Statesman, scientist, inventor, publisher, and author. His untiring energy and keen mind
made Franklin one of the most influential members of 18th-century America. In addition
to his numerous diplomatic and entrepreneurial accomplishments, he also was much
interested in his average fellow citizens. It was for them that he published his instructive
and entertaining almanac for twenty-five years from 1733 to 1758. His sense of humor,
his practical advice, and his pragmatic worldview made these annual publications of
twenty-four to thirty-six pages a major success. Under the pseudonym of Richard
Saunders, the Poor Richard’s Almanack was published in editions of more than 10,000
copies each year, setting new standards for the moralistic, pragmatic, and entertaining
content of similar publications.
While Franklin included short folk narratives, weather superstitions, and various other
folkloric texts, he was primarily interested in providing his compatriots with proverbial
wisdom. Contrary to popular belief, he coined hardly any new proverbs but copied them
from major English proverb collections. Of greatest influence was his essay titled “The
Way to Wealth” that appeared in the last almanac, of 1758 (cf. Gallacher 1949). This
short essay contains 105 proverbs culled from the previous issues of the almanac, and the
wisdom contained in them became the proverbial philosophy of virtue, prosperity,
prudence, and, above all, economic common sense that guided the population of this
young nation. These five proverbs appear to be his own: “Three removes is as bad as a
fire,” “Laziness travels so slowly, that poverty soon overtakes him,” “Sloth makes all
things difficult, but industry all easy,” “Industry pays debts, while despair increases
them,” and “There will be sleeping enough in the grave.” The name of Benjamin Franklin
or at least the popular pseudonym “Poor Richard” became attached to many traditional
folk proverbs. While Franklin originated few new proverbs, he deserves much credit in
popularizing old proverbs as pragmatic American wisdom.
Wolfgang Mieder
References
Barbour, Frances M. 1974. A Concordance to the Sayings in Franklin’s “Poor Richard. “Detroit:
Gale.
Gallacher, Stuart A. 1949. Franklin’s “Way to Wealth”: A Florilegium of Proverbs and Wise
Sayings. Journal of English and Germanic Philology 48:229–251.
Meister, Charles W. 1952–1953. Franklin as a Proverb Stylist. American Literature 24:157–166.
Mieder, Wolfgang. 1989. Benjamin Franklins “Proverbs.” In American Proverbs: A Study of Texts
and Contexts. Bern: Peter Lang, pp. 129–142.
Newcomb, Robert. 1957. The Sources of Benjamin Franklin’s Sayings of Poor Richard. Ph.D.
diss., University of Maryland.