Part 24

I thought it was simply the talk of a somewhat fresh but obliging hotel porter; but he didn’t do a thing but deliver the goods. And, what is more, the train conductor frequently came into our compartment, and pointed out the sights of interest.... I have known railroad men all my life, and been familiar with their practice of buying butter and eggs on the line, where they are cheaper, and carrying them home. The railroad men of South Africa do the same thing; the conductor told me that he buys eggs along the line at thirty cents a dozen when they are frequently 75 cents at the division point where he lives. He also buys his meat out in the country; a dressed sheep weighing eighty pounds costs him $4.80, so that he gets his meat at six cents a pound. Sometimes potatoes sell in South Africa at $11.50 for a sack of 165 pounds, and poor people pay three cents for every potato they buy in small quantities. On this run the conductor makes a round trip of 210 miles a day, which occupies him eleven hours. He says he earns about $120 a month, but in order to do this, he is compelled to get in forty days in a month. The engineer makes $5 for a day’s work of eleven hours.... On the way we passed a flock of thirty or forty ostriches grazing in a field, like cattle, but this isn’t considered a very good ostrich country. We also passed through the Paardeburg battle-field, on the Modder river, where General Cronje surrendered 4,000 men to a superior force of British. There are two cemeteries on the field, in which are buried the English and Boer soldiers who were killed in the battle. The Modder river battle-field does not look unlike the Custer battle-field on the Little Big Horn river in Montana. Indeed, the country between Bloemfontein and Kimberley does not look unlike the dry country in Montana.... We saw almost no cultivated fields on the way, but a great many cattle, and a few sheep. There is not a town between Bloemfontein and Kimberley: it is a frontier country, and the railroad has been in operation only four or five years. A man I met on the train says that in his section of the Orange Free State the soil is black and rich, and that fine crops of corn are raised; but I have seen no such country. He lives in a country town of 800 people, off the railroad, and says he pays only fourteen cents a pound for the best beef, while butter sells at 24 cents, and eggs at from 18 to 30 cents. In his country, the Boer women do their own cooking, but hire negroes to wait on them, and do the rough work. An ordinary negro house servant receives $4 a month; a particularly good one, $1.25 per week.... Kimberley, as you approach it by railroad, looks like Johannesburg, though it is much smaller. You see the same mountains around the mines, but at Kimberley the mountains are composed of blue mud that has been taken from the mines, washed for diamonds, and then piled up in waste heaps. The country is not unlike that around Johannesburg: large hills in every direction, and a rolling desolate country between them. Kimberley has warmer weather than Johannesburg, and we struck it on a tremendously hot day.... The first thing you notice at Kimberley is the great number of mulattoes, whereas there are almost none at Johannesburg or Durban.... I was told at Johannesburg that the hotels at Kimberley were abominable; they were so generally abused that I hoped to find them better than their reputation, but the Royal Palace, which I was told was the best, is the worst hotel I have ever patronized. And in an advertisement, I read that the Royal Palace was the “Hotel de luxe” of Kimberley. I am writing this in my room by the light of a tallow candle, as the electric light refuses to work. The hall servants (negro women) are the most slovenly creatures I have ever seen, and there does not seem to be any head to the place; I don’t know who runs it, but whoever he is, he doesn’t give much time to his job.... There are probably a half-dozen really excellent hotels at Bloemfontein; some of them only half patronized. Will some one please tell me why one of the good hotels at Bloemfontein, an insignificant country town, was not built at busy, hustling, prosperous Kimberley?... Johannesburg is a modern, beautiful city; Kimberley is a mining camp, with narrow, irregular streets. It has many good shops, but many of the people said to me:

“No one lives in Kimberley because he likes the town; we only remain here to make money.”

