Peter Cooper also left a portion of his wealth for "the diffusion of knowledge among men," but a different sort of knowledge--the knowledge that would help a man or woman to earn a living. His own career had shown him how necessary such knowledge is. His father was a hatter by trade, and the boy's earliest recollection was of his being employed to pull hair out of rabbit-skins, his head just reaching above the table. But the hat business was unprofitable, and the elder Cooper tried a number of businesses, brewing, brick-making, what not, the boy being required to take part in each of them, so that he had no time for schooling, and had to pick up such odds and ends of knowledge as he could. Finally, in 1808, at the age of seventeen, he was apprenticed to a carriage-maker, and remained with him until he was of age. After that, the young man himself tried various occupations without great success, until the establishment of a glue factory began to bring him large returns. By the beginning of 1828, he was able to purchase three thousand acres of land within the city of Baltimore and to establish the Canton iron-works, which was the first of his great enterprises tending toward the development of the iron industry in the United States. Other plants were built or purchased, rolling mills and blast furnaces established, and a great impetus given to this branch of manufacture. He practically financed the Atlantic Cable Company, in the face of ridicule, and made the cable possible, and he saved the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad from bankruptcy by designing and building a locomotive--the first ever built in this country--especially adapted to the uneven country over which the track was laid.