Part I

., dealing with the Carboniferous and newer strata, was published. It affords evidence throughout of the extensive and accurate knowledge possessed by Conybeare; and it exercised a marked influence on the progress of geology in this country. He was a fellow of the Royal Society and a corresponding member of the Institute of France. In 1844 he was awarded the Wollaston medal by the Geological Society of London. The loss of his eldest son, W. J. Conybeare, preyed on his mind and hastened his end. He died at Itchenstoke, near Portsmouth, a few months after his son, on the 12th of August 1857. (Obituary in _Gent. Mag._ Sept. 1857, p. 335.)

His elder brother JOHN JOSIAS CONYBEARE (1779-1824), also educated at Christ Church, Oxford, and an accomplished scholar, became vicar of Batheaston, and was professor of Anglo-Saxon and afterwards of poetry at Oxford. He likewise was an ardent student of geology and communicated several important papers to the _Annals of Philosophy_ and the _Transactions of the Geological Society_ of London. (Obituary in _Ann. Phil._ vol. viii., Sept. 1824, p. 162.)

CONYBEARE, WILLIAM JOHN (1815-1857), English divine, son of Dean W. D. Conybeare, was born on the 1st of August 1815, and was educated at Westminster and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was elected fellow in 1837. From 1842 to 1848 he was principal of the Liverpool Collegiate Institution, which he left for the vicarage of Axminster. He published _Essays, Ecclesiastical and Social_, in 1856, and a novel, _Perversion, or the Causes and Consequences of Infidelity_, but is best known as the joint author (with J. S. Howson) of _The Life and Epistles of St Paul_ (1851). He died at Weybridge in 1857.

COODE, SIR JOHN (1816-1892), English engineer, was born at Bodmin, Cornwall, on the 11th of November 1816, the son of a solicitor. After considerable experience as an engineer in the west of England he came to London, and from 1844-1847 had a consulting practice in Westminster. In the latter year he was appointed resident engineer in charge of the extensive national harbour works at Portland then in progress. In 1856 he was appointed engineer-in-chief of this undertaking, and this post he retained till the completion of the works in 1872. His services at Portland were rewarded with a knighthood. He was now recognized as the leading authority on harbour construction, and his advice was sought by many of the colonial governments, especially by those of South Africa and Australia, and by the Indian government. After the Portland harbour his best-known work is the harbour of Colombo, Ceylon. He was made a K.C.M.G. in 1886. From 1884 till his death he was a member of the Suez Canal Commission, and from 1889-1891 president of the Institution of Civil Engineers. He died at Brighton on the 2nd of March 1892.

COOK, ALBERT STANBURROUGH (1853- ), American scholar, was born on the 6th of March 1853 in Montville, Morris county, New Jersey. He graduated at Rutgers College in 1872, and also studied at Göttingen and Leipzig (1877-1878), and, after spending the years 1879-1881 as associate in English at Johns Hopkins University, in London, and under Sievers at Jena, he became in 1882 professor of English in the University of California, and in 1889 professor of English language and literature in Yale University. He re-organized the teaching of English in the state of California, and edited many texts for reading in secondary schools; but he is best known for his work in Old English and in poetics. He translated, edited, and revised Sievers' _Old English Grammar_ (1885), edited _Judith_ (1888), _The Christ of Cynewulf_ (1900), _Asser's Life of King Alfred_ (1905), and _The Dream of the Rood_ (1905), and prepared _A First Book in Old English Grammar_ (1894). He also edited, with annotations, _Sidney's Defense of Poesie_ (1890); _Shelley's Defense of Poetry_ (1891); _Newman's Poetry_ (1891); _Addison's Criticisms on Paradise Lost_ (1892); _The Art of Poetry_ (1892), being the essays of Horace, Vida and Boileau; and _Leigh Hunt's What is Poetry_ (1893); and published _Higher Study of English_ (1906).

COOK, EDWARD DUTTON (1829-1883), English dramatic critic and author, was born in London on the 30th of January 1829, the son of a solicitor. He was educated at King's College school, London, and, after four years in his father's office, obtained a situation in the London office of a railway company, at first utilizing only his spare time in literary work, but eventually devoting himself entirely to literature. He was dramatic critic of the _Pall Mall Gazette_ from 1867 to 1875, and of the _World_ from 1875 till his death. He also wrote freely on art topics, and was the author of several novels. He died in London on the 11th of September 1883.

COOK, ELIZA (1818-1889), English author, was born on the 24th of December 1818, in Southwark, being the daughter of a local tradesman. She was self-taught, and began when a girl to write poetry for the _Weekly Dispatch_ and _New Monthly_. In 1838 she published _Melaia and other Poems_, and from 1849 to 1854 conducted a paper for family reading called _Eliza Cook's Journal_. She also published _Jottings from my Journal_ (1860), and _New Echoes_ (1864); and in 1863 she was given a civil list pension of £100 a year. As the author of a single poem, "The Old Armchair," Eliza Cook's name was for a generation after 1838 a household word both in England and in America, her kindly domestic sentiment making her a great favourite with the working-class and middle-class public. She died at Wimbledon on the 23rd of September 1889.

COOK, JAMES (1728-1779), English naval captain and explorer, was born on the 28th of October 1728, at Marton village, Cleveland, Yorkshire, where his father was first an agricultural labourer and then a farm bailiff. At twelve years of age he was apprenticed to a haberdasher at Staithes, near Whitby, and afterwards to Messrs Walker, shipowners, of Whitby, whom he served for years in the Norway, Baltic and Newcastle trades.

In 1755, having risen to be a mate, Cook joined the royal navy, and after four years' service was, on the recommendation of Sir Hugh Palliser, his commander, appointed master successively of the sloop "Grampus," of the "Garland" and of the "Solebay," in the last of which he served in the St Lawrence. He was employed also in sounding and surveying the river, and he published a chart of the channel from Quebec to the sea. In 1762 he was present at the recapture of Newfoundland, and was employed in surveying portions of this coast (especially Placentia Harbour); in 1763, on Palliser becoming governor of Newfoundland, Cook was appointed "marine surveyor of the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador"; this office he held till 1767; and the volumes of sailing directions he now brought out (1766-1768) showed remarkable abilities. At the same time he began to make his reputation as a mathematician and astronomer by his observation of the solar eclipse of the 5th of August 1766, at one of the Burgeo Islands, near Cape Ray, and by his account of the same in the _Philosophical Transactions_ (vol. lvii. pp. 215-216).

In 1768 Cook was appointed to conduct an expedition, suggested by the revival of geographical interest now noticeable, and resolved on by the English admiralty at the instance of the Royal Society, for observing the impending transit of Venus, and prosecuting geographical researches in the South Pacific Ocean. For these purposes he received a commission as lieutenant (May 25th), and set sail in the "Endeavour," of 370 tons, accompanied by several men of science, including Sir Joseph Banks (August 25th). On the 13th of April 1769, he reached Tahiti, where he observed the transit on the 3rd of June. From Tahiti he sailed in quest of the great continent then supposed to exist in the South Pacific, explored the Society Islands, and thence struck to New Zealand, whose coasts he circumnavigated and examined with great care for six months, charting them for the first time with fair accuracy, and especially observing the channel ("Cook Strait") which divided the North and South Islands. His attempts to penetrate to the interior, however, were thwarted by native hostility. From New Zealand he proceeded to "New Holland" or Australia, and surveyed with the same minuteness and accuracy the whole east coast. New South Wales he named after a supposed resemblance to Glamorganshire; Botany Bay, sighted on the 28th of April 1770, was so called by the naturalists of the expedition. On account of the hostility of the natives his discoveries here also were confined to the coast, of which he took possession for Great Britain. From Australia Cook sailed to Batavia, satisfying himself upon the way that (as Torres had first shown in 1607) New Guinea was in no way an outlying part of the greater land mass to the south.

Arriving in England, by way of the Cape of Good Hope, on the 12th of June, Cook was made a commander, and soon after was appointed to command another expedition for examining and determining once for all the question of the supposed great southern continent. With the "Resolution" of 462 tons, the "Adventure" (Captain Furneaux) of 330 tons, and 193 men, he sailed from Plymouth on the 13th of July 1772; he touched at the Cape of Good Hope, and striking thence south-east (November 22nd) passed the Antarctic Circle (January 16th, 1773), repassed the same, and made his way to New Zealand (March 26th) without discovering land. From New Zealand he resumed his "search for a continent," working up and down across the South Pacific, and penetrating to 67° 31' and again to 71° 10' S., with imminent risk of destruction from floating ice, but with the satisfaction of disproving the possibility of the disputed continent in the seas south-eastward of New Zealand. He then made for Easter Island, whose exact position he determined, for the first time, with accuracy; noticing and describing the gigantic statues which Roggewein, the first discoverer of the island, had made known. In the same manner he accomplished a better determination and examination of the Marquesas, as well as of the Tonga or Friendly Islands, than had yet been made; and after a stay at Tahiti to rest and refit, crossed the central Pacific to the "New Hebrides," as he renamed Quiros's "Southern Land of the Holy Spirit" (a name preserved in the modern island of _Espiritu Santo_), called by Bougainville the "Great Cyclades" (_Grandes Cyclades_), whose position, extent, divisions and character were now verified as never before. Next followed the wholly new discoveries of New Caledonia, Norfolk Island, and the Isle of Pines. Another visit to New Zealand, and yet another examination of the far southern Pacific, which was crossed from west to east through the whole of its extent, from south Australia to Tierra del Fuego, were now undertaken by Cook before he finally closed his work in refutation of the Antarctic continent, as previously understood, on this side of the world. The voyage closed with a rapid survey of the "Land of Fire," the rounding of Cape Horn, the rediscovery of the island now named Southern Georgia, the discovery of Sandwich Land, the crossing of the South Atlantic (here also exploding the great _Terra Australis_ delusion), and visits to the Cape of Good Hope, St Helena, Ascension, Fernando Noronha and the Azores. The voyage (reckoning only from the Cape of Good Hope and back to the same) had covered considerably more than 20,000 leagues, nearly three times the equatorial circumference of the earth; it left the main outlines of the southern portions of the globe substantially as they are known to-day; and it showed a possibility of keeping a number of men for years at sea without a heavy toll of lives. Cook only lost one man out of 118 in more than 1000 days; he had conquered scurvy.

The discoverer reached Plymouth on the 25th of July 1775, and his achievements were promptly, if meanly, rewarded. He was immediately raised to the rank of post-captain, appointed a captain in Greenwich hospital, and soon afterwards unanimously elected a member of the Royal Society, from which he received the Copley gold medal for the best experimental paper which had appeared during the year.

Cook's third and last voyage was primarily to settle the question of the north-west passage, practically abandoned since before the middle of the 17th century, but now taken up again, as a matter of scientific interest, by the British government. The explorer, who had volunteered for this service, was instructed to sail first into the Pacific through the chain of the newly discovered islands which he had recently visited, and on reaching New Albion to proceed northward as far as latitude 65° and endeavour to find a passage to the Atlantic. Several ships were at the same time fitted out to attempt a passage on the other side from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Sailing from the Nore on the 25th of June 1776 (Plymouth, July 12), with the "Resolution" and "Discovery," and touching at the Cape of Good Hope, which he left on the 30th of November, Cook next made Tasmania and thence passed on to New Zealand and the Tonga and Society Islands, discovering on his way several of the larger members of the Hervey or Cook Archipelago, especially Mangaia and Aitutaki (March 30th-April 4th, 1777); some smaller isles of this group he had already sighted on his second voyage, September 23rd, 1773. From Tahiti, as he moved north towards the main object of his expedition, he made a far more important discovery, or rather rediscovery, that of the Hawaiian or Sandwich Islands, the greatest and most remarkable of the Polynesian archipelagos (early February 1778). These had perhaps first been seen by the Spanish navigator Gaetano in 1555; but their existence had been kept a close secret by Spain at the time, and had long been forgotten. Striking the west American coast in 44° 55' N. on the 7th of March following, he made an almost continuous survey of the same up to Bering Straits and beyond, as far as 70° 41', where he found the passage barred by a wall, or rather continent, of ice, rising 12 ft. above water, and stretching as far as the eye could reach. The farthest point visible on the American shore (in the extreme north-west of Alaska) he called Icy Cape. On his way towards Bering Straits he discovered and named King George's ("Nootka") and Prince William's Sound, as well as Cape Prince of Wales, the westernmost extremity of North America, never yet seen by English navigators, but well known to Russian explorers, who probably first sighted it in 1648; he also penetrated into the bay afterwards known as Cook's Inlet or River, which at first seemed to promise a passage to the Arctic Seas, to the south-east of the Alaska peninsula. Cook next visited the Asiatic shores of Bering Straits (the extreme north-east of Siberia); returning to America, he explored Norton Sound, north of the Yukon; touched at (Aleutian) Unalaska, where he met with some Russian-American settlers; and thence made his way back to the Hawaiian group, which he had christened after his friend and patron Lord Sandwich, then head of the British admiralty (January 17th, 1779). Here he visited Maui and Hawaii itself, whose size and importance he now first realized, and in one of whose bays (Kealakekua) he met his death early in the morning of the 14th of February 1779. During the night of the 13th, one of the "Discovery's" boats was stolen by the natives; and Cook, in order to recover it, made trial of his favourite expedient of seizing the king's person until reparation should be made. Having landed on the following day with some marines, a scuffle ensued which compelled the party to retreat to their boats. Cook was the last to retire; and as he was nearing the shore he received a blow from behind which felled him to the ground. He rose immediately, and vigorously resisted the crowds that pressed upon him, but was soon overpowered.

Had Cook returned from his third voyage, there is ground for believing King George would have made him a baronet. Distinguished honours were paid to his memory, both at home and by foreign courts, and a pension was settled upon his widow. But in his life a very inadequate share of official reward was dealt out to the man who not only may be placed first among British maritime discoverers, but also gave his country her title, and so her colonies, in Australasia. As a commander, an observer and a practical physician, his merits were equally great. Reference has been made to his survey work and to his victory over scurvy; it must not be forgotten that along with a commanding personal presence, and with sagacity, decision and perseverance quite extraordinary, went other qualities not less useful to his work. He won the affection of those who served under him by sympathy, kindness and unselfish care of others as noteworthy as his gifts of intellect.

See the _Account of a Voyage round the World in 1769-1771, by Lieut. James Cook_, in vols. ii. and iii. of Hawkesworth's Voyages (1773); the _Voyage towards the South Pole and round the World ... in ... 1772-1775, written by James Cook_ ... (1777); a _Voyage to the Pacific Ocean ... in 1776-1780_, vols. i. and ii. written by Cook (1784); also the _Narrative of the Voyages round the World performed by Captain James Cook_, by A. Kippis, D.D., F.R.S. (1788), long the standard life of the navigator, but now superseded by Arthur Kitson's _Captain James Cook, the Circumnavigator_ (1907). (C. R. B.)

COOK, THOMAS (1808-1892), English travelling agent, was born at Melbourne in Derbyshire on the 22nd of November 1808. Beginning work at the age of ten, he was successively a gardener's help and a wood-turner at Melbourne, and a printer at Loughborough. At the age of twenty he became a Bible-reader and village missionary for the county of Rutland; but in 1832, on his marriage, combined his wood-turning business with that occupation. In 1836 he became a total abstainer, and subsequently became actively associated with the temperance movement, and printed at his own expense various publications in its interest, notably the _Children's Temperance Magazine_ (1840), the first of its kind to appear in England. In June 1841 a large meeting was to be held at Loughborough in connexion with this movement, and Cook was struck with the idea of getting the Midland Counties Railway Company to run a special train from Leicester to the meeting. The company consented, and on the 5th of July there were carried 570 passengers from Leicester to Loughborough and back at a shilling a head. This is believed to be the first publicly-advertised excursion train ever run in England--private "specials," reserved for members of institutes and similar bodies, were already in use. The event caused great excitement, and Cook received so many applications to organize similar parties that he henceforward deserted wood-turning, while continuing his printing and publishing. The summers of the next three years were occupied with excursions like the first; but in 1845 Cook advertised a pleasure-trip on a more extensive scale, from Leicester to Liverpool and back, with opportunities for visiting the Isle of Man, Dublin and Welsh coast. A _Handbook of the Trip to Liverpool_ was supplied for the use of travellers. In the previous year Cook had entered into a permanent arrangement with the Midland Railway Company to place trains at his disposal, for which he should provide the passengers. A trip to Scotland followed, and the excursionists were received in Glasgow with music and salute of guns.

The next great impetus to popular travel was given by the Great Exhibition of 1851, which Cook helped 165,000 visitors to attend. On the occasion of the Paris exhibition of 1855 there was a Cook's excursion from Leicester to Calais and back for £1:10s. The following year saw the first grand circular tour in Europe. This part of Cook's activity largely increased after 1863, when the Scottish railway managers broke off their engagements with him, and left him free for more distant enterprise. Switzerland was opened up in 1863, and Italy in 1864. Up to this time "Cook's tourists" had been personally conducted, but now he began to be an agent for the sale of English and foreign tickets, the holders of which travelled independently. Switzerland was the first foreign country accessible under these conditions, and in 1865 nearly the whole of Europe was included in the scheme. Its extension to the United States followed in 1866. For the benefit of visitors to the Paris exhibition, Cook made a fresh departure and leased a hotel there. In the same year began his system of "hotel-coupons," providing accommodation at a fixed charge. The year 1869 was marked by an extension of Cook's tours to Palestine, followed by further developments of travel in the East, his son, John Mason Cook, (1834-1899), being appointed in 1870 agent of the khedivial government for passenger traffic on the Nile. The Franco-German War of 1870-1871 was expected to damage the tourist system, but, as a matter of fact, encouraged it, through the demand for combination, international tickets enabling travellers to reach the south of Europe without crossing the belligerent countries. At the termination of the war a party of American freemasons visited Paris under J. M. Cook's guidance, and became the precursors of the present vast American tourist traffic. At the beginning of 1872 J. M. Cook entered into formal partnership with his father, and the firm first took the name of Thomas Cook & Son. In 1882, on the outbreak of Arabi Pasha's rebellion, Thomas Cook & Son were commissioned to convey Sir Garnet Wolseley and his suite to Egypt, and to transport the wounded and sick up the Nile by water, for which they received the thanks of the war office. The firm was again employed in 1884 to convey General Gordon to the Sudan, and the whole of the men (18,000) and stores necessary for the expedition afterwards sent to relieve him. In 1889 Thomas Cook & Son acquired the exclusive right of carrying the mails, specie, soldiers and officials of the Egyptian government along the Nile. In 1891 the firm celebrated its jubilee, and on the 19th of July of the following year Thomas Cook died. He had been afflicted with blindness in his declining years. His son, J. M. Cook, died in 1899, leaving three sons, all actively engaged in the business.

