For forty years Peter Cooper served the City of New York and the State, and always to his own financial loss. He saw the last remains of the Indian Stockade removed from Manhattan Island. When he was elected alderman, the city was patrolled by night-watchmen, who made their rounds and cried the hour and "All's Well!" For five hours, from midnight until five o'clock in the morning, they walked and watched. They were paid a dollar a night, and the money was collected from the people who owned property on the streets they patrolled, just as in country towns they sprinkle the streets in front of the residences owned by the men who subscribe.
Peter Cooper inaugurated a system of "public safety," or police protection. He also replaced the old volunteer fire-department with a paid service. He was the first man to protest against the use of wells as a water-supply for a growing city.
The first water-pipes used in New York City were bored logs; he fought against these, and finally induced the city to use iron pipes. As there was no iron pipe at this time made in America, he inaugurated a company to cast pipe. Very naturally his motives in demanding iron pipes were assailed, but he stood his ground and made the pipes and sold them to the city rather than that the city should not have them. He was brave enough to place himself in a suspicious position, that the people might prosper.
In Eighteen Hundred Thirty, he organized "The Free School Society," to fight the division of the school funds among sectarian schools. The idea that any form of religion should be taught at public expense was abhorrent to him. He was denounced as an infidel and an enemy of society, but his purity of life and unselfish devotion to what he knew was right were his shield and defense. The fight was kept up from Eighteen Hundred Thirty to Eighteen Hundred Fifty-three, when it was fixed in the statute that "no fund raised by taxation should be provided or used for the support of any school in which any religious or sectarian doctrine or tenet is taught, inculcated or practised." The Free School Society was then fused with the School Board, and ceased to exist as a separate institution. That the amalgamation was a plan to shelve Peter Cooper's secular ideas dawned upon him later. And that the struggle for a school free from superstition's taint was not completely won, Peter Cooper fully realized.
During this long service on the School Board of New York City, Peter Cooper worked out in his own mind an ideal of education which he was unable to impress upon his fellow townsmen. No doubt their indifference and opposition tended to crystallize his own ideas.
It will not do to say that Peter Cooper was exactly disgusted with the public-school system of New York, for he, more than any other one man, had evolved it and carried it forward from very meager beginnings. Democracy is a safeguard against tyranny, but it often cramps and hinders the man of genuine initiative. If the entire public-school system of the State had been delegated to Peter Cooper in Eighteen Hundred Fifty, he as sole commissioner could and would have set the world a pace in pedagogy.
Disraeli's contention that democracy means the rule of the worst has in it a basis of truth. Peter Cooper's appeals to his colleagues on the School Board fell on idle ears. And so he decided to do the thing himself, and the extent to which he would do it was to be limited only by his fortune.
Cooper Union was to be a model for every public school in America.
The block bounded by Third and Fourth Avenues and the Bowery was bought up by Peter Cooper, a lot at a time, with the idea of a model school in mind. When Peter Cooper bought the first lot there in Eighteen Hundred Thirty-six, the site was at the extreme north limit of the city. Later, A. T. Stewart was to build his business palace near at hand.