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The Riverside Biographical Series
NUMBER 4
PETER COOPER
BY
ROSSITER W. RAYMOND
=The Riverside Biographical Series=
1. ANDREW JACKSON, by W. G. BROWN.
2. JAMES B. EADS, by LOUIS HOW.
3. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, by PAUL E. MORE.
4. PETER COOPER, by R. W. RAYMOND.
5. THOMAS JEFFERSON, by H. C. MERWIN.
6. WILLIAM PENN, by GEORGE HODGES.
7. GENERAL GRANT, by WALTER ALLEN.
8. LEWIS AND CLARK, by WILLIAM R. LIGHTON.
9. JOHN MARSHALL, by JAMES B. THAYER.
10. ALEXANDER HAMILTON, by CHAS. A. CONANT.
11. WASHINGTON IRVING, by H. W. BOYNTON.
12. PAUL JONES, by HUTCHINS HAPGOOD.
13. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS, by W. G. BROWN.
14. SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN, by H. D. SEDGWICK, Jr.
Each about 140 pages, 16mo, with photogravure
portrait, 65 cents, _net_; _School Edition_, each,
50 cents, _net_.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
[Illustration: (signed) Peter Cooper]
PETER COOPER
BY
ROSSITER W. RAYMOND
[Illustration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
=The Riverside Press Cambridge=
COPYRIGHT, 1901, BY ROSSITER W. RAYMOND.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
PREFACE vii
I. ANCESTRY 1
II. BOYHOOD AND YOUTH 10
III. BUSINESS VENTURES 16
IV. INVENTIONS 29
V. THE TOM THUMB 38
VI. MUNICIPAL AFFAIRS 52
VII. THE COOPER UNION FOR THE
ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE AND ART 64
VIII. NATIONAL POLITICS 96
IX. THE END 104
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 (as in his
case) 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.
1. The time of his birth and the prophetic anticipations of his parents
profoundly influenced his ambition to do something great for his
fellow-citizens of the republic whose life began so nearly with his own.
2. The atmosphere surrounding his youth was one of unlimited and
audacious adventure. New institutions, a virgin continent, the ardent
desire to be independent of the Old World, and a profound belief in the
destiny of America, all combined to stimulate endeavor. What Peter
Cooper said of himself as an apprentice was true of the typical young
American of his time: "I was always planning and contriving, and was
never satisfied unless I was doing something difficult--something that
had never been done before, if possible."
3. The new freedom and the vast opportunity presented in the young
republic encouraged, to a degree not paralleled before or since, that
change of occupation which, with all its drawbacks, had the one great
merit that it educated men to various activities. It was no disgrace to
an American to go into one business after another, seeking the one which
would prove most profitable and agreeable. Thus, Peter Cooper worked
successively as a hatter, a coach-builder, a machinist, a machine-maker,
a grocer, an iron-worker, and a glue-manufacturer, achieving success in
every occupation, but abandoning each for something more promising, and
learning in each something which promoted his success in the next.
4. At every stage of his progress, he followed the ideal of personal
independence, the honest acquisition of property, the establishment of a
home, and the rearing of a family. These were the first duties and the
dearest wishes--no matter what greater things might lie beyond. And he
profoundly realized that temperance, industry, frugality, and patience
were the necessary preliminaries to any longed-for achievement. As he
says, he had first to spend thirty years in getting a start; then to
spend another thirty years in accumulating the means for further advance
into the wider sphere of his aspirations. And during each stage of this
process, he was patient, as well as hopeful, neither wasting his
energies in visionary schemes nor allowing the eddies of daily toil to
divert the current of his deeper purposes.
5. At every stage, however, he found himself hindered by lack of
thorough knowledge. He invented perpetually and profusely; but some of
his most cherished inventions did not find practical recognition,
because he had attempted the premature or the impossible. His guiding
principle, of trying to do something that had never been done before, is
not an adequate substitute for a scientific knowledge of what can be,
and now needs to be, done. He found himself often too far in advance of
his generation. Moreover, he found that the lack of education crippled
him in the attempt to make other men understand and appreciate his
fruitful ideas. This is true of all really great "self-made men." They
may have achieved success and fame in spite of early disadvantages; they
may, perhaps, recognize the fact that such disadvantages, necessitating
a stern struggle, have sifted out, by natural selection, the possessors
of genius and sterling character; but not one of them fails to lament
the lack of that early training which would have made him still more
successful than he is; and not one of them fails to desire, for his
children and the coming generation of his fellows, the early advantages
which were denied to himself.
