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Favorite episode of all the Coopers and Hewitts was Peter Cooper's sturdy backing of the Atlantic cable after the first break disheartened its inventors. From that demonstration of confidence, he netted $2,000,000. When Herman Frasch developed his method of mining sulphur in Louisiana—by pumping hot water into the sulphur deposits to melt the sulphur and pumping it to the surface by compressed air—the Coopers and Hewitts were in the company. When the first experiment failed, five of the backers withdrew. Edward Hew itt's mother, Peter Cooper's daughter, knitted silently through the talk, then said, "If no one else will put up the money ... I will do it myself." She wanted to take at least half of the $600,-ooo capital. Her family, to save her, took most of it, let her invest $50,000. Soon sulphur flowed out of Louisiana at the rate of 2,000 tons a day. Profits were $30,000 a day. The $600,000 was repaid in a month. Dividends were 100% a month for years. In all, they totaled $125,000,000.
Inspired Wolf. Edward Hewitt has little use for large research laboratories for scientists, except in cases where the cost of experimentation is too great for one-man enterprise. He believes that most scientific progress depends on the lone wolf acting on his hunches and inspirations, and being backed in them. Readers noting, in the pages of Those Were the Days, the broken glass, smashed flywheels, torpedo boats that did not work, guns that blew up, flying machines that smashed before they left the ground, may decide that inventors also needed some special kind of confidence which was not courage so much as faith that nothing they built themselves would hurt them.
Peter Cooper tried to invent an explosive motor, made tha cylinder walls of glass so he could watch it work, and almost lost an eye. His paddle-wheel steamer sank at the dock. His locomotive was beaten in a race by a horse.
Edward Hewitt lost his own fortune in 1929. "I have had a most wonderfully interesting life," says he. "While I have taken out many patents, none of them has proved of fundamental importance, although some have received quite extended use. . . . My writings on the art of salmon fishing and trout fishing may well prove to be my most lasting contributions to human welfare."