average
value: if they insist on assorted goods, they pay fully as much minus
the duty which they pay later, as they would in their home market, and
to which must be added the cost of the trip to Europe. As the people
they sell to, know less about the goods, they succeed fairly well in
marketing them at a profit, and as long as trade is sufficiently good
to warrant the expense, such buyers will probably remain convinced that
the annual trip to Europe is a good stroke of business.
Importations
of this character have been sufficiently large of late years to
materially affect the price of goods on the other side. When the
markets are full of buyers who do not know inside values, Europeans are
not slow to take advantage of the situation. While they are able to
sell to men who have cash in hand, at large profits, it is difficult
for the dealers who are buying to sell to the same trade, to get bottom
prices against such competition. In this way cutters and second-hand
dealers in Europe have been enabled to get very profitable prices, of
which the syndicate, noting it, took advantage and periodically raised
the price of rough to correspond. Of course the tremendous increase in
the price of diamonds during the past ten years must be charged
primarily to the control of the mines by the syndicate and to the
general prosperity of the world and of the United States in
particular, for the States use a majority of the African diamonds
mined, nevertheless the flood of small and reckless American buyers in
Europe, has undoubtedly assisted the diamond syndicate to a large
degree in their policy of steadily advancing the price of diamonds.
The importance of the diamonds themselves as an item of commerce is however but a small part of their
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