COOK or HERVEY ISLANDS, an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean, lying mainly between 155° and 160° E., and about 20° S.; a dependency of the British colony of New Zealand. It comprises nine partly volcanic, partly coralline, islands, the more important of which are Rarotonga, hilly, fertile and well watered, with several cones 300 to 400 ft. high, above which towers the majestic Rarotonga volcano (2920 ft.), the culminating point of the archipelago; Mangaia (Mangia); Aitutaki, with luxuriant cocoa-nut palm groves; Atui (Vatui); Mitiero; Mauki; Fenuaiti; and the two Hervey Islets, which give an alternative name to the group. The total land area is 111 sq. m. Owing to its healthy, equable climate, the archipelago is well suited for European settlement; but the dangerous fringing coral reefs render it difficult of access, and it suffers also from the absence of good harbours. The natives, who are of Polynesian stock and speech, have legends of their emigration from Samoa. They say their ancestors found black people on the islands, and the strongly Melanesian type which is found, especially on Mangaia, supports the statement. The Cook Islanders were formerly man-hunters and cannibals, but they now are nearly all Protestants, wear European dress and live in stone houses. The total population is about 6200. Since 1890 the islands have enjoyed a general legislature and an executive council of which the _Arikis_ ("kings" and "queens") are members. But all enactments are subject to the approval of the British resident at Rarotonga, and a British protectorate, proclaimed in 1888, was followed by the annexation of the whole archipelago by the governor of New Zealand, by proclamation of June 10th, 1901. The archipelago was discovered by Captain Cook in 1777, and in 1823 became the scene of the remarkable missionary labours of John Williams, of the London Missionary Society. The chief products of the group are cocoanuts, fruits, coffee and copra. Lime-juice and hats are made.

COOKE, GEORGE FREDERICK (1756-1811), English actor, was born in London, and made his first appearance on the stage in Brentford at the age of twenty as Dumont in _Jane Shore_. His first London appearance was at the Haymarket in 1778, but it was not until 1794 in Dublin, as Othello, that he attained high rank in his profession. In 1801 he appeared in London as Richard III., Iago, Shylock and Sir Giles Overreach, and became the rival of Kemble, with whom, however, and with Mrs Siddons, he acted from 1803. His intemperate habits unfortunately grew more and more notorious, and on at least one occasion the curtain had to be rung down owing to the audience hissing his drunken condition. He visited the United States in 1810, and died in New York on the 26th of September 1811. A monument to his memory was erected in St Paul's churchyard there by Edmund Kean.

COOKE, JAY (1821-1905), American financier, was born at Sandusky, Ohio, on the 10th of August 1821, the son of Eleutheros Cooke (1787-1864), a pioneer Ohio lawyer, and Whig member of Congress from that state in 1831-1833. Being destined for a commercial career, Jay Cooke received a preliminary training in a trading house in St Louis, and in the booking office of a transportation company in Philadelphia, and at the age of eighteen entered the Philadelphia house of E.W. Clark & Company, one of the largest private banking firms in the country. He showed such aptitude for business that three years later he was admitted to membership in the firm, and before he was thirty he was also a partner in the New York and St Louis branches of the Clarks. In 1858 he retired from the firm, and for the next three years he devoted himself to reorganizing some of the abandoned Pennsylvania railways and canals and placing them again in operation. On the 1st of January 1861 he opened in Philadelphia the private banking house of Jay Cooke & Company, and soon achieved signal success in floating at par a war loan of $3,000,000 for the state of Pennsylvania, whose credit had become notoriously bad. In the early months of the Civil War Cooke co-operated with the secretary of the treasury, Salmon P. Chase, in securing loans from the leading bankers in the Northern cities, and his own firm was so successful in distributing treasury notes that Chase engaged him as special agent for the sale of the $500,000,000 of so-called "five-twenty" bonds authorized by the act of the 25th of February 1862. To dispose of these bonds the treasury department had already tried every regular means at its command and had failed. Cooke secured the influence of the American press, appointed 2500 sub-agents, and before the machinery he set in motion could be stopped he had sold $11,000,000 more of bonds than had been authorized, an excess which Congress immediately sanctioned. At the same time he used all his influence in favour of the establishment of national banks, and organized a national bank at Washington and another at Philadelphia almost as soon as such institutions were authorized by Congress. In the early months of 1865, when the needs of the government were pressing, and the sale of the new "seven-thirty" notes by the national banks had been very disappointing, Cooke's services were again secured. He sent agents into the remotest villages and hamlets, and even into the isolated mining camps of the West, and caused the rural newspapers to praise the loan. As a result, between February and July 1865 he had disposed of three series of the notes, reaching a total of $830,000,000. Through these efforts the Union soldiers were well supplied and well paid while dealing the final blows of the war; and, later, with money in their pockets, they were disbanded without difficulty.

After the war Cooke became interested in the development of the North-west, and in 1870 his firm undertook to finance the construction of the Northern Pacific railway. In advancing the money for the work, the firm over-estimated the possibilities of its capital, and at the approach of the financial crisis of 1873 it was forced to suspend. By 1880 Cooke had discharged all his obligations, and through an investment in a silver mine in Utah had again become wealthy. He died at Ogontz, Pennsylvania, on the 18th of February 1905. Cooke was noted for his piety, and gave regularly a tenth of his income for religious and charitable purposes. His handsome estate at Ogontz, which he had been compelled to give up during his bankruptcy, he later repurchased and converted into a school for girls.

See E. P. Oberholtzer, _Jay Cooke, Financier of the Civil War_ (Philadelphia, 1907).

COOKE, ROSE TERRY (1827-1892), American writer, _née_ Terry, was born at West Hartford, Connecticut, on the 17th of February 1827. She published in 1860 a volume of _Poems_, but after her marriage in 1873 to Rollin H. Cooke she was best known for her fresh and humorous stories, though in 1888 she published more verse in her _Complete Poems_. The chief volumes of fiction dealing mainly with New England country life, produced by Rose Terry Cooke, were _Happy Dodd_ (1878), _Somebody's Neighbors_ (1881), _Root-bound_ (1885), _The Sphinx's Children_ (1886), _Steadfast_ (1889) and _Huckleberries_ (1891). She died at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on the 18th of July 1892.

COOKERY (Lat. _coquus_, a cook), the art of preparing and dressing food of all sorts for human consumption, of converting the raw materials, by the application of heat or otherwise, into a digestible and pleasing condition, and generally ministering to the satisfaction of the appetite and the delight of the palate. We may take it that some form of cookery has existed from the earliest times, and its progress has been from the simple to the elaborate, dominated partly by the foods accessible to man, partly by the stage of civilization he has attained, and partly by the appliances at his command for the purpose either of treating the food, or of consuming it when served.

The developed art of cookery is necessarily a late addition--if it may be considered to be included at all--to the list of "fine arts." Originally it is a purely industrial and useful art. Man, says a French writer, was born a roaster, and "_pour être cuisinier, il a besoin de le devenir._" The ancients were great eaters, but strangers to the subtler refinements of the palate. The gods were supposed to love the smell of fried meat, while their nectar and ambrosia represented an ideal, which, though preserved as a phrase, would hardly satisfy a modern epicure. The ancients were poorly provided with pots and pans, except of a simple order, or with the appurtenances of a kitchen, and they were sadly to seek in the requisites of a modern table. So long as men ate with their hands no dainty confection was suitable; the viands were set forth in a straightforward style fit for their requirements. "Plain cooking," which, after all, can never become obsolete, was the only sort. Oddities, no doubt, were the luxuries; and we can see to-day in the ethnological accounts of contemporary savages and backward civilizations, a fair representation of the cookeries of the ancients. The luxuries of the Chinese are, in their way, a survival of long ages of a cookery which to western civilization is grotesque. Even if it is an historic impertinence, it is impossible for the countries of western civilization to regard the fine flower of their own evolution as other than the highest pitch of progress. _Autres temps, autres moeurs._ To the Chinaman French cooking may possibly be as grotesque as to an Englishman the Chinaman's hundred-year-old buried egg, black and tasteless. The history of comparative cookery is bound up with the physical possibilities of each country and its products; and if we attempt to mark out stages in the evolution of cookery as a fine art, it is necessarily as understood by the so-called civilized peoples of the West in their culmination at the present day.

It is obvious that opportunity has dominated its history, for the art of cookery is to some extent the product of an increased refinement of taste, consequent on culture and increase of wealth. To this extent it is a decadent art, ministering to the luxury of man, and to his progressive inclination to be pampered and have his appetite tickled. It is thus only remotely connected with the mere necessities of nutrition (q.v.), or the science of dietetics (q.v.). Mere hunger, though the best sauce, will not produce cookery, which is the art of sauces. For centuries its elaboration consisted mainly of a progressive variety of foods, the richest and rarest being sought out; and their nature depended on what was most difficult to obtain. The Greeks learnt by contact with Asia to increase the sumptuous character of their banquets, but we know little enough of their ideas of gastronomy. Athens was the centre of luxury. According to our chief authority Athenaeus, Archestratus of Gela, the friend of the son of Pericles, the guide of Epicurus, and author of the _Heduphagetica_, was a great traveller, and took pains to get information as to how the delicacies of the table were prepared in different parts. His lost work was versified by Ennius. Other connoisseurs seem to have been Numenius of Heraclea, Hegemon of Thasos, Philogenes of Leucas, Simonaclides of Chios, and Tyndarides of Sicyon. The Romans, emerging from their pristine simplicity, borrowed from the Greeks their achievements in gastronomic pleasure. We read of this or that Roman gourmet, such as Lucullus, his extravagances and his luxury. The name of the connoisseur Apicius, after whom a work of the time of Heliogabalus is called, comes down to us in association with a manual of cookery. And from Macrobius and Petronius we can gather very interesting glimpses of the Roman idea of a menu. In the later empire, tradition still centred round the Roman cookery favoured by the geographical position of Italy; while the customs and natural products of the remoter parts of Europe gradually begin to assert themselves as the middle ages progress.

It is, however, not till the Renaissance, and then too with Italy as the starting-point, that the history of modern cookery really begins. Meanwhile cookery may be studied rather in the architecture of kitchens, and the development of their appurtenances and personnel, than in any increase in the subtleties of the art; the ideal was inevitably gross; the end was feeding--inextricably associated in all ages with cooking, but as distinct from its _fine fleur_ as gluttony from gastronomy.

Montaigne's references to the revival of cookery in France by Catherine de' Medici indicate that the new attention paid to the art was really novel. She brought Italian cooks to Paris and introduced there a cultured simplicity which was unknown in France before. It is to the Italians apparently that later developments are originally due. It is clearly established, for instance (says Abraham Hayward in his _Art of Dining_), that the Italians introduced ices into France. Fricandeaus were invented by the _chef_ of Leo X. And Coryate in his _Crudities_, writing in the time of James I., says that he was called "furcifer" (evidently in contemptuous jest) by his friends, from his using those "Italian neatnesses called forks." The use of the fork and spoon marked an epoch in the progress of dining, and consequently of cookery.

Under Louis XIV. further advances were made. His _maître d'hôtel_, Béchamel, is famous for his sauce; and Vatel, the great Condé's cook, was a celebrated artist, of whose suicide in despair at the tardy arrival of the fish which he had ordered, Madame de Sévigné relates a moving story. The prince de Soubise, immortalized by his onion sauce, also had a famous chef.

In England the names of certain cookery-books may be noted, such as Sir J. Elliott's (1539), Abraham Veale's (1575), and the _Widdowe's Treasure_ (1625). The _Accomplisht Cook_, by Robert May, appeared in 1665, and from its preface we learn that the author (who speaks disparagingly of French cookery, but more gratefully of Italian and Spanish) was the son of a cook, and had studied abroad and under his father (c. 1610) at Lady Dormer's, and he speaks of that time as "the days wherein were produced the triumphs and trophies of cookery." From his description they consisted of most fantastic and elaborately built up dishes, intended to amuse and startle, no less than to satisfy the appetite and palate.

Louis XV. was a great gourmet; and his reign saw many developments in the culinary art. The mayonnaise (originally _mahonnaise_) is ascribed to the duc de Richelieu. Such dishes as "_potage à la Xavier_," "_cailles à la Mirepoix_," "_chartreuses à la Mauconseil_," "_poulets à la Villeroy_," "_potage à la Condé_," "_gigot à la Mailly_," owe their titles to celebrities of the day, and the Pompadour gave her name to various others. The Jesuits Brunoy and Bougeant, who wrote a preface to a contemporary treatise on cookery (1739), described the modern art as "more simple, more appropriate, and more cunning, than that of old days," giving the ingredients the same union as painters give to colours, and harmonizing all the tastes. The very phrase "_cordon bleu_" (strictly applied only to a woman cook) arose from an enthusiastic recognition of female merit by the king himself. Madame du Barry, piqued at his opinion that only a man could cook to perfection, had a dinner prepared for him by a _cuisinière_ with such success that the delighted monarch demanded that the artist should be named, in order that so precious a _cuisinier_ might be engaged for the royal household. "_Allons donc, la France!_" retorted the ex-grisette, "have I caught you at last? It is no _cuisinier_ at all, but a _cuisinière_, and I demand a recompense for her worthy both of her and of your majesty. Your royal bounty has made my negro, Zamore, governor of Luciennes, and I cannot accept less than a _cordon bleu_" (the Royal Order of the _Saint Esprit_) "for my _cuisinière_."

The French Revolution was temporarily a blow to Parisian cookery, as to everything else of the _ancien régime_. "Not a single turbot in the market," was the lament of Grimod de la Reynière, the great gourmet, and author of the _Manuel des amphitryons_ (1808). But while it fell heavily on the class of noble amphitryons it had one remarkable effect on the art which was epoch-making. It is from that time that we notice the rise of the Parisian restaurants. To 1770 is ascribed the first of these, the _Champ d'oiseau_ in the rue des Poulies. In 1789 there were a hundred. In 1804 (when the _Almanach des gourmands_, the first sustained effort at investing gastronomy with the dignity of an art, was started) there were between 500 and 600. And in 1814, to such an extent had the restaurants attracted the culinary talent of Paris, that the allied monarchs, on arriving there, had to contract with the two brothers Véry for the supply of their table. Among the great gastronomic names of Napoleon's day was that of his chancellor Cambacérès, of whose dinners many stories are told. Robert (the eponym of the _sauce Robert_), Rechaud and Mérillion were at this period esteemed the Raphael, Michelangelo and Rubens of cookery; while A. Beauvilliers (author of _Art des cuisines_) and Carême (author of the _Maître d'hôtel français_, and chef at different times to the Tsar Alexander I., Talleyrand, George IV. and Baron Rothschild) were no less celebrated.[1] Perhaps the greatest name of all in the history of the literature of cookery is that of Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826), the French judge and author of the _Physiologie du goût_ (1825), the classic of gastronomy.

In England Louis Eustache Ude, Charles Elmé Francatelli, and Alexis Soyer carried on the tradition, all being not only cooks but authors of treatises on the art. The _Original_ (1835) of Thomas Walker, the Lambeth police magistrate, is another work which has inspired later pens. Like the _Physiologie du goût_, it is no mere cookery-book, but a compound of observation and philosophy. Among simple hand-books, Mrs Glasse's, Dr Kitchener's and Mrs Rundell's were standard English works in the 18th and early 19th centuries; and in France the _Cuisinière de la campagne_ (1818) went through edition after edition. An interesting old English work is Dr Pegge's _Forme of Cury_ (1780), which includes some historical reflections on the subject. "We have some good families in England," he says, "of the name of Cook or Coke.... Depend upon it, they all originally sprang from real professional cooks, and they need not be ashamed of their extraction any more than Porters, Butlers, &c." He points out that cooks in early days were of some importance; William the Conqueror bestowed land on his _coquorum praepositus_ and _coquus regius_; and Domesday Book records the bestowal of a manor on Robert Argyllon, by the service of a dish called "de la Groute" on the king's coronation day.

At the present time, whatever the local varieties of cooking, and the difference of national custom, French cooking is admittedly the ideal of the culinary art, directly we leave the plain roast and boiled. And the spread of cosmopolitan hotels and restaurants over England, America and the European continent, has largely accustomed the whole civilized world to the Parisian type. The improvements in the appliances and appurtenances of the kitchen have made the whole world kin in the arts of dining, but the French chef remains the typical master of his craft. Schools of cookery have been added to the educational machine. The literature of the subject has passed beyond enumeration.

It is unnecessary here to pursue so vast a practical subject into detail; but the following notes on broiling, roasting, baking, boiling, stewing and frying may be useful.

_Broiling._--The earliest method of cooking was probably burying seeds and flesh in hot ashes, a kind of broiling on all the surfaces at the same time, which when properly done is the most delicate kind of cooking. Broiling is now done over a clear fire extending at least 2 in. beyond the edges of the gridiron, which should slightly incline towards the cook. It is usual to rub the bars with a piece of suet for meat, and chalk for fish, to prevent the thing broiled from being marked with the bars of the gridiron. In this kind of cookery the object is to coagulate as quickly as possible all the albumen on the surface, and seal up the pores of the meat so as to keep in all the juices and flavour. It is, therefore, necessary thoroughly to warm the gridiron before putting on the meat, or the heat of the fire is conducted away while the juices and flavour of the meat run into the fire. Broiling is a simple kind of cookery, and one well suited to invalids and persons of delicate appetites. There is no other way in which small quantities of meat can be so well and so quickly cooked. Broiling cannot be well done in front of an open fire, because one side of the meat is exposed to a current of cold air. A pair of tongs should be used instead of a fork for turning all broiled meat and fish.

_Roasting._--Two conditions are necessary for good roasting--a clear bright fire and frequent basting. Next to boiling or stewing it is the most economical method of cooking. The meat at first should be placed close to a brisk fire for five minutes to coagulate the albumen. It should then be drawn back a short distance and roasted slowly. If a meat screen be used, it should be placed before the fire to be moderately heated before the meat is put to roast. The centre of gravity of the fire should be a little above the centre of gravity of the joint. No kitchen can be complete without an open range, for it is almost impossible to have a properly roasted joint in closed kitcheners. The heat radiated from a good open fire quickly coagulates the albumen on the surface, and thus to a large extent prevents that which is fluid in the interior from solidifying. The connective tissue which unites the fibres is gradually converted into gelatin, and rendered easily soluble. The fibrin and albumen appear to undergo a higher oxidation and are more readily dissolved. The fat cells are gradually broken, and the liquid fat unites to a small extent with the chloride of sodium and the tribasic phosphate of sodium contained in the serum of the blood. It is easily seen that roasting by coagulating the external albumen keeps together the most valuable parts of the meat, till they have gradually and slowly undergone the desired change. This surface coagulation is not sufficient to prevent the free access of the oxygen of the surrounding air. The empyreumatic oils generated on the surface are neither wholesome nor agreeable, and these are perhaps better removed by roasting than any other method except broiling. The chief object is to retain as much as possible all the sapid juicy properties of the meat, so that at the first cut the gravy flows out of a rich reddish colour, and this can only be accomplished by a quick coagulation of the surface albumen. The time for roasting varies slightly with the kind of meat and the size of the joint. As a rule beef and mutton require a quarter of an hour to the pound; veal and pork about 17 minutes to the pound. To tell whether the joint is done, press the fleshy part with a spoon; if the meat yield easily it is done.

_Baking_ meat is in many respects objectionable, and should never be done if any other method is available. The gradual disuse of open grates for roasting has led to a practice of first baking and then browning before the fire. This method completely reverses the true order of cooking by beginning with the lowest temperature and finishing with the highest. Baked meat has never the delicate flavour of roast meat, nor is it so digestible. The vapours given off by the charring of the surface cannot freely escape, and the meat is cooked in an atmosphere charged with empyreumatic oil. A brick or earthenware oven is preferable to iron, because the porous nature of the bricks absorbs a good deal of the vapour. When potatoes are baked with meat, they should always be first parboiled, because they take a longer time to bake, and the moisture rising from the potatoes retards the process of baking, and makes the meat sodden. A baked meat pie, though not always very digestible, is far less objectionable than plain baked meat. In the case of a meat pie the surfaces of the meat are protected by a bad conductor of heat from that charring of the surface which generates empyreumatic vapours, and the fat and gravy, gradually rising in temperature, assist the cooking, and such cooking more nearly resembles stewing than baking. The process may go on for a long time after the removal of the meat from the oven, if surrounded with flannel, or some bad conductor of heat. The Cornish pasty is the best example of this kind of cooking. Meat, fish, game, parboiled vegetables, apples or anything that fancy suggests, are surrounded with a thick flour and water crust and slowly baked. When removed from the oven, and packed in layers of flannel, the pasty will keep hot for hours. When baked dishes contain eggs, it should be remembered that the albumen becomes harder and more insoluble, according to the time occupied in cooking. About the same time is required for baking as roasting.

