THE DIAMOND INDUSTRY AT KIMBERLEY. 455 

 THE DIAMOND INDUSTRY AT KIMBERLEY.* 



By LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL. 



^VTOTHING in the external appearance of Kimberley suggests 

 -L^ either its fame or its wealth. A straggling, hap-hazard con- 

 nection of small, low dwellings, constructed almost entirely of 

 corrugated iron or of wood, laid out with hardly any attempt at 

 regularity, and without the slightest trace of municipal magnifi- 

 cence, is the home of the diamond industry. It seems that when 

 the diamonds were first discovered, some twenty years ago, many 

 thousands of persons settled down suddenly on the spot like a 

 cluster of swarming bees, and established themselves anyhow as 

 best they could in the most rough and primitive fashion, never 

 dreaming but that the yield of diamonds would be of limited ex- 

 tent and of short duration, that their fortunes would be rapidly 

 acquired, and that they would pass as rapidly away from the 

 place, having exhausted all its wealth-producing resources. The 

 reverse has proved to be the case. The diamondiferous resources 

 of Kimberley are now known to be practically inexhaustible, but 

 the amalgamation of the mines has restricted employment and 

 checked immigration, and the town still preserves, and probably 

 will always preserve, its transitory and rough-and-ready appear- 

 ance. There are, however, a number of excellent shops, and there 

 are few articles of necessity, of convenience, or of luxury which 

 can not here be purchased. A most comfortable and hospitable 

 club, an admirably laid-out and well-arranged race-course testify 

 to the thoroughly English character of the settlement. At Kim- 

 berley the diamond is everything, and the source and method of 

 its production claim more than a passing mention. My first visit 

 was to the offices of the De Beers Company, which company repre- 

 sents the amalgamated interests of the De Beers, Kimberley, Bult- 

 fontein, Du Toits Pan, and other smaller mines. The amalgama- 

 tion was the work of Mr. Cecil Rhodes, and it was this great work, 

 accomplished in the teeth of unheard-of difficulties and almost 

 insurmountable opposition, representing the conciliation and uni- 

 fication of almost innumerable rival jarring and conflicting in- 

 terests, which revealed to South Africa that it possessed a public 

 man of the first order. The scale of the company's operations is 

 stupendous. On a capital of nearly 8,000,000 of debenture and 

 share stock it has paid, since its formation in 1888 up to March, 

 1890, interest at the rate of h\ per cent, and an annual dividend of 

 20 per cent. In the same period it has given out some 2,500,000 



* From Men, Mines, and Animals of South Africa. By Lord Randolph Churchill. New 

 York: D. Appleton & Co., 1892. 



