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Ch. 3: Growth of the Diamond Trade

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GROWTH OF THE DIAMOND TRADE 55
mines. For the ten years from 1898 to 1907 the price at the mines was as follows:
The yield of carats per load, however, fell steadily. Whereas Barnato in his first annual report after the con­solidation, reckoned each load as carrying on an average one and three-eighths carats, the yield of the De Beers and Kimberley in 1907 was 0.37 carats per load. In the first year of the De Beers Consolidated, the average was not as Barnato estimated, l}i carats, but 1.15.
Apparently the Diamond Syndicate advanced the price of rough to the cutters as much and as rapidly as the prosperity of a prospering public would permit, and the mines management charged themselves as the Diamond Syndicate, a sufficient advance to recoup themselves as stockholders, for the decreasing yield per load and con­sequent increase of cost per carat of production.
During the years of world-wide and marvelous pros­perity from 1889 to 1903, the De Beers Consolidated and the Diamond Syndicate controlled the African out­put and the diamond industry of the world, either by the control of the mines in Africa, or the purchase by the syndicate of the product of such small mines as
Ch. 3: Growth of the Diamond Trade Page of 448 Ch. 3: Growth of the Diamond Trade
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