Commentary
Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston on Jan. 6, 1706, the youngest son among a tradesman’s 15 children by two successive wives. He had two years of formal education. At the age of 12 he was apprenticed to his older brother James, a printer. Five years later, he ran away to New York. He couldn’t find a job there. He was forced to travel on to Philadelphia, arriving with one Dutch dollar and about 20 pence in copper.
But in the next 25 years, Franklin— established a successful printing business, with affiliated businesses throughout the colonies;
established a successful newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette, and also founded America’s first German-language newspaper;
created a highly popular annual almanac—“Poor Richard”—and composed the first series of political essays in American literature;
taught himself to read, write, and translate German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Latin;
organized America’s first public library, a fire department for Philadelphia, the American Philosophical Society, and a militia company;
invented the Franklin stove and a new printing method to prevent the counterfeiting of paper money;
served as clerk of the Pennsylvania colonial assembly, postmaster of Philadelphia, and co-postmaster for North America;
studied and wrote on the nature of whirlwinds and water spouts, and undertook the groundbreaking experiments in electricity that led to world-wide recognition—including several honorary masters degrees, and honorary doctorates from the University of St. Andrews and Oxford. And that was just the first half of his life….