_Boiling_ is one of the easiest methods of cooking, but a successful result depends on a number of conditions which, though they appear trifling, are nevertheless necessary. The fire must be watched so as properly to regulate the heat. The saucepan should be scrupulously clean and have a closely-fitting lid, and be large enough to hold sufficient water to well cover and surround the meat, and all scum should be removed as it comes to the surface; the addition of small quantities of cold water will assist the rising of the scum. For all cooking purposes clean rain water is to be preferred. Among cooks a great difference of opinion exists as to whether meat should be put into cold water and gradually brought to the boiling point, or should be put into boiling water. This, like many other unsettled questions in cookery, is best decided by careful scientific experiment and observation. If a piece of meat be put into water at a temperature of 60°, and gradually raised to 212°, the meat is undergoing a gradual loss of its soluble and nutritious properties, which are dissolved in the water. From the surface to the interior the albumen is partially dissolved out of the meat, the fibres become hard and stringy, and the thinner the piece of meat the greater the loss of all those sapid constituents which make boiled meat savoury, juicy and palatable. To put meat into cold water is clearly the best method for making soups and broth; it is the French method of preparing the _pot au feu_; but the meat at the end of the operation has lost much of that juicy sapid property which makes boiled meat so acceptable. The practice of soaking fresh meat in cold water before cooking is for the same reasons highly objectionable; if necessary, wipe it with a clean cloth. But in the case of salted, smoked and dried meats soaking for several hours is indispensable, and the water should be occasionally changed. The other method of boiling meat has the authority of Baron Liebig, who recommends putting the meat into water when in a state of ebullition, and after five minutes the saucepan is to be drawn aside, and the contents kept at a temperature of 162° (50° below boiling). The effect of boiling water is to coagulate the albumen on the surface of the meat, which prevents, but not entirely, the juices from passing into the water, and meat thus boiled has more flavour and has lost much less in weight. To obtain well-flavoured boiled meat the idea of soups or broth must be a secondary consideration. It is, however, impossible to cook a piece of meat in water without extracting some of its juices and nutriment, and the liquor should in both cases be made into a soup.

_Stewing._--When meat is slowly cooked in a close vessel it is said to be stewed; this method is generally adopted in the preparation of made dishes. Different kinds of meat may be used, or only one kind according to taste. The better the meat the better the stew; but by carefully stewing the coarsest and roughest parts will become soft, tender and digestible, which would not be possible by any other kind of cooking. Odd pieces of meat and trimmings and bones can often be purchased cheaply, and may be turned into good food by stewing. Bones, although containing little meat, contain from 39 to 49% of gelatin. The large bones should be broken into small pieces, and allowed to simmer till every piece is white and dry. Gelatin is largely used both in the form of jellies and soups. Lean meat, free from blood, is best for stewing, and, when cut into convenient pieces, it should be slightly browned in a little butter or dripping. Constant attention is necessary during this process, to prevent burning. The meat should be covered with soft water or, better, a little stock, and set aside to simmer for four or five hours, according to the nature of the material. When vegetables are used, these should also be slightly browned and added at intervals, so as not materially to lower the temperature. Stews may be thickened by the addition of pearl barley, sago, rice, potatoes, oatmeal, flour, &c., and flavoured with herbs and condiments according to taste. Although stewing is usually done in a stewpan or saucepan with a close-fitting cover, a good stone jar, with a well-fitting lid, is preferable in the homes of working people. This is better than a metal saucepan, and can be more easily kept clean; it retains the heat longer, and can be placed in the oven or covered with hot ashes. The common red jar is not suitable; it does not stand the heat so well as a grey jar; and the red glaze inside often gives way in the presence of salt. The lid of a vessel used for stewing should be removed as little as possible. An occasional shake will prevent the meat from sticking. At the end of the operation all the fat should be carefully removed.

_Frying._--Lard, oil, butter, or dripping may be used for frying. There are two methods of frying--the dry method, as in frying a pancake, and the wet method, as when the thing fried is immersed in a bath of hot fat. In the former case a frying pan is used, in the other a frying kettle or stewpan. It is usual for most things to have a wire frying basket; the things to be fried are placed in the basket and immersed at the proper temperature in the hot fat. The fat should gradually rise in temperature over a slow fire till it attains nearly 400° Fahr. Great care is required to fry properly. If the temperature is too low the things immersed in the fat are not fried, but soddened; if, on the other hand, the temperature is too high, they are charred. The temperature of the fat varies slightly with the nature of things to be fried. Fish, cutlets, croquets, rissoles and fritters are well fried at a temperature of 380° Fahr. Potatoes, chops and white bait are better fried at a temperature of 400° Fahr. Care must be taken not to lower the temperature too much by introducing too many things. The most successful frying is when the fat rises two or three degrees during the frying. Fried things should be of a golden brown colour, crisp and free from fat. When fat or oil has been used for fish it must be kept for fish. It is customary first to use fat for croquets, rissoles, fritters and other delicate things, and then to take it for fish. Everything fried in fat should be placed on bibulous paper to absorb any fat on the surfaces.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] See Lady S. O. Morgan's _France_, 1829-1830, ii. 414, for an account of a dinner by Carême.

COOKSTOWN, a market town of Co. Tyrone, Ireland, in the east parliamentary division, 54 m. W. by N. of Belfast, on branches of the Great Northern and the Northern Counties (Midland) railways. Pop. of urban district (1901) 3531. It consists principally of a single street of great length, and lies in a pleasant, well-wooded district, near the Ballinderry river. It has important manufactures of linen, and some agricultural trade. It was founded in 1609, the landlord, Allan Cook, giving name to it. The mansion of Killymoon Castle, in the vicinity, is a notable example of the work of a celebrated architect, John Nash (c. 1800).

COOKTOWN, a seaport of Banks county, Queensland, Australia, at the mouth of the Endeavour river, about 1050 m. direct N.N.W. of Brisbane. It is visited by the ocean steamers of several lines, and is the centre of a very extensive _bêche-de-mer_ and pearl fishery. Tin and gold are worked in the district, in which also good coffee and rice are grown. Cooktown is the port of the Palmer gold-fields, and a railway runs to Laura on the gold-fields, 67 m. W. by S. of Cooktown. It is the chief port of Queensland for the New Guinea trade; and is also the seat of a Roman Catholic vicariate apostolic whose bishop has jurisdiction over the whole of Queensland north of lat. 18° 50'. In 1770 Captain Cook here beached his ship the "Endeavour," to repair the damage caused by her striking a reef in the neighbourhood of the estuary, which he could only clear by throwing his guns overboard. Cooktown became a municipality in 1876. The population of the town and district in 1901 was 1936.

COOKWORTHY, WILLIAM (1705-1780), English potter, famous for his discovery of the existence of china-clay and china-stone in Cornwall, and as the first manufacturer of a porcelain similar in nature to the Chinese, from English materials, was born at Kingsbridge, Devon, of Quaker parents who were in humble circumstances. At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to a London apothecary named Bevans, and he afterwards returned to the neighbourhood of his birthplace, and carried on business at Plymouth with the co-operation of his master, under the title of Bevans & Cookworthy. The manufacture of porcelain was at the time attracting great attention in England, and while the factories at Bow, Chelsea, Worcester and Derby were introducing the artificial glassy porcelain, Cookworthy, following the accounts of Père d'Entrecolles, spent many years in searching for English materials similar to those used by the Chinese. From 1745 onwards he seems to have travelled over the greater portion of Cornwall and Devon in search of these minerals, and he finally located them in the parish of St Stephen's near to St Austell. With a certain amount of financial assistance from Mr Thomas Pitt of Boconnoc (afterwards Lord Camelford) he established the Plymouth China Factory at least as early as 1768. The factory was removed to Bristol about 1770, and the business was afterwards sold to Richard Champion and others and became the well-known Bristol Porcelain Manufactory. Apart from its historic interest there is little to be said for the Plymouth porcelain. Technically it was often imperfect, and its artistic treatment was never of a high order. But Cookworthy deserves to be remembered for his discovery of those abundant supplies of English clay and rocks which form the foundation of English porcelain and fine earthenware (see CERAMICS).

COOLGARDIE, a municipal town in Western Australia, 310 m. by rail E. by N. of Perth, and 528 m. by rail N.E. of Albany. Pop. (1901) 4249. Its gold-fields were discovered in 1891 and are among the richest in the colony. Lignite, copper, graphite and silver are also found. Toorak and Montana are small residential suburbs. A remarkable engineering work by which a full supply of water was brought to the town from Fremantle (a distance exceeding 330 m. direct) was completed in 1903.

COOLIE, or COOLY (from Koli or Kuli, an aboriginal race of western India; or perhaps from Tamil _k[=u]li_, hire, i.e. one hired), a term generally applied to Asiatic labourers belonging to the unskilled class as opposed to the artisan, and employed in a special sense to designate those natives of India and China who leave their country under contracts of service to work as labourers abroad. After the abolition of slavery much difficulty was found in obtaining cheap labour for tropical plantations. The emancipated black was unwilling to engage in field labour, while the white man was physically incapable of so doing. Recourse was had to the overpeopled empires of China and India, as the most likely sources from which to obtain that supply of workers upon which the very existence of some colonies, notably in the West Indies, depended.

Chinese coolies.

The first public recognition of the coolie traffic was in 1844, when the British colony of Guiana made provision for the encouragement of Chinese immigration. About the same time both Peru and Cuba began to look to China as likely to furnish an efficient substitute for the negro bondsman. Agents armed with consular commissions from Peru appeared in Chinese ports, where they collected and sent away shiploads of coolies. Each one was bound to serve the Peruvian planter to whom he might be assigned for seven or eight years, at fixed wages, generally about 17s. a month, food, clothes and lodging being provided. From 1847 to 1854 coolie emigration went on briskly without attracting much notice, but it gradually came to light that circumstances of great cruelty attended the trade. The transport ships were badly equipped and overcrowded, and many coolies died before the end of the voyage. On arrival in Cuba or Peru the survivors were sold by auction in the open market to the highest bidders, who held them virtually as slaves for seven years instead of for life. Particularly terrible was the lot of those who, contrary to their agreements, had been sent to labour in the foul guano pits of the Chincha islands, where they were forced to toil in gangs, each under the charge of an overseer armed with a cowhide lash. In 1860 it was calculated that of the four thousand coolies who had been fraudulently consigned to the guano pits of Peru not one had survived. The greater number of them had committed suicide. In 1854 the British governor of Hong-Kong issued a proclamation forbidding British subjects or vessels to engage in the transport of coolies to the Chinchas. Technically this was _ultra vires_ on his part, but his policy was confirmed by the Chinese Passengers' Act 1855, which put an end to the more abominable phase of the traffic. After that no British ship was allowed to sail on more than a week's voyage with more than twenty coolies on board, unless her master had complied with certain very stringent regulations.

The consequence of this was that the business of shipping coolies for Peru was transferred to the Portuguese settlement of Macao. There the Peruvian and Cuban "labour-agents" established depôts, which they unblushingly called "barracoons," the very term used in the West African slave trade. In these places coolies were "received," or in plain words, imprisoned and kept under close guard until a sufficient number were collected for export. Some of these were decoyed by fraudulent promises of profitable employment. Others were kidnapped by piratical junks hired to scour the neighbouring coasts. Many were bought from leaders of turbulent native factions, only too glad to sell the prisoners they captured whilst waging their internecine wars. The procurador or registrar-general of Macao went through the form of certifying the contracts; but his inspection was practically useless. After the war of 1856-1857 this masked slave trade pushed its agencies into Whampoa and Canton. In April 1859, however, the whole mercantile community of the latter port rose up in indignation against it, and transmitted such strong representations to the British embassy in China, that steps were taken to mitigate the evil. New regulations were from time to time passed by the Portuguese authorities for the purpose of minimizing the horrors of the Macao trade. They seem, however, to have been systematically evaded, and to have been practically inoperative. At Canton and Hong-Kong the coolie trade was put under various regulations, which in the latter port worked well only when the profits of "head-money" were ruined. In March 1866 the representatives of the governments of France, England and China drew up a convention for the regulation of the Canton trade, which had an unfortunate effect. It left head-money, the source of most of the abuses, comparatively untouched. It enacted that every coolie must at the end of a five years' engagement have his return passage-money paid to him. The West Indian colonies at once objected to this. They wanted permanent not temporary settlers. They could not afford to burden the coolie's expensive contract with return passage-money, so they declined to accept emigrants on these terms. Thus a legalized coolie trade between the West Indies and China was extinguished. Thereafter the coolie supply for British colonies was drawn exclusively from India, until 1904, when an exception was made in the case of the Transvaal. Under a convention drawn up in that year between the United Kingdom and China over fifty thousand indentured Chinese labourers were engaged on three years' contracts to work in the Witwatersrand gold mines (see TRANSVAAL). To the Malay states and other parts of eastern Asia there is an extensive yearly migration of Chinese coolies. This migration, however, is not under contract. From Amoy alone some seventy-five thousand coolies yearly migrate to Singapore and the Straits Settlements, whence they are drafted for labour purposes in every direction.

Indian coolies.

It is scarcely possible to say when the Indian coolie trade began. Before the end of the 18th century Tamil labourers from southern India were wont to emigrate to the Straits Settlements, and they also flocked to Tenasserim from the other side of the Bay of Bengal after the conquest had produced a demand for labour. The first regularly recorded attempt at organizing coolie emigration from India took place in 1834, when forty coolies were exported to Mauritius; but it was not until 1836 that the Indian government decided to put the trade under official regulations. In 1837 an emigration law was passed for all the territories of the East India Company, providing that a permit must be obtained from government for every shipment of coolies, that all contracts should terminate in five years, that a return passage should be guaranteed, that the terms of his contract should be carefully explained to each coolie, and that the emigrant ship should only carry one coolie for every ton and a half of burden. Then as now the Indian government watched the deportation of labour from their dominions with jealous and anxious care, and when in 1838 it was found that upwards of twenty-five thousand natives had, up to that year, gone from all parts of India to Mauritius, the government became somewhat alarmed at the dimensions which the traffic was assuming. Brougham and the anti-slavery party denounced the trade as a revival of slavery, and the Bengal government suspended it in order to investigate its alleged abuses. The nature of these may be guessed when it is said that the inquiry condemned the fraudulent methods of recruiting then in vogue, and the brutal treatment which coolies often received from ship captains and masters. In 1842 steps were taken formally to reopen the coolie trade with Mauritius, and in 1844 emigration to the West Indies was sanctioned by the Indian government. In 1847 Ceylon was separated from India, and her labour supply was cut off; but this accident was soon remedied, the Ceylon government adopting protective regulations for the coolies.

Modern regulations.

Emigration of coolies under contract to labour outside India is now regulated by the Emigration Act of 1883 and the rules issued under its provisions, the only exceptions being in respect of emigrants to Ceylon and the Straits Settlements and adjoining states, or those engaged by the British government for employment in east and central Africa. By section 8 of this act natives of India are permitted to emigrate under labour contracts only to such countries as have satisfied the government of India that sufficient provision is made for the protection of the emigrants. A country which is duly empowered under the act to receive emigrants may appoint an agent, residing in India, who is responsible for the due observance of the provisions of the law. These agents are under the general supervision of the protector of emigrants. As emigrants have to be recruited at great distances from the port of embarkation, recruiters are appointed by the agents and licensed by the protector. The conduct of these subordinates is minutely regulated. Every precaution is taken to let the emigrant know the exact terms on which he is hired, and to ensure good treatment in the interval between registration and embarkation. Coolies are shipped for the most part from Calcutta and Madras, but of recent years large numbers bound for Mombasa and the Seychelles left from Bombay and Karachi. Both the coolies themselves and the depôt are medically inspected. Only those physically fit are allowed to embark. The vessels for their conveyance are licensed and inspected by the local government. The terms on which emigrants are recruited are settled beforehand by convention with the colonies concerned, and are embodied in ordinances passed by the local legislatures. They vary in detail, but their main provisions relate to the rights and obligations of the emigrants, including the grant of a return passage on the expiry of a specified period, usually ten years. The British colonies to which coolies were exported in the decade 1891-1901 were British Guiana, Trinidad, St Lucia, Jamaica, Mauritius, the Seychelles Islands, Fiji, East Africa and Natal; the only non-British country was Dutch Guiana. Emigration to the French colonies, including Réunion has been forbidden by the government of India since 1886, but there still remain in those colonies some of the former emigrants, and the questions of their treatment and repatriation have frequently formed the subject of representations to the French authorities.

The British colonies.

The number of Indian coolies resident in the various British colonies in 1900 was 625,000, of which the largest numbers were 265,000 in Mauritius and 125,000 in British Guiana. There were still 13,800 in Réunion. The regulations governing coolie labour in British Guiana may be taken as typical for the British colonies generally. They are contained in the Labour Ordinance of 1873, which was amended by the ordinances of 1875, 1876, 1886 and 1887. Under these ordinances an immigration agent-general is appointed, to whom medical officers and recruiting agents are responsible, and the emigrants are allotted by him to the separate estates. They regulate the hours of work, the rate of wages, and the general treatment of the coolies, the nature of house and hospital accommodation, the terms of re-enlistment and the conditions of marriage amongst the coolies themselves. The coolies returning from the British colonies to India in 1901 possessed average savings of £19.

British East and South Africa.

During the construction of the Uganda railway large numbers of coolies were recruited in the Punjab and exported from Karachi to Mombasa. During the decade 1891-1901 the number of these emigrants was 33,000; but on the completion of the line the emigration practically stopped, while in 1901-1902 there were over 6000 emigrants who returned to India. Some, however, settled in East Africa. Coolies are also exported for government employment in Nyasaland. In Natal the Indian population had by 1904 reached over 100,000 and slightly outnumbered the whites. Many of the coolies had become permanent residents in the colony (see NATAL).

Assam, Ceylon and Burma.

According to the census of 1901 there were 775,844 foreigners in Assam, of whom no fewer than 645,000 or 83% were brought into the province as garden coolies. The recruiting of these coolies is regulated by Act VI. of 1901, which provides that a labour agreement may be entered into for four years, and includes a penal clause, under which a coolie deserting or refusing to work may be punished with imprisonment. The coolies can also give an agreement under Act XIII. of 1859, by which they are only liable to civil action for breach of contract. The latter are called non-act coolies. This system of immigration has made tea-planting the most important industry in Assam, and has greatly increased the prosperity of the province. Migration to Ceylon and Burma takes place chiefly from the Madras ports, and is of a seasonal and temporary character. The tea estates and pearl fisheries of Ceylon, and the town work and harvesting in Burma attract large numbers of Tamil labourers. The respective numbers embarking in 1901 were 117,000 for Ceylon, 84,000 for Burma and 27,000 for the Straits Settlements. In Ceylon there is no system of recruitment like that for the Assam tea-gardens. The coolies come in gangs, each under its own headman, with whom the planter deals exclusively, leaving him to make his own arrangements with the individual coolies. The coolies are mostly carried in small sailing vessels from the ports of Madura and Tanjore, and the number who permanently settle in Ceylon is not very great.

