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PREFACE DURING the last decade of Peter Cooper's life, the writer of this biographical sketch enjoyed some degree of intimacy with him, as professional adviser and traveling companion, and also, incidentally, as consulting engineer of the firm of Cooper and Hewitt, and manager of a department in the Cooper Union. This circumstance, together with the preference kindly expressed by Mr. Cooper's family, doubtless influenced the selection of the writer for the honorable task of preparing this book,--a task which was welcome as a labor of love, though the execution of it has been hindered and impaired by the demands of other duties. The real difficulty has been to compress within the prescribed limits a story covering so many years and so many topics, yet not possessing those features of dramatic action or adventure which could be treated briefly, with picturesque effect.

Mr. Cooper's family has kindly furnished abundant material for this work, including, besides his own published utterances, the notes of the stenographer to whom Mr. Cooper, in the last years of his life, dictated his "reminiscences." The use which has been made of these will be evident to the reader. Beyond an occasional revelation of the character of the speaker, or a side-light thrown upon the manners and conditions of our early national life, they have not furnished valuable data; and the study of them suggests an observation which may be heeded with advantage in similar cases hereafter, though it comes too late to be useful in this instance, namely, that the recollections of old people with retentive memories, like Peter Cooper, may be invaluable, if they are intelligently aroused and guided; but if the speakers are left to their own initiative, they are too likely to furnish superfluous accounts of events already described more accurately in authentic contemporaneous records.

It has not been practicable to preserve, in the treatment of the subject, a strictly chronological order. As the titles of the several chapters indicate, the different lines of Mr. Cooper's activity have been considered, to some extent, separately, so that their periods overlap each other.

This sketch of Mr. Cooper's career furnishes the elements of an analysis, which I introduce here, as a guide in the interpretation of what is to follow.

Some further observations concerning the secret of the universal esteem and affection enjoyed by Mr. Cooper will be reserved for the closing chapter.

PETER COOPER

ANCESTRY

OBADIAH COOPER, who, with his two brothers, came from England to the colony of New York about 1662, belonged, as we may infer with confidence, to that sturdy class of republican yeomanry which found the restored reign of the Stuarts intolerable. He settled at Fishkill-on-the-Hudson; and his son Obadiah--whom tradition declares to have been the fourth white man child born in what is now Dutchess County--was the great-grandfather of Peter Cooper. In 1720 an Obadiah of the next generation followed, and of his son John, born in 1755, Peter Cooper was the fifth child.

John Cooper came of age in the year of the Declaration of Independence. In the issue between the British government and the American colonies his choice could not be doubtful. He followed the traditions of his family. Indeed, it is now well established and universally admitted that the patriots of the American Revolution were not in fact arrayed against England. They were engaged in a struggle which was but a part of the great conflict waged against shortsighted and obstinate tyranny by Englishmen on both sides of the ocean, and in which the victory for liberty was won on this side sooner than on the other. What the Coopers and their kind achieved here was applauded openly in the mother country by the descendants of a common ancestry as a triumph for the common cause. The use of foreign mercenaries under British commanders in this country was the direct result of the impossibility of inducing Englishmen to enlist for service against their American kinsmen. Hence when John Cooper, of Fishkill, abandoned in 1776 the business he had just established as a hatter, and became sergeant in a company of "minute-men," he was but pursuing the course indicated both by his own convictions and by the history of his fathers and the sympathies of the party in England to which they had belonged. It was Freedom's battle "handed down from sire to son."

He served subsequently for two years in the Continental line, and for the last four years of the war as a lieutenant in the New York militia, actively employed in the perilous service of protecting life, property, and the public stores in the zone of debatable territory,--the "bloody ground" which surrounded the British lines in New York. At the close of the war, New York having been evacuated by the enemy, Lieutenant John Cooper retired to civil life, and resumed business as a hatter in that city,--a worthy example of that American citizen soldiery which has always been equally ready to leave the ways of peace for its country's defense, and to return to them when the exigency had passed.

