_Four American Leaders_




FRANKLIN


The facts about Franklin as a printer are simple and plain, but
impressive. His father, respecting the boy's strong disinclination to
become a tallow-chandler, selected the printer's trade for him, after
giving him opportunities to see members of several different trades at
their work, and considering the boy's own tastes and aptitudes. It was
at twelve years of age that Franklin signed indentures as an apprentice
to his older brother James, who was already an established printer. By
the time he was seventeen years old he had mastered the trade in all its
branches so completely that he could venture, with hardly any money in
his pocket, first into New York and then into Philadelphia without a
friend or acquaintance in either place, and yet succeed promptly in
earning his living. He knew all departments of the business. He was a
pressman as well as a compositor. He understood both newspaper and book
work. There were at that time no such sharp subdivisions of labor and no
such elaborate machinery as exist in the trade to-day; and Franklin
could do with his own eyes and hands, long before he was of age,