Question

Compare and contrast Cotton Mather’s economic advice with that of Benjamin Franklin. How are they similar? How are they different?

Answer 1

Today, Benjamin Franklin and Cotton Mather. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them. Cotton Mather Benjamin Franklin was Colonial America's famous liberal rebel. Cotton Mather was the archetypical conservative Puritan leader. Like Mather, Franklin started out in Boston. They made unlikely bedfellows, yet when Franklin was eleven, he read Mather's book, Essays to Do Good. It had a lasting impact on him, and through his vast influence it has, ultimately, touched us as well.
Ben Franklin's older brother James was a printer and the publisher of the New England Courant. James went after Mather on many issues -- most stridently during a 1721 smallpox epidemic. Mather was promoting the unheard-of practice of inoculation, which he'd learned from his African servant. (The idea of averting disease by subjecting yourself to it was a very hard sell).Ben had served as James' apprentice during those times. Then, at seventeen, he found work as a journeyman printer in Philadelphia. He's been associated with that city ever since. After a year he returned to Boston for a visit, and the first thing he did was a surprise. He went to visit Cotton Mather.Mather made no mention of the earlier attacks by James, and he received Ben graciously.
The clergyman Mather also influenced Franklin the scientist. He wrote about spontaneous hybridization in plants. He wrote a treatise on medicine. Mather was an empiricist who called "the incomparable Sir Isaac Newton" his guide in science. And so young Ben Franklin worked out his ethics by turning Mather's advice into the more compact and secular language of Poor Richard's Almanac. In an exhortation on service to the kingdom of God, Mather said that it means redressing "the miseries under which mankind is languishing. Poor Richard summarized that one in the words: Serving God is doing good to man, but praying is thought an easier service, and therefore more generally chosen.The story of how Franklin got published in the Courant is well known. Apprenticed to his brother, he feared James wouldn’t print his writing in the newspaper. So he wrote an essay in disguised handwriting under the nom de plume Silence Dogood. The name was probably an allusion to two of Mather’s books, Essays to Do Good and Silentiarius: A Brief Essay on the Holy Silence and Godly Patience, that Sad Things are to be Entertained withal.The common thread that seemed to interfere in all of Franklin's relationships is work and William was no different from being affected by it. Shelia Skemp states that "the formidable rival for his father's affection was Benjamin's voracious appetite for public affairs."[i] But was he really abandoned? Franklin took his son underneath his wings and travel with him everywhere. When Franklin travel to London in 1757 to perform his diplomatic duties, William was right by his side. When Franklin was making the preparations for his famous kite experiment, William was his confidant. William was a man of charm, and polish, expensively dressed, and well-traveled[ii] thanks to his father. Like Sally, Franklin has a person in mind for William to marry--Polly Stevenson. However, like Sally that plan fell through and William married another young woman. When Franklin returns back to London, it was William who stepped up and filled in for his father and took care of the family. Franklin introduced William to the world of politics. It is believed that because Franklin loved England and loved the empire and he taught his son to do the same. "He had always been proud of his English heritage. Benjamin Franklin's civic creations changed the way society lived back then and who knows what we would have had to combat the issues he foresaw back then now if he did not take the initiative he did. Since most of his creations and innovations are still in place it certainly shows that he is a man wise beyond his time, smart enough to utilize every opportunity given to him even when he was in a place of power. As for his civic virtue, he gave society someone to continue to look up to even centuries later for his awareness of how to live a fulfilling life without over doing the indulgences. Franklin's ideas about good citizens being ones who led a simple and virtuous life, of on going self improvement, aiming always to be honest and live within ones means and moderation is advice that we could all use, especially as former college students with the real world rapidly approaching. Franklin is in fact rather clear on this motivation behind his project. Obviously moral perfection is a task nothing short of daunting, and believing one is capable of this feat would be rather foolish- not to mention prideful. Much like his view on religion, Franklin seemed very adamant that the best way to find happiness with one's self, and with their God, is through the pursuit of leading a virtuous life. And further, that there is no blame in falling short of difficult tasks.