from the widow of the late J. G. R. van Coller, who served as policeman at Swellendam.

Report of a committee appointed to inquire into certain matters concerning the railway workshops.

wished to know if the Prime Minister was yet in a position to reply to ‘his question regarding the rates of pay in the Forest Department?

The question was put the other day and the answer was deferred. Consequently the notice of the question came off the paper.

Am I not to get an answer?

I take it that the hon. member will get an answer as soon as the return is prepared.

On the 19th March the hon. member for Heidelberg ’(Mr. Stockenstrom) asked my ruling on the point as to whether the notice of motion in the name of the hon. member for Georgetown (Mr. Andrews) on the eligibility of women to vote at Parliamentary elections, was in order in view of the fact that the Electoral Bill had already been introduced into this House when the notice of motion in question was given. The rule is that a motion must not anticipate a matter already appointed for consideration by the House. When notice of motion No. VI. for tomorrow was given by the hon. member for Georgetown, Order No. XII. for to-day had already been set down for discussion. Under clause 1 of the Electoral Bill, the qualification of voters is open for discussion, and the subject matter of the motion by the hon. member for Georgetown can there be raised. Consequently the notice of motion standing in the name of the hon. member for Georgetown must be discharged from the Order Paper. In the event of the Bill not being proceeded with, the hon. member will be at liberty again to give notice of his motion.

said that in the Union of South Africa agriculture came first, though it appeared as if that object had only been half attained, and he thought the item should be represented by a larger vote. Conditions changed rapidly. Ten years ago mealies were sold for at least 15s. a bag. South Africa was open for the importation of mealies, and America sold at 10s. per bag, with the result that the farmers here had to sell at the same price. The mealie harvest increased so much that a foreign market had to be sought. The wheat farmer was asking for protection in order to maintain the price at 15s., and the speaker quite agreed with that request. Before complying, however, they ought to ask whether sufficient wheat was grown for local use. He agreed with what had been said by the hon. member for Edenburg on the subject of protection. The exportation of leather and wool should be prevented, so that the country could be developed. The vote in respect of agriculture was too small for the purpose of developing their resources. There was in this country a lack of practical farmers. On the Estimates there was an item of £112,000 for an Agricultural College, which money was well bestowed. South African youths should be trained to that branch of industry. Hitherto these youths had studied to become doctors, Civil Servants, and lawyers, but they ought to be made into good farmers, and the agricultural school would help to do it. If they qualified themselves, they would be able to fill high positions at lower salaries than were now being paid. If the Irrigation and Settlement Bills were agreed to, farming would be assisted and poor whites employed on the railways would cease to exist as such. Those people were farmers, and if the Bills referred to resulted in their being brought back to the land, a great deal of good would be done. At the present time the mining industry was yielding a great deal, but that yield was uncertain, and some day or other the income from that, source would fail them. Every ounce of gold taken out of the mines made the country poorer. No doubt it had been said that the mines would continue for another thirty or fifty years, but that was only guesswork. If that were correct it would not be stated, because the share values would depreciate. In any case, when ultimately the mines were exhausted, agriculture must then be strong enough to bear all burdens. With regard to the complaint of labour shortage, he thought it was a rather good thing, because the less labour there was available the longer the mines would continue to work. He did not know what the members of the Labour party wanted. They did not want to import Kafirs because they died, but they wanted to import whites from England; but would the whites from England not die also? To import strangers from England was, in the speaker’s view, entirely wrong. They could only do the light work, and if compelled to do the heavy work 25 per cent of them would die in the first year. In view of the large income from posts and telegraphs, he could not understand why they did not have more telephones. He had asked for a necessary connection, but had been refused, whilst other necessary lines had only been constructed when the public had guaranteed their cost. That was wrong. The railway tariffs in the Transvaal were fairly high, and resulted in big profits. It was desired to reduce those tariffs and to introduce taxes. A tax by means of the railways was quite fair, and high tariffs on imported goods should be continued. Now, when the railway profits were considerable, the rolling stock should be improved, so as to prevent accidents on the railway and the actions at law which resulted from them. He trusted that the Minister of Commerce and Industries would propose during the next session a scheme to establish a wool factory. He had been a shareholder in a wool factory in Natal, which had made good progress, but which had been ruined by the action of the wholesale merchants. In the Transvaal excellent hats were being made, which were both cheap and satisfactory,. The Minister should examine these matters. Much had been said about the £6,000,000 which was paid to the Civil Servants, and the Government had been blamed for it. Of course, it was not the Government’s fault, as those salaries had already existed in the Colonies prior to the Union. In the South African Republic the salaries of Civil Servants were low, but after the war a number of worn-out majors and captains had been appointed with big salaries and all sorts of allowances. Those salaries still continued, but the Government could not be blamed for them. Why, for example, should the magistrate at Standerton draw a higher salary than the one at Wakkerstroom?

said that he quite agreed with the hon. member’s statement that the salaries were too high, but if the Crown Colony Government had sinned in this respect the present Government had carried on the same policy instead of changing it. He felt grateful to the hon. member for George for giving them lucid information on the proposed grading of salaries; it was just such a statement that he had wished given to the House. He understood the Minister of Finance to say that the report of the Civil Service Commission on the grading system would be found in the Estimates, and that the Estimates were based upon that. Were they, then, going to decide upon these Estimates without going into the report of the Commission, because before they could pass any salaries this grading system would have to be discussed by the House. He was not in a position to vote for salaries until they had decided upon the report. He agreed with the hon. member for George that the salaries were too large, and that the married men should have further allowances. It might be that the allowances proposed for the different parts of the country were just and fair, but there were other portions of the country where the cost of living was just as high as in some of the places mentioned here, and where no such allowance has been made. He spoke feelingly about this, because the Transkeian territory was such a portion. The cost of living in the Transkei was quite as high as the cost of living in Kimberley. Even before the outbreak of East Coast fever the cost of produce, groceries, and so on was as high as in Johannesburg and Pretoria. The only item that was lower was rent.

Proceeding, he said that there was an indication of a new departure in the method of drawing up the Estimates. The total number of the establishment included in the Estimates for 1912-16 was given as 20,759. Then in paragraph 2 of the memorandum it was stated: “To this figure must be added the number of natives, Indians, part-time officers, and others who are not shown in the numerical column, and who total 6,805.” He could not understand what that meant. Looking through the Estimates he found that though not in the numerical column the corresponding figures were in most, but not in all, instances attached to the money column. So the question arose, why were these people who were in the Government employ not put down in the numerical column? The Minister of Finance could not give him the reason, and the heads of Departments affected gave him no more satisfaction. On comparing the statements in the Memorandum with the figures in the Estimates he found the following discrepancies, the number not included in the numerical column. In regard to agriculture the memorandum, stated that there were 338 natives and coloured people in this category, but the Estimates showed 570 retired and 98 not included in column, 411 natives were redundant or retired. The more he looked at it the more puzzled he became. He defied even the hon. member for Cape Town Central to get satisfaction out of the figures. (Laughter.) In respect of the Department of the Minister of the Interior the numbers given were: Asylums, 328; Defence, 157, and these were absolutely correct. In the Department of Justice, police, the number was 3,031. The curious thing was that there was a statement that 253 Europeans had been taken on, in place of some of them, but as a fact nobody had been dismissed. Coming to Prisons and Reformatories the number of natives who were stated not to appear in the numerical column was 813. But looking through the Estimates they found nothing of the kind, unless the reduction in the item “subordinate officers” from 2,717 to 1,758 in numerical column indicated it. It seemed to him that there had been exchanges from one Department to another, and without giving any information there had been a juggling all round. As far as the Native Affairs Department was concerned the statement was pretty fair and square. The number of natives not appearing in the numerical column was 978. He had thought that perhaps they had all been dismissed, and he could not imagine how the Department could get along without them, but the Estimates show that none of them have been dismissed, they are all there, and the money to be paid to them. He must give some praise to the Department of Public Works. The number given is 195 both in the Memorandum and Estimates, but the pay for these men this year is £7,000, whereas last year it was only £5,337, and this needs explanation. In these figures they would find 474 natives in the Agricultural Department, and in prisons and reformatories 813, making altogether 1,287 who had been redundant or had been retired. If they added to these 1,287, the figure of 276 given by the Minister of Railways and Harbours, they got something over 1,500 natives and coloured people who had been absolutely dismissed during the past year. In the fourth paragraph of the memorandum it was stated that the decrease of 47 in the establishment since Union “has been achieved, notwithstanding the fact that the 1912-13 Estimates provide for an increase in the establishment of the police force of approximately 469 Europeans, in the Department of Posts, Telegraphs and Telephones of 350, in Asylum staffs of 167, and in the Printing and Stationery Department staff of 155 artisans.” That gave a total of 1,141, and to this they had to add 253 in the Department of Justice, though why those were not included in paragraph 4 he did not know. The total was thus raised Ito 1,394, and they had to add 276 in the Railway Department, making in all 1,670. It was clear any how that more than 1,500 natives and coloured people had been dismissed, and about 1,670 Europeans had, as it were, taken their place. (A laugh.) He asked, was the dismissal of those men fair? They were in the Government service, and they, equally with Europeans, had a right not to lose any of the positions which they held at the time of Union, and they knew, as a matter of fact, that a large number of Europeans who had been put in were not in the service previously. He did not think that that was in accordance with the Act of Union. Why should this legerdemain be practised? He claimed the right that they should know where they were and that they should not be puzzled in this way to find out what was the reality of the position. Why had this plan of leaving the number of native Civil Servants out of the numerical column been adopted? Nobody could tell him. One of the reasons which had been given was that they never did put natives and coloured people in the numerical column under the old Transvaal system because they were not reckoned as human beings but as animals, and the Transvaal constitution forbad any equality between white and coloured. Well, if that were the old Transvaal system, he hoped the Minister would adopt the old Cape system in future, so that they would know what the position was exactly. This was colour prejudice run mad, and it did not tend to the credit of the Ministry. Was this policy to be the policy of the Union? There were many indications that pointed in the same direction, that during the past twelve months the Ministry had been going on the wrong line with regard to this matter. He was not going to touch on the political aspect, or the question of the franchise, he was not going to deal much with the colour blot or colour bar that was introduced into religious matters last year in that House, but when he found these people who did not appear in the numerical column were natives and coloured people, he asked was this colour bar in matters political and matters religious to be extended to the inherent right of people in South Africa to earn their own living? Were they to be barred from that because of the colour of their skin? He regretted to see the same indication in the regulations framed under the Mining Law passed last session. Under those regulations no coloured man in the Free State or the Transvaal could be employed as a ganger, or a banksman, or an engine driver, or in certain other capacities.

