July 31, 2025 • 33 mins
Newt talks with Dr. Mark Skousen, “America’s Economist” about his new book, “The Greatest American: Benjamin Franklin, The World’s Most Versatile Genius.” Their conversation explores Franklin's profound impact on American politics and daily life, highlighting his diverse roles as an inventor, scientist and diplomat. Skousen, who is a direct descendant of Franklin, shares insights into Franklin's unfinished autobiography, which he completed using Franklin's letters and papers. They also discuss Franklin's practical approach to science, his mastery of diplomacy, and his personal philosophies, including his belief in the importance of being useful and educated. Dr. Skousen also touches on Franklin's complex relationships with women, his views on religion, and his legacy as a versatile genius. Skousen provides a comprehensive look at why Franklin is considered one of the greatest Americans, emphasizing his ability to connect with people from all walks of life and his enduring influence on modern society.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
On this episode of Newts World. Benjamin Franklin was the
oldest of the Founding fathers. He was a generation ahead
of George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, and yet
he was the most forward looking of the group and
the most modern of the founders. In his new book,
The Greatest American Benjamin Franklin, the World's Most Versatile Genius,
(00:28):
author of Mark S. Gosson, shows just how much of
an impact Benjamin Franklin had on American politics and daily life.
Here to talk about his new book, I'm really pleased
to welcome my guests, doctor Mark Scauson. He's the editor
of Forecasts and Strategies. He is a nationally known investment expert, economists,
university professor, and author of more than twenty five books.
(00:51):
He's known as america as Economist and has been identified
as one of the twenty most influential living economists. And
as it turns out, he is a direct descendant of
Benjamin Franklin. Mark, welcome, and thank you for joining me
(01:18):
on this world.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Well, it's my pleasure, and as Ben Franklin say, it
pleases my vanity to speak with the former Speaker of
the House.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
I don't know about Vanity, but we've been good friends
for many, many years, and you've had an important impact
on American politics and American economics. But I'm curious. You know,
after so many years of writing books on economics and
financial literacy, in two thousand and six, you and your
wife decided to write a book about Benjamin Franklin. How
did that come about?
Speaker 2 (01:49):
So, actually, what that book is about, it's called the
Completed Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin, so it's actually in his
own words. And what my wife and I did, we
went through the fifty volumes. There's fifty volumes of the
papers of Benjamin Franklin that are being compiled at Yale University,
and they're continuing to still put together these papers. We
(02:12):
thought one of the unfortunate events in ben Franklin's life
was that he started writing his autobiography late in life
and he never finished it. The autobiography that is so
famous that is in all the bookstores actually ends in
seventeen fifty seven, when Franklin's fifty two years of age
(02:34):
and he's just headed off to become a diplomat, a
London agent, and then there's the American Revolution and when
he goes to France and the Constitutional Convention, none of
that is in his autobiography. And my wife and I thought, wow,
you know, Ben Franklin, maybe we can finish his autobiography
(02:57):
by looking at his letters and the paper that he
wrote to see what is autobiographical, and see if we
could put together and complete his autobiography in his own name.
And it took over a year for us to do it,
but we were able to do it on the three
hundredth anniversary of his birth in two thousand and six,
and we published a book with Regnri called The Completed Autobiography.
(03:20):
It's his last thirty years, and it was a wonderful
revelation to hear in his own words what he thought
about the breakup with Britain, the declaration of Independence, and
his influence there, his nine years as ambassador to France,
and his critical role in raising funds and ammunition and
(03:42):
everything with the French which helped complete and win this
war against the mightiest army in the world. And then
at age eighty, he went back to the United States
and he helped formulate a new government. And so there's
all of his personal views about the Constitution and everything.
(04:03):
So that came out in two thousand and six, and
Franklin always said, I wish one of my children or
grandchildren would complete my autobiography because he ran out of
time and he died at seventeen ninety, at the age
of eighty four. And it was really a marvelous experience
for us. I felt after we had finished this that
Ben Franklin was looking down from the heavens, from the
(04:26):
spirit world and had a big smile on his face
to see that finally a descendant of Franklin had completed
his autobiography. So that's kind of a summary of what
that book was all about. It really was a revelation.
I learned a lot of new things and new quotes
from Ben Franklin as a result of that work.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
What makes it doubly interesting, I did not know this
about you, is that you're actually related to Franklin. Talk
about that.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Yeah, that was a long standing tradition on my mother's side,
her name was Helen McCarty, that somehow we were related
to Benjamin Franklin. So my wife and I went to
Philadelphia one weekend and we went to the Philosophical Society
and we looked at some wills and so on to
try to figure out exactly how we were connected. And
(05:13):
there was one missing link, one generation that was missing.
We could trace it back to a great grandson of
Benjamin Franklin, but there was a missing link, and we
finally discovered the grandson of Benjamin Franklin. His name was
Lewis Beach and he was the son of Sally Beach
(05:35):
and her husband. Sally was a daughter of Ben Franklin.
So this is the grandson of Benjamin Franklin. His name
was Lewis Beach Senior, and we found a will, his
last will and testament, he referred to two natural quote
natural children. One was also named Lewis, and that's who
we found out we were related to. So Franklin continued
(05:59):
the tradition, and as you know, Franklin was famous for
having an illegitimate child, and it turned out that that
kind of tradition continued on in a number of generations
and the Franklin family the Beaches were so embarrassed by
it that they did not include the two natural illegitimate
(06:20):
children in the descendants in the genealogy. So we founded
in the will, and that's how we found we were connected.
So I'm a sixth generation direct grandson of Benjamin Franklin.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
That means you have won five hundred and twelfth of
Franklin's blood.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
That's right. I have not inherited much from Franklin. We're
both left handed. We both have written a quote book.
