♦ VII ♦
It
is sufficiently clear that Ernest Oppenheimer nourished great ambitions
in respect of the role which he and his associated organizations were
to play in the future of the diamond industry, and the first step he
took had been to acquire an important degree of control of the South
West African production. It was not a monopoly—since there was a
certain measure of 'outside' production, and the position of the
Administrator of South West Africa in diamond matters implied a decided
limitation on his powers of action. Anglo American Corporation was not
a member of the Diamond Syndicate, and though Dunkelsbuhler's was a
rich and important house, it was not, so far as quota rights in the
Syndicate were concerned, on the same level as L. Breitmeyer and
Company and Barnato Brothers. These two firms, in addition to
possessing in their own names a large quota, were also connected with
the Central Mining and Investment Corporation and with the Johannesburg
Consolidated Investment Company respectively, so that their aggregated
power was considerably in excess of that of Dunkelsbuhler and Company.
Moreover, these two members of the Diamond Syndicate, besides being
financially very strong, were powerfully entrenched on the producing
side, through their interests in De Beers Consolidated (itself now the
deferred shareholder in the Premier (Transvaal) Mine) and in the
Jagersfontein Mine; and behind the De Beers Consolidated Mines there
stood, in the City of London, and in Paris, the magic name of the
Rothschilds: no longer, perhaps, as a firm, a large holder of shares,
but enjoying immense prestige, great connexions and a long record of
fruitful collaboration with the diamond industry. It was the case, of
course, that friendly relations had been established by Anglo American
Corporation with J. P. Morgan and Company, which, in effect, meant also
a friendly relationship with Morgan Grenfell and Company, of London,
but these relationships were of relatively recent date. Though there
were to be difficulties later on, Ernest Oppenheimer's relations with
De Beers in 1919 were
under
and of low average price? If the Government are really anxious to have
a diamond cutting industry established in South Africa, the only way to
do it is with the assistance of the Treasury, and by giving a subsidy
to any diamond cutters in Amsterdam or Antwerp for the first 200,000 or
500,000 carats of diamonds actually manufactured in the Union. That
subsidy must be on a sliding scale, increasing in the case of the
cutting of small diamonds. Only by actually assisting to cope with the
cost of cutting can we establish a diamond cutting industry in South
Africa, but we can never do it on an ad valorem basis.'
