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Joralemon on Cu

… the age of electricity and of copper will be short. At the intense rate of production that must come, the copper supply of the world will last hardly a score of years. … Our civilization based on electrical power will dwindle and die.
1924 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ira_Joralemon

LAST WEEK we reprinted part of an address made by Ira B. Joralemon before the Commonwealth age of electricity and of copper will be short. At the intense rate of production that must come, the copper supply of the world will last hardly a score of years.

Our civilization based on electrical power will dwindle and die." We are rather surprised that a geologist of Mr. Joralemon’s standing cannot use his imagination a little more than this, but no doubt he was painting the picture as black as possible so that copper miners would wake up to the fact that they are rapidly wasting a valuable natural resource with little or no profit to themselves.

Known deposits of copper ores of a present commercial grade are limited, as Mr. Joralemon says, and it might be possible that in twenty years electrical requirements will have milked most of them dry.

But metallurgical methods will advance: likewise prices, we hope; so that it will pay to mine lower grade deposits of which there is a tremendous tonnage available, and also deeper deposits such as ou friends in Michigan have.

And we can hardly believe that all the copper resources of the world are known Twenty years ago, for example, who would have classed such deposits as those at Chuquicamata and Bingham Canyon as important factors, even with the price o copper somewhat higher than it is now?

As to the electrical industry, we can hardly believe that all our electricity will go back into the clouds where Franklin found it, just because copper is scarce. Maybe copper won’t be required at all for transmission pur poses; we may just use the ether.