See E. Jenkins, _The Coolie; his Rights and Wrongs_ (1871); J. L. A. Hope, _In Quest of Coolies_ (1872); and C. B. Grose, _The Labour Ordinances_ (Georgetown, 1890). (C. L.)

COOMA, a town of Beresford county, New South Wales, Australia, 264 m. by rail S.S.W. of Sydney. Pop. (1901) 1938. The town is the centre of a pastoral district and has a large trade in furs, while at Bushy Hill, a mile from the town, is a small gold-field. Cooma, which is pleasantly situated at an elevation of 2657 ft., is the tourist centre for visitors to the Yarrangobilly Caves and Mount Kosciusko and its observatory. The caves are distant 65 m. from the town, situated in the side of a hill, overlooking the Yarrangobilly river; they are seven in number and of remarkable beauty and extent.

COOPER, ABRAHAM (1787-1868), English animal and battle painter, the son of a tobacconist, was born in London. At the age of thirteen he became an employé at Astley's amphitheatre, and was afterwards groom in the service of Sir Henry Meux. When he was twenty-two, wishing to possess a portrait of a favourite horse under his care, he bought a manual of painting, learned something of the use of oil-colours, and painted the picture on a canvas hung against the stable wall. His master bought it and encouraged him to continue in his efforts. He accordingly began to copy prints of horses, and was introduced to Benjamin Marshall, the animal painter, who took him into his studio, and seems to have introduced him to the _Sporting Magazine_, an illustrated periodical to which he was himself a contributor. In 1814 he exhibited his "Tam O'Shanter," and in 1816 he won a prize of £100 for his "Battle of Ligny." In 1817 he exhibited his "Battle of Marston Moor" and was made associate of the Academy, and in 1820 he was elected Academician. Cooper, although ill educated, was a clever and conscientious artist; his colouring was somewhat flat and dead, but he was a master of equine portraiture and anatomy, and had some antiquarian knowledge. He had a special fondness for Cavalier and Roundhead pictures.

COOPER, ALEXANDER (d. 1660), English miniature painter. His works are of great rarity, and the chief are a series representing the king and queen of Bohemia and their children, in the possession of the German emperor; some very remarkable portraits belonging to the queen of Holland, and others in the possession of the king of Sweden and in various Swedish galleries. He was the brother of Samuel Cooper, but whether senior or junior to him is not known, although, according to certain Swedish authorities, he is stated, upon very slight evidence, to have been born in 1605, four years before his more famous brother. He came to Sweden in 1646, and the Swedish documents declare that he was a Jew, and that his full name was Abraham Alexander Cooper. He had previously been residing in Holland, but on reaching Sweden entered the service of Queen Christina, and continued to be her miniature painter until 1654, when she resigned the crown. Two years later, Cooper was in Denmark, carrying out some commissions for Christian IV., but in 1657 was back again in Stockholm, where he died in the early part of 1660. The date of his birth is not known, but he is believed to have been born in London.

For full information regarding his career, and for various documents bearing his signature, see _The History of Portrait Miniatures_, by G. C. Williamson, chap. vi. page 78, and an article in the _Nineteenth Century_ for October 1905. (G. C. W.)

COOPER, SIR ASTLEY PASTON (1768-1841), English surgeon, was born at the village of Brooke in Norfolk on the 23rd of August 1768. His father, Dr Samuel Cooper, was a clergyman of the Church of England; his mother was the author of several novels. At the age of sixteen he was sent to London and placed under Henry Cline (1750-1827), surgeon to St Thomas's hospital. From the first he devoted himself to the study of anatomy, and had the privilege of attending the lectures of John Hunter. In 1789 he was appointed demonstrator of anatomy at St Thomas's hospital, where in 1791 he became joint lecturer with Cline in anatomy and surgery, and in 1800 he was appointed surgeon to Guy's hospital, on the death of his uncle, William Cooper. In 1802 he received the Copley medal for two papers read before the Royal Society of London on the destruction of the _membrana tympani_; and in 1805 he was elected a fellow of that society. In the same year he took an active part in the formation of the Medico-Chirurgical Society, and published in the first volume of its _Transactions_ an account of an attempt to tie the common carotid artery for aneurism. In 1804 he brought out the first, and in 1807 the second, part of his great work on hernia, which added so largely to his reputation that in 1813 his annual professional income rose to £21,000 sterling. In the same year he was appointed professor of comparative anatomy to the Royal College of Surgeons and was very popular as a lecturer. In 1817 he performed his famous operation of tying the abdominal aorta for aneurism; and in 1820 he removed a wen from the head of George IV., and about six months afterwards received a baronetcy, which, as he had no son, was to descend to his nephew and adopted son, Astley Cooper. He served as president of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1827 and again in 1836, and he was elected a vice-president of the Royal Society in 1830. He died on the 12th of February 1841 in London, and was interred, by his own desire, beneath the chapel of Guy's hospital. A statue by E. H. Baily was erected in St Paul's.

His chief works are _Anatomy and Surgical Treatment of Hernia_ (1804-1807); _Dislocations and Fractures_ (1822); _Lectures on Surgery_ (1824-1827); _Illustrations of Diseases of the Breast_ (1829); _Anatomy of the Thymus Gland_ (1832); _Anatomy of the Breast_ (1840).

See _Life of Sir A. Cooper_, by B. B. Cooper (1843).

COOPER, CHARLES HENRY (1808-1866), English antiquary, was born at Great Marlow, on the 20th of March 1808, being descended from a family formerly settled at Bray, Berkshire. He received his education at a private school in Reading. In 1826 he fixed his residence at Cambridge, and in 1836 was elected coroner of the borough. Four years later he was admitted a solicitor, and in course of time he acquired an extensive practice, but his taste and inclination ultimately led him to devote almost the whole of his time to literary research, and especially the elucidation of the history of the university of Cambridge. In 1849 he resigned the office of borough coroner on being elected to the town-clerkship, which he retained till his death on the 21st of March 1866. His earliest production, _A New Guide to the University and Town of Cambridge_, was published anonymously in 1831. _The Annals of Cambridge_ followed (1842-1853) containing a chronological history of the university and town from the earliest period to 1853. His most important work, the _Athenae Cantabrigienses_ (1858, 1861), a companion work to the famous _Athenae Oxonienses_ of Anthony à Wood, contains biographical memoirs of the authors and other men of eminence who were educated at the university of Cambridge from 1500 to 1609. Cooper's other works are _The Memorials of Cambridge_, (1858-1866) and a _Memoir of Margaret, Countess of Richmond and Derby_ (1874). He was a constant contributor to _Notes and Queries_, the _Gentleman's Magazine_ and other antiquarian publications, and left an immense collection of MS. materials for a biographical history of Great Britain and Ireland.

COOPER, JAMES FENIMORE (1789-1851), American novelist, was born at Burlington, New Jersey, on the 15th of September 1789. Reared in the wild country round Otsego Lake, N.Y., on the yet unsettled estates of his father, a judge and member of Congress, he was sent to school at Albany and at New Haven, and entered Yale College in his fourteenth year, remaining for some time the youngest student on the rolls. Three years afterwards he joined the United States navy; but after making a voyage or two in a merchant vessel, to perfect himself in seamanship, and obtaining his lieutenancy, he married and resigned his commission (1811). He settled in Westchester county, N.Y., the "Neutral Ground" of his earliest American romance, and produced anonymously (1820) his first book, _Precaution_, a novel of the fashionable school. This was followed (1821) by _The Spy_, which was very successful at the date of issue; _The Pioneers_ (1823), the first of the "Leatherstocking" series; and _The Pilot_ (1824), a bold and dashing sea-story. The next was _Lionel Lincoln_ (1825), a feeble and unattractive work; and this was succeeded in 1826 by the famous _Last of the Mohicans_, a book that is often quoted as its author's masterpiece. Quitting America for Europe he published at Paris _The Prairie_ (1826), the best of his books in nearly all respects, and _The Red Rover_, (1828), by no means his worst.

At this period the unequal and uncertain talent of Cooper would seem to have been at its best. These excellent novels were, however, succeeded by one very inferior, _The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish_ (1829); by _The Notions of a Travelling Bachelor_ (1828), an uninteresting book; and by _The Waterwitch_ (1830), one of the poorest of his many sea-stories. In 1830 he entered the lists as a party writer, defending in a series of letters to the _National_, a Parisian journal, the United States against a string of charges brought against them by the _Revue Britannique_; and for the rest of his life he continued skirmishing in print, sometimes for the national interest, sometimes for that of the individual, and not infrequently for both at once. This opportunity of making a political confession of faith appears not only to have fortified him in his own convictions, but to have inspired him with the idea of imposing them on the public through the medium of his art. His next three novels, _The Bravo_ (1831), _The Heidenmauer_ (1832) and _The Headsman: or the Abbaye of Vigneron_ (1833), were designed to exalt the people at the expense of the aristocracy. Of these the first is by no means a bad story, but the others are among the dullest ever written; all were widely read on both sides of the Atlantic.

In 1833 Cooper returned to America, and immediately published _A Letter to my Countrymen_, in which he gave his own version of the controversy he had been engaged in, and passed some sharp censure on his compatriots for their share in it. This attack he followed up with _The Monikins_ (1835) and _The American Democrat_ (1835); with several sets of notes on his travels and experiences in Europe, among which may be remarked his _England_ (1837), in three volumes, a burst of vanity and ill-temper; and with _Homeward Bound_, and _Home as Found_ (1838), noticeable as containing a highly idealized portrait of himself. All these books tended to increase the ill-feeling between author and public; the Whig press was virulent and scandalous in its comments, and Cooper plunged into a series of actions for libel. Victorious in all of them, he returned to his old occupation with something of his old vigour and success. A _History of the Navy of the United States_ (1839), supplemented (1846) by a set of _Lives of Distinguished American Naval Officers_, was succeeded by _The Pathfinder_ (1840), a good "Leatherstocking" novel; by _Mercedes of Castile_ (1840); _The Deerslayer_ (1841); by _The Two Admirals_ and by _Wing and Wing_ (1842); by _Wyandotte, The History of a Pocket Handkerchief_, and _Ned Myers_ (1843); and by _Afloat and Ashore, or the Adventures of Miles Wallingford_ (1844). From pure fiction, however, he turned again to the combination of art and controversy in which he had achieved distinction, and in the two _Littlepage Manuscripts_ (1845-1846) he fought with a great deal of vigour. His next novel was _The Crater, or Vulcan's Peak_ (1847), in which he attempted to introduce supernatural machinery with indifferent success; and this was succeeded by _Oak Openings_ and _Jack Tier_ (1848), the latter a curious _rifacimento_ of _The Red Rover_; by _The Sea Lions_ (1849); and finally by _The Ways of the Hour_ (1850), another novel with a purpose, and his last book. He died of dropsy on the 14th of September 1851 at Cooperstown, New York. His daughter, Susan Fenimore Cooper (1813-1894), was known as an author and philanthropist.

Cooper was certainly one of the most popular authors that have ever written. His stories have been translated into nearly all the languages of Europe and into some of those of Asia. Balzac admired him greatly, but with discrimination; Victor Hugo pronounced him greater than the great master of modern romance, and this verdict was echoed by a multitude of inferior readers, who were satisfied with no title for their favourite less than that of "the American Scott." As a satirist and observer he is simply the "Cooper who's written six volumes to prove he's as good as a Lord" of Lowell's clever portrait; his enormous vanity and his irritability find vent in a sort of dull violence, which is exceedingly tiresome. It is only as a novelist that he deserves consideration. His qualities are not those of the great masters of fiction; but he had an inexhaustible imagination, some faculty for simple combination of incident, a homely tragic force which is very genuine and effective, and up to a certain point a fine narrative power. His literary training was inadequate; his vocabulary is limited and his style awkward and pretentious; and he had a fondness for moralizing tritely and obviously, which mars his best passages. In point of conception, each of his three-and-thirty novels is either absolutely good or is possessed of a certain amount of merit; but hitches occur in all, so that every one of them is remarkable rather in its episodes than as a whole. Nothing can be more vividly told than the escape of the Yankee man-of-war through the shoals and from the English cruisers in _The Pilot_, but there are few things flatter in the range of fiction than the other incidents of the novel. It is therefore with some show of reason that _The Last of the Mohicans_, which as a chain of brilliantly narrated episodes is certainly the least faulty in this matter of sustained excellence of execution, should be held to be the best of his works.

The personages of his drama are rather to be accounted as so much painted cloth and cardboard, than as anything approaching the nature of men and women. As a creator of aught but romantic incident, indeed, Cooper's claims to renown must rest on the fine figure of the Leatherstocking, and, in a less degree, on that of his friend and companion, the Big Serpent. The latter has many and obvious merits, not the least of which is the pathos shed about him in his last incarnation as the Indian John of _The Pioneers_. Natty Bumpo, however, is a creation of no common unity and consistency. There are lapses and flaws, and Natty is made to say things which only Cooper, in his most verbosely didactic vein, could have uttered. But on the whole the impression left is good and true. In the dignity and simplicity of the old backwoodsman there is something almost Hebraic. With his naïve vanity and strong reverent piety, his valiant wariness, his discriminating cruelty, his fine natural sense of right and wrong, his rough limpid honesty, his kindly humour, his picturesque dialect, and his rare skill in woodcraft, he has all the breadth and roundness of a type and all the eccentricities and peculiarities of a portrait.

See _James Fenimore Cooper_ (Boston, 1883), by Thomas R. Lounsbury in the "American Men of Letters" series; Griswold, _Prose Writers of America_ (Philadelphia, 1847); J. R. Lowell, _Fable for Critics_; M. A. de Wolfe Howe, _American Bookmen_ (New York, 1898); and the introduction by Mowbray Morris to Macmillan's uniform edition of Cooper's novels (London, 1900). (W. E. H.)

COOPER, PETER (1791-1883), American manufacturer, inventor and philanthropist, was born in New York city on the 12th of February 1791. His grandfathers and his father served in the War of American Independence. He received practically no schooling, but worked with his father at hat-making in New York city, at brewing in Peekskill, at brick-making in Catskill, and again at brewing in Newburgh. At seventeen he was apprenticed to a coach-builder in New York city. On coming of age he got employment at Hempstead, Long Island, making machines for shearing cloth; three years afterwards he set up in this business for himself, having bought the sole right to manufacture such machinery in the state of New York. Business prospered during the War of 1812, but fell off after the peace. He turned his shop into a furniture factory; soon sold this and for a short time was engaged in the grocery business on the site of the present Bible House, opposite Cooper Union; and then invested in a glue and isinglass factory, situated for twenty-one years in Manhattan (where the Park Avenue Hotel was built later) and then in Brooklyn. About 1828 he built the Canton Iron Works in Baltimore, Maryland, the foundation of his great fortune. The Baltimore & Ohio railway was to cross his property, and, after various inventions aiming to do away with the locomotive crank and thus save two-fifths of the steam, in 1830 he designed and constructed (largely after plans made two years before) the first steam locomotive built in America; though only a small model it proved the practicability of using steam power for working that line. The "Tom Thumb," as Cooper called the locomotive, was about the size of a modern hand-car; as the natural draft was far from sufficient, Cooper devised a blowing apparatus. Selling his Baltimore works, he built, in 1836, in partnership with his brother Thomas, a rolling mill in New York; in 1845 he removed it to Trenton, New Jersey, where iron structural beams were first made in 1854 and the Bessemer process first tried in America in 1856; and at Philippsburg, New Jersey, he built the largest blast furnace in the country at that time. He built other foundries at Ringwood, New Jersey, and at Durham, Pennsylvania; bought iron mines in northern New Jersey, and carried the ore thence by railways to his mills. Actively interested with Cyrus Field in the laying of the first Atlantic cable, he was president of the New York, Newfoundland & London Telegraph Company, and his frequent cash advances made the success of the company possible; he was president of the North American Telegraph Company also, which controlled more than one-half of the telegraph lines of the United States. For his work in advancing the iron trade he received the Bessemer gold medal from the Iron and Steel Institute of Great Britain in 1879. He took a prominent part in educational affairs, strongly opposed the Roman Catholic claims for public funds for parochial schools, and conducted the campaign of the Free School Society to its successful issue in 1842, when a state law was passed forbidding the support from public funds of any "religious sectarian doctrine." He is probably best known, however, as the founder of the Cooper Union (q.v.). Cooper was an early advocate of the emancipation and the enlistment in the Union army of Southern negroes, and he upheld the administration of Lincoln. Though he had been a hard-money Democrat, he joined the Greenback party after the Civil War, and in 1876 was its candidate for the presidency, but received only 81,740 out of the 8,412,833 votes cast. He died in New York city on the 4th of April 1883. He published _The Political and Financial Opinions of Peter Cooper, with an Autobiography of his Early Life_ (1877), and _Ideas for a Science of Good Government, in Addresses, Letters and Articles on a Strictly National Currency, Tariff and Civil Service_ (1883).

There is a brief biography by R. W. Raymond, _Peter Cooper_ (Boston, 1900).

COOPER, SAMUEL (1609-1672), English miniature painter. This artist was undoubtedly the greatest painter of miniatures who ever lived. He is believed to have been born in London, and was a nephew of John Hoskins, the miniature painter, by whom he was educated. He lived in Henrietta St., Covent Garden, and frequented the Covent Garden Coffee-House. Pepys, who makes many references to him, tells us he was an excellent musician, playing well upon the lute, and also a good linguist, speaking French with ease. According to other contemporary writers, he was a short, stout man, of a ruddy countenance. He married one Christiana, whose portrait is at Welbeck Abbey, and he had one daughter. In 1668 he was instructed by Pepys to paint a portrait of Mrs Pepys, for which he charged £30. He is known to have painted also the portrait of John Aubrey, which was presented in 1691 to the Ashmolean Museum, as we learn from his correspondence with John Ray, the naturalist. Evelyn refers to him in 1662, when, on the occasion of the visit that the diarist paid to the king, Cooper was drawing the royal face and head for the new coinage.

Magnificent examples of his work are to be found at Windsor Castle, Belvoir Castle, Montague House, Welbeck Abbey, Ham House, the Rijks Museum at Amsterdam and in the collection of Mr J. Pierpont Morgan. His largest miniature is in the possession of the duke of Richmond and Gordon at Goodwood. A piece of the artist's handwriting is to be seen at the back of one of his miniatures in the Welbeck Abbey collection, and one of his drawings in black chalk is in the University Gallery at Oxford. His own portrait of himself is in the collection of Mr J. Pierpont Morgan.

The date of his death has been handed down by a record in the diary of Mary Beale, the miniature painter; and in some letters from Mr Charles Manners, addressed to Lord Roos, dated 1672, now amongst the duke of Rutland's papers at Belvoir, the writer refers to Cooper's serious illness on the 4th of May, and to his doubt as to whether the artist would ever recover. Mary Beale's reference to his decease is in the following words: "Sunday, May 5, 1672--Mr Samuel Cooper, the most famous limner of the world for a face, dyed."

For a fuller account see the _History of Portrait Miniatures_, by G. C. Williamson, vol. i. p. 64. (G. C. W.)