Quite right.

said it would be quite right for a property owner or a mining employer to make the restriction, but there was a vast difference between that and making it the law of the land. It was striking at the fundamental rights of humanity, and he trusted that the present Minister of Mines would take steps to have that blot on the regulations removed. He hoped that this Parliament was not going to adopt the old retrogressive policy of the Transvaal in this matter, but the policy that was held by such men as Sir George Grey and Rhodes, who encouraged the natives and coloured people to become artisans and skilled labourers. There was another indication he should like to mention. While in the Transvaal recently he was invited to visit the prisons there and see white prisoners working at their own trades. He asked where were the native prisoners? He was told that they were working on the roads. That was the class of work most of them were fitted for, he admitted, but not all of them. There might be a coloured man here and there who was an artisan, and he thought such a man should have been allowed to work at his trade, but he found subsequently that definite instructions had been issued that no coloured man was to be allowed to work at his own trade or to receive any remuneration. Re the Arms and Ammunition Bill they were all agreed that it would not be wise to allow natives to have firearms indiscriminately, but to say that no native or coloured man who already had a rifle was to be allowed to hold it without permission of the Government was going too far. As to the Squatters’ Bill, that was a crude, unjust measure of eviction and spoliation. The Government had taken no steps to provide proper reserves for the accommodation of the 200,000 natives who would be turned off the ground they and their forefathers had occupied for generations under that measure. Turning to mining matters, surely, continued Mr. Schreiner, it was wrong to debar men from obtaining labour because of the colour of their skin. The natives were the unskilled labourers of the mines, and they would remain so despite the efforts of hon. members on the crossbenches. (Hear, hear.) A higher power than the Labour members, great as their power was, had ordained that the native should live and work in South Africa, and that he should be willing to work for a less wage than any white man would accept. The two hundred thousand natives who worked on the mines were the source of South Africa’s prosperity. (Hear, hear.) Let us be thankful to them, and have a little spark of gratitude to the men who had brought prosperity, not only to the mining companies, but also to the farmers. (Hear, hear.) What made the prosperity of the Free State in the old days? Nothing but the Kimberley market. Some people talked as if the mines were the greatest enemies of South Africa. The poor mines that did not pay dividends were just as beneficial to South Africa as the rich ones were—(cheers)—for all the millions spent on them were circulated in the country. (Cheers.) It was right of the Government to support the mining industry as much as possible, and to hold the balance fairly between employers and employees. There were signs lately that Government was “wobbling.” He agreed that the Nyasa-land natives who could not stand the climate and work at the Rand should not be allowed to be recruited, but when Government wanted to discourage native recruiting generally outside the Union he was against the Government. To that extent Government was backing up the gentlemen on the cross-benches, who thought if they could get rid of 60,000 or 100,000 natives their places would be taken by white men. That was a pure figment of the imagination. (Laughter.) He did not think that-unskilled European mine labourers would be the best class of immigrants. The immigrants South Africa wanted were those who would settle on the land. We did not want to be troubled with huge strikes, unsettling the whole conditions of the country. We did not want bombs and Anarchists, or to have one class of people that would be able to tyrannise over the rest. (Loud cheers.) Proceeding, Mr. Schreiner took exception to the decision of the Government to reduce from £5 to £2 the amount of money advanced to natives when they were recruited for labour on the Rand. He did not think that anything less than £5 would satisfy the position, and the result of the reduction would operate in lessening the labour supply. He had letters from his constituents protesting against the action of the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association. This was what was supposed to be going on: the mining people were endeavouring to diminish the cost of labour as much as possible, and wanted to get the recruiting in their own hands, and did not desire to have the recruiters, who lived in the Native Territories, to have the advantages they now gained by recruiting for the mines. People in the territories feared that this was only a step in the direction of so diminishing the labour supply that at last there would be an outcry for Asiatic labour again. Continuing, he said that they did not want any more Asiatics, and he, for one, would fight against their entry. At the same time he thought they should deal fairly and squarely with those who were in the country at the present time. He thought that the Minister, without thinking, had handed himself over to those who were desirous of getting the whole of the recruiting in their hands. He thought that the people of the Transkei, white and black, should have a share in the prosperity of the mines. As to taxation the Minister of Finance had told the House that he intended to bring forward a scheme of uniform native taxation. He hoped that the underlying principle of that scheme would be that the natives would get something in return for the taxation which they paid to the Government. He quoted figures to show the amount the Government derived from the natives in direct taxation, and compared these items with the amounts spent on education in the four Provinces. In the Cape, 60 per cent of the direct revenue from the natives was spent in education, in Natal the percentage was 12, in the Orange Free State 9, and in the Transvaal—and here it was spent mostly upon the coloured people as distinct from the natives—6. The amount in the Transvaal had dropped about £7,000 since the previous year. It was only fair and right that the country should spend a fair and reasonable amount on that which the native valued much—education. In the Transvaal he pointed out that the Government did nothing for education of natives. It was a matter that was dealt with by missionary societies. He pointed out that instead of the taxation of the white population being spent on the natives it was the other way about, and he said that when uniform taxation came into being the point of giving the natives a fair return for this taxation should be taken into consideration. He pleaded for the Territories, even from a national point of view. It was a large part of the country, not a small district. It had a population of 908,000. It produced, according to the census of 1904, more than a fifth of the cattle in the Cape, one quarter of the horses and mules, a fifth of the sheep, one quarter of the goats, one quarter of the wool, three-fifths of the mealies of the Cape, three-quarters of the Kafir corn, and a quarter of the tobacco. He went on to point out that East Coast fever had destroyed 146,000 head of cattle, worth nearly a million sterling, in the course of the last couple of years. This had caused a great deal of distress, but the amount would have been greater, but for the wages that had come from the Rand. They were in great need of railway communication right through the country. There was the extension of the Butterworth-Idutywa railway, which, it was hoped, would have been completed by this time. It had just been lingering. If the Government had listened to the advice of officials who knew the country thoroughly, the railway, in view of the prevalence of East (Toast fever, would have been worked at from both ends. He pointed out that in addition to the difficulties the people had to face there was the difficulty of transporting materials for the construction of the dipping tanks. If the railway had been open, a lot of these difficulties would have been swept away. In spite of the fact that the people were hampered by not having the railway, there had been a large increase in the number of dipping tanks erected by the natives themselves. He thought that the Government ought to help these people by giving them efficient railway communication right through that part of the country. He did not know whether this extension to Umtata was already on the Government’s programme for this year, but he did hope it would be so, for there was a crying need for it. He had not yet received the statistics for 1911 as to the railway traffic at Butterworth, but going on the statistics of last year, the railway, if completed to Umtata, would bring in a revenue of over £100,000 a year, enough to pay cost of working and a large portion of the interest on cost of construction. Somebody had said something about ox wagon traffic, but he contended that once the railway was started ox wagon traffic would not hold up its head again. Continuing, he said he wished to bring a certain matter before the Minister of Lands. The matter referred more particularly to the Glen Grey district. When trading stations were first established, traders were enabled to get no more than a morgen of land, paying £1 quitrent. When the Glen Grey Act came into force the unalienated portion of the land was proclaimed commonage. Subsequently the Government agreed to increase the size of the stations, and traders could do so by paying £1 for each additional morgen of land up to five or six morgen. Some traders did so, but others did not. In 1909 the Cape Parliament reduced all traders’ quitrents to 4s. per morgen, with a minimum of £1. Now, in the Transkei the traders had five morgen and paid 20s., but those people in Glen Grey who had only one morgen had to pay just as much as those who had five. Of course, that materially changed the position, and among these traders there was a great number who felt that it was only fair and right that they should be allowed to increase their land from one morgen to five morgen, and he hoped the Minister would, if necessary, introduce a short Bill to provide for this act of justice. He wanted to say a word to the Prime Minister. (Laughter and “Hear, hear.”) As a Prime Minister they all admired his non-racial spirit. (Cheers.) They knew that he was non-racial, but they were sorry that he was unable to carry out his views. He tried to fill two positions. He was Minister of Agriculture as well as Prime Minister, and he thought the right hon. gentleman would rather be Minister of Agriculture than Prime Minister. However, he was not Prime Minister of one part of the country only; he was Prime Minister of the whole country. They did want to be proud of him, even although they were in opposition, and they wanted him to be strong enough to put his foot down on everything in any department of the Government that was racial and wrong and deserved condemnation, and not support it. Now, about agriculture. He was one of those who thought there was too much centralisation. Personally, he took a great deal of interest in agriculture, and when the right hon. gentleman became Prime Minister he thought they would see a large department which would be in touch with the people of the Transkei, and which would teach them how to cultivate the soil. He had talked with the Prime Minister on the question, and he said they must centralise first, because they must have one system of agriculture in the country. When they had done that then the powers would be devoluted to other parts. Why not devolute now? The work was too great to be carried on in one centre. They must devolute. Then, as he noticed the Minister of Mines in his place, he would reiterate what he had said, and hoped that he would remove the colour bar in the Mining Regulations, which says that no ganger, enginedriver, etc., etc., may be a coloured men. The hon. member, referring to the vote for printing, believed that its high cost was due to the Government doing their own printing. Of course, bilingualism doubled the cost, and that was unavoidable, but even here the cost might be reduced by using common sense. Proceeding, the hon. member said the right hon. the member for Victoria West had expressed his astonishment at the small export of wine. The right hon. gentleman said he could not understand the small quantity of wine exported, but in a measure he was responsible for it. He thought by putting on an excise on dop brandy to encourage the manufacture of light wines, but instead of this the wine farmers were making rough fortified wines for consumption by native and coloured people. He would be glad to see the quality of the wines improved. At one time he was laughed to scorn when he mentioned unfermented wine, but the time would come when the people would drink as much unfermented wine as alcoholic. Then, with regard to the Minister of Finance; he thought it was rather stupid finance to hand over for the next ten years £80,000 to Natal and £67,000 to the Orange Free State, instead of encouraging them to initiate local self-government and taxation such as we had in the Cape Province. To his mind, that was simply keeping people on crutches. They would not begin to tax themselves until these ten years were over. These subsidies should not be paid for more than two or three years. In regard to the Minister of Justice, he had already said that he admired very much the way in which the prisons were administered, but he had a complaint in regard to all the changes in connection with prisons. They might be advisable, but it was impossible to obtain any information about them. He did not know why gaols were being dismantled and gaolers dismissed. The Department was such a secret department that it absolutely resented any inquiries. He regretted that nothing appeared on the Estimates for higher education for natives. Many of them were going to America to receive higher education. They ought by grants to the Native Colleges, such as Lovedale, etc., to put a stop to the practice of natives going to foreign countries to receive higher education, and, incidentally, views on political questions which perhaps would not be of benefit to the country in the future. In conclusion, he wished to say that he was one of those who before Union believed that the interests of the country would be best served by a Ministry composed of men of both parties, and that at the beginning Union it was of the utmost importance that there should be no parties, at least for the first five years. However, the time and the opportunity had passed. He believed that if that scheme had been carried out, some of the things that had occurred in connection with the present Government and had pained the country would not have happened. He was not going to accuse the Government of jobbery or anything disreputable—(Ministerial laughter)—but he would plead as a South African, who loved South Africa as much as anyone, that the first Government of the Union should be a righteous Government in every respect, and one that they might be proud of. The Government ought to set their faces like a flint against anything that would deteriorate that ideal. He did not say that for the sake of party. From the point of view of party, it would be the best thing in the world for the Government to be as corrupt as possible. But they desired everything to be on the higher plane. They wished the foundations of South African nationality to be laid solidly and deeply, without any rotten or unstable work, and for an edifice to be reared thereon that would be noble and stately and of grand proportions. (Cheers.)