It was in 1779, during his military service, that John Cooper married Margaret, the daughter of John Campbell, a deputy quartermaster-general in the Continental army, and a trusted agent of Washington. The outbreak of hostilities in 1776 had found John Campbell a prosperous merchant and owner of real estate in New York city. He at once lent to the Revolutionary government eleven hundred guineas,--the whole of his ready money,--entered the service, was made deputy quartermaster-general, and was directed to superintend the hasty evacuation of the city by the Whig inhabitants, and to protect them and their property as far as possible. Lingering too long to assist some of the laggards, he was captured by the forces landed from the British fleet, but was subsequently released; and he made a temporary home at Fishkill while actively engaged in establishing the lines by which the British army, though holding the city and commanding its access to the sea, was practically besieged. General Campbell served throughout the war, and after hostilities had ceased commanded the troops at West Point until they were finally disbanded in 1785.

It is easy to imagine how the young lieutenant and the daughter of the commander who must have been frequently brought into personal relations with him may have met and loved and wedded in the midst of those troublous times, but the romance would have no special bearing on this history. It is enough to say that by this marriage the best blood of England and Scotland--of servants of God and lovers of freedom--was blended in the nine children, seven sons and two daughters, of whom Peter Cooper--born February 12, 1791, in Little Dock Street, New York--was the fifth.

John Cooper was not characteristically a seer of visions or a dreamer of dreams. On the contrary, the accounts of him which have come down to us describe him as a stalwart athlete, who "could lift a barrel of cider from the ground and put it in a wagon," and who once, being cornered and attacked by a bull, seized the animal's nose with one hand and so battered its head with a stone that it was glad to turn and fly. Yet he came of a race that believed in Divine guidance; and on one occasion at least he acted upon that belief in a matter then deemed more important, perhaps, than now. The incident can be given best in the words of Peter Cooper himself, who wrote:--

"My father used to tell me how he came to call me Peter. When I was born he became strongly impressed with the idea that I would some day have more than ordinary fame, and what name he should give me was a matter of serious and frequent thought. While walking on Broadway one dark night it seemed as though a voice spoke to him in a clear and distinct manner: 'Call him Peter!' That seeming voice settled my name. My father said that he felt that I was to be of great good in some way; and his remarks, with my mother's, concerning their aspirations and hopes for me acted as a stimulus and made me anxious to fulfill their wishes, and not disappoint them."

If names were to be characteristic of individual careers, it might be better to imitate some Indian tribes, and to give the permanent name only after the career, or at least the character, of its recipient had been indicated by his acts. In this instance the subsequent life of the son did not in any peculiar way imitate that of the Apostle Peter. Evidently not that particular name, but the simple fact that an eminent name, thus suggested and not already familiar in his family, had been given to him, produced upon his mind the effect to which he testifies.

But why should practical John Cooper be disposed to anticipate a special distinction for the infant who was the fifth of his numerous progeny? From the standpoint of the modes of thought of the godly patriots of that generation, and of their ancestors, the English Puritans and the Scotch Covenanters, it is scarcely hazardous to assume that current public affairs largely affected such domestic choices. Peter Cooper's birth was practically simultaneous with the launching of that Ship of State, the "Union, strong and great," in which all patriots had embarked "their hopes, triumphant o'er their fears." To his veteran-soldier father he was the first child of the new era; and the dreams that were dreamed over him were doubtless connected with that glorious future which had just dawned upon the federated republic. The choice of an unfamiliar, non-hereditary name, however suggested, symbolized the break between the old time and the new.

Above all, this incident produced in the son thus christened the profoundest effects, the deepest motives, that can inspire a boyish soul,--the belief in a beneficent mission, the yearning to discover it, the resolve to execute it, and the conviction that it was to be directly connected with the prosperity and progress of the great nation, the life of which began with his own.

The naming of Peter Cooper thus strikes the keynote, or, more accurately, the triple chord, of his life. For he was first of all an American, keenly aware of the opportunities offered by the free institutions of his country to individual ambition, industry, and genius, and of his own personal ability to make use of these opportunities. Secondly, he was a lover of his fellow men, determined to employ for their benefit the means and powers which he felt himself able to accumulate by thought, toil, and frugal economy. Thirdly, he was even in his philanthropy essentially still an American, intent most of all upon the welfare of those classes of his countrymen with whose struggles and needs his own early life had made him familiar. In other words, while his philanthropy covered a world-wide range, his peculiar mission, as he conceived it, was indissolubly blent with the success of the republic of which he was one of the earliest-born sons.

