To the list of U.S. industries born or reborn out of wartime stress will soon be added one of the most obscure and unsuccessful of all: diamond mining. For a modest $175,000 Arkansas Diamond Corp. last fortnight sold its long-idle field in Pike County, only one in the U.S. ever developed commercially. The buyer: an anonymous Chicago syndicate which hopes that wartime demand for industrial diamonds (up 60%) and wartime prices (up 20-70%) will enable it to succeed where others long have failed.
The Arkansas field was opened in 1906 by a guide named John Huddleston, who found a 2½-carat diamond washed...
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