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Chief significance of the Phelps Dodge move was its revelation of a serious split in the copper world, a split likely to increase as tariff agitation grows. Firmly opposed to a tariff is Anaconda whose U. S. production is diminutive and costly to its imports, chiefly from South America. Neutral ground is occupied by Kennecott. Its Alaskan mines, its prodigiously great subsidiary. Utah Copper, and its Nevada Consolidated Copper would not be affected, while its mines in Chile (Braden Copper) would suffer. Phelps Dodge, third biggest in the industry, is pro-tariff because it operates entirely in the U. S. except for a few unimportant Mexican camps. Behind Phelps Dodge stand the rank & file of U. S. producers—Calumet & Hecla, Miami, Old Dominion, Seneca, Tennessee Copper.
Although Phelps Dodge conducts a business founded in 1830 by Anson Greene Phelps it has only lately become a conspicuous top-flight company. The management of Walter Douglas (brother of famed Copperman James Stuart Douglas, father of Arizona's lone Congressman, Lewis Williams Douglas) prepared it for this phase but the growth has been since Mr. Gates pulled up stakes in 1930, left the vice-presidency of Utah Copper to succeed Mr. Douglas as president of Phelps Dodge. Its greatest expansion came when it renewed its diminishing reserves by the acquisition of Calumet & Arizona, the deal boosting its assets from $285,000,000 to $376,000,000. It has also acquired Nichols Copper Co., founded in 1905 by Dr. William Henry Nichols, one of the organizers of Allied Chemical & Dye Corp. (TIME, March 2). Nichols has two refineries. One, at Laurel Hill, Queens. Long Island, refines copper from all over the world and handled much of the Katanga output until Katanga built a refinery at Oolen, Belgium. The other, finished two years ago, is at El Paso. Nichols operates a new refinery at Montreal which it built with Noranda and British Metals Co. Phelps Dodge likewise bought National Electric Products Corp. a leading unit in the copper wire industry (TIME, Oct. 6, 1930).
President Gates is 49 but does not look it. He is husky, tanned. At Utah Copper he was Daniel Cowan Jackling's right-hand man. Oldtimers recall the way he inspected the properties on horseback, giving commands from the saddle. He now lives in Manhattan, two or three times a week arises at 6 a. m. for a ride in Central Park with his daughter. During the summer he likes to sail. He is of even temper, listens more often than he speaks. President Gates ranks as a No. 1 Copperman with John D. Ryan, Cornelius Francis Kelley and Daniel Cowan Jackling. But their rise to fame was with bull markets and prosperity; his star has ascended while the price of copper was dropping. If, before the 30-day limit expires, a new sales plan is adopted, curtailment agreed upon, the copper industry may hail him as a Depression-made leader.