to the whole country, ruined Peter Cooper's business; as it was no
longer possible to make cloth in the United States with profit. With
three trades at his finger ends, he now tried a fourth, cabinet-making,
in which he did not succeed. He moved out of town, and bought the stock
of a grocer, whose store stood on the very site of the present Cooper
Institute, at that time surrounded by fields and vacant lots. But even
then he thought that, by the time he was ready to begin his evening
school, that angle of land would probably be an excellent central spot
on which to build it.
He did very well with his grocery store; but it never would have enabled
him to endow his Institute. One day when he had kept his grocery about
a year, and used his new cradle at intervals in the rooms above, an old
friend of his accosted him, as he stood at the door of the grocery.
"I have been building," said his visitor, "a glue factory for my son;
but I don't think that either he or I can make it pay. But you are the
very man to do it."
"I'll go and see it," said Peter Cooper.
He got into his friend's wagon and they drove to the spot, which was
near the corner of Madison Avenue and Twenty-ninth Street, almost on the
very spot now occupied by an edifice of much note called "The Little
Church Round the Corner." He liked the look of the new factory, and he
saw no reason why the people of New York should send all the way to
Russia for good glue. His friend asked two thousand dollars for the
establishment as it stood, and Peter Cooper chanced to have that sum of
money, and no more. He bought the factory on the spot, sold his grocery
soon, and plunged into the manufacture of glue, of which he knew nothing
except that Russian glue was very good and American very bad.
Now he studied the composition of glue, and gradually learned the secret
of making the best possible article which brought the highest price in
the market. He worked for twenty years without a book-keeper, clerk,
salesman, or agent. He rose with the dawn. When his men came at seven
o'clock to work, they found the factory fires lighted, and it was the
master who had lighted them. He watched closely and always the boiling
of his glue, and at mid-day, when the critical operation was over, he
drove into the city and went the round of his customers, selling them
glue and isinglass, and passed the evening in posting his books and
reading to his family.
He developed the glue business until it yielded him a profit of thirty
thousand dollars a year. He soon began to feel himself a capitalist, and
to count the years until he would be able to begin the erection of the
institution he had in his mind. But men who are known to have capital
are continually solicited to embark in enterprises, and he was under a
strong temptation to yield to such solicitations, for the scheme which
he had projected would involve a larger expenditure than could be
ordinarily made from one business in one lifetime. He used to tell the
story of his getting into the business of making iron, which was finally
a source of great profit to him.
"In 1828," he would say, "I bought three thousand acres of land within
the city limits of Baltimore for $105,000. When I first purchased the
property it was in the midst of a great excitement created by a promise
of the rapid completion of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which had
been commenced by a subscription of five dollars per share. In the
course of the first year's operations they had spent more than the five
dollars per share. But the road had to make so many short turns in going
around points of rocks that they found they could not complete the road
without a much larger sum than they had supposed would be necessary;
while the many short turns in the road seemed to render it entirely
useless for locomotive purposes. The principal stockholders had become
so discouraged that they said they would not pay any more, and would
lose all they had already paid in. After conversing with them, I told
them that if they would hold on a little while I would put a small
locomotive on the road, which I thought would demonstrate the
practicability of using steam-engines on the road, even with all the
short turns in it. I got up a small engine for that purpose, and put it
upon the road, and invited the stockholders to witness the experiment.
After a good deal of trouble and difficulty in accomplishing the work,
the stockholders came, and thirty-six men were taken into a car, and,
with six men on the locomotive, which carried its own fuel and water,
and having to go up hill eighteen feet to a mile, and turn all the short
turns around the points of rocks, we succeeded in making the thirteen
miles, on the first passage out, in one hour and twelve minutes, and we
returned from Ellicott's Mills to Baltimore in fifty-seven minutes. This
locomotive was built to demonstrate that cars could be drawn around
short curves, beyond anything believed at that time to be possible. The
success of this locomotive also answered the question of the possibility
of building railroads in a country scarce of capital, and with immense
stretches of very rough country to pass, in order to connect commercial
centres, without the deep cuts, the tunneling and leveling which short
curves might avoid. My contrivance saved this road from bankruptcy."
