from Johannes Heyns, Robben Island, who has been segregated as a leper but alleges that he is free from the disease, praying that he be medically examined, and released if found to be free from leprosy.

in support of the petition of Johannes Heyns.

from J. W. Q. de Lisle, late examiner in the Customs Department, Durban.

from A. Cameron, principal of the Railway School at Tylden.

from S. J. Muller, formerly warder Cradock gaol.

from C. J. Janse van Rensburg, wounded in Natal during the late war.

from J. E. Symons, Service Inspector, Telegraph Department, Johannesburg.

Report on proposed irrigation project in the Clanwilliam and Van Rhynsdorp districts, by F. E. Kanthack, Director of Irrigation.

Return showing advances paid by purchasers on the tariff prices of trees at auction sales, held by the Forest Department, on the 1st March, 1911, at the different stations in the Humansdorp section of the Zitzikamna Forest, and particulars in regard to some advances paid for individual stinkwood trees.

Annual Report (1909-1910), Agricultural Department, Orange Free State.

as chairman, brought up the second report of the Select Committee on Standing Rules and Orders, as follows:

Your committee, having considered the Draft Standing Orders relating to Private Bills, prepared by the Clerk of the House and referred to them on the 29th January, have agreed to the same with certain amendments, and beg to recommend that the Standing Orders so amended and submitted herewith be adopted as the Standing Orders of this House relating to Private Bills. Your committee beg further to report that they have considered the amendments to Standing Orders Nos. 11, 19, 22, 29, 34, 39, 44, 51, 53, 55, 59, 63, 74, 91, 106, 153, 203, 235, 244, 246, 270, 272, and 279, as well as certain proposed new Standing Orders relating to public business, referred to them on the 29th March, and beg to recommend certain amendments (pp. 581-2, “Votes and Proceedings”). Your committee desire to place on record their appreciation of the valuable services rendered by the Clerk of the House both in the preparation of the draft rules and in the able assistance he has given the committee throughout their deliberations.

It was ordered that the Standing Orders relating to Private Bills be printed.

stated that unless notice of objection to the proposed Standing Orders relating to Private Bills, and to those Standing Orders relating to Public Business, which were referred back to the committee, and some of which have been amended by the committee, was given on or before the 30th instant, they would be considered as adopted.

asked leave before proceeding with the business of the day to say a few words on the subject of the ensuing departure of Sir Starr Jameson. It had been made known, he said, to the great regret of all of them that the Leader of the Opposition, Sir Starr Jameson, was about to break the bonds which attached him to South African politics by leaving for England. Every one regretted the reason which obliged Sir Starr to leave them. (Hear, hear.) From the time when they had first met, a certain friendship had arisen between them, and that friendship had since grown stronger despite the fact that they were by no means always in agreement. His opinions differed in many ways from those held by Sir Starr, though he was bound to admit that the latter held views which were both broad and clear. (Hear, hear.) Although they differed in matters or politics, the speaker respected a man who was always ready to co-operate where good results were to be expected. Sir Starr’s efforts, and particularly those of recent years, had contributed substantially to bring about union in South Africa. A modest manner and a readiness to cooperate took first place in his mind as against party politics Whilst they could: not always agree in matters of party politics, they were able to stand shoulder to shoulder when it concerned the happiness and the prosperity of the country, and in that respect they would miss him. It was for that reason that he regretted the fact that the Leader of the Opposition was compelled, owing to the state of his health, to leave South Africa. He (the Minister) hoped his departure would result in a complete recovery of health, and that they would speedily see him return to South Africa in order to help the country to become great. He accordingly wished him God’s blessing and good health. (Cheers.) It had been announced that the hon. member for Fort Beaufort had now been elected Leader of the Opposition, and the speaker desired to congratulate him. The hon. member stepped into the shoes of a man with whom they could get on well and who had made co-operation possible, and he (the speaker) hoped that the new Leader of the Opposition would exhibit the same spirit of co-operation in the future, in support of the aspiration: One people, one nation. That could not be done by breaking down existing facts, but by constructive work in the direction of creating a nation all having the same love for (South Africa, and all ready to co-operate in a friendly manner. That could be done without losing sight of party interests. In the name of the Government, he congratulated the hon. member for Fort Beaufort. (Hear, hear.)

