DIAMONDS COMMERCIALLY 27
ment
of the United States, have changed this condition. The supply of
diamond-bearing earth apparently is inexhaustible. The yield is so
even that the average weight of diamonds that will be found in a given
quantity of earth, from the mines individually and collectively, is
known beforehand to the fraction of a carat. The output can be
regulated with the exactitude of a factory, and as the principal mines
have been all under the control of one syndicate, deliveries and price
could also be adjusted at will.
With
the control practically of the diamond output of the world, the
Anglo-African syndicate began to sort and grade the rough closer, until
now no staple is more closely sorted than are African diamonds, and the
price set on them has been absolute and indisputable. The keen system
which governs the present marketing of diamonds is destructive of the
sentiment and romance which was once so characteristic of the business.
It has robbed it largely of the element of uncertainty which aforetime
appealed so strongly to the gambling instinct of the trader. It has
also raised the traffic to the dignity of a staple of commerce. The
enormous production of these later years, and the wider sale for
diamonds which has resulted from the strenuous and successful exertions
of the world during the last decade to create and accumulate
wealth, have combined to make the diamond an important item in the
trade of the world. Twenty-five years ago, few jewelers in the United
States carried diamonds in stock; to-day there is scarcely a jeweler
in the States, even in remote hamlets, who does not carry some, and
jewelers of prominence carry an average of from one hundred thousand to
a million dol-
