Lead Maneuver

When, 28 years ago, Simon I. Patino was a bill collector for a Bolivian general store, he accepted from a debtor certain mountain lands instead of $250. The store discharged him after making him pay $250 in cash. Impoverished, he went to see the land, dug, discovered tin. Today he heads the Patino Mines and Enterprises Consolidated, is one of the world's richest men, with a personal income exceeding that of the Bolivian Government. Although as Ambassador to France Patino divides his time between Paris and his Biarritz castle, he is still the "beeg boss" to Patin0 Mines' employes.

Of Senor Patino's customers the most important is the National Lead Co. whose principal business is to make things out of lead--such things as painters' materials (Dutch Boy Paint), babbitt metals, piano key leads, storage battery oxides. Important alloy of lead is tin, without which many of the most widely used lead products (such as solder) could not be made. The mines owned by National Lead are a small factor in its position as the world's largest consumer of tin and lead. For this reason National Lead, like any wise concern, keeps an eye on its raw supplies. It owns some Patino stock, keeps its own president and vice president on the Patino board of directors, was long a partner with Patino in owning Williams, Harvey & Co. of Liverpool, world's largest tin smelters.

This joint-ownership ceased last July. Senor Patino asked Lead to get out-- perhaps because Senor Patino's other English customers for tin objected to his partnership with a lead manufacturer. Regretfully, Lead's President Edward J. Cornish got out. Last week President Cornish got Lead into Associated Lead Manufacturers, Ltd., Great Britain's largest fabricator of lead products. (The deal involved a large but not majority block of stock.) Thus, National Lead is still Senor Patino's most important customer, with results perhaps, as follows: Lead will not share in Patino's smelting profits but the price Patino charges must be distinctly the price Lead is happy to pay.

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