He had, it seemed to him, three major causes for self-reproach in his past: the grief he had caused his parents by running away from Boston; the wrong he had done his brother James; and his long neglect of Debby. He resolved that henceforth his life would be conducted differently.
Printing was behind him now, or so he thought. Under Thomas Denham he set himself to learning the intricacies of merchandising. He lived with Denham; their relationship was that of father and son. It lasted only a few months. In February 1727, the good Quaker fell ill and did not recover. His executors took over his store, and Franklin was out of a job.
Swallowing his pride, he went back to Samuel Keimer. To his surprise his former employer welcomed him with open arms and even gave him a raise. He soon found out why. Keimer had hired half a dozen men at very low pay. The trouble was they knew nothing about printing. He needed Franklin to teach them their trade.
Obligingly, Franklin went to great pains to show the men everything he knew himself. He did considerably more than he was paid to do. When types wore out, instead of sending an order to England for more, he devised a copper mold to cast new type, the first time this had been done in America. He made their ink, and he started a sideline of engraving. All the techniques he had learned from the London experts, he now put to use.
Knowing Keimer, he did not expect gratitude nor did he get it. As business improved and as the workmen mastered their trade, the employer grew increasingly uncivil and quarrelsome. He complained that he was paying Franklin too much and nagged him incessantly. Matters soon came to a climax. One day Franklin heard a loud noise outside the shop and dashed to the window to see what was happening. He never did find out.
Keimer was standing in the street below and, on seeing Franklin’s face at the window, he bawled him out in such violent and insulting terms that everyone in the neighborhood could hear. No job was worth that much. Franklin took his hat and walked out, never to come back.
That night a fellow journeyman named Hugh Meredith came to see him. Meredith, who had been a farmer and taken up printing only recently, was fed up with Keimer. He proposed that the two of them should go into partnership as soon as his period of service was up a few months hence. His father admired Franklin and was willing to finance them. Mr. Meredith senior soon confirmed the offer, privately telling Franklin he felt he would be a good influence on his son, who drank too much.
During the next months Franklin did odd jobs and, in his spare time, organized a club called the Junto. There were twelve members in all, including Hugh and two other printers, a shoemaker, a joiner, a scrivener, and others in modest trades. “The Leather Apron Club,” the town’s wealthier citizens nicknamed the Junto, because of the humble working class background of its membership.
The Junto met each Friday. Franklin provided them with a list of “queries” to be discussed. “Have you lately observed any encroachment on the just liberties of the people?” Already he was beginning to think in terms of civil rights. “Do you know of any deserving young beginner lately set up whom it lies in the power of the Junto any way to encourage?” He knew from personal experience how much it meant to a young man to have friends to give him support and advice. “Which is best: to make a friend of a wise and good man that is poor or of a rich man that is neither wise nor good?” His brief tussle with earning a living had convinced him that wisdom was preferable to riches.
“Whence comes the dew that stands on the outside of a tankard that has cold water in it in the summertime?” The latter was one of many scientific “queries” he suggested to the Junto, in line with his own curiosity about the mysteries of life.