We think Franklin would appreciate the gift. After all, he was one of the most far-sighted publishers in the colonies. He purchased the Pennsylvania Gazette in 1729 and turned it into the colony’s leading paper. He branched out into almanacs in 1732 and became the most widely read American in the New World and the Old.

Franklin would have been excited our new technology—both as a scientist and a publisher. The possibility of expanding from old media into new media would have filled him with ideas for promoting science, politics, morals, and—definitely—entertainment. He was the one of those editors, according to biographer Walter Isaacson, “who are charmed and amused by the world and delight in charming and amusing others.

Turning around the Pennsylvania Gazette from a sleepy, dying periodical to the leading newspaper of the colony, Franklin knew that publishers can’t rely on old formulas. He broadened the scope of the newspaper’s contents and thought up new ways to generate public interest. For example, he would write letters to the editor under pseudonyms, attacking or praising the newspaper’s content. He would readily use humor, sometimes inventing humorous anecdotes that could have arisen from the mistakes printed by competing papers.

His almanacs were filled with information that would be practical to farmers and fishermen: sunrises, tides, and moon phases. But Franklin also included any information he thought would be interesting, including the musings of his alter-ego, Poor Richard. In a way, these almanacs were the forerunner to the blogs of today.

The Saturday Evening Post is among several organizations keeping alive the memory of this great American. The contribution of Benjamin Franklin to our country’s independence and prosperity are incalculable. As a diplomat, he secured financial and military support for the colonist from the court of France’s Louis XIV. But as a scientist, he shattered Europe’s dismissive attitude toward Americans as backwoodsmen and dirt farmers.

“84 Days of Ben Franklin” will feature quotes from Dr. Franklin, drawing on his earnest advice and his sharp-eyed view of society.

Sign up for Ben’s Twitter feed, click here.

84 Days of Ben Franklin The Saturday Evening Post

But he also urged people to look beyond small details, to forgive injuries, and never lose sight of the big picture. You can hear his optimism in his Poor Richard maxim:  “Energy and persistence conquer all things.”

Still, it’s difficult to tell how Ben would respond to the Obama administration’s announcement in November that the economy was showing signs of improvement — one sign, actually. Americans were losing their jobs more slowly.  The unemployment rate had fallen back to 10%. At any other time, such numbers would be depressing, but America is looking for any sign of promise.

Reading this, Ben would probably caution us to question any news that our ailing economy is recovering. He would advise caution, and rigorous frugality — but then, he always did. (“Rather go to bed without dinner than to rise in debt.”) He would remind us that good fortune rarely comes in large packages, accompanied by trumpets and a press conference. A good sign is when the little bits of encouraging news start to show up regularly.

“Human felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen as by little advantages that occur every day.”

Signs of Economic Recovery The Saturday Evening Post

“There is a Tradition that in the Planting of New England, the first Settlers met with many Difficulties and Hardships, as is generally the Case when a civilized People attempt establishing themselves in a wilderness Country.

“Being so piously disposed, they sought Relief from Heaven by laying their Wants and Distresses before the Lord in frequent set Days of Fasting and Prayer. Constant Meditation and Discourse on these Subjects, kept their Minds gloomy and discontented, and like the Children of Israel there were many disposed to return to the Egypt which Persecution had induced them to abandon.

“At length, when it was proposed in the Assembly to proclaim another Fast, a Farmer of plain Sense rose and remarked, that the Inconveniences they suffered, and concerning which they had so often wearied Heaven with their Complaints, were not so great as they might have expected, and were diminishing every day as the Colony strengthened; that the Earth began to reward their Labour and furnish liberally for their Subsistence; that their Seas and Rivers were full of Fish, the Air sweet, the Climate healthy; and above all, that they were there in the full Enjoyment of Liberty civil and religious.

“He therefore thought that reflecting and conversing on these Subjects would be more comfortable as leading more to make them contented with their Situation; and that it would be more becoming the Gratitude they owed to the divine Being, if instead of a Fast they should proclaim a Thanksgiving.

“His Advice was taken, and from that day to this, they have in every Year observed Circumstances of public Felicity sufficient to furnish Employment for a Thanksgiving Day, which is therefore constantly ordered and religiously observed.”

(pp. 116-117, “The Writings of Benjamin Franklin” Albert Henry Smith, ed., MacMillan, New York, 1907)

The Origins of Thanksgiving The Saturday Evening Post

It’s an ongoing debate. What are the benefits of daylight-saving time? And who gets them? While some benefit from the time change, others are inconvenienced by moving an hour of sunlight from the morning to the afternoon. Yet many Americans appreciate how the longer evenings in summer enable them to accomplish more during the day.

