[1] See Lady S. O. Morgan's _France_, 1829-1830, ii. 414, for an
account of a dinner by Careme.
COOKSTOWN, a market town of Co. Tyrone, Ireland, in the east
parliamentary division, 54 m. W. by N. of Belfast, on branches of the
Great Northern and the Northern Counties (Midland) railways. Pop. of
urban district (1901) 3531. It consists principally of a single street
of great length, and lies in a pleasant, well-wooded district, near the
Ballinderry river. It has important manufactures of linen, and some
agricultural trade. It was founded in 1609, the landlord, Allan Cook,
giving name to it. The mansion of Killymoon Castle, in the vicinity, is
a notable example of the work of a celebrated architect, John Nash (c.
1800).
COOKTOWN, a seaport of Banks county, Queensland, Australia, at the mouth
of the Endeavour river, about 1050 m. direct N.N.W. of Brisbane. It is
visited by the ocean steamers of several lines, and is the centre of a
very extensive _beche-de-mer_ and pearl fishery. Tin and gold are worked
in the district, in which also good coffee and rice are grown. Cooktown
is the port of the Palmer gold-fields, and a railway runs to Laura on
the gold-fields, 67 m. W. by S. of Cooktown. It is the chief port of
Queensland for the New Guinea trade; and is also the seat of a Roman
Catholic vicariate apostolic whose bishop has jurisdiction over the
whole of Queensland north of lat. 18 deg. 50'. In 1770 Captain Cook here
beached his ship the "Endeavour," to repair the damage caused by her
striking a reef in the neighbourhood of the estuary, which he could only
clear by throwing his guns overboard. Cooktown became a municipality in
1876. The population of the town and district in 1901 was 1936.
COOKWORTHY, WILLIAM (1705-1780), English potter, famous for his
discovery of the existence of china-clay and china-stone in Cornwall,
and as the first manufacturer of a porcelain similar in nature to the
Chinese, from English materials, was born at Kingsbridge, Devon, of
Quaker parents who were in humble circumstances. At the age of fourteen
he was apprenticed to a London apothecary named Bevans, and he
afterwards returned to the neighbourhood of his birthplace, and carried
on business at Plymouth with the co-operation of his master, under the
title of Bevans & Cookworthy. The manufacture of porcelain was at the
time attracting great attention in England, and while the factories at
Bow, Chelsea, Worcester and Derby were introducing the artificial glassy
porcelain, Cookworthy, following the accounts of Pere d'Entrecolles,
spent many years in searching for English materials similar to those
used by the Chinese. From 1745 onwards he seems to have travelled over
the greater portion of Cornwall and Devon in search of these minerals,
and he finally located them in the parish of St Stephen's near to St
Austell. With a certain amount of financial assistance from Mr Thomas
Pitt of Boconnoc (afterwards Lord Camelford) he established the Plymouth
China Factory at least as early as 1768. The factory was removed to
Bristol about 1770, and the business was afterwards sold to Richard
Champion and others and became the well-known Bristol Porcelain
Manufactory. Apart from its historic interest there is little to be said
for the Plymouth porcelain. Technically it was often imperfect, and its
artistic treatment was never of a high order. But Cookworthy deserves to
be remembered for his discovery of those abundant supplies of English
clay and rocks which form the foundation of English porcelain and fine
earthenware (see CERAMICS).
COOLGARDIE, a municipal town in Western Australia, 310 m. by rail E. by
N. of Perth, and 528 m. by rail N.E. of Albany. Pop. (1901) 4249. Its
gold-fields were discovered in 1891 and are among the richest in the
colony. Lignite, copper, graphite and silver are also found. Toorak and
Montana are small residential suburbs. A remarkable engineering work by
which a full supply of water was brought to the town from Fremantle (a
distance exceeding 330 m. direct) was completed in 1903.
COOLIE, or COOLY (from Koli or Kuli, an aboriginal race of western
India; or perhaps from Tamil _k[=u]li_, hire, i.e. one hired), a term
generally applied to Asiatic labourers belonging to the unskilled class
as opposed to the artisan, and employed in a special sense to designate
those natives of India and China who leave their country under contracts
of service to work as labourers abroad. After the abolition of slavery
much difficulty was found in obtaining cheap labour for tropical
plantations. The emancipated black was unwilling to engage in field
labour, while the white man was physically incapable of so doing.
Recourse was had to the overpeopled empires of China and India, as the
most likely sources from which to obtain that supply of workers upon
which the very existence of some colonies, notably in the West Indies,
depended.
Chinese coolies.
The first public recognition of the coolie traffic was in 1844, when the
British colony of Guiana made provision for the encouragement of Chinese
immigration. About the same time both Peru and Cuba began to look to
China as likely to furnish an efficient substitute for the negro
bondsman. Agents armed with consular commissions from Peru appeared in
Chinese ports, where they collected and sent away shiploads of coolies.
Each one was bound to serve the Peruvian planter to whom he might be
assigned for seven or eight years, at fixed wages, generally about 17s.
a month, food, clothes and lodging being provided. From 1847 to 1854
coolie emigration went on briskly without attracting much notice, but it
gradually came to light that circumstances of great cruelty attended the
trade. The transport ships were badly equipped and overcrowded, and many
coolies died before the end of the voyage. On arrival in Cuba or Peru
the survivors were sold by auction in the open market to the highest
bidders, who held them virtually as slaves for seven years instead of
for life. Particularly terrible was the lot of those who, contrary to
their agreements, had been sent to labour in the foul guano pits of the
Chincha islands, where they were forced to toil in gangs, each under the
charge of an overseer armed with a cowhide lash. In 1860 it was
calculated that of the four thousand coolies who had been fraudulently
consigned to the guano pits of Peru not one had survived. The greater
number of them had committed suicide. In 1854 the British governor of
Hong-Kong issued a proclamation forbidding British subjects or vessels
to engage in the transport of coolies to the Chinchas. Technically this
was _ultra vires_ on his part, but his policy was confirmed by the
Chinese Passengers' Act 1855, which put an end to the more abominable
phase of the traffic. After that no British ship was allowed to sail on
more than a week's voyage with more than twenty coolies on board, unless
her master had complied with certain very stringent regulations.
