Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Third Supplement.djvu/592

 whole; the mining board, with little capital or influence, was unequal to the task of control, which ever grew more complicated, and Wernher was one of the first to see that consolidation was the only solution. His company (usually called the French Company) gradually and constantly enlarged its holdings and bought up strategical points, but was unable to come to terms with the powerful Central Company, of which Barnett Isaacs, known as Barney Barnato [q.v.], was the presiding genius; and it carried on with this and other companies a wasteful war in production and underground workings.

As the work of the mine became more absorbing Wernher was forced to neglect the diamond buying business, hitherto the mainstay of the firm, and arranged with several younger men to operate on joint account, the firm supplying the capital for shipment. Thus began his partnership with Alfred Beit [q.v.]. ‘I am living’, he wrote in 1879, ‘with Rube and Van Beek and Beit. With the last, the nicest of all, I lived for a long time in Old De Beers. He is a cheery, optimistic fellow of extraordinary goodness of heart and of very great business ability.’ Now Beit had invested on his own account in the De Beers mine and was thereby brought into intimate contact with Cecil John Rhodes [q.v.]. Rhodes and his friends in De Beers were thus able to come to a firm understanding with Wernher and the French group in the Kimberley mine in the task of bringing Barnato to terms and of consolidating the whole industry. It was by the aid of Wernher that Rhodes, in a flying visit to Europe (1887), bought the French Company and so faced Barnato as an equal in his own mine. In the meantime Wernher and Beit had been quietly buying large holdings in Du Toit's Pan and elsewhere in complete understanding with Rhodes, and the result of all these combinations was that the rival holders were ultimately forced to agree to the amalgamation of the chief diamond mines of Kimberley as the De Beers Consolidated Mines (1888).

Meanwhile, in order to stop the wasteful competition and reckless selling of diamonds, Wernher set about the creation of a diamond syndicate in London. From 1880 to 1882 he directed the London office of his firm, Porges residing in Paris. He then returned to the fields, but in 1884 he was back in London and from that time controlled from Europe an immensely important business. In 1886 the London Diamond Syndicate was established, with the result that the price of diamonds became stable. In January 1890, when Porges retired, the firm of Wernher, Beit, & Co. came into being. The partnership merely confirmed the combination which had produced such important results. The junior partner was a financial genius of the first rank, and although it was a favourite joke with the senior that he was known only as the Christian name of Beit, yet Wernher supplied strength and solidity of character and wise judgement as well as a foresight which came of profound knowledge and long experience. Wernher thus stands out as one of the pioneers of Kimberley who cherished the design, and carried through the great task, of consolidation.

The discovery of the Witwatersrand gold deposits in 1887 brought the firm into the field as gold miners. Alfred Beit bought large and valuable properties on the advice of such expert prospectors as James Benjamin Taylor and (Sir) Joseph Benjamin Robinson. Wernher, however, did not visit the gold fields until many years later, but by a remarkable combination of judgement and imagination mastered from London the problems of the Rand and organized the industry on a stable and scientific basis. He showed himself, indeed, an expert in the science of mining. He put his faith in the deep levels, employed the best engineering skill to be found in the world, and developed the properties of his firm to such good purpose that in 1912, the year of his death, the gold mines under the control of his group produced 3,500,000 ounces of fine gold and paid in dividends no less than £4,250,000, that is, 51 per cent of the profits of the whole of the Witwatersrand. In 1911 he was awarded the gold medal of the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy.

Although Wernher came to live in London owing to the necessities of business, he made his choice of British nationality with deliberation. ‘Undoubtedly’, he wrote in December 1879, ‘I shall live in London. The trend of things in Germany now and the manner in which liberal development is fettered in every conceivable way is intolerable to anybody who knows English life.’ His family earnestly, even angrily, protested, and, in deference to their feelings, he did not become a naturalized British subject until 1898. But he made his home where he had not only made his fortune but his friends and his life. In 1888 he married Alice Sedgwick, daughter of James Mankievicz, of London. He bought an estate in Bedfordshire, Luton Hoo, and at his London residence, Bath House, indulged a lifelong taste in 566