For the first twenty years of its existence Phelps Dodge Corp. sold cotton and tin. When in 1833 a brand new warehouse collapsed on the heads of his fusty clerks, pious old Anson G. Phelps reorganized the business, began selling lumber, iron, steel, insurance. Next Phelps Dodge acquired a patch of ground in Bisbee, Ariz, and began to dig. In 1906 it announced in all New York newspapers: "Owing to the great increase of our Copper and Railroad business in the West, we have been obliged to give up the selling of all...
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