The consequence of this was that the business of shipping coolies for
Peru was transferred to the Portuguese settlement of Macao. There the
Peruvian and Cuban "labour-agents" established depots, which they
unblushingly called "barracoons," the very term used in the West African
slave trade. In these places coolies were "received," or in plain words,
imprisoned and kept under close guard until a sufficient number were
collected for export. Some of these were decoyed by fraudulent promises
of profitable employment. Others were kidnapped by piratical junks hired
to scour the neighbouring coasts. Many were bought from leaders of
turbulent native factions, only too glad to sell the prisoners they
captured whilst waging their internecine wars. The procurador or
registrar-general of Macao went through the form of certifying the
contracts; but his inspection was practically useless. After the war of
1856-1857 this masked slave trade pushed its agencies into Whampoa and
Canton. In April 1859, however, the whole mercantile community of the
latter port rose up in indignation against it, and transmitted such
strong representations to the British embassy in China, that steps were
taken to mitigate the evil. New regulations were from time to time
passed by the Portuguese authorities for the purpose of minimizing the
horrors of the Macao trade. They seem, however, to have been
systematically evaded, and to have been practically inoperative. At
Canton and Hong-Kong the coolie trade was put under various regulations,
which in the latter port worked well only when the profits of
"head-money" were ruined. In March 1866 the representatives of the
governments of France, England and China drew up a convention for the
regulation of the Canton trade, which had an unfortunate effect. It left
head-money, the source of most of the abuses, comparatively untouched.
It enacted that every coolie must at the end of a five years' engagement
have his return passage-money paid to him. The West Indian colonies at
once objected to this. They wanted permanent not temporary settlers.
They could not afford to burden the coolie's expensive contract with
return passage-money, so they declined to accept emigrants on these
terms. Thus a legalized coolie trade between the West Indies and China
was extinguished. Thereafter the coolie supply for British colonies was
drawn exclusively from India, until 1904, when an exception was made in
the case of the Transvaal. Under a convention drawn up in that year
between the United Kingdom and China over fifty thousand indentured
Chinese labourers were engaged on three years' contracts to work in the
Witwatersrand gold mines (see TRANSVAAL). To the Malay states and other
parts of eastern Asia there is an extensive yearly migration of Chinese
coolies. This migration, however, is not under contract. From Amoy alone
some seventy-five thousand coolies yearly migrate to Singapore and the
Straits Settlements, whence they are drafted for labour purposes in
every direction.
Indian coolies.
It is scarcely possible to say when the Indian coolie trade began.
Before the end of the 18th century Tamil labourers from southern India
were wont to emigrate to the Straits Settlements, and they also flocked
to Tenasserim from the other side of the Bay of Bengal after the
conquest had produced a demand for labour. The first regularly recorded
attempt at organizing coolie emigration from India took place in 1834,
when forty coolies were exported to Mauritius; but it was not until 1836
that the Indian government decided to put the trade under official
regulations. In 1837 an emigration law was passed for all the
territories of the East India Company, providing that a permit must be
obtained from government for every shipment of coolies, that all
contracts should terminate in five years, that a return passage should
be guaranteed, that the terms of his contract should be carefully
explained to each coolie, and that the emigrant ship should only carry
one coolie for every ton and a half of burden. Then as now the Indian
government watched the deportation of labour from their dominions with
jealous and anxious care, and when in 1838 it was found that upwards of
twenty-five thousand natives had, up to that year, gone from all parts
of India to Mauritius, the government became somewhat alarmed at the
dimensions which the traffic was assuming. Brougham and the anti-slavery
party denounced the trade as a revival of slavery, and the Bengal
government suspended it in order to investigate its alleged abuses. The
nature of these may be guessed when it is said that the inquiry
condemned the fraudulent methods of recruiting then in vogue, and the
brutal treatment which coolies often received from ship captains and
masters. In 1842 steps were taken formally to reopen the coolie trade
with Mauritius, and in 1844 emigration to the West Indies was sanctioned
by the Indian government. In 1847 Ceylon was separated from India, and
her labour supply was cut off; but this accident was soon remedied, the
Ceylon government adopting protective regulations for the coolies.
Modern regulations.
Emigration of coolies under contract to labour outside India is now
regulated by the Emigration Act of 1883 and the rules issued under its
provisions, the only exceptions being in respect of emigrants to Ceylon
and the Straits Settlements and adjoining states, or those engaged by
the British government for employment in east and central Africa. By
section 8 of this act natives of India are permitted to emigrate under
labour contracts only to such countries as have satisfied the government
of India that sufficient provision is made for the protection of the
emigrants. A country which is duly empowered under the act to receive
emigrants may appoint an agent, residing in India, who is responsible
for the due observance of the provisions of the law. These agents are
under the general supervision of the protector of emigrants. As
emigrants have to be recruited at great distances from the port of
embarkation, recruiters are appointed by the agents and licensed by the
protector. The conduct of these subordinates is minutely regulated.
Every precaution is taken to let the emigrant know the exact terms on
which he is hired, and to ensure good treatment in the interval between
registration and embarkation. Coolies are shipped for the most part from
Calcutta and Madras, but of recent years large numbers bound for Mombasa
and the Seychelles left from Bombay and Karachi. Both the coolies
themselves and the depot are medically inspected. Only those physically
fit are allowed to embark. The vessels for their conveyance are licensed
and inspected by the local government. The terms on which emigrants are
recruited are settled beforehand by convention with the colonies
concerned, and are embodied in ordinances passed by the local
legislatures. They vary in detail, but their main provisions relate to
the rights and obligations of the emigrants, including the grant of a
return passage on the expiry of a specified period, usually ten years.
The British colonies to which coolies were exported in the decade
1891-1901 were British Guiana, Trinidad, St Lucia, Jamaica, Mauritius,
the Seychelles Islands, Fiji, East Africa and Natal; the only
non-British country was Dutch Guiana. Emigration to the French colonies,
including Reunion has been forbidden by the government of India since
1886, but there still remain in those colonies some of the former
emigrants, and the questions of their treatment and repatriation have
frequently formed the subject of representations to the French
authorities.
The British colonies.
The number of Indian coolies resident in the various British colonies in
1900 was 625,000, of which the largest numbers were 265,000 in Mauritius
and 125,000 in British Guiana. There were still 13,800 in Reunion. The
regulations governing coolie labour in British Guiana may be taken as
typical for the British colonies generally. They are contained in the
Labour Ordinance of 1873, which was amended by the ordinances of 1875,
1876, 1886 and 1887. Under these ordinances an immigration agent-general
is appointed, to whom medical officers and recruiting agents are
responsible, and the emigrants are allotted by him to the separate
estates. They regulate the hours of work, the rate of wages, and the
general treatment of the coolies, the nature of house and hospital
accommodation, the terms of re-enlistment and the conditions of marriage
amongst the coolies themselves. The coolies returning from the British
colonies to India in 1901 possessed average savings of L19.
