FUTURE POSSIBILITIES

The basic purpose of a rigid and adequate copper ingot tariff is to care for the human factors, domestic institutions, and industrial agencies dependent on the continued and uninterrupted domestic production of copper; also to constantly maintain an efficient functioning domestic copper-mining industry, from ore to refined ingot stage, in order to promptly meet all domestic requirements during war as well as peace; likewise to carry on persistent exploratory efforts so that ample domestic copper ore reserves shall be available during all the years to come.

The whole tariff history of our country emphasizes that equitable protection has resulted in maintaining a uniformly high domestic wage detail, which in turn has builded and supported our domestic institutions and unrivaled industrial organizations. The economic supremacy of our country rests foundationally upon rigid tariff protection, not upon the uncertain and vacillating sands of free tradeism. Consequently, an adequate copper ingot tariff can not result other than beneficially to all the human factors involved.

It is evident that an efficient and continuously functioning domestic copper-mining industry is vitally essential during war, which in turn is dependent on the continuous maintenance of the industry during the intervening years of peace. It requires a vast sum and years of time to bring a domestic copper mining industrial unit from the exploratory to the refined ingot output stage.

It is obvious that from a national-defense standpoint alone it is rigidly essential that our domestic copper-mining industry be able to function maximumly. Furthermore, the domestic industry will furnish copper at fair commodity prices and prevent extortion on the part of foreign copper producers.

In view of the foregoing, there is no question but that a continuing domestic copper-mining industry is a national requisite, and this can not be maintained without ample and rigid tariff protection.

One of the most important phases within our domestic coppermining industry is to always maintain an ample poundage of copper within our known ore reserves.

At the present time our domestic copper ore reserves can care for 20 years of average domestic requirements. Ten years ago our ore reserves were only about one-half the present known domestic copper poundage. The intervening decade ore reserve increase was due to lowered domestic mining, milling, and metallurgic costs, and not to the discovery of new poundages within new ore areas.

We ascertain that a decade ago known domestic ore reserves embraced about 20,000,000000, pounds of copper with an average ore grade of 1.44 per cent. At the present time we have about 40,000,000,000 pounds of copper within our domestic reserve with a grade of 1.19 per cent. The copper poundage has doubled during the decade, but the ore grade was lowered 17.3 per cent.

The doubling of our domestic copper ore reserves the past decade through lowered operating costs solely, is most exceptional, and it is not expected that the increase of domestic ore reserves within present operating districts, through lowered costs alone, will show any appreciable future accretions.

We note that the domestic copper reserve poundage set out in Table 4 lies within 13 of our domestic copper-mining districts. According to Table 1A, the remaining 204 domestic copper-mining districts failed to report any developed ore.

It is reasonable to assume that if 6 per cent of our known domestic copper-producing districts have already developed a 20-year domestic supply of copper, the remaining 94 per cent under adequate tariff protection should be able to develop vast additional ore reserves.

These remaining 204 virtually unexplored domestic copper-mining districts, scattered through 19 of our domestic States, have never been explored from the present day copper efficiency operating cost standpoint. Neither can these 204 copper districts ever be explored from a commodity copper price standpoint until adequate tariff protection is accorded. All those districts will be developed down to the present commercial limit of one-half of 1 per cent copper ore very quickly after the laying of duties to "accord the domestic market to the domestic producer of copper."

According adequate protection to the domestic copper-mining industry means the salvaging of countless billions of pounds of copper for ages to come within our hundreds of known domestic coppermining districts. Rigid protection does now permit the salvaging of vast quantities of iron, lead, and zinc within these rigidly protected domestic mining industries, just as tariff protection does now operate within nearly all domestic industries to salvage products that would be termed industrial waste under free-trade conditions.

TARIFF PLEA

It is strange indeed that hundreds of thousands of citizens to be found within the 217 domestic copper-producing districts scattered throughout 19 of our States, must stand before the legislative bar pleading for adequate protection for the maintenance of their dependent industry within our high and universally protected country.

It would be stranger still if legislative factors failed to note the economic misery now besetting the domestic copper miner and the crushing hopelessness of his economic plight under continued freetrade conditions, without according immediate legislative relief.

There is not a product mined, grown, or manufactured within our domestic realm that has been so atrociously treated from a tariff standpoint as the copper ingot the past decade. The copper ingot has been deliberately left on the free list the past decade in violation of the domestic economic precept that a vitally important domestic product is entitled to a commodity price and control of the home market.

Domestic internationalists in control of our excessively highly protected domestic copper manufacturing industry have been the beneficiaries of this legislative neglect to accord protection to the domestic ingot. These internationalists are shipping in now, and have for the past decade, huge amounts of copper from their lowcost foreign copper estates. It is certain that these internationalists will continue this un-American practice until stopped by Congress.

The domestic copper manufacturer is the recipient of rigid protection on all the products he manufacturers. He is receiving greater protection proportionately to-day than he ever received in the past.

