Gold Paved the Way : the Story of the Gold Fields Group of Companies

## Author's Note THI s, you will fmd if you delve into it, is the history of a company founded in London in 1887 by Cecil Rhodes, the Empire-builder, and his partner Charles Rudd. The fact that its early chapters read like a Rider Haggard novel is no fault of mine. Rhodes actually did buy gold-mining claims' off the peg' and Rudd did, in fact, interrupt his administration of the company' s affairs to make a journey into Matabeleland and there persuade Chief Lobengula to sign a concession. And when he was lost in the desert and about to die of thirst he did stuff this precious document into an ant-bear hole and with it a bag of sovereigns. These are but two of the many adventures in which the partners, and later the company itself, were involved. But the greatest adventure of all came long after the founders were dead and within the memory of men who are living today. In 1932 the company, beaten almost to its knees by the Depression, discovered a new goldfield in South Africa. This discovery, the result ofbrilliant intuitive reasoning and courageous prospecting, changed its fortunes and its destiny. Today it is a world-wide organization with a hundred subsidiaries and one hundred thousand men and women under its umbrella. Simply to say that this book was written with the co-operation of Consolidated Gold Fields Limited is to understate what actually happened. Men in South Mrica, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand dropped whatever they were doing and patiently explained. Often the explanation took days. Thus, in a very real sense, this is their book, for they contributed all the facts on which it ix Part One tttttttttttttttt+ttttttttt+tt+++t THE EARLY HISTORY Cecil Jo1m Rhodes, who founded a company called The Gold Fields of South Africa Limited in London in 1887. Mr. Rudd and Mr. Rhodes 5 Cape Town, where he managed to secure some capital, enough to set him up as a diamond-buyer and an agent for various Cape Town flI1Ils. By this time diamonds had been found at Colesberg Kopje, at Bultfontein and on the farm Vooruitzicht. But the name ofthis latter farm was too much for the then Colonial Secretary, Lord Kimberley. He declared the word unpronounceable and unusable. It became 'Kimberley' instead. Charles Rudd, diamond-buyer, dealer in claims and agent, had chosen the psychological moment to begin business, and he prospered. But there was yet another disaster in store for him. He made himse!f personaIly responsible for collecting a parce! of valuable diamonds to be displayed at the Vienna Exhibition in 1872. Somewhere between Kimberley and Cape Town the parce! was stolen and no trace of it ever found. Rudd had to bear the loss -and the misfortune very nearly broke his stout heart. It took all his resources, plus aseries of promissory notes, to pay off the debts he incurred. His creditors eventually received their due but it was some years before he was free of debt. He certainly learnt the diamond business the hard way. Rhodes at this time had set his heart on completing his education at Oxford University. Because his brothers Herbert, Emest and Frank had all been educated at public schools while he was' a grammar-schoo! boy' (having been sent to the Bishop's Stortford School in his father's parish at a time when his hea1th was suspect) he feit that he was something less than a gentleman by comparison with them. He proposed to remedy this by putting himself through Oxford. And in this project his new friend, this mature and perhaps slightly embittered young man, could advise him. In 1862 Rudd had been coached for a Balliol scholarship by none other than the renowned Dr. Jowett and, though he had failed to win this distinction and had gone up to Cambridge instead, he was able to answer some of Rhodes' s interminable questions about Oxford and university life in general. He was also able to enlist the assistance of his other eider brother, Henry Rudd, a barrister and a distinguished graduate of Oxford, on whom the university had conferred the degree of D. C.L. ## Gold Paved TheWay Robinson opposed him because he was a newcomer and a youth, too brash to represent the diamond industry, said Robinson. The result was that Rhodes fought and won Barkly West where most of his constituents spoke Dutch, of which he had scarcely a word. Four years later Rhodes had his chance to retaliate. It was at a time when affairs on the diamond-fields were approaching a crisis. The price of the stones had fallen to a new low. The banks, seriously alarmed by the situation. were pressing their clients for money. Rhodes was hard at work trying to amalgamate various claims in the Dutoitspan Mine. where the principal companies were the Anglo-African, the Griqualand West Diamond Mining Company. the Hercules and J. B. Robinson & Company. Robinson, a large claimholder. professed to be in favour of the amalgamation, but Rhodes did not believe hirn and said openly that he was of the opinion that Robinson was working against the scheme. The result was that Robinson was left out of the merger at a time when he was most urgently in need of money. Sir Lewis Michell, biographer ofRhodes, says that from that day onwards there was' a standing feud' between Rhodes and Robinson. And certainly there is evidence that Robinson believed his rival had deliberately set out to ruin him. Robinson was a man who could neither forgive nor forget. He cherished his grudge against Rhodes and waited for the day when he would get his own back. He had not long to wait. ## After Diamonds -Gold +++++++++++++++++++++t+++++++++++ F 0 UR years after the first diamonds were discovered in South Mrica wandering prospectors found an alluvial gold-field in the South African Republic, the independent state which Afrikanders had established beyond the Vaal. This was not the first discovery of gold in the Transvaal. Quartz reefs had been worked as far back as I8S3 and there had been reports of other finds. But the rush which began in I 874 to a wild and inaccessible region that lay between Lydenburg and the Portuguese border was the real thing. Here alluvial claims on the Blyde River produced gold to the value of more than .