Johannesburg people are proud of their town, and they have reason to be, but Kimberley people are always apologetic. The population is thirty thousand, a large number of the inhabitants being negroes and Hindus. The rich mine-owners have race-tracks, clubs and resorts, but cannot be very comfortable, owing to the dust and the heat. The few Americans I have seen here are tanned until they are as brown as Indians, and they do not say much in praise of the town except that it is the greatest diamond camp in existence.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 19.—The De Beers Company represents one of the greatest corporations in the world. You hear of De Beers in every conversation when in Kimberley. De Beers owns private cars for use on the railways; De Beers gives millions to public enterprises, and to the government; De Beers owns parks, hotels, street-railways, and eight of the greatest diamond mines in the world.... De Beers was a Dutch farmer on whose land diamonds were found. He never made much out of the discovery, and has been dead a good many years, but, like our John Brown, his soul goes marching on. Cecil Rhodes and Alfred Beit were the real geniuses of Kimberley and its diamond fields, and they are represented in monuments here, but De Beers is heard of much more frequently because his name was given to the trust which took over the mines.... Diamonds were originally discovered in South Africa in 1867, by some Dutch children playing on the Orange river. Three years later, the great Kimberley deposit was found, and now the output is twenty-seven million dollars a year. It is a saying around Kimberley that if the De Beers company should put on the market all the diamonds it has on hand and could produce, diamonds would sell at a shilling a gallon, but the De Beers company only sells as many as it can get a good price for. Diamond-mining, according to experts, will continue at Kimberley for at least a hundred years; it has not been thought necessary to make figures beyond that time. South Africa produces ninety-five per cent of the diamonds of the world, and the De Beers company is the principal factor in the diamond-production of South Africa. The De Beers company does not represent the De Beers family, but many noted English and French capitalists, with a sprinkling of Americans; the diamond trust is one great trust in which Americans have little interest.... Originally, the diamond mines at Kimberley were divided into thousands of claims, 31×31 feet, but Cecil Rhodes saw that diamonds would soon become very cheap unless conditions were changed; so by hook and by crook he formed the great De Beers trust, which now produces only as many diamonds as the world will pay high prices for. Prosperous America takes the greater part of the output, and dull times in America means dull times in Kimberley. Alpheus Williams, an American, is general manager of the De Beers company, and many of the officials under him are Americans. There are other diamond mines in South Africa, including alluvial diggings, and the Premier mine near Pretoria, where was found the great Cullinan diamond, which weighed, before cutting, 3,025 carats, or a pound and a quarter. But Kimberley is the centre, and will remain so, unless other discoveries are made. At the end of 1908, it was estimated that eleven tons of diamonds, valued at $350,000,000, had been found at Kimberley. Diamonds weighing over an ounce are not infrequent; the largest found at Kimberley weighed over four ounces.... Before the passage of the Diamond Trade Act, thefts amounted to five million dollars a year, but the De Beers company regulated stealing as well as output, and the losses are now insignificant.... The finest diamond-cutting is lately being done in New York, and not in Amsterdam, as formerly. The diamonds cut in New York show more fire than diamonds cut in Amsterdam; they have a greater number of facets, and represent finer and better work. Cutting adds forty per cent to the value of diamonds, and an attempt is being made to put a tax of 20 per cent on all uncut diamonds sent out of South Africa. No cutting is done here, and the passage of such a law would add enormously to the country’s labor roll.... The average man, in thinking of a diamond mine at Kimberley, imagines a great open hole in the earth, and thousands of men working at the bottom of it. As a matter of fact, no such mining is now done in Kimberley, although visitors may see great holes in which such mining was formerly carried on. Diamonds are now mined very much as gold is mined. Shafts are sunk to great depths in the earth, and drifts run in every direction from the bottom. Some of these shafts are more than three thousand feet deep, and the diamond dirt is hoisted and treated very much as gold-bearing rock is hoisted and treated.... Diamonds are found in blue dirt, in what the miners call “pipes.” These pipes are the craters of extinct volcanoes, and taper toward the bottom like a funnel. The pipes are