THE YEARS OF APPRENTICESHIP 73
The
companies carrying on diamond mining in British South Africa did not
make an average 155. per carat profit, and therefore could not afford
to pay such a tax. It follows, then, that the result of such a tax
would have to be a sudden and arbitrary increase of nearly 60 per cent
in the price of diamonds. It is, however, quite unreasonable, to think
that diamonds arc being sold today at a lower price than the demand
warrants, especially not as for years past the diamond market has been
controlled by powerful and firm hands . . . common sense tells us that
the only way to increase the value of diamonds is to make them scarce,
that is, to reduce the production. Against a few hundred cutters
introduced into the country the loss of a very much larger number of
miners would have to be faced, so that the establishment of a new
industry would not be a gain but a loss to South Africa.
The
second document was, of course, the report written on South West
African diamonds. It was a joint contribution and, after the lapse of
fifty years, it is not possible, nor indeed worth while, to determine
the precise degree of contribution made by the three signatories
respectively. Being written within six years of the original discovery,
it is free from the mythology which in the course of time accumulates
to distort the naked facts. As regards the outlook for the future,
while it was recorded as inevitable that the claims of certain
companies would be worked out completely, yet 'it can be safely assumed
that over the next five years the present [1914] production of 115,000
carats per month could be maintained'. Moreover, 'in many cases it is
stated that a certain area has been exhausted. This should really be
interpreted as "all ground having been treated once". There is no doubt
that a good portion of the diamondiferous area will be retreated at
some later date if the price of the diamonds warrants it. The recovery
will be of poorer quality generally.' Five years later Ernest
Oppenheimer was to be intimately concerned with the formation of the
Consolidated Diamond Mines of South West Africa: his personal knowledge
of the area must have been of great value to him.
There
is a footnote of history to be added. On 30 July 1914, just five days
before the outbreak of war, the South African producers and the Diamond
Regie concluded an agreement. It provided for the creation of a diamond
pool of producers, for a board of control representative of the
producers, and for sale to the Diamond Syndicate, on the basis of the
latter receiving a commission of 4 per cent on the total net sales
proceeds plus 5 per cent of the profits, if any. The Syndicate members
were entitled to put into the pool the diamond stocks
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