e
first outcry against the personal ownership of human chattels was voiced
by New England, and her leading citizens generously devoted the incomes
of the fortunes their forefathers had amassed in the slave traffic to
releasing their colored fellow-creatures from bondage. That, however, is
still another story.

To return to "Coppers." In my young days in "the Street" in the early
'70s, the first task I remember performing was making deliveries of
copper stocks traded in by "the house" which was entitled to my
twelve-year-old services in return for the three large dollars which I
received each Saturday with far more honest pride than any three
millions I have since handled. As I grew up I watched Calumet and Hecla
advance from a dollar to 450 (it afterward sold at 900) because of its
real worth, and imbibed the conviction, which all true Bostonians
entertain, that money acquired through copper is at least 33 per cent.
better than money from any other source. I sympathized with the State
Street code which declares, or should: "Gold can be found in a day by
any one with eyes, silver in a week by any one with hands, and money in
a year by any one with sense enough to save it, but no man gets into
copper without capital, fortitude, patience, and brains." As a matter of
fact, it requires, even to-day, with all of to-day's facilities and
rush, $5,000,000 in money and five years of spending it after a copper
deposit has been found before it can be made to yield returns. Is it
surprising that a project requiring so much money for so long a time
should appeal to Boston's regard for endurance, expensiveness, and
exclusiveness? Could there be found an enterprise better calculated to
discourage the upstart?

My daily round of errands led me from broker to broker and from bank to
bank, and always I heard talk of copper. It is not remarkable that my
youthful mind became impressed with the profound importance of the metal
and all pertaining to it. I picked up a great deal of information on the
subject, which I fortified later with a careful study of copper the
metal, copper the mine, and copper the investment. As I mulled over the
immense returns obtained from their ventures by the men I knew had their
money in copper, it struck me as extraordinary that this industry should
be so much more profitable than others. Here was a great staple, a
necessity of the people, which had been in use since men began to sit
up, and would be needed un