Peter Cooper Part 4

[7] Not all of this amount is represented in permanent endowments, since large contributions to cover deficits in annual income as compared with current expenses, or for special repairs and alterations, do not appear under that head. According to the balance-sheet of January 1, 1900, the total a.s.sets consist of $1,075,428.62, the appraised value of the building, furniture, and apparatus; and $947,021.39 in cash on hand or investments,--making a total of $2,022,450.01. Of the invested sum $953,159.30 is in "special endowments," of which the income only can be expended. This fund comprises $200,000 from Peter Cooper and $340,000 from the family of the late William Cooper, his brother; the remainder is made up of smaller gifts (the chief of which are a bequest of $30,000 from Wilson G. Hunt, one of the original trustees, and $10,000 each from Mary Stuart, J. Pierpont Morgan, Morris K. Jesup, and John E. Parsons), and one of $300,000 made in December, 1899, by Andrew Carnegie. In addition to the aggregate thus made up Hon. Edward Cooper, the son, and Mr. Abram S. Hewitt, the son-in-law of Peter Cooper, have undertaken to furnish a further income of $10,000 per annum; and finally, according to the 41st Annual Report of the Trustees (May, 1900), the Cooper Union, as residuary legatee under the will of the late John Holstead, will ultimately receive between $200,000 and $300,000.

These recent additions to the endowment of the inst.i.tution will enable the trustees to enlarge its usefulness in many ways, and especially (being no longer dependent for annual income upon rents) to utilize the whole of the building for educational purposes. Yet the total endowment will still be modest, as compared with that of many similar inst.i.tutions of later origin.

[8] Old New Yorkers will be reminded of the closing lines of Fitz-Greene Halleck's poem,--

"And there is music twice a week On Scudder's balcony."

[9] There may have been more than a mere sentimental regret in his mind at that time; for his inventive intuition had struck out half a century before an idea to which the slow thought of his fellows had not yet attained,--the plan of utilizing roofs for the purpose of giving to all cla.s.ses an ownership of free air and far distance and boundless sky as complete as any landowner could command by fencing off a mountain for his own pleasure. As he looked down upon the vast wilderness of roofs and thought of the mult.i.tude laboring beneath them or trudging through the streets ("up one canon and down another," as old Jim Bridger the scout said in St. Louis), ignorant of the upper sphere within reach, he might well have felt that one part of his original scheme would still be a physical and moral boon to the metropolis. In fact the disappearance of the "vacant lots," so numerous in his youth, and so freely available as informal parks and playgrounds, had created new necessity for air and s.p.a.ce. Whether he consciously recalled the hanging gardens of Babylon, or the flat roofs universally utilized for social and domestic purposes in eastern and southern countries, I do not know. At all events he had seized upon a similar idea, and now--nearly a score of years after his death--we are waking up to its value. Even the Cooper Union building some day, after more pressing needs of equipment shall have been satisfied, may be crowned with its garden of rest and outlook.

[10] Of the original board, Peter Cooper was the first to pa.s.s away. Mr.

Hunt and Mr. Tiemann have since died, and Mr. R. Fulton Cutting has been elected a trustee. The other vacancies have not been filled.

VIII

NATIONAL POLITICS

PETER COOPER'S prominent activity in national politics belongs to two periods,--that of the war for the Union, and that of the subsequent controversies over questions of financial policy.

As has been explained, he felt his life to be peculiarly identified with that of the nation born with him; and the idea that this nation should be destroyed in the midst of its triumphant progress was profoundly abhorrent to him. Like many other patriots, he was ready to save the Union by a compromise, if that were practicable. He advocated the purchase and liberation by the government of all the slaves in the United States; he promoted a "peace conference" on the very eve of the war. But when South Carolina had formally seceded and the gauntlet had been cast at the feet of national authority, his course was not uncertain. He was a representative of the New York Chamber of Commerce in the deputation of thirty leading citizens of New York which visited Washington in order to discover what plan Mr. Buchanan (then still President) had in view. They got no satisfaction from the President, but a.s.sured themselves of the firm loyalty of Mr. Seward, then Senator from New York.

