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resign his post and renounce Kimberley, but now he did this. With his family he moved away, down to the Cape.
Along
the coast east of Cape Town, serving as a summer resort and suburb, is
a magnificent stretch of beach at the foot of the mountains known as
Sea Point. Oppenheimer went to stay there at a hotel for a bit.
For days he walked along the sand or climbed the rocks and sat high up,
looking out to sea, struggling with disappointment and resentment, and
thinking things out. He had to plan the future. He was only thirty-six,
but he had amassed capital and reputation: he had a wide choice of
alternatives. Certainly he would not return to Kimberley, but he didn't
want to leave South Africa altogether. He decided at last to go to
Johannesburg, and he has lived there ever since.
The
gold-mining company had on its staff an American consulting engineer
named W. L. Honnold. Honnold and Oppen-heimer became friendly, and the
American told Oppenheimer about his theory that there were other
undiscovered gold deposits at certain points relative to the Reef that
was then being worked. Honnold proposed to investigate by means of
boring, and of course a program of judicious land buying was indicated,
too. But this was all by way of being a major operation in the future:
the project called for more funds than the two men could supply for
themselves. It was a situation like that of Rhodes with the diamond
mines when he wanted to amalgamate. The two friends in 1917 organized
a company called the Anglo American Corporation of South Africa, a name
they hoped might strike a responsive chord in the only group of
investors who were likely to have ready cash at that time; that is to
say, Americans. Among Honnold's friends was Herbert Hoover, then in
London as head of the commission for Belgian
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