Daily Arizona silver belt., 1907-11-21

Natnanlel l. Amster or bOStOn, pres ident of the Arizona Commercial and Shannon copper companies and very prominent authority on copper. has this to say about the outlook of the red metal:
 "In my opinion there has never been time in the history of the copper in dustry that required more cool-headed and sane thinking than at this time.
 "Here we have the greatest possible prosperity in every quarter, every lab. bring man being employed, crops are large and prices high; every railroad is showing tremendous increases in traf- fic and every factory is unable to fill orders.
 ''It is generally conceded that cleo tricity is the coming powers to be used in every industry, as well as to turn every wheel that carries traffic.
 "Yet the many thousands of inves- tors who have their money in the pro dueing copper mines have in the past two months been driven to think that the copper metal is almost becoming useless, judging from the way their securities are being thrown away at any price that one may make.
 els it not about time that people should begin to realize that the value of their shares does not merely con sist of a steel engraved certificate, but represents mines, smelters, rail- roads, supplies, and probably, large amounts of treasury cash back of every share they hold.
 ''It is my information that every one of the legitimate mining company s shares listed on the exchange can cash in $50 in actual money for every dol lar of present selling prices.
 "The trouble is that the great ma jority of people that have their money in stocks have no clear idea of what such stocks represent; they merely have their eyes on the quotations.
 In days like these one may hear people say that such and such q stock is going to $lO per share when I know that there may be $50 of value back of the stock so mentioned. l am not having in mind any particular stock, but knowing wha I do about the general situation, I know what l say are facts.
 ''It is true that we have to-day an accumulation of about 125,000,000 pounds of copper, possibly 150,000,000 pounds. 1t Is also true, however, that among the consumers in this country who use in the neighborhood of 600,000,- 900 to 700,000,000 pounds per annuln there is only about 4,000,000 to 5000, 900 pounds of copper on hand.
 "It does not take, therefore, a Daniel to foresee what will happen when these consumers realize that the mining eom-i panies are not going to give their pro. duct away. They should begin to sup ply themselves, as they ordinarily would, with 20 per cent of their actual consumption. Such buying would i'm assimilate.
 "Let anyone take sufficient pains to study the copper situation and he will realize very quickly that the entire vis- ible supply of copper in the world is practically held today by the few metal selling agencies or by the producers. Should this be distributed, as naturally and ordinarily it should, there would be no visible supply.
 cit is true that the consumers haveI today the upper hand of the producers. No large sales of copper have taken place since last March, but the sales made in March represented the produc- ton to July lst, so that, therefore, the producers have on hand the supplies of July and August, but from that there have been sales of between 40,000,0O0l and 50,000,o00 pounds, mostly abroad, but some here.