Benjamin Franklin on one of the first public libraries in America

As I mentioned last month I've been working my way through the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin using DailyLit. It has been fun to get brief emails with snippets from the book.

I was struck today by just how wealthy our society is today in contrast to 250 years ago. In today's email was this snippet from chapter eight:

"Finding the advantage of this little collection, I propos'd to render the benefit from books more common, by commencing a public subscription library. I drew a sketch of the plan and rules that would be necessary, and got a skilful conveyancer, Mr. Charles Brockden, to put the whole in form of articles of agreement to be subscribed, by which each subscriber engag'd to pay a certain sum down for the first purchase of books, and an annual contribution for increasing them. So few were the readers at that time in Philadelphia, and the majority of us so poor, that I was not able, with great industry, to find more than fifty persons, mostly young tradesmen, willing to pay down for this purpose forty shillings each, and ten shillings per annum. On this little fund we began. The books were imported; the library wag opened one day in the week for lending to the subscribers, on their promissory notes to pay double the value if not duly returned.

"The institution soon manifested its utility, was imitated by other towns, and in other provinces. The libraries were augmented by donations; reading became fashionable; and our people, having no publick amusements to divert their attention from study, became better acquainted with books, and in a few years were observ'd by strangers to be better instructed and more intelligent than people of the same rank generally are in other countries."

I found this fascinating on a number of levels. One was a reminder that books were very expensive back then. I remember reading that The Wealth of Nations when it was published cost about a full years salary.

It was neat to see that people donated books.

Another interesting thing is that many people wanted to improve themselves. They wanted to read books. They were willing to spend money to join the library. This is one of the points that homeschoolers recognize: young children love to learn. Most chlidren lose their love for learning in public schools.

You can read the full biography at Project Gutenberg, though the text is slightly different.


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