COOPER (or COUPER), THOMAS (c. 1517-1594), English bishop and writer, was born in Oxford, where he was educated at Magdalen College. He became master of Magdalen College school, and afterwards practised as a physician in Oxford. His literary career began in 1548, when he compiled, or rather edited, a Latin dictionary _Bibliotheca Eliotae_, and in 1549 he published a continuation of Thomas Lanquet's _Chronicle of the World_. This work, known as _Cooper's Chronicle_, covers the period from A.D. 17 to the time of writing, and was reprinted in 1560 and 1565. In 1565 appeared the first edition of his greatest work, _Thesaurus Linguae Romanae et Britannicae_, and this was followed by three other editions. Queen Elizabeth was greatly pleased with the _Thesaurus_, generally known as _Cooper's Dictionary_; and its author, who had been ordained about 1559, was made dean of Christ Church, Oxford, in 1567. Two years later he became dean of Gloucester, in 1571 bishop of Lincoln and in 1584 bishop of Winchester. Cooper was a stout controversialist; he defended the practice and precept of the Church of England against the Roman Catholics on the one hand and against the Martin Marprelate writings and the Puritans on the other. He took some part, the exact extent of which is disputed, in the persecution of religious recusants in his diocese, and died at Winchester on the 29th of April 1594.

Cooper's _Admonition against Martin Marprelate_ was reprinted in 1847, and his _Answer in Defence of the Truth against the Apology of Private Mass_ in 1850.

COOPER, THOMAS (1759-1840), American educationalist and political philosopher, was born in London, England, on the 22nd of October 1759, and educated at Oxford. Threatened with prosecution at home because of his active sympathy with the French Revolution, he emigrated to America about 1793, and began the practice of law in Northumberland county, Pennsylvania. He was president-judge of the Fourth District of Pennsylvania in 1806-1811. Like his friend Joseph Priestley, who was then living in Northumberland, he sympathized with the Anti-Federalists, and took part in the agitation against the Sedition Act, and for a newspaper attack in 1799 on President John Adams, Cooper was convicted, fined and imprisoned for libel. Like Priestley, Cooper was very highly esteemed by Thomas Jefferson, who secured for him the appointment as first professor of natural science and law in the University of Virginia--a position which Cooper was forced to resign under the fierce attack made on him by the Virginia clergy. After filling the chair of chemistry in Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pa. (1811-1814), and in the University of Pennsylvania (1818-1819), he became professor of chemistry in South Carolina College, at Columbia, in 1819, and afterwards gave instruction in political economy also. In 1820 he became acting president of this institution, and was president from 1821 until 1833, when he resigned owing to the opposition within the state to his liberal religious views. In December 1834, owing to continued opposition, he resigned his professorship. He had been formally tried for infidelity in 1832. He was a born agitator: John Adams described him as "a learned, ingenious, scientific and talented madcap." Before his college classes, in public lectures, and in numerous pamphlets, he constantly preached the doctrine of free trade, and tried to show that the protective system was especially burdensome to the South. His remedy was state action. Each state, he contended, was a sovereign power and was in duty bound to protest against the tyrannical acts of the Federal government. He exercised considerable influence in preparing the people of South Carolina for nullification and secession; in fact he preceded Calhoun in advocating a practical application of the state sovereignty principle. The last years of his life were spent in preparing an edition of the Statutes at Large of the state, which was completed by David James McCord (1797-1855) and published in ten volumes (1836-1841). Dr Cooper died in Columbia on the 11th of May 1840. As a philosopher he was a follower of Hartley, Erasmus Darwin, Priestley and Broussais; he was a physiological materialist, and a severe critic of Scotch metaphysics. Among his publications are _Political Essays_ (1800); _An English Version of the Institutes of Justinian_ (1812); _Lectures on the Elements of Political Economy_ (1826); _A Treatise on the Law of Libel and the Liberty of the Press_ (1830); and a translation of Broussais' _On Irritation and Insanity_ (1831), with which were printed his own essays, "The Scripture Doctrine of Materialism," "View of the Metaphysical and Physiological Arguments in favour of Materialism," and "Outline of the Doctrine of the Association of Ideas."

See I. Woodbridge Riley, _American Philosophy: the Early Schools_ (New York, 1907).

COOPER, THOMAS (1805-1892), English Chartist and writer, the son of a working dyer, was born at Leicester on the 20th of March 1805. After his father's death his mother began business as a dyer and fancy box-maker at Gainsborough. Young Cooper was apprenticed to a shoemaker. He had a passion for knowledge; studied Greek, Latin and Hebrew in his spare time; and in 1827 gave up cobbling to become a schoolmaster, and, later, a Methodist preacher. His affairs did not prosper, and after going to Lincoln, where he obtained work on a local newspaper, he came to London in 1839. Here he became assistant to a second-hand bookseller, but in 1840 he joined the staff of the _Leicestershire Mercury_. His support of the Chartist movement obliged him to resign his position, but he undertook to edit _The Midland Counties Illuminator_, a Chartist journal, in 1841. He became a leader of the extreme Chartist party, and for his action in urging on the strike of 1842 he was imprisoned in Stafford gaol for two years. Here he produced _The Purgatory of Suicides_, a political epic in ten books, embodying the radical ideas of the time. In his efforts to publish this work after his liberation he came under the notice of Benjamin Disraeli and Douglas Jerrold. Through Jerrold's help it appeared in 1845, and Cooper then turned his attention to lecturing upon historical and educational subjects. In 1856 he suddenly renounced the free-thinking doctrines which he had held for many years, and became a lecturer on Christian evidences. He died at Lincoln on the 15th of July 1892. Among his other works may be mentioned the _Bridge of History over the Gulf of Time_ (1871) and the _Life of Thomas Cooper, written by Himself_ (1872).

COOPER, THOMAS SIDNEY (1803-1902), English painter, was born at Canterbury on the 20th of September 1803. In very early childhood he showed in many ways the strength of his artistic inclinations, but as the circumstances of his family did not admit of his receiving any systematic training, he began before he was twelve years old to work in the shop of a coach painter. A little later he obtained employment as a scene painter; and he alternated between these two occupations for about eight years. But the desire to become an artist continued to influence him, and all his spare moments were given up to drawing and painting from nature. At the age of twenty he went to London, drew for a while in the British Museum, and was admitted as a student of the Royal Academy. He then returned to Canterbury, where he was able to earn a living as a drawing-master and by the sale of sketches and drawings. In 1827 he settled in Brussels; but four years later he returned to London to live, and by showing his first picture at the Royal Academy (1833) began an unprecedentedly prolonged career as an exhibitor. Cooper's name is mainly associated with pictures of cattle or sheep, and the most notable of the many hundred he produced are: "A Summer's Noon" (1836), "A Drover's Halt on the Fells" (1838), "A Group in the Meadows" (1845), "The Half-past One o'Clock Charge at Waterloo" (1847), "The Shepherd's Sabbath" (1866), "The Monarch of the Meadows" (1873), "Separated but not Divorced" (1874), "Isaac's Substitute" (1880), "Pushing off for Tilbury Fort" (1884), "On a Farm in East Kent" (1889), "Return to the Farm, Milking Time" (1897). He was elected A.R.A. in 1845 and R.A. in 1867. He presented to his native place, in 1882, the Sidney Cooper Art Gallery, built on the site of the house in which he was born. He wrote his reminiscences, under the title of _My Life_, in 1890; and died on the 7th of February 1902.

COOPERAGE, or COPERAGE (Flemish and Dutch _kooper_, a trader, dealer), a system of traffic in spirituous liquors, tobacco and other articles amongst the fishermen in the North Sea. The practice began in the middle of the 19th century, when Flemish and Dutch _koopers_ frequented the fishing fleets for the purpose of barter. Trading first in tobacco, they extended their operations, and soon became practically floating grog-shops.

The demoralizing nature of the traffic was brought to the public notice in 1881, and a convention was held at the Hague in 1882 to consider means of remedying the abuses. In 1887 Great Britain, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, France and the Netherlands signed an agreement to prevent the sale or purchase of spirituous liquors among fishermen at sea. In Great Britain an act (the North Sea Fisheries Act 1888) was passed to carry into effect the terms of the convention. The act (now repealed and replaced by the North Sea Fisheries Act 1893, with which it is identical but for some slight verbal modifications) imposes a fine not exceeding £50 or a term of imprisonment not exceeding three months for supplying, exchanging or otherwise selling spirits. It imposes a like penalty for purchasing spirits by exchange or otherwise, and requires every British vessel dealing in provisions or other articles to have a licence and to carry a special mark. In 1882 Mr E. J. Mather started a mission to deep sea fishermen, which sends out mission ships and supplies the fishermen with good clothing, literature, tobacco, &c., at a fair price. This mission, now the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, is registered by the Board of Trade.

See E. J. Mather, _Nor'ard of the Dogger_ (1888), and publications of the Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen.

COOPERAGE (from "cooper," a maker of casks, derived from such forms as Mid. Dutch _cuper_, Ger. _Küfer_, Lat. _cuparius_; the same root is seen in various Teut. words for a basket, such as Dutch _kuip_ and Eng. "kipe" and "coop," but cooper is apparently not formed directly from "coop," which never means a "cask" but always a basket-cage for poultry, &c.), the art of making casks, barrels and other rounded vessels, the sides of which are composed of separate staves, held together by hoops surrounding them. The art is one of great antiquity; Pliny ascribes its invention to the inhabitants of the Alpine valleys. The trade is one in which there are numerous subdivisions, the chief of which are tight or wet and dry or slack cask manufacture. To these may be added white cooperage, a department which embraces the construction of wooden tubs, pails, churns and other even-staved vessels. Of all departments, the manufacture of tight casks or barrels for holding liquids is that which demands the greatest care and skill since, in addition to being perfectly tight when filled with liquid, the vessels must bear the strain of transportation to great distances, and in many cases have to resist considerable internal pressure when they contain fermenting liquors. The staves are best made of well-seasoned oak. Since a cask is a double conoid, usually having its greatest diameter (technically the bulge or belly) at the centre, each stave must be properly curved to form a segment of the whole, and must be so cut as to have a suitable bilge or increase of width from the ends to the middle; it must also have its edges bevelled to such an angle that it will form tight joints with its neighbours. The staves being prepared, the next operation is to set up or raise the barrel. For this purpose as many staves as are necessary are arranged upright in a circular frame, and round their lower halves are fitted truss hoops which serve to keep them together for the permanent hooping. The upper ends are then drawn together by means of a rope which is passed round them and tightened by a windlass, and other truss hoops are dropped over them, the wood being steamed or heated to enable it to bend freely to shape. The two ends of the cask are next finished to receive the heads by forming the chime, or bevel on the extremity of the staves, and the croze or groove into which the heads fit. Finally the heads and permanent hoops are put in place. The heads, when made of two or more pieces, are jointed by wooden dowel pins, and after being cut to size are chamfered or bevelled round the edge to fit into the croze grooves. The hoops are generally of iron. The manufacture of slack casks proceeds on the same general lines, but is simpler in various respects, both because less accurate workmanship is required, and because softer woods, largely fir, may be employed. Machinery of the most elaborate and specialized character has been devised to perform most of the operations in making both slack and tight casks, and though it involves considerable capital outlay it effects so great an economy of time that it has largely superseded hand labour. (For an account of such machinery see L. H. Ransome, "Cask-making Machinery," _Proc. Inst. Civ. Eng._ vol. 115; also an article in _Engineering_, 1908, 85, p. 845.) Barrels without separate staves are made by bending a sheet of wood, sawn from a log in a continuous strip, into the required circular shape, the bulge at the centre being obtained by cutting out V gores from the ends. Barrels are also sometimes made of steel, either of the ordinary bulging form or consisting of straight-sided drums provided near the middle with rings on which they may be rolled. Immense numbers of casks of different shapes and sizes are employed in various industries. Tight barrels are a necessity to the wine and cider maker, brewer and distiller, and are largely used for the transport of oils and liquid chemicals, while slack barrels are utilized by the million for packing cement, alkali, china, fruit, fish and numerous other products.

CO-OPERATION, a term used particularly both for a theory of life, and for a system of business, with the general sense of "working together" (_con_, with, and _opus_, work). In its narrowest usage it means a combination of individuals to economize by buying in common, or increase their profits by selling in common. In its widest usage it means the creed that life may best be ordered not by the competition of individuals, where each seeks the interest of himself and his family, but by mutual help; by each individual consciously striving for the good of the social body of which he forms part, and the social body in return caring for each individual: "each for all, and all for each" is its accepted motto. Thus it proposes to replace among rational and moral beings the struggle for existence by voluntary combination for life. More or less imperfectly embodying this theory, we have co-operation in the concrete, or "the co-operative movement," meaning those forms of voluntary association where individuals unite for mutual aid in the production of wealth, which they will devote to common purposes, or share among them upon principles of equity, reason and the common good, agreed upon beforehand. Not that a co-operative society can begin by saying absolutely what those principles in their purity would dictate. It begins with current prices, current rates of wages and interest, current hours of labour, and modifies them as soon as it can wherever they seem least conformable to equity, reason and the common good.

In the industrial world there is everywhere much working together for the production of wealth, but this is not included in co-operation if the shares of those concerned are determined by competition, i.e. by a struggle and the relative ability of each to secure a large share. Nor do co-operators regard the association as truly voluntary, though it may depend on contract, if that contract be one of service only, without an opportunity for all concerned to share in the ultimate control. Co-operation in fact is essentially a democratic association. On the other hand, there is some working together for the production of wealth which without being competitive, or based on service, is not strictly voluntary: thus in primitive societies there is much customary help, combined with customary division of the produce; and in advanced societies we have state and municipal socialism. These are indeed sometimes included in co-operation, but at least they are not voluntary co-operation, since the individual has no choice but to take part in them; they depend on the power of the ruler to coerce the ruled, or of the majority to coerce the minority. In co-operation, meaning voluntary co-operation, there may also, it is true, be frequent overruling of the minority by the majority, but only so far as the minority have, when joining the association, voluntarily agreed to permit, and subject always to an effective ultimate right of secession.

Thus co-operation occupies the middle ground between competition and state or municipal socialism. In its technical sense, however, it does not cover the whole of this ground: it does not cover associations which are primarily for social, provident, or religious purposes, but only those closely connected with the production of wealth. We speak of co-operative societies for agriculture, for manufacturing, for retail, or wholesale distribution, for building or house-owning, for raising capital and so forth; while the great Friendly Societies (q.v.), though a part of co-operation as a theory of life, are not part of the co-operative movement. The line is somewhat hard to draw, and consequently is drawn somewhat arbitrarily. Thus while a society for building, or for the collective ownership of houses, is counted a co-operative society, a Building Society (as we ordinarily understand the term), though it be purely mutual in its basis, is not so counted in Great Britain, but is in the United States (see BUILDING SOCIETIES).

Robert Owen.

For the early history of the co-operative movement we have to look chiefly to Great Britain, and British co-operation acknowledges as its founder Robert Owen (q.v.). In every age and every country the origins of co-operation may no doubt be traced, where men have helped one another in the creation of wealth and agreed as brothers as to its division. In England long before the days of Owen there was much co-operation of miners and fishermen which, though scarcely obligatory on the individuals taking part in it, was largely regulated by custom. Coming to more purely voluntary associations, co-operative workshops are recorded, retail co-operation was practised in Scotland from the middle of the 18th century, while in England shops not unlike co-operative stores, but without the democratic element, were in one or two instances set up by benevolent individuals. It does not seem, however, that there was any theory of co-operation until Owen in England, and almost simultaneously Fourier (q.v.) in France, formulated their gospels, not identical, yet having much in common. Of these two Owen and his teaching are by far the more important.

The end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries were the culminating days of the industrial revolution, when the old organization of domestic industry had given way before the factory system, and the population of the factory districts was suffering a martyrdom, with ruin of body and degradation of character, from unbridled competition, long hours, women's and children's labour, pauper apprenticeship, great fluctuations of trade and employment, dearness and adulteration of provisions, the truck system and insanitary homes. Owen, having himself become a great employer of labour, after starting as a draper's assistant, saw that this was in every sense waste, and that as it paid the manufacturer to have the best machinery and not to overdrive it, but to tend it well and keep it in the best repair, so it would pay him, and abundantly pay the nation, to have the human machines well cared for, not overworked, and kept in the best condition. The popular individualistic philosophy of that day taught that the good of society would be achieved by each individual seeking in his business relations the interest of himself and his family; but Owen maintained that the well-being of the social body could only be served if each individual made that his conscious aim. For this reason he and his disciples were called Socialists. He taught further that a man's character depended mainly upon the circumstances which influenced his life; he emphasized environment, and all but denied heredity. At New Lanark, from 1799, he carried out these ideas among the workers in the cotton mills of which he was managing partner.[1] "For twenty-nine years," he wrote, "we did without the necessity for magistrates or lawyers; without a single legal punishment; without any known poors' rate; without intemperance or religious animosities. We reduced the hours of labour, well educated all the children from infancy, greatly improved the condition of the adults, diminished their daily labour, paid interest on capital, and cleared upwards of £300,000 of profit." So wonderful were the results upon the population, that New Lanark became a show-place of world-wide renown, and was visited by many of the greatest and most exalted people of the period.

While thus using his own power Owen not only advocated legislation to limit the hours of factory labour, but appealed to the public authorities to establish industrial communities, where the poor might be set to work, and be managed paternally on the principles of New Lanark. So great was his repute, and so influential the royal and other personages who gave him their support, that this appeal might probably have been successful had not Owen, in reply to complaints as to his religious views--which were deistic--and that his system was not founded on religion, made a public attack upon all accepted religions.

Failing to get the required support from the Government and magistrates, he still sought it from wealthy believers in his teaching, and a number of "communities" (see COMMUNISM) were founded in England and Scotland, and in the United States. These were intended to be self-supporting, the land and other means of producing wealth being owned in common, and work and education being regulated on Owen's principles. Owen well knew that most of them lacked the large amount of capital necessary, but his hand was forced by enthusiastic followers, and even the most hopeful of the experiments, that of Queenwood in Hampshire (1839-1844), was made prematurely and failed.

His connexion with New Lanark also came to an end, not from any want of success, but through differences with some of his partners who objected to such matters as dancing, military drill for the children, and the wearing of kilts, but above all feared lest Owen's "infidelity" should undermine the people's faith.

Thus it might have seemed that Owen's life and fortune had been spent in vain, and resulted only in unsuccessful experiments; but this was far from being so. His teaching, and in particular his doctrines of circumstance, and of the conscious seeking after the social good, his belief in self-supporting communities, and his vision of a new moral and industrial world, had powerfully affected the working classes, indeed, all classes. Workmen in many parts of the country had formed groups with the ultimate object of founding self-supporting communities. If the government and the rich would not provide capital enough to start communities, the workers would start them themselves. Thus was the democratic basis given to co-operation. As a means they had been founding co-operative societies, which are sometimes called "union shops" to distinguish them from the later growth of societies of the Rochdale type. The members began by buying provisions wholesale and retailing them to themselves at current prices; the difference became capital, and as soon as possible one member was set to work to make boots and another clothes, and so forth, until ultimately the society should have capital enough to take land and form a community. Education also was prominent among their objects. These co-operative societies reached some 400 or 500 between 1828 and 1834, but the movement then collapsed. As the original enthusiasm died out, or members left the neighbourhood, or capital accumulated in the hands of the original shareholders, they almost all either failed or became private property. In those early days, moreover, the law gave no protection to the property of co-operative societies. This remained so until 1852, when the Christian Socialists (see SOCIALISM) among their many great services to the working classes secured such protection. In 1862 they secured also limited liability for the members.

Rochdale pioneers.

