The Waterbury Democrat., 1931-04-16
Will Copper Be First
 Industry To Recover?
Much Depends the Public Utilities and Also Foreign Demand Writes George L. Walker in Recent Issue of "BarrOn's Weekly

/, the increased prosperity the tin pro. lducers have enjoyed.
 ,. The Luxury Business
 By continuing this line of discus
 sion it could be made clear that nearly all of the worlds industrial
 expansion has,resulted directly or in- 1 directly from what may be compre. 1 hensive called the luxury business
 This is used for want of better Iterm, and by it is meant the produc-
 ton and distribution of those high I y- y-desirable new things that our an-
 cestOrs got along without, and which 1 two-thirds of the worlds people still are getting along without. z A quarter of a century ago most i of us believed that the then-grOwinG popular indulgence in such luxuries would soon absorb the supply of
 liquid capital and bring an industrial collapse. Despite such indulgence having been extended beyond the farthest limitssthen dreamed of, and
 nlso despite the destruction caused
 by the World war, the supply of capi- tai has gone on increasfng. The luxury business creates capl- tai for it's own nourishment. It could be argued successfully that if there
 were enough luxuries, and if all lux
 uries could be sold for prices which
 hundreds of. millions more of the
 worlds people could afford to pay. such conditions as industrial depres- sions would be unknown. But the industrial depression is here, and it is very real. It will be gin to be relieved only when some thing happens. to increase greatly the demand for one or more of the commodities, which are in oversup- 1 ply. @
 The Demand for Copper Metal The purpose of this article is tc
 call attention to the likelihood o1
 copper being the. first commodity te enjoy an excess of demand, of cop per production being the first basic Industry to recover. E.
 There ,.ispa. growing and persistine isMorfa5 wide demand for the, services lWhepy cleo riGitys supplies. and copper ds the netals' Of elecfgtcity sss Through l. out Europe, including the most high f3y-industrfalized countries. sthere is still an enormous unsatisfied demand for. eleetrie ghts, telephones and IS%freleSs. seats, ,Fa5 general eagerness tt obtain cheap selectrfcepow for man. lufactur1ngS purposes. and also for . fconHnuingg : extension of the 9electri. lffcatiOnss of always. J ss-.1 lea.e | These demands arean0t %merely ] prospectiwet but also so much a mat. Etef Of the present and immediatt lfutufe that.eethe work of supplying them has already begun. If the sta ltistics were available, they undoubt edly would show, that the consump. l ti6n of, copper for electrical pur. lposes did not fall off at all in Flu. hope last year. and that it is stil being *maintaineds:a sat the new high, l.eecord rate set up ain 1929. The; spre; E34minary figures of the American bureau of metal statistics indicate
 that more copper was consumed electrically in, the United States 1T 1880 than in 1928, and. only 1s1-: per cent less than. in 1929. & EIectrificatiOn on the Continent Despite the severity of the. busi- ness depression and the unprece' dented unemployment in England last year the numbers of telephone subscribers, users of electric lights
 and owners of wireless sets increased enormously, and the same apparent
 ly was true throughout Europe. This trend is continuing strong. It has been arranged to e1ectrify a consid- erable additional mileage of steam railways. Some of the semi-back- ward peoples of the Near East will have telephone systems installed. Wireless broadcasting is to be intro duced into India. F
 Public Utilities Are Prospering.
 It is of prime importance in this connection that nearly all the world s and power and teie- phone companies are prosperous. Few of them have failed to continue prosperous since the industrial de- precision set in. In ,consequence, capi- tai can be raised more easily and readily for identification than for al- most anything else. Electrification is thus one business which can be, Is being, carried on despite the busi- ness depression.
 There is one other outstanding de- mand. It Is for automobiles and trucks for use in backward countries. So far the use of ! automobiles in such, counties has grown rather slowly; due to the necessity of bring ing trails and wagon roads up to motor highway standards. But this work is being done, as the advantage of faster travel and transportation has made prompt and strong ap- peal to many peoples who had made practically no advance industrially during the past century. The expan- aion of the automobile business re- sulting from this demand will also cause a further important increase in the consumption of copper. e.. Phenomenal Growth in Consumption
 An examination of the copper sta tfstics of the past half century will further strengthen the argument which, emerges from the facts al- ready presented. From 191S to 1928 the worlds production of copper in- creased s96 per cent, as against 50 per cent for. steel, tine 4S per cent. lead 50 per cent, and zinc i45 1-2 per cent. Tn each case the increase was measured by growth of demand.
 It is probable that a larger amount of copper was used for electrical pur- poses along in 1929 than was pro- duced in the,world in 1913. The use of copper In building and a multi tude of other fields had increased greatly. and the automobile-manu- facturing industry had created new demand which was ahgorbniE a. spb- stantialk rercentaEe of the: totalepro-
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