WEBVTT - ON BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Episode 3: Industry 0:00:14.920 --> 0:00:18.599 I think about Ben Franklin all the time. I remember 0:00:18.680 --> 0:00:22.120 being with Elon Musk right when he bought Twitter, and 0:00:22.120 --> 0:00:25.079 he was trying to decide do you print everything is 0:00:25.079 --> 0:00:27.840 a total free speech? Does it become raucous? Or is 0:00:27.840 --> 0:00:32.159 there any limits to what you put on it? And 0:00:32.240 --> 0:00:34.680 I went back to when Ben Franklin was in his 0:00:34.800 --> 0:00:40.880 early twenties and a printer in Philadelphia and he had 0:00:40.880 --> 0:00:45.520 a newspaper. He writes apology for printers, which is still 0:00:45.560 --> 0:00:49.320 one of the best defenses of free speech. He says 0:00:49.560 --> 0:00:52.680 all voices should be allowed, because if you let the 0:00:52.720 --> 0:00:55.760 printer decide what should be enter out, you'd only hear 0:00:55.840 --> 0:00:57.080 the opinion of printers. 0:00:57.640 --> 0:00:59.360 And Franklin said, if. 0:00:59.280 --> 0:01:02.320 Truth and false did he have fair play, then truth 0:01:02.360 --> 0:01:06.280 will win out. But Franklin realizes after a while that's 0:01:06.280 --> 0:01:10.199 not always the case. Sometimes, as Franklin says in Poor Richard, 0:01:10.480 --> 0:01:12.560 a lie can make it all the way around the 0:01:12.560 --> 0:01:15.200 world while the truth is still putting on its shoes. 0:01:16.160 --> 0:01:19.600 And he does a test for himself. He had to 0:01:19.640 --> 0:01:23.480 figure out when do you refuse to print something you 0:01:23.560 --> 0:01:28.360 know as salacious or malicious or untrue. And at one 0:01:28.360 --> 0:01:31.800 point he was going to get paid to publish something scurreless, 0:01:32.200 --> 0:01:35.160 and it was so salacious, and he said, well, is 0:01:35.200 --> 0:01:38.800 it really worth the money? And to try to determine 0:01:38.800 --> 0:01:41.440 whether I'd publish it or not, I purchased this a 0:01:41.480 --> 0:01:45.200 small piece of bread. I went home and lay on 0:01:45.240 --> 0:01:48.120 the floor, slept on the floor, ate only bread and water. 0:01:48.920 --> 0:01:51.960 And I realized that I could live that way if 0:01:52.000 --> 0:01:55.800 I had to, and it was better to be proud 0:01:55.840 --> 0:01:56.960 of what I did. 0:02:03.680 --> 0:02:07.360 As a printer, a publisher, and a postmaster. Benjamin Franklin 0:02:07.440 --> 0:02:11.400 launched America's first great media empire. But that's not exactly 0:02:11.480 --> 0:02:14.239 how we picture him. For most of us, he's the 0:02:14.280 --> 0:02:17.840 funny writer or the old guy with a kite, not 0:02:18.080 --> 0:02:23.440 America's wealthiest self made businessman. But Franklin's ambitious. He devoured 0:02:23.440 --> 0:02:26.040 any book he could get his hands on, formed clubs 0:02:26.040 --> 0:02:29.280 to learn from his peers, jousted with his competitors, and 0:02:29.440 --> 0:02:33.640 constantly innovated seeking new efficiencies. And while it might be 0:02:33.720 --> 0:02:36.280 enough to appreciate Franklin for the business savant that he was, 0:02:36.919 --> 0:02:39.760 what he learned during those years, from the ethical questions 0:02:39.760 --> 0:02:42.760 he wrestled with to the observations he made while traveling 0:02:42.760 --> 0:02:46.040 for work, gave tremendous insight into the founding father he 0:02:46.080 --> 0:02:50.480 would become and the democracy he wanted to build. In 0:02:50.520 --> 0:02:54.120 this third episode of On Benjamin Franklin, Walter Isaacson reveals 0:02:54.120 --> 0:02:57.920 how Franklin's identity as a printer and businessman let him 0:02:57.919 --> 0:03:01.440 on a path not just to become a revolutionary, but 0:03:01.520 --> 0:03:05.119 to understanding the shape America's democracy would need to take. 0:03:21.680 --> 0:03:24.640 Can you walk us through how Ben Franklin created his 0:03:24.680 --> 0:03:27.960 print operation in Philadelphia, starting from showing up in the 0:03:28.000 --> 0:03:29.919 city with a few coins in his pocket. 