Before 1844 a co-operative society had already been formed and failed at Rochdale in Lancashire, yet some ardent spirits planned to form another. Twenty-eight poor men, flannel weavers and such like, got together a capital of £28 by twopenny and threepenny subscriptions, and in December 1844 opened in Toad Lane, Rochdale, a little shop from which, speaking broadly, the whole of British co-operation, and very much of that of other lands, has grown. Their objects were those of other co-operative societies of the time, including the ultimate aim of a self-supporting community. In this last they never succeeded, nor indeed did they attempt it; but they did succeed in vastly improving the position of millions of the working classes by enabling them to obtain their provisions cheap and pure, to avoid the millstone of debt, to save money, to pass from retail to wholesale trade, and from distribution to manufacturing, building and house-owning, ship-owning and banking; above all to educate themselves, and to live with an ideal.

The Rochdale Equitable Pioneers began their trading in the smallest way, the members taking turns to serve in the shop; yet where so many other Union shops had failed Rochdale succeeded, and it has steadily grown to an institution with some 14,000 members, doing a trade of £300,000, owning shops and workshops, a library and reading-rooms, making large profits, and devoting a substantial part of them to education and to charitable purposes. What was the reason of this difference? Chiefly it would seem a different method of dealing with the profits. Earlier "Stores" had divided these according to the capital contributed by each member, or else equally among the members: the Rochdale Pioneers determined that, after paying 5% interest on the share capital, all profit should be allotted to the purchasing members in proportion to their purchases, and be capitalized in the name of the member entitled, until his shares amounted to £5. Thus each member found it his interest to purchase at the store and to introduce new purchasers. The ownership of the store remained always with the purchasers, and each came under the magic influence of a little capital saved.

Growth of co-operative stores.

Not only did Rochdale store grow amazingly, but its example spread far and near. New stores were founded on the "Rochdale plan" and old stores adopted it; soon they were numbered by hundreds. In spite of many failures there were in 1906 more than fourteen hundred such stores in the United Kingdom, with nearly two and a quarter million members, over £33,000,000 capital, and sales exceeding £63,000,000 in the year. The number of societies does not increase of late years, the tendency being rather for established societies to open branches, but all the other figures increase rapidly from year to year.

These workmen's Co-operative Stores, or Distributive Societies, flourish chiefly in the north and midlands of England and in Scotland, but are found more or less all over the country. They, and practically all other British co-operative societies, are registered under the Industrial and Provident Societies Act, which constitutes them corporate bodies, with limited liability, and fixes £200 as the maximum that any member may hold in the share capital. Their government is democratic, based on one vote each, for man or woman; and their members or shareholders, and their committee-men or directors, are almost exclusively the more provident of the working classes, or belong to the class just above. Store societies are of various sizes, from the small village shop to the greatest of them all, the Leeds Society, with nearly 30,000 members, sales exceeding a million and a half sterling, and an elaborate organization of branches and manufacturing departments. Their method, the "Rochdale system," is as follows, subject to occasional variations. Membership is open to all who pay a shilling entrance fee and sign for a £1 share, which can be paid up out of profit. For the most part members may at any time withdraw their shares in cash at par. A record of each member's purchases is kept by means of metal tokens or otherwise, and at the end of each quarter, after paying a limited interest (never more than 5%, and in very many societies less) on shares, and, in some societies, paying a proportion of profit to the employees, the surplus is divided to the members in proportion to their purchases: non-members also usually receiving half dividends on theirs. Thus the members in effect obtain their necessaries at cost price. The dividend on members' purchases averages about 2s. 6d. in the £. In many successful societies even more is paid, but the average is falling. Where dividend is high, prices are often fixed above those current in the neighbourhood, so that the members, in addition to saving the retailer's profit, use their Society as a sort of savings bank, where they put away a halfpenny or so for every shilling they spend. In addition to retailing, a store often manufactures bread, clothes, boots and millinery, sometimes farms land, or grinds corn; usually for its own members only, but occasionally for sale to other societies also. Their productions in this way exceed £5,000,000 a year. They also invest large and increasing sums in building cottages, to let or sell to their members; and they lend still more largely to their members, to enable them to buy cottages.

Outwardly these stores may look like mere shops, but they are really much more. First, they are managed with a view not to a proprietor's profit, but to cheap and good commodities. Secondly they have done an immense work for thrift and the material prosperity of the working classes, and as teachers of business and self-government. But further, they have a distinct social and economic aim, namely, to correct the present inequalities of wealth, and substitute for the competitive system an industry controlled by all in the common interest, and distributing on principles of equity and reason, mutually agreed on, the wealth produced. With this view they acknowledge the duties of fair pay and good conditions for their own employees, and of not buying goods made under bad conditions. The best societies further set aside a small proportion of their profits for educational purposes, including concerts, social gatherings, classes, lectures, reading-rooms and libraries, and often make grants to causes with which they sympathize. Their members are prominent in local government affairs; co-operative candidates are occasionally run for town councils, and often talked of for parliament. Though the societies are non-political, and have refused to join the labour representation movement, they are usually centres of "progressive" ideas. There are of course many defects, and of their two million members a large, and many fear an increasing, proportion, attracted by the prosperity of the societies, think chiefly of what they themselves gain; but the government of the movement has, hitherto at least, been largely in the hands of men of ideas, who believe that stores are but a step to co-operative production, and on to the "co-operative commonwealth."

It is indeed only when we come to federations of co-operative societies, and above all to production, with its large number of employees, that the educational side of the movement and its power to promote industrial reform are most seen. The Co-operative Union, Limited, for instance, is a propagandist federation of all the chief co-operative societies in Great Britain, and some in Ireland. Its income of £10,000 a year is contributed by the Co-operative Societies. It looks after their legal and parliamentary interests, carries on much educational work by means of literature, lectures, classes, scholarships, summer meetings at the universities, and so on; organizes numerous local conferences for discussion, and once a year a great national co-operative congress, and exhibition of productions, in some chief centre of population. The Co-operative Wholesale Society, Limited, is a trading federation of the great majority of the English stores. Founded in 1863 on a small scale, it now counts its employees by thousands, its capital by millions, and its yearly sales by tens of millions. Besides its merchant trade, it manufactures to the value of £4,500,000, owning factories, warehouses and land in many districts. It imports largely, and runs its own steamships. It is also the bank of the co-operative societies, and the chief outlet for the always redundant capital of the well-established stores. The Scottish stores also have their Wholesale Society, not less important relatively. For many purposes these two are in partnership. In each of them the net profits are returned to the stores as a dividend on purchases, and thence to the whole body of members; but in the Scottish Wholesale a part is also paid to its employees as a dividend upon their wages. There are also a few local federations of stores, mostly for corn-milling and baking.

Co-partnership.

Strongly contrasting with this production by associations of consumers, or "consumers' production," is the co-partnership, or labour co-partnership, branch of co-operation. Its simplest form is an association of producers formed to carry on their own industry. Originally such societies were intended to consist solely of the workers employed; the ideal was the "self-governing workshop," introduced from France by the Christian Socialists of 1850; but membership is now open to the distributive societies, which are the chief customers, and usually, to all sympathizers. Shares are transferable, not withdrawable. Profits first pay the agreed "wages of capital," usually 5%, and of what remains the main part goes to the employees as a dividend on their wages, and to the customers as a dividend on their purchases. In well-established societies the dividend on wages averages about 1s. on the £. This is not usually paid in cash, but credited to the employees as share capital, whereby all may become members. Besides other producers' associations, more or less co-operative, there are over a hundred co-partnership societies at work in England, against a dozen or fifteen in 1883. They are engaged in boot-making, printing, building, weaving, clothing, wood-working, metal-working, and so on. Some of them are very small, while others have businesses of £50,000 a year or more, the average being about £10,000. The majority show fair, sometimes large profits. Each is governed by a committee, which is elected by the members and appoints the manager. A minority of them sell in the open, i.e. the non-co-operative, market, and a few sell largely for export.

Rival theories.

We constantly hear that co-operative production is a failure. There have no doubt been failures, especially of big experiments attempted among men totally unprepared. But many of the failures counted were not truly co-operative. At the present day consumers' production is successful beyond all question, while the net growth of producers' associations in the last twenty years has been marked both in number and importance. These two forms of production best illustrate the two rival theories which divide British co-operation, and between whose partisans the conflict has at times been sharp. The consumers' theory maintains that all profit on price is abstracted from the consumer, and must be returned to him; while to him should also belong all capital and control, subject to such regulations as the state and the trade unions enforce. This theory is fully exemplified in the English Wholesale Society, and in some of the smaller federations for production, which employ workmen, whether co-operators or not, for wages only, and admit no individual, but only co-operative societies, to membership. It is also exemplified by the great majority of the stores, though in their case the employee may become a member in his capacity as a consumer. The co-partnership theory, on the other hand, maintains that the workers actually employed in any industry, whether distributive or productive, should be partners with those who find the capital, and those who buy the produce, and should share with them the profit, responsibilities and control. The consumers' party contend that societies of producers make a profit out of the consumers, and thus are never truly co-operative, while as they multiply they must compete against each other. The co-partnership party answer that labour at least helps to make the profit, and that competition, as yet almost insignificant between their societies, can be avoided by federating them (a process long ago begun) for buying and selling in common, and for other common purposes, while leaving each the control and responsibility of its own internal affairs. They further advocate the eventual federation of the productive wing of co-operation with the distributive, for settling prices and all matters in which their interests might conflict. In this way they say the co-operative system may extend indefinitely without sacrificing either individual responsibility and freedom, or a general unity and control, so far as these are necessary to secure the common interest. On the other hand they hold that the opposing system tends more and more to centralization and bureaucracy, and divorces the individual workman from all personal interest in his work, and from any control over its conditions. They contend, moreover, and it is indeed admitted that, in spite of the great advantages which consumers' production has in its command of a market and of abundant capital, only a small part of industry can ever be carried on by associations of the persons who actually consume the produce. Outside this small part, therefore, voluntary co-operation is impossible except as some form of co-partnership.

On the working-out of these two principles depends the future of co-operation. The example of Scotland probably throws light on the problem. There co-operative production, amounting to some millions sterling, is nearly all carried on by federations of consumers' societies, including the Scottish Wholesale, which apply more or less successfully the co-partnership principle--i.e. their employees are admitted to share in profits, and may become members, whereby they are further admitted to share in capital and control. The type of organization hence resulting is very much the same as where a society of producers admits consumers' societies to membership, and sets aside a proportion of the profits to be returned to them as dividend upon their purchases. To this combined type, we have seen, English productive societies, started by producers, have come; and it would appear that those started by consumers must ultimately tend to it. However, in spite of honoured leaders of the early days, the consumers' party is at present greatly in the ascendant in English co-operation, and even in the Scottish federations it is almost strong enough to abolish co-partnership, and allow no one to share in capital, profit or control except in his capacity as a consumer.

An association of co-operative societies and individuals, called the Labour Co-partnership Association, exists to maintain the principle of co-partnership in co-operation, and also to promote its gradual adoption in ordinary businesses. Some progress in this latter direction is being made, there being a tendency to improve upon simple profit-sharing by capitalizing the workman's "bonus," whereby he becomes a shareholder, and the business is gradually modified in a co-operative direction. There are remarkable instances of such modification abroad, notably that of the great iron foundry and _Familistère_ at Guise in France. The most noteworthy, among several, in England is that of the South Metropolitan Gas Company, where after eighteen years of the system 5000 odd employees had in 1907 more than £320,000 invested in the company; they also elect three of themselves directors of the company, this being one-third of the board. Unfortunately this example is, or at least was, marred by a feud with the trade unions, whereas there is friendship between trade unionism and co-partnership, as indeed between trade unionism and co-operation generally.

Tenants' co-partnership societies.

One of the most recent and promising developments of English co-operation is the tenants' co-partnership movement for the common ownership of groups of houses, which the society owning them lets out to its members. These societies are but few as yet, but they have sprung up rapidly and promise great usefulness and extension. Somewhat similar societies have long been a recognized branch of co-operation on the continent of Europe.

The movement outside Britain.

Such, then, are the history and present extent of co-operation in Great Britain. Turning abroad we find in almost all civilized countries, besides other forms of co-operation, important and growing movements roughly similar to those above described, but on the whole less identified with the working classes and less coloured by their social and economic ideals. In France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and elsewhere, there are very important co-operative distributive movements looking to Rochdale as their prototype; and in the United States of America there are at least continual attempts to spread Rochdale co-operation. Of these foreign stores, however, many exhibit important modifications, such as unlimited liability, and selling at cost price, or between that and market prices. On the whole we may say that Rochdale Co-operation is the most extended and the most typical. It, and the workshop movement springing from Fourier, and the socialist co-operation of Belgium and elsewhere, are certainly the forms which have most of the ideal of democratic equality and social reconstruction. Other forms look more to the money benefits accruing to the members, seeking to supplement the present order of society, rather than to bring in a new order. Among these other forms--separate in origin, in methods, and largely in spirit--the most important are credit co-operation, or people's banking, and agricultural co-operation, two forms until recently unknown in the British Islands.

Germany and credit co-operation.

Confusion has sometimes arisen from the fact that while Rochdale Co-operation sets itself against "credit," continental co-operation is more concerned with obtaining credit for its members than with anything else. But credit is used in two senses. The English workman employed for wages is against the credit which means spending them before they are earned: continental co-operation seeks by collective credit to put into the hands of working peasants, craftsmen and traders, the stock and the tools without which their labour is vain. Credit for consumption is the road to poverty; credit for production the road to well-being.

Just as with co-operation in labour and in purchase, so mutual help in obtaining credit may doubtless be traced in primitive forms far back into history. It was certainly more or less "in the air" in Germany and France about 1848 and even earlier; but the beginning of systematic organized credit co-operation may be definitely fixed in the year 1849, when Raiffeisen began his _Darlehnscasse_, or loan bank, in Rhenish Prussia. Curiously enough it had also a second and entirely independent origin. For in the following year Schulze-Delitzsch, in a distant part of the same kingdom, established his Credit Society based on an entirely different system. As this second system spread much more rapidly than the other and attained, as indeed it retains, much greater commercial magnitude, it came to be regarded as the beginning of credit co-operation, of which for a long time it was the only important form. These two remain the two distinct types in every land. Thus Germany, which has innumerable co-operative societies of every form and of great importance, is in particular the mother of credit co-operation.

Raiffeisen loan banks.

In the famine years of 1846 and 1847 and for some years after, Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen was a burgomaster in the barren Westerwald. The people were hopelessly ground down by debt to money-lenders for small doles of capital, advanced to purchase stock, or meet times of special difficulty. It occurred to Raiffeisen that by combining to borrow a moderate sum of money on their joint responsibility, and afterwards to lend it out among themselves in small sums at a slightly greater rate of interest, the peasants might obtain relief from their burden of usury, and at the same time get the capital necessary to make their labour productive. Accordingly in 1849 at the little town of Flammersfeld, he set up a "Loan Bank." Despite its success, it remained the only one of its kind for five years, when Raiffeisen founded a second. There was no third for eight years more: it was only in 1880 that they began really to spread, but now they are found in many lands and are counted by thousands.

Such a bank is essentially an association of neighbours. Besides borrowing, it also receives savings deposits, which often produce a large part of, or even all, the capital it needs. Usually a few of the members are comparatively well to do people, who join to help their neighbours by increasing the society's credit. This Raiffeisen considered essential. They have no actual privilege, but by common consent they take a leading part. In the true Raiffeisen bank the liability of each member is unlimited, but limited liability has been introduced in some of its modifications. The Society confines its operations strictly to a small area, say a parish, where everyone knows everyone. Each borrower must specify the purpose for which he wants a loan, say to buy a cow or drain a field, or pay off a money-lender, and this is rigorously inquired into. Only members can borrow. Any member, however poor, can borrow for a profitable approved purpose, and no one, however rich, for any other. Practically all the members see that the money is applied as agreed; and, while the loan is often made for a long period, a year or two--even for ten or more--so as to repay itself out of the profit, power is reserved to call it in at short notice if misapplied. Loans are repayable by periodical instalments, but repayments must be made with absolute punctuality. No bills, mortgages or other securities are taken, except a note of hand either alone or with one or two sureties. There are two committees, one to lend and do the work of the society, and the other to supervise the first; and on both of these it is understood that the richer members are to be in a majority. No committeeman or officer receives any remuneration for his services, except that the accountant gets a small salary. Originally there were no shares, and when in 1889 the legislature ordained that there must be shares, the Raiffeisen banks made theirs as small as possible, generally ten or twelve shillings. Nothing is paid on the shares as interest or dividend, all profit being voted once for all to the ordinary reserve and the indivisible reserve, the latter the backbone of the system. In every large district the Raiffeisen banks are federated in a Union, and these Unions culminate in a General Agency. As an intermediary among themselves, and between them and the money market, the banks have also a central bank with a capital of £500,000, and with ten provincial branches. A great deal of agricultural co-operation has arisen from these banks as centres, and with the money they have supplied.

Raiffeisen banks boast that neither member nor creditor has ever lost a penny by them, and while this is denied it seems at least near the truth. Their credit is so good that they can obtain money at very low rates, and as their expenses are trifling they can re-lend to their members at rates but little higher. In Germany they usually lend at about 5%. Only men of good character can obtain membership: thus, besides spreading prosperity, they have everywhere been great promoters of sobriety and good conduct. They were only intended to meet the needs of the peasants, especially of the very poorest, and for this purpose they have proved admirably suited.

Schulze-Delitzch banks.

Very different were the people among whom Schulze-Delitzsch established his form of co-operative credit; and very different the organization he adopted and the results which have flowed from it. In 1850 Franz Hermann Schulze was a judge in his native town of Delitzsch, almost at the middle point of the southern edge of Prussia, and established there his first _Vorschussverein_, or Advance-Union. He had been in England and knew something of our co-operative movement, but he scarcely seems to have derived any part of his inspiration from it. The people he desired to help were townsmen, especially the small craftsmen working on their own account, the joiners, shoemakers and so forth; and his ideal was to do this merely by stimulating their thrift.

In a Schulze-Delitzsch bank, a number of such men combine together to raise a capital of guarantee: to do this every member takes up one share and one only, which is of large value, say £30 or £50 or even much more, but can be paid up by small instalments. Thus every member is committed to a long course of saving. On the strength of this capital in course of formation, and the unlimited liability of the members, the bank is able to borrow, or to receive as savings and deposits from members and others, a much larger capital. The funds so constituted it lends out at the highest rates it can command, originally 12% or 14%, but now very much less, and varying, of course, with the market. It lends to members only, but to any amount, for any purpose and on any good and sufficient security, whether acceptance, promissory note, overdraft, discount, mortgage, pledge, surety or what not. The loans, however, are always for a short period, usually three months, renewable for another three months, and sometimes further than that. The committee of management are elected by the general meetings; they decide on all loans, and receive a salary, plus a commission on the business done. The council of supervision are also paid, or at least entitled to pay. The great objects which a bank keeps in view are security and a good return on capital. It is not confined to a small area, but works for as large and as varied a constituency as possible. With such a constitution the Schulze-Delitzsch banks grow big and accumulate a large capital of their own. On an average each bank has nearly 600 members and lends about £150,000 per annum, including loans renewed. Losses are sometimes made, but they are not heavy on the whole. All the profits are divided upon capital, or put to reserve, except some, usually small, sums given to charitable or educational purposes. Dividends average about 5%, but have been known to reach and even exceed 30%.

