Peter Cooper Part 2

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 c.u.mbrous 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 mult.i.tude 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 quant.i.ty 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 pa.s.s 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!"

But the great value of the property was expected to be realized through the new railroad; and this expectation suffered a serious blow when the horse cars failed to pay expenses; the operation of the line was suspended; the directors lost faith in the enterprise; and many of the princ.i.p.al stockholders declared that they would rather lose the investment made so far than "throw good money after bad." For the hope that the new agency of steam might help them out was blighted by the news from England that Stephenson had said that steam could not be used as a motive power on a road having curves of less than 900 feet radius; and this road had, at Point of Rocks, a necessary curve with a radius of only 150 feet!

The situation presented exactly the sort of challenge calculated to arouse the courage and ingenuity of Peter Cooper, besides appealing to another of his personal characteristics, namely, his undying and unalterable faith in his own ideas and conclusions, whether they had achieved recognition or not. He could lay aside a scheme which had not found immediate and successful application, and turn his attention, with undiminished vivacity, to something else; but he never owned to a real defeat. And now the problem presented at Baltimore seemed to him a providential call for his intervention. If the English engineers could not run their locomotives around sharp curves, it must be because they persisted in using the vicious crank, which he had already superseded by his (temporarily unappreciated) invention! And, with unshaken faith in that device, he informed the Baltimore and Ohio directors (to use the words in which, long afterwards, he told the story) that he thought he "could knock together a locomotive which would get a train around the Point of Rocks."

It is a curious circ.u.mstance that, ever since that day, the characteristic difference between English and American locomotives has been the ability of the latter to pa.s.s curves of shorter radius than the former can safely follow. The reason, as all railway engineers know, is that the usual English construction involves a rigid frame, while the American has a movable truck or "bogie" under the front part of the engine. This solution of the problem was not reached by Mr. Cooper. What he, in fact, accomplished was simply a piece of audacity, which encouraged the enterprise of his countrymen, by proving that the dictum of limited experience abroad was not conclusive. Two features of his Baltimore experiment were characteristic of him. The first was that he undertook it, not merely in order to vindicate his invention, but to effect a practical result, namely, to make his land speculation pay. And the second was that when he found it difficult to operate his pet invention in this experiment, he laid it aside at once,--without losing an atom of faith in it, but also without persisting (as a typical enthusiast would have done) in risking upon the vindication of his personal opinion in one matter the success of another undertaking, more immediately important.

Mr. Cooper's own recollection of this event deserves to be told in his own words. He says:[4]--

"I came back to New York for a little bit of a bra.s.s engine of mine--about one horse power (it had a 3 in. cylinder and 14 in.

stroke)--and carried it back to Baltimore. I got some boiler iron and made a boiler about as high as an ordinary wash boiler; and then how to connect the boiler with the engine I didn't know. I couldn't find any iron pipes. The fact was that there were none for sale in this country.

So I took two muskets, broke off the wooden parts, and used the barrels for tubing, one on one side and the other on the other side of the boiler. I went into a coach-maker's shop and made this locomotive, which I called the Tom Thumb, because it was so insignificant. I didn't intend it for actual service, but only to show the directors what could be done. I meant to test two things: first, I meant to show that short turns could be made; and secondly, that I could get rotary motion without the use of a crank. I effected both of these things very nicely.

I changed the movement from a reciprocating to a rotary motion.

"I got up steam one Sat.u.r.day night. The president of the road and two or three other gentlemen were there. We got on the truck and went out two or three miles. All were delighted; for it opened new possibilities for the railroad. I put up the locomotive for the night in a shed, and invited the company to ride to Ellicott's Mills on Monday. Monday morning, what was my chagrin to find that some scamp had been there, and chopped off all the copper from the engine,--doubtless in order to sell it to some junk dealer!

"It took me a week or more to repair the machine; then some one got in and broke a piece out of the wheel, in experimenting with it; and then two wheels, cast one after the other, were damaged by the carelessness of the turner. I was thoroughly disgusted and discouraged; but, being determined that I would not be balked entirely, I changed the engine so that the power could be applied through the ordinary connection with a crank.[5]

"At last all was ready; and, on a Monday, we started,--six in the engine, and thirty-six on the car which I took in tow. We went up an average grade of eighteen feet to the mile; made the thirteen miles to Ellicott's Mills in one hour and twelve minutes; and came back in fifty-seven minutes. The result of that experiment was that the bonds of the railroad company were sold at once, and there was no longer any doubt as to the success of the road."

