TOW #18: Benjamin Franklin, The Way to Wealth (1758).

           TOW #18: Benjamin Franklin, The Way to Wealth (1758).

            Almanacs were a very popular forms of literature during the American colonial period and contained seasonal weather forecasts, puzzles and practical household prints.  From 1739 to 1758 Benjamin Franklin published Poor Richard’s Almanack under the name Richard Saunders (poor Richard) releasing up to around 10,000 print copies per year.  Franklin’s almanac was extensively popular for its use of word play and witty phrases, which are also rampant in his essay, “The Way to Wealth”.  “The Way to Wealth” is an essay written to Franklin’s “courteous reader(s)” in attempt to influence them into following his methods to attaining “wealth” (more like financial security). 

            The essay is written as a speech from Father Abraham to a group of people in which he explains, mostly through witty phrases, the ways in which they can become wealthy.  Many of these phrases can still be heard today, and their meaning remembered, for example, Franklin’s following anaphora – “Be ashamed to catch yourself idle, when there is so much to be done for yourself, your family, your country, and your king”-is a means to drive home his point on laziness.  Franklin’s repetition of the word “your” accentuates the fact that it is YOUR duty to keep yourself doing something to better you or your country’s situation and that good fortune doesn’t come to those that wait.

Further along Franklin uses repetition again.  “You may think, perhaps, that a little tea, or a little punch now and then, -diet a little more costly, clothes a little finer, and a little' entertainment now and then, can be no great matter; but remember, Many a little makes a mickle. Beware of little expenses; A small leak will sink a great ship” Franklin repeats the word “little” to show how a “little” here a “little” there can come to make a mickle (Scottish word meaning great or much).  New expensive things in “little” amounts can truly ruin the point of working harder for your money if your new fancies “sink (your) great ship”.

Benjamin Franklin was an inventor, politician, political theorist, scientist, intellectual, author, one of the Founding Fathers of the united states and the only Founding Father to have signed all four of the essential documents in the creation of the United States: The Declaration of Independence, The Treaty of Alliance, Amity, and Commerce with France, The Treaty of Peace between England, France, and the United States, and the Constitution.

Full Text: http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/bdorsey1/41docs/52-fra.html

http://sln.fi.edu/franklin/birthday/faq.html#32

http://inventors.about.com/cs/inventorsalphabet/a/Ben_Franklin_3.htm