said the debate had given him the impression that the Minister of Finance had been so clear in his Budget speech that the critics were unable to find much fault with it. He might, therefore, congratulate his colleague on his speech, and the country could certainly be congratulated on the bringing about of Union. That Union was still young, but if they took note of their financial position, they would see that it had been very much improved. There had been practically no extra taxation. On the contrary, taxation had actually been reduced, both in respect of railway tariffs and in other respects. The total of that diminished taxation represented some £2,000,000. He had always been optimistic as to the results of Union, but had not dared to hope that within two years they could diminish taxation by £2,000,000. He feared that the taxpayer was not sufficiently aware of what had already been attained, and of what economies had already been effected. The reduction of the taxation had taken place despite the increase in the Civil Service. The Government had resumed the contributions to the Sinking Fund, which had been suspended, Civil Servants were again receiving their normal increases, which had also been suspended, and owing to the carrying out of these old obligations the total expenditure had increased. Yet their finances were in a particularly good condition. There were increases of expenditure in connection with defence, education and police. Those increases were necessary in the interests of country and people, and they were healthy increases. It could not be denied that in all parts of the country there was an increase of prosperity, both in connection with industry and with trade. When the National Convention sat in Cape Town, and determined on the arrangements for the two capitals, it was said that Cape Town was dead, but it was now found to be one of the most prosperous places in the country. The Union was justified in the prevailing prosperity. There was now more confidence in this country, and there was more co-operation. Now, although items of expenditure had been diminished, the total was still fairly high, but he thought it was justified in view of the great advancement made in agriculture. The Department had been criticised for not doing enough for agriculture, but it could not be denied that conditions had never been so good as they now were. Complaint had been made about the increased importation of butter, but he thought that was due to the greater purchasing power of the public, which had considerably increased during the past two years. Besides that, there had been a great scarcity of butter two years ago, which had to be imported, and they were now suffering from the contracts which were made at that time. The dairy in dustry was still growing. He was grateful to the hon. member for Port Elizabeth, Central, for having, when the hon. member was a Minister, encouraged that industry. His attempts had not been entirely successful, but the Principle then laid down had found favour with the public. Some splendid results had been attained, and it would not be long before the dairy industry produced more than could be consumed in the local markets, and then exportation would follow. The value of mealies exported was £290,000 less than last year, but that was not due to any setback in the production. Every year more mealies were being produced than the previous year. The quantity consumed in the interior of the country also grew, and that was one good reason for the diminution of the export. They should remember that grain, which was exported, came back in the form of whisky, ham, bacon, cheese and such like, all of which competed with local products. It was better to use mealies for the feeding of cattle, or in factories, rather than to export them, so as to enable them to export other products. The reduced export of mealies was also due, in part, to a dry year, but notwithstanding the dry year, more than sufficient mealies had been grown for local consumption. Against the diminished exportation of mealies there was a reduced importation of wheat. Whilst the mealies exported were valued at £290,000 less than last year, the value of the wheat imported was £300,000 less. The amounts accordingly balanced each other. There was an increased exportation of fruits, wool and bark. The attempts of the Government were perhaps not so sensational as might be desired, but the Department did not wish to advertise itself. Only ten years ago the country had been devastated, and since then a development had taken place on a hitherto unknown scale, and that was due to co operation amongst farmers. The Government were doing all they could to assist agriculture, and notwithstanding plagues of hail, drought, and disease, farming was going ahead. He was especially glad that the country had devoted itself so earnestly to scientific farming, and with the help of irrigation further progress was sure to follow. In the Agricultural Department there was co-operation between all parts of the Union, and whilst persons in other professions formerly looked down on farming, those, times were now past. No longer did people think that the stupidest boys were good enough for farming. They preferred to set the cleverest boys at farm work, and to buy farms for them. Investigations as to cattle disease had always occasioned much difficulty. Horse-sickness had ruined numbers of people. It was now possible to render mules immune against that sickness by means of Dr. Theiler’s injection. The same preventive was being applied to horses, and with the greatest success, and the discovery had opened up a greater future for horse-breeding. Parts of the country which were formerly inaccessible, owing to horse-sickness, could now be worked with mules. There would have to be a further expenditure of money in connection with the laboratory. Dr. Theiler had discovered how to deal with blauwtong, so that whilst formerly in some districts twenty per cent. of the sheep died, at present none of them were lost. It was most difficult to eradicate East Coast fever. He meant that it was difficult to persuade the public that the tick carried the disease. They said that the tick had always been there, but that the disease had not always existed. The disease could easily be dealt with if only the people would cooperate. No matter what the Government did, if the people did not do their best to kill the tick, all their efforts would miscarry. The position with regard to East Coast fever had become better. About half the Transvaal had been infected, but the country was now almost clean. In 1911 the sickness broke out on 45 occasions only, whilst there were 223 farms declared to be clean, and many districts hitherto infected were able to bring in cattle from elsewhere, and to maintain them in safety. Where the East Coast fever was still prevailing, they were using all their influence to get dipping tanks constructed. The success of dipping had been completely proved by Dr. Watkins Pitchford, and he (the speaker) was grateful to him for his excellent work. At the time when Union was being born, there ensued a panic in Natal, owing to an outbreak of East Coast fever. Hundreds of people went round to buy up the cattle, which were sold at from £2 to £3 per head. The Natal farmers had fine cattle. They started to build dipping tanks, and now they had in Natal 1,400 of them. The cattle were regularly dipped, and nobody there feared East Coast fever any longer. Those people did not run after the Government asking for fences or special police, but they asked for advances to build tanks. In the whole country there were now 2,000 of these tanks, but still there was not sufficient attention devoted to the subject in the native locations. He had agreed with the Minister of Native Affairs to construct 190 dipping tanks in the different locations in Natal, and 28 tanks had been built south of the Kei River. Those tanks were built on behalf of those who wanted to help themselves. In the Transkei there were a number of these tanks, but not sufficient often. The disease was spreading, because the public would not submit to the restrictions, and it was spread by transport waggons. If there were sufficient tanks, transport waggons could be allowed to trek. He would call on the hon. member for Tembuland to use his influence to persuade the people in the Transkei to construct dinning tanks. The Government advanced the money, and the material could be brought from the coast at low freights; the making of a tank there would only take three weeks. In connection with East Coast fever there was too much of a tendency to look to the Government for help. They always blamed the Government. The Government were quite ready to help, but the farmers must in the first case help themselves. Fences and police would not stop the disease. They must have dipping tanks, and those who would not build tanks were a danger to the country. As soon as the tick was exterminated, not only would East Coast fever disappear, but other diseases also. If they borrowed money from the Government to build dipping tanks they would increase the value of their farms. He regretted that the disease had now broken out on this side of the Kei. The man who would not dip, and who continued to move his cattle about, would lose every ox he had and infect the whole district into the bargain. Dr. Theiler had discovered how to deal with East Coast fever, and had succeeded in salting about 70 per cent., but his cure could only be applied in places where the disease had already broken out, otherwise the whole country would become infected. Only last month they had salted 6,000 cattle in the Transkei. Money must be found to continue the fight against other diseases, and Dr. Theiler was giving his earnest attention to them. In 1902 there were only two laboratories in South Africa, namely, at Graham’s Town and Maritzburg. Now there was a big laboratory at Pretoria, the largest in the world, and in districts where the disease appeared a number of experimental stations had also been constructed. They would see, therefore, that the Government was doing its very best to fight these various diseases. Agricultural schools meant a great deal in the progress of the country, and he trusted that the House would never agree to retrench in that respect. Up to a few years ago there was only one agricultural school, namely, that at Eisenberg. Now there were four, each with a fair number of pupils. Elsenberg had 26, Cedara 25, Potchefstroom 66, and Grootfontein 85, making a total of 202 students. They were sons of South Africa, who were qualifying themselves in those schools in scientific farming. A similar school would shortly be started at Bloemfontein, and he hoped that finances during the following year would enable them to make a start with the agricultural college at Pretoria. In addition to that, they had 28 students abroad, who were specialising in different departments of agriculture, and within a year or fifteen months the first of these would return. If parents who could afford to do so would give their sons a similar training, it would have a good effect. They had a number of capable experts in the Department of Agriculture, and if they afterwards added young South Africans who were now studying abroad, they would see what progress could be made. He regretted that landowners did not maintain the value of their soil. There was too much of taking from the soil, and not enough of giving back. Mealie lands, which formerly produced 15 to 20 bags per morgen, now produced only five or six. That was caused by the impoverishment of the soil. The land in that way became less valuable, as they would find out when it came to a question of selling the land. He was glad to observe the increased tendency in the direction of fencing the farms. When once the farm was fenced its value was increased, they could work with economy, and it helped to resist the spread of disease. It was also desirable to divide the farms into camps, in order to prevent the best shrubs and the best grass from being eaten clean. If they divided the farm into camps, allowed the cattle to clean out one camp at a time, then they ate the whole of the shrubs equally. Irrigation works showed substantial progress, which he hoped would continue. The wine industry was also making good progress, and the quality was at least as good as of the best imported wine. In a thirsty climate such as that of South Africa, if the wine farmers could produce a good light drink, it would become the national drink. In order to protect wine farming, it was necessary that the law against adulteration be made of wider application. He was busy drafting such a Bill, which would be applicable to the whole Union; if possible he would introduce it during the present session. He was glad to see that new varieties of grass were being planted, especially in the districts where grass perished in winter. The new sorts remained sufficiently green during the winter to make the trekking of cattle unnecessary. Wherever lucerne refused to grow, they were planting new grasses, and the Government would continue to help in that. It would undoubtedly give satisfaction that the sugar industry in Natal was doing excellently well, and if they went on as they were they would soon produce sufficient sugar for the whole of South Africa. The exportation of wattle bark was also doing well, whilst the Western Province was busying itself more and more with the planting of Turkish tobacco. They ought, however, to build a central tobacco storehouse there such as they had at Rustenburg, from which were sold during last year 1,500,000 lb. tobacco. The exportation of fruits had greatly increased. Whilst in 1906 there were 59,800 boxes exported, there were in 1911, 245,000 boxes, apart from citrus fruit. More value was being attached to pedigree cattle, and there was a greater readiness to purchase them. Once the farmer had paid a high price for his cattle, the tendency was to take better care of them. There were very good sheep in South Africa, but there was a strong desire continually to import new blood. It could not be denied, however, that there were in South Africa sheep quite as good as those which were being imported. There still existed in the Union a number of one-sided laws, which were capable of being improved, as for example the Transvaal Precious Stones Act. If a farmer found a diamond mine on his farm, 60 per cent. of that mine belonged to the State. That was in accordance with an Ordinance passed five or six years ago by the Crown Colony Government. In a similar case in the Free State, only 40 per cent. came to the State, whilst in the Cape Province the Government obtained nothing. Those laws would have to be made uniform, without, however, disturbing existing arrangements. The new law would apply only to new mines. The laws dealing with native taxation also required amending, owing to the great differences which prevailed. A native in the Transvaal paid 40s. per annum, whilst in other parts of the Union he either paid 10s. or else nothing at all. The result of that was that in the Cape Province a native population of 1,545,308 paid in taxation £140.000. The figures for Natal were 951.808. and £190.000; for the Transvaal, 1.221,145, and £395,000; for the Free State, 339,811 and £57,000. Those amounts did not include pass fees. In the Cape, then, they paid per head 1s. 9d., in Natal 4s. in the Transvaal 6s. 5d. and in the Free State 3s. 4d. That showed clearly that the laws required to be changed. The native could not understand, now that Union had been brought about, why he must pay £2 in one place and in another only 10s. He did not wish to discuss the question of the coloured people, but in regard to the native question they were bound to act with the greatest caution. Some changes must be made, otherwise difficulties would arise. Were they to treat the races on a footing of equality, or must they try to find a solution which would give more satisfaction? To put them on an equality would never give satisfaction. He could not say that he had at present any solution of the question within view, but every responsible person would have to ponder the question, because it might be necessary to solve the problem at an earlier date than people generally thought. Personally, he thought that the solution would be found in the increasing of the rights of the natives, who must have a certain measure of self-government under white supervision in order that they might work out their own salvation and be treated justly. In a social sense, the two races could never become one. Marriages between whites and blacks were impossible, and would only lead to sorrow and mischief. The natives should be improved on their own national basis. He congratulated the Minister of Railways and Harbours on the manner in which he had obtained large railway profits, and was glad to see that tariffs would be further reduced by an amount of £750,000. That diminution was most desirable, and unless it took place there would be great dissatisfaction. At the same time the profits on the railways in the different Provinces were too unequal. For instance, they amounted in the Transvaal to £1,800,000, in Natal to £500,000, in the Free State to £300,000, whilst in the Cape Province there was a loss of £130,000. He did not wish to say that the tariff in the Cape Province should be increased, but it was possible that last year they had been too much reduced. It did appear to him, however, that the Transvaal and Free State were too heavily taxed through the railways. Those railways should be used to develop the country, and not as a taxing machine. It was laid down in the Constitution that during the first four years of Union there could not be large reductions in the tariffs, but at the end of that time there must be reductions, which would assist the whole of the population. Those reductions to an amount of £750,000 would be applied chiefly to the interior Provinces, so as to remove the dissatisfaction. The tariffs last year were reduced by an amount of £465,000, of which £370,000 benefited the Cape, which had afterwards also profited by an amount of £30,000, making altogether £400,000. In the Transvaal and Free State the railways had been used prior to Union as a taxing machine, because other taxation was not desired. That was why the tariffs were high, but they could not so remain. The Cape Province had already had a diminution in taxation of £900,000, and Natal of £200,000. They had therefore received a good deal of help, and it was time to devote some attention to the interior Provinces. The Government would give its attention to the losses on harbours, as it was an unheard-of system that the interior should have to pay for their losses. During the following year the harbours would have to pay their own way. During the past few months they had heard a good deal about whites and coloured people travelling in the same railway carriages, and the question had caused an agitation to arise, which required careful consideration. The Railway Department would have to see that sufficient carriages were built, so that in every train there should be first and second-class coaches for the exclusive use of coloured persons. Whites and coloured persons would then be kept apart. There would in that case still be equality of treatment, and agitation would at the same time be prevented. It was better to spend money in having more railway coaches than to preserve a system that would arouse ill feelings between the races. Instructions had already been given to keep the races apart on the railways, and the necessary carriages were now being built. With a little patience, therefore, the difficulty would be removed. It had been said that the Civil Service was much too large, and comparisons had been made with other countries. But in England for instance, the railways were in the hands of companies, whilst here they were the property of the State, with the result that 27,000 railway men in this country became Government servants. It was only fair, therefore, that the railways should be left out of account, together with other services which in other countries were performed by private enterprise. There had been a great expansion in the administration, which could not have been foreseen, and comparisons should not be made on the basis of population, but rather on the extent of territory. Carnarvon and Kenhardt, for example, were large districts sparsely populated, but they required police, magistrates and clerks. If the population of those districts were doubled, no increase would be required in the number of officials. The hon. member for George had stated that the Government should accept the recommendations of the Campbell report in connection with the salaries of the high officials, namely that the maximum salary should be £1,350. The Government had put the maximum at £1,500, but the hon. member had forgotten to mention that the Government had reduced the maximum of many high officials to £1.200. Heads of Departments were required to be reliable, technical people, and if such men did not receive sufficient payment, they went over to the service of private persons who paid them better. The hon. member for Port Elizabeth, Central, had threatened to block Supply until the Civil Service Bill had been laid on the table, but that was entirely unjustified. The drafting of such a Bill was a difficult matter and took time. In the Governor-General’s speech it had been promised that during this session a Civil Service Bill would be handed in, and he (the Minister) hoped that the Bill would pass, so that the Government could be relieved of a heavy burden. The officials who had been appointed had obtained their appointments under the existing law, and he hoped that the new law would be adopted unanimously. (Cheers.)