0:03:30.240 --> 0:03:33.840 When he straggles up Market Street. But draggled, he's able 0:03:33.880 --> 0:03:36.320 to get a job in one of the print shops 0:03:36.320 --> 0:03:40.120 there an apprentice, and he works very hard for a 0:03:40.680 --> 0:03:44.480 sort of ne'er do well printer named Samuel Kimo. And 0:03:44.800 --> 0:03:49.440 in the end Franklin becomes much more of the star 0:03:49.560 --> 0:03:50.440 of the town. 0:03:50.400 --> 0:03:53.360 Personally because he's good at doing his own pr right. 0:03:53.800 --> 0:03:57.760 But Franklin's ambitious. He's a young printer who knows how 0:03:57.800 --> 0:04:02.240 to ingratiate himself, and I think Keemar, his boss, becomes 0:04:02.320 --> 0:04:05.960 quite resentful. But Franklin eventually breaks away to start his 0:04:06.040 --> 0:04:07.080 own printing shop. 0:04:07.400 --> 0:04:08.760 And you write that it takes a while for him 0:04:08.800 --> 0:04:10.560 to get going. He's got his owne ups and downs. 0:04:11.520 --> 0:04:13.800 And there's one little anecdote that I wanted to talk about, 0:04:13.880 --> 0:04:15.600 which is not one of the biggest ones in the book, 0:04:15.640 --> 0:04:18.560 but it felt like it encapsulated some of that, which 0:04:18.600 --> 0:04:22.039 is he somehow connects with Governor Keith, governor of the 0:04:22.040 --> 0:04:25.880 Pennsylvania Colony, and he's going to be sent to London 0:04:26.160 --> 0:04:28.520 to buy printing equipment to set himself up as a printer. 0:04:28.640 --> 0:04:31.160 And the governor's promised him this, and then he arrives 0:04:31.160 --> 0:04:34.000 in London and turns out it was a completely false promise, 0:04:34.080 --> 0:04:36.640 that there was no money to buy the equipment, and 0:04:37.040 --> 0:04:39.719 he's very sanguine about it, and you write, for Franklin 0:04:39.760 --> 0:04:42.640 it was an insight into human foibles rather than evil. 0:04:43.240 --> 0:04:45.760 He wished to please everybody, Franklin later said of Keith, 0:04:45.839 --> 0:04:48.440 and having little to give, he gave expectations. 0:04:49.520 --> 0:04:52.600 Franklin looked at a guy like Governor Keith, who had 0:04:52.640 --> 0:04:56.760 promised him a lunge and credit. But then he said, well, 0:04:56.800 --> 0:04:59.200 he was just trying to please me. And I think 0:04:59.240 --> 0:05:03.479 that a bill to say, hey, we shouldn't ascribe deep 0:05:03.600 --> 0:05:07.159 evil motives to people. We should be tolerant that becomes 0:05:07.320 --> 0:05:10.119 ingrained in Franklin. So let's talk about his print shop. 0:05:10.760 --> 0:05:13.480 He's still pretty young when he starts it, going into 0:05:13.480 --> 0:05:16.640 competition with all these established printers. How does he distinguish 0:05:16.720 --> 0:05:20.479 himself when he had a print shop? He realized, you 0:05:20.560 --> 0:05:23.400 want him to be successful just printing things like the Bible, 0:05:23.400 --> 0:05:26.360 because people bought a Bible once in their lifetime, maybe 0:05:26.480 --> 0:05:29.680 or twice. So he realizes an almanac is a way 0:05:29.720 --> 0:05:31.679 to go. People would have to buy it every year. 0:05:32.360 --> 0:05:35.599 Sensing what people wanted and how to create demand was 0:05:35.640 --> 0:05:38.520 just one of the ways Franklin distinguished himself as a businessman. 0:05:39.400 --> 0:05:43.120 Another was his humor. Turns out, Franklin's sense of humor 0:05:43.200 --> 0:05:45.560 wasn't just a natural part of his writing. It was 0:05:45.600 --> 0:05:48.760 good business too, giving him a real advantage in the marketplace. 0:05:49.520 --> 0:05:52.279 Could he have made it if he hadn't been the 0:05:52.279 --> 0:05:53.120 writer that he was. 0:05:53.720 --> 0:05:57.560 I think being a humorous writer was key to his 0:05:57.680 --> 0:06:02.000 success because his news paper becomes more lively than the 0:06:02.120 --> 0:06:06.080 rivals his almanac. He pokes fun at the other almanac makers. 0:06:06.120 --> 0:06:08.600 He has poor Richard in the almanac predicting that we're 0:06:08.600 --> 0:06:12.720 going to die, and he gets into these fake rivalries 0:06:12.760 --> 0:06:16.120 and battles, public battles where they're poking fun at each other. 