A few weeks later the bombardment of Fort Sumter put an end to all projects of compromise. At the memorable ma.s.s meeting held in Union Square, New York, shortly after the receipt of this news, Peter Cooper, then seventy years old, was among the first to mount the platform. His familiar white hairs and kindly face were recognized by the crowd, which vociferously called for a speech from him. Stepping to the front, he uttered a few ringing sentences which sounded the keynote of the meeting. I quote but one or two:--

"We are contending with an enemy not only determined on our destruction as a nation, but to build on our ruins a government devoted with all its power to maintain, extend, and perpetuate a system in itself revolting to all the best feelings of humanity,--an inst.i.tution that enables thousands to sell their own children into hopeless bondage.

"Shall it succeed? You say 'No!' and I unite with you in your decision.

We cannot allow it to succeed. We should spend our lives, our property, and leave the land itself a desolation before such an inst.i.tution should triumph over the free people of this country. . . .

"Let us, therefore, unite to sustain the government by every means in our power, to arm and equip in the shortest possible time an army of the best men that can be found in the country."

From that day on his patriotism never doubted or faltered. When the war loan was announced he was the first man at the door of the subtreasury in New York waiting to make payment over the counter of all the money he had been able to collect without business disaster. "In those days,"

says a friend, "whenever he had nothing else to do, he would go down to the recruiting office and put in a subst.i.tute." It is estimated that he must have sent, first and last, about a score of soldiers to serve for him under the flag.

From the first he urged the emanc.i.p.ation and enlistment of the Southern negroes,--a policy which was ultimately adopted with successful results; and when in 1864, at the darkest hour of the struggle, there was danger of a fatal compromise, he actively promoted that great ma.s.s meeting in the hall of the Cooper Union which marked the turning-point of the struggle, carried the State of New York for Lincoln, and secured the triumph of the Union.

After the war was over he presided at another meeting, called to favor aid to the disabled soldiers of the nation; and the following paragraph quoted from his remarks on that occasion forms a fitting close to this brief notice of his patriotic activity:--

"If we required a stronger stimulus to urge us to perform our duty, we have only to turn our thoughts back to that fearful day when the armies of rebellion had entered Pennsylvania with the intent to subjugate the North to their domination. Had they been successful, they would have gloried in making us pay for the loss of their slaves and the expenses of their war. I trust that the government will not hesitate to tax my property and the property of every other man enough to provide for the comfort of our disabled soldiers and the families dependent on them for support."

In the financial controversies which accompanied and followed the period of "reconstruction" after the war, and were involved in the payment and adjustment of the national debt, Mr. Cooper appeared as an advocate of the "Greenback" party, and did not seem to realize that this was a complete reversal of his earlier position as a "hard-money" Democrat. I think the clue to this change may be found in his recollection of the war waged by Andrew Jackson on the United States Bank, and a vague feeling that the national banking system inst.i.tuted by Secretary Chase was open to similar objections. To this may be added his growing inclination in favor of "paternal government,"--which in a man so thoroughly self-supporting and self-reliant can be explained only by the fact that his personal philanthropy overbalanced his political philosophy; that he became more anxious to relieve the distress he saw than to question the wisdom of measures taken for that purpose. Two things are certain: first, that Mr. Cooper's motives in his later political course were thoroughly pure and unselfish; and secondly, that his utterances and publications in this connection show him to be dealing with subjects which he did not understand. This statement is made without regard to the merits of the controversy, or the strength of the arguments contributed to it by others. The simple truth is that Mr.

Cooper was too old to make original investigation of such questions, intelligently weighing all the modern conditions of industry and commerce, in which he was no longer an active partic.i.p.ant. He accepted in 1876 the nomination of the Greenback party for the presidency; but the issue was already practically dead, and he received but 81,740 votes out of a total of 8,412,833 cast. Undaunted by this defeat, he continued to utter his views. Those who wish to study them in detail may consult the volume "Ideas for a Science of Good Government in Addresses, Letters, and Articles on a Strictly National Currency, Tariff, and Civil Service," which he issued at the age of ninety-two, in the last year of his life. His own summary of his position, given on page 212 of this book, shows that he desired a national legal-tender paper currency, irredeemable in coin, but "interconvertible" with government bonds, and regulated by law as to volume per capita; a "discriminating" protective tariff, "helpful to all the industries of the country, where the raw material and the labor can be furnished by our own people;" and a civil service divorced from party politics, based on personal fitness, with tenure of office during good behavior, moderate salaries, and pensions for the aged and sick, and provision for widows and orphans.

