Stories of Great Inventors Part 26

Yet perhaps his even dreaming such dreams helped him to do the great things of which I shall tell you.

Now, Peter noticed that the tools which they worked with in the carriage shop were not very good.

So he began to try to make better ones.

He succeeded in doing so, but Mr. Woodward, the man for whom he worked, had all the benefit of his work.

But at last Peter's apprentices.h.i.+p was over.

Much to his surprise Mr. Woodward one day called him into his office.

"You have been very faithful," he said, "and I will set you up in a carriage manufactory of your own.

"You could pay me back the money borrowed in a few years."

This was a remarkable offer for a poor young man.

But Peter had made it a solemn rule of his life never to go in debt.

So he thanked Mr. Woodward very earnestly, but declined his offer.

It was then Mr. Woodward's turn to be astonished.

But he knew Peter was right, and respected his good judgment in the matter.

We may now call Peter Cooper a mechanic.

A mechanic is one who has skill in using tools in shaping wood, metals, etc.

Peter now found a situation in a woolen mill at Hempstead, Long Island.

Here he received nine dollars a week.

Still he kept trying to find better ways of doing things.

He invented a machine for shearing cloth, and from that earned five hundred dollars in two years.

With so much money as this he could not rest until he had visited his mother.

He found his parents deeply in debt.

He gave them the whole of his money, and promised to do more than that.

His father had not made a mistake in naming him after the Apostle Peter.

During this time Mr. Cooper had learned to know a beautiful girl named Sarah Bedell. This girl became his wife.

They moved to New York.

Here Mr. Cooper had a grocery-store.

A friend advised him to buy a glue factory which was for sale.

He knew nothing of the business, but he thought he could learn it.

He soon made not only the best glue, but the cheapest in the country.

For thirty years he carried on this business almost alone, with no salesman and no book-keeper.

He rose every morning at daylight, kindled his factory fires, and worked all the forenoon making glue.

In the afternoon he sold it.

In the evenings he kept his accounts, wrote his letters, and read with his wife and children.

He worked this way long after he had an income of thirty thousand dollars a year.

This was not because he wanted to have so much more money for himself.

You remember he had a plan to carry out which would take much money.

That was to build his free school for the poor.

He had no time for parties or pleasures.

But the people of New York knew he was both honest and intelligent.

They asked him to be a member of the City Council, and President of their Board of Education.

Peter Cooper never refused to do anything which might help others.

So he did not refuse these offices.

I must tell you now about Mr. Cooper's first child, and how fine a thing it was to have an inventor for a papa.

Mr. Cooper made for this baby a self-rocking cradle, with a fan attached to keep off the flies, and with a musical instrument to soothe the dear baby into dreamland.

Mr. Cooper's business prospered.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE "BEST FRIEND,"--FIRST LOCOMOTIVE BUILT IN AMERICA. BUILT BY PETER COOPER.]

Once the glue factory burned, with a loss of forty thousand dollars.

But at nine o'clock the next morning there was lumber on the ground for a factory three times as large as the one burned.

He then built a rolling mill and furnace in Baltimore.

They were then trying to build the Baltimore and Ohio railroad.