0:06:16.440 --> 0:06:19.560 But if you're in a jousting battle with Benjamin Franklin 0:06:19.640 --> 0:06:21.920 poking fun, he's going to win. 0:06:22.200 --> 0:06:22.440 You know. 0:06:22.520 --> 0:06:26.320 He's got the more pockish sense of humor. And so 0:06:26.680 --> 0:06:30.040 in the end, his almanacs were valued more, his newspaper 0:06:30.160 --> 0:06:34.000 was valued more. And he was smart about publishing. He 0:06:34.040 --> 0:06:38.680 published novels, Pamela, the first novel published in America. Franklin 0:06:38.760 --> 0:06:41.360 has a good sense for what the public wants. 0:06:41.400 --> 0:06:44.560 He's a good salesperson, but even with something like Poor Richard, 0:06:44.640 --> 0:06:48.279 he's always figuring out how to make another product. Like 0:06:48.400 --> 0:06:51.960 after printing year after year of almanacs, he figures out 0:06:51.960 --> 0:06:55.080 he can create a best of compilation. 0:06:54.880 --> 0:06:58.479 Right, definitely, and it's called The Weight of Wealth The 0:06:58.680 --> 0:07:02.680 Sayings of Poor Richard, and it was by far the 0:07:02.720 --> 0:07:05.839 biggest selling book in the colonies for years. 0:07:06.680 --> 0:07:09.520 But it wasn't just the content that made Franklin wealthy. 0:07:10.120 --> 0:07:12.280 He was savvy about other parts of the business too, 0:07:12.760 --> 0:07:16.080 striking deals to ensure his newspapers and books got premium 0:07:16.120 --> 0:07:20.040 placement and distribution. And even that wasn't enough for Franklin. 0:07:20.640 --> 0:07:23.240 He realized that if he could control the distribution, he 0:07:23.240 --> 0:07:26.680 could squash the competition, and so he laid the groundwork 0:07:26.920 --> 0:07:27.680 for a monopoly. 0:07:28.680 --> 0:07:31.800 When Franklin was a printer in Philadelphia, he had a 0:07:31.840 --> 0:07:37.000 competitor named Andrew Bradford. They competed against each other in 0:07:37.040 --> 0:07:39.880 many areas, but they also cooperated, just like you might 0:07:39.920 --> 0:07:44.920 find Apple and Microsoft competing and cooperating. They even published 0:07:44.920 --> 0:07:49.280 a PSALM book together and split the costs. But one 0:07:49.280 --> 0:07:53.440 thing that really heightened their competition was that Bradford was 0:07:53.480 --> 0:07:56.800 the postmaster, and that was a great advantage. He got 0:07:56.840 --> 0:08:01.880 to favor his own content, and Soanklin at first pushes 0:08:01.920 --> 0:08:06.080 against him and tries to get the Postmaster General to 0:08:06.280 --> 0:08:11.520 order Bradford to carry Franklin's papers as well. But eventually 0:08:11.840 --> 0:08:17.200 Franklin's able to rest away from Bradford the Philadelphia postmastership, 0:08:17.880 --> 0:08:20.480 and Franklin then says, I'm going to create an open system, 0:08:20.680 --> 0:08:22.960 and he does that, but then he gets mad at 0:08:23.000 --> 0:08:26.280 Bradford again, and for a while he's keeping Bradford from 0:08:26.320 --> 0:08:29.880 sending things through. But as usual, Franklin gets to the 0:08:30.000 --> 0:08:34.360 right place, and eventually we have a US postal system 0:08:34.800 --> 0:08:38.880 that's a platform for everybody, and it's an open system. 0:08:39.320 --> 0:08:42.360 The thing I love about this story is there's also 0:08:42.760 --> 0:08:45.959 if one of them doesn't want to carry the other's papers, 0:08:46.280 --> 0:08:48.960 there's this sort of backdoor way to make it happen. 0:08:49.760 --> 0:08:53.600 Yeah. What was great is when they would deny each 0:08:53.640 --> 0:08:56.040 other the right to use the postal system, you could 0:08:56.120 --> 0:08:58.079 just bribe the writers to do it. 0:08:58.320 --> 0:09:00.480 There's always a side door if you have cash to 0:09:00.520 --> 0:09:00.960 hold out. 0:09:01.240 --> 0:09:05.080 Nowadays we wrestled with should internet service providers be able 0:09:05.120 --> 0:09:10.040 to favor certain content or should all content be on 0:09:10.120 --> 0:09:13.840 a level playing field. It goes back to Franklin and 0:09:13.920 --> 0:09:18.439 Bradford in Philadelphia, finally, after a lot of struggle back 0:09:18.480 --> 0:09:21.240 and forth, saying an open system is better. 