Part 15 (1/2)
Peter Cooper lived to see the institution which he had founded realize at least some of his hopes for it He hi a pro to the reform of national or civic abuses In 1876, he was nominated by the national independent party as their candidate for president and received nearly a hundred thousand votes Since his death, the institution which he founded has grown steadily in importance; other bequests have been added to his, and Cooper Union has cohteousness
The year 1795 saw the birth of two children ere destined to do a great work for their country--George Peabody and Johns Hopkins Both were the sons of poor parents, with little opportunity for achieving the sort of learning which is taught in schools; but both, by hard experience with the world, gained another sort of learning which is often of e Peabody was forced to begin to earn his own living, and a place was found for hiood, he did his ell, and finally, at the age of nineteen, was offered a partnershi+p by another y and enthusiasm The business increased, branch houses were established, and at the age of thirty-five, George Peabody found hireat business, his elder partner having retired He decided to uardian angel for Alish capital He had never married, and it seemed alht was of how he could elevate hu some of his plans into effect
In 1852, his native town of Danvers, Massachusetts, celebrated her centennial, and her uished citizen was, of course, invited to be present He was too busy to attend, but sent a sealed envelope to be opened on the day of the celebration The seal was broken at the dinner hich the celebration closed, and the envelope was found to contain two slips of paper On one ritten this toast, ”Education--a debt due froenerations” The other was a check for twenty thousand dollars, afterwards increased to two hundred and fifty thousand, for the purpose of founding an Institute, with a free library and free course of lectures Four years later, the Peabody Institute was dedicated, its founder being in attendance Soon afterwards, he decided to build a similar Institute at Baltireater city, and gave a million dollars for the purpose It was opened in 1869, twenty thousand school children gathering to uard of honor for hiifts marked his life--the sum of three million dollars for the erection of model tenements for the London poor, and a like suro When, in 1869 the end careat funeral was held at Westland sent her noblest man-of-war to bear in state across the Atlantic the body of ”her friend,” the poor boy of Danvers
It is a strange coincidence that Baltie Peabody's philanthropy, should also be the object of that of Johns Hopkins The latter was of Quaker stock, was raised on a farrocery store at Baltio into business for hirocer, then as a banker, and finally as one of the backers of the Baltiave property valued at four and a half millions to found in the city of Baltiardless of race or color; and three and a half millions for the endowrown to be one of the most famous schools of law, medicine and science in the country
Another Quaker, Ezra Cornell, is also associated with the na the hills of western New York, helping his father on his farm and in his little pottery, the boy soon developed considerable e of seventeen, with the help of only a younger brother, he built a new hoest and best in the neighborhood He soon struck out into the world, engaged in businesses of various kinds with varying success, but it was not until he was thirty-six years old that he found his vocation
It was at that tied hiraph between Washi+ngton and Baltimore Thereafter he devoted himself entirely to the development of the new invention; succeeded, aftera coton, and superintended its construction It was the first of raph Coraph business of the country, and which made Ezra Cornell a millionaire He himself ell advanced in years, and finally retired froreat estate near Ithaca, New York, where he lived quietly, devising a reat fortune
He at last decided to found an institution ”where _any_ person can find instruction in _any_ study” Work was begun at once, and in 1868, Cornell College was for the first year The founder's gifts to this institution aggregated over three millions Many other bequests follohich have es in the country Froude, the great English historian, visited it on one occasion, and afterwards said:
”There is so I admire evenman by whom it was founded We have had such reat fortunes and who reatness in buying great estates and building castles for the founding of peerages to be handed down froht for i the people of a free nation There stands his great university, built upon a rock, to endure while the Areat benefaction we have to record is, in some respects, unique John Fox Slater was born in Slatersville, Rhode Island, in 1815
He was the son of Sareatest cotton-land, and he naturally succeeded to the business upon his father's death The business prospered, receiving a great iin, and Slater's wealth increased rapidly
He had, on roes at work in the cotton fields As tirew in hisfor these poor laborers to whom, indirectly, his own fortune was due, and in 1882, he set aside the su the lately emancipated population of the Southern States, and their posterity” For this gift he received the thanks of Congress No part of the gift is spent for grounds or buildings, but the whole incoroes in industrial education and in preparing them to be the teachers of their own race By the extraordinary ability of the fund's treasurer, it has been increased to a h half athe lines contemplated by the donor This, with the Peabody fund, co out the difficult problero education
The fortunes of such men as Peabody and Cornell and Hopkins and Peter Cooper seeations ofup Not all of them, by any land, there areup a fareat estate; but there are a feho have labored as faithfully to use their wealth wisely as they did to accumulate it
First of them is Leland Stanford, born in the valley of the Mohawk, studying law, andhis law library and all his property by fire, and finally joining the rush to the newly-discovered California gold-fields, where he arrived in 1852, being at that tiht years old After some experience in the old than digging for it, and set up a rew rapidly in importance and proved the foundation of a vast fortune
He was the first president of the Central Pacific Railroad, and was in charge of its construction over thethe last spike at Promontory Point, Utah, on the tenth of May, 1869 He was pro elected to the United States Senate in 1885
It is not by his public life, however, that he will be re there that was in any way ift of twenty reat university at Palo Alto, California, in memory of his only son On May 14, 1887, the cornerstone of this great institution was laid, and the university was formally opened in 1891 The idea of its founder was that it should teach not only the studies usually taught in college, but also other practical branches of education, such as telegraphy, type-setting, type-writing, book-keeping, and farrowth, that it now has over seventeen hundred students enrolled
After Senator Stanford's death in 1893, the university was further endowed by his , Jane Lathrop Stanford, so that the present productive funds of the university, after all of the buildings have been paid for, amount to nearly twenty-five ivers of recent years is John Davison Rockefeller, whose nareatest natural monopoly of modern tirocery store to one of the greatest capitalists in the history of the world is an interesting one, as well as an important one in the commercial history of America Born at Richford, New York, in 1839, his parents moved to Cleveland, Ohio, when he was a boy of fourteen, and such education as he had was secured in the Cleveland public schools He soon left school for business, getting employment first as clerk in a co junior partner in the firm of Clark & Rockefeller, commission merchants
At that ti to be developed, and young Rockefeller's attention was soon attracted to them He seems to have been one of the first to realize the vast possibilities of the oil business, and in 1865, he and his brother William built at Cleveland a refinery which they called the Standard Oil Works They had little an the work of consolidation, which culminated in the formation of the Standard Oil Trust in 1882 They were able to kill co fro rates than any coet a rebate on all oil shi+pped by coed the Standard Oil Coed a competitor a dollar and a quarter for the same service, that extra quarter went, not into the coffers of the railroad, but into the coffers of the Standard Oil Coal, and the Standard is compelled to do business on the same basis as its competitors, but its vast resources and occupancy of the field give it an advantage which nothing can counteract
The operations of the Standard Oil Coreat fortune for John D Rockefeller--how great cannot even be estimated Not until comparatively recent years, did he turn his attention fro it, but when he did, it was in a royal fashi+on Ten o, which opened its doors in 1892, and now has an enrolliven to the General Education Board, organized in 1903, for the purpose of pro education in the United States, without distinction of race, sex, or creed, and especially to promote and systematize various foriven to Yale; the great Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research was founded at New York and liberally endowed; and Mr