(;I,OOO,ooo and those who were first in the field made money. Some of the adventurous young men ofKimberley trekked there, among them Herbert, the eldest ofRhodes's six brothers. It was to join Herbert in cotton-farming in Natal that Rhodes had come to South Africa in I870. And Herbert had led the way to Kimberley and pegged the claims that were to stir his brother' sinterest in diamond-mining. Among others who went to Pilgrim' s Rest from Kimberley were Sam J ameson, brother of the redoubtable Dr. Leander Starr Jameson, Edouard Lippert, Hans Sauer, a doctor with a taste for hunting, and J. B. Taylor. But it was a long and arduous wagonjourney and they arrived too late. Their reminiscences of the days they spent at Pilgrim's Rest tell us more about the games of poker they played than the gold they won. They soon decided that there was more money to be made on the diamond diggings than in washing gravel in a sluice-box on the banks of the Blyde River. They all returned to Kimberley -all, that is, except Herbert Rhodes. He settled at Pilgrim' s Rest and a year or IS 'kop', meaning a 'hillock', 'vlei', meaning a 'pond or marshy ground' and 'spruit', a 'brook', all recur in names that have since become world-renowned. The team that Rhodes had assembled on the Witwatersrand now included Rudd, Sauer and Caldecott, and three young Afrikaners (Rho des called them 'Dutchmen') whom Sauer had collected because they knew the district and the owners of the farms. The date of Rudd and Rhodes' s arrival was probably some time in the last fortnight ofJuly 1886. Both were present at the gathering of three hundred claim-holders on the farm Turffontein on 5 August 1886, when Christiaan J oubert, head of the mines department of the Republic, and Johann Rissik, surveyor-general, outlined the Govemment' s plans for the diggings. Also present at that meeting was J. B. Robinson, who had arrived three weeks earlier -the first of the capitalists from Kimberley. The question was: Where to buy? Here the very fact that the Rhodes team consisted of four men with three assistants was a disadvantage. They all pulled different ways. Both Rhodes and Rudd, 23 east at ;(40 a claim. But, he says, Rudd tumed down the options because the outcrop of the reef was not visible for the greater part of the distance. These were the claims that afterwards became the Salisbury, the Jubilee, the Village Main Reef, the Wemmer and the Worcester mines, one of the richest sections of the Central Rand. But how was Rudd, or anyone else, to know this? All the experienced miners of the day said that the right place to peg was on the outcrop of the reef -no outcrop, no gold. Rudd and Rhodes chose the ground to the west where the prospecting had begun and where the Main Reef outcropped in a continuous line. It tumed out to be the wrong decision, whereas Robinson, in his purchases at Langlaagte and Turffontein, hit two of the richest sections of the Rand. But it must be remembered that there was no means of proving any of the properties. The only stamp battery on the Witwatersrand belonged to the Strubens and was booked for trial crushings for months ahead. And at the same time every coach that arrived, and they were arriving twice a day, brought speculators determined to snap up ground on the new field, so that it was now or never when it came to buying. Taking sampIes from the reefitself meant no more than tasting the icing on the top of the cake. The prospective mine-owner had to gamble on what lay below. Luck meant more than judgement and Rhodes and Rudd were unlucky and perhaps too cautious. Their principal purchase in the west, Luipaardsvlei, was a low-grade proposition though no one guessed it at the time. Their ground on Witpoor~ie, the neighbouring farm, was situated on one of the great structural breaks of the Witwatersrand series. There was no trace of the reefs on the farms Middelvlei, Droogeheuvel and Elandsvlei to the far west, in which they acquired an interest. In the east they were later to buy Rietfontein and Witkoppie -and run into mining problems that baffied the mining engineers of the day. All in all, they could scarcely have done worse had they deliberately set out to choose the most unpromising sections of the Witwatersrand on or near the outcrop. But they did not know this at the time; and let it be remembered that Hans Sauer, who was to criticize them so severely fifty years later, was the man who recommended the The young diamond diggers off duty and in their 'Sunday clothes'. L~ft to right: The household staff, N. Front Matter....Pages i-x Front Matter....Pages 1-1 Mr. Rudd and Mr. Rhodes....Pages 3-14 After Diamonds — Gold....Pages 15-25 The Company....Pages 26-35 Rudd Sets off on a Journey....Pages 36-47 ‘Our Theory was wrong ...’....Pages 48-56 Shafts and Boreholes....Pages 57-70 A ‘Swell’ Engineer....Pages 71-82 A Profit of £2,161,778....Pages 83-90 War Shuts Down the Mines....Pages 91-101 Lord Harris in the Chair....Pages 102-114 Profits Fall....Pages 115-127 Sub Nigel’s Riches....Pages 128-140 The Lost Reef....Pages 141-151 ‘The Egg of Columbus’....Pages 152-165 The Triumph....Pages 166-172 Front Matter....Pages 173-173 A ‘Gamble’ in Foreign Parts....Pages 175-190 Red-letter Day....Pages 191-201 Golden Jubilee....Pages 202-211 Move to the Country....Pages 212-225 The First New Mine....Pages 226-237 Front Matter....Pages 173-173 Aftermath of War....Pages 238-250 The Master Plan....Pages 251-259 The Big Bid....Pages 260-272 The New Look....Pages 273-281 Advance, Australia!....Pages 282-292 Copper ... Tin ... Coal....Pages 293-303 Looking to the Future....Pages 304-313 Back Matter....Pages 315-326