6. This experience it was which gave form to the aspirations and
purposes of Peter Cooper. As an apprentice, he resolved to do something
for the benefit of apprentices--to found some institution which should
supplement the deficiencies of early education, furnishing to virtuous,
industrious, and ambitious youths the means of progress, and attracting
the thoughtless or indolent into the same ascending road. How this
conception came to be both modified and realized will be seen in later
pages. At this point it is sufficient to note that the plan was
originally not only philanthropic, but patriotic and practical. It
contemplated the benefit, through means adapted to their special
condition, of Americans of that class to which Peter Cooper himself
belonged.
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
I
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 (now Water) 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.
II
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 (since the processes described really overlapped
instead of separately succeeding one another), 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.
He constructed a toy wagon, sold it for six dollars, managed to gather
four dollars more, invested the ten dollars in lottery tickets, and drew
only blanks, of which experience he said many years later, "I consider
it one of the best investments of my life; for I then learned that it
was not my _forte_ to make money at games of chance."
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.
III
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
$1.50 a day (then regarded as high wages) 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.[1] 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 (on what is now Thirty-Second Street) 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.
By these simple, old-fashioned methods he built up a business and
accumulated a fortune too large to be thus administered. It would have
been impossible for one head to carry the details of work and
management, for one pair of eyes to superintend each part of the work,
or for one pair of feet, however tireless, to travel all the ways which
lead to and from a great modern industrial establishment. Still less
could financial direction and protection be compassed by the simple
scheme which Mr. Cooper, in his old age, recalled with pride. "I used,"
he said once, "to pay all my debts every Saturday night; and I knew
that what I had left was my own!" This could not have been strictly
true; but it doubtless expressed an old man's memory of the way he
began, and the principles he had followed, with that horror of debt
which dated from the time when debtors could be put in jail. Fortunately
for Mr. Cooper, his son Edward, and his son-in-law, Abram S. Hewitt,
were at hand to undertake the management of his business enterprises at
the time when his own simple methods would have proved inadequate, so
that his inventive genius, adventurous courage, and, above all, intense
philanthropy, were backed with ample means.
In this account of his business ventures (though of much later date than
those already mentioned) 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 manufacture of iron was one of the early industries of the American
colonies, and after the Revolution it was prosecuted with increased
activity in small and primitive establishments. With its development
into scientific forms on a large scale Mr. Cooper was both directly and
indirectly connected. His Ringwood estate in New Jersey had been the
scene of the operations of the Ringwood Company in 1740, and of its
successors,--Hasenclever (1764) and Erskine (1771); and the Durham
furnace, on the Delaware River in Pennsylvania (on the site of the
Durham Iron Works of Cooper & Hewitt), made its first blast in 1727. Mr.
Cooper himself was engaged in 1830 in the manufacture of charcoal iron
near Baltimore, and in 1836, together with his brother Thomas, he
operated a rolling-mill in New York (on Thirty-Third Street, near Third
Avenue). At this mill anthracite was used for puddling in 1840. In 1845
the business was removed to Trenton, N. J.; and in the new
rolling-mill--then the largest in the United States--built at Trenton
for the manufacture of rails, the first iron beams for buildings were
rolled in 1854. By the erection of blast furnaces at Phillipsburg and
Ringwood, N. J., and Durham, Pa., and the addition of wire mills, bridge
shop, chain shop, etc., to the works at Trenton, the purchase of iron
and coal lands, and the development of numerous mines, the firm of
Cooper & Hewitt achieved high rank among the ironmasters of America; and
the Iron and Steel Institute of Great Britain conferred upon Peter
Cooper in 1879 the "Bessemer gold medal" for his services in the
development of the American iron trade. In 1890 the same honor was given
to Mr. Abram S. Hewitt in recognition of the experiments at Phillipsburg
as early as 1856 to test the new invention of Bessemer, of his
introduction of the open-hearth steel process into the United States,
and of other services rendered to the steel industry,--in all of which
he may be said to have followed, with the advantages of a wider culture
and ampler means, the example set by Mr. Cooper.
One of the boldest yet wisest and most profitable operations of Mr.
