DIAMOND TRADE

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 11, 14 January 1933, Page 11

DIAMOND TRADE

CONDITIONS IMPROVE

AN AFRICAN REVIVAL

Hope is alive again in the South African. diamond- fields. For the last three years, the thirty or forty thousand men, black and white, who gained their living in. the diamond mines have starved and struggled and drawn: rations from the State when everything else failed. . ■ ■ , Hundreds of engineers, mechanics, and prospectors have been: obliged to tramp the streets in search of unaccustomed emergency jobs. Tho great diamond companies, headed by ' the De Beers Corporation of Kimbe'rley, have striven to be generous in the matter of bonuses on discharge and to occupy free quarters, but the fact remains >tbat hardly another industry has stagnated so badly as this particular "luxury line." ! Now it looks as if things are on- the mend. In the s£ock 'exchanges of the Union shares of the big producers have begun to rise, the Government has given hints of better things (to come, and the tide of diggers is again setting in toward the diamokd fields, writes Erie Bosenthal in lie "San Francisco Chronicle." \ Nearly £20,000,000 worth! of diamonds_ are known to have been locked away in the vaults of the international Diamond Syndicate at Kimberjey, New York, and London—unsold stock in the hands of the cartel that regulates prices for the world.. That was two years ago. Times have not got much better since then, yet somehow the accumulation is to-day far smaller than when the slump began. During the last few weeks, without apparent reason, prices on the South African diggings have begun to risef. The picturesque little tin booths, surmounted by banners carrying the names of famous overseas buyers, have ststrted to do business again, although on a smaller scale, and the professional miners who work their own claims are engaging black helpers and shovelling out gravel. ; The international authorities, headed by Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, chairman of De Beers Consolidated Mines, have just been in conference in London, and the bulletins released to the Union public have been optimistic.

PERHAPS SOON.

As yet the big-scale • producers at Kimberley, Cullinan, Jagersforitein, and the other diamond towns cannot reopen, but there are hopes that conditions in America will have improved sufficiently early in 1933 to allow them to do so. Meanwhile, the wealthy Aierehants of India and the Far East are purchasing in South Africa. It was owing to the demands of various rich rajahs that the first revival set in here. The ! low prices attracted them. New diggings are about to bo proclaimed by the Union Government at Hendriksdal (Transvaal), and such is the enthusiasm of the fortune-seekers that violence has been threatened if the State withholds its official permission too long. "With the beginning of 1933 the Government intends to provide reading facilities on the American model for people even in the remotest reaches of the veldt. . It is announced that wth the aid and advice of the Carnegie Corporation, which has been conducting inquiries ever since 1928, tho library system in town and country will bo so interlinked that farmers will bo able to get regular supplies of books. Village reading rooms will bo supplied from the cities, but tho headquarters for the entire Dominion, will be the State Library at Pretoria. . !