| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Benjamin Franklin's Printing Network: Disseminating Virtue in Early America. By Ralph Frasca. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006. xii, 295 pp. $44.95, ISBN 0-8262-1614-5.)
The fact that Benjamin Franklin sponsored other printers in various colonies in order to enhance his profits and spread his influence is well known. Ralph Frasca has now undertaken the first full-fledged monograph on Franklin's printing network. Building on some of his own previously published work and using network theory as his point of departure (though, happily, he does not allow the pontifications of sociology to spoil the clarity of his prose), Frasca traces the founding and operation of a series of partnerships in Charlestown, New York, Antigua, Lancaster, New Haven, and Franklin's own Philadelphia.	1
Typically, Franklin selected one of his trusted journeymen to leave his employ in Philadelphia and set up printing in a strategically selected location. The former journeyman would become a business partner of Franklin's, operating under scrupulous articles of agreement whereby Franklin supplied the shop and materials, the partner agreed to work only under Franklin's terms and only with his equipment for a fixed term, and Franklin took a share of the profits. By 1755, "eight of the fifteen newspapers in the North American and West Indian colonies were published by printers who were partners with Franklin or had entered the trade through his auspices" (p. 196).	. . .

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