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92
SIR ERNEST OPPENHEIMER
It
includes the supply of financial facilities for the individual
producing unit, considered as a producing unit, but it includes much
else. As Ernest Oppenhcimer put it in his presidential address to the
Third (Triennial) Empire Mining and Metallurgical Congress in 1930:
The advantages of the system are manifold, but I will mention a few of the more outstanding features:
The
financing of the individual companies is facilitated. The parent
company acts as a link between the various operating companies, and
promotes co-operation in matters of common interest. The services of a
staff of highly skilled experts in all departments of mining and
metallurgy are constantly available to the individual companies.
Administration is standardized, in itself a matter of premier importance in all secretarial and accounting work.
The
stores and other requirements of the mines arc bought to the best
advantage, and at a minimum cost for the service. Where, as is the case
on the Rand, there are many companies whose properties adjoin or are
adjacent to one another, all engaged in the same class of work, the
existence of a central organization for the supply of expert advice and
information on matters which must in the nature of things be of common
interest, is clearly of incalculable value. It certainly ensures to the
individual companies great economics compared with the cost which would
have to be faced if each company were called upon to maintain a
separate and complete staff.
The
group system has had its critics in the past and has them in the
present: these criticisms have related at times to the possibility that
the leaders of such groups might abuse the powers which their knowledge
of detail and their financial strength give them.
The
answers lie in the fact that even under the group system the individual
producing units have their own responsible directorates and officials;
that the group system has developed a highly elaborate degree of
publicity which makes information generally available; finally, and
most importantly, that the leaders of any group abusing their position
would speedily lose public confidence and prestige and so destroy their
own power to do harm.
From the more technical angle the question is whether the group system justifies itself from the standpoint of cost, i.e.
whether the services performed could be more cheaply or more
efficiently carried out by the individual enterprises involved. The
situation was examined in detail by the Low Grade Mines Commission in
1920 and by the Commission on Conditions of Employment in the Gold
Mining Industry in 1948.
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