y the
entire glue business of the country in his hands." But chance had
nothing to do with Mr. Cooper's success: the secret of that success
was unremitting industry and generous economy. He worked that he
might earn, and he saved that he might use and give. For twenty
years while he held the glue factory, he was his own bookkeeper,
clerk, and salesman; going to the factory at daybreak to light the
fires, and spending the evenings at home, posting his books,
writing, and reading to his family.

In 1828, moved by the interest in business circles in the completion
of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, Mr. Cooper, with two partners,
bought a tract of three thousand acres within the city limits of
Baltimore. By the failure of his associates to meet the payment of
their shares, Mr. Cooper was obliged to shoulder the whole cost,
amounting to $105,000. The road, too, owing to unexpected
difficulties in construction, was dreading bankruptcy, from which it
was saved by Mr. Cooper's ingenuity in devising a locomotive that
enabled the company to overcome certain difficulties that had been
thought insurmountable. Failing in the end to sell his land as he
had hoped, Mr. Cooper decided to utilize the timber growing on it in
the manufacture of charcoal iron. When he had, after many
difficulties, established his works, he sold out to some Boston
capitalists, who formed the Canton Iron Company. Mr. Cooper took a
large part of the purchase in stock at $45 a share, which he finally
sold out at $230 a share.

This was the beginning of his interest in the iron business, where
the greater part of his fortune was made. The remainder came from
his glue works and the industries connected with them. In 1873, the
year of the great panic, in a letter to President Grant suggesting
remedial legislation, Mr. Cooper said that not less than a thousand
persons depended for their bread on the business carried on in the
circle of his family. He had at that time two rolling-mills running,
and two mills for the manufacture of wire and springs; and his glue,
oil, and isinglass works gave employment to two hundred persons.

The story of Mr. Cooper's connection with the laying of the Atlantic
cable has been so often told, that we do not repeat it here. It adds
further testimony to his indomitable energy, his largeness of view,
his financial ability, and the confidence that was felt in him by
his fellow-men. The story of the difficulties, failures and final
s