The Tom Thumb continued for several weeks to make trips to Ellicott's Mills; and on one occasion (September 18, 1830) ran a race from Riley House into Baltimore (about nine miles) with a light car, drawn on a parallel track by a gray horse noted for speed and endurance. The contest was planned by the stagecoach proprietors of Baltimore, with the view of demonstrating that nothing could be gained by the subst.i.tution of steam for horse power on the railroad. The gray horse won the race, but not until after the Tom Thumb had pa.s.sed him, and only by reason of a temporary breakdown of the machine, which caused a delay too great to be subsequently made up. Mr. Cooper's characteristic recollection of the event, as given fifty-five years later, was that "they tried a little race one day, but it didn't amount to anything. It was rather funny; and the locomotive got out of gear."

Mr. Latrobe says of the Tom Thumb:--

"The machine was not larger than the hand cars used by workmen to transfer themselves from place to place; and as the speaker now recalls its appearance, the only wonder is that so apparently insignificant a contrivance should ever have been regarded as competent to the smallest results. But Mr. Cooper was wiser than many of the wisest around him.

His engine could not have weighed a ton; but he saw in it a principle which the forty-ton engines of to-day have but served to develop and demonstrate. The boiler of Mr. Cooper's engine was not as large as the kitchen boiler attached to many a range in modern mansions. It was of about the same diameter, but not much more than half as high. It stood upright in the car, and was filled above the furnace, which occupied the lower section, with vertical tubes. The cylinder was but three and one half inches in diameter; and speed was got up by gearing. No natural draft could have been sufficient to get up steam in so small a boiler; and Mr. Cooper used, therefore, a blowing apparatus, driven by a drum, attached to one of the car wheels, over which pa.s.sed a cord, that, in its turn, worked a pulley on the shaft of the blower. The contrivance for dispensing with a crank, though its general appearance is recollected, the speaker cannot describe with any accuracy; nor is it important,--it came to nothing. . . .

"In a patent case, tried many years afterwards, the boiler of Mr.

Cooper's engine became, in some connection which has been forgotten, important as a piece of evidence. It was hunted for, and found among some old rubbish at Mount Clare. It was difficult to imagine that it had even generated steam enough to drive a coffee mill, much less that it had performed the feats here narrated."

After this experimental demonstration, the Tom Thumb retired into honorable but obscure repose in its maker's warehouse at New York, from which it emerged, fifty years later, to take part in the centennial celebration of the beginning of the commercial history of Baltimore (that place having been made a port of entry in 1780). According to a contemporary report of the festival, "in the vast procession, Mr. Cooper and his little Tom Thumb locomotive were the two most conspicuous objects, and received all the honors which could be paid by a quarter of a million of enthusiastic people."

FOOTNOTES:

[3] These and other statements in this chapter are taken from a lecture, delivered March 23, 1868, before the Maryland Inst.i.tute, by Hon. J. H.

B. Latrobe, giving his personal recollections of the early history of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.

[4] Ma.n.u.script of his _Reminiscences_.

[5] This was the sacrifice of a favorite invention to immediate practical considerations, which has been mentioned above as an instance of Mr. Cooper's common sense.

VI

MUNIc.i.p.aL AFFAIRS

PETER COOPER'S acquaintance with the affairs of New York city ranged from the time when, as a child, he was taken by his mother to see the last remaining fragments of the stockade erected by the early inhabitants for protection against the Indians, to the full metropolitan glory of the decade of his death. This wonderful munic.i.p.al history is too commonly regarded from a special standpoint, as if it were but the record of a continually renewed and often unsuccessful struggle against corrupt and incompetent city government. Contests of this kind, under democratic inst.i.tutions, always occupy more s.p.a.ce in the press, and make more noise in public oratory, than the quiet but steady progress of commercial undertakings, and the labors of unselfish citizens for education, art, and social improvement, which go on beneath the turbulent surface. Americans have long suffered under the unjust imputation of peculiar devotion to "the almighty dollar." The fact is that in no other country do individuals give so much or do so much without pecuniary reward--whether for personal friendship or for public spirit--as in the United States. The munificence of private benefactions and endowments, far surpa.s.sing the government support given in other nations to similar inst.i.tutions, furnish an abundant proof of the first half of this proposition; while the other half is proved by the innumerable boards, committees, and other organized bodies, to which active business men give time and thought without remuneration.

