One of the handiest places to put dollars safe away from Inflation, Revolution or the tribulations of the New Deal is in International Nickel, a Canadian corporation with most of its properties in Canada and a practical monopoly on the world's nickel supply. Long a favorite with excitable investors, Nickel is officered by U. S. citizens, its shares are listed on the New York Stock Exchange and an investment entails no confusion over foreign exchange or incomprehensible balance sheets.
Last week Nickel proved that it was not only a good repository for dollars but a money-maker in any currency. For the first half, Nickel reported a thumping $10,000,000 profit against $1,800,000 in the first six months of 1933. Possessing 90% of the world's nickel, Nickel would profit from war. At present not more than 5% of its output is used in armaments.* When Robert Crooks Stanley took the presidency in 1922, his job was to create a peacetime business. Nickel was such a drug on the market that the mines were closed, his company had lost nearly $800,000 in one year. Smart, self-confident, aggressive and a trained metallurgist. President Stanley wove into the warp of industry a number of steel and copper alloys, notably Monel metal (named after Nickel's first president, the late Col. Ambrose Monell). He fixed the price of nickel at 35ยข per lb. in 1926, did not raise it in 1929, did not lower it during Depression. And if Nickel makes as much money in the last half of this year as it did in the first, it will almost equal its 1929 all-time high of $22,000,000.
* More than one-third of Nickel's nickel is used to toughen steel, 20% going indirectly into automobiles alone. But a 10,000-ton cruiser needs about 50 tons of nickel, a French 75-mm. field gun about 50 Ib.