competition
with Rhodes. The price of shares went up and up, and soon the price of
diamonds went down and down, for Rhodes and Barnato began trying to
undersell each other. It was a lovely, unreal time for diamond buyers
and a harrowing one for the two great antagonists. Finally, early in
1888, Barnato had had enough; he was ready to capitulate. Rhodes laid
down the terms, and Barnato accepted them; he turned over all his
Kimberley Central shares to Rhodes, in return for a substantial but
not decisive block of shares in the big new company Rhodes now
created—De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd.
A
small group of Kimberley Central shareholders protested the
amalgamation, and this was when Rhodes's charter became famous.
Kimberley Central's charter, the dissidents pointed out, provided that
it could merge only with similar mining companies, and they maintained
that De Beers wasn't a similar mining company at all but a potential
empire. The shareholders took the matter to court, and during the
proceedings, as the two charters were discussed, Rhodes's grand design
was exposed for everybody concerned to see. It was plain he visualized
a company that would not stop with the mere mining and selling of
diamonds but would use its resources to branch out into all sorts of
interests as it expanded northward until it dominated the whole of
Africa, and after that, perhaps, the world. He dreamed of a huge
corporation, or a collection of huge corporations, in which a few
supermen would run everything. The disgruntled Kimberley Central
shareholders, for their part, thought that digging out and selling
diamonds were functions enough for any diamond mining company. Barnato
had always felt the same, but now they feared that, by merging their
interests with De Beers', he was steering them right into those un-
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