Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 November 1893 — Buying Back Their Own Diamonds [ARTICLE]

Buying Back Their Own Diamonds

The De Beers mines employ 8,000 whites and from 15,000 to 20,000 of the natives as laborers. The natives, Mr. McGregor said, will steal diamonds, and no way had been discovered to prevent the thefts. Under the law the native laborers are kept in inclosures called compounds. They sell the diamonds which they steal at a few shillings per carat. They are purchased, although the natives are ignorant of the fact, by agents of the De Beers Company and returned to the company. Within the last two years, Mr. McGregor said, the company has paid in this way $3,500,000 for diamonds which had been stolen by the natives. Mr. McGregor said it was expected that the dry diggings would be worked out in two years, but they have been worked since 1871, and there are no indications of a bottom being found. To prevent the soil from caving in shafts 1,000 feet have been sunk, and the mining is done in chambers similar to that of American coal mines.—[Baltimore Sun.