¶ Copper Sequence (1)
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Index Entry
Copper Sequence:
"Now I was assistant to the director of research for Phelps-Dodge and it was just at the time of World War I that flotation came in and the electrolytic refining of the copper. This so speeded up and reduced the cost of production of the copper that they found that the gold and silver occurring with the copper paid for the complete cost of mining and refining and bringing to market. Therefore the copper itself cost you nothing. You would only take it out of the ground when you could get the highest price; so it was a war price.
“Now, World War I then-- we’d just gotten electromagnetics, enough to really amount to something. In the one year, 1917, man refined and put on the market in one year more copper than he had mined and refined sumtotally in all the years before. And for years after that we stayed at this new magnitude. Copper was the handmaiden of energy, both in generation and delivery. Showing then what an energy war it was, was this extraordinary jump. And when the war was over-- all the wars up till this time had been agricultural in the agricultural accounting system of nature-- and when the war was over you had taken all the farm boys, and used up all of the farm products, and you trampled all the farms down, and bore it, and everybody.”
