Benjamin Franklin and Dale Carnegie

Both Franklin and Carnegie wrote their most important works at crucial periods in the evolution of the nation, and one can argue with reason that those works were shaped by their times. Specifically, Franklin wrote at the beginning of the experiment of nationhood, and his work reflects those dynamic, confident and experimental times. Carnegie, on the other hand, was heavily influenced by the Great Depression, and his work reveals a man determined to work hard and focus on practical goals (much like Franklin) in order to make the best of available opportunities in trying times. Both Franklin and Carnegie can be fairly described as "positive thinkers" who wrote trying to influence others to take action in order to implement such positive thinking.

Franklin's childhood in a large family played a significant part in both his later life and in his writings:

The tenth and youngest son in a family of seventeen children (he was the fifteenth), he was born in a colonial Boston in 1706. His father was a tall

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ry often focuses on the same surface considerations that Carnegie focuses--how an individual can manipulate his surroundings in order to become wealthy and powerful. Franklin's capitalistic interests are at the heart of, for example, much in Poor Richard's Almanac. The basic concern of Franklin's is clearly not philosophical, or spiritual, not even social or political, but economic. Franklin may be associated with moralistic aphorisms, but at the heart of those moral sayings is usually a fundamentally capitalistic nugget: "Get what you can, and what you get hold" (Franklin 13). Both Wright and Kemp and Claflin give much evidence that Franklin developed early his desire to seek his own way in life, and there is much evidence that wealth and the reputation and power it gives are essential elements in that way of life. This economic focus continues in general, underlies much of the practical wisdom for which Franklin is known. Again, this is the result in part of his early experience in a crowded household, raised to work hard by a father who had to watch every penny, and in an era when self-reliance was not simply a fad but a crucial element of survival of self, family, and nation. If one assesses Franklin's life and writing with
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Approximate Word count = 2046
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)