ANGLO AMERICAN CORPORATION 83
Perhaps
the most important event of the year for us was the securing of the
deep level lease of the Brakpan Mine. The business required a very
large expenditure of time and work, and consideration of alternative
policies involving complicated calculations by our engineering staff.
... In the negotiations with the Government we were fortunate in having
the assistance of Mr. Ernest Oppenheimer, late Mayor of Kimberley, who
went to South Africa as our special representative in all the financial
details, and devoted himself to our interests, ably seconded by Mr.
Lynch.
(Mr.
Lynch, it may be added, had succeeded W. L. Honnold as managing
director in South Africa of both Consolidated and Rand Selection Trust.
He was at a later date to become, first, an alternate director, then a
director, and finally the deputy chairman of the Anglo American
Corporation.)
The
relations between Ernest Oppenheimer and the Consolidated Mines
Selection were, therefore, intimate. He had, indeed as he was later to
tell the shareholders at the second annual meeting of Anglo American
Corporation, on 26 May 1919,
entered
into a reciprocal agreement with the Consolidated Mines Selection
Company Limited, prior to the formation of your corporation, under
which I had the right to participate to the extent of 50 per cent,
during a period of seven years from 8 June 1917, in any gold-mining
interests acquired by the C.M.S. Company in any part of the Transvaal
east of the present property of the East Rand Proprietary Mines, and
north of the township of Heidelberg.
This agreement he subsequently ceded to the corporation free of charge.
It
might have been expected that his career in the general mining field
would take the form of an increasing degree of control over what was
already a leading mining house. Indeed, in after years, he did so
obtain control, but during the period 1916-17 his activities took a
different form—he decided to form his own enterprise. There is no
surviving correspondence which would allow one to follow the earlier
course of his thoughts before he actually embarked upon negotiations,
but three points may be noted. First, Consolidated Mines Selection was
the subject for the time being of a vicious Press campaign, because
before the outbreak of the war four of its directors had been German
and a not insignificant percentage of its shareholdings had been in
German hands. This must have made its relations with the Government
more difficult, and it is to be remembered that Government was at that
time anxious for a speedy development of the Far