You know, he wrote Poor Richard's Almanac, and I've written
The Maximums of Wall Street. You know, he was kind
of a financial guru in many ways, giving personal advice
to people through is Poor Richard's Almanac, and which was
(07:00):
extremely popular that came out once a year. My Maxims
of Wall Street includes in it, I would say maybe
twenty quotes from Franklin. One of his most famous lines
he said, if fool and his money are soon parted,
and another great quote is nothing but money is sweeter
than honey. There's a number of great quotes that Franklin
(07:23):
had that were very applicable to today's world. Three can
keep a secret of two or dead. There's a lot
of great quotes that would be appropriate for today's personal finance.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
How did all this lead to your latest book, which
is the greatest American Benjamin Franklin, the world's most versatile genius.
Why does Franklin, above all the founding fathers, deserve the
title the greatest American.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Well, I think there is this debate, of course, as
to who are the best and the brightest among our
three hundred five hundreds. Who knows how many Americans have lived.
You know, I'm obviously a little bit prejudice in making
Franklin the greatest American. But the subtitle is really important,
the world's most versatile genius. And I came up with
(08:13):
twenty two careers that Franklin had. Twenty two an inventor,
a scientist, a printer, a publisher, a businessman, a diplomat,
a humorist. He was the first postmaster general. He was
America's first scientific American. There's so many areas if you
compare that to Thomas Jefferson or George Washington, they were
(08:37):
limited in their careers. But Franklin was a versatile genius
in so many ways. So he obviously was a jack
of all trades and a master of most. And you
can't say that about any other American. I mean, if
you go to Thomas Edison, if you go to Elon Musk,
there's all these famous Americans or naturalized Americans. Do they
(09:01):
really have that versatility. Here's the other issue about Franklin,
which I find very appealing and one of the reasons
I decided to write this book. He's the kind of
person that you could sit down with and have a
beer with, and he would probably be pretty honest in
saying everything that you wanted to hear. He would be transparent,
(09:22):
and I don't think you could say that about George Washington.
He would not consider it appropriate for you to ask
why he didn't have any children, or Thomas Jefferson, what
was his relationship with Sally Hemmings the slave girl, Or
in case of John Adams, all you would get is
a lot of arguments, a little too feisty in a
(09:42):
debating type of format. So Franklin to me, seemed very approachable.
He would be comfortable sitting down and talking to a
working man, the plumber. He could talk to the plumber,
and he could also talk to the King of England.
That's pretty unique as far as Americans their achievements.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
He had a very practical streak to his science when
inventing the lightning rod, the bifocal lens, the Franklin stove.
I mean, in many ways he used science to improve
the lives of people.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Newt. I think that's a very important point. He believed
that science should above all be useful and not just
be high theory. And the same thing in economics and
so many other areas where academics are constantly debating how
many angels are on the pin A lot of their
work is not valuable. And in fact, if you look
(10:37):
at many of the Nobel prizes that are given out
in science, a lot of them are high theory. Nobody
knows what they're all about. Same thing in economics. Many
cases you don't see the practical side. And in fact,
at the end of his life he said, the years
roll along, and then at the end, I want to
(10:59):
be known as being useful rather than I died rich.
So there's a lot to be said for that. I
would also apply that to religion. As you know, he
was a deist for most of his life. He was
a skeptic about religion. He was not a church goer.
John Adams and Abigail Adams thought he was a heretic,
(11:19):
but he was very interested in religion. But he said
the key to a good religion is that it's useful
and has practical charitable work. And helping other people rather
than just sitting in a chapel and listening to a
long sermon by Jonathan Edwards or somebody like that.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
There's a range to Franklin. That's I think Franklin almost unimaginable.
Very successful businessman, very successful writer, very successful politician, very
successful inventor. Every time you turned around there was something
he was doing, and he seemed to do all of
it well. Why do you think he was so universally competent?
Speaker 2 (12:19):
So he was born in a family in Boston. There
were thirteen brothers and sisters from two families. Josiah Franklin
and married another. He had ten children from one wife,
seven from another. He's like seventeen children and he was
the tenth child. When it comes to geniuses, a lot
(12:40):
of times they come from families that you don't expect brilliants.
This is God's little secret, isn't it about how people
are born and you have no expectation that they were
going to do well. But he was self learning right
from the very beginning. He loved read at night. When
he was a child, he would pull out the candlelight
(13:02):
and he would read at night. He was very versatile
in his reading. He was an apprentice for his older
brother James, so he got into the printing business and
the publishing business right from the get go. And you know,
if you're writing a newspaper, you're covering every subject imaginable.
There are so many different parts of a newspaper. And
(13:23):
I think his interest in all of God's creations caught
his imagination. And he traveled a lot. This is another
important point. He ran away at age seventeen, ended up
in Pennsylvania, dirt poor, had no money, but he had
a printer's expertise, and so he immediately started working for
(13:46):
some printers in Philadelphia. As a printer, you also get
involved in local politics right away. And he ended up
going to England as a very young man, like at
age twenty or maybe even nineteen. He's spent a couple
of years in London. It was there that he had
to deal with the hard to govern passions. And you know,
(14:07):
he's alone, He's a young adult, alone in the world,
and had to learn things very quickly. He was no
doubt a genius from the very beginning. By the way,
my book is not a typical biography. It's not like
Walter Isaacson's book on Ben Franklin, which I highly recommend,
or HW Brands. There's been dozens of biographies written on Franklin,
(14:30):
but my book, The Greatest American has eighty short chapters,
and each one addresses one or two particular topics that
Franklin would be interested in. It's really a book to
talk about the issues of today. How can you apply
Franklin's life in his views on today's hot issues, whether
(14:51):
it's taxes, inflation, the trade war, war and rumors of wars,
or women sex. And I should tell you in terms
of background, this book germinated from a series of columns
that I wrote for Newsmas. They have a newsletter called
the Franklin Prosperity Report. So for six or seven years
(15:13):
I wrote these short columns that became chapters in my book,
and they accepted every chapter or every column I wrote,
except for one. And what topic do you think they rejected? Oh,
I'm fascinating to what the hard to govern passions of
Ben Franklin. It was the sex column. So that's chapter
(15:36):
seventy seven of my book that is now included in there.
And basically, you know Newsmas they have a conservative audience.
