Summary Of Poor Richard's Almanack

In his “Poor Richard’s Almanack” Franklin writes that "He that drinks his cyder alone, let him catch his horse alone" (26). Franklin lived his life standing by this principle that he preached through his publications. He gave every ounce of his success back to his community while revolutionizing public service and philanthropy. Instead of boxing himself into one discipline of service, Franklin spread his wealth: he bettered education by founding an academy that promoted welfare through a public hospital, more advanced health care, and nondiscriminatory schooling opportunities; he founded a militia allow the common citizen to give back; he established police and fire departments in Philadelphia to make the colonies a safer place. In all of his

Through the years, when Franklin sniffed the need for community improvement (which was quite often, frankly), he turned to the Junto. The first of such ideas was a lending library open to every literate person in Philadelphia. The Junto members recruited subscribers to the library who would pay to take out books. At the founding, all of the forty-five books were nonfiction, but soon, the library expanded and took in creative volumes. The motto for the library was "to pour forth benefits for the common good is divine" (qtd in Isaacson, 103). Not only did this motto exemplify the library’s mission, it epitomizes Franklin’s life mission. As the library grew, the monetary demands exceeded the Junto’s resources. When Franklin began fundraising to buy more books and sustain the library, he was not afraid to back down as the leader of the library. He received harsh feedback from influential Pennsylvanians who alleged that Franklin founded the library for personal benefit (Isaacson, 103-104). He realized that people were reluctant to support a "proposer of any useful project, that might be suppos'd to raise one's reputation in the smallest

Thus, throughout his years of intense public service, Franklin spent a good deal of time on protection. He fought vehement disapproval from averse government workers who thought that there better uses for taxpayer dollars. Despite this opposition, Franklin quickly created a fire brigade of thirty members and a full-time police force, both funded through new taxes (Meltzer, 99, 101). When country was on the brink of war, Franklin organized the first Patriot militia in Philadelphia. After he had gathered volunteers, he raised 3,000 pounds (well over half a million of today’s dollars) from common Philadelphians to buy artillery. Soon after the official creation of the militia, the soldiers elected Franklin to be a colonel (Meltzer, 125). However, Franklin declared that he was “unfit” for such an honorable position and that he would rather serve as a “common soldier” (qtd in Meltzer, 125). Franklin denied this promotion because he never chose to elevate himself above his fellow Pennsylvanians. In a speech that Franklin gave to all of the volunteers leading up to the founding of the militia, Franklin begins, “We, the middling people... the tradesmen, shopkeepers and farmers of this province and city!" (qtd in Isaacson, 124). Franklin was not one of the “middling people.” In fact, he was more affluent that two-thirds of the Founding Fathers at the time of his