GROWTH OF THE DIAMOND TRADE 47
money
and suddenly acquired fortunes, raised the price twenty-five per cent.,
to which the Franco-German War added another ten per cent., and an era
of prosperity succeeding, sent it up fifteen or twenty per cent. more.
America's panic of 1873 broke the price again, and it fell steadily
with the advent of African diamonds until Cecil Rhodes syndicated the
mines, since which, with an unprecedented and inexhaustible supply, the
prices have been gradually forced up until they are now more than
double what they were at that time.
The
coalition of the Kimberley and De Beers interests under Cecil Rhodes
and Barney Barnato, transformed the diamond trade from an uncertain
and speculative industry, liable to sink with unfavorable conditions
into insignificance, to one of international importance, ranking with
the staples of commerce. The development of the industry will
therefore be considered mainly from that point.
When
the fact became apparent, that unlike all diamond mining heretofore in
India and Brazil and the first discoveries in Africa on the Vaal River
conducted in alluvial debris, the diggings about Kimberley and
elsewhere were all in huge pipes or chimneys of material in which the
diamonds were formed, and that the supply of diamond-bearing earth was
practically inexhaustible, the reflection followed, that without some
powerful control of the diamond output of Africa, diamonds would soon
become so common and plentiful, that however cheaply they could be
mined, competition and an over-supply would cheapen them to a
profitless price. Cecil Rhodes, with that overlook of present
conditions which enabled him to grasp their future outcome, at once