British East and South Africa.
During the construction of the Uganda railway large numbers of coolies
were recruited in the Punjab and exported from Karachi to Mombasa.
During the decade 1891-1901 the number of these emigrants was 33,000;
but on the completion of the line the emigration practically stopped,
while in 1901-1902 there were over 6000 emigrants who returned to India.
Some, however, settled in East Africa. Coolies are also exported for
government employment in Nyasaland. In Natal the Indian population had
by 1904 reached over 100,000 and slightly outnumbered the whites. Many
of the coolies had become permanent residents in the colony (see NATAL).
Assam, Ceylon and Burma.
According to the census of 1901 there were 775,844 foreigners in Assam,
of whom no fewer than 645,000 or 83% were brought into the province as
garden coolies. The recruiting of these coolies is regulated by Act VI.
of 1901, which provides that a labour agreement may be entered into for
four years, and includes a penal clause, under which a coolie deserting
or refusing to work may be punished with imprisonment. The coolies can
also give an agreement under Act XIII. of 1859, by which they are only
liable to civil action for breach of contract. The latter are called
non-act coolies. This system of immigration has made tea-planting the
most important industry in Assam, and has greatly increased the
prosperity of the province. Migration to Ceylon and Burma takes place
chiefly from the Madras ports, and is of a seasonal and temporary
character. The tea estates and pearl fisheries of Ceylon, and the town
work and harvesting in Burma attract large numbers of Tamil labourers.
The respective numbers embarking in 1901 were 117,000 for Ceylon, 84,000
for Burma and 27,000 for the Straits Settlements. In Ceylon there is no
system of recruitment like that for the Assam tea-gardens. The coolies
come in gangs, each under its own headman, with whom the planter deals
exclusively, leaving him to make his own arrangements with the
individual coolies. The coolies are mostly carried in small sailing
vessels from the ports of Madura and Tanjore, and the number who
permanently settle in Ceylon is not very great.
See E. Jenkins, _The Coolie; his Rights and Wrongs_ (1871); J. L. A.
Hope, _In Quest of Coolies_ (1872); and C. B. Grose, _The Labour
Ordinances_ (Georgetown, 1890). (C. L.)
COOMA, a town of Beresford county, New South Wales, Australia, 264 m. by
rail S.S.W. of Sydney. Pop. (1901) 1938. The town is the centre of a
pastoral district and has a large trade in furs, while at Bushy Hill, a
mile from the town, is a small gold-field. Cooma, which is pleasantly
situated at an elevation of 2657 ft., is the tourist centre for visitors
to the Yarrangobilly Caves and Mount Kosciusko and its observatory. The
caves are distant 65 m. from the town, situated in the side of a hill,
overlooking the Yarrangobilly river; they are seven in number and of
remarkable beauty and extent.
COOPER, ABRAHAM (1787-1868), English animal and battle painter, the son
of a tobacconist, was born in London. At the age of thirteen he became
an employe at Astley's amphitheatre, and was afterwards groom in the
service of Sir Henry Meux. When he was twenty-two, wishing to possess a
portrait of a favourite horse under his care, he bought a manual of
painting, learned something of the use of oil-colours, and painted the
picture on a canvas hung against the stable wall. His master bought it
and encouraged him to continue in his efforts. He accordingly began to
copy prints of horses, and was introduced to Benjamin Marshall, the
animal painter, who took him into his studio, and seems to have
introduced him to the _Sporting Magazine_, an illustrated periodical to
which he was himself a contributor. In 1814 he exhibited his "Tam
O'Shanter," and in 1816 he won a prize of L100 for his "Battle of
Ligny." In 1817 he exhibited his "Battle of Marston Moor" and was made
associate of the Academy, and in 1820 he was elected Academician.
Cooper, although ill educated, was a clever and conscientious artist;
his colouring was somewhat flat and dead, but he was a master of equine
portraiture and anatomy, and had some antiquarian knowledge. He had a
special fondness for Cavalier and Roundhead pictures.
COOPER, ALEXANDER (d. 1660), English miniature painter. His works are of
great rarity, and the chief are a series representing the king and queen
of Bohemia and their children, in the possession of the German emperor;
some very remarkable portraits belonging to the queen of Holland, and
others in the possession of the king of Sweden and in various Swedish
galleries. He was the brother of Samuel Cooper, but whether senior or
junior to him is not known, although, according to certain Swedish
authorities, he is stated, upon very slight evidence, to have been born
in 1605, four years before his more famous brother. He came to Sweden in
1646, and the Swedish documents declare that he was a Jew, and that his
full name was Abraham Alexander Cooper. He had previously been residing
in Holland, but on reaching Sweden entered the service of Queen
Christina, and continued to be her miniature painter until 1654, when
she resigned the crown. Two years later, Cooper was in Denmark, carrying
out some commissions for Christian IV., but in 1657 was back again in
Stockholm, where he died in the early part of 1660. The date of his
birth is not known, but he is believed to have been born in London.
For full information regarding his career, and for various documents
bearing his signature, see _The History of Portrait Miniatures_, by G.
C. Williamson, chap. vi. page 78, and an article in the _Nineteenth
Century_ for October 1905. (G. C. W.)
COOPER, SIR ASTLEY PASTON (1768-1841), English surgeon, was born at the
village of Brooke in Norfolk on the 23rd of August 1768. His father, Dr
Samuel Cooper, was a clergyman of the Church of England; his mother was
the author of several novels. At the age of sixteen he was sent to
London and placed under Henry Cline (1750-1827), surgeon to St Thomas's
hospital. From the first he devoted himself to the study of anatomy, and
had the privilege of attending the lectures of John Hunter. In 1789 he
was appointed demonstrator of anatomy at St Thomas's hospital, where in
1791 he became joint lecturer with Cline in anatomy and surgery, and in
1800 he was appointed surgeon to Guy's hospital, on the death of his
uncle, William Cooper. In 1802 he received the Copley medal for two
papers read before the Royal Society of London on the destruction of the
_membrana tympani_; and in 1805 he was elected a fellow of that society.
