Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 August 1878 — Cost of Diamond Digging. [ARTICLE]

Cost of Diamond Digging.

Diamond digging is expensive. We will take, for example, the average digggi| who owns a quarter claim and works his own ground. He can take his choice, according to locality, of paying from SI,OOO to SIO,OOO for his quarter claim—i. e., seven and one-half feet by thirtyone feet. It pays best to buy highpriced giound. His outfit of digging tools, washing-machine, etc., will cost say SI,OOO. His gang of twenty Kaffirs will cost him $5 each per week, or SIOO. One overseer besides himself, $25 per week. Meat and tobacco for Kaffirs, $5 per week extra. Then expenses of carting and taxes will make his total outlay at the least S2OO per week, or over SIO,OOO a year, exclusive of his own expense of living. If one cannot spend SBOO per month, I believe it is of no use to go to Kimberley to dig for diamonds. To offest this expense is, of course, good luck in “finding,” and from the very beginning of operations the digger often not only clears expenses, but makes a handsome profit. There is no doubt that diamond digging pays two-thirds of those who engage in it, well The fortunes made, as a rule, are small and numerous. Rarely has any one cleared $50,000 from any one claim. Success seems to be very 'evenly distributed, and chiefly attainable by those who can begin with say from $3,000 to $5,000. The amount of money paid for Kaffir labor alone is enormous. For instance, there are a thousand wheels; allowing five Kaffirs to each, we have 5,000 laborers daily at the mine. These, at $5 each per week, are paid $25,000, or SIOO,OOO per month, or $1,200,000 per year, and this for 5,000 Kaffirs only. The assessment of the Kimberley mine for the year 1877, simply for the purpose of distribution of rates or taxes, was $5,151,500, or about $7,000,000, if we add a third to briDg the first amount up to selling prices. It apparently never occurs to the digger to inquire into the unstable nature of the whole Kimberley fabric. Immense sums of money are invested in and around the mine, and bwners of town lots, of houses, of public buildings and ot claims, have settled into the calmest feeling of security. But no fear disturbs the digger of Kimberley. His belief in the immortality of the mine is supreme. But there are influences at work which are crowding the small capitalist from the fields. The increasing depth, crumbling reef and inflowing water are fast multiplying the expenses of working. The great bugbear of the digger is the word “company,” but even now small proprietorships are becoming merged in large aggregations of claims, and the next phase.of mining operations must undoubtedly be that of several large and competing companies, or, perhaps, a single one controlling the whole mine. Then the individual romance of diamond-hunting will be over. But there is no danger that the diamond will ever become common. Nature has placed it in lands difficult of access, and it is likely to remain a royal gem, surrounded with the seclusion of royalty.— Dr. W. J. Morton , in Scribner for August.