554
SIR ERNEST OPPENHEIMER
department
involved—exploration, expenditure on equipment and its installation
and, ultimately, actual working costs. If conditions arc made more
onerous the danger will be that capital will fight shy of an enterprise
like this which is still very much in the unproved stage. The possible
loss of further opportunity for gold mining in South Africa would be
regrettable enough in itself, but the general advancement of the
country would also be retarded and would suffer as there would be no
development of the many other activities which so far have always
followed on gold mining in this country. Sight must not be lost of the
fact that the Union of South Africa does not control the price of gold
and hence cannot adjust it to meet any increase in costs of production.
But
by the time this document was circulated not only had Anglo American
Corporation acquired large interests in Western Holdings, but had
embarked upon relations with the Blinkpoort Gold Syndicate and upon
renewed relations with Wit. Extensions.
Blinkpoort
Gold Syndicate had been registered in June 1933 and had acquired by
1939 prospecting and option rights in the Odendaalsrus area adjacent to
and north of the Western Holdings area. But, as the report of its
directors for the year ending 30 June 1939 stated:
Following
results obtained from the prospecting operations and acting upon the
advice of the geophysical consultant and with a view to curtailing
expenditure, your directors have allowed several contracts to lapse and
have maintained only those contracts which are considered to be
favourably situated ... it is not the intention of your company to
enter upon a programme of boring operations at present, but rather to
conserve its resources pending the results of boring operations being
conducted by others.
The company was, in fact, in a state of 'suspended animation'.
In
1941-2 the situation changed. In April 1942, Anglo American Corporation
concluded an agreement, in terms of which Anglo American Corporation
undertook the exploration, on joint account with Blinkpoort Syndicate,
of an area of some 5,000 morgen—the first fruits of that agreement
being the putting down of a borehole on the farm Arrarat No. 567.
Before the close of the financial year 1942-3, three boreholes had been
completed on that farm and a fourth was under way, half the cost being,
in this case, borne by African and European Investment Company. In
August 1944, a circular to shareholders announced important steps
which had been the subject of an agreement with Anglo American
Corporation dated July 1944. The capital of the company was increased
(Anglo American Corporation and Transvaal Mining and Finance Company
underwriting the issue free of commission and undertaking at the same
time to take up an
