Pudding Economics: Franklin's "The Way to Wealth" and the Transactional Self

Beginning in 1729 (at the age of 23), with a pamphlet advocating the printing of paper money in the colonies, Benjamin Franklin wrote 20 or so papers on economic growth in America. Karl Marx commended Franklin for developing a labor theory of value and contended that Thomas Robert Malthus ineptly borrowed Franklin's analysis of population trends (Capital 59n, 675n). Our view of Franklin's economic vision is rather crimped, however, by the prominence of the widely reprinted preface to the final Poor Richard's Almanack that Franklin himself produced (1758, released at the end of 1757). The 1758 preface was frequently reprinted beginning in the late eighteenth century under the title "The Way to Wealth" or "Father Abraham's Speech" and occasionally as "Poor Richard Improv'd." The 1758 preface continues to be so widely distributed as "The Way to Wealth" that Franklin's biographer J. A. Leo Lemay calls it "the best known of Franklin's writings" after the Autobiography (1791) (584). The 1758 preface is generally—but, I think, narrowly—interpreted as a sermon on frugality, anchoring Franklin's reputation as the prototypical advocate of industry and frugality.

Franklin, of course, regularly stressed these habits. In the Autobiography, for example, Franklin takes care "to be in reality industrious and frugal," and also to appear "an industrious, thriving young man," often pushing home printing paper in a wheelbarrow for other merchants and prospective clients to view (66).¹ At the end of a brief 1748 advice piece, Franklin counsels young readers: "the Way to Wealth, if you desire it, is as plain as the Way to Market. It depends chiefly on two Words, Industry and Frugality; i.e., Waste neither Time nor Money, but make the best Use of both" ("Advice to a Young Tradesman" 321–22). Franklin explains in the Autobiography that the Almanack contains "Proverbial Sentences, chiefly such as inculcated Industry and Frugality, as the Means of procuring Wealth, and thereby securing Virtue." The final preface "assembled [proverbs into] a connected discourse … as the harangue of a wise old man" (Autobiography 96). The piece is indeed ostensibly a sermon on frugality. Shoppers awaiting the opening of "a Vendue of Merchant Goods" (a vendue was an auction of a shop's or manufacturer's goods) ask old Father Abraham to explain how taxes might be reduced. In response, Abraham recites for several pages Poor Richard's sayings on industry and thrift. "[TJhink of Saving as well as of Getting," Abraham chimes from his source. "Frugality" requires restraint of "wants": "Women and Wine, Game and Deceit, / Make the Wealth small, and the Wants great" ("Way to Wealth" 197). Avoid "Debt," in particular to acquire "Superfluities." You "put yourself under … Tyranny when you run in Debt for [fashionable] Dress" (200).

The very form of the 1758 preface ironizes Abraham's doctrine of frugality. As he frequently does, Franklin speaks in fictional voice here. Richard Saunders begins and ends the 1758 preface, having "stopt my Horse lately where a great Number of People were collected at a Vendue of Merchant Goods" (193). Richard witnesses the entire interchange. He overhears Abraham's response to the shoppers' inquiry about taxes, notes that Abraham seems unaware that Richard has borrowed from many writers over the years, and observes that while the shoppers "approved the Doctrine, [they] immediately practised the contrary, just as if it had been a common Sermon; for the vendue opened, and they began to buy extravagantly" (202). Richard admits gratification to hear someone cite him so fulsomely, as Abraham ritualistic ally punctuates the aphorisms, "as Poor Richard says." If Father Abraham in fact imports his advice from Richard, as Richard has himself borrowed so many sayings, and if Richard is flattered by the attention, and thus is reliant upon his audience, then debt structures all actions in this short story or tale or sketch—the piece has literary form and should be regarded as a literary artifact rather than as a sermon. The effect of the story is to illustrate or even stimulate desire for social interaction that is not...