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to supper. They accepted, and when they had assembled at his board they found, much to their surprise, nothing before them but two puddings made of coarse meal, usually called "sawdust pudding," and a stone pitcher of water. Franklin ate heartily, although his guests found it practically impossible to do so. When he had finished he dismissed them with the statement, "My friends, any one who can subsist on sawdust pudding and water, as I can, needs no man's patronage."

Franklin was careful of the quality of his work. While learning his trade, and afterward when following it, he looked carefully into every method and process, with a view to determining for himself the reason for each operation, and frequently he was able to substitute better ones. Examination of the books and pamphlets he printed shows his work to have been of a uniformly higher grade than that of the other printers of his time or of the period which preceded his. We have already seen (p. 64) how he obtained one of his first orders, the public printing of Pennsylvania, because of the better quality of his workmanship...

Of Franklin's position in the business world in 1744, sixteen years after he began and four years before he was to retire, Parton says:

"His 'Gazette' became the leading newspaper of all the region between New York and Charleston. Poor Richard continued to amuse the whole coun-/

try, to the great profit of its printer, who was obliged to put it to press early in October in order to get a supply of copies to the remote colonies by the beginning of the new year. All the best jobs of printing given out by the provinces of New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, fell to the office of Franklin; who, by means of his partnerships, had a share also in the good things of Virginia, New York, the Carolinas, and Georgia. His schoolbooks, his hand-books of farriery, agriculture, and medicine, his numberless small pamphlets, his considerable importations from England, all contributed to swell his gains.'

Of these profits Parton adds: "Probably his business in the most prosperous years did not yield a profit of more than two thousand pounds sterling. But there was not, probably, another printer in the Colonies whose annual profits exceeded five hundred pounds."

Sydney George Fisher in "The True Benjamin Franklin," says: "Although extremely economical and thrifty in practice as well as in precept, he had very little love of money, and took no pleasure in business for mere business' sake." Fisher estimates Franklin's fortune at the time of his death to have been "considerably over one hundred thousand dollars." Parton gives the amount "at a liberal estimate, one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, of which about two-thirds was productive."

138

CHAP. XIII.

Partnerships.

IN ALL his business arrangements Benjamin Franklin was careful to have complete understandings in advance. It is the almost universal experience that partnerships are prolific sources of quarrels. Franklin had many business partnerships, but all, with possibly one exception, turned out satisfactorily. This was owing, he said, "a good deal to the Precaution of having very explicitly Settled, in our articles, everything to be done by or expected from each Partner fo that there was Nothing to dispute; which Precaution I would therefore recommend to all who enter into partnerships; for, whatever efteem Partners may have for, and Confidence in, each other at the time of the Contract, little Jealoufies and Difgufts may arise, with Ideas of Inequality in the Care and Burden, Business, &c., which are attended often with Breach of Friendship and of the connexion; perhaps with lawsuits and other difagreeable Confequences."

It is interesting to speculate on how wide might have become the operations of Benjamin Franklin had he continued in business for the remainder of his long life. Success in printing nowadays is considered to be entirely a matter of personality. Some one man or group of men dominates every

printing establishment, which means that it is necessarily a local business. In all the United States, with more than thirty-one thousand printing and publishing establishments, there are comparatively few conducting plants in places remote from their main offices. Benjamin Franklin operated printing houses located in widely separated parts of the Colonies and the West Indies. He was the first American trust magnate and the only one so far as the printing business is concerned.

The first of his ventures of the kind after the dissolution of the firm of Franklin and Meredith occurred in 1731, when he had been in business! only three years. This partnership was with Thomas Whitemarsh, who began in Charleston, S. C., October 1, 1731, and who the next year established a newspaper, the "Gazette," the first paper in either of the Carolinas. He was afterward appointed printer to the government.

Franklin had later another partner in Charleston, as successor to Whitemarsh. He was Peter Timothy, son of the Louis Timothee, who, as previously related, was the editor of Franklin's German newspaper, the "Philadelphische Zeitung."

Three partnerships concern themselves with relatives. Having become reconciled to his brother James, whom he visited, in Newport, R. I., to which place James had removed his printing office from Boston, Franklin returned to Philadelphia

with his brother's son, who also bore the name of James, taught him the printing trade, and a few years later sent him back to Newport with a new assortment of types to be added to the equipment which his mother was using in her management succeeding the death of the boy's father. This was a philanthropic rather than a business enterprise.

Franklin had another nephew, Benjamin Mecom, son of one of his sisters, whom he took into his shop in Philadelphia, taught the trade, and then established in business in Antigua, West Indies. The boy afterward returned to Boston, where Franklin again helped to set him up in business. He was only moderately successful and later made another move this time to New Haven, where Franklin procured for him the office of post

master.

William Dunlap was another of Franklin's partners who was a relative, although by marriage, he having married into Mrs. Franklin's family. He began printing at Lancaster, but later removed to Philadelphia. According to Isaiah Thomas his "printing was correctly and handsomely executed." He subsequently left the business to engage in the study of divinity, and in 1768 became the rector of a parish in Virginia.

Samuel Holland and Benjamin Franklin signed an agreement June 14, 1753, under which Holland