He still had his tract of Baltimore land upon his hands, which the check
to the prosperity of the city rendered for the time almost valueless; so
he determined to build ironworks upon it, and a rolling-mill. In his
zeal to acquire knowledge at first hand, he had a narrow escape from
destruction in Baltimore.
"In my efforts to make iron," he said, "I had to begin by burning the
wood growing upon the spot into charcoal, and in order to do that, I
erected large kilns, twenty-five feet in diameter, twelve feet high,
circular in form, hooped around with iron at the top, arched over so as
to make a tight place in which to put the wood, with single bricks left
out in different places in order to smother the fire out when the wood
was sufficiently burned. After having burned the coal in one of these
kilns perfectly, and believing the fire entirely smothered out, we
attempted to take the coal out of the kiln; but when we had got it about
half-way out, the coal itself took fire, and the men, after carrying
water some time to extinguish it, gave up in despair. I then went
myself to the door of the kiln to see if anything more could be done,
and just as I entered the door the gas itself took fire and enveloped me
in a sheet of flame. I had to run some ten feet to get out, and in doing
so my eyebrows and whiskers were burned, and my fur hat was scorched
down to the body of the fur. How I escaped I know not. I seemed to be
literally blown out by the explosion, and I narrowly escaped with my
life."
The ironworks were finally removed to Trenton, New Jersey, where to this
day, under the vigorous management of Mr. Hewitt and his partners, they
are very successful.
During these active years Peter Cooper never for a moment lost sight of
the great object of his life. We have a new proof of this, if proof were
needed, in the Autobiography recently published of the eloquent Orville
Dewey, pastor of the Unitarian Church of the Messiah, which Peter Cooper
attended for many years.
"There were two men," says Dr. Dewey, "who came to our church whose
coming seemed to be by chance, but was of great interest to me, for I
valued them greatly. They were Peter Cooper and Joseph Curtis.[2]
Neither of them then belonged to any religious society, or regularly
attended any church. They happened to be walking down Broadway one
Sunday evening, as the congregation were entering Stuyvesant Hall,
where we then temporarily worshiped, and they said:--
"'Let us go in here and see what _this_ is.'
"When they came out, as they both told me, they said to one another:--
"'This is the place for _us_!'
"And they immediately connected themselves with the congregation, to be
among its most valued members. Peter Cooper was even then meditating
that plan of a grand educational institute which he afterwards carried
out. He was engaged in a large and successful business, and his one
idea--which he often discussed with me--was to obtain the means of
building that institute. A man of the gentlest nature and the simplest
habits; yet his religious nature was his most remarkable quality. It
seemed to breathe through his life as fresh and tender as if it were in
some holy retreat, instead of a life of business."
Indeed there are several aged New Yorkers who can well remember hearing
Mr. Cooper speak of his project at that period.
After forty years of successful business life, he found, upon estimating
his resources, that he possessed about seven hundred thousand dollars
over and above the capital invested in his glue and iron works. Already
he had become the owner of portions of the ground he had selected so
long ago for the site of his school. The first lot he bought, as Mr.
Hewitt informs me, about thirty years before he began to build, and
from that time onward he continued to buy pieces of the ground as often
as they were for sale, if he could spare the money; until in 1854 the
whole block was his own.
At first his intention was merely to establish and endow just such an
evening school as he had felt the need of when he was an apprentice boy
in New York. But long before he was ready to begin, there were free
evening schools as well as day schools in every ward of the city, and he
therefore resolved to found something, he knew not what, which should
impart to apprentices and young mechanics a knowledge of the arts and
sciences underlying the ordinary trades, such as drawing, chemistry,
mechanics, and various branches of natural philosophy.
