Word: albina
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Fool's Silver. Albina Rodriguez had shocked her family and friends by marrying Simon Patino, son of a Spanish-Indian cobbler. Simon, the underpaid clerk of a German merchant, promptly got fired and had to make good on a $250 credit he had advanced to a prospector who had found, not silver, but "worthless" tin in the Andes...
...Albina who insisted that they go up in the mountains and work the claim, which had reverted to Simon. She tended the llama-dung fire, melted the snow for drinking water, and prodded Simon on when he tired of hacking away at the mountainside. When he finally struck the rich lode that became the fabulous La Salvadora mine, she helped load the sacks with ore, bring it down on llama-back, and grind it on a millstone...
...their luck to find the rich mine just when European supplies of tin were running out. Soon Bolivia was overrun with tin-hunters. When Simon foolishly agreed to sign away the mine for $350,000, iron-willed Albina knocked the pen from his hand...
Widow's Mite. As the dowager empress of tin, Albina will not have as easy a time as her ruthless husband in his heyday. Through the world cartel he created with the British and Dutch (in 1930), he could squeeze the Unless, smelterless U.S. (which normally consumes more than half of world tin production). But in World War II, when Simon was too friendly with the Nazis for British comfort, the cartel came apart. Alarmed, Patino tried to get back into U.S. good graces. Later, Chase National Bank's Vice President Joseph C. Rovensky became chairman...
...hopes to keep the world cartel from reforming. Moreover, since the richer Malayan mines can turn out better ore at lower cost than Bolivia, Albina has no assurance that the British would want it. But the U.S. is in no position to fight tin producers...