| Main centres: | 1-3 business days |
| Regional areas: | 3-4 business days |
| Remote areas: | 3-5 business days |
Purnell, 1962, hardcover, large format, illustrated, 336 pages, condition: very good.
The heroes of this story are the men who established the gold mines of South Africa which, in the first seventy-five years, have employed some seven million men and yielded gold worth ten-thousand million rand.
The story really began in 1886 when George Harrison, a prospector, found a gold-bearing reef in a stretch of barren veld known as the Witwatersrand in the small homespun republic across the Vaal. He sold his claim for £10 and vanished without knowing that he had stumbled on the worlds richest goldfield.
The men who followed Harrison were shrewder. One of them was J. B. Robinson whose Gladstone bag, half-filled with sovereigns, earned him £500 million. Not far behind Robinson came Cecil Rhodes, C. D. Rudd, George Farrar, Abe Bailey, Barney Barnato, belly Joel, the Albus, Lionel Phillips and Percy Fitzpatrick. This is their story, as it is also the story of the mining men of recent times, the leading personalities such as Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, the consulting engineers, the geologists, the metallurgists and the miners who have come from all parts of the world to serve the mines.
And it tells not only of the first dis-coveries but also of those of our day and of the new wealth they have brought South Africathe West Wits Line, the Klerksdorp mines, the Orange Free State field and the new mines at Evander in the Eastern Transvaal.
Here too, is the full story of the uranium in the gold reefs. The Gold Miners is thus the first complete history of the South African gold mines from 1885 to 1961. And, because the destinies of the people of South Africa and the mines are inextricably linked, this book is also the history of our countryof its wars, its strikes, its slumps and its booms.
H. V. MORTON, famous British author, says: It is a book which every holder of a gold mine share will enjoy. Mr. Cartwright is to be congratulated upon having dealt with the many aspects of a complex subject with that easy and competent simplicity which conceals a great deal of hard work. It is a book to be recommended to all who are interested in the worlds great industries, and to those who enjoy reading of human achievement.
