KEMP, GEOLOGY AXD EC0X0MIC8 371 



Iron, therefore, will never fail. It will probably not change in its 

 general relations to modern conditions for a very long time to come, so 

 far as its ores are concerned. We may have greater anxiety about the 

 supplies of coking coals than about the iron ore, but there are always such 

 possibilities of improvements or changes in processes that no one can 

 justly give way to unqualified forebodings. 



Copper is the metal generally considered next in importance to iron. 

 It is a very old one in the history of the race. The bronze age, you will 

 recall, preceded the iron age. Prehistoric man in Europe solved the 

 mixed metallurgy of copper and tin before he learned the smelting of 

 iron. Prehistoric man in America found native copper on the shores of 

 Lake Superior and passed it in trade a thousand miles from its home. 

 As a cherished possession, it constituted his ornaments while he lived, and 

 it was buried with him after he had died. 



Among the moderns, copper is most extensively employed in brass, but 

 as a conductor of electricity, it finds year by year increasing applications 

 in the purest condition in which the metallurgist can supply it. If at 

 home or in your office you look around your chair or desk, you will be 

 surprised to find hoM' universally employed it is. 



Greatly stimulated by the development of electricity in later years, the 

 production of copper has advanced by leaps and bounds. At present, the 

 United States is the heaviest producer, with Spain following next, but 

 yielding only one eighth as much. The United States furnishes over half 

 the total. In 1850, this country yielded 728 tons : in 1900, over 303.000, 

 and in 1908, 471,000. Meantime, in 1850, the price of copper was about 

 30 cents per pound. Its lowest point in recent years was nine cents in 

 1894. Its highest, 25 cents, was attained in 1907. We may each of us 

 imagine the variation in the profits of a mining enterprise as between 

 11 cents a pound and 15 cents, let alone 20 or 25 cents. Mining costs, 

 smelting and freight charges, show no such variation, so that with rising 

 prices profits greatly increase. Indeed, few of the metals have such ex- 

 traordinary ups and dovms as does copper. 



In its ores, the yield varies greatly. On Lake Superior, where the 

 native metal is distributed through ancient lava flows in little pellets, 

 leaves and sheets, it has been profitably mined and produced through 

 periods of years, when it constituted but three quarters of one per cent, 

 of the ore. The general run is, however, one per cent, and above. If we 

 recall that in a ton of 2,000 pounds, one per cent, is 20 pounds, and three 

 quarters of one per cent. 15 pounds, and if copper is selling at, say, 13 

 cents, the mining manager must break down, hoist, concentrate with 

 attendant losses and smelt an ore worth less than two dollars for all the 



