Penny-Wise

Nothing escapes the surge of inflation-certainly not money. Who could have predicted that the lowly copper penny would one day be priced out of the market? Alas, that day is at hand, and the Senate last week passed a bill, proposed by the Department of the Treasury, that would allow production of a new penny made of 96% aluminum alloy. The Treasury's problem: the copper used in minting billions of pennies annually is growing prohibitively expensive. Last January, the world price of copper was 50-c- per Ib. Now the price is more than $1 per Ib. and, the Treasury Department notes, if that figure reaches $ 1.20, the cost of making a cent will exceed the face value of the coin. Metal profiteers call that the "melting point," and it would usher in a vast hoarding of pennies in order eventually to melt them down for sale on the open market.

The new lightweight, aluminum-colored coins will go into production if that melting point is reached, and will bear the reassuring face of Abraham Lincoln on one side and the Lincoln Memorial on the other. The metal needed to produce them will cost the Government 90% less than it now spends on copper. Thus, not only will pennies cost less to produce, but the likelihood of their again reaching the melting point within the next several years will be sharply reduced. To critics who like the reassuring heft of copper, the Bureau of the Mint points out a shade defensively that aluminum is an acceptable coinage metal in 36 countries of the world. What the Mint fails to add is that many of these are among the world's poorest nations.

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