For years, conventional wisdom held that daylight-saving time saves energy, but perhaps not as much as originally thought, according to some analysts. And does the time change actually increase the risks of accidents and disease, as others report?

Where do you stand on the issue?

Share your opinion with Post readers here.

Should We Lose Daylight-Saving Time? The Saturday Evening Post

More than any other Founding Father, he would have savored life in 21st-century America. He would have enjoyed hosting his own Web site and Facebook account.

He’d post videos of his scientific experiments on YouTube and would ‘tweet’ new aphorisms onto his “Poor Richard Twitter” account. (“A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle. LOL!”)

But would he find that the wireless world and all its fascinating possibilities consumed too much of his day. Currently, adult Americans—who generally assert they have no free time—spend almost one hour a day online (and one source claims that teens spend 72 hours a week using electronic media, or about 10 hours a day!)

Traditionally, Americans have not chosen between activities. Instead we have made extra time in the day by working harder, moving faster, and generally speeding up the rhythm of life.

The Huffington Post (no relation to The Saturday Evening Post) recently started a book club and chose In Praise of Slowness by Carl Honoré for its first title. The book encourages readers to choose the pace of our lives and balance the speed in so many of their activities with slower, more thoughtful tempos.

In his day, Ben Franklin constantly encouraged his readers to use time wisely:

“Lost time is never found again.”
“Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.”
“Do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.”

This last line reflects Franklin’s belief in productivity over activity. We think he would have approved of the idea of slowing life to a deliberate pace, so we don’t squander time with idleness or mindless haste.

As he urged his readers:

“Never confuse motion with action … Leisure is the time for doing something useful. This leisure the diligent person will obtain, the lazy one never.”

Ben Franklin and the Slow Movement The Saturday Evening Post

What would Ben Franklin say about such a draconian method of epidemic control?

Here’s what he’d say: We did it all the time.

About a year ago, Mexican health authorities became aware of a potentially fatal new form of influenza that killed a significant percentage of those infected. With the help of virologists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, they learned that the causative organism contained genetic material from human, bird, and pig influenza viruses. Without an effective vaccine, Mexican authorities resorted to a measure borrowed from an earlier era: massive public quarantine. Starting in Mexico City, the quarantine was soon expanded to the entire country. The economic costs were enormous. Hotel occupancy in Cancun, for instance, dropped to less than 5 percent. Billions of pesos were lost in the retail, entertainment, and tourism sectors of the economy.

During Franklin’s lifetime, such widespread quarantines were common. Indeed, they were often the only way to contain epidemics of smallpox, yellow fever, malaria, and a host of other “contagions,” as they were called at the time.

Moreover, it often fell to Benjamin Franklin to announce such quarantine measures in his newspaper, The Pennsylvania Gazette, the most widely read periodical publication of colonial North America. In a typical example from the April 22, 1731, issue, Franklin told his readers that the Justices of the Peace in nearby Burlington, Pennsylvania,

“by reason of the great mortality in Philadelphia, and other parts of Pennsylvania, where the small-pox now violently rages…to prevent…the further spreading of so epidemical and dangerous a distemper” prohibited the annual May Fair in their town.

The cause of such epidemics was not known. Some considered divine punishment as the most likely reason, whereas Franklin and his fellow scientists, always looking for naturalistic explanations, assumed that exposure to a toxic fluid created the illness. At the same time, this fluid caused the victim to produce more such fluid, spreading the disease to others. Isolating those suffering from the malady was thus the best way to halt spread.

In a way, 18th-century scientists were correct. A virus is so small that it passes through the finest paper filters, ending up in the fluid that drips into a container below the funnel. Once a virus enters a living body, it takes over the reproductive machinery of target cells, programming the creation of millions of copies of itself.

Therefore, separating sick from healthy to control epidemics makes lots of sense.

In a recent medical journal article, American public health experts commended Mexican authorities for the efficient and remarkably successful way they handled the H1N1 influenza epidemic. In fact, Mexico, by reverting to a strategy developed in the Middle Ages, demonstrated the effectiveness of a nonpharmaceutical way to halt emerging epidemics.

Franklin, who became involved in the study of epidemics after he lost his 4-year-old son to smallpox, would, if alive, lavish praise on what he called “New Spain” for its pioneering reversion to an ancient technique.

Influenza: Epidemic Control Gone Too Far? The Saturday Evening Post

If you’re not churning out large, fast meals for a ravenous family, cooking can be a perpetually fresh adventure. Given time, curiosity, imagination, and a full spice rack, you can pursue hours of adventure, enjoy the satisfaction of creating a sensual pleasure, and get another meal out of the way.