I don't know. I thought I handled the topic pretty well,
but you know, he did have an illegitimate child, William,
who played a major role in his life, but he
only had one illegitimate child. One of the rumors is
(15:57):
that Franklin couldn't control his sexual habits and he had
numerous children out of wedlock, and that's not true. He
actually just had one, and he settled down and married
his wife, Deborah, and they were devoted to each other.
They were very different personalities and they eventually became somewhat
estrange when Franklin left to be the London Colonial Agent,
(16:20):
and then his wife died and he became ambassadors. So
there are lots of stories that I have in my
book and they also come out in the completed autobiography
about Franklin's love of women. He was definitely a ladies man.
His critics call him a womanizer and a lecture. There
is controversy in Ben Franklin's life, and he did have
a lot of enemies despite all of his diplomatic successes.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
A couple side notes. I read that Franklin took air BEVs.
What did that mean?
Speaker 2 (16:51):
He was famous and actually talked about it, wrote letters
about it, maybe even publicly commented about that you needed
to walk around in the nude and open up the
windows and breathe in the really fresh air. And he
had a dispute one time with John Adams in seventeen
(17:12):
seventy six after the declaration, they were both staying together.
They were planning to meet one of the generals to
see if they could resolve the war. So they were
sleeping in the same room and actually the same bed.
That was very typical back then that you shared a
bed together. And Franklin opens up the windows and says,
we got to let this fresh air in all night long,
(17:34):
and Adams is saying, I'm going to freeze to death.
Close the window. They had this big argument. But yeah,
he was famous for parading around naked and opening up
the windows and breathing and so forth. So he was
the first American nudist.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
He was eccentric. There's a story that while he was
active in Pennsylvania state politics, he was also in a
situation where he had some opponents who were trying to
pressure him. He invited him to dinner, and as the
story is told, he basically served pieces of wood, served
them as though they were a porridge ate his bowl complete.
(18:12):
The other guys couldn't eat anything. Hardly elia done. He said, gentlemen,
if I'm able to do that, why would you think
you can pressure me?
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Now.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
I don't know if that story is too or now,
but I've always thought it was a fascinating sense of
how tough and how direct Franklin was capable of being.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
I have to say. I mean, I've studied Franklin all
my life and I've never heard that story, but it
sounds very Franklin esque. He was actually very much a
compromiser in his politics, and this is why ken Burns says,
and I think he's right, he is America's greatest diplomat.
He was definitely wanting to convert and persuade, if you will,
(18:51):
those who disagreed with him on various issues. And so
that's the Franklin that I have been studying. For example,
he had this enemy and the legislature. They did not
get along at all. And finally Franklin decided to go
and he said, listen, I see in your library you
have a certain book. I'd like to borrow that book.
Would you mind loaning it to me? And as a result,
(19:14):
they became fast friends, and they were able to work
together in the legislature. He was very successful at doing this,
and he was very much involved with the Constitutional Convention,
for example, and the Constitutional Congress in the Declaration of
Independence in favor of Declaration, in favor of the Constitution.
(19:34):
You know, he's one of the few founders who signed
to both documents. He was very much active in making
improvements and changes behind the scenes. I mean Franklin. He
wasn't the author of the Declaration of Independence, that was
Thomas Jefferson, but he was asked to review the document.
He made only one significant change in the Declaration of Independence.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
You make the point that he he takes out sacred
and undeniable, which I guess was Jefferson's language, and replaces
it with self evident. What was Franklin's reasoning.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Yeah, so that one word change is really significant. So
Jefferson did say, we hold these truths to be sacred
and undeniable, and Franklin in his left hand, you can
see him scratching the words sacred and undeniable out, which
is a very religious perspective, and replacing it with self evident.
(20:30):
Because he was a rational scientist. It was his science
coming out his secularism if you will, and you know
he was a deist. He was not an atheist, although
many of his friends accused him of being a heretic
when it came to religion because he was not a
church goer. So that is the one change that he
made that we all say self evident that all men
(20:51):
are created equal, endow with their creator with certain inalienable
rights life, liberty, in the pursuit of happiness. I think
Franklin would have preferred the pursuit of wealth, but happiness
was definitely something he would be interested in.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
As I understand happiness in the Scottish Enlightenment meant wisdom
and virtue.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Yes, I think that's actually a better way of describing it,
and I think we've moved away from that unfortunately. And
Franklin was always an optimist in that respect in terms
of happiness and stuff. He was not bothered, particularly by
getting too old and having all the ailments and the
gout and the kidney stones, and he said, basically, life
(21:37):
has been good to me. He's had a positive attitude there.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
He was the oldest memory of the Constitutional Convention.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Correct. He died when he was eighty four. He was
in his early eighties, and of course he had to
be carried in because of the gout and kidney stone
problems that he had. He really thought he was going
to die in France, but he was able to make
it home and he did help out. He invited people
to his home for dinners. He played in the background
(22:25):
with the constitutional convention. He encouraged prayer at a time
when they were at loggerheads as to what to do
between the House and the Senate and representation. He was
very helpful in those kinds of compromises.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Didn't he actually suggest when they were at loggerheads they
take one day off for a day of prayer and fasting,
just to sort of break the tension and break the
ego centrism.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Yes, he did, And while he was giving that talk,
that's where he reveals. One of the things we learned
in completely reading Franklin's autobiography is that Franklin changed his
mind about religion. Not that he became a regular churchgoer,
but he used to be a deist. He used to
believe that God just created a clock and then just
(23:15):
let it run. But he said, have we not learned
that God intervened many times so that we would win
this war of independence. The longer I live, the more
I know that God governs in the affairs of men.
So he became an active theist at that point as
a result of these miracles that he saw that George
(23:35):
Washington and others enjoyed against the most powerful military might
in the world. So they rejected it though, because they
didn't have any money and they couldn't hire a minister,
they decided against prayer.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Washington had a very similar sense and said that it
was impossible to imagine that we would have won without
the intervention of God.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Yeah, so there was definitely a feeling among the Founding
Fathers that God was on their side and they were
doing God's well. So I think that impressed even people
like Ben Franklin who are skeptical about religion. At the
end of his life, he said, you know, I've reached
the time of ages. It'd be easier for me to
just wait until I get over the other side to
(24:20):
see whether Jesus is the savior of the world.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
In the middle of the positive part, for some reason,
he and John Adams really didn't get along. What was
the base of that?