BOYHOOD AND YOUTH

AT a meeting of friends, gathered February 12, 1882, to celebrate his ninety-first birthday anniversary, Mr. Cooper, after expressing his thanks for their congratulatory good wishes, and observing that in his case "length of days had not yet resulted in weariness of spirit," added this review of his life:--

"Looking back, I can see that my career has been divided into three eras. During the first thirty years I was engaged in getting a start in life; during the second thirty years I was occupied in getting means for carrying out the modest plan which I had long formed for the benefit of my fellow men; and during the last thirty years I have devoted myself to the execution of these plans. This work is now done."

Accepting this division of his career, as convenient, though not strictly accurate , we may consider first Mr. Cooper's means and method of achieving personal success; and in this survey the conditions of his boyhood and early youth are primarily important.

While he was still very young, the family removed from a temporary residence of three years in New York city to Peekskill, where he remained until, at the age of seventeen, he returned to New York as an apprentice, to be, thenceforward, dependent upon his own exertions for a living.

The intervening period was spent in ways characteristic of the period and of the individual. He attended school for three or four "quarters," of which period, according to his later recollection, "probably half was occupied by 'half-day' school." Outside of this scanty formal instruction, there is ample evidence that he developed body and mind in varied work and play. He bore to the end of life the scars of youthful escapades, witnessing the adventurous spirit of his boyhood. When only four years old, he climbed about the framework of a new house, and fell, head downward, upon an iron kettle, cutting his forehead to the bone. Later on, he was accidentally cut with a knife in the hands of a playmate. Later still, he cut himself dangerously with an axe. Again, he fell from a high tree, holding an iron hook with which he had been reaching for cherry-bearing branches, and managed to hook out one of his teeth. At another time he went for the nest of a hanging-bird, and had the fact that it was a hornet's nest indelibly impressed on his memory. Of course, he was nearly drowned three times,--such youngsters always have such escapes. In short, he was a thorough boy, adventuring all things, daunted by nothing, and protected from the results of his reckless endeavors by that Providence which watches over small boys.

But such a temperament finds play in useful work also. The boy learned every department of the hat-making business, beginning, when he was very young, with pulling the fur from the skins of rabbits. And, while assisting his mother in doing the family washing, he made what was, perhaps, his first invention,--a mechanical arrangement for pounding the soiled linen. Again, after carefully dissecting an old shoe, to learn how it was put together, he determined to make shoes and slippers for the family, and succeeded in turning out products of manufacture which were said to be as good as those to be found, at that day, in the regular trade.

When he was between thirteen and fourteen years old, his father built a large malt-house at Newburg, and the son loaded with his own hands and carted to the site selected all the stone for the building. Collecting wild honey and shooting game in the forests around Peekskill were additional employments which combined pleasure with profit. But this life did not satisfy the ambition of the youth; and in 1808, at the age of seventeen, he left the paternal roof and apprenticed himself for four years to John Woodward, a leading coach-builder in New York, whose shop was located on the corner of Broadway and Chambers Street, then the northerly edge of the city, opposite a vegetable garden, the remnants of which, after the occupation of a large portion by city, county, and national buildings, now constitute the City Hall Park. The terms of his employment were his board and a salary of twenty-five dollars a year,--out of which he managed not only to pay all obligations, but also to lay by a little money. During this period he not only mastered the details of the trade, but learned in his hours of leisure other branches, such as ornamental wood-carving, and made several inventions, one of which was a machine for mortising hubs,--an operation performed by hand up to that time. Another invention over which the young apprentice dreamed, and of which he laboriously constructed a model, was an apparatus for utilizing, in the running of machinery, the swift current of the tide in the East River.

BUSINESS VENTURES

AT the end of his apprenticeship, his employer offered to set him up in business as a coach-builder, lending him the necessary capital. Many years later, Mr. Cooper told the story thus:--

"I was about to accept his generous offer, when an incident occurred which changed my decision. Mr. Woodward had just completed one of the finest coaches ever built in New York, for a gentleman who was supposed to be one of the richest men in the city. But a day or two before the coach was to be delivered the gentleman died, and it was then found that he was insolvent. This made me hesitate. If I should accept my employer's kind offer and have such a misfortune happen to me in the sale of an elegant and expensive coach, I should consider myself a slave for life, since the law of imprisonment for debt had not then been abolished. So I changed my plans, and went to Hempstead, Long Island, to visit my brother."

