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THE BOOK OF DIAMONDS
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fair, and on a large scale by Cecil J. Rhodes when he forced an amalgamation of all the Kimberley mines.
Some
idea of the extent and power of the DeBeer's Consolidated Mines Company
may be had from the statement of Mr. Gardner F. Williams, the former
manager, that it occupies 200,000 acres; employed in 1906 nearly 24,000
natives, but owing to the 1907 panic in the United States the number of
employees had been reduced by the end of 1908 to 12,000; consumed
monthly 250,000 pounds of mutton, 200,000 pounds of beef; used 6,000
tons of coal a day; had 2,000 horses and mules, and kept 12 stallions
of the best breeds and 200 brood mares—this in a country that a little
over thirty years ago was over four hundred miles from the nearest
railroad and port and was obliged to transport most of the necessities
through an undeveloped country by ox or mule wagons. At that time coal
cost eighty dollars per ton; wood, one dollar and seventy-five cents
per one hundred pounds; eggs were seventy-five cents a dozen. The
first machinery used cost fabulous prices. A hundred horse-power engine
cost forty thousand dollars delivered in Kimberley. Transportation from
Port Elizabeth or Cape Town ranged from two dollars and fifty cents to
seven dollars and fifty cents per hundred pounds. Wagons were also
very high. White men in the mines got from twenty to forty dollars per
week; natives five to eight dollars. After the railroads from Cape
Town and Port Elizabeth were brought into Kimberley in 1885, prices
fell.
Foremost in the development of the diamond empire
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