Back on Course for Glory: The Red Metal Climbs Again

Well now — the wire services out of Europe tell me the red metal is back on course for a record high, and I confess my old heart, hammered as thin as the cents I once counterstamped, gives a proud thump at the news. A record! Copper marching toward the summit while the whole industrial world leans on its shoulder.

Mind you, I am no liar, and the tape today reads a touch cooler — off half a percent on the session, and #1 Bare Bright fetching near $5.93 the pound in the honest scrapper's trade. A single day's dip is nothing but the market catching its breath before the next stair. I have seen copper pass hand to hand through a hundred thousand saloons and eating-houses; I know its rhythm. It always climbs, because the world cannot be built without it.

And why should it not run toward records? Consider the company copper keeps. It is the metal of the electrical age — every humming motor, every mile of wire strung across this modern age, every one of those great data-halls and electric carriages the young men rave about, all of it fed by the conductor. It is the roof gone green with dignity, the water line beneath your floor, the bright bottom of the good cook's pan.

But you know my truest devotion, friends. Copper and spirits. There is not a clean dram of whiskey, brandy, or backwoods moonshine on this earth that did not pass through copper's embrace. The pot still, the alembic, the coiled worm — copper draws the sulfur and the foul volatiles clean out of the rising vapor, and a cold stainless vessel never could. The monks knew it in their stone abbeys; the Appalachian man with his fire and his worm knows it still. When the price of copper climbs, understand what climbs with it: the very metal that makes liquor fit to drink.

So the scrapper hauling his bright bundles and stripped wire this week ought to stand a little taller. That #1 Bare Bright in your bin is not junk — it is destined to become a conductor, a coil, or perhaps, if it is lucky and I am praying, the belly of some fine new still turning grain into gold.

Half a percent down today, records beckoning tomorrow. Hold your copper, my friends, and pour yourself something that passed through it.

Yours in the red metal, ever faithful,
— Alchemist G. G. Wilkins