GROWTH OF THE DIAMOND TRADE 59
yet
in full working order, has a plant about completed, capable of washing
8,000 loads a day. This mine will average probably one-fifth of a carat
per load, or about 500,000 carats for the year. With the De Beers group
and other independent mines turning out the same as in 1907, these new
mines could bring the total output to something over seven million
carats, an increase not much greater than that of 1908 over 1907, which
was nearly 1-1/2 million carats, although the new plants of the Premier
and Voorspoed mines were not yet in operation.
Beyond
the undoubted ability of the mines now in operation to produce over
seven million carats per annum, or nearly three times the quantity
which can be safely thrown upon the market, it is rumored that there
are huge quantities of diamond-bearing earth in Rhodesia and German
South West Africa, and probably many other rich deposits in Griqualand,
the Orange River Colony, and the Transvaal, yet uncovered. The diamond
industry has a problem of many difficult factors to solve. An unlimited
supply of material which can be marketed in limited quantities only,
and which can be produced at a cost so low that it is out of all
proportion to the market price of the finished product; an arbitrary
value which is a stimulus to new enterprises alien to the combination
which established it, and a commodity which loses a large part of its
desirability if the price of it is lowered. These apparently
irreconcilable elements make a satisfactory solution of the problem
extremely difficult, and there seems to be but one finality, viz., a
return to the regulation of output and price by the natural law of
supply and demand. At this writing
