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Show Mining and Financial THI3 pinch of the miners' striko a(; Bingham, if there is to be a pinch, has not yet been felt. So far veryone is happy. The Utah Copper company Ib happy because its shares and Its unsold copper have gone up in the face of the strike; the miners because they think their demands de-mands are as good as won; the mine guards because they are getting ?5 a day; the taxpayers, because the guards are being paid by the Utah Copper company, and the militia has not been called out, and the daily newspapers because they have added immensely to their street sales. There is some disappointment for the Irresponsible Irre-sponsible Order of Cheerful Idiots in the fact that the strike has produced, at this writing, no slaughter or destruction, de-struction, but a disappointment does not Impair the cheerfulness of the I. 0. C. I. It does not follow, however, that strikes' are good things, or that there is no pinch to this one. In the first place the world is losing about 333,000 pounds of copper a day from the Utah Copper company alono and as much more frdm other Bingham mines. This reduction has begun to stimulate the price of the metal already. al-ready. The rise in the price of the Taw material -will be paBsed along to the manufactured article and ultimately ulti-mately the users ;pf the articles in which copper figures will complain of the Increased cost of living as they help to pay for the Bingham strike. The world's loss of wealth in the form of copper amounts to about $113,400 a day. The number of strikers strik-ers is estimated at 4500 and their wages, if they were working, would amount to about $12,375 a day. On the Socialist theory that no wage is more than the cost of living and reproducing re-producing labor power, it might be argued that the strikers are getting a living anyway, and, therefore, are losing nothing. But even If we accept ac-cept the Socialist theory we must admit ad-mit that the strikers are consuming daily a good deal of substantial food which reduces the aggregate of the world's consumable wealth without the replacement of other wealth and giveB another lift to the cost of living. Company guards are costing the Utah Copper about $1,500 a day, which comes out of the pockets of the stockholders. stock-holders. Here again the cost-of-living statistician can figure out a loss to the public in the goods that the guards buy with their $1,500, for their work, being unproductive, puts nothing noth-ing In place of the wealth they take from the world's stock. Finally there Is a matter of $3,000 a day lost to the employes of the Garfield mills, who have been laid off on account of the strike. Without taking into account a great number of Individual losses this strike, quiet and orderly as It has been, has cost the world at large and the ordinary folks, known collectively col-lectively as "the public," $143,775 a day, or more than a million dollars for one week. So It appears there Is a pinch to It after all, and the "com mon person" who suggestes that It Is time to stop it, is not guilty of Impertinent Im-pertinent Interference with Mr. Moy-er's Moy-er's business, or Mr. Jackllng's business, busi-ness, or Mr. Guggenheim's business, as those gentlemen would give the aforesaid "common person" to understand. under-stand. The gentlemen mentioned need not be alarmed, however, for the "common "com-mon people" outside of the Intelligent Intelli-gent constituency of Goodwin's Weekely, do not feel the pinch of the strike until long after the strike is over, and when they do feel It they do not realize that the strike is responsible. re-sponsible. On its general lines the Bingham controversy has vindicated the analysis given on this page last week, written before the strike was begun. The miners have Insisted on their demands for more wages, firm In the belief that the companies will have to pay their price for labor or go without it, and the company "managers "man-agers have stuck to the position that they could get all the labor they wanted want-ed at the old price. All this talk about shooting, violence, "ignorant foreigners," for-eigners," "clean them out with the militia," etc., misses the real issue and serves only to' becloud the real question which strikes are called and fought out to answer. The stock market pages have been perused with unusual atentlon since the strike began. "When mining men noted that Utah Copper shares were liolding their own and even going up despite the loss and extra expense incident in-cident to the labor conflict, they declared de-clared with one voice that the Utah Copper interests were spending hundreds hun-dreds of thousands to support the market. mar-ket. But a puzzling sidelight was thrown on the stock situation by the other Bingham issues. Utah Consolidated, Consoli-dated, without conspicuous backing, stood at Its normal figure and Ohio Copper, which has never been accusod of possessing either visible or Invisible Invisi-ble means of support outsldo of its own mineral resources, wont up at the same rate as Utah Copper. The secret of this phenomenon is lost in the jungles of Broad sreot, New York. A partial explanation may be found, however, In the advance of copper metal. The Bingham companies, it is probable, have a good many million pounds of copper in various stages of production on which settlements have not been made and in the sale of this stock they will profit by the upward twist the strike has given the metal market. Possibly If the atrike were settled tomorrow, the losses of the producing concerns would bo more than offset by the additional ad-ditional value given to their accumulated accumu-lated product. |
