re supposed to be relics of the old "Manhattan" system.

VII

THE COOPER UNION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE AND ART

IN many respects the industrial conditions under which Peter Cooper
began his career had been revolutionized before he finished it. The
apprentice system has well-nigh passed away; and the old freedom with
which an intelligent, industrious, and ambitious young man could turn
from one occupation to another, seeking that road which offered greatest
promise of preferment, is greatly hampered by the modern regime of
"organized labor," which, whatever its advantages, presents its own
peculiar perils for the workingman. But it remains forever true that
under either of these systems, or any others that can be evolved or
invented, knowledge is power, and the bestowal of it is the one gift
which neither pauperizes the recipient nor injures the community.

As a struggling young apprentice, Peter Cooper regarded with intense
sympathy the needs and limitations of the class to which he belonged.
But his notion of a remedy was not that of paternal legislation, or
belligerent organization, or social reconstruction. To his conception
the atmosphere of personal liberty and responsibility furnished by the
new democratic republic, offering free scope to individual endeavor and
rewarding individual merit, was the best that could be asked.

What he dreamed of doing was simply to assist these social conditions by
providing for those who were handicapped by circumstances the means of
power and opportunity, to be utilized by their own assiduity. This plan
included not only what he then thought to be the most effective system
for intellectual improvement, but also provision for such innocent
entertainment as would supersede the grosser forms of recreation, which
involved the waste of money and health.

Walking up the Bowery Road--then the stage route to Boston, but now a
crowded down-town street--he selected in the suburbs of the city the
site for his great institution; and, as he accumulated the necessary
funds, he bought at intervals lot after lot at the intersection of Third
and Fourth Avenues, until he had acquired the entire block, paying for
his latest purchases (made after the neighborhood had been solidly built
up and had become a centre of business) very high prices compared with
those he had paid at the beginning. At last (in 1854) he commenced the
erection of a six-story fire-proof building of stone, bri