It may therefore justly be said that for co-operative institutions these banks smack too much of joint-stockism: they are in fact co-operative not much more than in the same sense that the Oldham cotton mills, and other "working-class limiteds," have sometimes been loosely called co-operative. They seem constituted to make the lender's interest supreme, but they have, nevertheless, conferred enormous benefits on the handicraftsmen, small traders, small cultivators and others who borrow from them. They have put capital within their reach at reasonable rates.

These banks also have their central point. In 1864 the German Co-operative Societies' Bank was founded to centralize the work of the local Schulze-Delitzsch banks and to bring the money market within their reach. It was not itself co-operative, and never confined its business to the co-operative banks. Beginning in a very small way, by 1903 it had attained a capital of a million and a half sterling and a yearly business of £154,000,000, of which £28,000,000 was specifically with co-operative credit societies. It was then amalgamated with another banking business, the _Dresdner Bank_, esteemed one of the most important and successful in Germany.

Thus these two types of credit co-operation agree in being founded on unlimited liability, but speaking broadly they are contrasted in that the Schulze-Delitzsch banks work primarily, though by no means solely, among townsmen, are based on share capital, work for profit, which they divide on shares, are conducted by paid directors, and confer their benefits not on the very poorest but rather, as their own friends say, on the middle classes: the Raiffeisen banks are designed for the peasantry, are not based upon share capital, neither divide, nor work for, profit, are conducted by unpaid directors, and confer their benefits especially on the very poor. The Schulze-Delitzsch type is strong in self-help, but tends to commercialism as it grows; the other needs the help of the well-to-do to back up the self-help of the poor, but it tends to altruism and the union of classes.

The world has 30,000 co-operative credit societies, not counting building societies; and though they are organized in many groups, especially in their native Germany, for local reasons, or because of some modification, or some compromise between the two systems, the two types really include them all. There is, however, a strong tendency to introduce limited liability into various offshoots of the one type and the other; even into the orthodox Schulze-Delitzsch banks themselves, when they grow big. From Germany co-operative banks have spread into almost all European countries--even at last to Ireland and England--and to America and Asia. In Germany there are some fifteen thousand local, and no less than sixty central, co-operative credit associations, which lend out £180,000,000 a year including renewals. In Italy, Austria and Hungary they are also strong. In 1896 it was estimated that £150,000,000 a year must be very well within the total amount lent by money co-operation on the continent of Europe; eight years later it could not well fall short of £250,000,000, and the amount keeps constantly increasing. Of this total only a small percentage represents loans by banks of the Raiffeisen type, which, though very numerous, often lend only a few hundred pounds each in the year.

Great controversy has prevailed as to the state subsidies given to co-operative credit. While governments are sometimes rather inclined to hinder co-operative distribution, they have shown a marked tendency to foster, whether for political or economic reasons, co-operative credit. The Prussian government in response to popular demand, vigorously supported by the agricultural interest, has founded and endowed with £2,500,000 of public money, the Central Co-operative Bank, whose object is to bring capital within the reach of the various groups of co-operative banks. The Schulze-Delitzsch Union was the only one to dispute the need of this, and though the bank has given a stimulus to the formation of co-operative societies, it still denies that this is a healthy propagation. Nevertheless, some even of the Schulze-Delitzsch societies resort to this state bank for money. It is under government administration and lends immense sums each year. In France the Bank of France has been compelled to lend £1,600,000 free of interest, and to give about £120,000 per annum out of its profits to assist agriculture; this money is being lent free to "regional" banks, and by them at about 3% to local societies. State help has also been given to the co-operative bank of the French workmen's productive societies. In Austria and in many other countries a great deal of similar help has been given.

Denmark and agricultural co-operation.

Closely connected with certain developments of credit, and deserving to rank as the third, if not the second, great subdivision of co-operation, is agricultural co-operation, a movement in the main of the last twenty years, but amounting now to a great force, almost everywhere except in Great Britain, and in some countries almost to a revolution. It is important to say agricultural co-operation and not co-operative agriculture, for in spite of some customary mutual help in farm work, in spite of several attempts, and some small successes, in co-operative farming, the actual cultivation is almost everywhere individualistic. The farmer or peasant cultivates alone, or with his family, or servants; when he co-operates with his fellows, it is to manufacture, or to market, the products of his farm, or more often to obtain the things he needs for his farming, to raise stock, to own expensive machinery in common, or insure against risks. By these means the small farmer, without sacrificing his own peculiar advantages, obtains most of the advantages of the big farmer, to the immense improvement of his position.

At almost every point agricultural and credit co-operation touch; yet the most perfect example of agricultural co-operation is not concerned with credit co-operation in any form. The farmers of Denmark practise co-operation in almost every variety, except for raising capital. The commercial banks have provided money to start dairies and other co-operative societies; so that, it would appear, the need of credit co-operation has not been felt.

The Danish farmer is almost always a freeholder: it is little more than a century since his ancestors were serfs. It is little more than a generation since a few men, turning to account the strong national feeling aroused by the defeat of 1864, started a great educational movement which has left its mark on all strata of Danish society. After the People's High School, technical schools arose in various places; and to these, and to the excellent continuation schools in the country districts, the Danes are beholden for the regeneration of their agriculture. From 1867 co-operative distributive societies on the Rochdale plan had been spreading in Denmark; but it was not till 1882 that co-operation in agriculture began, and the first co-operative dairy was formed; ten years later there were about a thousand such, a number which has slightly increased since. These dairies are productive societies in which the cow-owners are the shareholders, and all shareholders have equal rights and equal voting power, whether they own one cow or one hundred. Almost every village has its co-operative dairy, fitted to deal with the milk of from 400 to 1400, or even 2000 cows. They far exceed all the other dairies of Denmark. More than four-fifths of all the milk of Denmark is used in them, and they produce butter worth more than nine millions sterling. The profits are divided among those who supply the cream, in proportion to the value of their supplies--a method of dividing profits characteristic of agricultural co-operation. The village dairies are united in federations to export their produce.

Side by side with the dairies are other co-operative societies, quite independent but largely composed of the same members, for buying collectively fodder, manures and other agricultural or household requisites, for collecting and exporting eggs, slaughtering hogs and curing bacon, improving the breed of stock, for bee-keeping, fruit-growing and so forth. By means of these societies the country has been greatly enriched. The farmer not uncommonly belongs to ten co-operative societies, besides probably a farmers' club. The work of starting and administrating the societies is seldom paid, and many farmers give much time to it gratuitously. They are in the main organized on the same principles as the dairies, but with variations; the largest egg export society, for instance, has over 30,000 members. It is not a federation of village societies, but a centralized body with many branches.

The growth of the bacon-curing societies has been remarkable. The first of them was not founded until 1887, but they spread rapidly, and in seven years there were twenty, killing more than half the country's then produce of hogs. The movement has greatly increased since then, and multiplied its output about fourfold. Co-operation in collecting, grading and exporting eggs only began in 1895, and in eight years 65,000 members had joined the various egg societies, and the value of eggs exported had reached £436,000. Taken as a whole, the effect of agricultural co-operation in Denmark has amounted to little less than a revolution. It has brought the results of science within the peasant's reach, and he has been quick to avail himself of them: it has transformed a great part of farm work into a factory industry, increased the yield of the soil, improved the material position of the peasants, and drawn rich and poor together. Denmark, once so poor, is now, except England, probably the richest country in Europe in proportion to its population. Besides Denmark, Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Finland, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, Ireland and many other countries have important developments of agricultural co-operation. In Germany, where it is closely connected with credit co-operation, it seems to date from 1866 only, yet in forty years agricultural co-operative societies have come to number six thousand, without counting the agricultural banks, which exceed twice that number. There are dairies, societies to purchase farm requisites, societies of grape-growers, hop-growers and beetroot-growers, distilleries, labour societies, insurance societies, societies to own warehouses and granaries and to sell produce, to purchase land and resell it in small holdings, and even several societies which purchase land to cultivate it in common. The close connexion between credit-societies and other agricultural co-operation is exemplified in the Central Union of orthodox Raiffeisen credit societies at Neuwied. Through a central bank and a trading department allied to it, it has negotiated the joint purchase of coal, feeding-stuffs, manures, machinery and so forth to large amounts, as well as the difficult business of the combined sale of agricultural produce. Moreover, several local centres connected with this union have granaries and warehouses for the storage of agricultural produce, and negotiate joint sales, while within the union facilities have been found for selling the products of one district to members in another.

Irish agriculture.

In Ireland stores have not hitherto flourished, though a few exist. Irish co-operation is agricultural, and dates from the foundation of one co-operative dairy in 1889. Thence has grown a movement already of great importance, still advancing and comprising from eighty to ninety thousand members, belonging to some hundreds of societies--dairies, agricultural supply societies, banks and so forth, formed on the Danish model. To form a dairy the small working farmers of a district register a society and take up shares of £1 each, in proportion to the number of their cows. Each brings his milk to be separated, is paid for the butter-making material it contains, and receives back skim milk. If any profit is divided, it belongs nine-tenths to the suppliers of milk in proportion to the value of their supplies, and one-tenth to the dairy employees as dividend on wages in pursuance of the co-partnership principle. These dairies produce butter worth more than £1,000,000. Their rapid spread is due to their great influence in improving the quality of butter, and hence increasing the farmer's gains. The co-operative banks are of the Raiffeisen type, though a few have limited liability. They aim at providing the peasants with necessary capital ("the lucky money" they have christened it) and expelling the usurer. They are increasing rapidly. Among other objects of Irish co-operation are selling eggs, poultry, barley and pigs, joint-grazing, potato-spraying, scutching flax, bacon curing, home industries, and of course supplying farm requisites. The movement promises much further growth in magnitude and variety. The dairy societies have federated into an agency for reaching the English market, and the supply societies into an Irish Wholesale for purchasing to the best advantage. Besides the direct profits and economies of these societies, they have greatly benefited Ireland by teaching men of all classes, parties and religions to act together for peaceful progress; they have led to a wide diffusion of better agricultural knowledge, and to the establishment by government of the Agricultural Department. (See IRELAND.)

Co-operative agriculture in France and other countries.

In France, which Englishmen are apt to speak of as preeminently the country of co-operative production, the agricultural is the most important branch of co-operation; and the source and mainstay of agricultural co-operation are the _Syndicats Agricoles_. These are not technically co-operative societies; they are rather trade unions, not indeed of wage-earners only, or mainly, but of cultivators. They cannot legally trade, being constituted for the study and protection of the general interests of the members, the spread of information, and so forth. Their principal object however, seems in many cases to be to combine their members for the purchase of all farm requisites and especially of chemical manures. This they do by collecting, sorting and passing on orders. They cannot usually manage selling in common without the intervention of a society specially registered for that object. Beginning only in 1893, their number long ago ran into thousands and their membership into hundreds of thousands, drawn from all classes of cultivators and landowners, great and little. Among much other good work they have led to the formation of a large number of strictly co-operative societies for all the purposes of agriculture, except cultivation in common. Thus there are two thousand agricultural banks, besides butter factories, distilleries, associations for threshing, for sale of fruit and vegetables, for wine-making, oil-pressing, and so on, amounting altogether to some hundreds. There are also societies, mostly of ancient date, engaged in making Gruyère cheese: a few years ago these numbered 2000, but they are dwindling. Lastly, there are some eight thousand mutual insurance societies organized as agricultural syndicates.

Everywhere the main features of this agricultural movement are similar to those we have seen in Denmark and Ireland; it is supplementary to individual cultivation; hardly ever does it appear as associations for cultivating in common, and, speaking with certain important exceptions, it has no very ideal aims, but seeks chiefly to give the farmer a better profit. In England there are a number of farms worked by stores, and several large associations for the supply of farm requisites; but the typical agricultural co-operation, based on small village societies and federations of such societies, has only recently been made known and begun to take root.

France and co-operative production.

It is notable that while the _Syndicats agricoles_ are almost exactly what Fourier, the Robert Owen of France, foresaw as the next stage of social development, the other great branch of French co-operation, the workshop movement of the _Associations_ _ouvrières de production_, is directly due to his teaching, which led in 1848 to the starting of a large number of co-operative workshops. The suppression of association after the advent of Napoleon III. killed most of them, but with the return of liberty they revived and they have steadily increased ever since. They vary somewhat among themselves, but are in the main combinations of workmen to carry on their industries with their own capital or that of their trade unions. Their chief difference from English co-partnership societies is that they very rarely admit to membership any persons not belonging to the trade. They are engaged in a great variety of industries, selling comparatively little to co-operative distributive societies, as English co-partnership societies do, but taking contracts from government departments and the municipalities, and supplying the general public. Complete statistics of their total trade are not available, but it exceeds £2,000,000, and the separate societies seem to vary, like the majority of English co-partnership societies, from about £40,000 a year downwards, a few being larger but the great majority small. From about 140 societies in 1896 they have grown to between two and three times that number, and the increase continues with rapidity. More than two hundred of them are federated in the _Chambre consultative des associations ouvières de production_, which looks after certain business interests of the societies, and also assists the formation of new ones by propaganda and advice. In Paris alone about a third of these societies are found.

It has been objected that their growth is artificial inasmuch as the government gives them certain advantages, such as preference over the private contractor at an equal price, exemption from the deposit of security, and special concessions as to payments on account. It also grants a subvention (recently about £7000 per annum), which was formerly all given to the societies in grants, but is now largely lent to them at not more than 2% interest through their own special bank. This bank was founded in 1893 to help the societies with loans and discounts, and was soon after endowed by a disciple of Fourier with £20,000. The societies have also benefited by other private beneficence and public help. As to the Government aid, it must be remembered that in France the state helps all forms of industry in ways unknown to us, and the French co-operative producers always declare that what is done for them is a trifle compared to what is done for other manufacturers. Moreover, they get many large contracts in open and unaided competition. In these societies the _auxiliaires_, or workers who are not members, are often numerous; but no society is now admitted to their federation which does not share profits with the _auxiliaires_ and facilitate their admission to membership.

Consumers' co-operation, credit co-operation, agricultural co-operation, and workshop co-operation, as exemplified in Great Britain, Germany, Denmark and France, are found in most advanced countries, some in one and some in another, in forms roughly similar to those above described. Of co-operation for production it might have been said, a few years ago, that outside Great Britain it everywhere meant associations of producers. Except bakeries, there was but little consumers' production; that, however, seems now to be spreading in foreign countries also. The most important developments of co-operation not yet described are the socialist co-operation of Belgium, the co-operative building societies of the United States, the labour societies of Italy and Russia, the co-operation of German craftsmen to provide themselves with raw material, and the letting out of railway construction to temporary co-operative groups of workmen by the New Zealand and Victorian governments.

In Belgium co-operation is mostly socialist in the towns and Catholic in the country. In all the principal industrial centres are very important co-operative bakeries and distributive societies, owned by co-operative groups, numbering thousands of workmen of every calling. These _Maisons du peuple_ are admitted to be well managed, even by those who dislike their politics. The socialist party look upon them chiefly as a means of organizing and educating the working classes for political and economic emancipation, and of providing funds for political warfare. Like the English stores, and allied societies, they are based on the consumer, but unlike them they pay no interest on share capital, though they do on deposits. A much larger part of the profit than in England is devoted to propaganda and common purposes, though a part is also paid to the consumers individually in the form of checks exchangeable for bread or other goods. The workers employed also receive a share of profit as a dividend on their wages, and elect their representatives on the committee of management. By means of these societies the party has a press, buildings, and the funds to fight elections and support members in parliament. In France, where the store movement has been of an individualistic, and often middle class, tendency, the socialists have lately imitated the example of Belgium, and seem to be winning more success than the older French stores.

In the United States there has long been much important agricultural co-operation, and there have been many much-advertised attempts to establish Rochdale co-operation, but there have so often been failures and even dishonesties that co-operation has had a bad odour in the country, and the developments come and go with such rapidity that it is difficult to speak with confidence of its stability. The branch of co-operation which has been a great success in the United States consists of the great co-operative building societies, but building societies are not considered part of the co-operative movement in Great Britain.

Co-operation of all kinds is greatly developed in Italy, but one form is specially notable. The _Società di lavoro_ are co-operative labour gangs of great importance. They are counted by hundreds, and are found among navvies, builders, masons, carriers, stevedores, agricultural labourers and other workmen, and have carried out very great works in Italy and in foreign countries. They have, for instance, drained lands in the Campagna and made a railway in Greece. They differ from productive societies markedly in that they have comparatively little to do with capital or material, but contract mainly for labour.

The Slavonic races seem to have a special aptitude for grouping together co-operatively: it is said that men meeting casually on a journey will do so for the brief time they are together. In countries like Servia we see this ancient, and more or less customary, loose and unstable co-operation meeting the modern contractual, permanent co-operation of banks and other registered societies. So in Russia, where so large a part in the national organization is played by the _Artel_ (see RUSSIA), which may be a transitory co-operative group of workmen undertaking a particular piece of work, e.g. to build a house, or a permanent association like that of the bank porters combined together to guarantee one another's honesty.

State help.

While English and some other forms of co-operation have always repudiated state help, and probably rightly, so far as their own work is concerned, the state in almost all countries, and conspicuously in England, has in fact helped to the extent of providing special legislation, and waiving fees, so as to encourage the formation of co-operative societies. A second form of state help is very noticeable in the modern development of agriculture, as in Denmark, Canada, New Zealand, Ireland and very many countries, where the state has played a great part in performing or assisting functions which neither voluntary association nor individual enterprise could well perform alone; in providing technical education, expert advisers, exhibitions and prizes; in distributing information in all forms; in finding out markets, controlling railway rates, subsidizing steamboats, and even grading, branding, warehousing and freezing produce, and maintaining trade agents abroad. These things have not been done for co-operative societies alone, but for agriculture in general; but co-operation has chiefly benefited, and much has been done expressly to encourage the formation of associations of cultivators, and provincial and national federations of such associations; and government departments of agriculture are found acting through such bodies, and with their advice and assistance. The third and most questionable form of state help is by direct subventions, and we have seen how much has been done in this way for credit co-operation and particularly agricultural credit. Harm has undoubtedly been done in certain cases by forcing co-operative societies, whether from political motives or merely mistaken policy. Yet even as to money subventions, good authorities, while admitting the great dangers, remain convinced that the advantages overbalance them, self-help being evoked, and helped over initial difficulties which would otherwise be insuperable. Experience in fact shows that governments can do a very great deal, at least for agricultural co-operation, but only on condition that they encourage, and do not undermine, self-help and private initiative. Thus while voluntary association is sometimes advocated as a step towards, and sometimes on the other hand as a substitute for, and bulwark against, state socialism, we find in practice these two forces working each in its own sphere, and in ways complementary one to the other, while underlying and essential to both is the force of individual action and self-help.

Conclusion.

