resisted by his colleagues and not eventually insisted upon by the Government.
There
remained, when all other points had been settled, three main
difficulties. The Government, as the owner of the Namaqualand State
diggings, was naturally anxious to sell its diamonds, if not to the
South African cutters, then to the Syndicate or the Diamond
Corporation. This aspect of the problem became inextricably mixed up
with an allied matter—the right of the other producers to curtail
operations, if, in spite of such curtailment, they could continue to
contribute their full quota out of stocks. The Government took the view
that the quota should be reduced if operations were reduced, because,
as the Secretary for Mines argued in a letter to De Beers in August
1930, 'as the Government has to bear the brunt of the consequent
unemployment and distress it is not unreasonable to provide that the
balance of such producers' quota should fall [sic] to be made up by the Government'.
The
second main difficulty concerned the 'outside' producers in the true
sense, namely, producers outside the Union and South West Africa, in
particular the Angola and the Congo producing companies. The
cultivation of good relations with these producers, and with the West
African producers, had been for years one of Ernest Oppen-heimer's main
preoccupations. In May 1930 he visited Brussels, in company with his
brothers Louis and Otto (who had a special interest in Congo diamonds),
G. Imroth (representing Barnato Brothers) and Sir Edmund Davis, a
director of the Angola company. The result of this visit was that the
contracts with B.C.K. and Forminiere were renewed until the end of
1934, subject to certain technical adjustments, while the Angola
contract was also renewed. These arrangements were confirmed at a
meeting in Paris in September, when the Angola company agreed, in
principle, on Ernest Oppenheimcr's request to accept certain fixed
minima for the period 1932-4.
There
was, of course, a fundamental difference between the position of these
companies and that of the South African companies: any arrangements
concluded between them and the Syndicate were purely voluntary on their
part, and no pressure could be brought to bear upon them by the South
African Government, either to limit output, or indeed to sell to the
Syndicate at all—so far as the Congo and Angola companies were
concerned, they could always, if they wished, maintain a completely
independent organization in Antwerp, one of the two great cutting
centres. In the autumn of 1930 the agreements with these various
companies had been shown confidentially to the Minister
