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FIRE IN THE EARTH
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Netherlands Indies, from Brazil and other Latin-American countries.
But
the net results aren't encouraging to the importers. They look at the
statistics. They take the first six months of 1941 and compare the
period with the first six months of 1939, 1940, and 1941. In 1939,
236,340 carats of cut diamonds were imported; in 1940 the amount
dropped to 201,548; in 1941 it dropped even more sharply to 11,710; in
1942 it undoubtedly will take a tremendous drop. True enough, rough
diamonds jumped—from 50,997 in 1939 to 82,458 in 1941—but this was
because it is easy enough to get rough! It is not easy, as we have
seen, to get men to cut the rough.
That
explains why prices have jumped. The prices of rough have gone up only
slightly and anyhow that is a matter immediately concerning the cutter.
But the prices of cut diamonds in the United States have taken
fantastic flights. The bigger the stone the less the rise, because we
have the cutters to take care of "sizes," but we have not the cutters
to take care of the melee. Therefore the price of melee has jumped more
than 300 per cent and closer to 400 per cent. It is true that the price
of diamonds always jumps whenever there is a war. From the early part
of the eighteenth century to about 1850 the price of a good diamond
was about $50 a carat. The price remained unchanged until the Civil
War—and then boom! It went up to $125-$150 a carat. It fell back, after
the Civil War, to about $100 a carat, until 1915—and then boom! It
skyrocketed again to $750. It dropped back once more, fell even lower
with the depression, and with the second World War—boom! It jumped
again.
But the wars affected, previously, all diamonds of all sizes and qualities, just as they affected all luxuries. This time
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