Ben Franklin and Paper Money

We recently recovered my father's 1927 copy of Benjamin Franklin's autobiography. The introduction by Oral Sumner Coad notes that "the full text has been reprinted scores of times in the United States, and has been translated into all the languages of Europe. The demand for it at the public libraries is constant. It is a classic that is still actually read, and will continue to be as long as honesty and humor and wisdom and tolerant humanity are admired." We concur.
In the form of an essay to his son, the autobiography ends before Franklin becomes a man of history, leaving his remarkable public career to others to enshrine as second only to Washington's. That omission detracts not from the book. Franklin's view of himself and how he schooled himself for his upcoming historical roles is all the more focused by that omission.
Among his frank recall, we find his early thoughts on paper money issues, stimulated by an apparent shortage of circulating purchasing medium in 1730s Philadelphia, following an issue in 1723. Noting that the first issue had fostered trade, employment, and inhabitants, he wrote and printed an anonymous pamphlet, "The Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency," which was well received by "the common people in general," but disliked by "rich men."
The popular issue was made, and Franklin's friends saw to it that he got the employment of printing the money, at a time when he was a debtor himself, having borrowed to start his own printing business. He candidly notes that the job was "very profitable ... and a great help to me. This was another advantage gain'd by me being able to write."
The issue was so successful that several further issues grew to many times the earlier issue. Franklin, however, noted that the utility of the issues was "never afterwards to be much disputed ... I now think there are limits beyond which the quantity may be hurtful."
What might have caused him to grow wary of paper money? At the time of his supportive "Nature and Necessity" he was a hard-working debtor, and easy money meant more business coming his way. Moreover, to the extent that he could repay his debt with paper money rather than specie, his obligation to "rich men" was reduced accordingly.
However, after he became a rich man himself, after he advanced from a borrower and renter to a lender and man of property, after he came to prefer repayment with the superior buying power of specie, he notes that issues of paper currency "may be hurtful." This from the man we have equated with thrift as a personal virtue. Personal growth is good for posterity.
We are glad to have recovered this autobiography, which contains our father's claiming signature, and consider it one book of many that launched him on his life-long career as an iconoclastic economist pioneering inquiry into the role of commercial banking and short-term purchasing media as a major component of lasting and non-inflationary economic growth.
Should life and time permit, we will attempt further posts on the topic of wealth creation and its popular parasites, who, like Franklin, may change their minds, after all.