KIMBERLEY MINE AT THE PRESENT DAY
PLATE XX
WESSELTON (open) MINE
A certain amount of linking up of claims had already taken place, but, although many men must have seen that the complete amalgamation of the interests in each mine was imperative, two men alone had the capacity to bring their ideas to fruition. C. J. Rhodes was the principal agent in the formation in April 1880 of the De Beers Mining Company, which rapidly absorbed the remaining claims in the mine, and was re-formed in 1887 as the De Beers Consolidated Mining Company. Meantime, Barnett Isaacs, better known by the cognomen Barnato, which had been adopted by his
brother Henry when engaged in earning his livelihood in the diamond fields as an entertainer, had secured the major interests in the Kimberley mine. Rhodes saw that, for effective working of the two mines by any system of underground working, they must be under one management, but to all suggestions of amalgamation Barnato remained deaf, and at last Rhodes determined to secure control of the Kimberley mine at all costs. The story of the titanic struggle between these two men forms one of the epics of finance. Eventually, when shares in the Kimberley mine had been boomed to an extraordinary height, and the price of diamonds had fallen as low as 18s. a carat, Barnato gave way, and in July 1889 the Kimberley mine was absorbed by the De Beers Company on payment of the enormous sum of £5,338,650. Shortly afterwards they undertook the working of the Dutoitspan and the Bultfontein mines, and in January 1896 they acquired the Premier or Wesselton mine. The interests in the Jagersfontein mine were in 1888 united in the New Jagersfontein Mining and Exploration Company, and the mine is now worked also by the De Beers Company. Thus, until the development of the new Premier mine in the Transvaal, the De Beers Company practically controlled the diamond market. The development of this last mine was begun so recently, and its size is so vast—the longest diameter being half a mile—that open-cut working is likely to continue for some years.
PLATE XXI
