260 THE DIAMOND
who
chanced to be the unfortunate ones. The Kim-berley Mining Board was
therefore established in 1874, to remedy all mishaps, and assess the
cost upon all the owners pro rata. Thereafter each one was obliged to
pay his share of these expenditures for the common interests, or sell
his claims. This resulted in the sale of many claims, usually to
companies who were in a better financial position to pay these big
charges and wait for the profits which would accrue later. And as these
companies acquired more claims, if one was covered by fallen reef,
they had others from which they could be drawing money to offset the
charges made upon them, whereas if a man's single claim were buried,
his income with which to pay charges was buried with it.
The
consolidation of the mines was therefore a result of the force of
circumstances, for which shrewd men on the fields, who foresaw what the
trend of things must lead to, prepared themselves financially, both by
husbanding their own resources, and also by establishing connections
with men of large capital. This was done in a smaller way in the
Kimberley by Barney Bar-nato, simply as a money-making affair, and on a
larger scale by Cecil J. Rhodes when he forced an amalgamation of all
the Kimberley mines.
Some
idea of the extent and power of the De Beers Consolidated Mines Company
may be had from the statement of Mr. Gardner J. Williams, the former
manager, that it occupies 200,000 acres, employs 15,000 natives and
2,500 white men; (in 1906 the five mines employed nearly 24,000
natives, but owing to the 1907 panic in the United States, the number
of employees had been reduced by the end of 1908 to 12,278), con-