said that they agreed with some portions of the right hon. gentleman’s speech, but other portions required an answer. He would deal with some of the new points introduced into the debate, such as native taxation, but he thought that before that he ought to deal with the subject of the Civil Service Bill. He reminded the House that the Prime Minister’s speech took them no further than they were on the day the Governor’s Speech was delivered. The House had sat for two months, but the Prime Minister could not say when the Bill would be introduced. If the Prime Minister could make a definite statement on the point it would materially facilitate business. After all, was it such an extraordinarily difficult matter? The Minister of the Interior had introduced his Defence Bill and considerable progress had been made with it in committee. While they were waiting for the Civil Service Bill the Minister of Native Affairs had introduced the Electoral Reform Bill. It was the old case of the child over again: Always cake yesterday and cake to-morrow, but never cake to-day. But he thought that the time had come when the Prime Minister could give a definite undertaking that the House would sit until the Bill had passed. Unless the Bill was passed this session the Ministry would find that the unrest in the Service would increase. It was not due to political agitation, but due to the fact, as the hon. member for George had put it, that the Civil Servants felt the uncertainty of the position, and they wished that introductions into the service from outside could only be carried on through definite and regularised channels.

He did not know when he had listened with so much pleasure to remarks made by the Prime Minister as when he spoke of the inequality of taxation. He said that unless they had equality of taxation there was going to be trouble. But why had he confined his remark to native taxation? Why not have brought in equality, in regard to Europeans, and taxation in the Provinces instead of having the extraordinary proposals of the Treasurer. He thought that the House had listened with great attention and interest to another portion of the Prime Minister’s speech, namely, his admirable discussion on the benefits of progressive farming. The Prime Minister was a progressive farmer himself, and nobody realised better the advantages that resulted from progressive farming. When the right hon. gentleman came to East Coast fever there had been a little more trouble in following his arguments and deductions. What was wanted was that the Government should take the powers the House had given them and apply compulsory dipping throughout large portions of the country. They should prepare the inhabitants for it before the disease had actually broken out in a district by notifying a date in advance on which compulsory dipping would come into force. Farmers would, in consequence, erect their tanks and dipping would be in operation before the disease entered the district, instead of, as now, a rush made to build tanks when the district was already infected. The Prime Minister had emphasised that agriculture was never in a more prosperous condition than it was to-day. He was glad to think that was so. But the Prime Minister wished the House to think that it was due to the extraordinary management of a most able Government. The Prime Minister did what he could to press forward progressive agriculture, but he (Colonel Crewe) was not sure that in the Free State the conditions of agriculture were any better than when the Premier took charge of it. In regard to scab, the Free State had gone back. Do let them have an Agricultural Department which did something more than talk. As to native taxation, the natives in Transvaal paid £2 per head, and the natives at Glen Grey paid 25s. per head. But wherever they had a civilised population of natives they paid more in indirect taxation than did the uncivilised natives. (Hear, hear.) The Opposition would protest against any equalisation of taxation which would put the burden of direct taxation equally on the civilised and uncivilised natives. He entirely agreed with the idea of extending the principle of local self-government to the natives. There was no more successful instance of that than the Glen Grey system. The future peace and order of the natives depended very largely on their being allowed to manage their own affairs, subject to European tutelage. Continuing, Colonel Crewe said that, comparing the Estimates for 1908-9 with those now before the House, the increase in the salary vote for civil administration roughly amounted to £329,000, or an increase of 43 per cent, since Union. The increase in defence of £100,000 was due to the new defence scheme. He did not think the Prime Minister had done anything to explain the extraordinary increase in expenditure which had taken place since Union. He thought the Prime Minister ought to wear a white sheet. The right hon. gentleman should have stated that one of the intentions of the Government was to reduce expenditure as far as possible, bearing in mind the rights of the Civil Servants. The hon. member for George (Mr. Currey) had fired shots at the Government, saying that they were guilty of monstrous taxation and expenditure, yet the hon. member voted with the Government. (Opposition cheers.) In fact, the hon. member for George was among the “also bolted.” (Laughter.) How long, said the member for George, “will this sort of thing go on?” Exactly so long as hon. members attacked the Government in the flank for extravagance and did not support the Opposition by their votes, so long would Government ignore them. (Opposition cheers.)

Business was suspended at 6 p.m.

said that not only had extravagance been pointed out by the right hon. member for Victoria West and the hon. member for George, but the hon. member for Edenburg also pointed out where the extravagance of the Government was likely to lead them, and in continuation of that he would like to go into the figures of the Prime Minister with regard to taxation, which he said had been lowered, though he (the speaker) admitted that the coast colonies had benefited far more than the other colonies in this regard. The Cape and Natal had benefited materially from the Act of Union in regard to this remission of taxation, and he thought it only fair he should say so, representing as he did a Cape constituency; but he disputed the figure—two millions—which had been put before the House by the Prime Minister. The actual amount of taxation reduction was £391,000. To be added to that there was a reduction of £456,000, and then £121,000 in railway rates, making a reduction in all—it had to be remembered that the other Provinces as well as the coast Provinces, shared in this reduction of railway (rates—of £586,000, so far as the railways were concerned. If all those amounts were added together they did not make two millions, and he presumed the Prime Minister must have included £750,000 in railway rates, which would come into being if the Budget passed the House. Even with that addition the total only came to £1,727,000. For the life of him he could not make the total any larger. From that total they had to take the amount of £60,000, which came from the additional cigarette tax, and £20,000 from the increase in stamp duties. So that the amount of taxation remitted, past and prospective, came to less than £1,700,000. Now he would come to the question of economy, in so far as Union was concerned. Many people in the four Provinces supported the idea of Union, for they thought it would prove economical, and that there would be a big decrease in the cost of administration; at any rate, many people fondly believed that Union would be cheaper. Let them see whether they had received these benefits of cheapness. He would leave his hon. friend the Treasurer to choose between the charge levied by the hon. member for Cape Town that he was a spendthrift Minister, or the charge of weakness put forward by the hon. member for George. He could choose which he liked. The figures which were given by his hon. friend the member for Cape Town were practically correct, whichever way one looked at them. His hon. friend, the member for Cape Town, contended that there was an increase in the Estimates for the current year of £1,771,000 over the expenditure of the year 1908-9, the time of Union. One of the material decreases in the expenditure was in the Agricultural Department, where the Minister had exercised care and brought about a big reduction. In the Department of Posts and Telegraphs there was a reduction of £70,000, and in the case of the Legislature of £14,000. The figures which his hon. friend the member for Cape Town, Central, gave constituted an answer to the Prime Minister. Now the Prime Minister had said in effect that he was defending the Civil Servants against charges that had been made by the other side. Well, no attacks had been made on the Civil Servants, no attacks had been levied on the Civil Servants. What they objected to was the fact that the Civil Servants in the lower grades were not being treated as fairly as some of the officials in the higher grades—mostly in the Northern Provinces—and that the few had benefited at the expense of the many. On science and education (1908-9) there was an expenditure of l½ millions. In 1912-13 they found a vote for just over £2,000,000, or an increase of £550,559, or 30 per cent. of the total. This was an expenditure which no reasonable man could take objection to, because it was an expenditure for the future development of the children of the country. But justice! He did not know whether justice had advanced, but the oost of administration had gone up 7¼ per cent, since 1909.

