Show THE ELECTRIC AGE just as the nineteenth century was the age of steel the twentieth century in its beginning at least is the age of electricity and electricity demands copper in ever increasing qu quantities entities an for the last six decades of the nineteenth century says the copper handbook for 1906 just published by horace J stevens of houghton michigan the production of the leading metals increased at the rate of almost exactly 6 per cent compounded yearly but in the last decade of the century copper left the other metals behind and for fifteen years past the average ratio of increase in copper production has been 8 per cent compounded yearly this difference of only one and one half per cent in the ratio of yearly increase may seem small but like the fable of the horses shoes for which the first nail brought a penny and each nail thereafter was doubled in price the cumulative results are surprising and at the end of fifteen years have run into hundreds of millions of dollars in 1881 a quarter century past the worlds production of copper was long tons worth an average of 18 cents per pound giving a total value of in round figures while at the present moment the copper mines of the world are producing at the rate of nearly tons per annum worth with copper at a little more diore than 20 cents per pound one million dollars for every day in the year or at the rate of for 1906 an increase of almost fivefold five fold in the worlds copper bill in a quarter of a century with electricity finding new uses daily and with a rapid extension of electric energy for power traction and many other employments there is sin small all hope that the poor old world will be able to curtail its copper bill to any important extent and every reason to believe that the worlds copper ten years hence will cost cos worlds iron and an considerably more than the steel cost ten years ago |