THE ESSENTIAL COMBINATION
has
been told why and how the conflicting interests on the Diamond Field
were fused in one dominant organization. The signal services of this
amalgamation are now too obvious for dispute. By the formation of De
Beers Consolidated Mines Limited, it became practicable to design and
conduct mining operations systematically and economically and to
regulate the output to the market demand. It was soon
apparent, too, that the organization of this extraordinary joint stock
company was the creation of a power of yet unmeasured service for the
development of the resources of South Africa and the push of
civilization through the Dark Continent.
The
only approaches to the far-reaching conception of this organization
must be traced back to the old Dutch and English East India companies,
or the visionary project of John Law, exploding in air as the
Mississippi Bubble. At the outset, on the 12th of March, 1888, a
seemingly unpretentious joint stock company was formed and established
at Kimberley with a capital of £ 100,000 sterling, divided into twenty thousand shares of £5
each. Authority was granted, however, in the articles of the
association, to the shareholders of the company to increase this small
capital in general meeting, from time to time, for the acquisition of
new property, by creating new shares to any extent, or, in the exact
words of article 39 " such
amount as may be deemed expedient." No provision for expansion and
acquisition could be more liberal, and the particular specifications of the articles of the association show that " new property,"
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