316 BOARD OF AGRICULTUEE. 



mining companies sell all the copper they can at about 

 eighteen cents a pound to the consumers in the country, and 

 the surplus that cannot be used here is sold to go abroad, or 

 sent there to a market where it is worth, at the outside, 15^ 

 cents for the best. Last year the exports of copper, out of 

 a product of 27,275 tons, or fifty-four and one-half millions 

 of pounds, worth nearly ten millions of dollars, were 3,340,531 

 pounds, at a home value of 17^ cents a pound, amounting to 

 $565,295; and the imports were 744,566 pounds, costing 

 abroad 12| cents a pound, andamountingin value to $90,945, 

 which paid a duty of five cents a pound. This is about the 

 loss that the copper miner makes on his surplus after selling 

 you all he can at 18 cents a pound, and it shows plainly that 

 a protective tariff gives him a monopoly and forces the peo- 

 ple of this country to pay several cents a pound more for all 

 the copper they use than any other people in the world. 



Where is the sense of it, except to fill the pockets of a 

 few owners of copper mines? These do not need it as 

 protection, for they can produce it as cheaply as it can be 

 produced anywhere else. One mine alone (the Calumet 

 and Hecla) has paid to its owners, in about twenty years, 

 dividends to the amount of over twenty-one and one-half 

 millions dollars, with several millions surplus on hand, on an 

 original investment of $200,000. Can any such profits as 

 this be shown in agriculture? Suppose, for a moment, that 

 one of our neighbors should discover the most valuable cop- 

 per mine in the world on his farm, should we not think it 

 hard, if, in addition, Congress should pass a law making the 

 rest of us (who get no bounty for raising corn or pork) pay 

 him a bonus of fi.ve cents a pound on his product? And 

 yet, this is practically done for the copper miners. The price 

 of five cents a pound is added to the fifty millions of pounds 

 mined and used in this country, and we farmers pay our full 

 share of it. And as though this were not enough, that they 

 should have Vi full monopoly, an almost prohibitory duty was 

 laid upon copper ore, and the business of smelting it not 

 only was actually destroyed, but also the foreign commerce 

 based upon it. Formerly ships loaded with American goods 

 sailed from Boston to Chili, and in return brought back cop- 

 per ore, which Avas smelted at Point Shirley, East Boston, 