The visit to Hempstead became a prolonged residence. He obtained work at .50 a day in a factory making machines for shearing cloth, and after nearly three years had saved enough money to purchase the right for the State of New York to a patented machine for that purpose. He used to tell, in his old age, of his elation when he effected his first sale of a county-right, for which he received five hundred dollars from Mr. Vassar, of Poughkeepsie, afterwards the founder of Vassar College.

The manufacture and sale of the new shearing-machine, into which Mr. Cooper introduced many additional improvements, was a prosperous business, especially during the war of 1812, when domestic woolen goods were in great demand. He married, December 18, 1813, Sarah Bedell, a lady of Huguenot descent, who made for him a happy home during fifty-seven years. He bought a house in Hempstead, expecting to remain there; and in the household, as in business, he gave rein to his ardent and versatile inventive faculty. One of his domestic contrivances rocked the cradle, fanned away the flies, and played a lullaby to the baby. He sold the patent in Connecticut to a Yankee peddler for a horse and wagon, and the peddler's stock, including a hurdy-gurdy. Another invention was a machine for mowing grass, constructed on the principle of his cloth-shearing machine.

But after the war, the domestic woolen mills were shut down, and there was no sale for Mr. Cooper's machines. So he first turned his factory into a furniture shop, and then, selling it for what he could get, he moved to New York, and started in the grocery business, buying for this purpose a long lease of the ground where the Bible House now stands, opposite the Cooper Union on Ninth Street. Upon this ground he erected several buildings, one of which he used as his office. The business was profitable; but the real foundation of Mr. Cooper's wealth was laid when, at the age of thirty-three, he purchased a glue factory, situated where the Park Avenue Hotel now stands, and established himself as a glue manufacturer. The business speedily acquired and held for half a century practically the whole trade of the country in glue and isinglass,--a monopoly fairly earned by the cheapness and excellence of its product.

Mr. Cooper's inventions improved the quality and reduced the cost of his product, while his energy, industry, and frugality steadily increased his surplus cash, and enabled him, without borrowing capital, to extend his sphere of operations. For many years, he carried on his glue business without bookkeeper, agent, or salesman. Dawn found him at the suburban factory lighting the fires and preparing for the day's work; at noon, he drove in his buggy to the city, where he made his own sales and purchases; and all his evenings he spent at home, making up his accounts, answering his correspondents, studying out new inventions, or talking and reading to his wife and children.

In this account of his business ventures the part played by Peter Cooper in the development of the American iron industry and in the construction of the first transatlantic submarine telegraph may be recorded.

The capital estimated as necessary for making and laying the cable was raised by Mr. Field in England, where the Atlantic Telegraph Company was formed to construct and operate the line under concessions from the parent Newfoundland company. All classes in England felt a sentimental interest in the romantic enterprise; and the subscribers to the new stock included such men as Thackeray and others of equal note, outside of business circles altogether.

The company proceeded with vigor,--secured from the governments of Great Britain and the United States guaranties of subsidies and the free use of ships for laying the cable; contracts for the cable and its insulating covering were executed; and by the end of July, 1857, the British Agamemnon and the American Niagara had each twelve hundred and fifty miles of it on board. In August they connected the two halves of it in mid-Atlantic, and in September the shore end was landed at Heart's Content.

The sequel is familiar history. A few messages had been sent and received, when the current grew weaker and weaker, and at last failed entirely. The result was a strong reaction in popular sentiment. It was even questioned whether any messages had actually crossed the Atlantic. Fortunately this doubt could be conclusively disproved,--especially in England, where it was known that the British government had wired by the cable before its failure news of great political importance. The British company indeed courageously proceeded to make another cable; but when this parted in mid-ocean during the process of laying it even British tenacity of purpose was daunted, and for some two years the enterprise seemed to be dead. Meanwhile public opinion on this side was far more unfavorable, and the parent company found itself without means or credit. To retain its privileges it must pay additional money, and to make those privileges worth anything capital must be raised for a third attempt to lay the transatlantic line.