0:09:22.080 --> 0:09:24.640 Even as Franklin controlled so much of the printing industry, 0:09:25.120 --> 0:09:28.560 he remains committed to fair play. He believed competition at 0:09:28.559 --> 0:09:32.520 a marketplace of opinions created a healthier society, and any 0:09:32.520 --> 0:09:35.440 streaks of ruthlessness always seemed to be tamed by his 0:09:35.520 --> 0:09:37.080 greater sense of civic duty. 0:09:37.679 --> 0:09:43.240 Franklin did not believe that much in monetizing intellectual property. 0:09:43.880 --> 0:09:48.760 He never patented or copyrighted anything he did, and he 0:09:48.760 --> 0:09:50.760 could have done it with some of his writings. He 0:09:50.760 --> 0:09:52.839 could have said, I'm going to take a copyright out 0:09:52.880 --> 0:09:56.800 on the sayings of poor Richard. However, he knew that 0:09:56.840 --> 0:09:59.640 the sayings of Poor Richard were things that he had 0:09:59.679 --> 0:10:02.680 taken in from previous writers in the past two or 0:10:02.679 --> 0:10:06.079 three centuries who had said clever things, and Franklin might 0:10:06.120 --> 0:10:09.400 polish him up a bit. And so he was not 0:10:09.800 --> 0:10:13.600 a strong believer in the type of intellectual property that 0:10:13.640 --> 0:10:16.880 we would call copyrights or trademarks or patents. 0:10:17.400 --> 0:10:19.559 I feel like we should say he was really good 0:10:19.600 --> 0:10:22.360 at making money. I mean, he did very well for himself. 0:10:23.000 --> 0:10:26.239 He was very successful as a printer and a publisher, 0:10:26.720 --> 0:10:29.000 and he always looked after his interests, you know, making 0:10:29.000 --> 0:10:31.679 sure he got the contract to do the paper currency, 0:10:31.960 --> 0:10:36.280 and that is newspaper advocated for paper currency. On the 0:10:36.320 --> 0:10:41.760 other hand, he doesn't take out patents on his scientific inventions. 0:10:42.160 --> 0:10:46.000 He said, we all benefit from things that went before. 0:10:46.559 --> 0:10:49.800 We should put these into the commons, whether it's a 0:10:49.840 --> 0:10:52.320 Franklin stove or the lightning rod. 0:10:53.120 --> 0:10:56.160 It really is fascinating, Like, on the one hand, he's 0:10:56.280 --> 0:10:59.480 quickly on a path to being incredibly wealthy, and he's 0:10:59.480 --> 0:11:03.360 doing all the innovative and sometimes cutthroat business things like 0:11:03.400 --> 0:11:05.760 taking over the post office and trying to stamp out 0:11:05.760 --> 0:11:09.719 his competition. And then he's always so civic minded. He's 0:11:09.720 --> 0:11:13.000 always thinking about the middle class. It's almost at the 0:11:13.000 --> 0:11:14.160 core of his identity. 0:11:14.960 --> 0:11:18.400 Right when he gets to Philadelphia and he becomes a tradesman, 0:11:18.480 --> 0:11:21.760 he creates what's called the Leather Apron Club or the Junto, 0:11:22.480 --> 0:11:25.199 And it doesn't try to replicate the clubs for the 0:11:25.320 --> 0:11:30.040 very rich, aristocratic elite of Philadelphia. It's just supposed to 0:11:30.040 --> 0:11:33.640 be for the tradesman, the artist, and the shopkeepers what 0:11:33.760 --> 0:11:36.040 he called we the middling people. That's why it was 0:11:36.040 --> 0:11:38.520 called a leather apron club. They put on leather aprons 0:11:38.559 --> 0:11:41.600 in the morning and open up their shop. And he 0:11:41.720 --> 0:11:45.680 felt that the civic life of America would be driven 0:11:45.720 --> 0:11:47.040 by a middle class. 