♦ VIII ♦
At
this time, that is, during the latter months of 1927 and the year 1928,
Ernest Oppenheimer was confronted with three groups of technical
problems which required immediate attention.
The
first group consisted of two issues closely allied to one another. The
uprush of the Lichtenburg production seriously affected the saleability
of the output of the Premier Mine and also the saleability of inferior
stones generally. The first step taken was the sale to the De Beers
company of the six-month quota of the Premier Mine for the period
July-December 1927. The wider policy, which concerned De Beers as well
as the Premier Mine and the Diamond Syndicate, was the elimination of
inferior qualities from the sales quota of both mines. Writing to Louis
Oppenheimer on 28 December 1927, just before leaving for Europe, and
announcing his intention to 'settle the main outstanding diamond
questions' before he left, Ernest Oppenheimer argued that:
There
are two policies which could have been pursued: the one is to let the
Premier Mine become unpayable and the other to really make an effort,
by the elimination of rubbish, to make it a dividend-paying nunc. To
have followed the first course would have been absolutely wrong and of
no permanent advantage to De Beers. It is true that De Beers would have
replaced a part of the Premier shortfall, but the Government would
never put up with the complete loss of revenue from the Premier and in
the long run De Beers would be taxed further.
The
second course of making the Premier payable by eliminating rubbish is
the right one. We have carefully considered the mining policy and .. .
will adopt a mining policy which will make it unnecessary to start
underground work for seven or eight years, or in other words we get a
respite of quite
