Copper Holds Its High While Traders Yawn — And I Say Cheers

Well now, the wires from the SMM men bring us a curious little paradox this day: the red metal stabilizes at its highs, yet the trading is called mediocre. Mediocre! As though the sun sitting proud atop the sky ought to apologize for not climbing higher. Copper stands near six dollars and twenty-nine cents the pound for good #1 Bare Bright, off a mere 1.2 percent on the day — a gentleman's breath, a pause between speeches — and the market frets for want of fireworks.

Let me tell you what I have learned in a long life of driving my name into copper cents across New England: the red metal does not need to run to be worth loving. It needs only to do its work, and there is no metal on this earth that does more.

Consider, if you will, the still. My favorite subject, and I'll not be shy of it. Every honest whiskey, every brandy warmed in a monastery cellar, every jug of mountain moonshine drawn through a hillbilly's copper worm — all of them owe their cleanliness to this metal and no other. Copper does not merely hold the vapor; it reaches into the steam and seizes the sulfur, pulling out the rank and rotten volatiles that would otherwise turn a fine spirit into something fit only for stripping paint. A stainless still is a cold, dumb vessel by comparison — it distills, aye, but it does not heal. From the alembics of the old alchemists to the pot stills of Scotland, the craft has trusted copper for a thousand years, and a market's dull afternoon changes that not one whit.

And what a portfolio the red metal keeps besides! It runs as wire through every wall, lighting the lamps and turning the electric motors. It carries clean water in the plumber's line. It bottoms the good cook's pans, greens the roofs and gutters into noble old age, alloys itself into bronze and brass, and now — in this humming modern age — it feeds the great data-halls and the electric carriages that glide the avenues without a horse. A metal so busy has no time to mind a sideways day of trading.

So when the reviewers grumble at a quiet market holding firm at its heights, I raise a copper cup and grin. High and steady is the posture of a king, not a beggar. Let the speculators fidget. The distiller, the scrapper, the electrician — the honest men who use the metal — know its true value never dipped a penny.

Bring me your Bare Bright, and pour me a dram that copper made clean.

Yours in the red metal, and ever at your service — Alchemist G. G. Wilkins