What is it for?

To get better justice, I suppose, but I don’t know that you get it. The vote for police, prisons, and reformatories amounted to £1,928,000, an increase of £129,000 since 1908-9. But the greatest increase was shown in buildings and roads. Here they found that in 1908-9 the amount was £1,104,000, and they would admit that the Cape was then passing through a great deal of depression, and the building of roads and bridges was being cut down. The present expenditure amounted to £2,034,000, or an increase of 84 per cent. That was an expenditure that should have been carefully watched. On native affairs there was an increase of £40.000. Defence showed an increase of £158,000, but he would point out that this included roughly an amount of £100,000 for the new scheme of defence, an expenditure which, he believed, in the interests of the country was warranted. To the increase in the civil establishment of £329,000, they must add £101,462 increase in pensions; in other words, the total increase was well over £400,000. The administration of mines also had gone up £40,000 since 1909. Proceeding, the hon. member said he would like to point out to the Minister of Finance what would be the financial position in which he would find himself next year if there was no reduction in expenditure between now and next year. He would find himself in a very serious position indeed. His hon. friend laughed. He seemed a very light and air Treasuser.

Have you just discovered that?

No, I discovered it when my hon. friend spoke last. Continuing, the hon. member said that the position of the Minister was this. A good many on that side of the House believed that when he came to the Estimates of Revenue, he would find that he would have £300,000 or £400,000 more than he expected. His deficit for the current year was £670,000. He is going to lose his railway contribution of £500,000, and he was going to have the cost for defence from £200,000 to £250,000, apart from the amount he had provided this year. Put the question how they liked, his hon. friend was going to have a deficit of over £1,000,000, which he would have to meet by extra taxation. A considerable number of the constituencies represented on that side of the House was going to bear the largest portion of this taxation, and he hoped his hon. friends opposite were going to bear their share. There was every reason why the Treasurer should cut down his expenditure as much as possible. The time had come when there would have to be an equalisation of taxation, and the Treasurer would have to meet that as well. He should like to know whether the Railway Board was consulted?

Not about the men’s meeting. (Ministerial laughter.)

About the piecework? I should think the Cabinet knew as little about the report as the Railway Board. Surely this is a matter that need not have been cast on the floor of this House. I notice that the Minister of Railways has now come in. I wanted to know why on earth the Minister of Railways brought the question into the House at all, because it was the object of the Act of Union, as I understand, that the question of railways should be kept out of party politics.

If the Minister of Railways had made a clear statement, a statement that was ample in every form on the subject, I could have understood it, but he did not tell us what the minority reports said. The minority reports are signed by two members out of four. They said that they did not entirely agree with the majority report, and, further, that the point of efficiency could not be judged under present circumstances, and more time was required before that efficiency could be judged. Proceeding, Colonel Crewe said he gathered that the object of the Minister in introducing this matter was to show that, if the coast workshops were not very careful and if there were not more efficiency in their work, it was likely that the work would be transferred to more inland centres. He thought if the Minister read the Minority Report very carefully, he would see that they were not so clear that the efficiency of the workshops at the coast was not so great as those of the more inland centres. The whole thing was, upon what basis were these calculations made? Were they made without consideration of the machinery in those workshops? While one did not object to piece-work altogether, one did object to the idea that piece-work was going to run riot through the railway workshops, because, if they read the reports, they would see very clearly that piece-work was advantageous financially up to a certain point. The Minister of Railways was ill-advised to put the question before the House in the condition in which it was, with varying reports from the Commission, with two members of the Commission signing totally different reports to the other two members of the Commission. He thought it was very unfortunate and quite unwarranted. In closing, he would like to again urge the necessity for economy. They did not want to be faced with increased taxation, whether it was direct or indirect. He hoped the Minister of Finance would find some means after the expression of opinion from all sides of the House, of reducing his expenditure from the very high limit at which it stood at the present time. (Opposition cheers.)

said he must congratulate the Minister of Finance upon the statement he had been able to put before the House. He had, it seemed, been sailing in a very calm sea. Practically the saving on the next year’s Estimates is £107,000, and the year’s working has wound up with a surplus of £446,000. It was satisfactory to know that the country was in such a booming state that the Minister had received more revenue than he budgeted for. According to his own showing, there would be a deficit on the following year of £670,000, together with the deficiency which would accrue on his Supplementary Estimates, and he proposed to meet this by the surplus of 1910-11, of £855.000. Now the hon. member for Port Elizabeth, Central, has drawn attention to the fact that this money should not be devoted in that way. Of course, it was a maxim of taxation that they should not take more out of the pockets of the public than was absolutely necessary to carry on their year’s expenditure. Well, to him it seemed that this maxim may be very good when they were dealing with old settled countries, which had a normal recurrent expenditure and a practically normal recurrent revenue, but in a young country, and especially a country like South Africa, that had its ups and downs, as they had all experienced, he could not help feeling that the wiser course would have been for the Minister of Finance to have devoted that £855,000 to the reduction of our debt. (Hear, hear.)

Last year he cried “Caution,” and this year he was going to do the same. The Treasurer gave the taxpayers a great deal of relief by way of the remission of taxation and through the Minister of Railways and Harbours by way of reduced railway rates. That more than covered the deficiency, but in the flourishing state of the country he could not help thinking that the deficiency should have been met by the taxpayers. He had listened to the Prime Minister’s speech, and had noted his optimistic tone; but he did not share it. (Opposition cheers.) During the past two years they had spent nearly five millions of borrowed money, and intended spending seven millions in the next year—in all, 12 millions. Part of that was reproductive, but still the money was being spent, and they knew that in three years’ time they would be spending that money with a concomitant impetus to trade and a concomitant impulse to the general prosperity of the country. They had a boom in diamonds and ostrich feathers, and other booms; after the war there was a boom, and in 1908-9 the country was faced with taxation on the one hand, and bitter retrenchment on the other. They had a public debt with an annual interest of £4,000,000, and this year they were adding to that by £200,000, so that they would have an unavoidable annual expenditure roughly of £4,150,000. Then they had the Civil Service and pensions to meet, altogether an unavoidable expenditure of eleven millions. He thought they had to look and see where that was leading them, otherwise they would soon find themselves race to face with a set-back which would tax the energies of every right-thinking man in this country to set right. He felt very strongly on that point, because although he felt everything must be done to wake up the country and make South Africa the country it should be, he could not help-thinking they must not go too fast. (Hear, hear.) It was a bad principle to accustom the country to going ahead and remitting too much taxation. He did not think any harm would have been done this year by meeting their deficiency by putting a small tax on the community. (Ministerial cries of “No,” and Opposition cheers.)

A-tax on extravagance.

proceeding, said that according to the hon. member for George (Mr. H. L. Currey) they spent millions a year on salaries and pensions; in other words, taking it roughly at seven millions, every white man, woman, and child in this country was taxed to the extent of £2 for the Civil Service establishment. What he felt was that their rate of salaries was too high. (Opposition cheers.) It was all well and good to point to the Civil Service Commission and tell them they made those recommendations, and these scales had been fixed by that Commission, but surely the House was the proper body to fix the rate of pay of their Civil Service and administration from the highest to the lowest. (Opposition cheers.)

Especially the highest.

We feel our Civil Servants in the higher grades are overpaid. Proceeding-, he said it was the duty of the House to see to those things. The Right Hon. the Prime Minister, to-day, told them he believed in paying their high officials high salaries, otherwise they would get second-rate men. His (Mr. Watermeyer’s) experience of the country was that they could get the best brains in this country for £1,000 and £1,200 a year, and he did not think their heads of departments should have salaries that exceeded that amount. (Hear, hear.) It was all well and good to slur that matter over—(Opposition cheers)—but the ordinary man in this country looked upon those salaries as very princely. His argument was that if a man who was at the head of a public department only worked for sordid pounds, shillings, and pence he was a poor official.

What about Ministers?

proceeding, said he only wanted to draw attention to the fact that there was this feeling in the country that the higher grades of the Civil Service were overpaid. (Hear, hear.) Of course, they had been committed to that extent, and according to the Act of Union they must keep to it; but, looking at it how they liked, he thought that the scale brought in by the Commission was too high, and they should be careful not to commit themselves to a service list and pension list which the country could not pay. (Opposition cheers.) Then there was our scale of pensions. He thought that the time had arrived when pensions should he put on a proper footing. The enormous, disparity in the pensions paid to officers who had given equally devoted service to the country showed that there was something wrong. Turning to the question of development, he said that the right hon. member for Victoria West had drawn attention to the enormous volume of imports and exports. But what was the incentive to that trade? He could not help thinking that it was largely due to the borrowed money being spent year after year. As a fact the imports had decreased £900,000, and, with the exception of gold and diamonds, our exports had increased by only £339,000. He thought the country was really in a very serious state. He quite agreed that a developing country should not be an exporting country. It should develop in such a way that internal industries should use up the greater part of the country’s produce. But had we got those industries? He said “No.” The country had been looking to the fulfilment of the Prime Minister’s promise of protection to develop our local industries. He thought that this was one of the first tasks that the Government should have faced. Hand in hand with the development of our industries went the settlement of our labour question. It was no use saying that our labour was expensive. To his mind there was labour enough in the country to carry on any industry whatever. What was required in order to utilise this labour more fully was legislation on the lines of taking the natives out of their kraals, and holding up the comforts of civilised life as an incentive for them to look for work. He understood the Prime Minister to say that he was in favour of a kind of segregation. But when he looked at agriculture, he saw that it was starving, not because people would not pull off their coats, but owing to the supply of unskilled labour not being organised. The hon. member for Barkly had expressed surprise that while the price of land increased the farmers remained poor. The farmer remained poor because he could not find labour. The price of land went up because of the flow of capital into the country; many were turning their attention to agricultural experiments. But the man who went to the land and tried farming in earnest found himself handicapped in every direction owing to the scarcity of labour. That ought not to be the case. There was labour enough, but on account of it not being organised the country could derive no benefit from it. The labour question was interwoven with the policy of protection. When he looked at the black list the Treasurer had presented them with, of articles imported, but which could be produced within the country, he felt that it was due not alone to the want of Labour, but to the pernicious system of rebates on articles of produce. It might in a measure be due to the greater purchasing power of the country. On the other hand, they were faced with the fact that it paid a dealer better to sell Australian butter than the South African article. Further, it was remarkable that wherever one went in the country, one noticed that the farmer who used to be his own bootmaker, and to have his own leather prepared, found it infinitely cheaper now to buy the boots ready made. Yet they had the fact that poor whites were walking about the country with nothing to do. He put it all down to the system of rebates, whereby we were forced to use the articles made by the sweated labour of other countries. The country looked for a remedy to the Ministry. The Prime Minister had pointed out the enormous benefits the Cape had received from Union. He (the speaker) deprecated all these allusions to the benefits that this or that Province had received as a result of Union. With the disappearance of artificial boundaries the great demand was for equality of taxation, and it was essential that to satisfy public opinion the Ministry should take some steps to bring that about. He had been looking through the report of the Financial Relations Commission, and the conclusions they came to. He thought that it would be a bad system to hand over or assign some of our revenues to these Provincial Councils, because they would find that when the Provincial Councils became taxing machines great development would be greatly retarded. Taxation in all its branches should remain within the province of that House. He quite admitted that with regard to Natal and the Free State there should be some special treatment, but he could not agree with the proposal to have a hard and fast rule to last ten years. They would be accentuating Provincial feeling by allowing this principle of provincialism to remain. (Hear, hear.) The matter should be dealt with on a fair basis according to the requirements of the different Provinces. But in the one Province the cost of school buildings was put down as capital expenditure, while in the other Provinces the cost of school buildings was put down as annual expenditure. This was a matter that required carefully to be looked into. ’In conclusion, Mr. Watermeyer said the main thing that had struck him was that our prosperity was due to the enormous amount of loan money we had been spending. At present we were sailing on a sea of prosperity, but we must keep our eyes open to the results that must follow if there were a fall in the production of gold or a slump in the diamond or ostrich feather markets. (Cheers.)

