ANGLO AMERICAN CORPORATION	91
	Leadership at 'top level' was originally provided by a small group of men—C. J. Rhodes and C. D. Rudd, the Ecksteins, Alfred Beit and Julius Wernher, J. B. Robinson (although he left Kimberley under a cloud and was, in fact, put on his feet again by the generosity of Beit), the Barnatos, Sigismund Neumann, the Albus, the Farrers and others (they did not all come from Kimberley). But whether they were acting as individuals or as partnerships, their resources, so long as they were not organized on a joint-stock basis, were theirs and theirs alone, except in so far as they could borrow from banks or obtain loans from friends: to which there were obvious limits. If they were to 'capitalize' their reputations and reinforce their funds, they were obliged to seek the assistance of the investor. They could, of course, do this by the simple process of creating separate mining companies, retaining a certain holding for themselves, and using the proceeds of the issue for 'working capital' and for further company creations. But investment in individual mines did not necessarily satisfy the investor, who did not wish to put all his eggs into one basket: the obvious way out was to create not only individual companies controlling single mines, but companies holding interests in more than one mine. Such a develop­ment afforded wide scope for diversification of investment: it was possible to spread the risk by investing not only in gold-mines but in other enterprises as well—coal, land, diamonds, other industries— just as it was equally possible to move into gold from these other direc­tions, for the same purpose of distributing risks. Nor need investment be confined to any one country. Once the principle was accepted, it was possible to create sub-groups, or sub-interests, to group the mines in a particular area, for instance, and to substitute a holding in such a sub-group for a range of miscellaneous holdings in individual com­panies. From the standpoint of securing ultimate control at the mini­mum cost of direct capital investment, these sub-groupings have great advantages, though this aspect of the matter is by no means the sole, or the most important, consideration to be borne in mind. Thus there arose on the basis of private partnerships or individual businesses the 'finance houses' and the 'mining groups'. But the 'Group System' came to have important implications other than financial. There is an administrative aspect. From the administrative point of view the group system implies the provision, by a single centre, of those faculties which are the common necessities of a group of producing units, which, in the absence of such a single centre, would have to be found and paid for by each producing unit separately.