In the same year he took an active part in the formation of the
Medico-Chirurgical Society, and published in the first volume of its
_Transactions_ an account of an attempt to tie the common carotid artery
for aneurism. In 1804 he brought out the first, and in 1807 the second,
part of his great work on hernia, which added so largely to his
reputation that in 1813 his annual professional income rose to L21,000
sterling. In the same year he was appointed professor of comparative
anatomy to the Royal College of Surgeons and was very popular as a
lecturer. In 1817 he performed his famous operation of tying the
abdominal aorta for aneurism; and in 1820 he removed a wen from the head
of George IV., and about six months afterwards received a baronetcy,
which, as he had no son, was to descend to his nephew and adopted son,
Astley Cooper. He served as president of the Royal College of Surgeons
in 1827 and again in 1836, and he was elected a vice-president of the
Royal Society in 1830. He died on the 12th of February 1841 in London,
and was interred, by his own desire, beneath the chapel of Guy's
hospital. A statue by E. H. Baily was erected in St Paul's.
His chief works are _Anatomy and Surgical Treatment of Hernia_
(1804-1807); _Dislocations and Fractures_ (1822); _Lectures on
Surgery_ (1824-1827); _Illustrations of Diseases of the Breast_
(1829); _Anatomy of the Thymus Gland_ (1832); _Anatomy of the Breast_
(1840).
See _Life of Sir A. Cooper_, by B. B. Cooper (1843).
COOPER, CHARLES HENRY (1808-1866), English antiquary, was born at Great
Marlow, on the 20th of March 1808, being descended from a family
formerly settled at Bray, Berkshire. He received his education at a
private school in Reading. In 1826 he fixed his residence at Cambridge,
and in 1836 was elected coroner of the borough. Four years later he was
admitted a solicitor, and in course of time he acquired an extensive
practice, but his taste and inclination ultimately led him to devote
almost the whole of his time to literary research, and especially the
elucidation of the history of the university of Cambridge. In 1849 he
resigned the office of borough coroner on being elected to the
town-clerkship, which he retained till his death on the 21st of March
1866. His earliest production, _A New Guide to the University and Town
of Cambridge_, was published anonymously in 1831. _The Annals of
Cambridge_ followed (1842-1853) containing a chronological history of
the university and town from the earliest period to 1853. His most
important work, the _Athenae Cantabrigienses_ (1858, 1861), a companion
work to the famous _Athenae Oxonienses_ of Anthony a Wood, contains
biographical memoirs of the authors and other men of eminence who were
educated at the university of Cambridge from 1500 to 1609. Cooper's
other works are _The Memorials of Cambridge_, (1858-1866) and a _Memoir
of Margaret, Countess of Richmond and Derby_ (1874). He was a constant
contributor to _Notes and Queries_, the _Gentleman's Magazine_ and other
antiquarian publications, and left an immense collection of MS.
materials for a biographical history of Great Britain and Ireland.
COOPER, JAMES FENIMORE (1789-1851), American novelist, was born at
Burlington, New Jersey, on the 15th of September 1789. Reared in the
wild country round Otsego Lake, N.Y., on the yet unsettled estates of
his father, a judge and member of Congress, he was sent to school at
Albany and at New Haven, and entered Yale College in his fourteenth
year, remaining for some time the youngest student on the rolls. Three
years afterwards he joined the United States navy; but after making a
voyage or two in a merchant vessel, to perfect himself in seamanship,
and obtaining his lieutenancy, he married and resigned his commission
(1811). He settled in Westchester county, N.Y., the "Neutral Ground" of
his earliest American romance, and produced anonymously (1820) his first
book, _Precaution_, a novel of the fashionable school. This was followed
(1821) by _The Spy_, which was very successful at the date of issue;
_The Pioneers_ (1823), the first of the "Leatherstocking" series; and
_The Pilot_ (1824), a bold and dashing sea-story. The next was _Lionel
Lincoln_ (1825), a feeble and unattractive work; and this was succeeded
in 1826 by the famous _Last of the Mohicans_, a book that is often
quoted as its author's masterpiece. Quitting America for Europe he
published at Paris _The Prairie_ (1826), the best of his books in nearly
all respects, and _The Red Rover_, (1828), by no means his worst.
At this period the unequal and uncertain talent of Cooper would seem to
have been at its best. These excellent novels were, however, succeeded
by one very inferior, _The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish_ (1829); by _The
Notions of a Travelling Bachelor_ (1828), an uninteresting book; and by
_The Waterwitch_ (1830), one of the poorest of his many sea-stories. In
1830 he entered the lists as a party writer, defending in a series of
letters to the _National_, a Parisian journal, the United States against
a string of charges brought against them by the _Revue Britannique_; and
for the rest of his life he continued skirmishing in print, sometimes
for the national interest, sometimes for that of the individual, and not
infrequently for both at once. This opportunity of making a political
confession of faith appears not only to have fortified him in his own
convictions, but to have inspired him with the idea of imposing them on
the public through the medium of his art. His next three novels, _The
Bravo_ (1831), _The Heidenmauer_ (1832) and _The Headsman: or the Abbaye
of Vigneron_ (1833), were designed to exalt the people at the expense of
the aristocracy. Of these the first is by no means a bad story, but the
others are among the dullest ever written; all were widely read on both
sides of the Atlantic.
In 1833 Cooper returned to America, and immediately published _A Letter
to my Countrymen_, in which he gave his own version of the controversy
he had been engaged in, and passed some sharp censure on his compatriots
for their share in it. This attack he followed up with _The Monikins_
(1835) and _The American Democrat_ (1835); with several sets of notes on
his travels and experiences in Europe, among which may be remarked his
_England_ (1837), in three volumes, a burst of vanity and ill-temper;
and with _Homeward Bound_, and _Home as Found_ (1838), noticeable as
containing a highly idealized portrait of himself. All these books
tended to increase the ill-feeling between author and public; the Whig
press was virulent and scandalous in its comments, and Cooper plunged
into a series of actions for libel. Victorious in all of them, he
returned to his old occupation with something of his old vigour and
success. A _History of the Navy of the United States_ (1839),
supplemented (1846) by a set of _Lives of Distinguished American Naval
Officers_, was succeeded by _The Pathfinder_ (1840), a good
"Leatherstocking" novel; by _Mercedes of Castile_ (1840); _The
Deerslayer_ (1841); by _The Two Admirals_ and by _Wing and Wing_ (1842);
by _Wyandotte, The History of a Pocket Handkerchief_, and _Ned Myers_
(1843); and by _Afloat and Ashore, or the Adventures of Miles
Wallingford_ (1844). From pure fiction, however, he turned again to the
combination of art and controversy in which he had achieved distinction,
and in the two _Littlepage Manuscripts_ (1845-1846) he fought with a
great deal of vigour. His next novel was _The Crater, or Vulcan's Peak_
(1847), in which he attempted to introduce supernatural machinery with
indifferent success; and this was succeeded by _Oak Openings_ and _Jack
Tier_ (1848), the latter a curious _rifacimento_ of _The Red Rover_; by
_The Sea Lions_ (1849); and finally by _The Ways of the Hour_ (1850),
another novel with a purpose, and his last book. He died of dropsy on
the 14th of September 1851 at Cooperstown, New York. His daughter, Susan
Fenimore Cooper (1813-1894), was known as an author and philanthropist.
