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SIR ERNEST OPPENHEIMER
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♦ VI ♦
The
proposal to close down the Dutoitspan Mine at Kimberley and to work
only two other mines, each white worker to be employed four days a week
instead of five, was submitted to the Government on 19 June 1931.
Native labour would work a six-day week, and 'no white labour will be
thrown out of employment, and the white employees would be able to earn
a wage sufficient to cover living expenses'.
It
was this proposal which led to the De Aar conference between the
Minister of Mines and Ernest Oppenheimer on 30 June. He was in a
fighting mood; he wanted above all to get the Government to consent to
a possible closure in two months' time:
Our
London colleagues do not realize as vividly as we on the spot do what
the closing down of a mine means. We are making every effort; we can
carry on for two months, but we might have to come back in two months
and say we cannot carry on. We have not got any more money—we cannot
help ourselves. If we cannot agree now we will have to close down. . .
. I have had so much worry about this; if my plans to keep people
employed are so little appreciated that we cannot put our programme
into force with the consent of the Government, then what is the use of
discussing any future reductions which may become necessary with the
Government? At the end of two months' time it will then be best to
close down and suffer the penalty. I am not going to stand to see De
Beers brought to bankruptcy. We shall do our best to so work our mines
that our employees are not put out of employment, but we must husband
our resources. Wc will carry on as long as we can, and more we cannot
do. I am not going to be pointed to as the chairman of De Beers company
who saw it brought to bankruptcy and who kept their Europeans employed
to ruin the shareholders. If we have to do it—which I regret most
terribly—without your sanction, and if the Government will not give us
the countenance to reduce our operations, I will never approach them
again.
For
the rest, at this first conference, it is clear from the record of the
proceedings that the Minister was concerned with removing the evident
suspicion entertained by Ernest Oppenheimer that the former was
antagonistic to the diamond industry, while Ernest Oppenheimer himself
was concerned with explaining to the Minister that the maintenance of
the ratio between sales of outside producers' and conference producers'
diamonds was essentially a question of the revival of the market demand
for diamonds as a whole; if the world demand were
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