The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1899-11-19
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MILLIONAIRES AT KIMBERLEY.
story of the Great Diamond Field,
as Told in Reginald Statham's

Book.
From the New York Commercial.
London. Nov. 4-For the moment the
interest of the war is wrapped up in Mafe-
king and Kimberley, and of these two
towns Kimberley is just now the most in
teresting to the British public Mr..
Rhodes, for whose mead a reward of IS 900
is offered, is staying in the town. Kim
berley, through it's diamond fields, may
be said to have led up to the war, and
the story of the discovery and develop
ment of the diamond fields is of extreme
interest. 1t is very we'll told by Mr.. Reg
inald Statham, in his entertaining and in
structive volume, South Africa, as It Is
twenty-five years ago, or a little more
cape Colony was a purely agricultural
community. 1t was on a desolate farm
in the midst of this desolate wilderness that
some one by accident kicked up pebble
that seemed a little unlike other pebbles.
And then? Then, of course, came the
rush. The amount of hardship suffered by
those who sought the South African dia-
mond fields in the earlier days whether
they walked or Travelled by coach or by
wagon, must have been immeasureable. Il
was not until the fields had been In ex-
istence for ten years that there was a
AdtlNdJ over even nan the OlSIanCe-Ine
five or six of seven hundred miles-be-
tween the port of debarkation and the GEN.
ter of the adventurer's hope
Matters got into more regular kind of
groove after a time. There were three
principal mines, and the main roads lead
ing from one to the other supplied the out
lines of town, lesser thoroughfares being
determined by the direction originally taxi
en- by alleyways between rows of tents or
shanties The life, IL hard, had the adj
vantage of being simple
There were difficulties experienced. of
course, as the workings went lower. The
debris from a claim higher up would fall
and block the work of claim lower down
or your own soil would take Its Way down
into some one else's block. There came a
day. too, when a sudden panic shook the
mines from end to end. The workers who
had gone deepest-perhaps some sixty feet
suddenly found that the yellow soil from
which they had been extracting diamonds
came to stop. There was no more of il
but instead there was a pale blue gravel
which seemed the end of everything. Real
ly it was the beginning, for the blue soil
turned out to be the true home of the dia-
mond. The work went on, the chasm
grew deeper. The old difficulty that arose
when claim fell in upon claim was sue
ceeded by new and more formidable diff
fculty of similar kind. The walls of the
mine-the reef" as it was not very an
propriately called-began to fall in upon
the whole area of the mine.
The government ought to do something
the government that was practically lv-
ing upon the diamond industry, and re-
ceived an enormously increased revenue in
the shape of duties levied on goods i'm
ported for consumption on the fields. The
government did, to some extent, consider
certain schemes and proposals for en-
aDllnS the golden goose to continue to Law
without interruption. The schemes were
for the most part wild ones.
While these schemes were under discus-
sion, boom came on. The f1otation Of
companies took the place of the search for
diamonds. The boom" was engineered
under all the usual conditions The men
with money went in and got out again.
bringing their sheaves with them. and
leaving 1t to timorous and unsubstantial
men to bear the brunt of the collapse AMI
thus IL came about that the Industry
dwindled and Kimberley drooped. nj,
matters were in such a state that a Colo
NAL ministry, possessed of a little conr
age and foresight, could have made tbe
diamond fields a national industry almost
on its own terms.
Gradually ownership of mines became
consolidated into two great groups. There
was the group controlling the Kimberlev
mine, headed by Mr.. Barnato, there was
the group controlling the De Beers nina
headed by Mr.. Cecil Rhodes For some
time it seemed doubtful which of these
groups would absorb the other. AT last
some members Of the Barnato group be-
came alarmed, and began selling The
Rhodes group took advantage of the mo-
mentary weakness, and with the assist
ance of the Rothschilds, bought the Rar
nato group out. A fac smile of the
check for upward of f5,500,0o0 paid by De
Beers Co as the purchase price of the
assets of the principal owners of the Kim
berley mine-the Central Company-is atil
sold in Kimberley as a Photographic curl
osity.
The industry, as now carried on is alb
solutely untaXed in any way. 1t contrib
utes not a penny to the state treasury
and Che mines are not even rated for the
benefit of the town of Kimberley. What
Is the result? That the amalgamation NJ
the Kimberley diamond mines has tlaoed
in the hands Of very small group Of per-
sons a wealth out of proportion 10 The
average Individual wealth of the country
and has thus given those persons a most
dangerous power Of political ascendancy,