to
merge individual ownerships into corporate control, and to amalgamate
corporations into supreme interests, separately in the Kimberley and De
Beers, so also it became inevitable that the two great fields should
also be merged, and Rhodes sought to merge the whole diamond-mining
industry into the De Beers Consolidated Mines, a company whose
franchise permitted almost everything but the functions of national
government. Barnato wished to confine the interests he represented, to
the mining of diamonds and the profits accruing, without entering into
the liabilities which the greater scheme involved. The French Company
was the clashing point. The two interests fought long and hard, and
finally compromised by passing the French Company into the Kimberley
Central, and allowing Rhodes to acquire a large interest in the
Central. Rhodes then sought to force the two great companies to merge,
and finally succeeded in obliging the Barnato interests to agree to do
so. A minority of the stockholders of the Kimberley Central, however,
succeeded in getting an injunction restraining the merger, on the
grounds that The De Beers Consolidated Mines, on account of its
extensive powers beyond that of diamond mining, was not a company for
the same or similar purposes as the Central, which was a company formed
for diamond mining only, and whose articles of association permitted
the company to amalgamate only with another company of the same or
similar purposes. This did not deter Rhodes and his associates, who
accomplished their object by the liquidation of the Kimberley Central
and the purchase of all its property and assets by the De Beers
Consolidation,
