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WORLD CRISIS AND WORLD LEADERSHIP 259
the
end of December; and on 6 January the Minister was presented with an
elaborate memorandum setting out the offer in detail. The basic fact to
be faced was that the South African receipts did not amount to £600,000
South African, or, as the memorandum was to put it, did not reach
£600,000 gold. That being so, modification in the programme was
inevitable. The preamble to the memorandum set out the position:
According
to the undertaking given to the Government last July, the producers
undertook to continue the scale of working adopted for the second six
months of 1931 and for the first semester of 1932, provided the
replacement for this latter period was £600,000, based on five-eighths
of the total sales by the Diamond Corporation of conference producers'
and outside goods, and calculated in accordance with the sales
agreements.
It
is clearly evident now that the replacement figure will not equal
.£600,000 in gold, and therefore the producers are free from the
obligation of the undertaking referred to.
However,
'with the object of averting drastic retrenchment of white labour at
the various properties and the resulting distress of such a step in the
present critical times', a modified programme was suggested. As regards
the Premier and the Consolidated Diamond Mines, production was to be
carried on till 30 June 1932 at the then current rate, subject to
certain minor modifications—the same applied to Koffiefon-tein though
this mine was not a conference producer. As regards New Jagersfontein,
which was in a serious financial condition, its expenditure was to be
limited 'to the sum necessary to maintain and protect the property'.
The
critical case was, obviously, the position of De Beers itself. The
producers offered to carry on operations on the then current scale till
31 March 1932. If at that date sales had reached .£300,000 in gold, 'plus
one-half of the difference between £600,000 and the actual replacement
in gold', the same scale of production would be continued till 30 June
1932. This, in effect, meant that the minimum receipts in South
African currency required to make the offer effective was £450,000. If
sales subsequently increased, so as to make receipts £1,000,000 gold
(or .£1,000,000 S.A.), production would be maintained on the same
scale till December 1932; and the mines would revert to the production
programme of the first three months 1931,
Kotze,
important new directors of De Beers, by E. H. Farrer and J. H. Gratton,
managing director and executive secretary respectively of the Diamond
Corporation, and by H. T. Dickinson, the consulting engineer to De
Beers.
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