Four American Leaders

Four American Leaders

Project Gutenberg's Four American Leaders, by Charles William Eliot
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: Four American Leaders
Author: Charles William Eliot
Release Date: October 23, 2005 [EBook #16931]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOUR
AMERICAN LEADERS ***

Produced by Graeme Mackreth and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

FOUR AMERICAN LEADERS
BY CHARLES W. ELIOT

BOSTON AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION 1906
Copyright, 1906 American Unitarian Association

Note
The four essays in this volume were written for celebrations or
commemorations in which several persons took part. Each of them is,
therefore, only a partial presentation of the life and character of its
subject. The delineation in every case is not comprehensive and
proportionate, but rather portrays the man in some of his aspects and
qualities.

Contents I. Franklin 1
An address delivered before the meeting of the American Philosophical
Society to commemorate the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of
Benjamin Franklin, Philadelphia, April 20, 1906.
II. Washington 31
An address given before the Union League Club of Chicago at the
exercises in commemoration of the birth of Washington, February 23,
1903.
III. Channing 57
An address made at the unveiling of the Channing statue on the
occasion of the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of William
Ellery Channing, Boston, June 1, 1903.
IV. Emerson 73
An address delivered on the commemoration of the centenary of the
birth of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Boston, May 24, 1903.

Four American Leaders

FRANKLIN
The facts about Franklin as a printer are simple and plain, but
impressive. His father, respecting the boy's strong disinclination to
become a tallow-chandler, selected the printer's trade for him, after
giving him opportunities to see members of several different trades at
their work, and considering the boy's own tastes and aptitudes. It was at
twelve years of age that Franklin signed indentures as an apprentice to
his older brother James, who was already an established printer. By the
time he was seventeen years old he had mastered the trade in all its
branches so completely that he could venture, with hardly any money
in his pocket, first into New York and then into Philadelphia without a
friend or acquaintance in either place, and yet succeed promptly in
earning his living. He knew all departments of the business. He was a
pressman as well as a compositor. He understood both newspaper and
book work. There were at that time no such sharp subdivisions of labor
and no such elaborate machinery as exist in the trade to-day; and
Franklin could do with his own eyes and hands, long before he was of
age, everything which the printer's art was then equal to. When the
faithless Governor Keith caused Franklin to land in London without
any resources whatever except his skill at his trade, the youth was fully
capable of supporting himself in the great city as a printer. Franklin had
been induced by the governor to go to England, where he was to buy a
complete outfit for a good printing office to be set up in Philadelphia.
He had already presented the governor with an inventory of the
materials needed in a small printing office, and was competent to make
a critical selection of all these materials; yet when he arrived in London
on this errand he was only eighteen years old. Thrown completely on
his own resources in the great city, he immediately got work at a
famous printing house in Bartholomew Close, but soon moved to a still
larger printing house, in which he remained during the rest of his stay
in London. Here he worked as a pressman at first, but was soon
transferred to the composing room, evidently excelling his comrades in

both branches of the art. The customary drink money was demanded of
him, first by the pressmen with whom he was associated, and
afterwards by the compositors. Franklin undertook to resist the second
demand; and it is interesting to learn that after a resistance of three
weeks he was forced to yield to the demands of the men by just such
measures as are now used against any scab in a unionized printing
office. He says in his autobiography: "I had so many little pieces of
private mischief done me by mixing my sorts, transposing my pages,
breaking my matter, and so forth, if I were ever so little out of the
room ... that, notwithstanding the master's protection, I found myself
obliged to comply and pay the money, convinced