Peter Cooper

Peter Cooper was the kind of American who no longer exists: a man who left school at eleven, built the country's first steam locomotive in his iron works, founded an institution that still educates free students 165 years later, and ran for president on a platform demanding monetary reform. This biography, written in the early twentieth century, traces that improbable arc from Cooper's Revolutionary War-era childhood through his decades as a glue-factory owner turned industrialist, inventor, and radical economist. Rossiter W. Raymond paints a portrait of relentless self-improvement, a man who taught himself engineering, advocated for laboring-class education before it was fashionable, and used his fortune to challenge the financial powers that dominated Gilded Age America. The prose carries the earnest admiration of an era that still believed in great men as engines of progress. For readers curious about the forgotten roots of American innovation and the ideals that built institutions like Cooper Union, this biography offers a window into a world where a shoe clerk's son could reshape national infrastructure and die beloved by thousands.