classes, and the other
the violent assault of the rich. This is getting to be the age of
dynamite--dynamite under the Kremlin, dynamite in proximity to
Parliament House and railroad track, dynamite near lordly mansions,
dynamite in Ireland, dynamite in England, dynamite in America. The rich
are becoming more exclusive, and the poor more irate. I prescribe for
the cure of this mighty evil of the world a large allopathic dose of
Peter Cooperism. You never heard of dynamite in Cooper Institute. You
never heard of any one searching the cellar of that man's house for a
keg of dynamite. At times of public excitement, when prominent men had
their houses guarded, there were no sentinels needed at his door. The
poorest man with a hod on his shoulder carrying brick up a wall
begrudged not the philanthropist his carriage as he rode by. No one put
the torch to Peter Cooper's glue factory. When on some great popular
occasion the masses assembled in the hall of Cooper Institute and its
founder came on the platform, there were many hard hands that clapped in
vigorous applause. Let the rich stretch forth toward the great masses of
England, Ireland, and America as generous and kind a hand as that of
Peter Cooper, and the age of dynamite will end. What police can not do,
and shot and shell can not do, and strongest laws severely executed can
not do, and armies can not do, will yet be accomplished by something
that I see fit to baptize as Peter Cooperism. I hail the early twilight
of that day when a man of millions shall come forth and say: "There are
seventy thousand destitute children in New York, and here I put up and
endow out of my fortune a whole line of institutions to take care of
them; here are vast multitudes in filthy and unventilated
tenement-houses, for whom I will build a whole block of residences at
cheap rents; here are nations without Christ, and I turn my fortune
inside out to send them flaming evangels; there shall be no more hunger,
and no more sickness, and no more ignorance, and no more crime, if I can
help it." That spirit among the opulent of this country and other
countries would stop contention, and the last incendiary's torch would
be extinguished, and the last dagger of assassination would go to
slicing bread for poor children, and the last pound of dynamite that
threatens death would go to work in quarries to blast foundation-stones
for asylums and universities and churches. May the spirit of Peter
Cooper and