We note in Table 2 that the manufacturer has a 45 per cent ad valorem rate as against manufactures not specially provided for. It will be seen that this rate prevailed whether the copper ingot was on the free list as from 1894 to date, or protected by a 5-cent duty as of 1869-1883, or a 1.25-cent duty from 1890-1894. The copper manufacturer also has a duty rate up to 11 cents per pound as against imported brazed copper tubes, likewise other rigidly protective specific rates as set out in paragraph 381, Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930.

The copper manufacturer has been accorded the domestic market for disposal of his product. The manufacturer has rigid and absolute sale control of the domestic market, for there are practically no dutiable copper imports. The duties are so rigidly protective that virtually all foreign-manufactured products are excluded. We further find that even with all this rigid domestic protection the domestic manufacturer exports up to 15 per cent of his manufactured products. The domestic copper miner's product, the highly manufactured electrolytic refined copper ingot, has been denied control of the home market, the result being an avalanche of copper imports from the four corners of the earth. Every slave, peon, and pauper labor copper ingot in the world seemingly has been dumped within the domestic market, compelling the domestic miner to meet this iniquitous economic competition or starve. We also find that the domestic copper miner exports less copper proportionately, as explained herein, than the domestic copper manufacturer.

Who other than a domestic internationalist and his minions would have the brazen effrontery to openly sponsor the un-American protective doctrine that the copper manufacturer is solely and alone entitled to rigid protection, but that the producer of his product, the copper miner, must be kept chained everlastingly within the competitive slave area of free tradism?

Congress not alone protected flour but also wheat; the garment, also wool; packed products, also cattle; steel articles, also the steel ingot; lead products, also lead; zinc articles, also zinc; aluminum products, likewise aluminum--and so on down through an unending list of comparisons emphasizing that the domestic manufactured article and its basic product are both rigidly protected.

Congress, during 1846 to 1894, a period of 44 years, also accorded protection that initiated and laid the broad economic foundation of our existing domestic copper-mining industry. All that Congress needs to do is to scan the resultant effects of the protection accorded within the foregoing near half-century period, to fully appreciate the marvelous efficacy of rigid tariff protection for the domestic copper miner's product.

The industrial momentum imparted during the long period of protection has carried the domestic copper-mining industry through its disastrous period of free tradism up until this time, up to the very tottering edge of a yawning abyss of hopelessness, despair, and utter

ruin.

The copper miner of to-day pleads with Congress, as did his economic forebear of 70 years ago when confronted with utter ruin, to save him from the crushing competition of foreign slave, peon, and pauper-produced copper; to again grant the same degree of equitable

protection then accorded; pleads that Congress remove the free-trade shackles riveted on at the behest of internationalists 40 years ago. When rigid protection is restored the domestic copper miner will begin to develop an unprecedented supply of copper within the 217 domestic copper-mining districts, all of which are virtually unexplored from the standpoint of modern operating efficiencies, and a commodity price for copper, amply sufficient to care for our vitally essential war and peace requirements of copper for centuries to come.

Rigid protection will accord a continuous and an American standard of living to hundreds of thousands of citizens dependent on the industry, likewise maintain existing American institutions and communities, and found new ones within the hundreds of copper districts scattered throughout 19 American States.

APPENDIX

WHEAT AND COPPER TARIFF DETAILS

Uninformed or biased critics of a probable reenacted copper tariff seemingly find a rare and prolonged degree of solace in comparing the domestic wheat and copper mining industries, stating that both have large exportable surpluses; consequently a protective tariff can not aid either.

In order to submit statistical data of basic comparative value, it was deemed essential that same should cover broad production period spans that in the aggregate truly represented average industrial factors existent during the economic life of the domestic wheat and copper mining industries.

WHEAT STATISTICS

Analyzing certain wheat statistics as outlined in the latest United States Department of Agriculture Year Books, we ascertain that the 26-year period, 1904-1929, embraces 55 per cent of all the wheat grown and 64 per cent of the farm value of wheat produced during the 64-year period, 1866-1929.

The 26-year period, 1904-1929, is an aggregate of the 4-year war period, 1915-1918, and 11 years prior, 1904-1914, and 11 years subsequent to the war, namely, 1919-1929. We find that there was grown during this 26-year period about 20,177,000,000 bushels of wheat, having a farm value of about $23,127,000,000, or $1.15 per bushel. We further note that 21.5 per cent of said period production was available for export.

It was likewise found during the 11-year period, 1904-1914, that the average farm value price of wheat equals 85.4 cents per bushel; furthermore than the average annual amount of wheat exported equals 128,000,000 bushels.

During the 4-year war period, 1915-1918, we find that the average farm value price of wheat equals $1.59 per bushel, and the average annual amount of wheat exported equals 198,000,000 bushels.

We further find for the 11-year postwar period, 1919-1929, that the average price of wheat equals $1.24 per bushel, and that the average annual amount of wheat exported equals 195,600,000 bushels. The foregoing factors compared with those for the pre-war period, 1904-1914, denote a 44.6 per cent increase in price per bushel of wheat and 52.8 per cent increase in average annual amount of wheat exported.

We likewise ascertained that during the post Fordney-McCumber 7-year tariff period, 1923-1929, the average price of wheat equaled $1.13 per bushel, and that the average annual amount of wheat exported equaled 166,300,000 bushels. Comparing the foregoing