IX

THE END

IN 1874, at the age of eighty-three, Mr. Cooper said at a reception given in his honor:--

"When I was born, New York contained 27,000 inhabitants. The upper limits of the city were at Chambers Street. Not a single free school, either by day or night, existed. General Washington had just entered upon his first term as President of the United States, the whole annual expenditures of which did not exceed $2,500,000, being about sixty cents per head of the population. Not a single steam engine had yet been built or erected on the American continent; and the people were clad in homespun, and were characterized by the simple virtues and habits which are usually a.s.sociated with that primitive garb. I need not tell you what the country now is, and what the habits and the garments of its people now are, or that the expenditure, per capita, of the general government has increased fifteen-fold. But I have witnessed and taken a deep interest in every step of the marvellous development and progress which have characterized this century beyond all the centuries which have gone before.

"Measured by the achievements of the years I have seen, I am one of the oldest men who have ever lived; but I do not feel old, and I propose to give you the receipt by which I have preserved my youth.

"I have always given a friendly welcome to new ideas, and I have endeavored not to feel too old to learn; and thus, though I stand here with the snows of so many winters upon my head, my faith in human nature, my belief in the progress of man to a better social condition, and especially my trust in the ability of men to establish and maintain self-government, are as fresh and as young as when I began to travel the path of life.

"While I have always recognized that the object of business is to make money in an honorable manner, I have endeavored to remember that the object of life is to do good. Hence I have been ready to engage in all new enterprises, and, without incurring debt, to risk in their promotion the means which I had acquired, provided they seemed to me calculated to advance the general good. This will account for my early attempt to perfect the steam engine, for my attempt to construct the first American locomotive, for my connection with the telegraph in a course of efforts to unite our country with the European world, and for my recent efforts to solve the problem of economical steam navigation on the ca.n.a.ls; to all of which you have so kindly referred. It happens to but few men to change the current of human progress, as it did to Watt, to Fulton, to Stephenson, and to Morse; but most men may be ready to welcome laborers to a new field of usefulness, and to clear the road for their progress.

"This I have tried to do, as well in the perfecting and execution of their ideas as in making such provision as my means have permitted for the proper education of the young mechanics and citizens of my native city, in order to fit them for the reception of new ideas, social, mechanical, and scientific--hoping thus to economize and expand the intellectual as well as the physical forces, and provide a larger fund for distribution among the various cla.s.ses which necessarily make up the total of society. If our lives shall be such that we shall receive the glad welcome of 'Well done, good and faithful servant,' we shall then know that we have not lived in vain."

For nine years after this utterance he continued the peaceful and happy life which it describes. When the end came, it was quiet and painless.

Surrounded by his children and grandchildren, and whispering with almost his last breath the desire for an increase of his bequest to that other well-beloved child, the Cooper Union, he "fell on sleep," April 4, 1883.

On the day of his funeral New York city presented an almost unexampled spectacle. All Soul's Unitarian Church, in which his body was deposited, early in the morning was thronged with a mighty mult.i.tude, pa.s.sing in procession to look upon the beloved face. Eighteen young men from the Cooper Union surrounded it, as a guard of honor. A body of 3500 students of that inst.i.tution, of both s.e.xes, marched by, casting flowers upon the coffin, and followed by delegations from all the munic.i.p.al and charitable organizations of the city, and by uncounted mult.i.tudes, whose relation to the beloved philanthropist was not official or representative, but simply personal.

The busiest streets of New York, through which the funeral procession pa.s.sed on its way to Greenwood Cemetery, beyond the East River, were closed to business and hung in black. The flags on all public buildings, and on the ships in the harbor, were at half-mast. The bells of all churches were tolled. The whole city mourned, as it had not done since, eighty years before, the funeral procession of George Washington moved through its streets.

If we seek, without affectionate prejudice, to discover the cause of this universal grief, affection, and admiration, we shall find, I think, that it lies chiefly in two circ.u.mstances; namely, the character of Peter Cooper as a lover of his kind, and the opportunity afforded him by his long life, not only to prove that character, but to become personally known to many thousands of those whom he sought unselfishly to serve. Few persons except military commanders have such an opportunity. The philanthropists who labor in secret, no matter with what n.o.ble motive, and do not come face to face with their beneficiaries, may win the applause of posterity, but cannot expect to receive the immediate and personal affection of their contemporaries.

Least of all do posthumous gifts arouse this sentiment. Peter Cooper, above all other claims to renown and grat.i.tude, identified himself with his philanthropy, and was known where he was loved.

"Who gives himself with his gift, feeds three: Himself, his hungering neighbor, and Me!"