The_Open_Door_deel1

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The 1898 concession agreement with the "Excelsior Mining Company"
was amended in 1909, during the Administration of President
Arthur Barclay, whereby
"the further right was granted to the Company upon any
public lands in the said County of Maryland County to
cut and to fell timber" (7)
whereas yet another amendment (in 1914) gave the company the right
to construct a railway in Maryland County (which would run between
the harbour of Cape Palmas and the northern boundary of the County),
the right to construct electric light and power stations, and communication
facilities (8). This amendment was approved during the
Administration of President Daniel E. Howard. The interesting
point here of this 1914 Amendment is that clearly the company's
attention was focussed on the northern part of .Maryland County
(this region became part of Grand Gedeh County under the administrative
reform of 1964-). As these infrastructural improvements
never materialised - infrastructure in this part of the country
being non-existent before the coming to power of President
William Tubman - neither mining nor timber cutting operations
were ever carried out on a large scale (9).
Recorded gold mining operations in this area started in the late
1930's. In 1941, local people concentrated the mining of gold
in an area south-west of the town of Zwedru, in those days still
called Tchien, but the increased interest in diamonds after the
discovery of important diamond deposits along the Lofa
river, in the 1950's, and the resulting "diamond rush" brought
gold mining activities virtually to a stand-still (10)a Only
with the increase in the price of gold in the 197O's was
renewed interest shown by various investors.
There are other sources reporting or indicating the failure
of a start of the mining operations, in particular of gold,
in the first half of the twentieth century in Liberia. In 1933
President Edwin J. Barclay granted the Dutch "Holland Syndicate"
(whose major financier was "Wm.H. Muller and Company") the sole
prospecting rights in the country as well as an option on
50,000 acres (to be selected by the concessionaire). The
Dutch concentrated their surveys on the Western part of the
country, hoping to locate gold and diamond deposits in view of
the recent discoveries and subsequent exploitation of diamonds
in neighbouring Sierra Leone, near Pendembu. It was during
this search for diamonds and gold that the high-grade iron ore
reserves of Bomi Hills were discovered by one of the Dutch
explorers (ll) (see below, the Liberia Mining Company, Chapter
7). Whether the "Holland Syndicate" ever found and extracted
gold or diamonds is unknown as no record exists of the
minerals possibly extracted and exported (12). Though export of
gold did take place during the 19th century and in the first
quarter of the 20th century, the gold industry figured in
export statistics for the first time in 1935, to the amount of
I 22,700 (13). Most if not all of this had been produced by