‘Mechanic to Millionaire’ tells the story of inventor and philanthropist Peter Cooper
By Ilene Dube
AS students walk alongside the seated statue of Peter Cooper in New York’s Cooper Square — right across the street from Cooper Union — few have an inkling as to the accomplishments of the school’s founder. But in 1883, when the inventor, entrepreneur, educator and philanthropist died, one of the most pre-eminent sculptors of the day, Augustus St. Gaudens, was selected to cast Cooper’s image in bronze, and no less that Stanford White to design the canopy that protects the sculpture.
Cooper, whose father was a hatter, had less than two years formal education, and yet went on to create one of the greatest educational institutions. Today, the highly selective Cooper Union accepts less than 5 percent of applicants. Mechanic to Millionaire: The Peter Cooper Story, produced by the Gardner Documentary Group, tells the story of this important leader of the industrial revolution, and will be screened Oct. 7 at the Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick, and Oct. 11 at the New Jersey State Museum in Trenton.
Award-winning filmmaker Janet Gardner, a Rocky Hill resident, studied art at Cooper Union in the 1960s. “When you walked into the building, as I did as a young woman, you felt the breadth of history that he endowed, but his accomplishments were a well-kept secret.” Later in life, she was surprised to learn that no one had made a film about Cooper. John Iselin, a former president of Cooper Union and Channel 13, challenged Ms. Gardner to “find the fun” in Cooper.
”Peter Cooper was what we’d today call a nerd,” says Ms. Gardner, speaking by phone from her New York office. “He didn’t have a sense of humor. And the National Endowment for the Humanities challenged me to find his dark side. So we showed how he was a pioneering polluter with his glue factory.”
Cooper, an old-fashioned visionary, according to the film, had a major impact on skyscrapers, manufacturing, food, education and telecommunications. The film traces how he spent the first 30 years of his life getting started, the second 30 years making a fortune, and the final 30 giving it away.
Frustrated as a hatter, Cooper’s father tried going into the grocery business, but customers bought on credit and that put him into debt. Young Peter had to leave school to help his father when he returned to hatmaking. At his father’s side, Peter invented the first washing machine to beat laundry.
As a young man, Peter went to New York City to apprentice with a coach maker, hoping to become a master craftsman. He educated himself from books and, with Ben Franklin as his role model, hired tutors.
He called himself a “mechanic” long after making his fortune, because he believed the term referred to a fierce independence, according to the film.
After Cooper’s first child was born, the mechanic observed his wife rocking the cradle and invented a pendulous cradle that would rock itself.
Cooper opened his own grocery store, and when it did well, he invested the savings in real estate. From there, he invested in a glue factory. This was during an economic downturn, but a growing furniture business created demand for glue. Cooper used animal hides to make the gelatin for a better quality glue, and developed a system of testing and grading that has become an industry standard.
Adding flavor to the gelatin, he created an early version of Jell-O. But his glue factory was polluting the air and water, and so he moved his operation out of Manhattan.
As steam railroads were emerging, Cooper built an iron works in Baltimore to create rails. He put together the first steam locomotive, the “Tom Thumb.” (For the film’s set, Ms. Gardner found a Cooper Union engineering student, Keith Yeager, to build the washing machine and steam locomotive.)
With foundries and blast furnaces, Peter Cooper employed 2,500 men and jumpstarted the industrial revolution. In a quest for water power, he moved his operation to Trenton, where his iron works became the heart of the business and the city became the hub of a vast empire.
Cooper was also involved with laying the first telegraph cable over the Atlantic. “If people could talk to each other, they could avoid war,” he is quoted as saying.
Looking at a side view of rails, he saw I beams and rolled these out of his Trenton mill, revolutionizing tall building construction. These were used in building the capitol dome in Washington, D.C., and became the construction standard for the modern skyscraper. They were used in the building of Cooper Union, his crowning achievement.
He wanted to give working people the advantage in arts and sciences that he never had, according to the film. “Education ought to be free as air and water,” he famously said.
Cooper wanted the doors open at night to educate boys and girls, and more than 2,000 waited in line to gain admittance. The school was free to women and people of all backgrounds.
Later, Peter Cooper went to South Carolina, hoping to start a school for children of freed slaves, although Limestone College in Gaffney, S.C., wound up as a school for women, according to Ms. Gardner.
Among the biggest challenges in making a film about someone who’s been dead for more than 100 years is finding images. “There was no photography in the early 19th century so we had to recreate and re-enact his childhood,” Ms. Gardner says. There is voice-over narration during the re-enactments, with Kevin Kline speaking the words of Abraham Lincoln. It was in Cooper Union’s Great Hall that Lincoln gave the speech that won him the party’s nomination for president.
Re-enacted scenes were shot at Ringwood Manor in Reid State Park, Passaic County, where Cooper’s mansion still stands, and in Old Bethpage Village, N.Y., where his first house has been preserved.
”We did as much as we could to make it authentic with the help of historians such as (Princeton University history professor) Sean Wilentz and (others),” says Ms. Gardner. Archives at the New York Public Library, Cooper Union and the Library of Congress were tremendous resources.
”What we wanted to do was bring him back and make him relevant for today,” says Ms. Gardner. “He was wary of bankers and brokers because the banks had failed in the mid 19th century. His business advice brings him back to us in the recession. He was a man of conscience who saw the big picture and saved so many lives.”
Ms. Gardner, who attends Princeton Friends Meetings, was interested in the fact that Cooper, whose father was a “fire-and-brimstone Methodist,” was influenced by Elias Hicks, a leading Quaker. “He follows Quaker principles in his philosophy. He believed wealth is a public trust. His was made by many people and he believed he should give it back to the people.”
- Mechanic to Millionaire: The Peter Cooper Story will be screened at the Zimmerli Art Museum, 71 Hamilton St., New Brunswick, Oct. 7, 6:30 p.m., and at the New Jersey State Museum, 205 W. State St., Trenton, Oct. 11, 1:30 p.m. http://petercooperstory.com