Peter Cooper, the Philanthropist
2Sa_19:32 : ’93Now Barzillai was a very aged man, even fourscore years old: and he had provided the king of sustenance while he lay at Mahanaim; for he was a very great man.’94
Barzillai of the text was a very old man, a very kind man, a very affectionate man, a very patriotic man, a very wealthy man of the tenth century before Christ, suggestive of our modern philanthropist, Peter Cooper, of the nineteenth century after Christ. And so there has been many a man in the centuries b. c. typical of some men in the centuries A. d. When I see this Barzillai of the text going out to meet David’92s retreating troops and providing them with flour and corn and mattresses, it makes me think of our modern philanthropist, who was always ready to make response in time of necessity, whether it were individual, municipal, or national. The snow of his white locks has melted from our sight, and the benediction of his genial face has come to its long amen; but his influence, halting not a second for the obsequies to be finished, moved right on with no change save that of augmentation; for in the arithmetical sum of a useful life, death is multiplication instead of subtraction, and the marble of the tomb, instead of being the goal at the end of the race, is only the starting-point for a grander career.
Why so many good people with hat off in reverence before a man who never wielded a sword or made a masterly oration or stood in senatorial place? He was neither general nor lord nor governor nor President. The learned title of LL. D. bestowed by a university did not stick to him one minute. The prefix of ’93Mr.’94 and the suffix of ’93Esq.’94 seemed always an incongruity when connected with his name. For all Christendom he has been, and for all ages to come he will be, plain Peter Cooper. But why all the flags at half-mast? And why the complimentary resolutions of Legislatures and common councils? And why a deep-fetched sigh from millions of hearts which cannot make adequate expression of their grief.
First, I remark, in answering these questions: Peter Cooper was the father of many American philanthropies. There have been larger donations for the public good since his great munificence of 1857, but the memorable gift of Cooper Institute has brought forth scores and hundreds of philanthropies and charities all over the land. As a father may have six children all of whom shall grow up to be larger than himself; so that munificence of 1857 has brought forth hundreds and thousands of charities, some of them larger in bulk than the original.
You must remember that in those days when that six-storied temple of instruction on Third and Fourth Avenues, New York, was built at an expense of six hundred and thirty thousand dollars, and then endowed with one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, one hundred thousand dollars was more than five hundred thousand dollars now, and while in our days millionaires are so common we hardly stop to look at them, in those times a millionaire was a rare spectacle. Why, Stephen Girard and John Jacob Astor of olden times would almost have excited the sympathy of our modern railroad magnates. The well on to eight hundred thousand dollars expended in building and in endowing Cooper Institute were more than the equivalent of five million dollars now. There have been larger gifts in our time, which have not produced more than a fraction of the good produced by that munificence of 1857. That gift brooded other charities, that beneficence mothered hundreds of educational institutions, that generosity gave glorious suggestion to many a man whose fortune was held with iron grip of selfishness. If you should trace back the ancestral line of many of the hospitals and infirmaries and colleges and universities and benevolent institutions of this country, you would find that Peter Cooper was their glorious progenitor. That institution there, standing twenty-six years on the great thoroughfare, saying to the populations surging to and fro: ’93Here I stand, without money and without price to bless and educate all the struggling who will come under my wings.’94 That institution standing for twenty-six years, from all its windows crying out against miserliness and cupidity. That free reading-room, the birthplace of hundreds of free reading-rooms all over America. Great reservoir of Christian beneficence’97Cooper Institute.
Peter Cooper has also impressed us all with the fact that it is a very wise thing for a man to become his own executor. How much more beautiful is ante-mortem charity than post-mortem benevolence. There is many a man who has kept his money as long as he could keep it, and then when he had to die, he has made some charitable institution a legatee. Many a man has kept his money just as long as he could keep it, and then when death met him, said: ’93Well, if I must, I must; and now, Bible Society, you take so many thousands, and, Reformatory Institution, you take so many thousands.’94 The fact is if that man had had four or five stout pockets in his shroud, he would have taken all his wealth with him. Better late than never to be charitable, but greater will be the reward of that man who gives to charitable institutions while he has the power to retain what he is giving away. It seems to me that often a donation in a last will and testament is merely an attempt to bribe the ferryman of the river Styx to land the man in celestial instead of infernal regions. Mean as sin while he lives, he expects to cross over and be ushered up the shining banks of heaven. A skinflint when he leaves this world, he expects to be hailed on the other shore as a George Peabody.
How often it is that charitable contribution in last will and testament fails to reach its right destination. If you have pride in being a sane man, and if you are at the same time desirous of making charitable contribution, make the contribution before your death, for the probability is your heirs will prove you are crazy. How often it is that an estate is taken into the Surrogate’92s Court and there is a great quarrel over the matter, and as every positive man has some idiosyncrasies, your idiosyncracies will be taken out, and they will be ventilated and they will be enlarged and they will be caricatured until the courts of Brooklyn and New York will pronounce you a fool. If a man have a second wife the children of the first wife will prove in the courts that the man was subjected to undue influence; and many a man who, when he made his will had more brain than all his children ever will have, has been pronounced after death to have been fit for the lunatic asylum. Be your own executor like Peter Cooper. Do not let charitable institutions be chiefly indebted to your last sickness and death. Better, like Peter Cooper, to walk through the halls you have built by your beneficence, and see young men whom you have educated by your charity, and get the sublime satisfaction of your generosity. I am not surprised to read that the Barzillai of my text lived to be eighty years of age. He stood in the perpetual sunshine of his own generosity. I am not surprised that our modern Barzillai lived to be ninety-two years of age. He felt the reaction of his helpfulness for others. Doing good was one of the strongest reasons of his longevity.
