South
African, during a visit to England in 1880, make the rounds of the
newspapers in an attempt to convince the die-hards. Rhodes by this time
was firmly established as a magnate and so was Barney Barnato, and
Kimberley had become quite a town. But the self-appointed missionary of
truth couldn't convince The Times of all this, nor the Observer, nor the Telegraph. The Times's city,
or financial, editor did listen for a while and promised to publish a
letter on the subject, but later on he changed his mind. He had made
inquiries, he said, and discovered that the mines were in the hands of
unprincipled men. Besides, he pointed out, such a letter might affect
the share market.
In
the meantime the picture was changing on the Fields: many of the
original diggers had acknowledged defeat and pulled out, whereas others
saw beyond the difficulties of individual mining to a solution of
their troubles by combining. Rhodes wasn't the only one who realized
that consolidation was inevitable. A lot of men were busy snapping up
relinquished claims. For a while the Kimberley, the most important
mine in the Fields, was split up and owned by a bewildering number of
companies, but the best claims in the place belonged to Barney Barnato.
No novelist could have created a neater character than Barnato to set in contrast against the empire-builder Rhodes. Barnato
was a melodramatic, mercurial figure: Rhodes was cool and well-bred in
the English fashion. Barnato came from London's East End: Rhodes was a
clergyman's son with a middle-class background. Rhodes had been
educated and continued doggedly to acquire more education all through
his early career in the Diamond Fields, returning to Oxford at intervals