Speaker 2 (24:30):
So this happened. They were getting along fairly well. When
the Continent of Congress in seventeen seventy six had the
Declaration of Independence, Franklin recognized that John Adams was a
cantankerous and debating type of person. The real conflict occurred
when Franklin and Adams were together as ambassadors commissioners if
(24:55):
you will, in Paris. So Franklin went over there first
in late seventeen seventy six. John Adams came a year
or two later and was just a polled by Franklin's behavior.
He was disorganized, the papers were everywhere, there were spies everywhere.
Franklin didn't really care that much about the spies, and
(25:17):
so forth. He was beloved by the French. Both men
and women love Franklin. And there's this one particular case
where John and Abigail Adams attended a salon that was
run by Madame Elvy SEUs, and Madame elvis SEUs was
putting her arms around Franklin and kissing him, and everybody
was seeing him very in a social way. And John
(25:41):
and Abigail Adams, they were very puritanical in their religious views.
They didn't like the way women fondled over Franklin. And
the other big issue was Franklin had an incredible ability
to raise funds and loans from France and ammunition and uniforms,
(26:02):
and sent several generals over there, including Lafayette. He was
so successful that I think John Adams was very envious
of his success. John Adams learned French better, but hated
the French. He did not like the French culture. Adams
loved it. So there were a lot of factors involved,
and the biggest problem was that John Adams could not
(26:24):
raise a single livre, the French currency, in terms of
loans and grants to fight the war. He ended up
got a Dutch loan, but that was after the war
was over. Basically he raised the money after the Battle
of Yorktown. But if you look at the Battle of Yorktown,
that was the deciding factor in seventeen eighty one when
(26:45):
the war was won. And if you look at that
battle that George Washington won, half the ships were French,
the uniforms were French, half the troops were French. Most
historians agree that without the French participation, it would have
been another ten years fighting for independence. So Franklin has
(27:06):
to be really given all the credit, not John Adams,
but Ben Franklin for working with Virgin the Foreign Minister
and raising all this money. In fact, I have a
chapter on fundraising and I use Ben Franklin as the
best example. He was famous for fundraising. Back in Philadelphia,
he raised money for the hospitals and the matching funds
(27:28):
idea that if you pay ten grand, we will match that.
That came from Ben Franklin in raising money for the hospital.
But in France, one of the fun things that he
did was Congress said you've got to go back to
the French and ask for more money. Franklin said, no, no, no,
we've asked for money and we're going to look like
we're desperate. But finally he wrote this letter to Virgin
(27:51):
the Foreign Minister, saying we need another twenty million livre
to keep this war going. And he wrote it in
the best diplomatic language here back from Virgina at all.
And wrote another letter a week later saying did you
get my letter? And Virgin said, listen, come to Versailles
and we'll discuss it. So he gets in his carriage,
he goes to Versailles. He meets with Virgin and Virgin
(28:14):
has this real dark mood on his face, and he says,
doctor Franklin, don't you realize that we know that you've
run out of money. You don't have any credit anymore.
You can't even pay the interest on these debts. And
not only that, but we're broke too. We have all
kinds of problems. Our budget is broken. We don't have
(28:35):
any money either. So I'm sorry, doctor Franklin. We can't
loan you your twenty million livre. We can't even loan
you a single livra. And then he paused, and then
he said, but because of your love of our country,
and because we love you and the king loves you,
the King of France has decided to give you, as
(28:57):
a personal grant, a gift of six million livre. So
that's what I call fundraising extraordinary.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
It really is amazing. What would you say for young
people today? What is Franklin's greatest legacy?
Speaker 2 (29:17):
So Franklin is a firm believer in as far as
people's personal life and what they decide to do. He
would probably offer advice to how can you channel your
hard to govern passions into a useful life, to think more,
(29:39):
not just of yourself but of others, I think there's
a lot to be said for that. He was really
utilitarian in so many ways. Make your life useful, but
in order to do that, you need an education. He
emphasized over and over the development of wisdom through education,
(30:01):
and to control your emotions. You can't destroy your emotions.
You've got to channel them in the right direction, and
that means getting a job that you really enjoy. Eventually,
he had to do a lot of hard work, the
things he didn't want to do in life. As a
young man, he made mistakes and he recognized in his
(30:22):
autobiography he talks about the errata because it the errata
of his life, and of course having an illegitimate child
was a real problem that he had to overcome, and
he was constantly overcoming his errors. And one of the
things I really liked about him is in the autobiography
he talks about the thirteen virtues that he wanted to emphasize,
(30:45):
and frugality was one of them. Silence was another. He
was not known to be particularly loquacious, and moderation was
virtue as well. And when he finished, he had twelve
of them. Initially, and when he was finished, a friend
of his said, well, I've looked at your twelve virtues,
and I see you've left out one because do you know,
(31:08):
doctor Franklin, You're known as a very arrogant and vain person.
