Show COPPER AND PRICES some of our contemporaries in england and on the continent of europe says say a the engineering gi and mining journal are inclined to resent the present high prices of copper and to attribute it to speculation in the united states and especially to what they call the control of the market by a single interest they consider moreover that the price can be brought down if purchasers for consumption will hold back their orders uch such is the advice given by some prominent foreign journals but it is based on a mistaken theory altogether and will not indeed it cannot be followed for very substantial reasons the most important of these is that many british and continental manufacturers have accepted this theory and have for months past held back buying t only for their immediate needs and making 0 tio no contracts for the future most of these people now find themselves practically without supplies and with orders that must be filled and they are compelled to buy at the prices now prevailing which promise to rise fise to a still higher point before a fall can be expected we have several times pointed out the great increase in the consumption of copper during the past three years and the causes which made this increase much r greater than would result simply from the Z general activity of trade it is not necessary to go into these again in detail briefly speaking they are the he t great extent of new electric work the large accumulation of war material by aalthe leading nations of europe and the activity in shipbuilding the first and second causes cause s continue 0 to o operate with full vigor the quantity of new electric work undertaken seems to increase instead of diminishing while the demand for war material apart from its consumption or destruction in south africa and china is also on the increase there is at present a temporary cessation in activity in shipbuilding t but we do not believe lieve e that it will continue long iong when we consider that the exi existing stin 01 demand for ocean tonnage naoe exceeds the supply and that high freight Z rates must necessarily stimulate the demand for vessels on this side of the water vater indeed shipbuilding is very active thus the main sources of demand for copper show no indications of falling off in the immediate future and much the same can be said of the minor uses of the metal which are extending in and increasing 0 rather than diminishing the substitution of other metal for copper in construction especially in electric work has made but little advance for reasons which we have frequently indicated while there has been some speculation here as would naturally be the case in such favorable conditions it has not by any means attained the proportions which foreign writers attribute to it the narrow darrow control of the market is also an overestimated factor the fact is that the recent advances in copper I 1 have been due chiefly to economic causes which admit of easy explanation which are still in operation and ad which are well understood by those who study the market care fully sl |