$5,000,000, which enabled it to pay to the people who had invested in its 100,000 shares of stock (par value, $25), 160 per cent., or a total of $4,000,000, and, at the same time, carry an enormous amount to its surplus.
In the commercial world copper occupies an impregnable position. To compete, it is first necessary to find a copper deposit; then to lock up a vast sum of money for a long term of years before returns begin to accrue. And new copper deposits are as rare and few and far between as Lincolns and Roosevelts in politics or Grants and Lees in war. In the last eight years, or since the metal has been prominently before the world of capital, but two great producers of copper have been created—the Copper Range at Lake Superior, Michigan, and the Greene Consolidated in Mexico—and these two mines have only, at the end of six years, after an immense expenditure of millions (Copper Range, with a capital of $38,500,000, 385,000 shares, par $100, which sold in the open market a few years ago at $6, now selling at $75, and Greene Consolidated, with a capital of $8,650,000, 865,000 shares, par $10, now selling in the open market at $25), reached the point of profitable production. Their combined output, while reaching the (for young mines) unprecedented amount of one hundred and odd million pounds of metal per annum, constitutes but a fraction of that which Mother Earth has given up during the period of their development, namely, 2,500,000,000 pounds, all of which has been disposed of and cannot again be used to satisfy a ravenous consumption.
It seemed to me, then, a curious anomaly that, while capital was chasing investments which promised but four per cent., it eschewed copper which yielded from sixteen to twenty-five per cent., and my investigations told me that a producing copper-mine is the surest business venture a man engages in, for, by the time it begins to produce profitably, it must be so far developed that its owners are certain of ore to work on for decades ahead. A good copper-mine is really a safe-deposit