The Art of Making Money Plenty Industrial progress, combined with vast expanses of fertile, mineral-rich land, conspired to create the universally accepted idea that the United States was the unrivalled land of opportunity. Yet economic development brought with it alarming instability. Enthusiastic striving for upward mobility was attended by deep anxiety, as Americans saw greed and materialism encroach on traditional religious values.
Moral exemplars preach the work ethic, and caricatures ridicule the stock market speculator.
The firm also adapted its comic prints to the requirements of advertisers, leaving space below an amusing or eye-catching image for a product name. In the decades following his death in 1790, Benjamin Franklin was remembered as the archetypal American self-made man, who transformed his great talents into personal fame and fortune. This rebus, attributed to Franklin, teaches the virtues of industry and thrift. I will acquaint all with the true secret of money. Catching the certain way to fill empty purses and how to keep them always full.