in 1905, will
receive no more for his twenty per cent. increased crop, coming from
over two millions increased acreage planted last year, than for his
smaller one of the year before.

That my readers may quickly, and once for all, grasp the point I wish to
make, I will illustrate:

The Steel trust in 1904 did a gross business of $432,000,000, upon which
they made a profit of $71,400,000, and yet this vast amount was only
five per cent. upon the trust's inflated capital of $1,400,000,000 odd;
and as the "System," in regulating the capitalization, arranged that the
preferred stock (and bonds), which represented the "System's" profit,
should receive seven per cent., there was not a dollar in dividends for
the $520,000,000 of common stock which had been sold to the people for,
in round figures, $300,000,000.

At the same time the Calumet & Hecla Copper Company produced and sold
over $10,000,000 worth of copper, upon which it earned, net, over
$5,000,000, which enabled it to pay to the people who had invested in
its 100,000 shares of stock (par value, $25), 160 per cent., or a total
of $4,000,000, and, at the same time, carry an enormous amount to its
surplus.

In the commercial world copper occupies an impregnable position. To
compete, it is first necessary to find a copper deposit; then to lock up
a vast sum of money for a long term of years before returns begin to
accrue. And new copper deposits are as rare and few and far between as
Lincolns and Roosevelts in politics or Grants and Lees in war. In the
last eight years, or since the metal has been prominently before the
world of capital, but two great producers of copper have been
created--the Copper Range at Lake Superior, Michigan, and the Greene
Consolidated in Mexico--and these two mines have only, at the end of six
years, after an immense expenditure of millions (Copper Range, with a
capital of $38,500,000, 385,000 shares, par $100, which sold in the open
market a few years ago at $6, now selling at $75, and Greene
Consolidated, with a capital of $8,650,000, 865,000 shares, par $10, now
selling in the open market at $25), reached the point of profitable
production. Their combined output, while reaching the (for young mines)
unprecedented amount of one hundred and odd million pounds of metal per
annum, constitutes but a fraction of that which Mother Earth has given
up during the period of their development, namely, 2,500,000,000 pounds,
all of which has been disp