THE IMMENSE COPPER WEALTH OF THE UNITED STATES.
IN an article on "Modern Methods of Finance," in the December Pearson's, Mr. Henry George, Jr., speaks of our great copper interests as follows: "Modern copper mining began in the United States about 1845. In that year our total production was estimated to be about one hundred tons. More than a tenth of this was produced in Michigan. Copper mining in many of the states rapidly developed, but nowhere so rapidly as in Michigan, which in 1880 yielded more than four-fifths of the output of the country. "Then it was that Montana began its phenomenal mineral development. By 1892 its copper production exceeded that of bountiful Michigan. Arizona's copper development came later. Toward the close of the nineties, the copper mines in the United States exceeded annually eighty million dollars in value, which rivaled our gold yield, and far surpassed our petroleum. We had come to produce more copper than all the rest of the world combined, and hence our product commanded the world's market. "This country's enormous copper yield came mainly from three districts, in the following order: The Butte region; Silver Bow County, Montana; the Lake Superior peninsula of Michigan, where it is richest; and the triangular region in southeastern Arizona, marked by Clifton, Bisbee, and Globe."