said he wished to refer to the charge of inefficiency which had been levelled by the Minister of Railways against some of the men he (Mr. Robinson) represented, for his constituency was probably more largely affected by the charge than any other one in South Africa. He had thought it advisable to calculate on the basis of inefficiency, as alleged by the Minister, what would be the monetary loss to the artisans of Durban and Maritzburg. The apparent surplus of skilled and unskilled men as indicated by the summary of the Majority Report was 576. Presuming that the men would earn an average monthly wage of £15, that meant an annual loss of £103,680, or, including natives, an annual loss of £110,000. In addition there was the loss of prestige as affecting the men and apparently there was a veiled threat on the part of the Minister that—by reason of their inefficiency—there was to be a perpetuation of the loss of their political rights. In the first instance he understood the Minister to say that he did not level this charge, but hon. members could not absolve the Minister entirely from the charge, because he started by doing what any responsible Minister should have hesitated to do after the experience they had in that House of quoting from a memorandum which apparently had been prepared by him of the contents of reports. At the same time he acquitted the Minister of any desire to deceive that House or the country. (An HON. MEMBER: “Why?” and laughter.) The Minister should have placed the reports themselves on the table. (Opposition cheers.) When the Minister was pressed to put the reports on the table it was only after considerable pressure, and in a very hesitating and ungracious way, that he indicated that he would put the memorandum which had been asked for by an hon. member on the table of the House. The next step was a matter which affected the privileges of that House, for before that memorandum had been placed on the table the Minister handed it to the newspapers—to some of the newspapers—for publication. (An HON. MEMBER: “Disgraceful.”) It appeared to him (Mr. Robinson) that the Minister had not even read the summary, because in that summary there was a paragraph by Mr. Gilmour which put an entirely different construction on the charge of inefficiency.

Continuing, he said that Mr. Gilmour stated that the lower efficiency figures for locomotive work at Durban were due to the comparatively small amount of material used there. That threw a very interesting light on the figures which had been submitted. One phase of the hon. Minister’s speech struck him at once. If this state of inefficiency had been existing for a time, why was it not discovered by the Administration without having to send a Commission round. He did not think that hon. members realised the enormous loss to the country if the figures supplied were accurate, and he would like the House to bear with him while he gave a few calculations which he had made concerning the loss to the country if these figures were established. He found that the total wages paid for the year ended December 51, 1911, to the service mechanical workshops amounted to £1,099.140. Of this, Pretoria received £293,024 and Bloemfontein £94,370, leaving a balance of £711,746 received by all the other workshops. Taking the efficiency at Pretoria and Bloemfontein at 100 per cent., the others worked out: Salt River, 40.9 per cent.; Uitenhage, 47.1; East London, 38.4; Durban, 38.1, or an average inefficiency of 41.4. Say 41 per cent. of £771,000 was, roughly, £300,000 per annum. What he was endeavouring to find was this: if these figures were correct, the Administration asked them to believe that, though, the Administration was losing £300,000 a year, they could not discover it without sending a Commission round to inquire. Of course, the whole thing was a mistake; and it was fortunate that the Minister, even at the eleventh hour, had placed these reports on the table. He had gone through the reports that afternoon—true, in a cursory way, but if the House would allow him, he would like to quote from those reports in order to indicate that a grave error had been made. He had already referred to the fact that even in the majority report some explanation was advanced by Mr. Gilmour and his colleague as indicating, in the Locomotive Department at Durban, that it was the small amount of material that was used that accounted for the small percentage of efficiency. Both Mr. Hendrie and Mr. Beatty affirmed that the findings of the majority report were incorrect. However, he would cite the actual report. Mr. Beatty said: “With reference to Durban—taking into consideration the way in which their material was handled before Union, and the fact that the methods there were still in the transition stage during the five months ended August 25, 1911—any deductions drawn as to the efficiency or otherwise of the labour there during that period based on the material would be entirely unreliable and absurd.” Mr. Hendrie stated: “With regard to the comparative efficiency of the various workshops, so far as can be ascertained from the volume and cost of work turned out, I am of the opinion, taking Pretoria as a basis, and making due allowance for the varying conditions prevailing in the respective Provinces, that, on the whole, with, perhaps, the exception of locomotive repairs effected at Uitenhage, the information obtainable at present does not show that the other shops are less efficient, either in regard to output or cost than Pretoria.”

Go on.

I don’t want to tire hon. members. Continuing, he said he thought few hon. members realised the meaning of the word, material, but they would easily understand when he cited a passage from page 2 Of Mr. Beatty’s report, “The materials shown in the statements of cost of locomotive repairs at Pretoria and Bloemfontein includes manufactured and partially manufactured spare parts for locomotives that have been simply passed through the store. As these parts are drawn out of store as material the wages incurred in their manufacture is disguised under the heading of material.” Then on page 3, “As an illustration of the effect of this practice, suppose that at the beginning of the five months ended 25th August, 1911, the practice had been instituted at Salt River of passing the repaired axle boxes of the locomotives through the stores, this would have had the effect of converting all the money spent upon repairing these boxes from wages into material, and would obviously make Salt River show up much more favourably when compared with Pretoria as regards labour efficiency based upon value of material used, yet the actual labour and quantity of raw material used would not in reality have been affected in the slightest, apart from the cost of trolleying the axle boxes into the Store and back into the shop. This practice of passing the repaired parts of the locomotives through the stores can be carried to such an extent that in many cases the greater proportion of the expenditure in connection with a repair would appear as material. With reference to Durban, taking into consideration the way their material was handled before Union and the fact that the methods there were still in the transition stage, during the five months ended 25th August, 1911, any deductions drawn as to the efficiency or otherwise of the labour there during that period based on the material would be entirely unreliable and absurd.”

The men at Durban worked out their returns from the whole of the labour and the whole of the material was counted against them. There were other circumstances which militated in favour of Pretoria. He was not drawing upon his imagination. He was simply quoting from the papers laid upon the table of the House by his hon. friend. The other report stated that it was the custom before Union to make things locally, which in the case of Pretoria were imported and put into stores. Hon. members would realise that when the parts were imported from Europe and simply put into stores, from which they were taken out and assembled, that was a very different thing from actually making the articles. There was another thing that militated against Durban, and he would tell hon. members that what he said was true. Most hon. members must be aware that the Natal lines were the hardest lines in South Africa, and the repairs to the rolling stock were generally much heavier and took much greater time to carry out than in establishments carrying out repairs to engines running upon straight lines. The average weight of the engines was far greater in Durban than in other parts of South Africa. That also militated against the men in Durban. The Durban men were often called out to do repairs to the harbours, and their going away frequently left a large number of men standing idle. That did not occur in Pretoria. One quotation from Mr. Beatty, and he believed that those who read this report would be convinced that the majority report had done a great injustice to the workmen of Salt River and Durban. Mr. Beatty, on page 35 of his report, referred to the parts manufactured at Salt River. Bloemfontein, and Pretoria. He said, unfortunately there had been comparatively few modern type vehicles built at Salt River recently, the cost of which can be compared with similar vehicles built at Pretoria; but still there are a number available for comparisons. The four first-class 5½ compartment saloons built since 1909 averaged £3,050 each. These saloons were 2 ft. 9 in. shorter than the C.S.A.R. saloons. Then Mr. Beatty goes on to set off the difference in the various workshops. Making all necessary allowances, and taking into consideration the difference in wages, the difference in cost of making a saloon carriage in favour of Durban is £560 less than in Pretoria, and £500 less than in Bloemfontein. He hoped that the hon. Minister would read the report now, and he was positive that whether Mr. Beatty was right or Mr. Hendrie, certainly the report of these two men was just as entitled to respect as the report of the other two. Under these circumstances, was it fair for the Minister to come to the House on his own responsibility, or with a report which was not complete, and which affected that amour propre of the servants of the country.

He urged that upon these reports the statement ought never to have gone forth that there was this degree of inefficiency as between Durban and Pretoria (Hear, hear.) The Minister of Railways smiled. He (Mr. Robinson) knew this was only a matter of the dignity of a workman as against, probably, the dignity of a very high official of the State, but he thought that the self-respect of these men was as great and as high as that of any official, however highly placed he might be. There was one other matter to which he desired to refer while on this question of reports. The Minister stated some time ago that the report of the Re-grading Commission was in his hands. He (Mr. Robinson) asked him a question with regard to it, but the Minister could not tell him whether he proposed to have it printed or lay it on the table of the House, or read extracts from it. Now, this was a matter in which the keenest interest was taken by the railway men, and he would like the Minister to state what he proposed to do with regard to that report—whether he proposed to give them an extract, or lay it on the table, or tell them what its contents were (Opposition cheers.)

said he concluded from the debate that the members of the Opposition had made up their minds to criticise with or without reason, taking care, however, not to make any recommendations where they disapproved, in order to escape criticism in return. Economy had been preached to them by the Opposition, but when economy took place, they shrieked out about the injustice of it all. It was just done to cause a sensation. Last year all sorts of changes were asked for as a result of Union, which changes were even now impossible. The Opposition did not want to have officials dismissed, and yet they wanted economy. He (the speaker) was also in favour of economy, but when it was carried out they ought fairly to recognise the Government’s difficult position. (Some days ago there was a plea for a contribution of £400,000 or £500,000 to the British Fleet, and the motion was carried to a division He had voted against the motion, because it was not in the interests of the country to lay on it a heavier tax. Some of the critics had stated that the Minister of Finance should not have appropriated the 1910-1911 surplus, but should either have reduced his expenses, or else introduced new taxation. The speaker thought that the action of the Minister was perfectly proper, and that they should avoid new taxation as much as possible. Of course, if no revenue were to be drawn from the railways, something must be put in its place, but it must be admitted that the high railway tariffs were unfair to the interior. He rejoiced, therefore, at the diminution of £750,000 in the railway tariffs in the interior. What taxation would have to be introduced next year? He thought that only Customs duties would answer the purpose, and that there should be neither an income tax nor a land tax. Nothing was fairer than an import duty, which dealt with all men on a basis of equality. They were constantly told that the farmer worked too little, and sat on his stoep too much. The fact was that the genuine farmer earned his bread in the sweat of his brow, and knew nothing whatever about an eight-hour working day. There were a good many poor farmers in the towns, and they were there, not because farming was profitable, but because life in the towns was easier. They must be brought back to the land. The farmer must be protected, and his produce also must be protected by import dues, as the competition from abroad was too great. It was said that protection would result in the country losing its population, but in Australia a policy of protection had resulted in an increase of population. Equalisation of taxation was a difficult problem, and so long as there were Provincial Councils it would continue to be unequal. In the interior they had as yet received no relief from taxation, and on the other hand they had now to pay the cigarette tax and increased stamp dues. He thought the salaries of Civil Servants ought to be reduced, though he admitted the matter was a difficult one. The Government had done all it could to help the farmer, but it was impossible for them to go and look for markets. If they did that, there would be more Barbary ostrich debates. The hon. member for Langlaagte had reproached the Government for not doing more in the matter of miners’ phthisis, although they had given a sum of £40,000 for that purpose. Expropriation of land for the purpose of settlements was not necessary. Sufficient land came into the market, which the Government could buy without announcing their intention beforehand. With regard to railway tariffs, these should be so regulated that exportation would be facilitated. He could not understand the statement that there had been no diminution of taxation, in view of the large reductions which had been made in railway tariffs. Those reductions would result in an increased use of the railways, so that the railway profits would continue, and it would be necessary to find that point to which the tariff could be reduced, when there would be no profit. Many people were demanding compulsory dipping of cattle, but by anyone who knew the country, this could not be recommended until people had been educated up to it. Cooperation was absolutely necessary if they wished to make compulsory dipping a success.

