It is apparent that Mr. Cooper was not the methodical sort of a person who keeps all his incoming correspondence. A man who served for nearly forty years in Congress must have accumulated an enormous amount of manuscript records. Mr. Cooper had obviously looked over his papers and discarded the greater part of them. Those that were retained were filed in large manila envelopes, many of them with his notation, “Keep” and an occasional indication of the nature of the contents. Within the envelopes was an assortment of clippings, correspondence, notes on speeches and addresses, and printed documents and pamphlets. In one or two cases all the material in an envelope related to one subject, but the contents of most of them were miscellaneous in subject as well as in form. Someone, probably Mrs. Cooper, seems to have searched through many of the envelopes, for some of them contained items of correspondence or clippings regarding events after the death of Mr. Cooper, as late as 1938, and on one or two of them there were notations in Mrs. Cooper's handwriting.
It is not likely that the papers could have been retained in their subject arrangement in any case, but since the only advantage in so keeping them had been lost by the shifting of materials in the envelopes, they were all removed. The order now of the bulk of the collection is chronological.
It is very evident that the correspondence had been sifted and selected. The parts retained were, for the most part, those relating to happy occasions in the lives of the Coopers; those dealing with controversial matters such as Cooper's part in the First World War; those concerning outstanding events; and those that were written by people of importance such as Theodore Roosevelt, Taft, and La Follette. All of the correspondence received in the Archives has been preserved. It consists almost entirely of incoming letters and telegrams, with only a very few copies of Cooper's replies.
As chairman, 1899-1908, of the important House Committee on Insular Affairs created at the close of the Spanish-American War, Cooper had close connections with the establishment of an American-pattern civil government in the newly acquired territories. In 1905 he was a member of the delegation of thirty-two senators and representatives who accompanied Secretary of War Taft on a trip to the Philippines. The papers contain no official records of the trip, but the social end of the gay party, which included President Roosevelt's daughter Alice and a number of other unofficial visitors, is suggested in the collections of programs and invitations in the Cooper papers, and in his diary of the trip. Two long letters from Taft written in 1902 while governor of the Philippines and later ones while he was Secretary of War, a few letters from residents of those islands, and a letter from President Roosevelt in 1906 regarding Puerto Rico, describe conditions in the territories and discuss remedial measures.
The only other subject dealt with to any extent in the papers is that of the preliminaries to World War I. Throughout his career Cooper was, generally speaking, a supporter of the La Follette program, although there are indications in the papers of an absence of cordiality in their political relationships. There are no La Follette letters for the war period, but from 1915 to 1918 there is enough correspondence to give a clear view of Cooper's position on Congressional measures leading up to this country's entrance into the war, a position that placed him in the “willful group” so sharply rebuked by President Wilson. Cooper's utterances on the “Lusitania” sinking, on the submarine menace, the arming of munitions ships, the declaration of war, and conscription, attracted nationwide attention, and letters and telegrams preserved in significant quantities voice for the most part approbation of his stand, although some show vigorous condemnation. His constituents manifested their disapproval of his course by refusing to return him to Congress in 1918, but in 1920 he was reelected.
Other subjects of national interest that are touched upon in these papers are the selection of Speaker Henderson for the House of Representatives and the rebellion against Speaker Cannon and the Republican conventions of 1908 and 1924, at both of which Cooper placed the minority platforms before the convention.
There is very little material on election campaigns in Wisconsin. There is a campaign memorandum book for 1900; comments on Cooper's Senatorial aspirations in 1907 and 1908; occasional assurances of support from his district; few letters from party leaders in the state; and some requests to speak for the party in other states. Racine interests are touched upon in letters regarding securing a Carnegie grant for its Public Library in 1901, and appropriations for its harbor in 1910.
Among the parts of the papers dealing with the personal lives of the Coopers are a diary with entries for 1811-1869 kept by Cooper's grandfather, Joel Cooper, who lived and died in Rochester, Vermont; a few early school essays and letters of Henry A. Cooper; a box of invitations to public functions in Washington, Racine, and elsewhere; and a number of social letters and programs kept by Mrs. Cooper in the late twenties.
When received, the greater part of the unpublished material in the Cooper papers consisted of Cooper's notes for speeches, written with pencil on the cheapest kind of pulp pencil tablet paper. Most of these were rolled and tied; others were folded and filed in envelopes with printed records of the speeches, together with comments in newspapers and correspondence. Most of these notes were discarded because the paper was already crumbling, and the pencil writing was badly blurred. The fact, too, that the completed speeches appeared in print in the Congressional Record or elsewhere made it superfluous to keep the original notes.
The articles and addresses that are preserved are (1) a few early ones written in his college days, (2) a few that are autobiographical in nature or that were prepared for occasions at Racine, (3) one or two that were delivered on notable occasions such as the “Out of War” address, and (4) some printed articles of his own or his contemporaries on which he made notations that reveal his attitude on the subject under discussion. There also are some duplicate campaign documents.
