Benjamin Franklin, Self-Revealed, Volume 1 (of 2) / A Biographical and Critical Study Based Mainly on his own Writings

by Wiliam Cabell Bruce

The Reverend Gilbert Tennent, one of whose sermons caused Whitefield to say, "Never before heard I such a searching sermon; he is a son of thunder, and does not regard the face of man," was not so fortunate as Dr. Bond when he asked Franklin to assist him in obtaining subscriptions for the erection of a new meeting-house in Philadelphia, for the use of a congregation drawn from among the Presbyterians, who were originally disciples of Whitefield. Franklin says that he absolutely refused to do so because he was unwilling to make himself disagreeable to his fellow-citizens by soliciting contributions from them too frequently. The truth in part, we suspect, was that his zealous interest was not easily excited in any meeting-house where even a missionary sent by the Mufti of Constantinople to preach Mohammedanism to the people of Philadelphia would not find a pulpit at his service. But, if this incident has any general significance, it may be accepted as evidence that, though Franklin might contribute nothing else upon such an occasion, he was prepared to contribute a good joke. When Tennent found that he could get no other kind of assistance from him, he asked him to give him at least his advice. What followed would suffer in telling if not told as the Autobiography tells it:

That I will readily do [said Franklin], and, in the first place, I advise you to apply to all those whom you know will give something; next, to those whom you are uncertain whether they will give anything or not, and show them the list of those who have given; and, lastly, do not neglect those who you are sure will give nothing, for in some of them you may be mistaken. He laugh'd and thank'd me, and said he would take my advice. He did so, for he ask'd of everybody, and he obtain'd a much larger sum than he expected, with which he erected the capacious and very elegant meeting-house that stands in Arch Street.

Other services rendered by Franklin to Philadelphia related to the better paving and lighting of its streets. These streets were laid out with great regularity, but, being wholly unpaved, were mere quagmires in winter and stifling stretches of dust in summer. So bad was their condition as a rule that Philadelphia came to be known among the country people around it as "Filthy-dirty." Franklin, when he lived near the Jersey Market, witnessed with concern the miserable plight of its patrons as they waded about on either side of it in mire deep enough to have prompted the observation of Napoleon, based upon his campaigns in Poland, that mud should be accounted a fifth element. A step was taken when a stretch of ground down the middle of the market was paved with brick. This offered a firm footing, when once attained, but, before a pedestrian could attain it, he might be overshoes in wet clay. By tongue and pen, Franklin at length succeeded in having the spaces between the market and the foot pavements of the streets flanking it laid with stone. The result was that for a season a market woman could reach the market dry-shod, but, in the course of time, the pavements became loaded with mud shaken off the wheels of passing vehicles, and this mud, after being thus deposited, was allowed, for lack of street cleaners, to remain where it fell. Here was an inviting situation, indeed, for such a municipal housewife as Franklin. Having hunted up a poor, industrious man, who was willing to contract for the sum of sixpence per month, per house, to sweep up and carry away the dirt in front of the houses abutting on these pavements, he wrote and published a paper setting forth the marked advantages to the neighborhood that would result from such a small expenditure—the reduced amount of mud that people would carry around on their shoes, the readier access that customers would have to the shops near the market, freedom from wind-borne dust and other kindred benefits not likely to escape the attention of a man to whom even the dust of unpaved streets suggested the following reflections in the Autobiography:

Human felicity is produc'd not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day. Thus, if you teach a poor young man to shave himself, and keep his razor in order, you may contribute more to the happiness of his life than in giving him a thousand guineas. The money may be soon spent, the regret only remaining of having foolishly consumed it; but in the other case, he escapes the frequent vexation of waiting for barbers, and of their sometimes dirty fingers, offensive breaths, and dull razors; he shaves when most convenient to him, and enjoys daily the pleasure of its being done with a good instrument.

A copy of the paper was sent to each house affected by its proposals, every householder agreed to pay his sixpence, and the sense of comfort experienced by the entire population of Philadelphia in the more commodious use of the market prepared their minds for the bill which Franklin later introduced into the Assembly providing for the paving of the whole city. He was on the point of embarking on his second voyage to England when this was done, and the bill was not passed until after he was gone, and then with an alteration in his method of assessing the paving cost which his judgment did not deem an improvement; but the bill as passed contained a further provision for lighting as well as paving the streets of Philadelphia which he did deem a great improvement. The merit of first suggesting the hospital Franklin is studious to tell us, though ascribed to him, was due to Dr. Bond. So likewise he is quick to admit that the honor of giving the first impulse to municipal lighting in Philadelphia did not belong to him, as had been supposed, but to John Clifton, who had placed a private lamp at his own door. Franklin simply followed Clifton's example; but, when the city began to light its streets, his fertile mind did bring forward a novel idea which proved a highly useful one. Instead of the globes imported from London which became so black and opaque from smoke for lack of air, when the lamps were lighted, that they had to be cleaned every day, and which, moreover, were totally wrecked by a single blow, he suggested that the coverings for the city lamps should be composed of four flat panes, with a long funnel above and inlets below for the free circulation of air. The result was a covering that remained untarnished until morning and was not involved in complete ruin by a single fracture.

