Comparing Franklin's The Way To Wealth And Salt Of The Earth

Work and success has been a contentious topic of debate in America, from before its inception to modern times. One important aspect is competition, or how one should interact with others in order to achieve success. The purpose of this essay is to explain how Benjamin Franklin’s “The Way to Wealth” and Herbert Biberman’s Salt of the Earth present opposing views on competition.

Franklin wrote “The Way to Wealth” as a guide on how he believes one should achieve success. Part of this is self-sufficiency, as expressed with one of Poor Richard’s aphorisms, “keep thy shop, and they shop will keep thee”. The reason Franklin advocates this is because does not place much trust in other people, as he believes that they are inherently greedy and that they will take advantage of kindness. This can be seen in another one of Poor Richard’s aphorisms, “Trusting too much to others’ care is the ruin of many; for, as the Almanack says, in the affairs of this world, men are saved, not by faith, but by the want of it”.

This can be seen in how Franklin views credit. If a creditor loans to a debtor, he argues, both are worse off – the former because he or she has lost the liberty to be able to spend the money in the fashion he or she wishes to do so, and

Whereas Franklin promotes an individualistic view, Biberman promotes a more communist view, where the strongest power is not an individual but rather the collective as a whole. In fact, the miners protest against the idea of working by themselves due to the risks it gives without much personal benefit. Another contrast regards the nature of people. While Franklin believed that people only help for monetary gain, no one in Salt of the Earth wanted to help for personal reasons, but rather to help better the working and living conditions of their community. Thus, these views can be considered two extremes of how one deals with competition with regards to work and