round, as may be seen in the old open workings, some of which are a thousand feet deep. The deepest working in any “pipe” is now at a depth of three thousand feet, but a diamond drill has been sent down a thousand feet further without the blue dirt giving out; so no one knows how deep they are.... The old open holes in the ground were found very expensive to work at a depth of eight hundred or a thousand feet, so the blue dirt is now hoisted by means of modern cages operating in timbered shafts, as coal is hoisted; down below, drifts are run, and the blue dirt hauled to the hoisting-shafts as is done in coal-mining. As the blue dirt is exhausted, the shafts are sunk deeper, and drifts run lower down. The “pipe” at the biggest diamond mine at Kimberley is three hundred yards across at the top, and, as I have already said, this tapers toward the bottom like the funnel you use in pouring vinegar into a jug. The Premier mine, near Pretoria, is very much larger than any mine at Kimberley, being eight hundred yards across at the top. This great Premier mine, which you hear little of, mines forty thousand tons of blue dirt per day, and employs twelve thousand men, as against twenty thousand employed in all the Kimberley mines. The Premier dirt, however, is worth only one dollar per ton, whereas that at Kimberley averages something like three times as much.... Briefly, the process of finding the diamonds is as follows: The blue dirt in which the diamonds are found is brought to the surface precisely as coal is hoisted, and mined in about the same way. It is then placed in little iron cars, and hauled to a level field, where it is spread over the surface to a depth of two feet. This is done to permit the weather to disintegrate the dirt, and render its washing easier. Today I saw a field of four thousand acres covered with this blue dirt. It will remain out in the weather a year before it is treated in the washing-mills.... You might pause a moment and think of that four-thousand-acre field, covered to a depth of two feet with the blue dirt in which diamonds are found. The four-thousand-acre field I saw represented the output of only one mine; there are eight in the Kimberley district, only two of which are known to be duffers, as they say here; that is, of little value.... And you may rest assured that this four-thousand-acre field is carefully guarded; it is surrounded with a barbed wire fence fourteen feet high, and on top of the fence are four wires spread out in such a way that no one could possibly climb over. At night, the fence is illuminated with electric lights, and there is a patrol of armed guards day and night. But you might be turned loose in the four-thousand-acre field, and not find a diamond in a year; the process of finding them is very intricate, expensive, and difficult. Many of the natives who work in the diamond mines have never seen a diamond: they see only the blue dirt.... After the blue dirt has lain out in the weather a year, and been plowed up at intervals with steam plows, that all portions of it may have a chance at the sun, it is washed in enormous mills, and reduced in the proportion of one to four million: that is, for every pound of diamonds found, four million pounds of blue dirt are mined, hoisted, exposed in the field a year, and then run through the washing-mills.... In these washing-mills, the blue dirt is first crushed between rollers, and then run through shaking washing-pans three different times. What is left is then taken in cars to another mill, called the pulsator, and here the precious dirt is again washed three times. Finally the diamonds and the heavier pebbles remaining after six washings, go in a stream of water over a shaking-pan, the bottom of which is covered with vaseline. The diamonds stick to the vaseline, for some reason yet unexplained, while the pebbles roll away with the water. The diamonds on the screen are then easily collected and sorted. Some of the sorters, greatly to my surprise, were negroes in charge of white men.... Today I saw the result of one day’s washing from one mine; a pile of rough diamonds, many of them as small as pin-heads. One of them was said to be worth a thousand dollars. Dozens were of fairly good size, but the bulk of them were very small. These small diamonds will be used in cutting the big ones. There were many straw-colored diamonds, and some of them were black; the black ones will be used in diamond drills. It seemed to me that there were half a pint of these diamonds; Adelaide says a pint. But anyway, three or four thousand men, aided by the most enormous machines I have ever seen, work a day, and turn out—what? A half-pint or pint of bright stones of no actual value except in cutting glass and in diamond drills. The diamonds when found are in all sorts of shapes, but some of them look somewhat like diamonds after they have been cut. When taken out of the washing-machines they look like ordinary rock crystals; but they do not flash or sparkle. Cutting gives