prolonged
fall of prices and the massive unemployment which accomÂpanied that
fall affected every part of the world, destroyed the interÂnational
gold standard and enormously strengthened the impulse towards narrow
and selfish trade and economic policies and in the end threatened the
entire social and political basis of the western world.
The
onset of the depression already found the diamond industry facing the
handicap of large stocks, the financing of which inevitably became more
arduous the longer the depression lasted, since current production also
involved a tie-up of funds. Inevitably, further, the prolongation of
the depression made it impossible to arrive at finality in any
dispositions made, and greatly increased the risk that the views of the
Government and the views of the leaders of the industry should fail to
coincide.
Inevitably,
also, the depression imposed an almost intolerable burden upon Ernest
Oppenheimer himself. His interests were not confined to the diamond
industry and the universality of the collapse rendered the position of
the base metal producers, and therefore of all his Rhodesian concerns,
as precarious as that of the diamond producers. He had not only to
confront technical problems of the most serious kind and to act as
spokesman of the diamond industry in Parhament, but had also to
confront the problem of finance in his own person. He was a rich man,
but his fortune was bound up with the future of the diamond industry
and trade, with Anglo American Corporation (also intimately linked with
the diamond industry and trade) and with Rhodesian companies. In after
life he would often refer to these years and admit that the strain was
almost intolerable, not only from the physical and mental but also from
the financial point of view. But he never lost either his courage or
his resourcefulness.
In
one other and important respect the situation was changing: the old
generation was giving way to a new. S. B. Joel suffered a serious
illness in 1930, and the possibility that he might not recover had
already raised the question of whether the diamond industry could stand
the shock of a possible withdrawal of 'Barnato money' from the trade
and the further question of how to prevent the Jagersfontein Mine from
passing into possibly hostile hands. He attended the 42nd annual
meeting of De Beers, over which Ernest Oppenheimer presided for the
first time, but he died on 22 May 1931. L. Breitmeyer, who together
with F. Hirschhorn represented the last links with the old firm of
Wernher, Beit and Company, had died in March of 1930; Sir David Harris,
another veteran, retired from the De Beers board on 30 Sep-
