OCR Text |
Show Slump in Diamond Industry The advent of large quantities of diamonds from Gem an Southwest Africa is having a considerable effect in depressing diamond prices. Hitherto the big diamond syndicates haye managed manag-ed to keep diamona prices very uniform and to steadily boost them, by refusing to allow more diamonds to be sold than the market would absorb. The German diamonds are a little solter than the Cape stones and can therefore be more easily worked, thereby reducing the p:ice. Hitherto also the diamond-workers' diamond-workers' unions or guilds have had things all their own way and have helped help-ed to raise prices. . n.e highesn paid workers the ones who cleave or split the stones and who have to have the greatest skill and good judgment draw as mucn as ylzo a week. Tne guilds will not permit more than a very limited number of apprentices to learn the trade, and these can only be sons 01 the workers or of jewelers. Pupils sometimes pay as high as $2,000 lor being taught. The financial depression in the United Statas has greatly injured injur-ed the diamond market, tor Americans are the great diamond buyers. Since a high protective cuty was put on cut diamonds in the United States a considerable con-siderable diamond-cutting industry has been built up on our side of the water, though the great centers of theindustry are Amsterdam, Holland, and Antwerp, Belgium. Recently the business has become partly a "cottage" one; that is the - workers instead of woiking in factories carry the diamonds home and cut and pol sh them there. In this way they can teach their family how to help The result is that the work is being done much cheaper than unuer the old system. |