24	SIR ERNEST OPPENHEIMER
	It would be both easy and misleading to discuss the issue merely in terms of the self-interest of diamond producers and distributors. Had the market collapsed—as it threatened to do at times, particularly when the great depression shook the economy of the entire world— shareholders and diamond merchants would have suffered immense losses, and so would the owners of diamonds. But the social conse­quences in the areas of actual or potential production would have been equally serious and would have involved grave political consequences. These adverse consequences would have been gravest in the Union and in South West Africa, but the economic development of Angola, of the Congo and of West Africa would also have been seriously affected. It was Ernest Oppenheimer who was destined to solve the problems involved: they were immense. It was necessary to reconcile the divergent interests of different producing areas; they had a common interest in preventing the destruction of the market; but in the appor­tionment of production and/or sales quotas, each area, naturally, desired to expand at the expense of others, and, in this desire, they were backed by governments anxious to sustain the level of employment and to maintain or increase tax revenues from diamond mining. In South Africa, the Government was not only a tax-gatherer, but in the course of time it became a producer on its own account; it was not only anxious to maintain, or if possible expand, South Africa's share of the market, but to encourage diamond cutting in South Africa, which was against the interests of the traditional producers of cut stones, especially Antwerp and Amsterdam. It was also necessary to reconcile the interests of the producers with the interests of the distributors and to reconcile the interests of the distributors inter se: at the commencement, the Diamond Syndicate handled only Kimberley diamonds, but in 1914 the outbreak of World War I prevented the inauguration of an attempt to widen the international control of diamond sales; just before that war broke out |the Syndicate and the official Regie in German South West Africa had come to terms. When production expanded in Angola, Congo and West Africa the problem became, obviously, much more acute. More disparate interests were involved; above all, more finance was required to buy up and, if necessary, hold indefinitely the quantities produced. The larger the output, the greater the finance involved, but, with the growth of scale, also grew the financial risk of great loss if the market finally collapsed. The issue, at bottom, was a simple one: if the distributors, to hmit their risks, insisted on a limitation