Cooper was certainly one of the most popular authors that have ever
written. His stories have been translated into nearly all the languages
of Europe and into some of those of Asia. Balzac admired him greatly,
but with discrimination; Victor Hugo pronounced him greater than the
great master of modern romance, and this verdict was echoed by a
multitude of inferior readers, who were satisfied with no title for
their favourite less than that of "the American Scott." As a satirist
and observer he is simply the "Cooper who's written six volumes to prove
he's as good as a Lord" of Lowell's clever portrait; his enormous vanity
and his irritability find vent in a sort of dull violence, which is
exceedingly tiresome. It is only as a novelist that he deserves
consideration. His qualities are not those of the great masters of
fiction; but he had an inexhaustible imagination, some faculty for
simple combination of incident, a homely tragic force which is very
genuine and effective, and up to a certain point a fine narrative power.
His literary training was inadequate; his vocabulary is limited and his
style awkward and pretentious; and he had a fondness for moralizing
tritely and obviously, which mars his best passages. In point of
conception, each of his three-and-thirty novels is either absolutely
good or is possessed of a certain amount of merit; but hitches occur in
all, so that every one of them is remarkable rather in its episodes than
as a whole. Nothing can be more vividly told than the escape of the
Yankee man-of-war through the shoals and from the English cruisers in
_The Pilot_, but there are few things flatter in the range of fiction
than the other incidents of the novel. It is therefore with some show of
reason that _The Last of the Mohicans_, which as a chain of brilliantly
narrated episodes is certainly the least faulty in this matter of
sustained excellence of execution, should be held to be the best of his
works.
The personages of his drama are rather to be accounted as so much
painted cloth and cardboard, than as anything approaching the nature of
men and women. As a creator of aught but romantic incident, indeed,
Cooper's claims to renown must rest on the fine figure of the
Leatherstocking, and, in a less degree, on that of his friend and
companion, the Big Serpent. The latter has many and obvious merits, not
the least of which is the pathos shed about him in his last incarnation
as the Indian John of _The Pioneers_. Natty Bumpo, however, is a
creation of no common unity and consistency. There are lapses and flaws,
and Natty is made to say things which only Cooper, in his most verbosely
didactic vein, could have uttered. But on the whole the impression left
is good and true. In the dignity and simplicity of the old backwoodsman
there is something almost Hebraic. With his naive vanity and strong
reverent piety, his valiant wariness, his discriminating cruelty, his
fine natural sense of right and wrong, his rough limpid honesty, his
kindly humour, his picturesque dialect, and his rare skill in woodcraft,
he has all the breadth and roundness of a type and all the
eccentricities and peculiarities of a portrait.
See _James Fenimore Cooper_ (Boston, 1883), by Thomas R. Lounsbury in
the "American Men of Letters" series; Griswold, _Prose Writers of
America_ (Philadelphia, 1847); J. R. Lowell, _Fable for Critics_; M.
A. de Wolfe Howe, _American Bookmen_ (New York, 1898); and the
introduction by Mowbray Morris to Macmillan's uniform edition of
Cooper's novels (London, 1900). (W. E. H.)
COOPER, PETER (1791-1883), American manufacturer, inventor and
philanthropist, was born in New York city on the 12th of February 1791.
His grandfathers and his father served in the War of American
Independence. He received practically no schooling, but worked with his
father at hat-making in New York city, at brewing in Peekskill, at
brick-making in Catskill, and again at brewing in Newburgh. At seventeen
he was apprenticed to a coach-builder in New York city. On coming of age
he got employment at Hempstead, Long Island, making machines for
shearing cloth; three years afterwards he set up in this business for
himself, having bought the sole right to manufacture such machinery in
the state of New York. Business prospered during the War of 1812, but
fell off after the peace. He turned his shop into a furniture factory;
soon sold this and for a short time was engaged in the grocery business
on the site of the present Bible House, opposite Cooper Union; and then
invested in a glue and isinglass factory, situated for twenty-one years
in Manhattan (where the Park Avenue Hotel was built later) and then in
Brooklyn. About 1828 he built the Canton Iron Works in Baltimore,
Maryland, the foundation of his great fortune. The Baltimore & Ohio
railway was to cross his property, and, after various inventions aiming
to do away with the locomotive crank and thus save two-fifths of the
steam, in 1830 he designed and constructed (largely after plans made two
years before) the first steam locomotive built in America; though only a
small model it proved the practicability of using steam power for
working that line. The "Tom Thumb," as Cooper called the locomotive, was
about the size of a modern hand-car; as the natural draft was far from
sufficient, Cooper devised a blowing apparatus. Selling his Baltimore
works, he built, in 1836, in partnership with his brother Thomas, a
rolling mill in New York; in 1845 he removed it to Trenton, New Jersey,
where iron structural beams were first made in 1854 and the Bessemer
process first tried in America in 1856; and at Philippsburg, New Jersey,
he built the largest blast furnace in the country at that time. He built
other foundries at Ringwood, New Jersey, and at Durham, Pennsylvania;
bought iron mines in northern New Jersey, and carried the ore thence by
railways to his mills. Actively interested with Cyrus Field in the
laying of the first Atlantic cable, he was president of the New York,
Newfoundland & London Telegraph Company, and his frequent cash advances
made the success of the company possible; he was president of the North
American Telegraph Company also, which controlled more than one-half of
the telegraph lines of the United States. For his work in advancing the
iron trade he received the Bessemer gold medal from the Iron and Steel
Institute of Great Britain in 1879. He took a prominent part in
educational affairs, strongly opposed the Roman Catholic claims for
public funds for parochial schools, and conducted the campaign of the
Free School Society to its successful issue in 1842, when a state law
was passed forbidding the support from public funds of any "religious
sectarian doctrine." He is probably best known, however, as the founder
of the Cooper Union (q.v.). Cooper was an early advocate of the
emancipation and the enlistment in the Union army of Southern negroes,
and he upheld the administration of Lincoln. Though he had been a
hard-money Democrat, he joined the Greenback party after the Civil War,
and in 1876 was its candidate for the presidency, but received only
81,740 out of the 8,412,833 votes cast. He died in New York city on the
4th of April 1883. He published _The Political and Financial Opinions of
Peter Cooper, with an Autobiography of his Early Life_ (1877), and
_Ideas for a Science of Good Government, in Addresses, Letters and
Articles on a Strictly National Currency, Tariff and Civil Service_
(1883).