While he was revolving this scheme in his mind he happened to meet in
the street a highly accomplished physician who had just returned from a
tour in Europe, and who began at once to describe in glowing words the
Polytechnic School of Paris, wherein mechanics and engineers receive the
instruction which their professions require. The doctor said that young
men came from all parts of France and lived on dry bread, just to attend
the Polytechnic.
He was no longer in doubt; he entered at once upon the realization of
his project. Beginning to build in 1854, he erected a massive structure
of brick, stone, and iron, six stories in height, and fire-proof in
every part, at a cost of seven hundred thousand dollars, the savings of
his lifetime up to that period. Five years after, he delivered the
complete structure, with the hearty consent of his wife, his children,
and his son-in-law, into the hands of trustees, thus placing it beyond
his own control forever. Two thousand pupils at once applied for
admission. From that day to this the Institute has continued from year
to year to enlarge its scope and improve its methods. Mr. Cooper added
something every year to its resources, until his entire gift to the
public amounted to about two millions of dollars.
Peter Cooper lived to the great age of ninety-two. No face in New York
was more familiar to the people, and surely none was so welcome to them
as the benign, placid, beaming countenance of "Old Peter Cooper." The
roughest cartman, the most reckless hack driver would draw up his horses
and wait without a word of impatience, if it was Peter Cooper's quaint
old gig that blocked the way. He was one of the most uniformly happy
persons I have ever met, and he retained his cheerfulness to the very
end. Being asked one day in his ninetieth year, how he had preserved so
well his bodily and mental vigor, he replied:--
"I always find something to keep me busy; and to be doing something for
the good of man, or to keep the wheels in motion, is the best medicine
one can take. I run up and down stairs here almost as easily as I did
years ago, when I never expected that my term would run into the
nineties. I have occasional twinges from the nervous shock and physical
injury sustained from an explosion that occurred while I was conducting
some experiments with nitrogen gas years ago. In other respects my days
pass as painlessly as they did when I was a boy carrying a grocer's
basket about the streets. It is very curious, but somehow, though I have
none, of the pains and troubles that old men talk about, I have not the
same luxury of life--the same relish in the mere act of living--that I
had then. Age is like babyhood come back again in a certain way. Even
the memories of baby-life come back--the tricks, the pranks, the boyish
dreams; and things that I did not remember at forty or fifty years old I
recollect vividly now. But a boy of ninety and a boy of nine are very
different things, none the less. I never felt better in my life except
for twinges occasioned by my nitrogen experiment. But still I hear a
voice calling to me, as my mother often did, when I was a boy 'Peter,
Peter, it is about bed-time,' and I have an old man's presentiment that
I shall be taken soon."
He loved the Institute he had founded to the last hour of his
consciousness. A few weeks before his death he said to Reverend Robert
Collyer:--
"I would be glad to have four more years of life given me, for I am
anxious to make some additional improvements in Cooper Union, and then
part of my life-work would be complete. If I could only live four years
longer I would die content."
Dr. Collyer adds this pleasing anecdote:--
"I remember a talk I had with him not long before his death, in which he
said that a Presbyterian minister of great reputation and ability, but
who has since died, had called upon him one day and among other things
discussed the future life. They were old and tried friends, the minister
and Mr. Cooper, and when the clergyman began to question Mr. Cooper's
belief, he said: 'I sometimes think that if one has too good a time here
below, there is less reason for him to go to heaven. I have had a very
good time, but I know poor creatures whose lives have been spent in a
constant struggle for existence. They should have some reward hereafter.
They have worked here; they should be rewarded after death. The only
doubts that I have about the future are whether I have not had too good
a time on earth.'"
He died in April, 1883, from a severe cold which he had not the strength
to throw off. His end was as peaceful and painless as his life had been
innocent and beneficial.
[2] A noted philanthropist of that day, devoted to the improvement of
the public schools of the city.
PARIS-DUVERNEY.
FRENCH FINANCIER.
