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When a second invitation came from the king, he accepted, and in September there began a series of meetings between the two men which resulted in the organization of the Forminiere and with it the dawn of a real international epoch in American enterprise. In the light of our immense riches the timidity of American capital in actual constructive enterprise overseas is astonishing.
Heretofore I had been under the spell of the Congo River. Now I was to catch the magic of its largest tributary, the Kasai. Long before the Forminiere broke out its banner, America had been associated with the Congo.
Long before the Forminiere came into being, the Société Generale was the chief financial factor in the Congo. With the exception of the Huileries du Congo Belge, which is British, it either dominates or has large holdings in every one of the sixteen major corporations doing business in the Colony and whose combined total capitalization is more than 200,000,000 francs.
He remains the unfailing beast of burden despite all scientific progress. I slept that night in a native house on the outskirts of a village. It was what is called a chitenda, which is a grass structure open at all the sides. The last white man to occupy this domicile was Louis Franck, the Belgian Minister of the Colonies, who had gone up to the Forminiere diamond fields a few weeks before.
This means that it controls railways and river transport, and the cotton, gold, rubber, ivory and diamond output. The custodians of this far-flung financial power are the money kings of Belgium. Chief among them is Jean Jadot, Governor of the Société Generale the institution still designates its head by this ancient title and President of the Forminiere.
At Djoko Punda you enter the domain of the Forminiere, the corporation founded by a monarch and which has a kingdom for a partner. Woven into its story is the romance of a one-time barefoot Virginia boy who became the commercial associate of a king. What is the Forminiere and what does it do? The name is a contraction of Société Internationale Forestiere & Miniere du Congo.
They were Charles H. Davis and Henry Fairbairn, both Forminiere engineers who had made their way overland from the Angola diamond fields. Only one down-bound Belgian boat had passed since their arrival and it was so crowded with Belgian officials on their way to Matadi to catch the August steamer for Europe, that there was no accommodation for them.
Experienced diamond men say that a diamond in the ground is worth two in the market. It is this element of the unknown that gives the Congo field one of its principal potentialities. The Congo diamond fields are merely a part of the Forminiere treasure-trove.
More than twelve thousand natives are employed throughout the Congo area alone and nowhere have I seen a more contented lot of blacks. The Forminiere obtains this good-will by wisely keeping the price of trade goods such as salt and calico at the pre-war rate. It is an admirable investment. This merchandise is practically the legal tender of the jungle.
The Ramona mine has steam-driven pans, while at Tshisundu, which is in charge of William McMillan, I witnessed the last word in alluvial diamond mining. At this place Forminiere has erected an imposing power plant whose tall smokestack dominates the surrounding forest.
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