Now for the effect which this produced on the country at large:
“The effect of that offer of the copper producers was electrical,” said Mr. Baruch. “It showed that there was in this country a desire to set aside selfishness, so far as our government was concerned in its need * * * ‘Make us any price you want.’ So that was practically the attitude that the producers took.”
But the government did not get copper at that much-advertised patriotic price.
- Mr. Graham—“They did not pay 16 2-3 cents for the 45,000,000 pounds?”
- Mr. Baruch—“Oh, no; not these other large quantities of materials.”
He said that the copper was furnished to the government without receiving money for it; price-fixing was yet in the future. “Then we came to the point, ‘Well, what about the civilian population?’ So we made a rule that became a policy, that whatever price was fixed it should be for everybody; that what was fair for the army and navy was fair for the civilian population.”
There seems to have been a rapid cooling of generosity under the prospect of colossal sales. And the upshot of it was that, after all the hurrah, the government really paid about 27 cents.
What these figures mean, can be deduced from the fact that during the war the government bought 592,258,674 pounds of copper.
If the reader is not already staggered by the import of these facts, there remains one more for him to consider—
After the armistice the surplus copper was sold back to the copper producers. In April and May, 1919, the American Metals Selling Company received from the United States Government over 16,500,000 pounds of copper at a fraction over 15 cents. This was less than the boasted patriotic price of 16 2-3 cents at the beginning. Not counting what they had received from the government for the copper in the first place, their profits on the difference between the price they paid for the surplus copper and the price for which they sold it again, were beyond counting.
