Men of progress; biographical sketches and portraits of leaders in business and professional life in the state of Rhode Island and Providence plantations . cademy at Cheetham Hill, Manchester. .\t theage of fourteen he was apprenticed to a large dry-goods firm in Manchester, where from the first hisambition to get on was manifested by diligence,punctuality — never being known to be late — andby paying very close attention to business. Whenseventeen years of age he commenced taking short MEN OF PROGRESS. 97 trips as a commercial traveller, and at nineteen hemade his first journey to New York. A
Men of progress; biographical sketches and portraits of leaders in business and professional life in the state of Rhode Island and Providence plantations . cademy at Cheetham Hill, Manchester. .\t theage of fourteen he was apprenticed to a large dry-goods firm in Manchester, where from the first hisambition to get on was manifested by diligence,punctuality — never being known to be late — andby paying very close attention to business. Whenseventeen years of age he commenced taking short MEN OF PROGRESS. 97 trips as a commercial traveller, and at nineteen hemade his first journey to New York. After severalyears of hard struggle he succeeded in working upa valuable connection with leading firms in thelargest American cities, in English full-fashionedhosiery, representing manufacturers of Nottingham,England, with whom he was associated, first astraveUing salesman, later as partner, and finallyestablishing his own firm of R. W. Cooper & continued his American trips for twenty-oneyears, crossing the ocean about one hundred times,and travelling an average of nearly twenty-five thoii-sand miles a year, without ever meeting with an. ROBERT W, COOPER. accident. About the year 1880 he began to losehis trade, the German manufacturers coming intothe market with the same class of goods, but madeby their cheap pauper labor, paying wages aboutone-third what he was paying in England, thus en-abling them to undersell him in the American mar-ket. After several years of ineffectual struggling tomeet the conditions arising from this German com-petition, he found that to save himself from ruin hemust choose one of two things — move to Germanyto secure the advantage of cheap labor, or move toAmerica and get the benefit of the protective decided upon the latter. With the aid of NewYork friends he removed his machinery and skilledwork-people to this country, arriving with them December 24, 1884, in the village of Thornton, R. I.,where a mill and cottages had been espe
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