News / Brèves History / Histoire Back to previous selection / Retour à la sélection précédente How Ben Franklin Organized Our Economic Independence by Anton Chaitkin 1 November 2011 Click for PDF : ’An Enquiry into the Principles on which a Commercial system There are in every country certain important crises when exertion or neglect must produce consequences of the utmost moment. The [present] period . . . [is] clearly of this description. Our money absorbed by a wanton consumption of imported luxuries, a fluctuating paper medium substituting in its stead, foreign commerce extremely circumscribed and a federal government ineffective [and] disjointed, tell us. . .plainly that further negligence may ruin us forever. An extraordinary meeting was held at Benjamin Franklin’s home on Friday, May 11, 1787, to hear an outline for the economic policy and national mission that the United States Constitution should be designed to carry out.