Without describing in detail the difficulties and anxieties of this period, it may be said that the intelligent courage of Peter Cooper saved the enterprise, while it secured to him a large pecuniary reward; for he perceived that the real problem had been solved by the first apparent failure; that the failure of a cable in use or the loss of a cable in laying it were mere incidental misfortunes which more thorough precautions and better luck would preclude; and he backed with his own faith and money the undaunted enthusiasm and persuasive eloquence of Mr. Field, whose expenses he paid for another journey to England, and who succeeded at last in raising there the funds for the third and successful attempt. Moreover Mr. Cooper upheld the credit of the Newfoundland company, personally paying the drafts drawn upon it, and taking its bonds as his security. It is too much to say that the Atlantic cable would never have been laid, but there can be no doubt that the enterprise would have been long suspended, without this timely aid. The third cable was a success; the lost second was recovered and made useful; and now the thing is easy which thus seemed so problematical. If Peter Cooper received in the end a handsome sum from this investment, who could grudge him the wealth so acquired?

FOOTNOTES:

"Not only do I think of my wife during my waking moments; she often comes to me in my dreams, sometimes once a week, sometimes once in two weeks, and sometimes at longer intervals. It is one of the greatest pleasures of my life that I can believe that she has been, and is now, my guardian angel, and it is one of my happiest hopes that I shall see that this our world is but the bud of a being that is to ripen and bear its choicest fruits in another and a better."

Letter of Morse to the Secretary of the Treasury in the autumn of 1843.

INVENTIONS

THE inventions projected, though in many instances not perfected or successfully introduced, by Mr. Cooper constitute a long list and cover a wide field. A few of them may be mentioned here, in addition to those to which allusion has been made already. It will be seen that even those which failed of commercial success generally contained the germs of future mechanical progress, and bore witness to the extraordinary vigor and versatility of his genius.

When the Erie Canal was approaching completion it occurred to Mr. Cooper that canal boats might be propelled by the power of water drawn from a higher level and moving a series of endless chains along the canal. After some preliminary experiments he built a flat-bottomed scow, arranged a water wheel to utilize the tidal current in the East River, and actually achieved a trial trip of two miles and return, in which Governor Clinton and other invited guests took part. The governor was so well pleased that he paid Mr. Cooper eight hundred dollars for the first chance to purchase the right of applying the method on the new canal. But the scheme failed for the reason that the right of way for the Erie Canal had been secured from the farmers of the State by representing to them the profit which they would realize from selling forage, etc., for the use of canal boats, which were to be drawn by horses or mules. The introduction of mechanical power would destroy these inducements, and the plan was abandoned,--though Mr. Cooper had demonstrated its feasibility by running his endless chain on the East River for ten days and carrying hundreds of passengers over the trial route. It is not likely that such a use of water power on the Erie Canal would have proved practicable on a large scale; but the endless chain, which Mr. Cooper apparently considered as a minor feature only, has been adopted since, and lies at the basis of the famous Belgian system of river and canal transportation.

In 1824 the wave of enthusiastic sympathy for the Greeks which swept over the country upon receipt of the tidings of their revolt against Turkish tyranny stimulated Mr. Cooper to invent a torpedo boat, to be steered from the shore by "two steel wires, like the reins of a horse." But on the trial trip of the boat a ship crossed and broke the wires when about six of their total length of ten miles had been let out. The delay made the invention too late for use by the Greeks, and it was not further pursued.

About 1835 the subject of aerial navigation had in the United States one of its periodical revivals. Mr. Cooper, believing that a motive power developed from materials of small weight was essential to the solution of the problem, resolved to employ the explosive force of chloride of nitrogen,--one of the most dangerous compounds known to chemists. The result of his experiments in this direction was an explosion which blew his apparatus to pieces, and nearly cost the audacious inventor an eye. In fact, though the organ was saved from total destruction, it was permanently injured.

The conveyance of freight by aerial cables--a method now widely used--was practiced by Mr. Cooper at an early day. The use of elevators in buildings was foreseen and provided for by him in the erection of the Cooper Union building, and in that building also he introduced for the first time iron beams as part of a fire-proof construction. In these and other inventions his prophetic intuitions were illustrated.

But such intuitions do not fully take the place of scientific training; and one of the inventions of Peter Cooper--which he considered for many years, and possibly to the very last, as his crowning achievement--was a curious example of misdirected ingenuity. It is worthy of notice here, however, for another reason, namely, because of its accidental association with one of its inventor's most remarkable triumphs.

As a young apprentice he had studied the steam engine, and had resolved that he would improve it by doing away with the crank. To his mind this was a source of great loss of power, and he believed that, if he could transform the rectilinear motion of the piston rod directly into rotary motion without the intervention of the crank, he would effect a notable economy.

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