them that quality. The De Beers company last year made ten million dollars profit, I am told, and I am also told that one gold mine at Johannesburg last year made half that amount.... The mining of the blue dirt is done by natives who live in compounds, or quarters, and who are never permitted to leave the place until they quit, or are discharged; but no native is employed who will not agree to work at least four months. Today I visited one of these compounds, occupied by 2,500 natives. The place looked to be a thousand feet square. In the centre is a place where the men bathe after coming from underground. The houses where the men sleep form the square, and thirty men are provided with sleeping-bunks in one room. The bunks are in tiers, three deep, and reminded me of my quarters on the ship “Maunganui” between Wellington and Sydney.... In front of the houses the men do their cooking, at open fires, with wood furnished by the company. The men earn an average of eighty-two cents a day each, and are compelled to board themselves. They usually live in messes, one man in the mess doing the cooking for a week. The company has stores in the compound where all sorts of provisions may be had at about cost.... The men come from the interior, and, when they arrive, are given a number. This number is retained until the man quits, or is discharged. There is a system of piece work, and some of the men make $1.25 a day. The eight-hour system prevails, but the system of team work is such that all the men work steadily; the company sees to it that there are no shirkers. So the De Beers company has the services of excellent workmen at an average cost of eighty-two cents a day. There is a modern hospital in the compound, and men who are injured are treated free, and, in addition, receive their usual wages while laid up. The compound is much cleaner than an ordinary negro village, and many of the men remain with the company for years.... There is a good deal of water in the Kimberley mines. In one of them, 25,000 gallons an hour is pumped without trouble from a depth of 1,500 feet.... The blue dirt is hauled from the mine to the field, where it is exposed to the weather for a year, in iron cars holding about a ton each. The cars are pulled by an endless cable, and one of the sights of Kimberley is these cars going and coming without attendance on a double-track railway two or three miles long. The cars run in bunches of three, about twenty yards apart, and reminded me of ants coming and going.... When the blue dirt is ready to be treated, it is hauled to the washing-mills in the same cars, and in the same way. At the washing-mills there is a large residue known to contain no diamonds, and this is carried to the top of the dump and thrown away, and thus are formed the gray mounds seen around the town of Kimberley.... The Transvaal government has an interest in the Premier diamond mine near Pretoria, and gets sixty per cent of its profits. The government’s share amounts to two and a half million dollars a year. Whenever a diamond mine shows a disposition to amount to a good deal, the De Beers company buys it. The stockholders in the De Beers company have gradually acquired a large interest in the Premier mine, so that there is a “gentlemen’s agreement” in the disposition of diamonds.... A great deal of hauling is done from Kimberley to points off the railroad, and donkey teams are used in freighting. Every time I go on the streets I see donkey teams of ten to fourteen span hitched to enormous freight wagons. The donkey teams are usually driven by three Kaffirs.... The favorite vegetable in South Africa seems to be cabbage. At the public markets I see particularly big stacks of it, but little else. In the public market of Kimberley, vegetables are placed on the ground; I saw string beans lying on the ground, in the filth of the market-place, this morning.... Kimberley is very dusty and dirty. The days are about as hot now as they are at home in July and August, but the nights are much cooler. An American woman who has lived in South Africa nineteen years, says she has never slept a night without blankets over her.... I was frequently told in Kimberley I should look up a man named Brink, the only man in the town who could give away diamonds, if so disposed, and not be responsible to anyone. I did not see Brink, but I saw a man who sent me permits which enabled me to see most points of interest. The De Beers officials are very polite to visitors, and anyone who comes recommended may easily see all there is to see.... Kimberley has one long business street which is very creditable, but outside of that the town does not look very well. Rain is very scarce, much scarcer than at Johannesburg, and when the wind blows, all doors must be closed, owing to the dust from the mine dumps. It is much hotter here in summer than in Johannesburg, and general conditions of living worse. I shouldn’t mind living in Johannesburg, but I don’t believe I could be content in Kimberley.