0:11:48.240 --> 0:11:51.240 When we come back, we dive into the revolutionary impact 0:11:51.320 --> 0:11:54.800 of the Leather Apron Club and the surprising ways its 0:11:54.880 --> 0:12:08.440 legacy still lives on today. People might have a vision 0:12:08.480 --> 0:12:11.680 of a printer or a newspaperman today a publisher and 0:12:12.040 --> 0:12:14.280 who they are and where they came from. But this 0:12:14.480 --> 0:12:18.680 was a real blue collar job. Then did you explain 0:12:18.720 --> 0:12:21.680 that and what Franklin means when he describes himself as 0:12:21.720 --> 0:12:23.000 a leather apron man. 0:12:24.559 --> 0:12:29.040 Benjamin Franklin throughout his life would sign his name B. Franklin, 0:12:29.160 --> 0:12:32.960 Common Printer. And it was because he believed that being 0:12:32.960 --> 0:12:36.560 a leather apron, meaning somebody owned a shop opened up 0:12:36.640 --> 0:12:41.079 in the morning, served people that market street, middle class 0:12:41.160 --> 0:12:43.680 values was the heart of who we were going to 0:12:43.679 --> 0:12:46.440 be as a nation, rather than trying to create the 0:12:46.520 --> 0:12:49.880 class system in England and the pretensions of the elite 0:12:50.080 --> 0:12:54.840 and the aristocracy. And so that notion of a printer 0:12:55.280 --> 0:12:58.840 as a shopkeeper and publisher was something he always had 0:12:59.080 --> 0:13:04.480 a pride in. Now this was something rather new in England. 0:13:04.640 --> 0:13:07.640 You had had an aristocracy and a working class, and 0:13:08.240 --> 0:13:14.480 but that wasn't a prosperous, vibrant middle class. And Franklin 0:13:14.640 --> 0:13:19.360 knew that a strong America would come from having a 0:13:19.480 --> 0:13:22.079 thriving class of small business owners. 0:13:23.040 --> 0:13:26.320 So the Leather Apron Club banded together in this new 0:13:26.360 --> 0:13:29.319 model to do good in the community, partially out of 0:13:29.360 --> 0:13:32.800 a sense of moral righteousness, but also out of practicality. 0:13:33.400 --> 0:13:35.680 The members knew that their businesses all had a better 0:13:35.679 --> 0:13:38.400 shout of success if the city was thriving, if the 0:13:38.400 --> 0:13:40.599 streets were clean and if the people had money in 0:13:40.640 --> 0:13:41.640 their pockets to spend. 0:13:42.320 --> 0:13:46.080 One of the Poor Richard Almanac sayings is about doing 0:13:46.160 --> 0:13:50.760 well by doing good, And this describes Franklin, which is 0:13:51.040 --> 0:13:54.360 he wants to do civic good, but he also knows 0:13:54.440 --> 0:13:56.640 you can profit by it when you start with his 0:13:56.800 --> 0:14:00.880 heat put A little things like keeping the streets, he said, 0:14:00.960 --> 0:14:03.760 might seem like a minor thing that some dust may 0:14:03.760 --> 0:14:07.360 get in somebody's eye, But if you multiply that to 0:14:07.480 --> 0:14:10.960 the whole community, you see why we all have to 0:14:11.000 --> 0:14:15.040 work together. And so what is Jonto or Leather Apron 0:14:15.040 --> 0:14:18.680 Club does is at every meeting they talk about what 0:14:18.800 --> 0:14:21.200 is it that a fellow member of the club might 0:14:21.280 --> 0:14:24.960 need and might help them in business? What ways can 0:14:25.000 --> 0:14:30.640 we help the commerce of Philadelphia, What new ideas might 0:14:30.720 --> 0:14:34.560 we profit from? And so he was always mixing his 0:14:34.680 --> 0:14:39.360 civic virtue with doing well by himself, like making sure 0:14:39.400 --> 0:14:42.240 that the other members of the Leather Apron Club used 0:14:42.280 --> 0:14:45.680 him as a printer. So they form all sorts of 0:14:46.040 --> 0:14:51.440 ideas and associations, to have a volunteer street sweeping core, 0:14:51.880 --> 0:14:54.080 to have a volunteer fire department. 0:14:54.400 --> 0:14:58.680 And people now maybe have a hard time conceptualizing the 0:14:58.800 --> 0:15:01.040 era where some of the things that he came up 0:15:01.040 --> 0:15:04.920 with didn't already exist. For instance, you've mentioned the volunteer 0:15:04.960 --> 0:15:08.160 firefighting or even the militias that he'd helped set up 0:15:08.320 --> 0:15:10.760 prior to him coming up with them. What was happening 0:15:10.920 --> 0:15:16.120 around a fire before Franklin's set up one of these associations. 