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Ch. 2: Old Digger, Old Fool

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CHAPTER TWO
Old Digger, Old Fool
What started out as a diamond rush in South Africa is now a system of corporations that are piled up on each other, to form an inverted pyramid, in a relationship fantastically close and complex. Diamonds financed the development of gold mines. Gold mines led to the recent uranium discoveries. African fi­nance in general underwrites a considerable part of the world's banking activities. To an ordinary unfinancial brain like mine it is all so deep and mysterious that it came as a considerable shock to discover that the map of Africa is still dotted, close to the cradle of the whole thing, with diamond diggings of the earliest pattern. Private diggers still wield their picks and shov­els (anyway steam shovels) and scratch away at the surface of the same earth that is pierced by shafts, practically next door —shafts that go down thousands of feet into diamond-bearing volcanic stocks.
The private diggers see nothing out of the ordinary in this. To them, digging is a natural, sensible proceeding, and under­ground mining seems prosaic and rather decadent. They see no reason why they should give up time-honored, respectable
Ch. 1: Kimberly Page of 303 Ch. 2: Old Digger, Old Fool
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