Diamonds | Rhodes | Barnato | De Beers Trading Company DTC



	FIRE IN THE EARTH

	of "monopoly" and "closed market" and "arbitrary price control." This book does not plead the case one way or the other, since it seeks to be entirely objective. The opponents of the Diamond Corporation and Diamond Trading Company (overwhelmingly consisting of people outside the diamond business) protest that London (by that they mean De Beers, the Diamond Corporation, and the Trading Company) has stifled competition, has inflated the value of the diamond beyond all common logic, and has deliberately curtailed production to prevent a plethora of stones with a resultant drop in value. Diamond men do not deny those things. But they ask questions such as these: Did Cecil Rhodes and Sir Ernest Oppenheimer and the Diamond Corporation establish the diamond as the most precious material object in the world? Or was it not regarded as such in the days of Pliny the Younger and of Tavernier the Traveler? What would the thousands upon thousands of men and women—some rich, but many so poor that they could only purchase one on a long installment basis—think if suddenly there were to be a flood of these gems upon the world, wiping out values? Every time there have been new great diamond finds— in the Congo, in Brazil, and, yes, even in South Africa—a depression in values has threatened. But for the strong, controlling head of one unit, of this entity called "London," such a depression would have persisted. That is why it is important to look into the story of the Lichtenburg and Namaqualand diamond rushes. For many years geologists had made what seemed rash predictions about the possibility of rich diamond deposits in the Western Transvaal. For thousands of years the great (62)