Cooper was his investment in the Atlantic cable enterprise of Cyrus
Field. He was already past middle age when this audacious scheme began
to be dreamed of. In 1842 Morse had laid down an experimental cable from
Castle Garden to Governor's Island in New York harbor, and claimed as a
practical inference that a telegraphic communication on his plan could
"with certainty be established across the Atlantic."[2] In 1851 the
first cable was laid between France and England, and others rapidly
followed on ocean lines over short distances. The principle was thus
established, and the doubts as to its practical application to a line of
at least twenty-five hundred miles were of such a character as to seem
more serious to scientific men than to American capitalists of Mr.
Cooper's type. In March, 1854, the New York, Newfoundland, & London
Telegraph Company was organized, and Mr. Cooper became (and remained for
twenty trying years) its president. There was little difficulty in
raising the money for the eighty-five miles of cable which were to be
laid under the Gulf of St. Lawrence, or in obtaining from the British
colonies favorable charters granting exclusive privileges, land grants,
and even subsidies. Yet the construction of the land line across
Newfoundland to the terminus at Heart's Content proved difficult and
costly, and the St. Lawrence cable was lost in laying. Yet additional
capital was subscribed; and a couple of years later the Newfoundland
line, the St. Lawrence cable, and another submarine link of thirteen
miles across the Straits of Northumberland had been successfully
finished. Nothing remained to be done _except_ the procuring of means
and the devising of successful methods for the installation of the
Atlantic cable itself, without which all this preliminary expenditure
would have been thrown away.
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:
[1] Many years after his wife's death, and shortly before his own, Mr.
Cooper dictated the following passage, which is almost the last in his
_Reminiscences_:--
"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."
[2] Letter of Morse to the Secretary of the Treasury in the autumn of
1843.
IV
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 (as Mr. Cooper explained half a
century later) 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.
Now, there is no such loss of power through the crank as he imagined,
nor is it likely that any other device for obtaining rotary from
rectilinear motion will be found superior to that which Watt devised.
But Peter Cooper assailed this fancied evil with undoubting confidence,
both as to its existence and as to his ability to do away with it. The
result was an invention for which he received, April 28, 1828, letters
patent of the United States. At that early day patents were
comparatively few,--so few that this one bears no number; and the duties
of general administration did not prevent the highest officials from
attending to details. This patent, issued to Peter Cooper, of New York,
was personally signed by John Quincy Adams, President; countersigned by
Henry Clay, Secretary of State; transmitted to William Wirt,
Attorney-General; examined, approved, and signed by him, and returned to
the Department of State for final delivery to the patentee. It grants
for fourteen years to the said Peter Cooper, his heirs, administrators,
and assignees the exclusive right to make, use, or license others to
use, the described improvement in the method of effecting rotary motion
directly from the alternate rectilinear motion of a steam piston.
Evidently these distinguished statesmen--Adams, Clay, and Wirt--were not
experts in mechanics, or at least did not undertake to hinder by
technical criticism the experiments of American ambition; and there was
no trained corps of patent-examiners to decide upon the novelty,
practicability, and usefulness of any proposed improvement in the arts.
Probably the government shared at that time the dominant American
feeling of unconquerable youth, ready to attack all problems, especially
those which previous experience had pronounced insoluble, and to
determine the impossible by attempting it. This spirit has in fact more
or less dominated the United States Patent Office down to the present
time. With all its present equipment of examiners, trained in theory and
versed in technical literature, it still concerns itself chiefly in the
consideration of a proposed invention with the question of novelty,
rather than that of feasibility or value; and the effect has been that,
while thousands of patents are granted for absurd, unnecessary, or
inoperative devices, the net result of the encouragement thus given to
individual ingenuity and audacity is a catalogue of great inventions
unmatched in the history of any other nation.
The patent of Peter Cooper, which now lies before me,--a time-stained
parchment bearing the great seal of the United States and the autographs
of the famous men named above,--is accompanied by no drawings; but it
contains a detailed specification which shows that the invention
consisted in an arrangement by which, at each forward movement, a
prolongation of the piston rod clawed into an endless chain, which was
pulled back by the return stroke. This chain passed around a wheel, to
which it consequently imparted a rotary motion.
