IV | Franklin as Printer and Journalist
Franklin was a printer chiefly because of two proclivities which were basic in his personality from childhood to old age—a bent toward practical mechanics ("handiness") and a fondness for reading (bookishness). Further, he was a journalist and publisher chiefly because he was a printer.
A thorough printer is both an artisan and an artist; he has both the manual dexterity of a good workman and the aesthetic appreciation of the amateur of beauty. Franklin always took pride in his ability to handle the printer's tools, from the time when, at the age of twelve, he became "a useful hand"[i-162] in the print shop of his brother James, until the very end of his life. One of the pleasantest anecdotes of the old printer is that which tells of his visit to the famous Didot printing establishment in Paris, when he stepped up to a press, and motioning the printer aside, himself took possession of the machine and printed off several sheets. Then the American ambassador smiled at the gaping printers and said, "Do not be astonished, Sirs, it is my former business."[i-163]
Even in his boyhood, it was a pleasure to Franklin "to see good workmen handle their tools," and he tells in his autobiography how much this feeling for tools meant to him throughout his life.[i-164] His flair for invention, though founded on this same "handiness," was not always directed toward the production of tools; but in the two fields of "philosophical" experimentation and the printing trade, his dexterity and cleverness in making needful instruments and devices were invaluable.
Partly because of the fact that printers' supplies must be imported from England, and partly because of his natural tool-mindedness, Franklin manufactured more of his own supplies than any other American commercial printer before or since. He cast type, made paper molds, mixed inks, made contributions to press building, did engraving, forwarded experiments in stereotyping, and worked at logotypy. Long after he had retired from the printing business. Franklin continued to influence developments in that field. It is a common saying among printers that one never forgets the smell of printer's ink. Franklin kept touch with his former business through various partnerships, through correspondence with printer friends, through the establishment of a private press in his home at Passy during his ambassadorship to France, and through his personal supervision of the education of his grandson in "the art preservative of arts." "I am too old to follow printing again myself," he wrote to a friend, "but, loving the business, I have brought up my grandson Benjamin to it, and have built and furnished a printing-house for him, which he now manages under my eye."[i-165]
As to just how adept Franklin was on the distinctively aesthetic side of printing, critics must differ. It has been customary to assume that the output of his shop was far superior to that of the several other printing houses in the colonies.[i-166] Such broad generalizations are misleading, however; and it is certainly possible to find Parks and even Bradford imprints which compare favorably enough with some of Franklin's. In typography, the phase of printing which affords the widest aesthetic scope, Franklin was by no means a genius. William Parks, of Annapolis and later of Williamsburg, was at least Franklin's peer during the seventeen-thirties and 'forties in the artistic arrangement of type; and William Goddard, who practiced the art a little later in several of the colonies, was his superior. Yet Franklin was an outstanding printer in a region blessed with few good presses. The difference between him and most of the other colonial printers may be stated thus: Franklin maintained a high average of workmanlike (though not inspired) performance, while his contemporaries were inclined to be slovenly, inaccurate, and generally careless.
In the later years of his life Franklin gave no little attention to fine printing, though as a dilettante rather than as a commercial printer. In France he was friendly with François Ambroise Didot, the greatest French printer of his times, and put his grandson Benjamin Franklin Bache to school in Didot's establishment. With Pierre Simon Fournier, who ranked next to Didot among French printers, Franklin corresponded from time to time. In England the American printer maintained touch with prominent practitioners of his craft from the time of his first visit abroad until his death. Samuel Palmer, Franklin's first London employer, was but a mediocre printer; but John Watts, to whose house the young American went after a year at Palmer's, stood much higher in his vocation.[i-167] Both Watts and Palmer were patrons of William Caslon, from whom Franklin later bought type. But John Baskerville, Caslon's rival, was the founder whom Franklin did most to encourage and to bring to the attention of discriminating printers. The English printer with whom Franklin was upon the terms of greatest intimacy—and that for many years—was William Strahan, member of Parliament, King's Printer, and a successful publisher. Strahan was a man of parts, a great letter writer, and a friend of David Hume and Samuel Johnson. The latter referred to the Strahan shop as "the greatest printing house in London."[i-168] Another correspondent was John Walter, logotyper, press builder, and founder of the London Times.[i-169] In all his letters to his printer friends, Franklin shows not only a lively interest in improvements and inventions for the trade, but also an increasing interest in the artistic side of printing and type-founding.
