The White Pine news. [volume] (Ely, Nev.) 1906-1910, 1909-09-26

When the Anaconda copper mine
became n of the wonders of the
world, adding millions of dollars to
the fortunes of DAILY, Hearst and Hag-
gins our national pride was aroused
by the fact that the American copper
output shot above 100000, 900
pounds a year. A hundred million
was a figure to ~conjure with in the
SOS.
Then in the late COS, when the
marvellous Anaconda alone produced
10000, 900 pounds in a single year,
and the whole country went wild over
copper shares with the entry of Stan
dard Oil capital into Montana, our
output reached the 500, 600, 900 mark.
We wondered what we would do with
all our copper.
Today our mines are on a billion
pound basis. We passed the 900,-
100000 mark after the flotations of
Amalgamated, and the output of
American-owned mines just over the
Mexican and Canadian borders put
the figures ell above a billion. From
out of the shafts of our copper
mines more ore is now raised every
"a hours than was mined in a whole
year in the early SOS when Lake
Superior district was opened up by
New England capital.
Since the Amalgamated Copper
Company was floated, nine years ago,
we have mined more copper than was
produced in this country in all the
years before from the day Columbus
landed.
What do we do with our copper?
Rather what would we do without
it? For without copper we would
have no telephones, Broadway would
be lighted with gas, and VI would
still be riding on horse ears and cable
cars. The marvellous electrical dew
elopment of the last 80 years in light,
power, heat and communication
would have been impossible without
the Anaconda, the Calumet & Hecla,
the Boston & Montana and the Cop
per Queen-for the mines of all the
rest of the world, the thirty century
old Rio Tinto in Spain. the eve
century old Mansfield in Germany,
the ancient workings in Chilli and
Japan could not have kept pace with
American inventive genius. AS we
found need of coal, iron, gold, silver
and copper, We Ia dug them up in
such undreamed of quantities as to
amaze the world.
The Bel telephone wires, overhead
and under ground, if strung out into
one string of copper wire would reach
thirty-seven times as far as the moon,
or $50 times around the earth. And
telephone lines are being extended
at an amazing rate. They have doubl-
ed in the last four years. Last year
wiring increased from 7,5O0,0 0u
miles to 100000 miles; it has since
gone beyond 5000, 900 miles. The
amount of copper in Bell telephone
lines increased from 100000, 900
pounds in 1905 to $4,000, 900
pounds in 1906, to 100000, 900
pounds in 1907, and now it is close to
half a billion-a million pounds of
new wire a week, more than all the
mines of the country produced when
the Anaconda was opened up, thirty
years ago, more than the whole
world produced sixty years ago. The
independent telephone lines also on
sume many millions of pounds of cop
per. For instruments and switch
boards millions of pounds more cop
per are used bp the telephone lines.
One manufacturing company control
led by the Belllines, uses $4,000, 900
pounds of copper a year making
wires and instruments. The compan-
les making telephones for the indie
pendent lines use many millions more
For twenty odd years we have been
constructing trolley roads, and the
wires that carry the currentxzfif1ff
wires that carry the electric power
" nearly $4,000 miles of track
contain more than 100000, 600
pounds of copper. Now there is a
mile of electric railway for every five
miles of steam road, but before many
years, this proposition will be rever-
sed. A million miles of trolleys in
this country is no wild dream. In
the meantime many steam locomo-
tives will be sent to the scrap heap.
We have already cen the beginning
of this revolution in the casting aside
of the locomotives on the New York
elevated railways and the substitu-
tion of electric for steam locomotives