There is a brief biography by R. W. Raymond, _Peter Cooper_ (Boston,
1900).
COOPER, SAMUEL (1609-1672), English miniature painter. This artist was
undoubtedly the greatest painter of miniatures who ever lived. He is
believed to have been born in London, and was a nephew of John Hoskins,
the miniature painter, by whom he was educated. He lived in Henrietta
St., Covent Garden, and frequented the Covent Garden Coffee-House.
Pepys, who makes many references to him, tells us he was an excellent
musician, playing well upon the lute, and also a good linguist, speaking
French with ease. According to other contemporary writers, he was a
short, stout man, of a ruddy countenance. He married one Christiana,
whose portrait is at Welbeck Abbey, and he had one daughter. In 1668 he
was instructed by Pepys to paint a portrait of Mrs Pepys, for which he
charged L30. He is known to have painted also the portrait of John
Aubrey, which was presented in 1691 to the Ashmolean Museum, as we
learn from his correspondence with John Ray, the naturalist. Evelyn
refers to him in 1662, when, on the occasion of the visit that the
diarist paid to the king, Cooper was drawing the royal face and head for
the new coinage.
Magnificent examples of his work are to be found at Windsor Castle,
Belvoir Castle, Montague House, Welbeck Abbey, Ham House, the Rijks
Museum at Amsterdam and in the collection of Mr J. Pierpont Morgan. His
largest miniature is in the possession of the duke of Richmond and
Gordon at Goodwood. A piece of the artist's handwriting is to be seen at
the back of one of his miniatures in the Welbeck Abbey collection, and
one of his drawings in black chalk is in the University Gallery at
Oxford. His own portrait of himself is in the collection of Mr J.
Pierpont Morgan.
The date of his death has been handed down by a record in the diary of
Mary Beale, the miniature painter; and in some letters from Mr Charles
Manners, addressed to Lord Roos, dated 1672, now amongst the duke of
Rutland's papers at Belvoir, the writer refers to Cooper's serious
illness on the 4th of May, and to his doubt as to whether the artist
would ever recover. Mary Beale's reference to his decease is in the
following words: "Sunday, May 5, 1672--Mr Samuel Cooper, the most famous
limner of the world for a face, dyed."
For a fuller account see the _History of Portrait Miniatures_, by G.
C. Williamson, vol. i. p. 64. (G. C. W.)
COOPER (or COUPER), THOMAS (c. 1517-1594), English bishop and writer,
was born in Oxford, where he was educated at Magdalen College. He became
master of Magdalen College school, and afterwards practised as a
physician in Oxford. His literary career began in 1548, when he
compiled, or rather edited, a Latin dictionary _Bibliotheca Eliotae_,
and in 1549 he published a continuation of Thomas Lanquet's _Chronicle
of the World_. This work, known as _Cooper's Chronicle_, covers the
period from A.D. 17 to the time of writing, and was reprinted in 1560
and 1565. In 1565 appeared the first edition of his greatest work,
_Thesaurus Linguae Romanae et Britannicae_, and this was followed by
three other editions. Queen Elizabeth was greatly pleased with the
_Thesaurus_, generally known as _Cooper's Dictionary_; and its author,
who had been ordained about 1559, was made dean of Christ Church,
Oxford, in 1567. Two years later he became dean of Gloucester, in 1571
bishop of Lincoln and in 1584 bishop of Winchester. Cooper was a stout
controversialist; he defended the practice and precept of the Church of
England against the Roman Catholics on the one hand and against the
Martin Marprelate writings and the Puritans on the other. He took some
part, the exact extent of which is disputed, in the persecution of
religious recusants in his diocese, and died at Winchester on the 29th
of April 1594.
Cooper's _Admonition against Martin Marprelate_ was reprinted in 1847,
and his _Answer in Defence of the Truth against the Apology of Private
Mass_ in 1850.
COOPER, THOMAS (1759-1840), American educationalist and political
philosopher, was born in London, England, on the 22nd of October 1759,
and educated at Oxford. Threatened with prosecution at home because of
his active sympathy with the French Revolution, he emigrated to America
about 1793, and began the practice of law in Northumberland county,
Pennsylvania. He was president-judge of the Fourth District of
Pennsylvania in 1806-1811. Like his friend Joseph Priestley, who was
then living in Northumberland, he sympathized with the Anti-Federalists,
and took part in the agitation against the Sedition Act, and for a
newspaper attack in 1799 on President John Adams, Cooper was convicted,
fined and imprisoned for libel. Like Priestley, Cooper was very highly
esteemed by Thomas Jefferson, who secured for him the appointment as
first professor of natural science and law in the University of
Virginia--a position which Cooper was forced to resign under the fierce
attack made on him by the Virginia clergy. After filling the chair of
chemistry in Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pa. (1811-1814), and in the
University of Pennsylvania (1818-1819), he became professor of chemistry
in South Carolina College, at Columbia, in 1819, and afterwards gave
instruction in political economy also. In 1820 he became acting
president of this institution, and was president from 1821 until 1833,
when he resigned owing to the opposition within the state to his liberal
religious views. In December 1834, owing to continued opposition, he
resigned his professorship. He had been formally tried for infidelity in
1832. He was a born agitator: John Adams described him as "a learned,
ingenious, scientific and talented madcap." Before his college classes,
in public lectures, and in numerous pamphlets, he constantly preached
the doctrine of free trade, and tried to show that the protective system
was especially burdensome to the South. His remedy was state action.
Each state, he contended, was a sovereign power and was in duty bound to
protest against the tyrannical acts of the Federal government. He
exercised considerable influence in preparing the people of South
Carolina for nullification and secession; in fact he preceded Calhoun in
advocating a practical application of the state sovereignty principle.
The last years of his life were spent in preparing an edition of the
Statutes at Large of the state, which was completed by David James
McCord (1797-1855) and published in ten volumes (1836-1841). Dr Cooper
died in Columbia on the 11th of May 1840. As a philosopher he was a
follower of Hartley, Erasmus Darwin, Priestley and Broussais; he was a
physiological materialist, and a severe critic of Scotch metaphysics.
