The appeal of this society to "the affluent and charitable of every denomination of Christians" was liberally answered, and by December, 1809, a school capable of accommodating five hundred children had been erected upon a purchased site. This was the beginning in New York city of the free school system, over which for twenty-five years De Witt Clinton presided. During that period the schools, supported by generous private contributions, and also after a while by a state tax, steadily increased in number, efficiency, and public favor. Peter Cooper had been always a zealous supporter of these schools, but not until 1838 did he become—by election as a trustee of the Free School Society—officially connected with them. It was a critical period in their history. The original national debt of the Union had been recently extinguished, and a considerable surplus had been returned to the contributing States, of which New York devoted its share to educational purposes, thus largely increasing the fund for the city. In 1822, sixteen years before, the common council had made the free schools "unsectarian," excluding from the benefits of the fund all institutions of denominational character. The various sects had submitted reluctantly to this decision so long as the fund was too small to be divided among them; but its sudden enlargement encouraged an attempt to secure appropriations for parochial schools.
In his first annual message Governor Seward recommended to the legislature the establishment of schools in which the children of foreigners might be "instructed by teachers speaking the same language with themselves and professing the same faith." The Roman Catholic community, acting at once upon this suggestion, sent a deputation to the New York common council demanding for their schools "a pro rata share" of the educational fund, to which as taxpayers they contributed.
In the resistance made to this claim by the Free School Society Mr. Cooper took a prominent and ardent part. The advocates of unsectarian public schools were victorious; but the controversy continued to agitate the State until the passage by the legislature in 1842 of an act establishing in New York city a new board of education to control the schools supported from the funds of the State, and at the same time forbidding the support from this fund of schools in which "any religious sectarian doctrine or tenet shall be taught, inculcated, or practiced." The Free School Society, resenting and distrusting this new (and in some respects complicated) arrangement, continued its separate activity for eleven years; but in 1853, the unsectarian character of the public schools of New York having been established beyond question, the society and the board of education were by common consent amalgamated by statute. At the final meeting of the society Peter Cooper delivered the valedictory address, the language of which indicates that not without apprehension did he contemplate the surrender of the public schools to the exclusive control of a body of officials likely to be more or less influenced by partisan or political considerations.
Yet his characteristic common sense came again in this instance to the front. The moral which he drew from his doubts and fears was that "the stewardship we are about to resign is not a reprieve from the responsibilities of the future." And in obedience to this conviction he accepted, with fourteen of his old colleagues, membership in the board of education, of which he served for two years as vice-president, resigning in January, 1855, at which time he had formed and begun to carry out the great plan of an institution for free popular education with which his name is now forever associated.
Many years later Mr. Cooper became the president of the Citizens' Association of New York, which he supported with untiring enthusiasm and lavish expenditure, and which in its day did good work in securing for the city an efficient fire department, boards of health, docks, and education, and an improved charter. Mr. Cooper retired in 1873, and the association died soon after, to be revived in other organizations, which have from time to time continued the perennial battle for good government in New York begun by him.
VII
THE COOPER UNION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE AND ART
In many respects the industrial conditions under which Peter Cooper began his career had been revolutionized before he finished it. The apprentice system has well-nigh passed away; and the old freedom with which an intelligent, industrious, and ambitious young man could turn from one occupation to another, seeking that road which offered greatest promise of preferment, is greatly hampered by the modern regime of "organized labor," which, whatever its advantages, presents its own peculiar perils for the workingman. But it remains forever true that under either of these systems, or any others that can be evolved or invented, knowledge is power, and the bestowal of it is the one gift which neither pauperizes the recipient nor injures the community.