Did you know that? And Franklin said, well, no, tell
me more, and so he took that to heart. So
he added humility as his thirteenth virtue. I don't know
if that answers your question or not, but I do
think he really wanted to focus on being a useful
(31:30):
person and an active person, not one who just sits
back and waits for opportunities to come to you. You
have to go out and actively seek results, just like
you did. You decided to run for office. I mean
you didn't have to do that. You could have remained
a teacher, and a teacher is one of the greatest
(31:52):
callings you can ever have. But you decided on your
own to run for office. And what a difference that made.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Generous of you. I really want to thank you for
joining me. Mark. You're an extraordinarily prolific writer. You've made
a huge impact and taught people a lot. Your new book,
The Greatest American Benjamin Franklin, the world's most versatile Genius
is available now in Amazon and in bookstores everywhere, and
I think you've really brought it to life in this conversation.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Great. Thank you very much. You know it's been a
real pleasure.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Thank you to my guest Mark Skelsen. You can get
a link to buy his new book, The Greatest American
Benjamin Franklin, the World's most Versatile Genius on our show
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three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producers Guardnsei Sloan. Our
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(32:49):
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consigner for my three freeweekly columns at GINGRISHFREI sixty dot
com slash newsletter. I'm Newt Gingrich. This is newtwork
On this episode of Newts World. Benjamin Franklin was the
oldest of the Founding fathers. He was a generation ahead
of George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, and yet
he was the most forward looking of the group and
the most modern of the founders. In his new book,
The Greatest American Benjamin Franklin, the World's Most Versatile Genius,
(00:28):
author of Mark S. Gosson, shows just how much of
an impact Benjamin Franklin had on American politics and daily life.
Here to talk about his new book, I'm really pleased
to welcome my guests, doctor Mark Scauson. He's the editor
of Forecasts and Strategies. He is a nationally known investment expert, economists,
university professor, and author of more than twenty five books.
(00:51):
He's known as america as Economist and has been identified
as one of the twenty most influential living economists. And
as it turns out, he is a direct descendant of
Benjamin Franklin. Mark, welcome, and thank you for joining me
(01:18):
on this world.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Well, it's my pleasure, and as Ben Franklin say, it
pleases my vanity to speak with the former Speaker of
the House.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
I don't know about Vanity, but we've been good friends
for many, many years, and you've had an important impact
on American politics and American economics. But I'm curious. You know,
after so many years of writing books on economics and
financial literacy, in two thousand and six, you and your
wife decided to write a book about Benjamin Franklin. How
did that come about?
Speaker 2 (01:49):
So, actually, what that book is about, it's called the
Completed Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin, so it's actually in his
own words. And what my wife and I did, we
went through the fifty volumes. There's fifty volumes of the
papers of Benjamin Franklin that are being compiled at Yale University,
and they're continuing to still put together these papers. We
(02:12):
thought one of the unfortunate events in ben Franklin's life
was that he started writing his autobiography late in life
and he never finished it. The autobiography that is so
famous that is in all the bookstores actually ends in
seventeen fifty seven, when Franklin's fifty two years of age
(02:34):
and he's just headed off to become a diplomat, a
London agent, and then there's the American Revolution and when
he goes to France and the Constitutional Convention, none of
that is in his autobiography. And my wife and I thought, wow,
you know, Ben Franklin, maybe we can finish his autobiography
(02:57):
by looking at his letters and the paper that he
wrote to see what is autobiographical, and see if we
could put together and complete his autobiography in his own name.
And it took over a year for us to do it,
but we were able to do it on the three
hundredth anniversary of his birth in two thousand and six,
and we published a book with Regnri called The Completed Autobiography.
(03:20):
It's his last thirty years, and it was a wonderful
revelation to hear in his own words what he thought
about the breakup with Britain, the declaration of Independence, and
his influence there, his nine years as ambassador to France,
and his critical role in raising funds and ammunition and
(03:42):
everything with the French which helped complete and win this
war against the mightiest army in the world. And then
at age eighty, he went back to the United States
and he helped formulate a new government. And so there's
all of his personal views about the Constitution and everything.
(04:03):
So that came out in two thousand and six, and
Franklin always said, I wish one of my children or
grandchildren would complete my autobiography because he ran out of
time and he died at seventeen ninety, at the age
of eighty four. And it was really a marvelous experience
for us. I felt after we had finished this that
Ben Franklin was looking down from the heavens, from the
(04:26):
spirit world and had a big smile on his face
to see that finally a descendant of Franklin had completed
his autobiography. So that's kind of a summary of what
that book was all about. It really was a revelation.
I learned a lot of new things and new quotes
from Ben Franklin as a result of that work.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
What makes it doubly interesting, I did not know this
about you, is that you're actually related to Franklin. Talk
about that.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Yeah, that was a long standing tradition on my mother's side,
her name was Helen McCarty, that somehow we were related
to Benjamin Franklin. So my wife and I went to
Philadelphia one weekend and we went to the Philosophical Society
and we looked at some wills and so on to
try to figure out exactly how we were connected. And
(05:13):
there was one missing link, one generation that was missing.
We could trace it back to a great grandson of
Benjamin Franklin, but there was a missing link, and we
finally discovered the grandson of Benjamin Franklin. His name was
Lewis Beach and he was the son of Sally Beach
(05:35):
and her husband. Sally was a daughter of Ben Franklin.
So this is the grandson of Benjamin Franklin. His name
was Lewis Beach Senior, and we found a will, his
last will and testament, he referred to two natural quote
natural children. One was also named Lewis, and that's who
we found out we were related to. So Franklin continued
(05:59):
the tradition, and as you know, Franklin was famous for
having an illegitimate child, and it turned out that that
kind of tradition continued on in a number of generations
and the Franklin family the Beaches were so embarrassed by
it that they did not include the two natural illegitimate
(06:20):
children in the descendants in the genealogy. So we founded
in the will, and that's how we found we were connected.
So I'm a sixth generation direct grandson of Benjamin Franklin.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
That means you have won five hundred and twelfth of
Franklin's blood.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
That's right. I have not inherited much from Franklin. We're
both left handed. We both have written a quote book.
You know, he wrote Poor Richard's Almanac, and I've written
The Maximums of Wall Street. You know, he was kind
of a financial guru in many ways, giving personal advice
to people through is Poor Richard's Almanac, and which was
(07:00):
extremely popular that came out once a year. My Maxims
of Wall Street includes in it, I would say maybe
twenty quotes from Franklin. One of his most famous lines
he said, if fool and his money are soon parted,
and another great quote is nothing but money is sweeter
than honey. There's a number of great quotes that Franklin
(07:23):
had that were very applicable to today's world. Three can
keep a secret of two or dead. There's a lot
of great quotes that would be appropriate for today's personal finance.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
How did all this lead to your latest book, which
is the greatest American Benjamin Franklin, the world's most versatile genius.
