Dress for Success

1
Dress for Success

• The Self-made Ben Franklin
• Pt I

2
The Holy Experiment

• Pennsylvania founded 1682
• Quaker sect founded 1650 in England
• Pacifist, thrifty, plain, antinomian,
  anticlerical
• William Penn receives land grant from Duke of
  York in exchange for debts owed
• Still, bought land from Indians (mythologized by
  Hicks)
• Only colony except RI where Quakerism (and other
  religious sects) tolerated
• E.g. Keimer (in Autobiography) is a Jew?
• By 1700 Philadelphia challenges Boston as center
  of commerce, culture diversity
• By 1725, second biggest city in English-speaking
  world

3
Edward Hicks Peaceable Kingdom (c.1833)
4
The European Enlightenment

• Rise of confidence in rationality among middle
  upper classes
• Scientific revolution organizes world-view
• Enthusiasm for experimentation, mathematics
• Belief that universe is knowable, predictable
• Value on information received through senses
• Rather than just by reading or thinking
• De-emphasis on religion other supernatural
  beliefs
• Especially in France England revolution in
  the air?
• Final transition from medieval Europe
• Optimism progress things will get better

5
American Enlightenment

• 1700 Massachusetts still theocracy
• Challenged by growing prosperity
• Trading slaves, sugar rum land speculation
• In Boston, Cotton Mather introduces inoculation
  for smallpox
• Going against Gods will?
• Emphasis on practicality
• Rising tide of colonial secularism
• Waves of immigrants German, Swedish, French
• Diversity ( literacy) undercuts theocracy
• Tempered by frontier conditions and lack of
  developed, educated class

6
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

• Born in Boston
• Urban working class, father a later immigrant
• Escapes Puritan society
• Indentured to printer brother is a runaway
• Outspoken in person on page saucy
  provoking
• Conflict between tradesmen Boston aristocracy
• Carried on in print first American newspaper
  censored
• Franklin already a freethinker a Deist
• An outlander in Philadelphia age 17
• Able to converse, negotiate, job-hunt with
  equality in leveled colonial society accent,
  class, race
• Famous scene carrying loaves down street past
  future wife American mythology in the making

7

• 1791 Published in France
• 1793 Translated into English in London
• 1820 published in US

8
Self-Made Man

• autobiography word not used until later
• constructing new person from the old
• Using story to make own legend ( Gazette)
• Becomes representative man
• But is he? Wealthy urban politician?
• Most Americans still farmers, live away from city
• Franklin plays these tensions, profits from them
• Sides with frontier settlers against urban
  merchants
• Compare to traditional Puritan attitude
• Focus on worldly success, not heavenly reward
• Be useful to God, or to humans?
• Utilitarianism enlightened self-interest

9
Ben the Marble Statue
10
Ben the Human Being?
11
Civic Man the American as Associator

• 1727 Junto
• 1731 public library
• 1732 German-language newspaper
• 1736 fire company
• 1743 scientific society
• 1745 police (watch)
• 1747 citizen militia

• 1748 BF retires (age 42)
• 1748 street sweeping
• 1748 street lighting
• 1749 college
• 1751 hospital
• 1751 fire-insurance company