We have now surveyed co-operation in its chief forms and in some of the countries where it is chiefly found. Some years ago it was roughly estimated that the members of one or other of its branches numbered six millions, representing with their families a population of 25,000,000 people. This must be much within the truth to-day. In no other country so much as in Great Britain do we find the tendency for all branches of co-operation to federate in one union and to help one another by mutual trade. Yet everywhere the instinct of co-operative societies is to federate with others--at least with others of their own particular shade; so that Wholesales and other federations are found more and more in many countries. Since 1895 the co-operators and co-operative societies of many far-distant lands--almost of the whole world--have been drawn together by the International Co-operative Alliance, a body which, without attempting to interfere in their differences, collects information from all, and distributes it to all, keeps them all in touch, and every few years calls their delegates together in congress, to discuss their problems, and to remember their common ideals.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--International Co-operative Alliance, _International Co-operative Bibliography_ (London, 1906); G. J. Holyoake, _History of Co-operation_ (London, 1875-1879, new ed., 1906), _History of the Rochdale Pioneers_ (London, 1893, new ed., 1900), _Self-Help a Hundred Years Ago_ (London, 3rd ed., 1891), _Co-operative Movement of To-day_ (London, 1891, new ed., 1896); Lloyd Jones, _Life and Times and Labours of Robert Owen_ (London, 1890, new ed., 1895); F. Podmore, _Robert Owen_ (London, 1906); E. T. Craig, _History of Ralahine_ (London, 1882, new ed., 1893); Thomas Hughes and E. V. Neale, _A Manual for Co-operators_ (Manchester, 1881, 1888); Catherine Webb (editor), _Industrial Co-operation_ (Manchester, 1904); Beatrice Potter (Mrs Sidney Webb), _Co-operative Movement in Great Britain_ (London, 1891, 1893, 1904); A. H. D. Acland and B. Jones, _Working Men Co-operators_ (1898); Benjamin Jones, _Co-operative Production_ (London, 1894); C. R. Fay, _Co-operation at Home and Abroad_ (London, 1908); H. D. Lloyd, _Labour Co-partnership_ (London and New York, 1898); D. F. Schloss, _Methods of Industrial Remuneration_ (London, 2nd ed., 1894); N. P. Gilman, _Profit Sharing_ (London, 1892); C. Robert, _Guide pratique de la participation_ (Paris, 1892); Aneurin Williams, _Twenty-eight Years of Co-partnership at Guise_ (Letchworth, 1908), _Relations of Co-operative Movement to National and International Commerce_ (Manchester, 1896); Dallet-Fabre-Prudhommeaux, _Le Familistère illustré_ (Paris, 1901); Bernadot, _Le Familistère de Guise_ (Guise, 1892); E. O. Greening, _The Co-operative Traveller Abroad_ (London, 1888); H. W. Wolff, _People's Banks_ (London, 1893, 1896), _Co-operative Banking, its Principles and Practice, with a chapter on Co-operative Mortgage Credit_ (London, 1907); de Rocquigny, _La Co-opération de production dans l'agriculture_ (Paris, 1896); Merlin, _Les Associations ouvrières et patronales_, &c. (Paris, 1900); Mabilleau and others, _La Prévoyance sociale en Italie_ (Paris, 1898); Fr. Müller, _Wesen, Grundsätze und Nutzen der Consumvereine_ (Basel, 1900). See also the annual Reports of the Government Labour Departments, and the _Monthly Bulletin_ of the Internat. Co-op. Alliance. (A. Wi.*)

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Holyoake, _History of Co-operation_ (1906 edition), i. 34.

COOPERSTOWN, a village and the county-seat of Otsego county, New York, U.S.A., where the Susquehanna river emerges from Otsego Lake; about 92 m. (by rail) W. of Albany. Pop. (1890) 2657; (1900) 2368; (1905) 2446; (1910) 2484. It is served by the Cooperstown & Charlotte Valley railway (owned and controlled by the Delaware & Hudson), and is on the line of the Oneonta & Mohawk Valley electric railway. The village lies in the midst of a hop-growing and dairying region, and has cheese factories and creameries. It has a public library, Thanksgiving hospital, a Y.M.C.A. hall, and the Diocesan orphanage (Protestant Episcopal). Cooperstown is a summer resort, Otsego Lake (9 m. long and with an average width of about 1 m.), the "Glimmerglass" of Cooper's novels, being one of the most picturesque of the New York lakes. Cooperstown occupies the site of an old Indian town. In 1785 the site became the property of Judge William Cooper, who in the following year founded there a village which took his name and was incorporated in 1807. Judge Cooper himself settled here with his family in 1790. His son, James Fenimore Cooper, who lived here for many years and is buried in the Episcopal cemetery here, made the region famous in his novels.

See J. Fenimore Cooper, _The Chronicles of Cooperstown_ (Cooperstown, 1838).

COOPER UNION, a unique educational and charitable institution "for the advancement of science and art" in New York city. It is housed in a brownstone building in Astor Place, between 3rd and 4th Avenues immediately N. of the Bowery, and was founded in 1857-1859 by Peter Cooper, and chartered in 1859. In a letter to the trustees accompanying the trust-deed to the property, Cooper said that he wished the endowment to be "for ever devoted to the advancement of science and art, in their application to the varied and useful purposes of life"; provided for a reading-room, a school of art for women, and an office in the Union, "where persons may apply ... for the services of young men and women of known character and qualifications to fill the various situations"; expressed the desire that students have monthly meetings held in due form, "as I believe it to be a very important part of the education of an American citizen to know how to preside with propriety over a deliberative assembly"; urged lectures and debates exclusive of theological and party questions; and required that no religious test should ever be made for admission to the Union. Cooper's most efficient assistant in the Union was Abram S. Hewitt. In 1900 Andrew Carnegie put the finances of the Union on a sure footing by gifts aggregating $600,000. For the year 1907 its revenue was $161,228 (including extraordinary receipts of $25,565, from bequests, &c.), its expenditures $161,390; at the same time its assets were $3,870,520, of which $1,070,877 was general endowment, building and equipment, and $2,797,728 was special endowments ($205,000 being various endowments by Peter Cooper; $340,000, the William Cooper Foundation; $600,000, the Cooper-Hewitt Foundation; $391,656, the John Halstead Bequest; $217,820, the Hewitt Memorial Endowment). The work has been very successful, the instruction is excellent, and the interest of the pupils is eager. All courses are free. The reading-room and library contain full files of current journals and magazines; the library has the rare complete old and new series of patent office reports, and in 1907 had 45,760 volumes; in the same year there were 578,582 readers. There is an excellent museum for the arts of decoration. Apart from valuable lecture courses, the principal departments of the Union, with their attendance in 1907, were: a night school of science--a five-year course in general science (667) and in chemistry (154), a three-year course in electricity (114), and a night school of art (1333); a day school of technical science--four years in civil, mechanical or electrical engineering--(237); a woman's art school (282); a school of stenography and typewriting for women (55); a school of telegraphy for women (31); a class in elocution (96); and classes in oratory and debate (146). During the year 2505 was the highest number in attendance at any time, and then 3000 were on the waiting list.

In the great hall of the Union free lectures for the people are given throughout the winter; one course, the Hewitt lectures, in co-operation with Columbia University, "of a very high grade, corresponding more nearly to those given by the Lowell Institute in Boston"; six (in 1907) courses in co-operation with the Board of Education of New York city, which, upon Mayor Hewitt's suggestion, made an appropriation for this work in 1887-1888, and extended such lecture courses to different parts of the city, all under the direction (after 1890) of Henry M. Leipziger (b. 1854), and several courses dealing especially with social and political subjects, and including, besides lectures and recitals, public meetings for the discussion of current problems.

CO-OPTATION (from Lat. _co-optare_; less correctly "co-option"), the election to vacancies on a legislative, administrative or other body by the votes of the existing members of the body, instead of by an outside constituency. Such bodies may be purely co-optative, as the Royal Academy, or may be elective with power to add to the numbers by co-optation, as municipal corporations in England.

COORG (an anglicized corruption of _Kodagu_, said to be derived from the Kanarese _Kudu_, "steep," "hilly"), a province of India, administered by a commissioner, subordinate to the governor-general through the resident of Mysore, who is officially also chief commissioner of Coorg. It lies in the south of the peninsula, on the plateau of the Western Ghats, sloping inland towards Mysore. It is an attractive field of coffee cultivation, though the greater part is still under forest, but the prosperity of the industry has declined since 1891. The administrative headquarters are at Mercara (pop. 6732). Coorg is the smallest province in India, its area being only 1582 sq. m. Of this amount about 1000 sq. m. consist of ghat, reserved and other forests. Coorg was constituted a province not on account of its size, but on account of its isolation. It lies at the top of the Western Ghats, and is cut off by them from easy communication with the British districts of South Kanara and Malabar, which form its western and southern boundaries, while on its other sides it is surrounded by the native state of Mysore. It is a mountainous district, presenting throughout a series of wooded hills and deep valleys; the lowest elevations are 3000 ft. above sea-level. The loftiest peak, Tadiandamol, has an altitude of 5729 ft.; Pushpagiri, another peak, is 5626 ft. high. The principal river is the Cauvery, which rises on the eastern side of the Western Ghats, and with its tributaries drains the greater part of Coorg. Besides these there are several large streams that take their rise in Coorg. In the rainy season, which lasts during the continuance of the southwest monsoon, or from June to the end of September, the rivers flow with violence and great rapidity. In July and August the rainfall is excessive, and the month of November is often showery. The yearly rainfall may exceed 160 in.; in the dense jungle tract it reaches from 120 to 150; in the bamboo district in the west from 60 to 100 in. The climate, though humid, is on the whole healthy; it is believed to have been rendered hotter and drier by the clearing of forest land. Coorg has an average temperature of about 60° F., the extremes being 52° and 82°. The hottest season is in April and May. In the direction of Mysore the whole country is thickly wooded; but to the westward the forests are more open. The flora of the jungle includes _Michelia_ (Chumpak), _Mesua_ (Ironwood), _Diospyros_ (Ebony and other species), _Cedrela toona_ (White cedar), _Chickrassia tubularis_ (Red cedar), _Calophyllum angustifolium_ (Poon spar), _Canarium strictum_ (Black Dammar tree), _Artocarpus_, _Dipterocarpus_, _Garcinia_, _Euonymus_, _Cinnamomum iners_, _Myristica_, _Vaccinium_, _Myrtaceae_, _Melastomaceae_, _Rubus_ (three species), and a rose. In the undergrowth are found cardamom, areca, plantain, canes, wild pepper, tree and other ferns, and arums. In the forest of the less thickly-wooded bamboo country in the west of Coorg the trees most common are the _Dalbergia latifolia_ (Black wood), _Pterocarpus marsupium_ (Kino tree), _Terminalia coriacea_ (Mutti), _Lagerströmia parviflora_ (Benteak), _Conocarpus lalifolius_ (Dindul), _Bassia latifolia_, _Butea frondosa_, _Nauclea parviflora_, and several acacias, with which, in the eastern part of the district, teak and sandalwood occur. Among the fauna may be mentioned the elephant, tiger, tiger-cat, cheetah or hunting leopard, wild dog, elk, bison, wild boar, several species of deer, hares, monkeys, the buceros and various other birds, the cobra di capello, and a few alligators. The most interesting antiquities of Coorg are the earth redoubts or war-trenches (_kadangas_), which are from 15 to 25 ft. high, and provided with a ditch 10 ft. deep by 8 or 10 ft. wide. Their linear extent is reckoned at between 500 and 600 m. They are mentioned in inscriptions of the 9th and 10th centuries. The exports of Coorg are mainly rice, coffee and cardamoms; and the only important manufacture is a kind of coarse blanket. Fruits of many descriptions, especially oranges, are produced in abundance, and are of excellent quality.

In 1901 the population was 180,607, showing an increase of 4.4% in the decade. Of the various tribes inhabiting Coorg, the Coorgs proper, or Kodagas, and the Yeravas, or Eravas, both special to the country, are the most numerous. The Kodagas (36,091) are a light-coloured race of unknown origin. They constitute a highland clan, free from the trammels of caste, and they have the manly bearing and independent spirit natural in men who have been from time immemorial the lords of the soil. Their religion consists of ancestor- and demon-worship, with a certain admixture of Brahman cults. The men are by tradition warriors and hunters, and while they will plough the fields and reap the rice, they leave all menial work to the women and servants. They speak Kodagu, a dialect of Hala Kannada or old Kanarese, midway between that and Malay[=a]lam. It has been asserted that the institution of polyandry was prevalent among them, according to which the brothers of a family had their wives in common. But if this institution ever existed it no longer does so. The Yeravas (14,586) are a race of an altogether inferior type, dark-skinned and thick-lipped, resembling the Australian aborigines who possibly, according to one theory, may have sprung from the same Dravidian stock (see AUSTRALIA: ABORIGINES). Though now nominally free, they were, before the establishment of British rule, the hereditary praedial slaves of the Kodagas. Some of them live a primitive life in the jungle, but the majority earn a livelihood as coolies. They are demon-worshippers, their favourite deity being Karingali (black Kali). Their language, a dialect of Malay[=a]lam, is peculiar to them. Among the other tribes or castes special to Coorg are the Heggades (1503 in 1901), cultivators from Malabar; the Ayiri (898), who constitute the artisan caste; the Medas (584), who are basket-and mat-makers, and act as drummers at feasts; the Binepatta (98), originally wandering musicians from Malabar, now agriculturists; the Kavadi (49), cultivators from Yeden[=a]lkn[=a]d; all these speak the Coorg language, wear the Coorg dress, and conform, more or less, to Coorg customs. Other tribes are not special to Coorg. Of these the Holeyas (27,000) are the most numerous. They are divided into four sections: Badagas from Mysore, Kembattis and M[=a]ringis from Malabar, Kukkas from S. Kanara. They were formerly the slaves of the Kodagas and now act as their menials. The Lingayats (8700) are rather a religious sect than a tribe. Of the Tulu (farmer) class the Gaudas (11,900), who live principally along the western boundary, are the most important; they speak Tulu and wear the Coorg dress. Other castes and tribes are the Tiyas (1500) and Nayars (1400), immigrants from Malay[=a]lam; the Vellala (1300), who are Tamils; the Mahrattas (2400) and Brahmans (1100). Of the Mussulmans the most numerous are the Moplahs (6700) and the Shaikhs (4400), both chiefly traders. Of native Christians there are upwards of 3000. The official language of Coorg, which is that spoken by 45% of the population, is Kanarese (Kannada), the Coorg language (Kodagu) coming next. The Coorg dress is very picturesque, its characteristics being a long coat (Kupasa), of dark-coloured cloth, reaching below the knees, folded across and confined at the waist by a red or blue girdle. The sleeves are cut off below the elbow, showing the arms of a white shirt. The head-dress is a red kerchief, or a peculiar large, flat turban, covering the back of the neck. The Coorg also carries a short knife, with an ivory or silver hilt, fastened with silver chains and stuck into the girdle. A large, broad-bladed waist knife, akin to the _kukri_ of the Gurkhas, worn at the back, point upwards, was formerly a formidable weapon in hand-to-hand fighting, but is now used only for exhibitions of strength and skill on festive occasions.

The chief crops are rice and coffee. Some abandoned coffee land has been planted with tea as an experiment. The cultivation of cinchona has proved unprofitable. There is no railway. There are no colleges, but twenty-four scholarships are given to maintain Coorg students at colleges in Madras and Mysore. There are secondary schools at Mercara and Virarajendrapet.

The early accounts of Coorg are purely legendary, and it was not till the 9th and 10th centuries that its history became the subject of authentic record. At this period, according to inscriptions, the country was ruled by the Gangas of Talak[=a]d, under whom the Changalvas, kings of Changa-n[=a]d, styled later kings of Nanjarayapatna or Nanjarajapatna, held the east and part of the north of Coorg, together with the Hunsur _tal[=u]k_ in Mysore. After the overthrow, in the 11th century, of the Ganga power by the Cholas, the Changalvas became tributary to the latter. When the Cholas in their turn were driven from the Mysore country by the Hoysalas, in the 12th century, the Changalvas held out for independence; but after a severe struggle they were subdued and became vassals of the Hoysala kings. In the 14th century, after the fall of the Hoysala rule, they passed under the supremacy of the Vijayanagar empire. During this period, at the beginning of the 16th century, Nanja Raja founded the new Changalva capital Nanjarajapatna. In 1589 Piriya Raja or Rudragana rebuilt Singapatna and renamed it Piriyapatna (Periapatam). The power of the Vijayanagar empire had, however, been broken in 1565 by the Mahommedans; in 1610 the Vijayanagar viceroy of Seringapatam was ousted by the raja of Mysore, who in 1644 captured Piriyapatna. Vira Raja, the last of the Changalva kings, fell in the defence of his capital, after putting to death his wives and children.

Coorg, however, was not absorbed in Mysore, which was hard pressed by other enemies, and a prince of the Ikkeri or Bednur family (perhaps related to the Changalvas) succeeded in bringing the whole country under his sway, his descendants continuing to be rajas of Coorg till 1834. The capital was removed in 1681 by Muddu Raja to Madikeri or Mercara. In 1770 a disputed succession led to the intervention of Hyder Ali of Mysore in favour of Linga Raja, who had fled to him for help, and whom he placed on the throne on his consenting to cede certain territories and to pay tribute. On Linga Raja's death in 1780 Hyder Ali interned his sons, who were minors, in a fort in Mysore, and, under pretence of acting as their guardian, installed a Brahman governor at Mercara with a Mussulman garrison. In 1782, however, the Coorgs rose in rebellion and drove out the Mahommedans. Two years later Tippoo Sultan reduced the country; but the Coorgs having again rebelled in 1785 he vowed their destruction. Having secured some 70,000 of them by treachery, he drove them to Seringapatam, where he had them circumcised by force. Coorg was partitioned among Mussulman proprietors, and held down by garrisons in four forts. In 1788, however, Vira Raja (or Vira Rajendra Wodeyar), with his wife and his brothers Linga Raja and Appaji, succeeded in escaping from his captivity, at Periapatam and, placing himself at the head of a Coorg rebellion, succeeded in driving the forces of Tippoo out of the country. The British, who were about to enter on the struggle with Tippoo, now made a treaty with Vira Raja; and during the war that followed the Coorgs proved invaluable allies. By the treaty of peace Coorg, though not adjacent to the East India Company's territories, was included in the cessions forced upon Tippoo. On the spot where he had first met the British commander, General Abercromby, the raja founded the city of Virarajendrapet.

Vira Raja, who, in consequence of his mind becoming unhinged, was guilty towards the end of his reign of hideous atrocities, died in 1809 without male heirs, leaving his favourite daughter Devamm[=a]ji as rani. His brother Linga Raja, however, after acting as regent for his niece, announced in 1811 his own assumption of the government. He died in 1820, and was succeeded by his son Vira Raja, a youth of twenty, and a monster of sensuality and cruelty. Among his victims were all the members of the families of his predecessors, including Devamm[=a]ji. At last, in 1832, evidence of treasonable designs on the raja's part led to inquiries on the spot by the British resident at Mysore, as the result of which, and of the raja's refusal to amend his ways, a British force marched into Coorg in 1834. On the 11th of April the raja was deposed by Colonel Fraser, the political agent with the force, and on the 7th of May the state was formally annexed to the East India Company's territory. In 1852 the raja, who had been deported to Vellore, obtained leave to visit England with his favourite daughter Gauramma, to whom he wished to give a European education. On the 30th of June she was baptized, Queen Victoria being one of her sponsors; she afterwards married a British officer who, after her death in 1864, mysteriously disappeared together with their child. Vira Raja himself died in 1863, and was buried in Kensal Green cemetery.

The so-called Coorg rebellion of 1837 was really a rising of the Gaudas, due to the grievance felt in having to pay taxes in money instead of in kind. A man named Virappa, who pretended to have escaped from the massacre of 1820, tried to take advantage of this to assert his claim to be raja, but the Coorgs remained loyal to the British and the attempt failed. In 1861, after the Mutiny, the loyalty of the Coorgs was rewarded by their being exempted from the Disarmament Act.

See "The Coorgs and Yeravas," by T. H. Holland in the _Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal_, vol. lxx.