The "bookish inclination" which Franklin credits in the Autobiography with being the quality that decided his father to make a printer of him, appertained to the trade because printers were commonly publishers and sellers of books and pamphlets, and often editors and publishers of newspapers. How the young Franklin satisfied his literary urge in the print shop of his brother James is a familiar story, and his theories of writing are traced in another section of this Introduction. The contribution to literature which he made as a publisher of original books is negligible, but he did his part both as publisher and bookseller to spread that bookishness to which he felt that he owed much of his own success. Like all publishers before and since, he was forced by his customers to issue books of a lower sort than he could fully approve in order to float editions of more desirable works: he tells plaintively of his public's preference for "Robin Hood's Songs" over the Psalms of his beloved Watts.[i-170] In still another way, Franklin promoted the bookishness of his community: he founded the first of American circulating libraries, and he built up for himself one of the largest private libraries in the country.[i-171]
Journalism was a common by-product of the printing trade. When Franklin and Meredith took over Keimer's The Universal Instructor in all Arts and Sciences: and Pennsylvania Gazette in 1729, there were six other newspapers being published in the colonies—three in Boston and one each in New York, Philadelphia, and Annapolis. The Williamsburg press had a newspaper a few years later, but the other two printing towns in the colonies had to wait some thirty years for journalistic ventures—a newspaper in New London and a magazine in Woodbridge.[i-172]
The fundamental question to be asked in analyzing a newspaper may be stated thus: What is the editorial conception of the primary function of the press? Franklin had received his early newspaper training on his brother's New England Courant, which frankly acknowledged entertainment as its primary function and relegated news to a minor place. Of his contemporaries in 1729, the oldest, the Boston News-Letter, held the publication of news to be its sole function; while the Boston Gazette, the New York Gazette, and the Maryland Gazette took much the same attitude. In the main, they were rather dreary reprints of stale European news. Bradford's American Weekly Mercury, in Philadelphia, gave somewhat more attention to local news; but with the exception of the Franklin-Breintnal Busy-Body papers, contributed in 1728-1729 in order to bring Keimer to his knees, the Mercury gave very little attention to the entertainment function. Only the New England Weekly Journal, carrying on something of the tradition of the old Courant, dealt largely in entertainment as well as in news. This bi-functional policy was the one adopted by Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette, which was always readable and amusing at the same time that it was newsy.
Of the editorial or opinion-forming function of newspapers there was little evidence in Franklin's paper,[i-173] at least in the field of politics. The obvious reason was the active governmental censorship. It remained for John Peter Zenger to introduce that function into colonial journalism in the New York Weekly Journal in 1733: his struggle for the freedom of the press is well known.[i-174] But the Pennsylvania Gazette never became in any degree a political organ while Franklin edited it; and his first political pronouncement was published not in his paper but in a pamphlet, Plain Truth, issued just before his retirement from editorial duties.
Two common misconceptions in regard to Franklin's newspaper call for correction: (1) The Pennsylvania Gazette was not connected as forerunner or ancestor with the Saturday Evening Post. The Gazette, a newspaper to the end, closed its file in 1815;[i-175] the Post, a story paper, issued its Volume I, Number 1, in 1821. Throughout much of the latter half of the nineteenth century, the Post carried the legend "Founded in 1821" on its front page; and not until after the Curtis Publishing Company bought it in 1897 did it begin to print the words "Founded A.D. 1728 by Benjamin Franklin" on its cover. The sole connection of the Post with Franklin lies in the fact that it was first issued from an office at 53 Market Street which Franklin had once occupied.[i-176] (2) Franklin did not publish a "chain" of newspapers. A "chain" implies some kind of co-operative connection between the various members, but the several papers which Franklin helped to finance had no such relationship. In some he was a six-years partner,[i-177] keeping his interest until the resident publisher, usually a former employee, was established; to some he made loans or, in the case of relatives, gifts.[i-178]
One of his journalistic ventures which is not mentioned in the Autobiography is the General Magazine, of 1741. It missed by three days being the first of American magazines: Andrew Bradford had learned of Franklin's project and, with his American Magazine, beat him in the race for priority. But the American Magazine was a failure in three monthly numbers, while Franklin's periodical, though more readable, died after its sixth issue.[i-179] As an initial episode in the history of American magazines, the General Magazine has a certain eminence; but Franklin's neglect of it when writing his Autobiography, after the events of nearly fifty busy years had apparently crowded it out of his memory, is sufficient commentary on its unimportance.
To the end of his life Franklin was proud of his trade of printing, with its handmaiden journalism. His last will and testament begins: "I, Benjamin Franklin, Printer...." Though clearly not the chief interest of his life, it was one to which he was fundamentally and consistently attached.