Why does Franklin, above all the founding fathers, deserve the
title the greatest American.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Well, I think there is this debate, of course, as
to who are the best and the brightest among our
three hundred five hundreds. Who knows how many Americans have lived.
You know, I'm obviously a little bit prejudice in making
Franklin the greatest American. But the subtitle is really important,
the world's most versatile genius. And I came up with
(08:13):
twenty two careers that Franklin had. Twenty two an inventor,
a scientist, a printer, a publisher, a businessman, a diplomat,
a humorist. He was the first postmaster general. He was
America's first scientific American. There's so many areas if you
compare that to Thomas Jefferson or George Washington, they were
(08:37):
limited in their careers. But Franklin was a versatile genius
in so many ways. So he obviously was a jack
of all trades and a master of most. And you
can't say that about any other American. I mean, if
you go to Thomas Edison, if you go to Elon Musk,
there's all these famous Americans or naturalized Americans. Do they
(09:01):
really have that versatility. Here's the other issue about Franklin,
which I find very appealing and one of the reasons
I decided to write this book. He's the kind of
person that you could sit down with and have a
beer with, and he would probably be pretty honest in
saying everything that you wanted to hear. He would be transparent,
(09:22):
and I don't think you could say that about George Washington.
He would not consider it appropriate for you to ask
why he didn't have any children, or Thomas Jefferson, what
was his relationship with Sally Hemmings the slave girl, Or
in case of John Adams, all you would get is
a lot of arguments, a little too feisty in a
(09:42):
debating type of format. So Franklin to me, seemed very approachable.
He would be comfortable sitting down and talking to a
working man, the plumber. He could talk to the plumber,
and he could also talk to the King of England.
That's pretty unique as far as Americans their achievements.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
He had a very practical streak to his science when
inventing the lightning rod, the bifocal lens, the Franklin stove.
I mean, in many ways he used science to improve
the lives of people.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Newt. I think that's a very important point. He believed
that science should above all be useful and not just
be high theory. And the same thing in economics and
so many other areas where academics are constantly debating how
many angels are on the pin A lot of their
work is not valuable. And in fact, if you look
(10:37):
at many of the Nobel prizes that are given out
in science, a lot of them are high theory. Nobody
knows what they're all about. Same thing in economics. Many
cases you don't see the practical side. And in fact,
at the end of his life he said, the years
roll along, and then at the end, I want to
(10:59):
be known as being useful rather than I died rich.
So there's a lot to be said for that. I
would also apply that to religion. As you know, he
was a deist for most of his life. He was
a skeptic about religion. He was not a church goer.
John Adams and Abigail Adams thought he was a heretic,
(11:19):
but he was very interested in religion. But he said
the key to a good religion is that it's useful
and has practical charitable work. And helping other people rather
than just sitting in a chapel and listening to a
long sermon by Jonathan Edwards or somebody like that.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
There's a range to Franklin. That's I think Franklin almost unimaginable.
Very successful businessman, very successful writer, very successful politician, very
successful inventor. Every time you turned around there was something
he was doing, and he seemed to do all of
it well. Why do you think he was so universally competent?
Speaker 2 (12:19):
So he was born in a family in Boston. There
were thirteen brothers and sisters from two families. Josiah Franklin
and married another. He had ten children from one wife,
seven from another. He's like seventeen children and he was
the tenth child. When it comes to geniuses, a lot
(12:40):
of times they come from families that you don't expect brilliants.
This is God's little secret, isn't it about how people
are born and you have no expectation that they were
going to do well. But he was self learning right
from the very beginning. He loved read at night. When
he was a child, he would pull out the candlelight
(13:02):
and he would read at night. He was very versatile
in his reading. He was an apprentice for his older
brother James, so he got into the printing business and
the publishing business right from the get go. And you know,
if you're writing a newspaper, you're covering every subject imaginable.
There are so many different parts of a newspaper. And
(13:23):
I think his interest in all of God's creations caught
his imagination. And he traveled a lot. This is another
important point. He ran away at age seventeen, ended up
in Pennsylvania, dirt poor, had no money, but he had
a printer's expertise, and so he immediately started working for
(13:46):
some printers in Philadelphia. As a printer, you also get
involved in local politics right away. And he ended up
going to England as a very young man, like at
age twenty or maybe even nineteen. He's spent a couple
of years in London. It was there that he had
to deal with the hard to govern passions. And you know,
(14:07):
he's alone, He's a young adult, alone in the world,
and had to learn things very quickly. He was no
doubt a genius from the very beginning. By the way,
my book is not a typical biography. It's not like
Walter Isaacson's book on Ben Franklin, which I highly recommend,
or HW Brands. There's been dozens of biographies written on Franklin,
(14:30):
but my book, The Greatest American has eighty short chapters,
and each one addresses one or two particular topics that
Franklin would be interested in. It's really a book to
talk about the issues of today. How can you apply
Franklin's life in his views on today's hot issues, whether
(14:51):
it's taxes, inflation, the trade war, war and rumors of wars,
or women sex. And I should tell you in terms
of background, this book germinated from a series of columns
that I wrote for Newsmas. They have a newsletter called
the Franklin Prosperity Report. So for six or seven years
(15:13):
I wrote these short columns that became chapters in my book,
and they accepted every chapter or every column I wrote,
except for one. And what topic do you think they rejected? Oh,
I'm fascinating to what the hard to govern passions of
Ben Franklin. It was the sex column. So that's chapter
(15:36):
seventy seven of my book that is now included in there.
And basically, you know Newsmas they have a conservative audience.
I don't know. I thought I handled the topic pretty well,
but you know, he did have an illegitimate child, William,
who played a major role in his life, but he
only had one illegitimate child. One of the rumors is
(15:57):
that Franklin couldn't control his sexual habits and he had
numerous children out of wedlock, and that's not true. He
actually just had one, and he settled down and married
his wife, Deborah, and they were devoted to each other.