There is great excitement in a chase, and many an old hunter’92s heart has throbbed at the baying of the hounds; but there is one kind of chase that is very exhausting and that is deathful. Many a man with a large fortune behind him has called up all his past dollars as a pack of hounds to go out with him and hunt up one more dollar before he dies. Away, away, the old hunter and all the hounds. Hotter and hotter the chase. Closer on the track and closer on the track, the old man a little ahead and his dollars following on like a pack of hounds. Now they are coming in at the death, the dollar only a little way ahead, and the old man, with pale cheek and panting breath and shriveled arm, clutches for the dollar just as it turns on its track, and missing it, he still pursues and still pursues until the exhausted dollar plunges into a hole and burrows deeper and deeper down until the old hunter with both hands, takes hold and claws out the dirt from the embankment, burrowing deeper down and deeper down until just clutching that last dollar, the burrowed embankment breaks and he rolls over into his own grave, while a clap of thunder from a clear sky sounds: ’93What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his soul?’94
We talk a great deal about old misers. There are no old misers, or but very few of them. The most of the misers are comparatively young. Avarice kills more than war. In contrast with all that, look at the philanthropist at ninety-two years of age dying of a sold caught in going out to look after the prosperity of a charitable institution which himself had founded’97two thousand students in its evening schools.
Peter Cooper also impresses us with the best way of settling this old quarrel between capital and labor, this altercation between the rich and the poor. There are two ways in which this quarrel between capital and labor will never be settled. One is, by the violent suppression of the laboring classes, and the other is, by maltreatment of rich people. This is fast getting to be the age of dynamite. Dynamite under the Kremlin. Dynamite near the Parliament Houses and railroad bridges. Dynamite in Ireland. Dynamite in England. Dynamite in Germany. Dynamite in Russia. Dynamite in America. The rich are becoming more arrogant and the poor more unreasonable. I prescribe for the cure of this great evil the largest kind of allopathic dose of Peter Cooperism. Whoever heard of dynamite under Cooper Institute? Whoever looked for a keg of dynamite in the cellar of Peter Cooper’92s house? In the times of great public excitement, when public men have had to have their houses guarded by soldiers, no sentinel has ever stood at that man’92s door, and there has not been a time in the last forty years that the plainest man in New York and Brooklyn could not ring his door-bell and go in and shake hands with Peter Cooper. The poorest man with a hod of bricks on his shoulder climbing the ladder on a wall never begrudged this philanthropist his ride in an easy carriage.
On great occasions, when there came vast audiences in Cooper Institute, and the founder of that institute walked on the platform, the hard hands of American laborers in the applause clapped the loudest. When the opulent men of America and England and Russia and all the other lands shall stretch out to the laboring classes and the suffering classes as kind and as genial a hand as that of Peter Cooper, that will terminate the age of dynamite. What the police cannot do, what shot and shell cannot do, what severe laws severely executed cannot do, what armies with bayonets cannot do, will yet be accomplished by what I now baptize as Peter-Cooperism.
I hail the early twilight of that day when the men of fortune in all lands will come forth and say: ’93There are seventy thousand destitute children in New York city, and out of my fortune I will build this line of asylums to take care of them. There are vast multitudes of people in all the cities living in filthy and unventilated tenement-houses, and out of my fortune I will build a line of residences with cheap rents. There are nations that know nothing of Jesus Christ; I will turn my fortune inside out to send them flaming evangels. There shall be no more hunger, there shall be no more ignorance, there shall be no more crime, so far as I can help it.’94 When that day comes, this quarrel between capital and labor, and between the poor and the rich, will cease, and the last torch of incendiarism will be extinguished, and the last knife of assassination will go to slicing bread for poor children, and the last pound of dynamite that now threatens death will go to work in the quarries to blast foundation stones for churches and universities and asylums. May the spirit of Peter Cooper come down upon all the bank-stock and the government securities and the railroad companies and the great business houses of America.
Peter Cooper also has impressed us with the new style of monumental and epitaphal commemoration. You all want to be remembered. It would not be a pleasant thought to you to think that the moment you are gone out of the world you will be forgotten. But if the executors of Peter Cooper should expend twenty million dollars for a mausoleum in Greenwood it would not make him so well remembered as that building on Third and Fourth Avenues, New York. How few the people who would walk around the silent mausoleum as compared with the vast multitudes that will move up and down by that structure in the ages that are to come! Among the thousands who will be educated in that building will there ever be one so stupid as not to know who founded it? And how great a heart he had! And how he struggled to achieve a fortune, and always mastered that fortune and never allowed the fortune to master him. What is a monument of Aberdeen granite compared with a monument built out of the intellects and souls of immortal men and women? What an epitaph cut by a sculptor’92s chisel compared with the epitaph that will be written by generations and centuries that are to come writing his praise? Adorned and beautiful be all the crypts and catacombs and shrines of the dead; but if the superfluous and inexcusable expense of catafalque and necropolis and mausoleum had been put into practical use, there would have been bread for all the hungry, and knowledge for all the ignorant, and a home for all the lost.
