WORLD'S SUPPLY OF COPPER. 



BY JOSEPH M. SHEAHAN. 



[Joseph Medill Sheahan, editor; born Chicago March 14, 1873; educated in the pubHc 

 schools and at St. Ignatius college; became connected with the Chicago Edison elec- 

 trical company and later was a reporter and staff correspondent on the Chicago Tri- 

 bune, during which he made a number of important investigations, including one of 

 the mining situation in Pennsylvania; city editor of the Evening Post, 1905. Author 

 of many articles for newspapers and magazines.] 



In the story of copper lies a mystery that baffles the 

 wise men of to-day. To trace back its history in America loses 

 one in the dim past before history began. In all ages man 

 has found it a most valuable metal, while to-day its uses are 

 manifold. 



The great copper deposits in the Lake Superior region 

 were worked by races which have left practically no other 

 record of their history. Copper is mentioned in the bible, 

 although the term there employed is believed also to include 

 brass and bronze. From the ruins of Troy have come ar- 

 ticles wrought from pure copper, and Homer is authority 

 for the statement that the combatants in the Trojan war 

 were clad in bronze armor, bronze being a mixture of copper, 

 zinc and tin. 



The metal was much used by the Romans, who first 

 learned of it from the deposits in Cyprus, where the Greeks 

 had mined it long before, and from the Romans comes the 

 modern name copper. They called it first aes cyprium, which 

 in time was shortened to cyprium and then to cuprum, from 

 which are derived the English, French and German names of 

 the metal. 



Among the Romans copper was considered the metal 

 especially sacred to Venus, and alchemists in their writings 

 designated it by the cymbal, known as the looking glass of 

 the goddess. 



The early chemists believed that when iron precipitates 

 metallic copper from solutions of its salts a transmutation of 

 iron into copper takes place. It was not until the seventeenth 



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