TO THE FORMATION OF THE NEW SYNDICATE 131
our
endeavours will be directed to maintaining and strengthening the
co-operation between all the big producers, and I know that this is
also the policy of the companies in which we are interested. . . .
The arrangements were concluded in November 1923, the minute book of the corporation, recording under date of 16 November that:
The
chairman stated he was pleased to report that he had that morning
received a cable from London to the effect that Mr. Louis Oppenheimer
had made arrangements for the corporation to have an 8 per cent
interest in the Diamond Syndicate from 1 January 1924, while retaining
a 16 per cent interest in Angola diamonds. Arrangements would be made
in such a way that the corporation and Messrs. A. Dunkelsbuhler and
Company would remain free to negotiate with the Consolidated Diamond
Mines of South West Africa Limited, should the Syndicate or producers
not come to terms with that company. The chairman explained that, in
view of this very large interest which the Anglo American Corporation
had in the Consolidated Diamond Mines, some such provision was
essential, but hitherto it had proved a barrier to their joining the
Syndicate.
During
1924, also, an interest was acquired in the West African fields. Here
again, the shareholders of Anglo American Corporation were informed that
we
arranged to acquire an interest in the company and to purchase the
diamonds, always with the proviso that the annual output should be
limited. The Union producers have limited their output for a
considerable number of years and, in negotiating with companies outside
the Union, I found that the people who directed these concerns fully
realized the necessity of control, and freely and readily adopted the
principle of limiting their net output to the demand.
The
chairman of African Selection Trust at the time was Mr. (later Sir) A.
Chester Beatty, with whom Ernest Oppenheimer was later to be in
intimate contact over Rhodesian affairs.
The
first mention of British Guiana diamonds occurs in Ernest Oppenheimcr's
correspondence under date of 6 March 1924. Writing to M. Hodgson in
Kimberley, he remarked that
.
. . with reference to British Guiana, I don't know who gives the
Standard Bank this information, but these diamonds are by no means a
particular competition to South West, containing large quantities of
one, two and three carat stones, and even bigger pieces, and it is not
correct to say that they seriously compete with South West any more
than with any other