In the 18th Century, American colonists were beginning to move beyond the subsistence diet of pioneers. They had the time and money to look into ways of combining New World produce with Old World recipes. Cooks were combining the familiar fare of corn, beans, squash, ham, beef, and cod with European cooking methods and seasonings that were becoming more available in the larger cities.

Ben Franklin, the patron saint of moderation, was wary of these culinary innovations:

“In general, mankind, since the improvement of cookery, eats twice as much as nature requires.”

He later advised:

“To lengthen thy life, lessen thy meals.”

It was good advice, but hard to follow, even for Franklin, who loved good food and company as much as he loved virtue. So it is not surprising to see that he wrote, late in life:

“I don’t so much mind being old, as I mind being fat and old.”

Haute Cuisine The Saturday Evening Post

What would Ben Franklin say about the notion that colds come from exposure to wetness?

Here’s what Franklin did say: “The disorder we call a cold … can never by a little addition of moisture hurt a body filled with watery fluids from head to foot.”

During Franklin’s era, it was almost universally believed that cold damp air caused the condition we call a cold, a belief that persists to the present. Indeed, the name “cold” derives from that concept. Towards the middle of the 18th century, when Franklin was at the peak of his influence, a number of thinkers, Franklin among them, concluded that colds and influenza were contagious diseases, similar to smallpox, malaria, and other maladies that swept through colonial North America from time to time.

We have to remember that the notion that germs cause diseases hadn’t yet been proposed in Franklin’s lifetime, even though some experimenters had seen such tiny organisms with primitive microscopes developed in the late 1600s.

As for the notion that dampness caused colds, Franklin pooh-poohed this idea in a 1773-letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush—a prominent Philadelphia physician and signer of the Declaration of Independence. Rush strongly believed that dampness somehow led to colds. Franklin explained to Rush why he didn’t accept this concept. Instead, he concluded that colds were transmitted from one person to another. He said, “I have long been satisfy’d from Observation, that besides the general Colds now termed Influenza’s, which may possibly be spread by Contagion as well as by a particular Quality of the Air, People often catch Cold from one another when shut up together in small close Rooms, Coaches, and so forth, and when sitting near and conversing so as to breathe in each others Transpiration …”

As for the notion that one could catch a cold by becoming wet, Franklin told Dr. Rush:

“Travelling in our severe Winters, I have suffered Cold sometimes to an Extremity only short of Freezing, but this did not make me catch Cold. And for Moisture, I have been in the River every Evening two or three Hours for a Fortnight together, when one would suppose I might imbibe enough of it to take Cold if Humidity could give it; but no such Effect followed: Boys never get Cold by Swimming. Nor are People at Sea, or who live at Bermudas, or St. Helena, where the Air must be ever moist, from the Dashing and Breaking of Waves against their Rocks on all sides, more subject to Colds than those who inhabit Parts of a Continent where the Air is dryest.”

Furthermore, Franklin was convinced that a person’s physical condition was even more important than exposure to the expired breath of others. Here’s how he put it:

“From these Causes, but more from too full Living with too little Exercise, proceed in my Opinion most of the Disorders which for 100 Years past the English have called Colds.”

Catching Colds The Saturday Evening Post

Naturally, America wonders if a revival of the housing market will bring a return of the financial meltdown that began with subprime lending.

Hopefully, banks will bypass the short-term gains they can make out of high-risk home loans.

But consumers also need to be part of the solution. Even if mortgage officers in banks are ready to approve risky loans, buyers will still need to practice moderation. The instability of our economy will not disappear soon. Buyers should scale back expectations for their next house instead of gambling on long-term, unrealistic earnings.

The quote “Don’t count your chickens before they are hatched,” might be appropriate here, except Franklin didn’t say it—Aesop did.

Franklin’s comment is more pertinent to homebuyers, as he advises them not to let the possibilities of earnings obscure the realities of daily costs.

“Gain may be temporary and uncertain; but ever while you live, expense is constant and certain: and it is easier to build two chimneys than to keep one in fuel.”

Living Inside Your Means The Saturday Evening Post

What would Ben Franklin say about individuals who decline inoculation?

Here is what he did say about the subject: “As the practice of Inoculation always divided people into parties, some contending warmly for it, and others as strongly against it. …” It was necessary to have a strict and impartial enquiry into the inoculation and death rates during epidemics.

