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 of the folly of being on ill terms with those one is to live with continually.”  He was stronger than any of his mates, kept his head clearer because he did not fuddle it with beer, and availed himself of the liberty which then existed of working as fast and as much as he chose.  On this point he says:  “My constant attendance (I never making a St. Monday) recommended me to the master; and my uncommon quickness at composing occasioned my being put upon all work of dispatch, which was generally better paid.  So I went on now very agreeably.”

On his return to Philadelphia Franklin obtained for a few months another occupation than that of printer; but this employment failing through the death of his employer, Franklin returned to printing, becoming the manager of a small printing office, in which he was the only skilled workman and was expected to teach several green hands.  At that time he was only twenty-one years of age.  This printing office often wanted sorts, and there was no type-foundry in America.  Franklin succeeded in contriving a mould, struck the matrices in lead, and thus supplied the deficiencies of the office.  The autobiography says:  “I also engraved several things on occasion; I made the ink; I was warehouse man and everything, and in short quite a factotum.”  Nevertheless, he was dismissed before long by his incompetent employer, who, however, was glad to re-engage