Much more of the prosperity of a winter country depends on the plenty and cheapness of fuel, than is generally imagined. In travelling I have observed, that in those parts where the inhabitants can have neither wood nor coal nor turf but at excessive prices, the working people live in miserable hovels, are ragged, and have nothing comfortable about them. But when fuel is cheap (or where they have the art of managing it to advantage) they are well furnished with necessaries, and have decent habitations. The obvious reason is, that the working hours of such people are the profitable hours, and they who cannot afford sufficient fuel have fewer such hours in the twenty four, than those who have it cheap and plenty: for much of the domestic work of poor women, such as spinning, sewing, knitting; and of the men in those manufactures that require little bodily exercise, cannot well be performed where the fingers are numbed with cold, those people, therefore, in cold weather, are induced to go to bed sooner, and lie longer in a morning, than they would do if they could have good fires or warm stoves to sit by; and their hours of work are not sufficient to produce the means of comfortable subsistence. Those public works, therefore, such as roads, canals, &c. by which fuel may be brought cheap into such countries from distant places, are of great utility; and those who promote them may be reckoned among the benefactors of mankind.
I have great pleasure in having thus complied with your request, and in the reflection, that the friendship you honour me with, and in which I have ever been so happy, has continued so many years without the smallest interruption. Our distance from each other is now augmented, and nature must soon put an end to the possibility of my continuing our correspondence: but if consciousness and memory remain in a future state, my esteem and respect for you, my dear friend, will be everlasting.
B. FRANKLIN.
Notes for the Letter upon Chimneys.
No. I.
The latest work on architecture that I have seen, is that entitled Nutshells, which appears to be written by a very ingenious man, and contains a table of the proportions of the openings of chimneys; but they relate solely to the proportions he gives his rooms, without the smallest regard to the funnels. And he remarks, respecting those proportions, that they are similar to the harmonic divisions of a monochord.[58] He does not indeed lay much stress on this; but it shows that we like the appearance of principles; and where we have not true ones, we have some satisfaction in producing such as are imaginary.
No. II.
The description of the sliding plates here promised, and which hath been since brought into use under various names, with some immaterial changes, is contained in a former letter to J. B. Esq. as follows:
TO J. B.[59] ESQ. AT BOSTON, IN NEW-ENGLAND.