Unpegged Copper

It took ten months of humoring and hammering, persuasion and perseverance to get the U. S. copper industry to sign a code last year, but once having signed, coppermen became NRA's heartiest boosters. Just two years before they had been starving to death with copper at 4.7-c- per Ib. The code pegged the price at 9-c-. Early last year there was enough copper above ground to keep the U. S. supplied for 18 months with every mine closed. The code slapped severe restrictions on output and today the copper above ground would last only seven months. From the code authority coppermen were able to get better figures on demand & supply than they ever had before. Despite early confusion between Blue Eagle, non-Blue Eagle and export copper, the code worked so successfully that prostrated foreign producers rushed to Manhattan last winter to pattern a world agreement after it (TIME, April 8).

When the Supreme Court chopped off the Blue Eagle's head, the copper industry came to a standstill. Nobody wanted to be the first to slash prices, especially since inventory-taking was less than two months off. Aged Philanthropist Adolph Lewisohn, president of Miami Copper Co., did his best to stave off a price panic fortnight ago by crying stoutly: "I have been associated with the copper industry for more than 50 years and only once prior to the Depression have I seen such a low price as 9-c-. . . . The copper industry is headed for higher prices, and legitimately."

Last week the copper industry got a good shove in the opposite direction at the hands of the U. S. Government when the Navy Department announced the award of a 750,000-lb. contract at 8 1/2-c- per Ib., lowest price in 14 months, to Milhauser Trading Corp.(copper brokers), one of the loudest opponents of the code. Domestic fabricators took the cue, dropped prices of all copper products 1-c- per Ib. Copper for export sank to 7 1/4-c- against a top of 7 1/2-c- the previous day and 8 1/2-c- the preceding month.

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