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COOPER 



COOPERAGE 



which then prevailed. On either side of the 

 Atlantic Cooper's own severity of language won him 

 no small amount of personal unpopularity ; yet no 

 man loved his own country better than he ; and 

 his high regard for the nobler side of the English 

 character, and his appreciation of the grand achieve- 

 ments of British history, found frequent expression 

 in his writings. These writings, other than the 

 best of his novels, contained much to excite 

 opposition, and they brought upon him, not alto- 

 gether undeservedly, the reputation of being a 

 proud, contentious, and somewhat wrong-headed 

 man; yet there was in his real character much 

 sweetness, as well as great strength, purity and 

 dignity, and unqualified honesty. His pride was 

 large, but it was not mixed with personal vanity. 

 It has been well said that his faults were those of 

 temper and judgment, rather than of character. 

 He died at Cooperstown, September 14, 1851. 

 The best biography is by Lounsbury (1882). 



Cooper, PETER, manufacturer and philan- 

 thropist, born at New York, 12th February 1791, 

 assisted his father in his successive occupations of 

 hatter, brewer, and brickmaker, and served an 

 apprenticeship to a carriage-builder, 1808-12. He 

 next made independent ventures as a machinist, 

 cabinetmaker, and grocer, and established a glue 

 factory on Long Island. He erected large iron- 

 works in Baltimore in 1828, and in 1830 constructed 

 there, from his own designs, the first locomotive 

 engine ever built in America. He afterwards 

 built an iron-wire factory in New York, and 

 large blast-furnaces in Pennsylvania ; and he 

 was largely instrumental in bringing about the 

 laying of the Atlantic cable. To provide the 

 working-classes with educational advantages, of 

 which he himself had enjoyed so few, he erected 

 and endowed the Cooper Union (1854-59), one of 

 the most useful institutions in New York, where 

 free lectures, reading-room, art collections, and 

 technical schools have been provided. In 1876 

 he received the Independent nomination for presi- 

 dent. He died in New York, 4th April 1883. See 

 Life by Mrs Carter ( 1889). 



Cooper, THOMAS, the Chartist poet, born at 

 Leicester in 1805, was apprenticed to a shoemaker 

 at Gainsborough, taught himself Latin, Greek, 

 Hebrew, and French, and became a schoolmaster 

 at twenty- three, and at the same time a local 

 Methodist preacher. After reporting for some of 

 the newspapers in the Midlands, he became leader 

 of the Leicester Chartists in 1841, and was an 

 active editor of tracts. He lectured in the Potteries 

 during the riots in August 1842, was arrested on a 

 charge of conspiracy and sedition, and sentenced to 

 two years' imprisonment in Stafford gaol. Here he 

 wrote The Purgatory of Suicides, a poem in the 

 Spenserian stanza, and Wise Saws and Modern 

 Instances, a series of tales, which were both pub- 

 lished in 1845. Next year appeared his Baron's 

 Yule Feast, a Christinas Rhyme, and a series of 

 papers headed ' Condition of the People of England ' 

 in Douglas Jerrold's Newspaper. In 1848 he began 

 to lecture on history and politics in London, and 

 set up the Plain Speaker and Cooper's Journal, two 

 short-lived penny weeklies. He published two 

 novels, Alderman Ralph (1853), and The Family 

 Feud ( 1854), and about the end of 1855 relinquished 

 the sceptical opinions he had held since his imprison- 

 ment, and became an active lecturer on Christian 

 evidences. In 1867 a number of his friends pur- 

 chased for him and his wife an annuity of 100. 

 Cooper published his Autobiography in 1872, and 

 Poetical Works in 1878. Died July 15, 1892. 



Cooperage, the art of making vessels of 

 pieces of wood bound together by hoops. It is a 

 very ancient art, such vessels having been in use 



among the Romans at the period of the Christian 

 era. The upright pieces forming the sides of a barrel 

 or cask, or other cooper's work, are called staves; and 

 as casks are usually larger in the middle than at the 

 top and bottom, this swelling, called the belly or 

 bulge, is formed by skilfully shaping each stave so 

 that it shall form part of the required double conoid, 

 and that, when all are built and hooped together, 

 their edges shall coincide perfectly ; for this purpose 

 each stave is made broadest in the middle, and 

 narrowed down in a curved line towards each end. 

 A skilful cooper can work this curve so accurately, 

 that no further fitting or alteration shall be needed 

 when the staves are put together. The staves are 

 made to meet at their inner edges, and by driving 

 the hoops very hard, the inner part is compressed 

 until the slight gaping outside is closed, and thus 

 slight inaccuracies of fitting are remedied. 



There are several branches of cooperage. The wet 

 or tight cooper makes vessels for holding liquids. 

 The dry cooper does inferior work, such as barrels 

 for containing dry goods, where an inferior degree of 

 accuracy is sufficient. The white cooper makes 

 churns, pails, &c., which for the most part have 

 straight sides. 



The best work is made of oak, which must be 

 thoroughly dried before being put together. In 

 warm countries, the drying of the sun is sufficient, 

 and casks are therefore mounted in summer only ; 

 but in Britain, artificial drying is commonly resorted 

 to. The hoops are hammered down from the narrow 

 to the wide part of the cask, by means of a mallet 

 striking a piece of wood held against the hoop. 

 Iron hoops are sometimes put on hot, in order that 

 their contraction on cooling may bind the work 

 together. Most ingeniously constructed machinery 

 is now generally used in barrel-making. 



Cooperage, on the North Sea, is that de- 

 moralising system of selling or bartering strong 

 drink, tobacco, or other articles, to fishermen or 

 sailors, from Dutch or other foreign vessels called 

 copers (Ger. kaufen, Dut. kopen}. They osten- 

 sibly cruise with the English fishing-fleets to sell 

 foreign tobacco on which no duty has been paid, 

 and what on shore would cost four shillings per 

 pound is sold for eighteenpence. The trade began 

 more than fifty years ago by foreign vessels from 

 Dutch ports trading with English smacksmen in 

 articles of clothing, which grew into the more profit- 

 able barter and sale of tobacco and spirits. An 

 English smack, until the insurance company 

 refused to insure her, has been known to take out 

 500 worth of grog and tobacco, and clear another 

 500 in two months in the traffic. To counter- 

 act the evils of the system, Mr E. J. Mather, 

 in 1882, started a mission for the deep-sea, 

 fishermen, which in 1888 had at command eight 

 mission ships, stored with good literature, woollen 

 clothing, tobacco, and medicine, and a staff of 

 twelve clergymen as honorary chaplains. The 

 Customs Commissioners refused the necessary 

 concessions for the sale of tobacco at a cheap 

 rate in 1885, but granted the same in 1887, and 

 now the ordinary drawings of a voyage may be 

 100 for tobacco! The Queen became the patron 

 of the mission, and it is duly registered by the 

 Board of Trade. As a result of an international 

 conference at the Hague between the six fishing 

 powers, a convention was signed in 1887, one of 

 the provisions of which contemplated the absolute 

 prohibition of the sale or barter of spirits on the 

 North Sea. The North Sea Fisheries Bill (1888) 

 gave effect (as far as Great Britain is concerned) 

 to the recommendation of the convention. The 

 sale of spirits to fishermen and others on board 

 fishing-vessels is prohibited ; fishermen are for- 

 bidden to buy spirits at sea ; the exchange or barter 

 for spirits of any article, especially the fish caught, 



