WISDOM FROM THE 1700'S

Well, it has been over a few weeks since I've blogged.  Have been busy getting ready for the April Thrift Shop at our children's alma mater.  We usually go every spring and fall to help the school out.  Now to the task at hand.

We love to read and have many books.  My selections are mostly classics and true-to-life stories and biography.  I have The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.  It is the complete and unabridged version which sometimes sends me to the dictionary to find the definition of a word.  I'm learning a lot about Franklin, his life and the way people lived during the 1700's.

As I was reading I came across an interesting event in Franklin's life.  I will quote it here so as to get the facts from his point of view as it happened.  

" In 1733 I sent one of my journeymen to Charleston, South Carolina, where a printer was wanting.  I furnished him with a press and letters, on an agreement of partnership, by which I was to receive one third of the profits of the business, paying one third of the expense.  He was a man of learning, but ignorant in matters of account; and , though he sometimes made me remittances, I could get no account from him, nor any satisfactory state of our partnership while he lived.  On his decease, the business was continued by his widow, who, being born and bred in Holland, where, as I have been informed, the knowledge of accounts makes a part of female education, she not only sent me as clear a statement as she could find of the transactions past, but continued to account with the greatest regularity and exactness every quarter afterward, and managed the business with such success, that she not only reputably brought up a family of children, but, at the expiration of the term, was able to purchase of me the printing-house, and establish her son in it."

"I mentioned this affair chiefly for the sake of recommending that branch of education for our young women, as likely to be of more use to them and their children, in case of widowhood, than either music or dancing, by preserving them from losses by imposition of crafty men, and enabling them to continue, perhaps, a profitable mercantile house, with established correspondence, till a son is grown up fit to undertake and go on with it, to the lasting advantage and enriching of the family."

Wow.  This was an amazingly woman-liberating idea in Franklin's day.  Remember that women usually stayed in their father's home until they married.  When they married or while they were in their father's home their duties were washing, cleaning, cooking, ironing, sewing, taking care of the children, among other things.  Most girls didn't even go to school or learn to read.  They were probably too busy helping their mothers!  We are so privileged in present days.  Or are we?

Benjamin Franklin was a very practical man.  He could see the value of teaching women skills that would help their families.  He suggested that women could handle the accounting affairs of the family business if they learned how to in school or from their fathers.  In case of becoming a widow or an orphan with no family they could run the business very successfully or hire out as an accountant to some other person.  Apparently in those days women could do domestic chores, be a governess, teach school or teach music or dancing to make a living. 

Maybe if the printer in Charleston, South Carolina had let his wife handle the "matters of account", which was her talent, the business would have done better while her husband was still living.

Well, that is my thoughts for now.  Come back to my site and maybe I'll have a blast from the past piece just waiting to unfold.