an inexhaustible imagination, some faculty for simple combi nation of incident, a homely tragic force which is very genu ine and effective, and up to a certain point a fine narrative power. His literary training was inadequate ; his vocabu lary 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 natter 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 execu
tion, 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 naive vanity and strDng reverent piety, his valiant wariness, his discriminat ing 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 psculiarities of a portrait.
See Griswold, Prose Writers of America, Philadelphia, 1847; Eclectic Magazine, 1851 ; J. R. Lowell, Fable for Critics; and American Literature, vol. i. p. 725.
COOPERAGE, 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, being mentioned by Pliny, who ascribes its invention to the inhabitants of the Alpine valleys. The cask or barrel form is at once the strongest, tightest, and most convenient form into which wood can be fashioned as a vessel for storing either liquid or solid substances, and the manufacture has attained great pre cision and perfection. 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 em braces 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, experience, and skill; as, in addition to perfect tightness when filled with liquid, the vessels must bear the strain of transportation to great distances, and in many cases they have to resist consider able internal pressure when they contain fermenting liquors. Cooperage is still most commonly pursued as a handicraft with the tools and appliances which have been employed from the earliest times ; but many expedients of the greatest ingenuity and efficiency have been introduced or performing the numerous operations by mechanical means. Tight casks are generally made of well-seasoned oak of the best quality, free from twists and warping. Whether accomplished by hand or machinery the follow ing are the essential operations. 1st, The preparation of the staves is the most important and difficult task of the cooper, inasmuch as a cask being a double conoid, having its greatest diameter (technically the bulge or belly) in its centre, each stave must be accurately curved to form a segment of the whole. The taper from the centre to the extremities must be curved ; in cross section it must be double concave, and the joints, or edges, must be so bevelled that when bent into position they shall form a true piano through the central axis of the vessel. 2d, Trussing con sists of setting the separate staves, properly bevelled and jointed, upright in a frame in order to receive trussing hoops at both ends, which serve to keep them together for the permanent hooping. The lower ends of the staves are set together in a frame and a hoop passed round them. A rope is then carried rouni the upper part and gradually tightened till the joints are brought quite close, when a hoop is dropped over and the rope removed. 3d, Chiming and crozing consists in finishing the two ends for receiving the heads. The chime is the bevel formed on the extremity of the staves, and the croze consists of the groove into which the ends or heads fit. 4th, Hooping, and 5th, Prepar ing heads or ends, are the other operations to be noticed. For wet casks hoops are generally made of iron, although wooden hoops also are employed. The heads, when made of two or more pieces, are jointed by means of dowel pins, and after being cut to the proper size they are chamfered or bevelled at the edges to lit into the croze grooves. Drawings and descriptions of a very elaborate and com plete series of machines made by Messrs Allen, Ransome, & Co. of Chelsea, from the designs of Mr John Richard, for performing these various operations, will be found in Engineering (vol. xxi. January-June 1876).
The quantity of tight casks required in certain industries is incalculable. On the continent of Europe they are in most extensive demand in the wine-producing districts. In Great Britain, brewers and distillers must hare enormous stocks, and both in Great Britain and in the United States the mineral oil and petroleum trade employ vast quantities. Slack barrels are almost as extensively employed in con nection with chemical industries and the fruit and fish trades. In America slack barrels are the form most generally adopted for packing almost all kinds of dry goods for storing and transport, and the flour, rosin, fruit, and other products sent to Europe are almost invariably inclosed in such vessels.
CO-OPERATION, a term in social economics, which, though of generic significance in the science of industry and trade, has a specific and technical sense, implying the association of any number of individuals or societies for mutual profit, whether in the purchase and distribution of commodities for consumption, or in the production of commodities, or in the borrowing and lending of capital among workmen.
The most powerful co-operative force in the industrial system is what economists have termed " the division of labour," but that is in reality also a union and graduation of labour towards productive ends, and has its counterpart in the multiform divisions of capital in its application to the maintenance and extension of industry.
position between the doctrines of the communists and socialists (see Communism) on the one hand, and the private property and freedom of individual labour and enterprize on the other. It takes its departure from communism at a very definite and significant point. While the latter would
extinguish the motive of individual gain and possession