h the founding of the first De Beers Company, named
after a Boer who had owned the land on which the mine lay. It culminated
in 1887 in the battle with Barnato,[62] his most dangerous competitor,
when by dexterous purchasing of shares in his rival's company Rhodes
forced him into a final scheme of amalgamation. In 1888 was founded the
great corporation of De Beers Consolidated mines. The masterful will of
Rhodes dictated the terms of the Trust deed, giving very extensive power
to the Directorate for the using of their funds. He was already laying
his foundations, though few could then have guessed what imperial work
was to be done with the money thus obtained. The process of amalgamation
was not popular in Kimberley. It resulted in closing down many of the
less profitable claims and in reducing the amount of labour employed.
But it brought in better machinery and it saved expenses of management.
Above all, it curtailed the output of diamonds and so kept up the market
price in Europe and elsewhere. Many people refused to believe that
Rhodes could have outmanoeuvred a man of exceptional financial ability
without using dishonourable means. But there is no doubt that it was
masterful character which won the day, that strength of will which
decides the issue at the critical moment. Many others have been
prejudiced against him merely from the fact that he spent so much time
and energy in the pursuit of 'filthy lucre'. We must remember that
Rhodes himself said: 'What's the earthly use of having ideas if you
haven't the money to carry them out?' We must also remember that all
witnesses of his life agree that the ideas were always foremost, the
money a mere instrument to realize them. The story was told to Edmund
Garrett by one of Rhodes's old Kimberley associates 'how one day in
those scheming years, deep in the sordid details of amalgamation, Rhodes
("always a bit of a crank") suddenly put his hand over a great piece of
No Man's Africa on the map and said, "Look here: all that British--that
is my dream".'[63]

[Note 62: Barney Barnato, born in Houndsditch, 1852; died at sea,
1897.]

[Note 63: Perhaps the best character sketch of Rhodes is that
printed as an appendix to Sir E. T. Cook's _Life of Edmund Garrett_
(Edward Arnold, 1909). Garrett's career as journalist and politician in
South Africa was terminated by illness in 1899.]

But long before this struggle was over, Rhodes had embarked on new
courses which were to carry