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Show COPPER PRODUCERS PREOIGIMII1 Improvement in Domestic Demand From Brass Manufacturers. Copper producers are predicting that the red metal will be firmly established on the 131-cent basis from now on. There has been a moderate improvement In the domestic demand which has come more especially from the brass manufacturers who have been booking good orders from abroad for war materials. Domestic manufact ui-eis cannot bo car--. rylng anything Hit normal stocks of copper, cop-per, it is said, and will have to add ma- terially to their supplies in the event that business undergoes the degree of improve-- improve-- ment which is believed to be in store for it. There ar indications also that the foreign demand which has been compar-itlvely compar-itlvely quiet during the past lew weeks will soon show another revival. Now that copper is quoted at a price which enables most pioducers to earn a . moderate profit on their operations, the trade is beginning to ask if the publication publica-tion of the copper producers' monthly statistics sta-tistics will be resumed. There is a growing grow-ing conviction, however, that it will not . be. There have always been certain copper cop-per interests who opposed the publication of these statistics on the ground that they were Injurious to the producers. These interests say that If the statistics indicated indicat-ed a rapidly diminishing surplus it was argued that the figures were manipulated, with the result that the price of the metal made comparatively little response. On the other hand, if the figures showed an increasing surplus, the result was a decline de-cline In price. In other words, from the point of view of the consumer It seemed to be a case of "heads I win, tails you lose." TTnder the circumstances, it is believed be-lieved that nothing will be lost and something may be gained by the permanent perma-nent suspension of tue producers statements. state-ments. Whether this view will prevail ' in the councils of the association remains to be seen. . Another question that is being asked ib whether the recovery In the price of copper cop-per will tempt producers to abandon their present policy of curtailment. It It does, some reaction in price .would seem to be inevitable, for it must be remembered re-membered that the recovery of the past several weeks has been due very largely to the fact that the output has been cut down to the extent of hundreds of millions mil-lions of pounds a year. For this reason it Is doubtful if there will be much disposition, dis-position, except on the part of the smaller small-er mines, to resume operations on a maximum max-imum scale. The view that will probably be taken by the more Important interests inter-ests is that "until normal world conditions have been restored, it is better to sell a certain amount of copper at 13 or 14 cents than twice as much copper at 11 cents. , . To bring out this point more clearly, let us take the case of a company like Chino. Here is a property that can turn out 60,000,000 pounds or copper per annum an-num at an averago cost of 84 cents a pound. On this basis the eompany s profits on an 11-cent metal market would be $1,600,000 per annum. Yet on a production pro-duction of only 80,000.000 pounds per annum an-num but with copper selling at, say, 14 cents, the company's profits would be almost al-most precisely the same. Moreover, this would spell conservation of the company s ore resources. Clearly, therefore, it is to the interest of producers to continue to operate on the present basis until maximum maxi-mum operations can be safely resumed. |