Among his publications are _Political Essays_ (1800); _An English
Version of the Institutes of Justinian_ (1812); _Lectures on the
Elements of Political Economy_ (1826); _A Treatise on the Law of Libel
and the Liberty of the Press_ (1830); and a translation of Broussais'
_On Irritation and Insanity_ (1831), with which were printed his own
essays, "The Scripture Doctrine of Materialism," "View of the
Metaphysical and Physiological Arguments in favour of Materialism," and
"Outline of the Doctrine of the Association of Ideas."
See I. Woodbridge Riley, _American Philosophy: the Early Schools_ (New
York, 1907).
COOPER, THOMAS (1805-1892), English Chartist and writer, the son of a
working dyer, was born at Leicester on the 20th of March 1805. After his
father's death his mother began business as a dyer and fancy box-maker
at Gainsborough. Young Cooper was apprenticed to a shoemaker. He had a
passion for knowledge; studied Greek, Latin and Hebrew in his spare
time; and in 1827 gave up cobbling to become a schoolmaster, and, later,
a Methodist preacher. His affairs did not prosper, and after going to
Lincoln, where he obtained work on a local newspaper, he came to London
in 1839. Here he became assistant to a second-hand bookseller, but in
1840 he joined the staff of the _Leicestershire Mercury_. His support of
the Chartist movement obliged him to resign his position, but he
undertook to edit _The Midland Counties Illuminator_, a Chartist
journal, in 1841. He became a leader of the extreme Chartist party, and
for his action in urging on the strike of 1842 he was imprisoned in
Stafford gaol for two years. Here he produced _The Purgatory of
Suicides_, a political epic in ten books, embodying the radical ideas of
the time. In his efforts to publish this work after his liberation he
came under the notice of Benjamin Disraeli and Douglas Jerrold. Through
Jerrold's help it appeared in 1845, and Cooper then turned his attention
to lecturing upon historical and educational subjects. In 1856 he
suddenly renounced the free-thinking doctrines which he had held for
many years, and became a lecturer on Christian evidences. He died at
Lincoln on the 15th of July 1892. Among his other works may be mentioned
the _Bridge of History over the Gulf of Time_ (1871) and the _Life of
Thomas Cooper, written by Himself_ (1872).
COOPER, THOMAS SIDNEY (1803-1902), English painter, was born at
Canterbury on the 20th of September 1803. In very early childhood he
showed in many ways the strength of his artistic inclinations, but as
the circumstances of his family did not admit of his receiving any
systematic training, he began before he was twelve years old to work in
the shop of a coach painter. A little later he obtained employment as a
scene painter; and he alternated between these two occupations for about
eight years. But the desire to become an artist continued to influence
him, and all his spare moments were given up to drawing and painting
from nature. At the age of twenty he went to London, drew for a while in
the British Museum, and was admitted as a student of the Royal Academy.
He then returned to Canterbury, where he was able to earn a living as a
drawing-master and by the sale of sketches and drawings. In 1827 he
settled in Brussels; but four years later he returned to London to live,
and by showing his first picture at the Royal Academy (1833) began an
unprecedentedly prolonged career as an exhibitor. Cooper's name is
mainly associated with pictures of cattle or sheep, and the most notable
of the many hundred he produced are: "A Summer's Noon" (1836), "A
Drover's Halt on the Fells" (1838), "A Group in the Meadows" (1845),
"The Half-past One o'Clock Charge at Waterloo" (1847), "The Shepherd's
Sabbath" (1866), "The Monarch of the Meadows" (1873), "Separated but not
Divorced" (1874), "Isaac's Substitute" (1880), "Pushing off for Tilbury
Fort" (1884), "On a Farm in East Kent" (1889), "Return to the Farm,
Milking Time" (1897). He was elected A.R.A. in 1845 and R.A. in 1867. He
presented to his native place, in 1882, the Sidney Cooper Art Gallery,
built on the site of the house in which he was born. He wrote his
reminiscences, under the title of _My Life_, in 1890; and died on the
7th of February 1902.
COOPERAGE, or COPERAGE (Flemish and Dutch _kooper_, a trader, dealer), a
system of traffic in spirituous liquors, tobacco and other articles
amongst the fishermen in the North Sea. The practice began in the middle
of the 19th century, when Flemish and Dutch _koopers_ frequented the
fishing fleets for the purpose of barter. Trading first in tobacco, they
extended their operations, and soon became practically floating
grog-shops.
The demoralizing nature of the traffic was brought to the public notice
in 1881, and a convention was held at the Hague in 1882 to consider
means of remedying the abuses. In 1887 Great Britain, Germany, Belgium,
Denmark, France and the Netherlands signed an agreement to prevent the
sale or purchase of spirituous liquors among fishermen at sea. In Great
Britain an act (the North Sea Fisheries Act 1888) was passed to carry
into effect the terms of the convention. The act (now repealed and
replaced by the North Sea Fisheries Act 1893, with which it is identical
but for some slight verbal modifications) imposes a fine not exceeding
L50 or a term of imprisonment not exceeding three months for supplying,
exchanging or otherwise selling spirits. It imposes a like penalty for
purchasing spirits by exchange or otherwise, and requires every British
vessel dealing in provisions or other articles to have a licence and to
carry a special mark. In 1882 Mr E. J. Mather started a mission to deep
sea fishermen, which sends out mission ships and supplies the fishermen
with good clothing, literature, tobacco, &c., at a fair price. This
mission, now the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, is
registered by the Board of Trade.
See E. J. Mather, _Nor'ard of the Dogger_ (1888), and publications of
the Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen.
COOPERAGE (from "cooper," a maker of casks, derived from such forms as
Mid. Dutch _cuper_, Ger. _Kufer_, Lat. _cuparius_; the same root is seen
in various Teut. words for a basket, such as Dutch _kuip_ and Eng.
