ng-mill in New York (on Thirty-Third Street, near Third
Avenue). At this mill anthracite was used for puddling in 1840. In 1845
the business was removed to Trenton, N. J.; and in the new
rolling-mill--then the largest in the United States--built at Trenton
for the manufacture of rails, the first iron beams for buildings were
rolled in 1854. By the erection of blast furnaces at Phillipsburg and
Ringwood, N. J., and Durham, Pa., and the addition of wire mills, bridge
shop, chain shop, etc., to the works at Trenton, the purchase of iron
and coal lands, and the development of numerous mines, the firm of
Cooper & Hewitt achieved high rank among the ironmasters of America; and
the Iron and Steel Institute of Great Britain conferred upon Peter
Cooper in 1879 the "Bessemer gold medal" for his services in the
development of the American iron trade. In 1890 the same honor was given
to Mr. Abram S. Hewitt in recognition of the experiments at Phillipsburg
as early as 1856 to test the new invention of Bessemer, of his
introduction of the open-hearth steel process into the United States,
and of other services rendered to the steel industry,--in all of which
he may be said to have followed, with the advantages of a wider culture
and ampler means, the example set by Mr. Cooper.

One of the boldest yet wisest and most profitable operations of Mr.
Cooper was his investment in the Atlantic cable enterprise of Cyrus
Field. He was already past middle age when this audacious scheme began
to be dreamed of. In 1842 Morse had laid down an experimental cable from
Castle Garden to Governor's Island in New York harbor, and claimed as a
practical inference that a telegraphic communication on his plan could
"with certainty be established across the Atlantic."[2] In 1851 the
first cable was laid between France and England, and others rapidly
followed on ocean lines over short distances. The principle was thus
established, and the doubts as to its practical application to a line of
at least twenty-five hundred miles were of such a character as to seem
more serious to scientific men than to American capitalists of Mr.
Cooper's type. In March, 1854, the New York, Newfoundland, & London
Telegraph Company was organized, and Mr. Cooper became (and remained for
twenty trying years) its president. There was little difficulty in
raising the money for the eighty-five miles of cable which were to be
laid under the Gulf of St. Lawrence, or in obtaining from the B