236
SIR ERNEST OPPENHEIMER
However
desirous the Syndicate might be to afford a market for these latter
goods, the nature of market demand had to be taken into account, and in
so far as substitution was possible, an increase in 'outside'
stocks was just as serious a matter for the Syndicate as a possible
increase in the stocks of 'conference goods', complicated as the
situation was by the existence of the large stocks which the Syndicate
was already carrying.
By
the beginning of October 1930, there still remained a third major
problem to be settled: namely, the cession of the sales agreements to
the Diamond Corporation; on the necessity for this Ernest Oppen-heimer
was insistent, but it required the assent of the Minister, then in
London. On 10 October he was cabling London:
It
is essential that we get Minister's definite undertaking that he will
not refuse his consent to transfer agreements to Diamond Corporation as
soon as capital is enlarged to .£5,000,000 and £5,000,000 debentures.
In the absence of such definite undertaking all our work will be undone
and I do not wish to be a party to new agreements in such circumstances.
There were dangers in the situation: Ernest Oppenheimer was afraid, as he put it in a subsequent cable, of
Minister
attaching impossible conditions to transfer which he may well be
encouraged to do by Cape Town friends who are antagonistic and I would
not be surprised if they had already put forward such conditions which
Minister did not disclose in order to reach settlement. It is very
essential that Minister should now give his consent to transfer all
agreements to Diamond Corporation. I can understand that Minister might
say he does not know Diamond Corporation and would like to be assured
that it could carry out terms of agreements, and to cover this point a
condition that the present Syndicate should guarantee the fulfilment of
the contracts by Diamond Corporation is understandable and would be
acceptable to us.
He
subsequently drafted the guarantee formula, which was accepted. But, as
the Minister told Louis Oppenheimer a few days later in London, 'I am
not opposed on principle to a transfer from the Syndicate but I cannot
be rushed into a decision'. This was on 13 October, and in spite of a
premature Press announcement announcing agreement, full consent to cession was held up, while other details also continued
to be discussed. New difficulties were raised: the Advisory Committee
raised what Ernest Oppenheimer rightly called an 'eleventh hour
quibble', i.e. the legality of the Syndicate's position over a period
of forty years, which might be held to invalidate any arrangements for
