Author: JF Ptak

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2820

“The Most Awful Spectacle in History” screams the headline of this full-page (16″ tall)  Illustrated London News advertisement for the “Save the Children” fund, appearing 22 May 1920.  There was good reason for the screaming–following the Great War there were millions and millions of people in dire need of food in the months and years following 11.11.18.  Hundreds of thousands–millions–of these people were children. The ad makes a direct plea for the sake of the children, where the reader is told that in some districts there is “not a child under the age of 7 years”, as all have died. To not donate a penny or a shilling and allow the catastrophe to continue would mean that “we are for ever humiliated in the eyes of God and Man”.  

The appeal here is simple–Lord Weardale (Philip Stanhope, 1847-1923), who was the chair of the “Save the Children” fund (London) is asking for a penny, from everyone, as the accumulation of that penny a day for two months “the children of Europe would be saved”. 

With assistance from other countries–including the U.S. where the effort was spearheaded by Herbert Hoover–the Fund raised more than a million pounds and averted an enormous catastrophe. Unfortunately, a larger disaster loomed to the east–the Great Famine in Russia of 1921-1922 (following by just thirty years the Russian Famine of 1891-2)–and in rhis circumstance the relief efforts failed. The Russian famine began with a natural disaster which was then inflamed by complete (sometimes intentional) mismanagement by the government, the result of which caused the deaths of between five and eight million people.  Hoover–as Secretary of Commerce–guided the Russian Famine Relief Act spending of 20 million dollars for the purchase of U.S. foods to be sent to Russia, but the combinations of political intrigue, capital mismanagement, and of course natural disasters leading to more disease and death, left millions dead.  

As the 1920 ad sums the situation: “the cry of the hungry can never be foreign to the followers of the Son of Man”–but they were, and are. 

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2815

I uncovered a little cache of National Geographic magazines from 1900-1915, and picked out the 1906 volume to have a look at what I hoped for would be photo coverage of the San Francisco earthquake. There’s a good and very strikingly-illustrated article to be found there, but what got my real attention was the article “The Diamond Mines of South Africa”. Actually it was one photograph that grabbed me away from the rest of the book—an image of a diamond miner who was caught stealing diamonds from the mine, extracted during his shift. It is a singularly sad photo—the man’s face is pained and troubled, standing there behind a mine official, naked, and wearing gigantic baseball mitt type gloves with a heavy chain.

Here are a few questions that sprang to mind: Who were the workers? How did they steal” How did the company catch them? How did the company prevent such theft?

In this case the theft occurred in one of the De Beers mining facilities in South Africa. Although De Beers used convict labor, at this camp the workers were there of their own free will (I guess), joining the company to work for periods of about three months.

• “To enter the service of the company, each applicant must sign a written con tract binding himself to live in the com pound and work continuously and faith fully for a period of at least three months or longer if he so desires. At the expiration of a contract the applicant may leave if he chooses or his contract may be renewed indefinitely. Some of the natives in De Beers compound have been employed continuously for ten years or more in the service of the company,…”

Once the contract was signed, the agreement was strictly enforced,and the lifestyle of all who worked at the mind seemed to become of one solid mass, the workers held there life inmates. It looks as though every aspect of their lives was regulated, not the least of which involved travel outside the compound or interacting with any outsiders—this to prevent the theft and exchange of diamonds.

The article describe the general layouts of the compounds housing the diamond workers: there were 17 in the diamond fields, 12 owned by De Beer. The largest belonged to De Beer: it was 4 acres and held 3,000 workers, who were contained in the area by 10′ tall corrugated iron fences; they slept 20-25 to a 25’x30′ room. 3K people on 4 acres is a huge number: