DIAMONDS by Frank S. Arnett

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 2, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 27.

DIAMONDS

By Frank S. Arnett

[Frank S. Arnett, in Ainslee's.]

THE world has never seen, and in no other part of the world is there now to be seen, anything like America's jewel-madness, as shown by the conditions of to-day, when more than three hundred New York establishments are engaged solely in the importation of precious stones, when agents of American dealers are searching Europe for the white gem, and hopelessly endeavoring to supply American appeals for rubies and emeralds, and when six thousand men in South Africa are toiling to obtain diamonds, more than half of which are to add to the beauty and happiness of the American woman. It is she that has caused the United States to become the greatest diamond-market in the world. For her we have imported in a single year twenty million dollars' worth of precious stones; for her at one period we smuggled them in at the rate of seven million dollars a year; for her we annually buy something like twelve million dollars' worth of diamonds, and thus for her sake heartlessly leave of the world's total output of diamonds only some eight million dollars' worth to satisfy the vanity of all the rest of the women on earth. For her adornment we annually cause to be brought to this country diamonds weighing in the aggregate one thousand two hundred pounds, a weight three times that of the total output of the famous Kimberley field, and practically the equal of that of the whole of South Africa, the world's greatest diamond-mine.