In the American tradition Benjamin Franklin is the living symbol that America is the land of opportunity: he is the original boy who made good. The facts of his rise to wealth and to fame are more impressive than any story written by Horatio Alger and, being the stuff of life itself, more representative of the American character. "Franklin is claimed by more groups than any other person in our history," as Calvin Coolidge described his reputation in 1927, and admiration for what Franklin did transcends the bounds of color, religion or political party (Ford, p 123).
Author of The Way to Wealth, Franklin has become a patron saint of businessmen, and the club he founded and called the "Junto" has been claimed as the original "Rotary"; but he is also the hero of the men who work with their hands and it was as artisan -- printer and mechanic -that he made his way in the world. "A penny saved is a penny earned" may be found engraved on the walls of savings banks throughout the land, but printers remember that at the height of his national prestige and international fame he still described himself as a craftsman: "Benjamin Franklin, of Philadelphia, printer," adding in a lesser place that he was also "late Minister Plenipotentiary from the United States of America to the Court of France" and "now President of the State of Pennsylvania" (Rava, p78).
Mechanic, man of the people, spokesman for plain Americans, Franklin satirized titles of honor in his youth by showing that the Bible did not refer to "Master Adam" or "the Right Honourable Abraham, Viscount Mesopotamia, Baron of Canaan," and in old age he ridiculed the suggestion of an American hereditary aristocracy by saying he would prefer "hereditary professors of mathematics"; yet in his Autobiography he took a childish pride in boasting that he had known five kings and that one of them had even asked him to sit down in his presence.
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