said he did not intend to go over the same ground that had been travelled by other hon. members, but in as short a time as possible he would like to deal with he finances of this country and the effect on the future from a mining point of view. During the course of that debate several members had alluded to the mines, and had referred to them as a diminishing and vanishing asset of the Union. However, they had not indicated in what way the mines were vanishing and how their products were diminishing, and without some explanation, those who were interested in the finances of this country might be under the impression that the mines of the Union were on the eve of extinction. He would first of all deal with the mines as a diminishing asset, and in reply to that statement he would tell the House that during the last ten years the mineral products of this country had been increased over 100 per cent.

He would deal with the mines as a vanishing asset. There had been no indication from hon. members who had spoken as to when the mines would cease to work in this country. They had given no indication as to whether it would be ten years, twenty years, thirty years, or forty years; even if the mines were worked out in thirty or forty or fifty years, would there be no discoveries of new mines before the existing mines came to the end of their tether? Consider what had happened in regard to diamond mining in this country. Fifteen years ago, in the Cape House of Assembly, hon. members—some of them had since gained places of distinction—bewailed the fate of the Cape Colony, saying the mines would soon be worked out and only big holes left behind. At that time they simply had the diamond mines at Kimberley and the alluvial diggings on the Vaal River in Barkly West. During the last ten years there had been discoveries of new mines and alluvial discoveries at Christiania and Bloemhof. He did not like to prophesy, though one could safely prophesy fifty years ahead, for the reason that one could never be called to account. (Laughter.) No doubt those hon. gentlemen who bewailed the fate of the Cape in the past had some sort of instrument like a water diviner which indicated to them what was going to happen in the future. Let them consider what the mines of South Africa had produced up to the present, and what they were likely to yield in the future. He was merely taking into calculation the mines that existed at present; he was not basing calculations upon any new discoveries in the future. If he referred to the annual budget speech of the Treasurer he found that up to 31st December, 1911, it was estimated that all the mines of South Africa had yielded 519¼ millions of minerals. He had gone very carefully into these figures, and as far as he could see they were very near the mark. These minerals had been produced during the last forty years. He would like to show the House how the Cape Province had fared in this period during which the mining industry had been developed. He could not deal with the matter from the point of view of the Union for the reason that there was no Statistical Register which enabled him to do so. There used to be an excellent Statistical Register in the Cape Colony and, therefore, he could only deal with the question from the point of the Cape Province. He thought that the figures would astound hon. members of that House. The total revenue of the Cape Colony in 1869—before mining came into operation in South Africa—was £580,000; in 1859 it was £508,000, or an increase of only £74,000 in ten years. In 1859 the exports were £2,048,000, and in 1869 £2,252,000, an increase in exports of £204,000 in ten years. The revenue of the Cape Colony at the end of the first ten years of mining—that was only the diamond mining period—was £2,522,000—that was in 1879. There was an increase of £1,942,000 at the end of the first ten years of the mining period, while during the previous agricultural period of ten years the increase was only £204,000. Let them take the Cape Town Municipality. In 1865 the total revenue of the Cape Town Municipality was £21,819. In 1909 the total revenue of the Cape Town Municipality was £346,856. That told its own tale. It showed the enormous development that had taken place all over South Africa consequent upon mining. Take the Divisional Councils. In 1886 the total assessed value of divisional property was £36,751,969; in 1909 the total assessed value of divisional property was £92,347,644, an increase of £55,000,000 since the gold mining industry in the Transvaal made itself felt throughout South Africa.

The engineers last year estimated that in the existing gold mines of the Rand there was still left to be extracted from these mines 1,046 millions worth of gold. To-day they might take it at a thousand millions. He had gone very carefully also into the diamond mining industry, and he had endeavoured to estimate the value of the diamonds still left in the existing diamond mines. He had come to the conclusion that it would be about 250 millions. Therefore they had a total of 1,250 millions worth of gold and diamonds still to be extracted from the existing mines in South Africa. Now, that was a very magnificent asset to South Africa. This immense industry would leave in its train a wealth of development uncomprehended by anyone in this country. They would have large irrigation works, large cities, big industries, scientific and improved methods of farming, universities, and they would have also a highly improved and educated people, a great asset for every nation. Let him next deal with the mineral production for one year only, and he would show what it cost to produce gold and diamonds and how much money was circulated in the country by the production of the millions he would quote. The total mineral production for 1911 was £47,087,000. It would be interesting to know what amount of money was circulated in wages, purchase of explosives, railway rates, etc. It would be surprising to hon. members to know that the wages alone for he production of 47 millions amounted to £20,519,984. Roughly speaking, ten million pounds were paid for white labour and ten millions for black and coloured. The different companies also spent in stores £14,070,291, so there was actually spent £34,590,275 to produce these minerals. Deducting 2½ millions for the purchase of machinery bought in Europe, there remained the sum of 32 millions circulated in this country for the production of these minerals. If that money had been spent in the production of 47 millions worth of minerals, what would be spent in producing the 1,250 millions still remaining to be extracted? And if the Cape Province had advanced to such an extent by the production of 519 millions of minerals, what would be the advance in the whole of South Africa in the production of 2½ times that value of minerals in the next 40 years? Well, it had been said in this House that these mines have been taking the money out of the country, but he held that it had made the country prosperous by putting this enormous amount of money paid for the production of these minerals into circulation. If the working of these minerals was making the country poorer it would be quite easy to pass a law making prospecting and the working of the minerals prohibitive. It would also be easy to prevent any new mines being opened up. He did not say for one moment that South Africa would have a long uninterrupted period of prosperity—they might have one or two set-backs occasionally, but he did not think they would be very serious, and he did not think they could be so acute as the crisis they had in Cape Colony in 1907-8, when during the American crisis it was impossible to sell any rough diamonds, because at that time the total mining exportation of Cape Colony was diamonds, but in the Union to-day the value of the diamonds produced only represented 18 or 19 per cent. of the total amount of minerals produced in South Africa. They must remember that the large majority of minerals produced consisted of gold having a standard value, in which there could be no fluctuation. He might take the House into his confidence and state that the diamond market was in a very good condition to-day, and he did not expect any crisis, but if there should be a lull in the diamond market it would only be felt in a very small degree as compared with the effect it had in 1907-8-9 upon the finances of the Cape Colony.

He alluded to Natal coal. The supply of coal in Natal and the Transvaal was practically inexhaustible. It was an industry that should be encouraged. It was a most valuable asset, but in Natal they wanted better and speedier communication to the coast. (Hear, hear.) He was quite certain that if the Government could appoint a Select Committee next session of Parliament to go into this Natal coal question, and see what it was capable of, and how much bunkering, etc., could be done in this regard, they would be doing something for the development of this country, and doing perhaps more for the advance of Natal if they were to build another railway to bring the coal right to the coast, and reduce the railway rates, than the £80,000 per annum for the next ten years that the Treasurer proposed to give to the Province of Natal. (Hear, hear.) They had heard, he went on to say, that the expenditure for governing the Union had reached 16½ millions per annum. He could not say if this amount were extravagant or not, but he did not believe in extravagance, and he did not think that prosperity justified extravagance—(hear, hear)—and he did not think that the Treasurer was addicted to that vice. He knew that last year charges of extravagance were made against the Treasurer. He took the trouble to dissect the Estimates and financial statements, and he discovered that those charges were not correct. It might be that there was a little exaggeration during the present session of Parliament. Still, he must say that he disapproved of retrenching Civil Servants and engaging outside men. He thought that that required explanation. (Hear, hear.) He thought that at the bottom of it all was bilingualism. In his opinion, the present Civil Service was large enough to cope with a much bigger trade than we were doing at the present time. (Hear, hear.) He was not, however, one that despaired. He still thought that things would come right, and that this Union had advanced during the last five years, and would go ahead during the next five years, and that they would have an increasing revenue, and a revenue, in his opinion, five years hence to pay for their present Union expenditure if kept at £16,000,000, without the imposition of any fresh taxation.

He had no fear for the future of South Africa. They had many croakers in the Cape House of Assembly, and they generally croaked loudest when the Government was on the eve of issuing a big loan. He believed that the Treasurer indicated the other day that he intended issuing a loan. He would have no difficulty in raising that loan. It would be subscribed, in his (Sir D. Harris’s) opinion, several times’ over.

Oh, no; it depends upon the terms.

That is my opinion. The Treasurer-General, I take it, is going to wait for the psychological moment. He will feel the market and he will not float the loan upon such terms that the people will avoid it. I say that the people who subscribe to these loans look to the assets of a country, they look to its possibilities. There is no other country that offers the possibilities for the investment of money that South Africa does. (Hear, hear.) If the figures I have put forward to-night are correct, I say that for every sovereign to be raised by the Treasurer in loans there will be £100 security in minerals alone. With wise administration and good government, South Africa will advance in the next forty years in the same proportion as she has done in the last forty years, and, with irrigation and mining and wise men at the helm—(hear, hear)—South Africa will be a great and prosperous country. (Cheers.)

said that the hon. member for Calvinia (Mr. Watermeyer) was endeavouring to out-Herod Herod, or, rather, the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (Sir E. H. Walton), as a pessimist. He was very pleased to notice the changed tone of the hon. member for Port Elizabeth in criticising the Budget this year. He (the hon. member for Port Elizabeth) was very much less doleful and despondent this year, and, therefore, he (the speaker) thought there was more hope. The hon. member for Port Elizabeth only urged the Treasurer to be more cautious. He (the speaker) took exception to the advice tendered to the Treasurer to use the whole of his surplus for the redemption of debt or as an alternative to build up a reserve fund. He (the hon. member for Port Elizabeth) had suggested that the £855,000 surplus should be added to the amount already set aside for the redemption of debt. In fact, the hon. member wished the Treasurer to follow the example of the Biblical treasurer, who took his one talent entrusted to him and buried it instead of investing it in productive works. That was an unwise policy. They surely owed something to posterity—(laughter)—or should do something for it. The hon. member for Port Elizabeth reminded them that their mines were only temporary endowments. Well, he thought that all the more reason why they should build up new and permanent industries and develop the resources of the country. It was not for the Treasurer to shirk his responsibilities and bury his surplus; but he should create more industries and invest his money in reproductive works. If they did that posterity would be more grateful to them than if they left them clear of debt with an undeveloped country and worked-out mines. Were they justified in frittering away their birthright and handing over this country to posterity as a squeezed-out orange? That was not the policy of the men who made this country their home; but was the policy of men who made this country their happy hunting ground for a brief space. The people of the country were calling out for development, and any curtailment of development expenditure would be unjust. Let them look at the forty million acres of Crown land at the disposal of the Government, exclusive of native reserves and locations. As one hon. member pointed out the other day, a small portion of that could be put under cultivation and used for the purpose of intense cultivation. But for the greater portion of it, quite 95 per cent, was some of the finest cattle raising land in the world. Ac the present moment it was producing nothing, but if it was stocked with cattle it would prove a great addition to their exports. There was any amount of subterranean water which they could draw upon, and there were thousands of people knocking at their doors for admission. Continuing, the hon. gentleman referred to an article which had appeared in the ‘ Transvaal Leader,” and which stated that several thousand applicants were available who desired land in this country, the greater part of whom had from £1,000 or £1,500 capital available. He thought they should settle their own people first.

