TRADE IN DIAMONDS

Hokitika Guardian, 30 January 1933, Page 8

TRADE IN DIAMONDS

REVIVAL IN .‘SOUTH AFRICA. ' BLOEMFONTEIN, December 1. Hope us alive again in the S°utn African diamond fields. For th e 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. The great diamond companies, headed by the Be Peei-s Corporation of Kimberley, have striven to be generous in the matter of bonuses on discharge and permission to occupy free quarters, but the fact remains ' that hardly another .industry, has stagnated so badly as this particular “luxury line.” Now it looks as if things are mending. In the stock exchange of the Union s hdre. s of the big producers have begun to rise, the Government has given hints of better tilings to come, and the tide of diggers in again setting in towards the diamond fields. Nearly £20,000,000 'worth of diamonds are known to havo been locked away in the vaults of the Internationa] Diamond Syndicate .at, Kimberley, 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 th P accumulation is to-day far smaller than when tb'-* slump began. During the last few weeks, without, apparent, reason, prices on th 0 .South African diggings have begun to rise. The picturesque little tin booths, suimonnt.ed by banners carrying the names of famous overseas buyers, have started to do bnsinp.vs again, although on a smaller scale, and Vbe professional miners who work their own claims are engaging black helpers and shovelling out gravel.