"kipe" and "coop," but cooper is apparently not formed directly from
"coop," which never means a "cask" but always a basket-cage for poultry,
&c.), the art of making casks, barrels and other rounded vessels, the
sides of which are composed of separate staves, held together by hoops
surrounding them. The art is one of great antiquity; Pliny ascribes its
invention to the inhabitants of the Alpine valleys. The trade is one in
which there are numerous subdivisions, the chief of which are tight or
wet and dry or slack cask manufacture. To these may be added white
cooperage, a department which embraces the construction of wooden tubs,
pails, churns and other even-staved vessels. Of all departments, the
manufacture of tight casks or barrels for holding liquids is that which
demands the greatest care and skill since, in addition to being
perfectly tight when filled with liquid, the vessels must bear the
strain of transportation to great distances, and in many cases have to
resist considerable internal pressure when they contain fermenting
liquors. The staves are best made of well-seasoned oak. Since a cask is
a double conoid, usually having its greatest diameter (technically the
bulge or belly) at the centre, each stave must be properly curved to
form a segment of the whole, and must be so cut as to have a suitable
bilge or increase of width from the ends to the middle; it must also
have its edges bevelled to such an angle that it will form tight joints
with its neighbours. The staves being prepared, the next operation is to
set up or raise the barrel. For this purpose as many staves as are
necessary are arranged upright in a circular frame, and round their
lower halves are fitted truss hoops which serve to keep them together
for the permanent hooping. The upper ends are then drawn together by
means of a rope which is passed round them and tightened by a windlass,
and other truss hoops are dropped over them, the wood being steamed or
heated to enable it to bend freely to shape. The two ends of the cask
are next finished to receive the heads by forming the chime, or bevel on
the extremity of the staves, and the croze or groove into which the
heads fit. Finally the heads and permanent hoops are put in place. The
heads, when made of two or more pieces, are jointed by wooden dowel
pins, and after being cut to size are chamfered or bevelled round the
edge to fit into the croze grooves. The hoops are generally of iron. The
manufacture of slack casks proceeds on the same general lines, but is
simpler in various respects, both because less accurate workmanship is
required, and because softer woods, largely fir, may be employed.
Machinery of the most elaborate and specialized character has been
devised to perform most of the operations in making both slack and tight
casks, and though it involves considerable capital outlay it effects so
great an economy of time that it has largely superseded hand labour.
(For an account of such machinery see L. H. Ransome, "Cask-making
Machinery," _Proc. Inst. Civ. Eng._ vol. 115; also an article in
_Engineering_, 1908, 85, p. 845.) Barrels without separate staves are
made by bending a sheet of wood, sawn from a log in a continuous strip,
into the required circular shape, the bulge at the centre being obtained
by cutting out V gores from the ends. Barrels are also sometimes made of
steel, either of the ordinary bulging form or consisting of
straight-sided drums provided near the middle with rings on which they
may be rolled. Immense numbers of casks of different shapes and sizes
are employed in various industries. Tight barrels are a necessity to the
wine and cider maker, brewer and distiller, and are largely used for the
transport of oils and liquid chemicals, while slack barrels are utilized
by the million for packing cement, alkali, china, fruit, fish and
numerous other products.
CO-OPERATION, a term used particularly both for a theory of life, and
for a system of business, with the general sense of "working together"
(_con_, with, and _opus_, work). In its narrowest usage it means a
combination of individuals to economize by buying in common, or increase
their profits by selling in common. In its widest usage it means the
creed that life may best be ordered not by the competition of
individuals, where each seeks the interest of himself and his family,
but by mutual help; by each individual consciously striving for the good
of the social body of which he forms part, and the social body in return
caring for each individual: "each for all, and all for each" is its
accepted motto. Thus it proposes to replace among rational and moral
beings the struggle for existence by voluntary combination for life.
More or less imperfectly embodying this theory, we have co-operation in
the concrete, or "the co-operative movement," meaning those forms of
voluntary association where individuals unite for mutual aid in the
production of wealth, which they will devote to common purposes, or
share among them upon principles of equity, reason and the common good,
agreed upon beforehand. Not that a co-operative society can begin by
saying absolutely what those principles in their purity would dictate.
It begins with current prices, current rates of wages and interest,
current hours of labour, and modifies them as soon as it can wherever
they seem least conformable to equity, reason and the common good.
In the industrial world there is everywhere much working together for
the production of wealth, but this is not included in co-operation if
the shares of those concerned are determined by competition, i.e. by a
struggle and the relative ability of each to secure a large share. Nor
do co-operators regard the association as truly voluntary, though it may
depend on contract, if that contract be one of service only, without an
opportunity for all concerned to share in the ultimate control.
Co-operation in fact is essentially a democratic association. On the
other hand, there is some working together for the production of wealth
which without being competitive, or based on service, is not strictly
voluntary: thus in primitive societies there is much customary help,
combined with customary division of the produce; and in advanced
societies we have state and municipal socialism. These are indeed
sometimes included in co-operation, but at least they are not voluntary
co-operation, since the individual has no choice but to take part in
them; they depend on the power of the ruler to coerce the ruled, or of
the majority to coerce the minority. In co-operation, meaning voluntary
co-operation, there may also, it is true, be frequent overruling of the
minority by the majority, but only so far as the minority have, when
joining the association, voluntarily agreed to permit, and subject
always to an effective ultimate right of secession.
Thus co-operation occupies the middle ground between competition and
state or municipal socialism. In its technical sense, however, it does
not cover the whole of this ground: it does not cover associations which
are primarily for social, provident, or religious purposes, but only
those closely connected with the production of wealth. We speak of
co-operative societies for agriculture, for manufacturing, for retail,
or wholesale distribution, for building or house-owning, for raising
capital and so forth; while the great Friendly Societies (q.v.), though
a part of co-operation as a theory of life, are not part of the
co-operative movement. The line is somewhat hard to draw, and
consequently is drawn somewhat arbitrarily. Thus while a society for
building, or for the collective ownership of houses, is counted a
co-operative society, a Building Society (as we ordinarily understand
the term), though it be purely mutual in its basis, is not so counted in
Great Britain, but is in the United States (see BUILDING SOCIETIES).
Robert Owen.
For the early history of the co-operative movement we have to look
chiefly to Great Britain, and British co-operation acknowledges as its
founder Robert Owen (q.v.). In every age and every country the origins
of co-operation may no doubt be traced, where men have helped one
another in the creation of wealth and agreed as brothers as to its
division. In England long before the days of Owen there was much
co-operation of miners and fishermen which, though scarcely obligatory on
the individuals taking part in it, was largely regulated by custom.
Coming to more purely voluntary associations, co-operative workshops are
recorded, retail co-operation was practised in Scotland from the middle
of the 18th century, while in England shops not unlike co-operative
stores, but without the democratic element, were in one or two instances
set up by benevolent individuals. It does not seem, however, that there
was any theory of co-operation until Owen in England, and almost
simultaneously Fourier (q.v.) in France, formulated their gospels, not
identical, yet having much in common. Of these two Owen and his teaching
are by far the more important.