I'm Brooke Gladstone.

With part three of our series,

Busted America's Poverty Myths,

this one is about the biggest myth of all.

Must I forever be a beggar?

Whose golden dreams will not come true.

Or will I go from rags to riches?

My fate is up to you.

The upward mobility myth, the one that paints America as a nation where everyone has an equal chance to surmount any obstacle and advance from rags to riches.

It's an idea sewn on our shores by a founding father, himself born into poverty.

Benjamin Franklin.

He's the youngest of ten sons, and his sister Jane is the youngest of seven daughters.

Benny and Jenny, they're called when they're little. Their father's a candle maker and a soap boiler.

Historian Jill Lepore, author of Book of Ages, The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin, writes that Jenny and Benny are close.

He teaches her to read. They spend their childhood making soap and dipping candles.

Benjamin is an apprentice to his brother, who's a printer.

And when he's 16 or 17, he runs away to Philadelphia, and he eventually opens up his own printing shop.

And he does so well that Franklin actually manufactures most of the paper in the colonies in the 18th century.

He opens up and owns a whole lot of paper mills.

Paper in the 18th century is made from rags.

And so Franklin, in his newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette, prints these little notices, bring in your rags, cash for rags.

Ben sends them to his mill to be pulped.

...