The pyramids of Egypt are the tombs of the dead kings, their names even obliterated, and even the pyramids of Egypt are crumbling away. But monuments of good men last forever. Long after Walter Scott’92s ’93Old Mortality’94 shall have worn out his chisel in reviving the names faded from the old tombstones, the names of those who have helped others will be held in everlasting remembrance. The Sabbath-school teacher builds her monument in the heavenly thrones and palaces of her converted class. George M’fcller, of England, builds his monument in the orphan-houses of Bristol. George Peabody builds his monument in the library of his native village and the schoolhouses for educating the blacks in different parts of the South. Handel built his monument in the ’93Hallelujah Chorus.’94 Cyrus W. Field built his monument in the cables underlying the sea, lashing the continents together and hastening on the day of universal brotherhood. He who prays or gives for a church of Jesus Christ builds his monument in all that sacred edifice shall accomplish for good. Wilberforce built his monument in the piled-up shackles of a demolished slave trade. Livingstone built his monument in what shall be regenerated Africa. Paul built his monument in the magnificent story of the Resurrection. William E. Dodge built his monument in the reformatory institutions he either established or helped to support. Peter Cooper built his monument in the philanthropies he encouraged by the establishment of that one institution for the education of the masses.
Ah! that is a fame worth having; that is an immortality you can strive after without the degradation of worldly ambition. Let such monuments be built all the lands over, until every crippled limb is straightened and every inebriate learns the luxury of cold water, and every outcast is brought home to his God, and the last crime is extirpated, and Paradise Lost becomes Paradise Regained.
But once more I am impressed with the fact that the longest life-path has a terminus. What a gauntlet to run’97ninety-two years of epidemics and ailments and accidents! Why, it seemed as if he would always stay with us. Living on from the administration of George Washington to that of President Arthur. But the liberal hand is closed, the beaming eye is shut, the world-encompassing heart is still. When he was at my house I felt I was entertaining a king. But the king is dead. The largest volume of human life we see has its last chapter and its last page and its last line and its last word. And what are the ninety-two years of earthly existence compared with the five hundred thousand million years which just open the chapter of the great future? For that let us all get ready. Christ came to reconstruct us into purity and holiness and happiness and heaven.
What were the minuti’e6 of Peter Cooper’92s religious experiences I do not know. Some men are worse than their creed. Some men are better than their creed. In my estimation the grandest profession of the religion of Jesus Christ a man can ever make is a holy life devoted to making the world good and happy. I make no depreciation of the important duty of professing faith in Jesus Christ in the usual modes in the Christian church; but grander than that is a life all devoted to making the world better and to making the world good. A man may be a member of the most orthodox church in Christendom, and he may sit at all the communions for half a century, if he be mean and selfish and careless of the world’92s condition, he is no Christian; while on the other hand, a man may have peculiarities of religious belief, and yet if he spend his whole life for others, he is so much like Christ I shall call him a Christian. The grandest philanthropist the world ever saw was Christ, and the greatest charity of all the ages, that which gave his life life for the redemption of a world.
Standing in the shadow of Peter Cooper’92s grave today, I implore God for the sanctification of all the wealth of this country, and pray that it may be consecrated to that which is good and helpful. We are, as a nation, about to enter upon an age of prosperity such as has never been imagined. There may be recoil; there may be here and there as the years go by a setback in our national prosperity; but God only can tell the wealth that is to roll into the lap of this nation. In the intervals of my various journeys to the South there has been a change for the better amounting to a resurrection. The Chattahoochee will soon rival the Merrimac, and already all over the South you hear the dash of the water-wheel and the clatter of the spindle. In the one city of Atlanta six million dollars invested in manufactories. The South has gone out of politics and into business; there is going to roll up from that part of this land a wealth unimaginable. Then from the West all the mines and the quarries will disgorge, and there will be silver and gold and precious stones rolled over all this land. But the need will be just as appalling as the opulence will be tremendous. Five million people in the United States today over ten years of age who cannot read. Six million people in the United States today over ten years of age who cannot write, and two million of them voters’97a fact enough not only to appall but to stun every philanthropist.
We want five hundred Cooper Institutes. We want churches innumerable. We want just one great revival, one reaching from St. Lawrence to Key West and from Barnegat lighthouse to the Golden Gate of the Pacific. You and I have a responsibility in the matter. God help you to do your work and help me to do mine. I like the sentiment and I like the rhythm of that verse written by some anonymous poet:
When I am dead and gone,
And the mold upon my breast,
Say not that he did ill or well,
Only ’93he did his best.’94
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage