“In the kingdom of copper, there are two major provinces,” Time Magazine stated on Sept. 21, 1936. “One is the U.S., bounded by a towering tariff wall (4¢ per lb.). The other is the world outside.”

In the “world outside”, the article states, copper men have low production costs and, since the Depression, usually sell their metal at prices below those of the U.S., keeping the majority of U.S. copper out of foreign markets.

During the second week of September 1936, however, foreign prices exceeded U.S. prices by 20¢ per pound.

Adelaide Walters, author of The International Copper Cartel, published in the Southern Economic Journal, in Oct. 1944, wrote that a cartel, Copper Exporters, Inc., which functioned between 1924 and 1929, accounted for approximately 95% of the world copper production, represented by both American and foreign interests. It should be noted here that none of the Michigan companies were members of the cartel.

“With a favorable market condition of low stock and rising consumption,” Walters wrote, “the copper producers were in a strong position. Everything went smoothly until the hectic boom period of 1928 and 1929 when the cartel resorted to rationing sales, thereby causing the buyers to bid up and up.”

This is reflected in the Quincy Mining Company annual report for 1929, when President W. Parsons Todd reported his company was selling copper at an average price of 18.28¢ per pound.

Walters wrote that this was about the time the resentment against the cartel, particularly the Americans who dominated cartel polices, finally had enough and called a buyer’s strike.

“From then on until the dissolution of the cartel in 1932, with the enactment of the U.S. excise tax on copper,” Walters wrote, “the power position of the cartel steadily declined. Like many another cartel, it could not weather the storms of depressed prices and excessive capacity.”

In Quincy’s annual report for 1930, Todd wrote that in the months before May, when he penned his report, copper had been averaging between 10 and 11¢ per pound.

The copper men Time Magazine was referencing were those of the International Copper Cartel (ICC), which was established in 1935, in an attempt to regulate the world copper market outside of the U.S., as Walters wrote, chiefly by adjusting mine production of copper ore to consumption prices agreeable to the cartel members.

The ICC, Walters wrote, was formed to liquidate the tremendous stocks of copper piled up as result of the Great War and regulate new production and exports.

“Although they have never succeeded in stabilizing copper prices over long periods,” Time Magazine reported, “copper men periodically play with ‘stabilization,’ sporadically get into and out of international agreements to keep up prices by restricting production.”

Ironically, this cartel was wholly American in membership, Walters states, and represented 95% of the American output and was able to control the world market. There were five members in the cartel and two foreign observers. The voting members were: Anaconda Copper (United States), Kennecott Copper (United States), Roan Antelope Copper (Northern Rhodesia), Rhokana Corporation (Northern Rhodesia) and the Union Minière du Haut-Katanga (Belgian Congo), while the non-voting members were Bor (Yugoslavia) and Rio Tinto (Spain). Combined, these seven companies accounted for more than half of the global output of refined copper at that time.

“Chief U. S. copper companies to cash in on the foreign market,” Times Magazine reported, “are Anaconda and Kennecott, which operate big mines abroad.”

By 1934, conditions had not improved significantly. Calumet and Hecla’s operations remained confined to the Conglomerate Lode. When C&H officials had made the decision to suspend operations across all of its mines and refineries, the only exception was the Conglomerate Lode, on which the Calumet and the Hecla mines had been built. The annual report of the company for 1932 pronounced the end the once world famous lode. As the shafts went deeper, the content of the copper decreased and was “considerably poorer than that mined from the shaft pillars and old backs higher up,” the report stated. With the low price of copper, and its diminished content, work in the Conglomerate Lode was, in Jan. 1930, confined to robbing the shaft pillars and abandoned stopes and drifts in the upper part of the mine. To minimize expenditures as much as possible, the decision was made to remove the pumps and other equipment from the lower levels. As workers raced to rob the last mineral value of the mine, its lower levels were left to fill with water.

With crews still working to extract the last of the mineral, C&H took a severe financial beating. Production was, in 1934, almost 33 million pounds of copper, which sold at average price of just over

7¢a pound.

The Michigan mines were not affiliated with the ICC, and therefore, were not concerned with their policies or market manipulations. C&H put its reclamation plant back into operation in 1935, producing just over 9 million pounds of copper, which sold at an average 4.80¢ per pound, according to the Minerals Yearbook for 1936.

The 1936 Yearbook reported that the output of the Copper Range Company was roughly 20% greater than in 1934, producing, 1936, more than 16 and a half million pounds, all from the Champion Mine. The Quincy Mine resumed operations again in 1937.

Slowly, the Lake Superior copper region began to dust itself off from the inactivity of the previous five to six years, but when it did not emerge unscathed.