0:15:16.000 --> 0:15:20.240 Well, you had people who either paid for protection, or 0:15:20.280 --> 0:15:24.120 people would pay for constable watches and stuff. But what 0:15:24.200 --> 0:15:28.360 he realizes is, especially with fires, but even with crime, 0:15:29.160 --> 0:15:32.480 that you can't just have certain people protect their own homes. 0:15:32.520 --> 0:15:35.960 The whole community has to pull together to do it. 0:15:36.880 --> 0:15:39.760 Fire on one home in Milk Street hurts every home 0:15:39.800 --> 0:15:43.400 on Milk Street, and so there are things we have 0:15:43.480 --> 0:15:48.360 to join together to do. One of the essences of 0:15:48.440 --> 0:15:52.920 democracy is figuring out what should be done in the commons, 0:15:53.560 --> 0:15:56.040 what should be done by government, what should be left 0:15:56.080 --> 0:15:59.880 to the private sphere. And this notion that we gather 0:16:00.120 --> 0:16:05.920 together in civic associations, it's so perplexed Tokeville. When he 0:16:05.960 --> 0:16:09.880 writes about democracy in America, he says Americans are the 0:16:09.880 --> 0:16:14.200 most individualistic people, and yet somehow they keep forming associations 0:16:14.240 --> 0:16:17.760 and this is in conflict. But for Benjamin Franklin, it 0:16:17.880 --> 0:16:21.760 wasn't in conflict at all. As poor Richard said, he 0:16:21.800 --> 0:16:25.120 who drinks alone let him catch his horse alone, which 0:16:25.160 --> 0:16:27.800 means it's not easy to catch a runaway horse unless 0:16:27.800 --> 0:16:31.040 you have friends helping you do it. And so that 0:16:31.280 --> 0:16:36.960 notion of governing ourselves through civic associations and then eventually 0:16:37.040 --> 0:16:41.600 of public private partnerships with local government and then later 0:16:41.680 --> 0:16:47.960 on colonial and national government, that becomes a new concept 0:16:48.240 --> 0:16:51.480 of how we were going to create in America. That's 0:16:51.520 --> 0:16:56.880 elevated both self reliance as well as community and civic association. 0:16:57.640 --> 0:17:00.080 And also the lending library was a big part of 0:17:00.920 --> 0:17:02.680 what role did that play. 0:17:02.640 --> 0:17:05.600 Among the things the Leather Apron Club does is it 0:17:05.760 --> 0:17:10.240 creates the first sort of public library where they all 0:17:10.280 --> 0:17:13.639 agreed in the club to put their books together so 0:17:13.760 --> 0:17:17.280 other people could borrow them. And soon they have a 0:17:17.440 --> 0:17:22.760 room that they rent and it becomes away. As Franklin 0:17:22.880 --> 0:17:28.760 puts it, that the average tradesperson in America, the average shopkeeper, 0:17:29.200 --> 0:17:32.760 could be just as well informed, is just as educated 0:17:33.280 --> 0:17:36.960 as some of the elite or aristocracy. One of the 0:17:37.000 --> 0:17:40.520 amusing things Franklin figured out when he is starting his 0:17:40.680 --> 0:17:45.480 library is that he asked one of the wealthier privileged 0:17:45.520 --> 0:17:49.080 people of Philadelphia who didn't particularly like the young striving 0:17:49.160 --> 0:17:53.640 Benjamin Franklin if he could borrow a particular book, and 0:17:53.840 --> 0:17:57.120 he borrows it and then returns it and is very 0:17:57.200 --> 0:18:00.000 grateful for it and talks about how influential the book is. 0:18:00.680 --> 0:18:03.840 And after that the person he borrowed the book from 0:18:04.240 --> 0:18:08.040 loves Benjamin Franklin, and Franklin says, what I learned is 0:18:08.560 --> 0:18:11.720 sometimes when you allow a person to do you a favor, 0:18:12.240 --> 0:18:14.760 they will like you more than if you're doing favors 0:18:14.760 --> 0:18:15.160 for them. 0:18:16.880 --> 0:18:19.639 I love that lesson. And you describe these things coming 0:18:19.680 --> 0:18:24.160 together beginning in these clubs. If we creates this library, 0:18:24.400 --> 0:18:28.080 people can teach themselves. They can educate themselves, which is 0:18:28.400 --> 0:18:31.119 exactly what someone would do after being denied the opportunity 0:18:31.119 --> 0:18:31.760 to go to Harvard. 