Ever since 1955, Cleveland's M. A. Hanna coal and iron company has had its eye on a South American lode that would make any miner sharpen his pick. The property: Brazil's St. John D'el Rey, which Brazilians romantically labeled the "heart of gold within a breast of iron." Spreading over 100 square miles in Minas Gerais state, some 200 miles north of Rio de Janeiro, the D'el Rey mines produced only gold for 120 years—and in recent times some heavy deficits for the company's British owners. What magnetized Hanna, which had been built into a $250 million empire by...
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