B. Franklin, Inspiration

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I have a soft spot for Keith Richards. Now, I know some of you may not be fans of classic rock. (Yes, I’m looking at you, Gen Zers. You can wear the tees, but do you really know your AC/DCs, ZZs, or David Lees?*)

For the uninitiated, Keef (as we Stones fans know him) is one of rock’s great guitarists. This guy just oozes licks. When it comes to life choices, I will not hold him up as an exemplar (although he finally has come clean, I’m happy to report). Way back when he was young, however, he made one really good decision. He became a musician.

I say that not merely because of all the joy he has brought to the world through his music, but also because of all the joy he has brought himself. I’ll never forget reading something he said about making music: he loved it so much, he said, he didn’t want to stop to “take a pee.”

B. Franklin, Printer

Bathroom habits aside, I think Benjamin Franklin felt the same way about printing. As we saw in the last two columns, he entered the trade as an apprentice to his brother when he was still a boy, eventually made a highly successful career of it, and even came back to it when he was working as a diplomat in France.

He also embraced this trade as part of his identity. When he was still a young man, he wrote this epitaph for himself:

The Body of B. Franklin, Printer; like the Cover of an old Book, Its Contents torn out, And stript of its Lettering and Gilding, Lies here, Food for Worms. But the Work shall not be wholly lost; For it will, as he believ'd, appear once more, In a new & more perfect Edition, Corrected and amended By the Author.

He returned to this metaphor equating a human being with a book in the opening of his autobiography, and, in his will, he again identified himself as a printer:

I, Benjamin Franklin, of Philadelphia, printer, late Minister Plenipotentiary from the United States of America to the Court of France...

Franklin, a master of words, surely recognized the significance of the way he arranged them here, placing “printer” immediately before “late Minister Plenipotentiary from the United States of America to the Court of France.” The latter designation would strike some as the more impressive, but Franklin put “printer” before this title—and indeed before the many other things he could have listed here: scientist, inventor, activist, philanthropist, swimmer . . .

What was so special about being a printer?

Franklin worked at this printing press when he was a young man in London. Today it is part of the collection at the National Museum of American History, part of the Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, DC.

B. Franklin, Leader

In colonial America, it was easier for young men from modest backgrounds to climb the social ladder than it had been in Europe in previous centuries. When Franklin formed his Junto, a mutual-improvement club for himself and other young aspirants, he was trying to grease the wheels for this group of Americans. Still, in a land without public schools or public libraries, it was much more difficult to rise then than it is now. If you were the son of a tradesman, you almost certainly were not going to become, say, a professor or the head of a college campus (as I, as the son of a tradesman, was able to do after making use of—you guessed it—public schools and public libraries).

Of all the trades Franklin could have chosen for himself (or had chosen for him), printing was the ideal match, both for him and for the world. Because it was a trade—and not an elite profession such as law—it was possible, but it also allowed him to tap into his extraordinary abilities as a writer and to make a broad impact on the world around him.

Here’s where divine intervention or fate seems to have played a role. If Franklin had become a candlemaker or a sailor or a cutler (all real possibilities for him), he could have made valuable contributions to the world, but it’s very unlikely that he would have shaped the course of history the way he did after becoming a printer. Other trades produce things, but printing, because it centers on words, allows the tradesman to contribute and spread ideas and, through these words and ideas, enter the elite world of colonial movers and shakers.

In the early eighteenth century, when Franklin was coming up, there were no professional writers. The closest you could come, as a tradesman, to making a living with words was to be a printer. Franklin, to be sure, printed many words written by others—particularly through his contract with the local government—but he also had a tool, namely a printing press, that he could use to print his own words. He wrote news articles and essays for the newspaper he issued from this press and printed his Poor Richard’s Almanack, where he shared aphorisms that would become some of the most famous quotations in American history.

While printing spread Franklin’s words, it also helped to make the man. When you make candles, your reputation as an intellectual is not likely to spread far, no matter how good your candles are. When you print words, it’s a different story, so to speak. In his autobiography, Franklin recalled the impact that his printing work had on others:

Our first papers made a quite different appearance from any before in the province; a better type, and better printed; but some spirited remarks of my writing, on the dispute then going on between Governor Burnet and the Massachusetts Assembly, struck the principal people, occasioned the paper and the manager of it to be much talk'd of, and in a few weeks brought them all to be our subscribers.

Their example was follow'd by many, and our number went on growing continually. This was one of the first good effects of my having learnt a little to scribble; another was, that the leading men, seeing a newspaper now in the hands of one who could also handle a pen, thought it convenient to oblige and encourage me.

With comical humility, Franklin refers to having “learnt a little to scribble,” but the reality is that he was a good enough writer to turn heads. He would eventually, of course, make his way into the highest levels of society, leaving his mark on American history in countless ways. Perhaps the best evidence for the rise that Franklin achieved through printing came in 1776. Thomas Jefferson, a lawyer and a graduate of William and Mary, was chosen to write the Declaration of Independence, but he asked Franklin, the retired printer, for feedback on his draft. In a letter I recently had the opportunity to view at the American Philosophical Society Museum in Philadelphia, Jefferson wrote, “will Doctr. Franklyn be so good as to peruse it & suggest such alterations as his more enlarged view of the subject will dictate?”

Seeing this letter from Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Franklin was the highlight of my visit to the American Philosophical Society Museum in Philadelphia. It is part of a current exhibition called “These Truths: The Declarations of Independence.”

B. Franklin, Inspiration

Franklin’s example is not a reason for all of us to become printers. Rather, to use a word we often see these days in reference to careers, it teaches the importance of “fit.”

Franklin fit into the printing profession as neatly as those letters he was arranging fit into a printing frame. He was good at the trade, and it was good for him, allowing him to use his skills in ways that would serve the world.

Where do you fit? In other words, where do your interests and abilities align with a career that the world needs? In my world of higher education, I often hear students say they want to help people. Indeed, I heard this sentiment just a few days ago on a student trip to Washington, DC.

That’s a noble aspiration, but it requires some refinement. How will you help others? Unless you aspire to be, say, a thief or a hacker (and I hope you set your sights higher), you can contribute to society and your fellow human beings in just about any job, whether you are making products that people need (as Franklin’s father and my father did) or informing and teaching people (as Franklin and I have done) or treating illness (as nurses and other healthcare workers do) or making countless other kinds of contributions in countless other trades and professions.

The trick is to find the fit, to find the work that fulfills you while it serves the world, and for that level of “fitness,” I suggest this test:

Is this work so joyful and so valuable that nobody wants you to stop and take a pee?

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*One day, as I was walking on my campus, I saw a student wearing a Led Zeppelin T-shirt, and I got a thrill. I stopped and said something like, “All, right Led Zeppelin!” She calmly told me she didn’t know who they were. So much for intergenerational connections.