Bisbee daily review., 1907-08-25
WORLD DEPENDS Oh HE RED
 METAL
Price of Copper a Source of Anxiety to Many Large Industrial Corporations - Want it Settled Firmly,

BOSTON, Aug. 24.-Regarding the romance of copper much has been writ
 ten; electrical engineers throughout
 the world have in the past two or three years discovered a great deal about
 present drop in the price of the metal
 is regarded hopefully among the men
 present drop in the price of the metal
 is regarded hopefully among the men
 who have to figure a long way ahead
 on probable cost of construction. If
 copper should get hack to 20 cents a pound and stay there every American
 city that has to pay for electric ser
 vice will have reason for rejoicing.
 Almost every body knows in a gen.
 eral way the story of aristocratic in-
 veStments in mining the useful indus
 trial metal. In Boston, long the lead ing American center of copper specu- latiOn, elderly men still babble of days when they might have bought-and 1 didn't buy Calumet & Hecla for s1
 share, to sell out a generation later
 at S900 a share. Everyone has heard how families of the New England city
 during the last half of the nineteenth century gOuged more than S100, ,OGO,- 900 in profits out of the Mexican pen | insula alone. Then there are the fam liar romantic facts regarding the great est of copper camps, Butte, Mont, orig inally designed to be a center of gold mining, but more lately it depends almost entirely upon the production of the best of electrical conductors. Most youths have read fascinating stories of the copper mines of Cornwall, pushing ambitiOusly under the sea to points where the beating of the waves can be heard through the thin crust which preserves the chambers from engulf ment. Eastern cities have seen not a | little of copper kings of Montana, Ari- zOna and Mexico who now Haunt their 1 riches in New York and Washington, 1 building ragtime palaces that make the architects laugh with gIee and the public with derision.
 Not everyone, however, appreciates | how closely the stern reality of the copper situation has in the immediate past touched ordinary Americans in
 their every day activities.
 1 For some time copper has been re- | tailiHg at about 9 cents pound. That l is a very high price. Many of us can l remember when the junk dealer of , ltIEl a UT J cents d pound TOT tue DOL
 tom of mothers leaky wash boiler.
 There have been all sorts of variations. ! due partly to supply and demand, and !! partly to the manipulations of the market since 1864, when the market 1 price was cents. It looked as if an inflated value would be put upon the metal for some time to come when the celebrated French syndicate of Q m n the entire output of the world. But the syndicate began it's work too early. The era of the present immense cleo trical development was then only start ing. The syndicate became overloaded because everyone with any new or old copper to sell rushed in to get the ben
 eft of high prices offered. Presently,
 therefore, there was a drop and the syndicate landed underneath. The pieces were too numerous to picl: up. What for some years has been troub,
 ling the engineers who have to esti-
 mate for long time ahead the cost of giving various forms of electrical ser. vice, such as lighting, traction and the
 telephone has been the uncertainty whether there will be enough copper
 10 go around. That is a serious mat . ter. The average man does not un derstand that the length of the ride that he gets on the trolley for nickel
 the price he pays per kilOwatt hour foI electric light in his house, or the . amount which the telephone company } charges him for his annual contract or [ party line or a single line is depen dent more upon the cost of copper . than of any one factor
 Suppose copper, the metal, for ex l ample, should advance in price up tC the point reached after the Civil War
 namely. SO cents. No available sub stitute has ever been found, for cop l lper is by far the best of electrical con : ductors. Any of the other metal:
 whose conductivity is high belong il
 the precious or nai-precious class ant
 are not available. An advance of 2 per cent over present prices of thu
 metal would mean that between cen ? ters of population in interurban trolle! ? lines, nickels would have to be col Iected not perhaps twice as often a {. now, but certainly much oftener; tha : SIS. telephone service would have t ? be advanced, not perhaps to S35- or $40 ' but certainly to more than S20. Grea ' as the economies are that can be praC
 tised by an i industrial corporation I when it has to do so, there are limits a and eieettical engineers of all persua e sions are convinced that high-price i copper is the limit.
 I Figures are notoriously dry read 0 ing, but there are some statistics | n connection with copper productio }, that are fairly encouraging at the pre-; e ent time when the average man, wh L is paying from 25 to 100 per cent nor ? for all the necessities of life than h s had to pay a few years ago, doesn r relish the idea of having to pay bigge l. electric light and telephone bills. Tn + worlds production of copper has il
 creased from year to year in accor' d ance with the following table:
 ,f 1886 .. ....... 25,5s l. 1890 e.. 269, ,45 m IS95 .. 3S4, ,56 e 1900 - ..... ....... 4S5.S5 D. 1ao1 - 511, ,01 lt 1909 542,1f f 1909 .. 5s5, ,0s "a 1a04 ... 641. .6s
 1908 ..... 6S2, ,12 a 1e0s - ... .... 711,61