Few people alive today are old enough to remember the 1918 influenza pandemic, an event that killed tens of millions of people. Ben Franklin, however, lived in an era where contagious epidemics—yellow fever, malaria, smallpox, typhus, influenza—were common. Since the germ theory of disease had not yet been proposed during Franklin’s lifetime, people had no idea about what caused such deadly assaults on the population. The most commonly accepted explanation involved divine visitation, presumably as punishment to an entire population for sinful conduct.

Edward Jenner’s discovery of the smallpox vaccine did not occur until several years after Franklin died. During Franklin’s lifetime, inoculation against smallpox was performed by exposing a person to scabs taken from the skin of somebody with the disease. Usually, the inoculation process produced a mild smallpox infection; survival meant lifetime immunity. Occasionally, however, the inoculation would lead to a progressive form of the disease, which would kill the patient. For this reason, many feared inoculation, although Franklin favored it.

When Ben Franklin was a young printer in Philadelphia, he lost the only son he had with his wife to a smallpox epidemic. The lad was 4 years old at the time. Franklin had planned to have the boy inoculated, but never got around to it.

Ben Franklin never forgave himself for the loss. Like many parents who nowadays create a foundation in the memory of a child who died so that others might benefit from research into the illness that took away their loved one, Franklin started collecting smallpox inoculation statistics. He soon realized that the risk of inoculation was small compared to the risk of acquiring a smallpox infection in what he referred to as the “usual way.”

When Franklin was in England in 1759, he persuaded a famous physician to write a pamphlet for distribution in British North America favoring the smallpox inoculation. Franklin himself penned the pamphlet’s preface. In it, he presented his statistical results, hoping to persuade parents that their children would benefit from inoculation. Likewise, he found it necessary to overcome theological resistance to inoculation. Certain men of the cloth, it turns out, were convinced that any attempt to reduce the impact of a divinely ordained plague would go against God’s will. Franklin found it necessary, therefore, to point out that God gave mankind the capacity to discover a method that reduced the impact of a contagious illness.

Here’s how Franklin combined his analysis of smallpox statistics with his response to those who found inoculation somehow unholy:

“If the chance were only as two to one in favour of the practice [of inoculation] among children, would it not be sufficient to induce a tender parent to lay hold of the advantage? But when it’s so much greater, as it appears to be by these accounts (in some even as thirty to one) surely parents will no longer refuse to accept and thankfully use a discovery GOD in his mercy has been pleased to bless mankind with.”

Influenza Pandemic The Saturday Evening Post

The stimulus package, which was passed earlier this year, set aside $32 billion in higher-education funding, which will benefit 800,000 students. Even so, parents are naturally concerned that their earnings aren’t rising nearly as fast as the cost of educating their children.

Ben Franklin would try to reassure today’s parents with the value of learning. “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”

Franklin remained a skeptical pragmatist all his life, but he grew dreamy-eyed whenever he talked of learning. He prized education above all things, even above hard work and justice. The minimal schooling he received as a child—only two years of elementary education—left him hungry for more. However, the needs of his family forced him to start work early in life.

Everything else Ben Franklin learned he grabbed between jobs. He read continuously. As a young man, he lived on inexpensive vegetables so he could afford to buy more books. His lifetime of study led him beyond the range of his educated peers into fields of scientific and philosophic speculation. His pursuit of learning eventually earned him honorary degrees from Harvard and Yale, an honorary Master’s degree from William and Mary College, and honorary doctorate degrees from the University of St. Andrews and Oxford University.

Yet he never considered himself an intellectual. If anything, he believed he hadn’t learned enough, and that his thick head prevented him from being truly intelligent. Too much of his education, he believed, was obtained the hard way. He was referring to himself, as much as anyone, when he observed:

“Experience keeps a dear [overpriced] school, but fools will learn in no other.”

The High Cost of Learning The Saturday Evening Post

We haven’t seen protests of such ferocity since the 1960s, when young Americans—perhaps some of the same people protesting health care policy today—disrupted cities and college campuses.

Of course, it would be interesting to know Benjamin Franklin’s opinion about a new, government-run health care program. But we believe he would want to address the issue of civil discourse before the problem concerning health insurance.

Don’t Be Fooled by the Stuffy Portraits

Franklin was a man of strong passions. Yet he forced himself to shape his outrage for effectiveness. He succeeded so well that he became America’s first, and perhaps most important, diplomat. His persuasive power secured the vital support of France, which proved essential for the success of our revolution.

He was not always such an effective speaker. His mastery began when, as a young man, a Quaker friend “kindly informed me that I was generally thought proud; that my pride showed itself frequently in conversation; that I was not content with being in the right when discussing any point, but was overbearing, and rather insolent, of which he convinced me by mentioning several instances; I determined endeavoring to cure myself, if I could, of this vice.”

