler, 

 selected the printer's trade for him, after giving him 

 opportunities to see members of several different trades 

 at their work, and considering the boy's own tastes and 

 aptitudes. It was at twelve years of age that Franklin 

 signed indentures as an apprentice to his older brother 

 James, who was already an established printer. By the 

 time he was seventeen years old he had mastered the 

 trade in all its branches so completely that he could ven- 

 ture with hardly any money in his pocket first into New 

 York and then into Philadelphia without a friend or 

 acquaintance in either place, and yet succeed promptly 

 in earning his living. He knew all the departments of 

 the business. He was a pressman as well as a compos- 

 itor. He understood both newspaper work and book 

 work. There were at that time no such sharp sub- 

 divisions of labor and no such elaborate machinery as 

 exist in the trade to-day, and Franklin could do with 



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