Peter Cooper’s example, which our mulit-millionaire philanthropists might follow with good results
Puck stands next to a statue of Peter Cooper in front of the Cooper Union building, holding a paper that states “Puck suggests a few outlets for overflowing incomes.” Crowds of working class men and women and disadvantaged youths in need of proper education fill the sides, while in the center throngs of people stream toward the entrances to the Cooper Union building.
Comments and Context
Inventor and philanthropist Peter Cooper established Cooper Union in 1859 as a school, totally or substantially tuition-free, primarily to teach trades and industrial arts. In an impressive building on New York City’s Astor Place, in its first year it hosted the most important speech of Abraham Lincoln’s pre-presidential canvass; and can boast of many prominent graduates through the years. As it expanded, a daytime engineering college and a four-year undergraduate program both were established in 1902, the date of Ehrhart’s cartoon. He implicitly criticizes Andrew Carnegie, whose eponymous libraries, in the cartoon’s view, did not serve common workers. However, Carnegie himself contributed greatly to Cooper Union during 1902. Generally, Puck was celebrating a New York institution on the occasion of its general reputation and its contemporary expansion. Cooper Union, by the way, is less than five minute’s walk from the Puck Building, which still sits on the corner of Houston and Mulberry Streets in Manhattan.