Some one has remarked that the old French monarchy was a despotism
tempered by epigrams. I take the liberty of adding that if the despotism
of the later French kings had not been frequently tempered by something
more effectual than epigrams, it would not have lasted as long as it
did.
What tempered and saved it was, that, occasionally, by hook or by crook,
men of sterling sense and ability rose from the ordinary walks of life
to positions of influence and power, which enabled them to counteract
the folly of the ruling class.
About the year 1691 there was an inn at the foot of the Alps, near the
border line that divided France from Switzerland, bearing the sign, St.
Francis of the Mountain. There was no village near. The inn stood alone
among the mountains, being supported in part by travelers going from
France to Geneva, and in part by the sale of wine to the farmers who
lived in the neighborhood. The landlord, named Paris, was a man of
intelligence and ability, who, besides keeping his inn, cultivated a
farm; assisted in both by energetic, capable sons, of whom he had four:
Antoine, aged twenty-three; Claude, twenty-one; Joseph, seven; and Jean,
an infant. It was a strong, able family, who loved and confided in one
another, having no thought but to live and die near the spot upon which
they were born, and in about the same sphere of life.
But such was not their destiny. An intrigue of the French ministry drew
these four sons from obscurity, and led them to the high places of the
world. Pontchartrain, whose name is still borne by a lake in Louisiana,
was then minister of finance to Louis XIV. To facilitate the movements
of the army in the war then going on between France and Savoy, he
proposed to the king the formation of a company which should contract to
supply the army with provisions; and, the king accepting his suggestion,
the company was formed, and began operations. But the secretary of war
took this movement of his colleague in high dudgeon, as the supply of
the army, he thought, belonged to the war department. To frustrate and
disgrace the new company of contractors, he ordered the army destined to
operate in Italy to take the field on the first of May, several weeks
before it was possible for the contractors by the ordinary methods to
collect and move the requisite supplies. The company explained the
impossibility of their feeding the army so early in the season; but the
minister of war, not ill-pleased to see his rival embarrassed, held to
his purpose, and informed the contractors' agent that he must have
thirty thousand sacks of flour at a certain post by a certain day, or
his head should answer it.
The agent, alarmed, and at his wits' end, consulted the innkeeper of the
Alps, whom he knew to be an energetic spirit, and perfectly well
acquainted with the men, the animals, the resources, and the roads of
the region in which he lived, and through which the provisions would
have to pass. The elder sons of the landlord were in the field at the
time at work, and he told the agent he must wait a few hours till he
could talk the matter over with them. At the close of the day there was
a family consultation, and the result was that they undertook the task.
Antoine, the eldest son, went to Lyons, the nearest large city, and
induced the magistrates to lend the king the grain preserved in the
public depositories against famine, engaging to replace it as soon as
the navigation opened in the spring. The magistrates, full of zeal for
the king's service, yielded willingly; and meanwhile, Claude, the second
of the brothers, bought a thousand mules; and, in a very few days, in
spite of the rigor of the season, long lines of mules, each laden with a
sack of flour, were winding their way through the defiles of the Alps,
guided by peasants whom the father of these boys had selected.
This operation being insufficient, hundreds of laborers were set to work
breaking the ice in the night, and in constructing barges, so as to be
in readiness the moment navigation was practicable.
Early in the spring two hundred barge loads were set floating down
toward the seat of war; and by the time the general in command was ready
to take the field, there was an abundance of tents, provisions,
ammunition, and artillery within easy reach.
The innkeeper and his sons were liberally recompensed; and their talents
thus being made known to the company of contractors, they were employed
again a year or two after in collecting the means required in a siege,
and in forwarding provisions to a province threatened with famine. These
large operations gave the brothers a certain distaste for their country
life, and they removed to Paris in quest of a more stirring and
brilliant career than an Alpine inn with farm adjacent could afford. One
of them enlisted at first in the king's guards, and the rest obtained
clerkships in the office of the company of contractors. By the time they
were all grown to manhood, the eldest, a man over forty, and the
youngest, eighteen or twenty, they had themselves become army
contractors and capitalists, noted in army circles for the tact, the
fidelity, and the indomitable energy with which they carried on their
business.
