The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1899-11-18
HAS ONE THOUSAND MILLIONS.
IMMENSE FORTUNE OF SOUTH
AFRICAN DIAMOND KING.
Son of Hamburg Merchant Has
Made Immense Fortune During
Past Decade.

Past Decade.
The only man in the world ever re-
puted to be worth e2OO,OOO,O 900 is the
Anglicised German Alfred Belt, whose
address, if you care to know, is simply
Cape Town, or Kimberley, or Johannes
| burg, South Africa, or Park Lane, Lon
don.
Mr.. Belt is yet on the foolish side of
80, having been born in Hamburg in
1853, and has made his fabulous fortune
| in the last twenty-four years.
| 1t is all very like a fairy book story
| to read of a man worth a thousand
millions. but it seems like Christmas
! spectacle to read that what has made
him so rich is not land or railroads or
! factories or shops. or wheat corners or
oil fields. but just gold and diamonds.
| The very things that stand for
riches came to him in the first instance
not as result of riches, but their
cause.
Alfred Belt was a we'll educated mer-
| chants son in Hamburg, destined to go
into the office, where ne would learn to
check and supervise accounts relating
and from the ports of the earth; to
inherit a comfortable income from a
staid old shipping business; to cultivate
a family, a taste for music, d proper
regard for beer and go to his fathers a
respected, but very little known Ger
man merchant.
But about the time he Sas going
into business and giving UP the duels
and other delights of students days,
young South African town of Kimber-
ley, which promised such development
that his firm considered it wise to send
a representative into this new marvel
land to examine and see if the resources
of the country justified the big credits
the traders in all sorts of stores and
machinery were demanding from Ham
burg merchants.
Diamonds, wealth in it's most concen-
trated form, had been found in the
Orange River country in 1868, and in
1870 or possibly a year earlier, reports
came of even greater diamond mines
found in Kimberley, to the northwest.
There was a rush to the country
from all over South Africa. and soon
from all over the world but it was not
until 1875 that the slow-moving, con-
servative Hamburg firm of which the
elder Belt was a member felt the ire
impetus VI lue new CTdue
strongly enough to induce them to send
out and investigate.
That sort of work required the vigor
and youth and activity and perhaps,
the enthusiasm of youngster, and so
Alfred Belt, then % years of age, was
QUILTED with credit, with arms, with
letters of Introduction and a paternal
blessing, and set sail for Cape Town,
thence by bullock team-for the rail-
road was not yet built-across Cape
Colony, the Free State, Transvaal, and
so into Kimberley.
He found city of madmen. Thou
sands had rushed in, taken up or
bought land, worked the wonderful
blue or yellow clay, filed, as is a pud-
ding with fruit, with the dull stones
which could be cut and polished into
the jewels for which the world would
give fortunes.
There was chaos in the laws, chaos
in the manner of working mines,
chaos in the trade which competition
had already nearly ruined; there were
enormous losses from theft; Il D.
E" businesS-illicit diamond buying
had grown to scandaious proportions,
and altogether the young German saw
a state of affairs which if not rcmedied
would compel him to report unfavor-
ably on the credit of the new district
derby business methods by inherit
ance, and he saw that there could
very easily be too much of a good
thing, even diamonds.
He undertook then the work of first
combining and then systematizing
the diamond mining industry.
This is not to say that Rhodes did
not have a large hand in the ultimate
close corporation results He did:
Int oil in, EaIJ
first to realize that diamonds might be-
come so cheap as to be profitless to
mine; first to begin the quiet buying
up of scattered and conflicting claims;
first to see that there was wealth be-
.yond the dreams of avarice only if
the production of diamonds should be
kept down to the point where they
would be freely absorbed by the ma
lions at the old standard price.
The result was combination which
is a, model of it's kind. The great De
Beers mine has for years paid 51A per
cent on it's bonds and 20 per cent div
idends on its stock, and il is capital
lied at eS0OO,OO0.
Then came the gold discoveries,
and the German Belt was the first to
see that vast production was possible
only if the mines were worked on the
highest scientific principles, and to
lean mining engineers and paid them
what they wanted-S25,0OO, $4,000 |
$780, 900 a year-in salaries.
Rhodes, dashing, sensational, came |
along and became the chief figure in |
the public eye when that eye was !
turned towards South Africa, but all /
ways there was the firm of Wernher, !
Belt & Co at work for the greatest !
profit and the smallest amount of no !
toriety.
Now and then young Belt would do
to amaze the trade-but not
the public-as when he had a pure
white 1881 carat finished stone exhib /
tied in little shop window in the Rue
de la Paix, Paris as a sample of our
goods"
Soon his gold and diamond mines
were paying almost beyond public COM
9rtetion
How much is he WORTH someone
asked a friend of his once. He prob
ably could not get out more than
thousand millions now" was the re-
spouse, but if he would let the price
IF rough diamonds go below from Is
to SO shillings per carat no one knows
how much he would realize. For no
1ne else except Rhodes knows how
many barrels of diamonds they have
salted away down there to keep the
market steady