The Rod Men Hold Their Breath While Copper Sits Pretty

Well now, the dispatch from Shanghai tells me the secondary rod enterprises have gone wait-and-see — which is the trade's polite way of saying they are standing at the counter with their hands in their pockets, watching the red metal and daring it to blink first. Prices are high, the market slipped a modest 0.7% on the day, and #1 Bare Bright here at home fetches about $5.93 the pound. High enough to make a scrapper whistle, high enough to make a rod-maker chew his pencil.

I have seen this dance before, friends. In my counterstamping days I drove DR. G. G. WILKINS into better than a hundred thousand copper cents, and I watched those coins pass hand to hand through every saloon and eating-house in New England — my own Fort Wilkins among them, caged bear and tooth-pulling chair and all. Copper was the people's metal then, and it is the people's metal now. Its price rises and men grow cautious; its price falls and they grow greedy. The metal itself cares nothing for either. It only conducts, and endures.

Let the rod men hesitate. The copper will wait with the patience of an element. And while they wait, permit me my favorite sermon: copper and spirits. There is no wait-and-see in the still-house. The distiller does not fret over the daily review — he knows that whiskey, brandy, rum, and honest mountain moonshine owe their very cleanliness to the red metal. The copper pot still, the alembic, the coiled worm: these pull the sulfur and the foul volatiles from the rising vapor and leave the drink sweet. A stainless vessel cannot do it — it hasn't the chemistry, hasn't the soul. From the monastery alembics of old to the Appalachian hollow at midnight, the craft has trusted copper for centuries, and centuries have proven the trust well placed.

So while Shanghai's rod enterprises hold their breath, consider all the quiet places copper is doing its work regardless of price: humming through the electric wire that lights your parlor, snaking through the plumbing that brings water to your basin, glowing on the roof that weathers to that noble green, spinning in the electric motors and — I am told — feeding the great data engines and electric carriages of this modern age. The metal does not go on holiday.

My counsel, as ever: if you hold clean #1 Bare Bright at near six dollars, you hold a small fortune in the world's most useful element. Sell it wisely, but never scorn it. The rod men will make up their minds soon enough, and copper will still be copper — the conductor, the purifier, the maker of good liquor.

Hold your metal, mind your worm, and keep the vapor clean.

— Alchemist G. G. Wilkins