Amsterdam is indebted to those Portuguese Jews who emigrated from Antwerp in 1576 for the introduction of its most widely known industry, that of diamond polishing--an art utterly unknown in Europe prior to the fifteenth century. To-day there are more than seventy diamond polishing establishments in and about the city, employing some 10,000 men, and they are building a new diamond exchange to cost in the neighborhood of $240,000. The cut diamonds exported to the United States from the Amsterdam district alone in 1909--the latest figures at my elbow--were valued at $13,319,417, in addition to more than a million dollars’ worth in the rough. The rules of the London syndicate from which every Amsterdam diamond polisher must purchase his uncut stones are equally strict with the regulation of the diamond workers’ organization. In the former case, a diamond polisher must procure an introduction to the London merchant through the de Beers syndicate in order to obtain a “sight.” If a polisher is buying diamonds of one class, say Kimberly, he may not under any circumstances obtain a “sight” of diamonds of any other class, say Jagerfontein. He may examine the parcel of diamonds offered to him for a “sight” for fifteen minutes, no longer. If they do not suit him his trip to London has been of no avail. He must take what is offered or nothing, and at the price quoted. Until five years ago a polisher was punished by not being able to obtain a “sight” for a year if he refused to accept a parcel offered for purchase, and he would often pay a premium of $4,000 for another man’s packet without seeing a stone. With regard to the worker, no one in Amsterdam may learn the trade of diamond polishing without the consent of the organization and unless he be the son of a diamond worker or jeweler. He must be under eighteen years of age, he must pass a rigid examination, and if he desires to become a cleaver--the highest salaried artisan in the diamond industry, whose wages often amount to $120 a week--he must pay sometimes as much as $2,000. There are special schools in Amsterdam for turners and polishers which charge an instruction fee ranging from $120 to $150. The rough diamond is first cleaved by hand, or, if thought more profitable, it is set in a bar of hot lead which, after having cooled, is placed in front of a phosphor-bronze saw and sawed in half. Whether or not this saw may be used a second time depends upon the crystallization of the stone sawed. Some stones that, after being sawed, are considered too hard to polish, are pulverized and mixed with emery dust to be used in making the saws. The two halves of the original stone are then handed over to the cutters who cut them round, or nearly so, and remove the flaws. The polishers then polish the stones and make their facets, which, in the case of a gem of the first class, number from fifty-eight to sixty-four.