CHAPTER SEVEN: Politician: Philadelphia, 1749–1756

Franklin transitions from printer-entrepreneur to gentleman-scholar in 1748, retiring at 42 with a profitable partnership that secures his financial future. This chapter traces his civic innovations—library, fire company, militia, and philosophical society—and his complex relationships with religious and political figures, including his profitable but theologically distant partnership with evangelist George Whitefield.

Franklin's civic enterprises of the 1730s–1740s reflect his belief that collective action surpasses individual effort. He founds the Library Company of Philadelphia (1731) by strategically crediting others to overcome public reluctance; it becomes America's first subscription library and endures as a major cultural institution. His fire company (1736) and night watch proposal establish organized civic services, the latter introducing progressive taxation arguments. Franklin initially struggles to join the Freemasons but succeeds through strategic newspaper coverage; he becomes Grand Master in 1734. A 1737 scandal involving a Freemason initiate's accidental death temporarily damages his reputation, though he defends the organization to his mother.

During the Great Awakening, Franklin supports Samuel Hemphill, a morality-focused Presbyterian preacher, against orthodox critics, publishing angry anonymous pamphlets—rare for Franklin—when Hemphill is censured for heresy and plagiarism. More significantly, Franklin becomes enthralled by itinerant evangelist George Whitefield in 1739, covering his revivals extensively and eventually publishing most of Whitefield's sermons and journals, which enriches Franklin while promoting the preacher's charitable work. By 1740, Franklin cools toward Whitefield's theology, publishing critical letters, though they maintain cordial correspondence.

Franklin's rivalry with printer Andrew Bradford intensifies over politics and distribution. After Bradford loses the postmaster position in 1737 due to bookkeeping negligence, Franklin assumes it, gaining postal advantages. When lawyer John Webbe betrays Franklin's magazine idea to Bradford in 1740, Franklin launches competing publications; both fail within months. Franklin explores questions of gender in two famous essays: "Advice to a Young Man on the Choice of a Mistress" (1745, suppressed for decades) and "The Speech of Polly Baker," a hoax defending unmarried motherhood that exposes sexual double standards.

In 1743, Franklin's daughter Sally is born. Though he educates her in practical subjects—reading, writing, arithmetic, accounting—he denies her the formal academic training he provides his son William and makes no provision for girls at his proposed academy. His small family size contrasts with colonial norms and grants him later freedom for scientific and diplomatic pursuits.

Franklin founds the American Philosophical Society in 1743, positioning Philadelphia as an intercolonial intellectual hub. In 1747, responding to Pennsylvania's pacifist Quaker Assembly's failure to defend against French privateers during King George's War, he writes the inflammatory pamphlet "Plain Truth," rallying "we the middling people" to form an independent militia with elected officers and no class distinctions—a radical assertion of popular self-defense that alarms Proprietor Thomas Penn as near-treasonous. The association disbands when the war threat passes in 1748.

At 42, precisely at his life's midpoint, Franklin retires from active printing, turning the business to foreman David Hall under a partnership yielding him half profits (£650 annually). He seeks leisure for scientific experiment and intellectual fellowship rather than further wealth accumulation, positioning himself as a gentleman-philosopher, though remaining populist in local politics and avoiding overt aristocratic pretense.