0:18:32.359 --> 0:18:34.960 He extends that to the Academy for the Education of 0:18:35.000 --> 0:18:39.920 Youth that becomes University of Pennsylvania. Both Franklin and Jefferson 0:18:40.440 --> 0:18:43.800 or exemplars of the Enlightenment. But Jefferson, when he creates 0:18:43.800 --> 0:18:48.639 a university that becomes the University of Virginia, talks about 0:18:49.119 --> 0:18:53.040 taking the most elite thinkers and bringing them into a 0:18:53.080 --> 0:18:58.720 new quote natural aristocracy. Franklin, when he creates what becomes 0:18:58.720 --> 0:19:02.400 the University of Pennsylvania, believes the goal is to take 0:19:02.480 --> 0:19:06.040 all people, no matter how brilliant they are or just 0:19:06.160 --> 0:19:10.760 industrious they are, and say everybody will benefit from learning. 0:19:11.240 --> 0:19:14.000 That education should not just be for the well born 0:19:14.200 --> 0:19:17.640 and for the elite, but it should become something that 0:19:18.040 --> 0:19:23.439 every striving person in America had a right to go 0:19:23.520 --> 0:19:25.920 borrow a book from a library, or to be part 0:19:25.920 --> 0:19:28.240 of an academy for the education of youth. 0:19:28.920 --> 0:19:32.240 For someone who joked about struggling with humility and whose 0:19:32.320 --> 0:19:35.160 name ended up on so many things, from the Franklin 0:19:35.200 --> 0:19:38.359 Stove to the one hundred dollars Bill, Franklin loved to 0:19:38.400 --> 0:19:41.439 play with anonymity in his writing, and he did it 0:19:41.480 --> 0:19:43.760 too in his work with the Leather Apron Club. 0:19:44.520 --> 0:19:48.439 Whenever he proposed a civic association, he might write a 0:19:48.520 --> 0:19:51.240 letter to the newspaper, but he said he was always 0:19:51.359 --> 0:19:53.359 very careful to make it that sounded like it was 0:19:53.400 --> 0:19:56.800 his suggestion. In fact, sometimes he would write letters to 0:19:57.000 --> 0:20:00.520 his newspaper under a pseudonym and say, it's been posed 0:20:00.560 --> 0:20:04.120 that maybe we should have a volunteer fire department. He said, 0:20:04.359 --> 0:20:07.639 it's amazing how much you can get done if you 0:20:07.680 --> 0:20:09.879 aren't interested in taking the credit for it. 0:20:10.320 --> 0:20:13.680 He also didn't seem to see any contradiction between being 0:20:13.760 --> 0:20:16.840 this sort of pr man for himself, building up his 0:20:16.880 --> 0:20:20.080 image so that he could use his image, and also 0:20:20.680 --> 0:20:24.080 being the person who slid these ideas in underneath the 0:20:24.080 --> 0:20:26.320 door so that other people would think they were theirs. 0:20:26.960 --> 0:20:31.600 One of his clever insights is if you don't take 0:20:31.680 --> 0:20:34.800 credit for something, if you give somebody else the credit 0:20:34.840 --> 0:20:38.480 for an idea, it'll later become known that you were 0:20:38.560 --> 0:20:41.240 really the person who came up with it, it'll give 0:20:41.280 --> 0:20:44.120 you a lot more benefit to your reputation. 0:20:45.520 --> 0:20:48.160 While the Leather Apron Club was all about banding together 0:20:48.200 --> 0:20:50.720 with other shopkeepers to help one another in the city 0:20:50.720 --> 0:20:55.439 of Philadelphia, for Franklin was also about helping himself in 0:20:55.480 --> 0:20:58.920 the bottom line, the whole doing well by doing good 0:20:59.000 --> 0:21:03.760 maxim But Franklin's affects in his way of encouraging conversation 0:21:04.720 --> 0:21:11.000 sometimes made people question his intentions. You sort of write 0:21:11.000 --> 0:21:13.800 that for a man of his fame, he didn't have 0:21:13.840 --> 0:21:16.280 as many disputes as you might expect. He was able 0:21:16.280 --> 0:21:18.359 to resolve a lot of them, but he does start 0:21:18.359 --> 0:21:21.399 having these conflicts with other printers and eventually with the 0:21:21.440 --> 0:21:25.200 Penn family. And how does he sort of navigate when 0:21:25.240 --> 0:21:27.399 he feels like someone has a raid against him. 0:21:27.800 --> 0:21:31.959 In his Leather Apron Club, they had a way of 0:21:32.040 --> 0:21:35.800 discussing things that he felt would stop it from being 0:21:35.840 --> 0:21:40.919 too disputatious, Like if you disagreed with somebody, instead of 0:21:40.960 --> 0:21:46.920 contradicting them, you'd ask questions. That made Franklin charming at times, 0:21:47.280 --> 0:21:53.760 But after a while this indirectness, slyly asking questions in 0:21:54.040 --> 0:21:58.760 order to get his point across, he ends up alienating 0:21:58.920 --> 0:22:03.920 people who think he's not a fourth right principled person. 