DIAMOND TRADE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIV, Issue 251, 20 September 1934, Page 2

DIAMOND TRADE.

GOVERNMENT RELIEF FOR . KIMBERLEY. The once prosperous city of Kimberley is in extremis through the collapse of the diamond market, says a Pretoria report. The South African Cabinet on August 3 discussed a report by Dr Holloway, economic adviser to the Treasury, who has investigated the conditions in the diamond fields. The Government has decided to afford permanent relief through the setting up of a new industry, as Kimberley, cannot await a revival in the diamond trade, which experts now fear may still take several years. The town of Kimberley dates from 1870, when diamonds were first discovered on'the farms of Du Toits Pan and Bultfontein. The mining camp then established gradually developed into the substantially built township which with its suburbs, according to the 1931 census, had a white population of 17,561 and a coloured population of 27,442. A few years ago the De Beers and Jagersfontein mines supplied 85 per cent, of the world’s diamonds. During the period of prosperity in the United States before the Stock Exchange panic of 1929 that country took 80 per cent, of the world’s output of diamonds, but the world-wide depression of the ensuing years has hit the diamond trade very hard and culminated in 1932 in the closing down of De Beers, the Premier, and other mines and the throwing out of work of large numbers of white and native employees. In 1933 the Government declared its intention to open no new fields during the prevailing depression, and a conference held in the same year resulted in an agreement to control sales and stabilise, prices.