tember
1931; he died in June 1932; F. Hirschhorn had already resigned in
December 1930. Lord Bessborough, who had been deputy chairman of De
Beers since 1924, also retired in 1931 on being appointed Governor
General of Canada. These changes necessarily meant that Ernest
Oppenheimer, already eminent both by virtue of his abilities and also
through his position, became also the manifest surviving inheritor of
the old days and the old traditions of the diamond industry. He had
still the aid and support of his brothers in London in facing the new
problems; in South Africa he recruited new blood in the persons of Sir
Robert Kotze, M.P., previously Chief Government Mining Engineer, and E.
H. Farrer, formerly Union Secretary to the Treasury, thus bringing into
diamond affairs a new element of expertise of great importance. This
expert element was reinforced in London by the appointment to the De
Beers board of Sir Basil Blackett, a distinguished Treasury expert and
a former finance member of the Government of India.
♦ II ♦
It
was obviously in the general interest that the negotiations for new
inter-producers' and sales agreements, which began at the beginning of
1930, should be concluded as speedily as possible; delays involved a
further undermining of confidence in the future of the industry. In
fact, it was not until May 1931 that the Union Government finally
ratified the agreements and by that time the international economic
situation was much worse than it had been in February 1930, when the
first of what in the event was to prove a long series of conferences of
various kinds between the industry and the Union Government took place.
By the time the conference of 19 February 1930 was called, the
conference producers and the Syndicate (for it has to be remembered
that the embryo Diamond Corporation was at this stage still only to
be concerned with the 'outside' production)2 had agreed upon draft
terms as regards quotas and sales arrangements: further, it had been
agreed in principle between the Congo producers and the Syndicate
that the then existing arrangements were to be continued for another
period. The general results of the February conference were summed
2
By an agreement dated 10 March 1930 between the conference producers,
the Syndicate members and the Diamond corporation, all right, title
and interests in the 'outside diamonds' were ceded to the corporation,
those diamonds, then in the possession of the Syndicate, being valued
at £4,811,766 10s. 0d.
