The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1899-01-01
FOREIGN VIEWS ABOUT COPPER

From the london Financial News,
Dec. 8.
The English public has probably very
little idea of the enormous progress
which has been made in other coun-
tries, especially in America, in the ap-
plication of electricity to the needs of
common life. Our telephone system is
the worst and least popular in the
world. Our tramways are still unsup-
piled with the method of traction which
even secondrate cities in Germany are
using to the greatest public advantage.
Our streets are still left to a great ex-
tent to that pickering gas which only
just renders darkness visible. Our I'M
deerground railways are still for the
most part ill-ventilated sewers, where
we are liable to be stified by sulphur
and bad air. Our factories are, as yet,
but to a small extent lighted by cleo
tricity. And electricity as a motive
power has not yet become of any i'm
portance in our industrial life.
This state of things cannot possibly
continue. Somehow or another we have
to keep pace with the rest of the world,
which is certainly not standing still,
and already, in this matter of electrical
appliance, is far ahead of Great Brit
ain. This nation, which took the lead
in the development of steam power in
the factory industry, is charged with
falling behind altogether at the present
moment in dealing with the accumula-
tion of force by electrical methods,
whether such force be derived from the
stored-up resources of coal or from
those great water powers in which this
sole ies npt1 jt,1N tNrr a,
ficient, but which at present we are
wholly unable to make use of even so
we'll as little Switzerland If we are
to hold our own in the worlds compe-
tition, however, the time cannot be far
distant when the bore of the Severn
and the waterfalls of Scotland and
Wales will be put to the same purposes
as similar powers would certainly long
since have been applied to in other
countries. This means that here, as
elsewhere, everything which is neces-
sary for the extension of electrical
power will experience great and
growing demand
Now, copper bears to electricity al
most the same relation which iron does
to steam. Every such step i'll the prog
ress of electricity as that which con-
ssts in the Harvesting of the rapids of
Niagara for the service of mankind in
wolves an extension of the use of this
has already sprung up along the road
from Buffalo to Niagara, supplied with
motive power, heat and lighting from
the rapids of the Niagara or ST. Law
renee rivers, means that so much more
copper is required for this purpose
alone. II is the same with the extern
sion of electrical tramways and the de-
velopment of the use of brass and other
mixed metals in other departments of
industry. The demand for copper, in
fact. is certain not to diminish, and to
all appearances must very largely in
crease within the next few years We
are obviously entering upon an cleo
trical period, For cables alone a heavy
demand is expected to at once arise, as
soon as the political situation becomes
little clear In such conditions it is
natural that we should look at the cop
per supply with a view to forming a
judgment as to how ia the mines at
present in full work can meet the pres
ent, and more especially the future, de-
rnand. The outlook at the moment is
scarcely encouraging to those who look
for a cheap supply of this most import
ant metal. For some years past, owing