Over this road he carried forty thousand tons a year.
The poor boy, who once earned but twenty-five dollars a year, had
become a millionaire.
No good luck accomplished this.
But these are the things that did it:
Hard work.
Living within his means.
Saving his time.
Common sense, which helped him to look carefully before he
invested his money.
Promptness.
Keeping his word.
Mr. Cooper was honorable in all his business.
Once he said to a friend who had an interest in the Trenton works:
"I do not feel quite easy about the amount we are making. We are
making too much money. It is not right."
The price was made lower at once.
Do you not think Peter Cooper was an unusual kind of a man to lower
the price of an article just because the world needed it so much?
He was now sixty-four years of age.
He had worked day and night for forty years to build his Free
College.
He had bought the ground for it.
And now for five whole years he watched his great, six-story,
brown-stone building as it grew.
The man who was once a penniless lad should teach many through these
great stones some of the lessons he knew so well.
Some of these are industry, economy and perseverance.
The words which he wrote and placed in a box in the corner stone are
not too hard for you to read.
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