On July 1, 1731, Benjamin Franklin and fifty members of his Junto, a discussion club he had founded in Philadelphia, signed the Articles of Agreement establishing the Library Company of Philadelphia.

The Junto met to debate intellectual and political questions, but the conversations kept stalling. The books needed to settle an argument or dig deeper into a subject were scattered across fifty separate households, and no member could afford on his own the volumes the group actually needed.

Fifty men signed the agreement anyway. Robert Grace held share number one, Thomas Hopkinson held share two, Franklin held share three, and forty-seven more names followed, each committing 40 shillings upfront and 10 shillings every year after. Joseph Breintnall took on the job of secretary. James Logan, known locally as the best judge of books in the colony, helped compile the list of titles the new library actually needed.

On March 31, 1732, that list crossed the ocean to London, entrusted to the agent Peter Collinson. The shipment arrived that autumn. Among the volumes the fifty shareholders received for their money: John Locke's Collection of Several Pieces, the Port-Royal Logic, Plutarch's Morals, and a merchant's guide to commerce. Louis Timothee was hired as the first librarian to keep track of it all, and Philip Syng Jr., another shareholder, engraved the company's official seal, two open books beneath a Latin motto that translated to pouring forth benefits for the common good.

By 1741, the company's first printed catalog listed 375 titles, more than any single one of the founders had owned when the conversations first stalled. The Library Company went on to become the largest public library in America, a position it held until the late nineteenth century, and the subscription model the Junto had built out of necessity became the template other cities copied.

Nearly three hundred years after Franklin and his fifty partners signed their names to a shared debt, the library they founded still operates, holding more than 500,000 volumes, outlasting every man who first paid his shillings for it.

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