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Ch. 2: Anglo-American Corporation

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CHAPTER II
Anglo American Corporation
1917 onwards. The Anglo American Corporation was founded in 1917, when Ernest Oppenheimcr had attained the age of 37. The formation of the corporation was to prove to be the turning point of his life: it also was a turning point in the history of South African mining. This chapter deals with the formation of the corporation; it was indirectly the result of the close association of Dunkelsbuhler and Company, the partnership firm with which the Oppenheimcr family had long been closely connected, with two gold-mining houses —the Consolidated Mines Selection Company and the Rand Selection Company. The personal relations between Ernest Oppenheimer and W. L. Honnold, an eminent American expert connected with the two companies mentioned, led to the association of American capital with the new enterprise. At that time the centre of interest in gold-mining circles was the development of production on the Far East Rand. The Anglo American Corporation's interests were first centred there, but it and its associated companies have since spread far beyond this limited area. The main lines of development are indicated, for, from the first, Ernest Oppenheimer had intended his firm to be a factor, not only in gold-mining, but in diamond affairs as well. In fact, however, no simple formula can describe the developments of the forty-five years since the date of the formation of the corporation.
♦ I ♦
he relations between gold- and diamond-mining in South Africa have always been intimate, though not necessarily at all times formal. The earliest discoveries of gold and diamonds
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tooK place almost contemporaneously, and long beiore cither industry had reached an advanced stage of technological or financial develop­ment there was a rudimentary flow of labour and of capital from one to the other according to the relative prospects opening up at the moment. The Australian, Californian and other 'diggers' who were originally attracted by the prospects of the 'Tati' and the 'northern gold-fields' hurried to the Vaal and to Kimberley when prospects there appeared to be brighter: when the first depression—in 1872 and 1873—occurred on the diamond fields, some alleviation of the resulting economic distress there was occasioned by the migration of diggers to Lydenburg and Pilgrims' Rest in the eastern Transvaal. The Barberton 'gold-boom' and the early Rand discoveries did some-
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