uccess of this grandest achievement of modern science and
enterprise, is as romantic as any episode in social history.

But, in Peter Cooper's view, the most important event in his
life--the one to which all his energies, his thoughts, his economics
had been steadily directed since his youth--was the founding of the
institution that bears his name, and that has made him a powerful
factor in the development of New York. It was the outcome, in the
first place, of its founder's regret for the deficiencies of his own
early training, which were owing partly to his parents' poverty and
partly to the lack of public or free schools in his native city when
he was a boy. But this regret, which could only have been felt by a
man of superior intelligence, was made to flower in this great
result by Mr. Cooper's genuine, deep, and unfailing love for his
fellow-men, and his belief in the duty of every man to help the race
forward in its progress to a better social condition. He has himself
stated the principles on which his life was founded. His aim was "to
render some equivalent to society, in some useful form of labor, for
each day of his existence;" and "while he had always recognized that
the object of business is to make money in an honorable manner, he
had endeavored to remember that the object of life is to do good."

In 1876 Mr. Cooper was nominated for the presidency by the National
Independent or "Greenback" party. It was with no selfish ambition
that he allowed his name to go before the voters of the country, and
his only regret at the result was that a policy was defeated which
he believed to be for the public good.

Mr. Cooper died April 4, 1883, at the age of ninety-two, after a
short illness, the result of a cold. At his funeral, the late Dr.
Crosby said: "What an example has been set by this life to our young
men! How it shows them what the true aim of life should be! What an
example to our wealthy men to show that money obtained by honest
industry, and spent in benefiting mankind, will never produce war
between labor and capital, but will assuage all angry elements, and
give universal peace! Oh! if all our wealthy men were like Peter
Cooper, all classes would be satisfied, all commotions cease, and
the community would be as near perfection--as near perfection in the
pecuniary view--as it possibly could be on earth."

[Signature: Clarence Cook.]

LOUIS KOSSUTH

(1802-1894)

[Illustration: Louis Kossuth.]