This spirit has never been wholly missed in public affairs, even in the city of New York, so often charged with the lack of it. All the great features of its munic.i.p.al progress, even those which have been, at some stage, tainted with lamentable corruption, have been originated or supported by unselfish public spirit. It might even be said that without this support, innocently given and deceitfully misused, the schemers for private gain could not have achieved their periodical and temporary successes.

Peter Cooper was an ill.u.s.trious example of good citizenship in this respect. First elected to public office as "a.s.sistant alderman," in 1828, he turned his attention immediately upon the subject most important to the growth and welfare of a city, yet most likely to be neglected until it is forced upon the community as an unwelcome necessity,--namely, the water supply. Up to that time, New York had depended upon the springs of Manhattan Island, some of which supplied water, conveyed through the streets by means of wooden pipes (bored logs), while most of them were utilized by means of pumps only, to which the inhabitants sent for their supply.[6]

Mr. Cooper induced the water committee, of which he had been appointed a member, to visit Philadelphia and inspect the works by which the water of the Schuylkill was raised to a high reservoir, and thence distributed in iron pipes throughout that city, and then to examine the Croton and Bronx rivers, for the purpose of ascertaining what these streams could supply. The season being dry, the rivers were so low that Mr. Cooper was not satisfied of their capacity to furnish the needed quant.i.ty; so he investigated further, on his own account, the watershed (then a wilderness) of the Hackensack River in New Jersey, and subsequently submitted to the board of aldermen plans and models, ill.u.s.trating a scheme for the supply of water to New York from that region, by means of pipes laid under the North River.

To the end of his life, Mr. Cooper adhered to his preference for this method of conveying water across river channels, as compared with elevated aqueducts, like the "high bridge" subsequently constructed across the Harlem River. And in this particular, his intuitive engineer's judgment was not at fault, although the cla.s.sic example of the Romans, who spent untold labor and time in building aqueducts, where buried conduits would have been both cheaper and better, still dominated the professional world. But Peter Cooper furnished another example of his practical wisdom, by sacrificing his superior theory for the sake of the useful result contemplated. Thorough study showed that, although the Croton region could not be relied upon at all times for an immediately adequate water supply, yet its average through the year was sufficient for the purpose, so that the creation, by means of higher dams, of large storage reservoirs, would solve the pressing problem. This plan was ultimately adopted, and has been pursued with suitable enlargements, ever since. Peter Cooper was made chairman of the water committee,--a position which he retained until some years after the Croton system was completed.

In the procurement of iron pipes for the system of distribution, and their proper testing before acceptance, his integrity and intelligence were specially effective in protecting the interests of the city, by securing the best material at the lowest cost. While Mr. Cooper was a strong "protectionist," favoring the encouragement of American industries, he never recognized any distinctions among Americans. In his patriotic thought, the unit to be regarded was not the city or the State of New York, but the United States of America; and he earnestly opposed the contention of the New York iron founders, that contracts for the pipe of the Croton system ought not to be made with inhabitants of another State. His arguments prevailed; and the pipe was ordered from a Philadelphia manufacturer, who offered a better article at a lower price.

During Mr. Cooper's official service, and not without his active aid and advice (though his personal attention was mainly given to the water department), the beginnings of an organized police and fire service were established. When he was first elected to office the city was guarded by watchmen, who served four hours every night for seventy-five cents.

Every householder was expected to have leathern buckets in his hall, and in case of an alarm of fire to throw them into the street, so that the citizens voluntarily running to the rescue could form a line to the nearest pump, and, pa.s.sing the water by means of the buckets, supply the tank of the small hand-engine, which then squirted it upon the burning building. It is needless to detail here the steps by which out of this crude beginning the present effective New York Fire Department has been perfected. Suffice it to say that the beginning itself was promoted, and its future importance was foreseen, by Peter Cooper and his public-spirited colleagues.