They were very different personalities and they eventually became somewhat
estrange when Franklin left to be the London Colonial Agent,
(16:20):
and then his wife died and he became ambassadors. So
there are lots of stories that I have in my
book and they also come out in the completed autobiography
about Franklin's love of women. He was definitely a ladies man.
His critics call him a womanizer and a lecture. There
is controversy in Ben Franklin's life, and he did have
a lot of enemies despite all of his diplomatic successes.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
A couple side notes. I read that Franklin took air BEVs.
What did that mean?
Speaker 2 (16:51):
He was famous and actually talked about it, wrote letters
about it, maybe even publicly commented about that you needed
to walk around in the nude and open up the
windows and breathe in the really fresh air. And he
had a dispute one time with John Adams in seventeen
(17:12):
seventy six after the declaration, they were both staying together.
They were planning to meet one of the generals to
see if they could resolve the war. So they were
sleeping in the same room and actually the same bed.
That was very typical back then that you shared a
bed together. And Franklin opens up the windows and says,
we got to let this fresh air in all night long,
(17:34):
and Adams is saying, I'm going to freeze to death.
Close the window. They had this big argument. But yeah,
he was famous for parading around naked and opening up
the windows and breathing and so forth. So he was
the first American nudist.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
He was eccentric. There's a story that while he was
active in Pennsylvania state politics, he was also in a
situation where he had some opponents who were trying to
pressure him. He invited him to dinner, and as the
story is told, he basically served pieces of wood, served
them as though they were a porridge ate his bowl complete.
(18:12):
The other guys couldn't eat anything. Hardly elia done. He said, gentlemen,
if I'm able to do that, why would you think
you can pressure me?
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Now.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
I don't know if that story is too or now,
but I've always thought it was a fascinating sense of
how tough and how direct Franklin was capable of being.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
I have to say. I mean, I've studied Franklin all
my life and I've never heard that story, but it
sounds very Franklin esque. He was actually very much a
compromiser in his politics, and this is why ken Burns says,
and I think he's right, he is America's greatest diplomat.
He was definitely wanting to convert and persuade, if you will,
(18:51):
those who disagreed with him on various issues. And so
that's the Franklin that I have been studying. For example,
he had this enemy and the legislature. They did not
get along at all. And finally Franklin decided to go
and he said, listen, I see in your library you
have a certain book. I'd like to borrow that book.
Would you mind loaning it to me? And as a result,
(19:14):
they became fast friends, and they were able to work
together in the legislature. He was very successful at doing this,
and he was very much involved with the Constitutional Convention,
for example, and the Constitutional Congress in the Declaration of
Independence in favor of Declaration, in favor of the Constitution.
(19:34):
You know, he's one of the few founders who signed
to both documents. He was very much active in making
improvements and changes behind the scenes. I mean Franklin. He
wasn't the author of the Declaration of Independence, that was
Thomas Jefferson, but he was asked to review the document.
He made only one significant change in the Declaration of Independence.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
You make the point that he he takes out sacred
and undeniable, which I guess was Jefferson's language, and replaces
it with self evident. What was Franklin's reasoning.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Yeah, so that one word change is really significant. So
Jefferson did say, we hold these truths to be sacred
and undeniable, and Franklin in his left hand, you can
see him scratching the words sacred and undeniable out, which
is a very religious perspective, and replacing it with self evident.
(20:30):
Because he was a rational scientist. It was his science
coming out his secularism if you will, and you know
he was a deist. He was not an atheist, although
many of his friends accused him of being a heretic
when it came to religion because he was not a
church goer. So that is the one change that he
made that we all say self evident that all men
(20:51):
are created equal, endow with their creator with certain inalienable
rights life, liberty, in the pursuit of happiness. I think
Franklin would have preferred the pursuit of wealth, but happiness
was definitely something he would be interested in.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
As I understand happiness in the Scottish Enlightenment meant wisdom
and virtue.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Yes, I think that's actually a better way of describing it,
and I think we've moved away from that unfortunately. And
Franklin was always an optimist in that respect in terms
of happiness and stuff. He was not bothered, particularly by
getting too old and having all the ailments and the
gout and the kidney stones, and he said, basically, life
(21:37):
has been good to me. He's had a positive attitude there.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
He was the oldest memory of the Constitutional Convention.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Correct. He died when he was eighty four. He was
in his early eighties, and of course he had to
be carried in because of the gout and kidney stone
problems that he had. He really thought he was going
to die in France, but he was able to make
it home and he did help out. He invited people
to his home for dinners. He played in the background
(22:25):
with the constitutional convention. He encouraged prayer at a time
when they were at loggerheads as to what to do
between the House and the Senate and representation. He was
very helpful in those kinds of compromises.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Didn't he actually suggest when they were at loggerheads they
take one day off for a day of prayer and fasting,
just to sort of break the tension and break the
ego centrism.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Yes, he did, And while he was giving that talk,
that's where he reveals. One of the things we learned
in completely reading Franklin's autobiography is that Franklin changed his
mind about religion. Not that he became a regular churchgoer,
but he used to be a deist. He used to
believe that God just created a clock and then just
(23:15):
let it run. But he said, have we not learned
that God intervened many times so that we would win
this war of independence. The longer I live, the more
I know that God governs in the affairs of men.
So he became an active theist at that point as
a result of these miracles that he saw that George
(23:35):
Washington and others enjoyed against the most powerful military might
in the world. So they rejected it though, because they
didn't have any money and they couldn't hire a minister,
they decided against prayer.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Washington had a very similar sense and said that it
was impossible to imagine that we would have won without
the intervention of God.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Yeah, so there was definitely a feeling among the Founding
Fathers that God was on their side and they were
doing God's well. So I think that impressed even people
like Ben Franklin who are skeptical about religion. At the
end of his life, he said, you know, I've reached
the time of ages. It'd be easier for me to
just wait until I get over the other side to
(24:20):
see whether Jesus is the savior of the world.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
In the middle of the positive part, for some reason,
he and John Adams really didn't get along. What was
the base of that?
