BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

Taranaki Daily News, 19 January 1935, Page 11 (Supplement)

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

PRINTERS’ “PATRON SAINT”

(By

H.E.C.)

It was a pressman from Los Angeles, who visited the Dominion last year, who used the title “patron saint of American printing” to illustrate the veneration felt for Benjamin Franklin whose “'birthday” fell during this week. Saintship has many interpretations, and there were patches in Benjamin’s career that made the title “saint” a little questionable. If he deserved the title it certainly carried with it the saving grace of some very human failings. All the same,, it was a wonderful career that began when Benjamin Franklin was born at Boston, (Mass.), on January 17, 1706. His father was a “homey” from Oxfordshire, and Benjamin was the youngest son in a family of six sons and four daughters. He attended a ‘(grammar school” when eight years old; two yc later was apprenticed to his father’s business of candle and soap making, but at twelve years of age he found his vocation, being apprenticed to his half-brother James, a printer -in Boston. Work at “the case” did not satisfy the lad who wds reading all he could get hold of and thinking for himself. He began to write, and when he was 15 had the temerity to establish what has been called “the first sensational newspaper of America.” He called it the New England Courant and he used his paper to attack the theocratic government and the ruling aristocracy of puritans of which American-born youth was getting tired.

Two years later he went to Philadelphia as a printer, having quarrelled with his half-brother over the conduct of the Courant. His ability and studious habits became known to the Governor of Pennsylvania, and he offered to aid the youth in setting up a printing press of his own. Benjamin’s .father considered him too young and refused financial assistance, so the youth returned to Philadelphia more than a little dejected. The Governor urged him to go to London to perfect his knowledge of .printing and promised him letters to the great “Penn” family, ground-landlords then of so much of the territory of Pennsylvania. The Governor forgot his promise, so Franklin reached London in December 1724 unaided, and there he worked in various printing establishments. .

He was back at Philadelphia in October, 1726, still under the age of 21, and went back to his former employer. Tn 1728 he started business as a printer and in the same year bought the almost moribund Pennsylvania Gazette. Franklin made the paper bright, liberal and amusing, and in a few years could claim for it a circulation the largest in America. ■

From that period, although he extended. his printing houses to New York, Charleston and the West Indies, it is as a pressman and public leader that Franklin is known. When the Gazette was recovering, after two years of his invigorating control, he married Deborah Read. They had been lovers when Benjamin was 17, but his journey to England had led t< Deborah’s marriage to a man who had subsequently disappeared. Franklin saw that America was for the native-born. Religious squabbles that had driven their forebears from England were only dry history to them, and the inhibitions of Puritan rule were irritating and ineffective. He established a young .man’s club at Philadelphia, joined the Masonic fraternity and became Grand Master of the Pennsylvania' Lodge. He had been made Government Printer in' 1730 and seven years later was made Postmaster at Philadelphia. His association with the authorities at London became closer, and with his official position, obtained he left his commercial affairs to others and began his public career. He was 42 years old when he was elected a member of the Philadelphia City Council; Two years later he was a member of the Pennsylvania Assembly and had laid the foundations of what is now the University of Pennsylvania. In the Provincial Assembly, his knowledge and ability soon brought him to the front. He was sent, with others, to try and arrange treaties with the Indians,' and end the ceaseless warfare between them and the white settlers. Consideration of the future led him to write a treatise on “The • Union of the English Colonies in America.” It was studied appreciatively in the colonies, but London would have none of it.

However, his publications, political and philosophical, brought him friends in Great Britain. He went across the Atlantic again. Oxford and St. Andrews gave him honorary degrees, and it looked as though his discussions with the King’s Ministers might reconcile the opposing views of the Crown and the colonists. A pamphlet written by Franklin is said to have made Britain decide to keep Canada rather than Guadeloupe when making one of her many post-war agreements with France, and in the fight of later events the Empire owes a good deal to the Philadelphia journalist. As everyone knows the fink between Crown and colonies was broken. Franklin had done his best to prevent it. He had risked misjudgment and the displeasure of his fellow-colonials, but when the break came he was a supporter of the Republic though his son was on the King’s side.

The United States established, Franklin became a member of Congress, and was soon sent as Minister to France. There, in spite of difficulties, often made by his own countrymen, he added to his reputation as a diplomat, a philosopher and a man of letters. He negotiated a Franco-American treaty, and in 1785 he returned to Philadelphia where he died on April 17, 1790. It was the American, journalist who called him a “patron saint” who drew attention also to Franklin’s pride in his craft. Successful businessman, diplomatist, inventor and scholar he might be, but it was as a printer he wished to be remembered, and in pursuance of that desire he wrote his own epitaph. It is as follows: — The Body of Benjamin Franklin, Printer (Like the. Cover of an Old Book Stripped >f its Gilding and Binding, its Contents tom out) Lies here, Food for the Worms Yet the Work itself shall not Perish For it Will, as he Believes,

Appear once more in a new and more Beautiful Edition Corrected and Amended by the Author. "

America is said to be the country where there is no sentiment in commercial affairs. It is pleasant therefore to read that on the anniversary of Benjamin Franklin’s birth it is the habit of one American newspaper at least to reprint the self-designed epitaph of America’s greatest printer and journalist.