But a still more profoundly important element of munic.i.p.al and national progress, in which the partic.i.p.ation of Peter Cooper was active and influential, was the free public school system in New York. This system was originally planted by the great mayor and governor, De Witt Clinton, to whom the State is indebted for the Erie Ca.n.a.l, and for many other plans and impulses scarcely less significant. While Clinton was an advocate of universal suffrage, he perceived the danger of granting this power to an ignorant and largely foreign population; and in 1805 he secured a charter for "The Society for Establishing a Free School in the City of New York for the Education of Such Poor Children as do not Belong to, or are not Provided for by, Any Religious Society."

The appeal of this society to "the affluent and charitable of every denomination of Christians" was liberally answered, and by December, 1809, a school capable of accommodating five hundred children had been erected upon a purchased site. This was the beginning in New York city of the free school system, over which for twenty-five years De Witt Clinton presided. During that period the schools, supported by generous private contributions, and also after a while by a state tax, steadily increased in number, efficiency, and public favor. Peter Cooper had been always a zealous supporter of these schools, but not until 1838 did he become--by election as a trustee of the Free School Society--officially connected with them. It was a critical period in their history. The original national debt of the Union had been recently extinguished, and a considerable surplus had been returned to the contributing States, of which New York devoted its share to educational purposes, thus largely increasing the fund for the city. In 1822, sixteen years before, the common council had made the free schools "unsectarian," excluding from the benefits of the fund all inst.i.tutions of denominational character.

The various sects had submitted reluctantly to this decision so long as the fund was too small to be divided among them; but its sudden enlargement encouraged an attempt to secure appropriations for parochial schools.

In his first annual message Governor Seward recommended to the legislature the establishment of schools in which the children of foreigners might be "instructed by teachers speaking the same language with themselves and professing the same faith." The Roman Catholic community, acting at once upon this suggestion, sent a deputation to the New York common council demanding for their schools "a pro rata share"

of the educational fund, to which as taxpayers they contributed.

In the resistance made to this claim by the Free School Society Mr.

Cooper took a prominent and ardent part. The advocates of unsectarian public schools were victorious; but the controversy continued to agitate the State until the pa.s.sage by the legislature in 1842 of an act establishing in New York city a new board of education to control the schools supported from the funds of the State, and at the same time forbidding the support from this fund of schools in which "any religious sectarian doctrine or tenet shall be taught, inculcated, or practiced."

The Free School Society, resenting and distrusting this new (and in some respects complicated) arrangement, continued its separate activity for eleven years; but in 1853, the unsectarian character of the public schools of New York having been established beyond question, the society and the board of education were by common consent amalgamated by statute. At the final meeting of the society Peter Cooper delivered the valedictory address, the language of which indicates that not without apprehension did he contemplate the surrender of the public schools to the exclusive control of a body of officials likely to be more or less influenced by partisan or political considerations.

Yet his characteristic common sense came again in this instance to the front. The moral which he drew from his doubts and fears was that "the stewardship we are about to resign is not a reprieve from the responsibilities of the future." And in obedience to this conviction he accepted, with fourteen of his old colleagues, membership in the board of education, of which he served for two years as vice-president, resigning in January, 1855, at which time he had formed and begun to carry out the great plan of an inst.i.tution for free popular education with which his name is now forever a.s.sociated.

Many years later Mr. Cooper became the president of the Citizens'

a.s.sociation of New York, which he supported with untiring enthusiasm and lavish expenditure, and which in its day did good work in securing for the city an efficient fire department, boards of health, docks, and education, and an improved charter. Mr. Cooper retired in 1873, and the a.s.sociation died soon after, to be revived in other organizations, which have from time to time continued the perennial battle for good government in New York begun by him.

FOOTNOTE:

[6] A curious survival of this state of things is the Manhattan Company, which secured from the legislature a perpetual charter, so skillfully framed (by Aaron Burr) that, although it grants much more extensive powers than could now be obtained by a corporation, it cannot be successfully a.s.sailed so long as the fundamental condition is fulfilled,--namely, that the company shall be prepared to furnish water at all times, on demand. It is said that, in compliance with this requirement, a small steam pump is kept continually running, in connection with a short system of pipes, somewhere near the City Hall, and that the company stands ready to furnish water to any applicant--only, the charter does not fix the price which it may exact!

So far as I know, the only use now made of the extensive powers granted by this famous charter is the maintenance of the Manhattan Bank. A few years ago, excavations in lower Broadway brought to light bored logs, which were supposed to be relics of the old "Manhattan" system.

VII

THE COOPER UNION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE AND ART