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Show UTAH Hi DECLARES III In Spit of the Fact That This Company Is Mining Copper and Selling Same for Less Than Cost, Yet They Declared a 25-cent Dividend. Action of directors of the Utah Copper Cop-per company and the Ray Consolidated Copper company recently In declaring 1 regular dividends of $1.50 and 25 cents per share on the respective, stocks of these companies came as a decided surprise sur-prise to followers of metal markets. It was rather expected by many local mining men that these companies, like the Chino Copper company and the Nevada Consolidated Copper comparty,' would pass the present quarter's dividends divi-dends until the price for the red metal ' allowed profitable operation. The report of the Utah Copper company com-pany for the third quarter of 1920 states that the per pound cost of producing pro-ducing the metal was 17.156 cents as compared with 13.697 cents for the preceding pre-ceding quarter. This cost of' 17 cents per pound Is at least 2 cents above the present price of the metal. Of course, had not the porphyry companies dur-. dur-. Ing the period when copper was in demand de-mand and when profitable operation was possible piled up a good surplus, 'payments of dividends for several quarters past probably would not have been possible. |