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Benjamin Franklin and the Leather-Apron Men: The Politics of Class in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 July 2009

SIMON P. NEWMAN
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Abstract

Benjamin Franklin's autobiography reveals his deep investment in shaping and controlling how both his contemporaries and posterity assessed his life and achievements. This essay explores Franklin's construction and presentation of his pride in his working-class origins and identity, analysing how and why Franklin sought not to hide his poor origins but rather to celebrate them as a virtue. As an extremely successful printer, Franklin had risen from working-class obscurity to the highest ranks of Philadelphia society, yet unlike other self-made men of the era Franklin embraced and celebrated his artisanal roots, and he made deliberate use of his working-class identity during the Seven Years War and the subsequent imperial crisis, thereby consolidating his own reputation and firming up the support of urban workers who considered him one of their own.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , August 2009 , pp. 161 - 175
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

1 The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Leonard W. Labaree, et al. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), 125. Hereafter cited as Autobiography. The most comprehensive biographical study of Franklin is the as-yet unfinished multi-volume work by J. A. Leo Lemay. See Lemay, The Life of Benjamin Franklin, Volume I, Journalist, 1706–1730 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006); idem, The Life of Benjamin Franklin, Volume 2, Printer and Publisher, 1730–1747 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006); and idem, The Life of Benjamin Franklin, Volume 3, Soldier, Scientist, and Politician, 1748–1757 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).

2 Edmund S. Morgan, Benjamin Franklin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002); Gordon S. Wood, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin (New York: Penguin, 2004); David Waldstreicher, Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery, and the American Revolution (New York: Hill and Wang, 2004).

3 Morgan, 304.

4 Wood, x. The best discussion of Franklin's pride in his working origins is Billy G. Smith, “Benjamin Franklin, Civic Improver,” in Page Talbot, ed., Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 91–123.

5 “NEW-YORK, July 8,” American Minerva, and the New-York (Evening) Advertiser (New York City), 8 July 1795.

6 Autobiography, 46.

7 Ibid., 57.

8 The reference to an “excellent Craftsman” is drawn from Richard Saunders, Poor Richard Improved: Being an Almanack and Ephemeris … for the Year of Our Lord 1751 (Philadelphia: Franklin and Hall, 1751), in The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, eds. Leonard W. Labaree et al., Volume IV (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961), 86. Hereafter cited as Papers. Examples of workers described by Franklin as “ingenious” include his uncle Benjamin, Aquila Rose and Matthew Adams. See James N. Green and Peter Stallybrass, Benjamin Franklin, Writer and Printer (New Castle, Delaware: Oak Knoll Press, 2006), 9.

9 Here I take issue with the argument presented in Paul W. Connor, Poor Richard's Politicks: Benjamin Franklin and His New American Order (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), 40–47.

10 Autobiography, 69.

11 Silence Dogood, New England Courant (Boston), 2 April 1722, in Papers, Volume I, 9. For further discussion of Franklin's tendency to obscure his identity as an author and present himself as a printer, see Green and Stallybrass, 5–9.

12 I am indebted to James Green for this observation.

13 Lemay, Life of Franklin, Volume I, 11.

14 Lemay, Life of Franklin, Volume I, 5–211.

15 Lemay, Life of Franklin, Volume I, 335, 334–36.

16 Smith, “Benjamin Franklin,” 100.

17 Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (New York: International Publishers, 1970), 55; idem, Capital, trans. Ben Fowkes, 3 vols. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990), 1, 142, 286.

18 Franklin, A Modest Enquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper-Currency (Philadelphia, 1729), in Papers, Volume I, 144, 148.

19 Ronald Schultz, The Republic of Labor: Philadelphia Artisans and the Politics of Class, 1720–1830 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 4–5.

20 Autobiography, 124.

21 For a discussion of these trends in Philadelphia see Schultz; and Billy G. Smith, The “Lower Sort”: Philadelphia's Laboring People, 1750–1800 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990).

22 Autobiography, 182; A Tradesman of Philadelphia, Plain Truth: Or, Serious Considerations On the Present State of the City of Philadelphia, and the Province of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1747), in Papers, Volume III, 180–204.

