300 WORKMEN AND HEROES ception of a short time passed in his youth in its vicinity, were spent by Mr. Cooper in the city of New York. It was little more than a country town when he was born ; it was already one of the great cities of the world when he died ; and in all that time he had been associated with the business enterprises that had helped its growth, as one of the chief actors. The fortune that he built up was both earned and expended here ; the man- ner of its earning was known of all men, but the way in which it was expended was rather felt than known, for, like all great and generous benefactors, Mr. Cooper was without ostentation ; but as he gave while he was alive and all the time that he was alive ; and as he gave to the people among whom he lived, and not to outsiders, it naturally followed that his name, his person, his traits of char- acter, became, as it were, a common possession to the people of New York ; but few men upon whom such a glare of publicity had fallen for so many years would have been able to bear the scrutiny so well as Peter Cooper. He was born on February 12, 1791, presumably in Little Dock Street, now Water Street, Coenties Slip, where his father, John Cooper, carried on the trade of a hatter. His shop was near the store of John Jacob Astor, from whom he bought the beaver-skins which he made up into hats. John Cooper had served in the war of the Revolution, and when it ended, he retired with the rank of lieutenant. He married Margaret, the daughter of John Campbell, who also had served in the Continental army, as quartermaster, and who now carried on the trade of potter and tile-maker on the spot where St. Paul's Chapel now stands. To John and Margaret Cooper nine children were born, two daughters and seven sons, of whom Peter was the fifth, and was named after the apostle in the be lief, as his father expressed it, that he would come to something. Following the fashion of the time, he was set to work at his father's trade as soon as he was old enough to work, as all his brothers had been before him ; and in later years he de- scribed himself as a little boy, with his head just reaching the top of the table where he was set to pulling out the hairs from rabbit skins to use in making fur hats ; and he was kept at the business until he was fifteen, when, as he used to tell, he had learned to make every part of a hat. So independent is business suc- cess of what is commonly called education, that it may be of interest to record that Peter Cooper never went to school for more than one year, and only in the half of each day of school : his parents were poor, and could not spare what his labor earned, and besides his health was delicate, and the confinement of school was thought more injurious to him than the work in the shop. In consequence of this restriction Peter Cooper grew to manhood with very little learning be- yond reading, writing, and the rudiments of arithmetic, and while this was a source of regret to him all his life, it was in reality the spur that drove him to found an institution that should take away all excuses for ignorance from the coming generations of poor boys in his native city. . The elder Cooper would seem to have been a man of small practical capacity or staying power, for he moved about from place to place, changing his busi- ness in the hope of bettering his condition ; now going to Peekskill to set up a