“I cannot boast of much success in acquiring the reality of this virtue, but I had a good deal with regard to the appearance of it. I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradiction to the sentiments of others, and all positive assertion of my own. I even forbid myself … the use of every word or expression in the language that imported a fixed opinion, such as ‘certainly,’ ‘undoubtedly,’ etc., and I adopted, instead of them, ‘I conceive,’ ‘I apprehend,’ or ‘I imagine a thing to be so or so,’ or ‘it so appears to me at present.’”

Being right, Franklin discovered, wasn’t enough. If he wanted the support of reasonable people, he had to appeal to their reason.

“When another asserted something that I thought an error, I denied myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing immediately some absurdity in his proposition; and in answering I began by observing that in certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present case there appeared or seemed to me some difference, etc.”

The benefit, Franklin discovered, was far more than a control of his passions. It earned him an unexpected persuasiveness.

“I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I engaged in went on more pleasantly. The modest way in which I proposed my opinions procured them a readier reception and less contradiction; I had less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily prevailed with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I happened to be in the right.

“And this mode, which I at first put on with some violence to my natural inclination, became at length so easy, and so habitual to me, that perhaps for these fifty years past no one has ever heard a dogmatical expression escape me. And to this habit … I think it principally owing that I had early so much weight with my fellow-citizens when I proposed new institutions, or alterations in the old, and so much influence in public councils when I became a member; for I was but a bad speaker, never eloquent, subject to much hesitation in my choice of words, hardly correct in language, and yet I generally carried my points.”

Political Debate The Saturday Evening Post

The term “dog days” did not originally refer to dogs, though it has become associated with thick-furred hounds cowering in the shade and panting hoarsely around their lolling tongues.

Rather, the term is astrological and refers to the time between July and August when the dog star, Sirius, appears just before sunrise. Ancient astrologers believed the light of Sirius, the brightest star in the heavens, made these days hotter. The ancients also believed that the position of the planets gave rise to the illnesses of late summer: typhus, malaria, and polio.

In the 18th century, people sought to protect themselves from fevers by regulating their temperature. One way was through bloodletting. A more salubrious method was cold baths. Benjamin Franklin didn’t approve of either, but developed his own approach.

“You know the cold bath has long been in vogue here as a tonic; but the shock of the cold water has always appeared to me, generally speaking, as too violent, and I have found it much more agreeable to my constitution to bathe in another element; I mean cold air.

“With this view I rise almost every morning and sit in my chamber without any clothes whatever, half an hour or an hour, according to the season, either reading or writing. This practice is not in the least painful, but, on the contrary, agreeable; and, if I return to bed afterwards, before I dress myself, as sometimes happens, I make a supplement to my night’s rest of one or two hours of the most pleasing sleep that can be imagined.

“I find no ill consequences whatever resulting from it, and that at least it does not injure my health, if it does not in fact contribute much to its preservation. I shall therefore call it for the future a bracing or tonic bath.”

The fact that Benjamin Franklin later became an honored and admired American implies that Franklin either kept the shutters on his windows in good repair, or he had highly tolerant neighbors.

Surviving the Dog Days The Saturday Evening Post

One of the bill’s authors was Michigan’s John Dingell, who represented the 15th Congressional district from 1933 to 1955. He was succeeded by his son, who has held this post from 1955 to today.

Now the longest-serving representative, John Dingell Jr. continues to promote his father’s Wagner-Murray-Dingell bill. Sixty-six years have elapsed, but the bill still lingers in committee, unable to move forward or to be killed. Other legislation has come and gone. The government has taken action on other issues, many of which were not as important.

We asked Dr. Benjamin Franklin why the government has not resolved the issue in over a half century of deliberation. The problem, he indicated, is that lawmakers like to work within familiar grounds. Radical change only comes when pressed by emergencies:

“Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.”

Where Is the Government’s Health Care Plan? The Saturday Evening Post

The man implied that Aldrin had lied about going to the moon. Aldrin told the man to go away. The man continued making his accusation, eventually calling Aldrin “a coward, a liar, and a thief.” Aldrin responded by landing a right hook to the man’s jaw, lifting his antagonist off his feet.

As satisfying as this might seem, we know punching isn’t the best response to aggravating crackpots. But, as Ben Franklin noted, there are no really satisfactory ways of dealing with foolish behavior.

“It is Ill-manners to silence a Fool, and Cruelty to let him go on.”

What’s To Be Done with Fools? The Saturday Evening Post