Speaker 2 (24:30):
So this happened. They were getting along fairly well. When
the Continent of Congress in seventeen seventy six had the
Declaration of Independence, Franklin recognized that John Adams was a
cantankerous and debating type of person. The real conflict occurred
when Franklin and Adams were together as ambassadors commissioners if
(24:55):
you will, in Paris. So Franklin went over there first
in late seventeen seventy six. John Adams came a year
or two later and was just a polled by Franklin's behavior.
He was disorganized, the papers were everywhere, there were spies everywhere.
Franklin didn't really care that much about the spies, and
(25:17):
so forth. He was beloved by the French. Both men
and women love Franklin. And there's this one particular case
where John and Abigail Adams attended a salon that was
run by Madame Elvy SEUs, and Madame elvis SEUs was
putting her arms around Franklin and kissing him, and everybody
was seeing him very in a social way. And John
(25:41):
and Abigail Adams, they were very puritanical in their religious views.
They didn't like the way women fondled over Franklin. And
the other big issue was Franklin had an incredible ability
to raise funds and loans from France and ammunition and uniforms,
(26:02):
and sent several generals over there, including Lafayette. He was
so successful that I think John Adams was very envious
of his success. John Adams learned French better, but hated
the French. He did not like the French culture. Adams
loved it. So there were a lot of factors involved,
and the biggest problem was that John Adams could not
(26:24):
raise a single livre, the French currency, in terms of
loans and grants to fight the war. He ended up
got a Dutch loan, but that was after the war
was over. Basically he raised the money after the Battle
of Yorktown. But if you look at the Battle of Yorktown,
that was the deciding factor in seventeen eighty one when
(26:45):
the war was won. And if you look at that
battle that George Washington won, half the ships were French,
the uniforms were French, half the troops were French. Most
historians agree that without the French participation, it would have
been another ten years fighting for independence. So Franklin has
(27:06):
to be really given all the credit, not John Adams,
but Ben Franklin for working with Virgin the Foreign Minister
and raising all this money. In fact, I have a
chapter on fundraising and I use Ben Franklin as the
best example. He was famous for fundraising. Back in Philadelphia,
he raised money for the hospitals and the matching funds
(27:28):
idea that if you pay ten grand, we will match that.
That came from Ben Franklin in raising money for the hospital.
But in France, one of the fun things that he
did was Congress said you've got to go back to
the French and ask for more money. Franklin said, no, no, no,
we've asked for money and we're going to look like
we're desperate. But finally he wrote this letter to Virgin
(27:51):
the Foreign Minister, saying we need another twenty million livre
to keep this war going. And he wrote it in
the best diplomatic language here back from Virgina at all.
And wrote another letter a week later saying did you
get my letter? And Virgin said, listen, come to Versailles
and we'll discuss it. So he gets in his carriage,
he goes to Versailles. He meets with Virgin and Virgin
(28:14):
has this real dark mood on his face, and he says,
doctor Franklin, don't you realize that we know that you've
run out of money. You don't have any credit anymore.
You can't even pay the interest on these debts. And
not only that, but we're broke too. We have all
kinds of problems. Our budget is broken. We don't have
(28:35):
any money either. So I'm sorry, doctor Franklin. We can't
loan you your twenty million livre. We can't even loan
you a single livra. And then he paused, and then
he said, but because of your love of our country,
and because we love you and the king loves you,
the King of France has decided to give you, as
(28:57):
a personal grant, a gift of six million livre. So
that's what I call fundraising extraordinary.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
It really is amazing. What would you say for young
people today? What is Franklin's greatest legacy?
Speaker 2 (29:17):
So Franklin is a firm believer in as far as
people's personal life and what they decide to do. He
would probably offer advice to how can you channel your
hard to govern passions into a useful life, to think more,
(29:39):
not just of yourself but of others, I think there's
a lot to be said for that. He was really
utilitarian in so many ways. Make your life useful, but
in order to do that, you need an education. He
emphasized over and over the development of wisdom through education,
(30:01):
and to control your emotions. You can't destroy your emotions.
You've got to channel them in the right direction, and
that means getting a job that you really enjoy. Eventually,
he had to do a lot of hard work, the
things he didn't want to do in life. As a
young man, he made mistakes and he recognized in his
(30:22):
autobiography he talks about the errata because it the errata
of his life, and of course having an illegitimate child
was a real problem that he had to overcome, and
he was constantly overcoming his errors. And one of the
things I really liked about him is in the autobiography
he talks about the thirteen virtues that he wanted to emphasize,
(30:45):
and frugality was one of them. Silence was another. He
was not known to be particularly loquacious, and moderation was
virtue as well. And when he finished, he had twelve
of them. Initially, and when he was finished, a friend
of his said, well, I've looked at your twelve virtues,
and I see you've left out one because do you know,
(31:08):
doctor Franklin, You're known as a very arrogant and vain person.
Did you know that? And Franklin said, well, no, tell
me more, and so he took that to heart. So
he added humility as his thirteenth virtue. I don't know
if that answers your question or not, but I do
think he really wanted to focus on being a useful
(31:30):
person and an active person, not one who just sits
back and waits for opportunities to come to you. You
have to go out and actively seek results, just like
you did. You decided to run for office. I mean
you didn't have to do that. You could have remained
a teacher, and a teacher is one of the greatest
(31:52):
callings you can ever have. But you decided on your
own to run for office. And what a difference that made.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Generous of you. I really want to thank you for
joining me. Mark. You're an extraordinarily prolific writer. You've made
a huge impact and taught people a lot. Your new book,
The Greatest American Benjamin Franklin, the world's most versatile Genius
is available now in Amazon and in bookstores everywhere, and
I think you've really brought it to life in this conversation.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Great. Thank you very much. You know it's been a
real pleasure.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Thank you to my guest Mark Skelsen. You can get
a link to buy his new book, The Greatest American
Benjamin Franklin, the World's most Versatile Genius on our show
page at newtsworld dot com. Newsworld is produced by Gingish
three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producers Guardnsei Sloan. Our
researcher is Rachel Peterson. The all work for the show
(32:49):
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