As rare as were Marshals of Napoleon by 1840, or old Bolsheviks by 1938, are international capitalists in 1940. Of that once fabulous and proverbially sinister tribe, a seam-faced, 75-year-old survivor arrived with wife and family in Manhattan last week. He was Tin King Simon Ituri Patino. For many years Sefior Patino has run Bolivian politics from Paris, married his daughters to French and Spanish nobility, enjoyed extraterritoriality (and freedom from income taxes) as Bolivia's Minister to France. For several months he has been appearing and disappearing in the U. S. tin picture, uncertain where to settle. Last week, he settled in a six-room suite at the Waldorf-Astoria.
When Simon Patino was born a poor cholo (half-Indian) in Cochabamba, Bolivia produced hardly any tin at all. When he grew up and became a clerk in a miner's supply store, he one day allowed a prospector to settle a $250 debt with the deed to a tin mine. This got him fired, put him in the tin business just as the mines of Saxony, Bohemia and Cornwall began to run out. By 1910 he was selling to Europe on a big scale. By 1912 he had $2,000,000 to buy more mines. By 1924 he owned much more than half the swollen Bolivian output, was known in half a dozen capitals as a bon viveur, was called the "richest man in the world."
Simon returned to Cochabamba in 1924 to build some palaces and settle down. Promptly blackballed by the cholo-con-temning local gentry, he closed the palaces, went to Europe, has not visited Bolivia since. In time he sold a 10% interest in his mines to National Lead Co., and diversified his own stake. He now owns mines in Malay (No. 1 tin-ore producer), a huge smelter near Liverpool. He likes to think he also still controls large smelters in Germany. He let France go on his cuff, and calls Mussolini "Mi Musso."
No. 1 tin consumer (80,000 tons a year) is the U. S.; No. 2 is Europe. Living in Spain since war began, Patino wanted to keep in with both sides. He tried to scare the Germans by dangling his tin elsewhere, but bit his nails for fear they would just bomb his Liverpool plant. He changed his mind half a dozen times about whether to come to the U. S. When the State Department failed to jitter at his Nazi flirtations, made him no offers, he came anyway.
Tin, a strategic material to the U. S., is life and death to Bolivia, constitutes 70% of her exports. Yet the Bolivian mines, thanks to depression and years of mining by their absentee landlord, are run down. Controlling more than half the production, Patino has also managed to restrict the rest. Not for ten years has Bolivia produced the full quota set for her by the British-controlled cartel. Last year Bolivia mined 27,000 tons of ore. To reach an estimated potential of 50,000 tons, the Bolivian mines need back maintenance, new machinery, more labor.