34
SIR ERNEST OPPENHEIMER
improved
when South Africa, after a bitter struggle to maintain the old
relationship between the South African pound and gold, followed the
example of Great Britain and abandoned the gold standard on 27 December
1932; parity with the pound sterling followed. The equilibrium between
prices and costs was more than restored, not by lowering the latter
directly, but by raising the former. The result was that a great
impetus was given to the expansionist movement which was already
becoming manifest: from this time onwards it was the Far West
Rand and the Klerksdorp areas which attracted attention— not for the
first time. Once these areas were 'proven', it was inevitable that
attempts should be made to discover whether the gold-bearing reefs
extended southwards beyond the boundary formed by the Vaal River into
the Orange Free State, into areas which previous experience had also
suggested might be auriferous.
In
the event, it was ultimately shown that the payable gold-bearing reef
of the Orange Free State was not identical with the 'West Wits Line' of
the western Transvaal. But it took both time and money before the facts
could be established, and there were moments when it looked as if the
whole of the efforts expended were to prove abortive. And even after
the break-through, the outlook for Anglo American Corporation was not
too promising: it was by a series of very bold coups by Ernest
Oppenheimer that the position was dramatically reversed.
The
original pioneering work in the modern development of the Far West Rand
was undertaken by the geologists and consulting engineers of the
gold-mining house established by C.J. Rhodes—New Consolidated Gold
Fields, which led to the formation of West Wit-watersrand Areas, in
which Anglo American Corporation took an interest. 'West Wits' was
founded in November 1932: it was followed in April 1933 by the
registration of Western Reefs Exploration and Development Company, by
Anglo American Corporation. A steady policy of exploration and
development followed, on both sides of the Vaal; this phase culminated
in the formation of the West Rand Investment Trust. It was a consistent
policy of Ernest Oppenheimer to group together into separate holding
and finance companies, for financial and administrative reasons, the
interests of Anglo American Corporation in specific directions: a
policy which had really begun when he brought the Rand Selection and
Consolidated Mines Selection companies, with their interests in the Far
East Rand gold and coal, under the control of Anglo American
Corporation. It was a policy