Such were some of the principal achievements of Franklin for the benefit of Philadelphia. It is not easy to magnify unduly their significance when we bear in mind that they were all crowded into a period of some thirty years during the greater part of which he was faithfully heeding Poor Richard's maxim, "Keep thy shop and thy shop will keep thee"; to say nothing of the claims upon his time of political duties and scientific studies and experiments. Franklin was not the Romulus of Philadelphia; nor was he its Augustus, who found it of brick and left it of marble. There was solid brick enough in the structure of American colonial life, but little marble. However, it can at least be said of him that rarely has any single private individual, with no great fortune, and with no control over the public purse except what is conferred by the favor of public opinion won by personal intelligence and public spirit, laid the foundations of so much that was of lasting and increasing utility to an infant community destined to become one of the populous and opulent cities of the world. In how many other respects his sympathy with human interests in their broader relations made its influence felt in Colonial America we can only conjecture, but in many ways, in addition to those already mentioned, its fructifying results have been brought home to us. It was at his instance that the merchants of Philadelphia sent the ship Argo to the Arctics to discover a Northwest Passage. Kalm, the Swedish botanist, when he came to Pennsylvania, found in him a most helpful friend and patron. He labored untiringly to obtain for Bartram, the American naturalist, the recognition which he richly merited. One of the proudest days of his life was when his eager exertions in behalf of silk culture in Pennsylvania were rewarded by the knowledge that the Queen of England had not only graciously condescended to accept a sample of Pennsylvania silk tendered to her by him but proposed to wear it in the form of a dress. During his third sojourn in England, the hospital at home was frequently reminded of the strength of his concern for its welfare by gifts and suggestions more valuable than gifts. To him was entrusted the commission of purchasing a telescope and other instruments for the Astronomical School at Harvard College. To the library of Harvard he occasionally forwarded parcels of books, either his own gifts or gifts from his friends. In addition to his zealous efforts in the latter part of his life in behalf of negro emancipation and the relief of the free blacks, he was for several years one of the associates charged with the management of the Bray Fund for the conversion of negroes in the British plantations. He was also a trustee of the Society for the benefit of poor Germans, one of the objects of which was the establishment of English schools in the German communities which had become so numerous in Pennsylvania. It was high time that this object should receive the attention of the Englishry of the province as one of his letters indicates.

I remember [he said in 1753 in a letter to Richard Jackson] when they [the Germans] modestly declined intermeddling in our Elections, but now they come in Droves and carry all before them, except in one or two Counties.

Few of their Children in the Country learn English. They import many Books from Germany; and of the six Printing-Houses in the Province, two are entirely German, two half German half English, and but two entirely English. They have one German Newspaper, and one half-German. Advertisements, intended to be general, are now printed in Dutch and English. The Signs in our Streets have Inscriptions in both Languages, and in some places only German. They begin of late to make all their Bonds and other legal Instruments in their own Language, which (though I think it ought not to be) are allowed good in our Courts, where the German Business so increases, that there is continued need of Interpreters; and I suppose in a few Years they will also be necessary in the Assembly to tell one half of our Legislators what the other half say.[13]

As we are said to be indebted to Jefferson for the introduction into America of the Lombardy poplar so it is said that we are indebted to Franklin for the domestication of the yellow willow so useful in the manufacture of wicker-work. The story is that his observant eye noted the sprouts, which a willow basket from abroad had put forth, when refreshed by the water of a creek into which it had been tossed, and that he was at pains to plant some of them on a lot in Philadelphia. Apparently, he was the first person, too, to introduce the rhubarb plant into America. He obtained seed of the broom-corn on one of his visits to Virginia, and took care to disseminate it in Pennsylvania and other Colonies. When the Pennsylvania farmers were skeptical about the value of plaster, he framed in that substance on the surface of a conspicuous field the words: "this has been plastered," which were soon rewritten in vegetation that rose legibly above the general level of its surroundings. One of his suggestions was an "office of insurance" on the mutual assessment plan against losses from storms, blights, insects, etc., suffered by farmers. Among his essays is a concise but highly instructive one on Maize, or Indian Corn, which was well calculated to make known to the world a plant now hardly less prized by the American for its general usefulness than the date-palm is by the Arab. John Adams informs us in his Diary that, on one occasion, when in Massachusetts, Franklin mentioned that Rhenish grape-vines had been recently planted at Philadelphia, and had succeeded very well, whereupon his host, Edmund Quincy, expressed the wish that he could plant some in his own garden. A few weeks later Quincy received a bundle of the Rhenish slips by sea from Franklin, and a little later another by post.

Thus [diarizes Adams, at the time a young man of but twenty-four, when the difficulty with which the slips had been procured by Franklin came to his knowledge] he took the trouble to hunt over the city (Philadelphia) and not finding vines there, he sends seventy miles into the country, and then sends one bundle by water, and, lest they should miscarry, another by land, to a gentleman whom he owed nothing, and was but little acquainted with, purely for the sake of doing good in the world by propagating the Rhenish vines through these provinces. And Mr. Quincy has some of them now growing in his garden. This is an instance, too, of his amazing capacity for business, his memory and resolution: amidst so much business as counselor, postmaster, printer, so many private studies, and so many public avocations too, to remember such a transient hint and exert himself so in answer to it, is surprising.