0:22:04.640 --> 0:22:11.640 John Adams called him insinuating, And so even though he's 0:22:11.720 --> 0:22:15.760 extraordinarily popular, he's able to rub people the wrong way 0:22:15.880 --> 0:22:20.560 sometimes and make enemies of the people he went into 0:22:20.600 --> 0:22:21.240 business with. 0:22:22.440 --> 0:22:25.479 But for all his flaws, Franklin was still a uniter, 0:22:26.000 --> 0:22:28.439 someone who had an incredible ability to bring people of 0:22:28.520 --> 0:22:33.359 differing persuasions together. When we return from break, we learned 0:22:33.359 --> 0:22:36.000 how Franklin's business trips up and down the East Coast 0:22:36.160 --> 0:22:38.919 gave him a unique perspective on the colonies, and how 0:22:38.920 --> 0:22:50.000 a little cartoon he published quickly became a call to arms. 0:22:54.680 --> 0:22:56.520 I want to talk a little bit about why Benjamin 0:22:56.560 --> 0:22:59.840 Franklin is so fixated on becoming Postmaster General. Why is 0:22:59.840 --> 0:23:01.560 it that's so key to his business empire. 0:23:02.240 --> 0:23:07.000 Once Franklin has the most successful content and the printing house, 0:23:07.200 --> 0:23:13.119 he also pushes and becomes the postmaster. He realizes, just 0:23:13.240 --> 0:23:18.080 as the cable titans of today realize, that if you 0:23:18.560 --> 0:23:21.600 own the content, you own the distribution system, if you 0:23:21.720 --> 0:23:25.800 have franchises, if you are able to do the printing 0:23:25.840 --> 0:23:30.000 and the publishing, that becomes the path to make him 0:23:30.040 --> 0:23:34.480 the most successful self made business person in America. So 0:23:34.560 --> 0:23:37.160 it becomes the first great media empire. 0:23:37.920 --> 0:23:40.280 In seventeen forty eight, at the age of forty two, 0:23:40.680 --> 0:23:44.119 Franklin retires from daily life at the printing shop, but 0:23:44.160 --> 0:23:47.960 he definitely doesn't stop working. Instead, he hangs up his 0:23:48.040 --> 0:23:51.800 leather apron to concentrate on grander ambitions further afield from 0:23:51.800 --> 0:23:55.199 Market Street. Some of those include the scientific experiments we 0:23:55.240 --> 0:23:58.920 heard about earlier, but in seventeen fifty three he also 0:23:58.960 --> 0:24:02.600 gets to work building a small postal system as Postmaster General. 0:24:03.320 --> 0:24:07.520 Before he became a deputy colonial postmaster, if you wanted 0:24:07.560 --> 0:24:11.359 to send a letter from Philadelphia to Boston, it often 0:24:11.359 --> 0:24:13.280 had to travel all the way to London and back, 0:24:13.840 --> 0:24:16.520 but he created a postal wrote. He was able to 0:24:16.600 --> 0:24:19.240 franchise print shops up and down the coast with his 0:24:19.400 --> 0:24:23.359 former workers or his cousins, sets them up in the 0:24:23.359 --> 0:24:27.320 printing business, shares the Poor Richard's Almanac and the news 0:24:27.359 --> 0:24:31.440 with him, helps them become postmasters, and then ties them 0:24:31.480 --> 0:24:35.199 all together. And then he traveled up and down the coast, 0:24:35.520 --> 0:24:38.440 both looking in on the print shops that he had franchised, 0:24:38.480 --> 0:24:42.600 but also making sure that each postal stop connected and 0:24:42.640 --> 0:24:46.280 that the postmasters and colonial postal system worked. And it 0:24:46.320 --> 0:24:48.120 gave him a unique perspective. 0:24:49.000 --> 0:24:51.919 His love of travel and his desire to sort of 0:24:52.359 --> 0:24:56.280 get out into the world and escape the provincialism of 0:24:56.680 --> 0:24:59.720