Ben Franklin is well known for his respect for the industrious. His Poor Richard alter ego is responsible for familiar advice like "No pain, no gain", "Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise", and even "God helps those who help themselves" (No, it's not in the Bible). I just finished his autobiography and realized that tomorrow is the 4th of July, so I thought another of his observations and the actions it prompted might make a good subject for discussion.
When Ben lived in Philadelphia as a youngish man who had already started a flourishing printing business, it was still a very young city, just getting started on what was to become a notable future, the same as the man himself. One might say they grew up together. One might even say they helped one another along and one way they did so began pretty humbly - by Ben observing a woman sweeping the street in front of her house.
In those days, none of Philly's streets were paved and it takes little imagination to understand what happened when it rained. Carriages and horses made the dirt streets a quagmire through which not only they, but men and women, had to trudge, all dragging through clinging mud, towing it with them wherever they went.
One day, Ben observed a woman sweeping away the loose dirt in front of her house and asked why she did that. When she told him that it kept the mud down there when it rained, he, because he was Ben Franklin, had an idea. What if they paved the streets with bricks? It sounded like a fine idea and as things turned out, Ben got it done. But the way he got it done was what impressed me. He found the bricks, and found the people to do the work, then got the immediate neighbors to pitch in a little bit, just a few pennies each, to finance the work done in front of their house. Just their house, the part from which they would directly benefit.
And something happened.
Actually, two somethings.
First, the street got paved. The mud abated. When it rained, everybody looked at their improved circumstances and took pleasure in the results. A good thing for everyone.
Also, however, something else happened. Now, Ben didn't write about this, but I got to thinking. When Philadelphians looked at their lovely paved streets, they had to be thinking, "Look what we did." Emphasis on the WE. Everyone who benefited from the project, from the residents to the bricklayers, realized not only a practical benefit from it, but could see their own participation in it. Every day, when they swept the newly laid bricks outside of their own homes.
And that happened, I believe, because the project was accomplished not through taxes by some amorphous THEY but by people they talked to. People who had a recognizable face and with whom they'd had conversation. Neighbors. Friends. Strangers who helped each other. They'd built something. Together. And they enjoyed the fruits of their labors together.
And they celebrated every day by sweeping.
Don't think people sweep their sidewalks anymore? You're wrong. The first time I went to Italy, on my first morning in Rome, we were staying in an Airbnb on a quiet street and I woke to singing. When I opened the shutters, I looked down. There, in front of the shop below our apartment, the shopkeeper was sweeping the sidewalk outside of his store, singing some pleasant little ditty I couldn't understand, and happy. Happy to be sweeping. Happy to have a sidewalk to sweep. Happy.
And he was beautiful. Like Ben. Like working together for the common good with people we can embrace when the work is done. Projects that have human faces.
I smile to think what might still be possible. Happy Fourth.
First Photo credit: Wisconsin Historical Society
Second Photo credit: Alamy