23 Plain Truth, 198–99.

24 Autobiography, 183.

25 “Philadelphia, January 5,” Pennsylvania Gazette (Philadelphia), 5 Jan. 1748. It is possible that Franklin's democratic ideas about militia organization were drawn from his youth in Massachusetts, where “over half the [milita] company officers identified themselves with manual occupations, and in fact followed the same livelihoods as private soldiers.” See Fred Anderson, A People's Army: Massachusetts Soldiers and Society in the Seven Years' War (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1984), 55. I am grateful to Alan Houston, who has traced the occupations of many of the officers recorded as serving in the eleven Philadelphia companies listed in the Pennsylvania Gazette article. See Alan Houston, Benjamin Franklin and the Politics of Improvement (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 85–92.

26 Gary B. Nash, The Urban Crucible: Social Change, Political Consciousness, and the Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 232.

27 Autobiography, 183.

28 Philadelphia Lottery Accounts (Philadelphia: Franklin and Hall, 1752). For discussion of the ways in which the lottery scheme worked, and how it benefited Philadelphia's working men and their families, see Houston, 92–100.

29 Philadelphia Lottery Accounts, 6, 11, 7, 11.

30 Ibid., 7, 11, 12.

31 Autobiography, 230; “A Dialogue between X, Y, and Z, concerning the present State of Affairs in Pennsylvania,” Pennsylvania Gazette, 18 Dec. 1755, in Papers, Volume VI, 295–306.

32 “Militia Act,” 25 Nov. 1755, Papers, Volume VI, 270.

33 Ibid., 272–73.

34 “A Dialogue between X, Y, and Z,” Papers, Volume VI, 298.

35 Autobiography, 238.

36 Hutson, James H., “An Investigation of the Inarticulate: Philadelphia's White Oaks,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 28 (1971), 3–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lemisch, Jesse and Alexander, John K., “The White Oaks, Jack Tar, and the Concept of the Inarticulate,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 29 (1972), 109–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Crowther, Simeon J., “A Note on the Economic Position of Philadelphia's White Oaks,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 29 (1972), 134–36.Google Scholar

37 Crowther, 134–35.

38 Hutson argued that the White Oaks were “typical of the ordinary Philadelphia workingman”; see Hutson, 25. Lemisch and Alexander, and then Crowther, disagreed, providing compelling evidence that many ship carpenters, and presumably many members of the White Oaks, were relatively successful craftsmen, of middling rank.

39 Samuel Wharton to Benjamin Franklin, Philadelphia, 13 Oct. 1765, Papers, Volume XII, 316.

40 Deborah Franklin to Benjamin Franklin, Philadelphia, 22 Sept. 1765, and 3 Nov. 1765, Papers, Volume XII, 271, 353; Nash, The Urban Crucible, 305–6.

41 For examples of popular reactions to the Stamp Act see Alfred F. Young, The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999); Nash, 292–338; Simon P. Newman, Parades and the Politics of the Street: Festive Culture in the Early American Republic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 11–44.

42 Hutson, 11–12.

43 Jacques Gibelin, Mémoires de la privée de Benjamin Franklin, écrits par lui-même (Paris: Chez Buisson, 1791), 110, as quoted in Green and Stallybrass, Benjamin Franklin, 154. See also Smith, “Benjamin Franklin,” 113.

44 Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis, Oeuvres complètes de Cabanis, 6 vols. (Paris: Bossange Freres, 1825), 5, 222–23.

45 Franklin to Richard Bache, Passy, 11 Nov. 1784, The Papers of Benjamin Franklin: American Philosophical Society and Yale University. Digital Edition by the Packard Humanities Institute, available at http://franklinpapers.org/franklin/framedVolumes.jsp. Hereafter cited as Papers: Digital Edition.

46 See James Tagg, Benjamin Franklin Bache and the Philadelphia Aurora (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), esp. 23–55, and Jeffrey A. Smith, Franklin and Bache: Envisioning the Enlightened Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 67–82.

47 Franklin, Will and Codicil, 17 July 1788, Papers: Digital Edition.

48 Wood, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, 10.

49 Ibid., 235.

50 Franklin, “Queries and Remarks on Hints for the Members of Pennsylvania Convention”, Nov. 1789, Papers: Digital Edition.

51 “Some Account of the Pennsylvania Hospital,” 28 May 1754, Papers, Volume V, 287; “FORM of the ASSOCIATION into which Numbers are daily entering, for the Defence of this City and Province,” Pennsylvania Gazette, 3 Dec. 1747; Franklin's amended copy of the first draft of the Pennsylvania Declaration of Rights is reprinted in Papers, Volume XXII, 531.

52 For Franklin's funeral see “Philadelphia, April 28,” Pennsylvania Gazette, 28 April 1791.