FRANKLIN'S POCKET CHANGE

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V25 2022 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 25, Number 12, March 20, 2022, Article 28

The Winter 2022 issue of Financial History has an article by Willard Sterne Randall titled "The Founders' Fortunes: Benjamin Franklin's Early Rise and Business Career". It's an interesting overview of how the industrious young man, "already a master printer" made his fortune in Philadelphia after he'd "spent his last Dutch dollar."

I wasn't aware of his association with a young evangelist, the Reverend George Whitefield. But the numismatic part is an interesting description of the coins Franklin carried with him to attend one of Whitefield's sermons in 1739. -Editor

On November 8, 1739, the Gazette noted the arrival in Philadelphia of a young evangelist. The Reverend George Whitefield, a 25-year-old Anglican priest, was preaching his way from Rhode Island to Georgia, everywhere drawing unprecedented crowds. His fire-and-brimstone sermons were igniting a religious revival movement that would shake the political and social foundations of the mainland British colonies while at the same time greatly enhancing Franklin's fortune.

Whitefield had arrived in colonial America from Great Britain already so popular that few churches could safely accommodate his legion of listeners.

The normally tightfisted Franklin attended one of Whitefield's Philadelphia sermons. In his autobiography, Franklin recalled that he was well aware beforehand of the evangelist's mission to raise funds to build an orphanage in Georgia:

I perceived he intended to finish with a Collection, and I silently resolved he should get nothing from me. I had in my Pocket a Handful of Copper Money, three or four silver Dollars and five Pistoles in Gold. As he proceeded I began to soften, and concluded to give the Coppers. Another stroke of his Oratory made me ashamed'd of that, and determined me to give the Silver; and he finished so admirably, that I empty'd my Pockets wholly in to the Collector's Dish, Gold and all.

Franklin recognized a business opportunity, and printer and preacher met before Whitefield concluded his first visit to Philadelphia. Together, the two men forged a mutually beneficial publishing partnership.

The itinerant evangelist went off preaching all the way to Georgia while Franklin rushed to publish his sermons. In addition, Franklin contracted to publish American editions of Whitefield's Journals and Sermons, as well as any other books he would write in America.

In November 1739, Franklin announced in the Gazette his first printing of the Whitefield sermons. Within days, orders for 200 complete sets poured in. Whitefield's style, a blend of autobiography, Christian discourse and travelogue written in plain English, proved an instant success. Soon Franklin was shipping boxes of the books up and down the Atlantic Coast and deep into the hinterland to general stores, bookstores and print shops. Between 1739 and 1741, Franklin printed 110 Whitefield titles.

The profits from Franklin's association with the evangelist outstripped those from his own bestselling Almanack. In 1740 alone, the sales of Whitefield's writings and printed sermons accounted for 30% of all works published in America.