The reader is aware that during the last years of the reign of Louis
XIV., France suffered a series of most disastrous defeats from the
allied armies, commanded by the great English general, the Duke of
Marlborough. It was these four able brothers who supplied the French
army with provisions during that terrible time; and I do not hesitate to
say, that, on two or three critical occasions, it was their energy and
intelligence that saved the independence of their country. Often the
king's government could not give them a single louis-d'or in money when
a famishing army was to be supplied. On several occasions they spent
their whole capital in the work and risked their credit. There was one
period of five months, as they used afterwards to say, when they never
once went to bed _sure_ of being able to feed the army the next day.
During those years of trial they were sustained in a great degree by the
confidence which they inspired in their honesty, as well as in their
ability. The great French banker and capitalist then was Samuel Bernard.
On more than one occasion Bernard saved them by lending them, on their
personal security, immense sums; in one crisis as much as three million
francs.
We can judge of the extent of their operations, when we learn that,
during the last two years of the war, they had to supply a hundred and
eighty thousand men in the field, and twenty thousand men in garrison,
while receiving from the government little besides depreciated paper.
Peace came at last; and it came at a moment when the whole capital of
the four brothers was in the king's paper, and when the finances were
in a state of inconceivable confusion. The old king died in 1715,
leaving as heir to the throne a sickly boy five years of age. The royal
paper was so much depreciated that the king's promise to pay one hundred
francs sold in the street for twenty-five francs. Then came the Scotch
inflator, John Law, who gave France a brief delirium of paper
prosperity, ending with the most woful and widespread collapse ever
known. It was these four brothers, but especially the third brother,
Joseph Paris, known in French history as Paris-Duverney, who, by labors
almost without example, restored the finances of the country, funded the
debt at a reasonable interest, and enabled France to profit by the
twenty years of peace that lay before her.
There is nothing in the whole history of finance more remarkable than
the five years' labors of these brothers after the Law-mania of 1719;
and it is hardly possible to overstate the value of their services at a
time when the kingdom was governed by an idle and dissolute regent, and
when there was not a nobleman about the court capable of grappling with
the situation. The regent died of his debaucheries in the midst of their
work. The Duke of Bourbon succeeded him; he was governed by Madame de
Prie; and between them they concocted a nice scheme for getting the
young king married, who had then reached the mature age of fifteen. The
idea was to rule the king through a queen of their own choosing, and
who would be grateful to them for her elevation.
But it turned out quite otherwise. The king, indeed, was married, and he
was very fond of his wife, and she tried to carry out the desires of
those who had made her queen of France. But there was an obstacle in the
way; and that obstacle was the king's unbounded confidence in his tutor,
the Abbé de Fleury, a serene and extremely agreeable old gentleman past
seventy. A struggle arose between the old tutor and Madame de Prie for
the possession of the young king. The tutor won the victory. The Duke of
Bourbon was exiled to his country-seat, and Madame de Prie was sent
packing. Paris-Duverney and his first clerk were put into the Bastille,
where they were detained for two years in unusually rigorous
imprisonment, and his three brothers were exiled to their native
province.
Another intrigue of court set them free again, and the four brothers
were once more in Paris, where they continued their career as bankers,
contractors, and capitalists as long as they lived, each of them
acquiring and leaving a colossal fortune, which their heirs were
considerate enough to dissipate. It was Paris-Duverney who suggested and
managed the great military school at Paris, which still exists. It was
he also who helped make the fortunes of the most celebrated literary men
of his time, Voltaire and Beaumarchais. He did this by admitting them to
a share in army contracts, one of which yielded Voltaire a profit of
seven hundred thousand francs, which, with good nursing, made him at
last the richest literary man that ever lived.