GROWTH OF THE DIAMOND TRADE 49
£115,000
capital, under the title of the " Barnato Diamond Mining Company." In
1881, he floated several other companies. The time and conditions were
ripe for consolidation. The working of individual claims was fast
becoming impractical; there was an undoubted supply of diamonds, and
times were booming in the home countries from which the capital must
come for large and united action.
While
Barnato was doing this work on the Kimberley, Cecil John Rhodes was
similarly at work on the De Beers, three miles away. In the same year
he there formed the De Beers Mining Company. There were two other
companies on the De Beers chimney: The De Beers Central, and the
Oriental. The claims of these companies were in some respects more
favorably situated than those of Rhodes' Company; he therefore worked
for an amalgamation of the three, and succeeded; first absorbing the
Central, and later the Oriental, so that his mine, the De Beers Mining
Company, practically controlled the De Beers Chimney.
On
the Kimberley, Barnato continued to pursue the policy of amalgamation
also, gathering into one company known as the Kimberley Central, every
claim except those owned by the French Company.
While
these two men were working on parallel lines near together, to
concentrate power by the seizure of opportunities which the evolution
of natural conditions offered, the one as part of a grand scheme of
empire building, the other with the sole business object of
money-making, those same evolutions gradually converged their
ambitions and brought them in contact, and
contact was necessarily, war. As it became necessary 4
