Dowager Empress

In a fashionable Paris hotel last week, a lonely and ailing old woman took up the scepter of one of the world's greatest industrial empires. Seventyish Albina Rodriguez Patino, widow of Bolivian Tin King Simon Patino, succeeded him as president of the Patino Mines & Enterprises Consolidated (Inc.), which controls 35% of the world's current tin supply.

As Albina Patino and her children control 80% of the stock, she had, in effect, elected herself. But few would dispute her qualifications. When the door of the blue marble tomb at Cochabamba, Bolivia, clanged shut...

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