Engineers do not need to be told that this cumbrous arrangement could
not successfully replace the crank, even if such a replacement were
desirable. Yet the inventor constructed a working-machine, and satisfied
himself, by a "duty trial" of some sort, that it "saved two fifths of
the steam." His discovery, however, was not hailed with immediate
recognition by the mechanical public; and its author, undisturbed in his
faith, bided his time.
This, by the way, points to a characteristic of Peter Cooper,
differentiating him from the numerous enthusiasts whom prudent men are
accustomed to avoid. He was not a man "of one idea." His fertile and
ingenious mind threw out its suggestions in every direction, into fields
untrodden by experience; but when any such plan failed of acceptance, he
turned, with undiminished courage and hope, to something else,
remaining, nevertheless, still steadfast in his former conception, and
ready to seize any opportunity for its realization.
Thus it came to pass that Mr. Cooper's abortive improvement upon the
steam engine was the source of his fame as the builder of the first
American locomotive, as the following chapter will explain.
V
THE TOM THUMB
IN the specification of the patent secured in 1828 by Mr. Cooper for an
improved steam engine, he took pains to declare the suitability of his
invention as a motor for "land carriages." No doubt he had heard of
Stephenson's "Rocket," if not of the engine built by Blenkinsop in 1813,
the sight of which in operation caused Stephenson to resolve that he
would "make a better." The famous competitive trial of the Rocket, the
Novelty, the Sanspareil, and the Perseverance, on a two-mile section of
the Liverpool and Manchester Railroad, took place in October, 1827, at
which time Peter Cooper must have been perfecting the application for
his patent.
But other circumstances played their part in the result which we are
about to consider. Some time before 1830 Mr. Cooper had been drawn into
a land speculation at Canton, in the suburbs of Baltimore. Failing of
support from his partners, he had been obliged to buy them out, and to
assume the whole burden of the enterprise. Just at that time there was
great popular expectation of the future importance of Baltimore. A
little earlier, there had been general despair among the merchants of
that city. New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore were seeking the trade
of the region beyond the Alleghanies,--then "the West," but now the
centre of the population of the United States. New York flanked the
mountains with her Erie Canal; Philadelphia got at last a practicable,
though less satisfactory, water line; but Baltimore, though nearest of
all to the longed-for market, found, through careful examination by
eminent engineers, that no canal was practicable for her, at a cost
within her means. In 1824 and 1825 the consequent general despondency
concerning the future of the city was so strong that Baltimore
merchants began to move to New York and Philadelphia.[3]
But at this period the world began to hear of railways. A well-known
merchant of Baltimore, returning from England, described with enthusiasm
the coal trains, drawn by the cumbrous ante-Stephenson engines, which he
had seen there. The idea of a tramway (with or without steam motors)
found ready acceptance in a community both enterprising and desperate. A
town meeting, held in 1826, to consider Western communications, resulted
in an application to the Maryland legislature, and the incorporation, in
March, 1827, of the Baltimore and Ohio,--the first railroad company thus
created in the United States for purposes of general transportation,--the
leader of that vast multitude of similar enterprises, the history of
which is the history of our nation's marvelous commercial progress. By
the legislative charter, the city of Baltimore and the State of Maryland
were authorized to subscribe to the company's stock.
In the address already cited, Mr. Latrobe, an eye-witness, says of the
scenes which followed:--
"Then came a scene which almost beggars description. By this time,
public excitement had gone beyond fever heat and reached the boiling
point. Everybody wanted stock. The number of shares subscribed were to
be apportioned, if the limit of the capital should be exceeded; and
every one set about obtaining proxies. Parents subscribed in the names
of their children, and paid the dollar on each share that the rules
prescribed. Before even a survey had been made, the possession of stock
in any quantity was regarded as a provision for old age; and great was
the scramble to obtain it. The excitement in Baltimore roused public
attention elsewhere; and a railroad mania began to pervade the land."
The proposed railroad was to pass through Mr. Cooper's Canton property,
which he had already begun to develop, "so that it should pay the
taxes," by building upon it charcoal kilns, after a design of his own,
with the purpose of turning the forest into charcoal, and, by means of
this fuel, smelting the iron ore which the land contained. What was the
immediate commercial outcome of this enterprise is not recorded. Mr.
Cooper's characteristic recollection, more than sixty years later, was
that, "with the exception of a dangerous explosion," which nearly cost
him his life, the charcoal kilns were "a great success!"