These immense tracts would form some of the finest cattle ranches in the world. There was no necessity for immediate railway communication, as the stock could be driven to the market. It was impossible to expect a reduction of taxation at present. Rather let them grin and bear it, than retard the development of the country. We might equalise taxation by placing some of it on the shoulders of the coastal man as well as the inland man, and that was being and would be done by remission of railway taxation and substituting a more general tax. That additional taxation would be necessary in the near future was undoubted. The hon. member for Port Elizabeth said if we had used the surplus of £855,000 for the redemption of debt it would be saving the country £30,000 a year, but as an alternative he advised the Treasurer to follow the course adopted by Joseph, the Egyptian Treasurer-General, and heap up surpluses in prosperous years to be utilised during any lean years we might have. Some of their ideas were antiquated, but they need not go back to Egyptian times. All the surpluses should be used to promote the development of the country. It had been said that they were living in a fool’s paradise, but he found it very pleasant to live in. (Laughter.) The people of many a young country, or for the matter of that, old country, would be glad to be living in a so-called fool’s paradise—a fool’s paradise of a very permanent nature. An increased contribution towards the Navy was advocated by hon. members opposite. Although he admitted the patriotism he did not admire the logic, as they had been advocating economy, and the hon. member for Port Elizabeth pointed out that the South African taxpayer paid £6 10s. as against £3 12s. of the British taxpayer. The man always advising extreme caution was generally an enemy, and not a friend, and if they followed his advice they would strike the rock of timidity.

said he was sorry that the Treasurer would not fall in with the proposal to adjourn the debate, and therefore he was forced to offer a few remarks. He had listened to some of the speeches with regard to agriculture and it had occurred to him that the persons who received the votes and doles did not always appreciate them, and there was not that advance in agriculture in any way proportionate to the amounts granted by the Parliaments in the past. However, he would admit that during the past few years there had been an improvement. He ventured to suggest to the Government that the woollen industry should be given greater consideration and attention. We might well set up a factory for the manufacture of blankets. (Cheers.) Here was an industry staring us in the face, yet Government was doing nothing—(hear, hear)—Government should have an office in London where a display could be made of our products worthy of the Union, for our exhibit at the Crystal Palace last year was but a poor show, especially when contrasted with the Canadian exhibit. While there was much in the Industrial Commission’s report which had been condemned, there was a good deal in it worthy of attention. Proceeding, the hon. member referred to afforestation and asked what did they find. (An HON. MEMBER: “Trees”—laughter.) The beautiful wood from Knysna was being sold at a penny per cubic foot and turned into sleepers, which could be purchased cheaper than we could produce them. The wood was worthy of better use—for instance, for making tables, piano cases, etc. The hon. member went on to say that he had read a report of the Glencoe Collieries and the manager said that had it been possible to get trucks another 20,000 tons of coal could have been sent to the coast. He thought that if the Minister had the trucks the collieries would have got them; but why had he not got these trucks? The hon. member thought that the soap industry of Messrs. Lever should be encouraged by Government, while he also drew attention to a building that was being constructed on the way to Salt River for Chamberlain’s Cough Mixtures. (Laughter.) These were industries which increased the scope of employment of white Labour. They had been told by the Minister of Justice, who had recently made a speech at Caledon, that his party had stolen a part of the Unionists’ programme. They had supported the present Government so long as they followed that programme. They might be numerically small and liable to be crushed, but when anything was done that they did not think right, they were going to show their teeth. (Hear, hear.) They would do their utmost to see that the rights of the Civil Servants were not frittered away. But numbers of men had been imported into the Union Civil Service—something like 600. It would have been far more economical to have utilised the services of the retrenched men, and have placed them in the positions now filled by these new men. The hon. member referred to the increases of salary granted to officials in the railway service, in some cases from £200 up to £950 per annum. The point he complained of was that there had been retrenchments, increased pensions, increased salaries and increased employees, and yet at the same time those who were in the service were treated unfairly, and consequently created great unrest and discontent. That was the reason why they asked for a Public Service Bill. The hon. member for Port Elizabeth had said that they would obstruct—(“No”)—the passing of the Budget until they had this Bill tabled. (Hear, hear.) They ought to go further, and obstruct, not until this Bill had been tabled, but until the Bill had been passed. (Hear, hear.) That was the attitude he (Mr. Nathan) would like to adopt.

Proceeding, the hon. member said they had the return regarding the Barbary ostriches, and he was very pleased to find that the gentlemen who attended the meetings paid their expenses to Pretoria. They were told that the matter arose out of something said in confidence at a meeting. He had since heard that it was that an official had been approached by a gentleman from America to go to Barbary. To forestall him, Government sent men to capture all the ostriches in Barbary. (Laughter.) One man had his life insured for £10,000, and he supposed the premium, said to be £750 sterling, would be added to the cost of the ostriches. At Port Elizabeth the highest bid received for a cock Barbary ostrich was 1s. (Laughter.) He anticipated they would hear more of it. Another matter he wished to refer to was the importation of some bloodhounds by the Government. It was now costing the country, approximately, £1,000 per annum to keep them. They were to be used to track criminals; but he did not think that method of tracking was suited to this country. The Minister of Justice had imported the dogs on his own authority, against the best advice. They might hear more of these dogs in the future. In regard to the renting of private premises in Cape Town by the Government, he should like to get a return, but experience had shown him how difficult it was to move for any returns. Landlords have no doubt wanted from 8 to 10 per cent, per annum return on their investments. Well, the Government could borrow at 3½ and save the difference. This would be economising in the right direction. On the increased expenditure entailed by the defence scheme, the hon. member for East London said the net increase was £100,000. He found that an item under special services gave an expenditure of £12,000 for “inception of new Defence Organisation,” and there were other new items that should be looked into, viz., £31,000 for the purchase of armaments, £48,000 for stores, and general expenses, £5,725, for all of which no details whatever of any kind were given in the Estimates. He complained of the difficulty he always had in getting any detailed information from the Estimates which were worse than a Chinese puzzle—of which older members than he had been constantly complaining, and he wondered when this state of things was going to be remedied. Continuing, the hon. member expressed the opinion that it would have been better to have hastened slowly with the Defence Scheme, and to have command on a smaller expenditure for the first few years, and which could be increased as time went on, in other words, to make haste slowly. Large votes were spread broadcast through the Estimates, yet when it was proposed to slightly increase the Navy vote the Government objected. The hon. member complained of the lack of detailed information in the Estimates. Dealing with the police, he said that it was not necessary for constables to know two languages in Johannesburg, and with regard to their pay, whilst at the time of Union, and in last year’s Budget, the pay was 7s. rising by 4d. rises to 9s., this year’s Estimates laid down the pay at 6s., with 3d. rises to 8s., coupled no doubt with allowances, but that was not the same thing, and more would be said about this when the vote was reached.

When do you finish?

Oh! I can go on for a long time. (Laughter.) The hon. member proceeded to protest against excessive centralisation. He believed all the members of the Ministry were capable men, but they did not always exercise sound judgment. Now, on the question of uniformity of taxation. They had the cigarette and the stamp taxes, and there was an outcry from all over the Union on the inequality of taxation. Whenever an attempt was made to impose extra taxation the Transvaal was always the sufferer. The point he wanted to make was what a glorious opportunity the Treasurer had lost in not retaining the equalisation of Transfer Duty in the hands of this House, for he proposed delegating this to the Provincial Councils. The Transvaal already contributed 56 per cent. of the whole revenue of the country, and the Government must not expect that Province to raise the duty above 1¼ per cent. as was now paid. Now, with regard to the distillation of spirits, a (petition was read from the Transvaal with regard to that, but he wanted to know if that petition had been considered at all. He would like to know why, when one was discussing questions of taxation, one should not be met with the courtesy of having the Minister of Finance in his place. He was glad to see that the Minister had returned. Proceeding, he said they had a warning from the hon. member for Yeoville that there may be a set-back, and it behoved them to be careful. He next referred to a letter he had received from Johannesburg in reference to the state of the property market, and pointed out the dangers of a reaction setting in. Having detailed the various measures that were dropped last session, Mr. Nathan said the same thing would happen this session. Measures would reach a certain stage, and then they would be jettisoned. He next accused the Government of stealing the Opposition’s programme.

A very good thing for the country. (Opposition cheers.)

continuing, said the Opposition objected to the charge that they had not the South African spirit; this was not the best way of cementing the people of the country. He thought that the Government could not be happy about some of its supporters, who should be on his (the speaker’s) side of the House. He proceeded to read a question he asked of the Minister of Justice, and the reply he received. There had been an enormous increase of the expenditure in the department of the Minister of Justiie, and he referred to specific instances. The truth of it was this, there was too great a hurry to enter into this Union. He remembered a letter headed “Ere it be too late,” wherein he asked the Government whether it would not be better for men who had made high finance a study to be consulted before Union was consummated.

At 12.13 Mr. NATHAN moved the adjournment of the debate.

The motion was not seconded.

The hon. member may proceed.

It is evident that the House wishes me to proceed. It is not often that an hon. member has such a compliment paid him. (Laughter.) Continuing, he said that it was now 12.15 a.m., and both the Minister of Railways and Harbours and the Minister of Finance were absent from their places. That might be the Cape practice, but it was not the Transvaal practice.

The hon. member must address the Chair, and not hon. members all round him.

gave some reminiscences of the Budget debate of last year. He then came about 45th on the list.

The Chairman of Committee took the chair at 12.18 a.m.

went on to say that now he was 15th on the list.

Don’t talk nonsense!

appealed to the Chair as to whether the hon. member was in order in using that expression. The Chief Whip of the Government party ought to set an example.

At 12.22 the hon. member moved the adjournment of the debate.

said that the hon. member could not move it again.

said that the motion had been withdrawn.

moved the adjournment of the debate until Wednesday

said that that was only the second day of the debate on that important question. He would like to know what the policy of the Government was, and whether they would allow that debate to proceed.

said that it was not usual for the Government to declare what its policy was on an occasion like that.

The motion was agreed to.