who was received with cheers, said: On behalf of myself and those on this side of the House, I desire to tender to my right hon. friend our sincere and cordial thanks for the very kindly words he has spoken in regard to our leader, Sir Starr Jameson, and to assure him that the words he has spoken are deeply appreciated by hon. members on this side of the House. (Opposition cheers.) We all recognise what my right hon. friend has so kindly recognised—that not only has Sir Starr Jameson made friends on this side of the House, but he has also made friends on the other side of the House. (Cheers.) He has taught us—I think more than anyone else in this country—to recognise that you can differ politically without interfering with personal friendship. (Cheers.) I desire to tender sincere thanks for the very kindly manner in which my right hon. friend has referred to the position I now occupy—unfortunately.

resumed his speech, saying he did not believe it would be satisfactory if they adopted the piece-work system in the railway workshops. On the subject of the work of Parliament, he hoped hon. members would give their best attention to the need of getting the affairs of the Union into good order, with an eye more to the interests of the Union as a whole than to the interests of the various Provinces. When once the principles of central government had been placed in order, the time would then come for active criticism from the Opposition if the Government should act contrary to what was thought to be right. At present, however, it was a time when they must all help to establish the basis of the new conditions which had been brought about owing to the advent of Union. (Hear, hear.)

said he had intended to refer at some length to the question of the public service, but as the Minister of the Interior had given notice to introduce a Public Service Bill, he thought a better opportunity would be found on the debate for the second reading. He wished to refer to another matter, for which the present debate gave the best opportunity of discussion, the matter already referred to by the hon. member for Umbilo. It was of great importance, as the Minister had himself indicated to the House, and related to the future conduct of the railway system of this country. The Minister read to the House certain extracts from a report which had been made to him as Minister of Railways by a Commission appointed to inquire into the general efficiency of the railway workshops throughout the Union. He indicated to the House that he considered that report to be of great importance, and certainly the figures which were read were figures of a very startling nature, and gave the impression that the relative efficiency of the different railway workshops varied to an extraordinary extent. The Minister read certain statements, which showed that the workshops at Bloemfontein and Pretoria were much more efficient on the basis taken for that estimated efficiency by two members of the Commission. To anybody who realised where the workmen in the different workshops of the Union were brought from, and the nature of the work they did, it was on the face of it an extraordinary thing that there should be an enormous variation in the efficiency in the different centres, because these workmen were all drawn from very much the same source. They had to a large extent got their training in this country at the different workshops, or had received it at big works in England. He had no doubt that if statistics were available, it would be found that a large number of the men at Pretoria and Bloemfontein had actually been trained in the Cape or Natal workshops, and transferred in the days before Union from those workshops. The Minister shook his head, but he believed that was so, though he must bow to the Minister in a matter like that. Not only did two members of the Commission bring out this startling difference in efficiency, but they actually reduced that difference to a matter of percentage and decimals. That must have suggested to anyone who knew the conditions under which work in the railway workshops was done a doubt as to the accuracy of the estimate of relative efficiency. This was a matter on which it was difficult for any hon. member to question the authority of the gentlemen who made the report. Mr. Gilmour, the chairman of that Commission, was an engineer whose qualifications were known to all, and Mr. Collins, who joined in his report, was also a gentleman of the highest reputation, and it was difficult for any hon. member to dispute the conclusions arrived at by such authorities; but Mr. Beatty, a railway engineer of great experience in the Cape, and Mr. Hendrie, who was at present Chief Mechanical Engineer of the whole railway system of the Union, differed from these conclusions almost in toto. Therefore, there was no reason for any hon. member to apologise for going very carefully into the conclusions in the report, and for seeing whether they could be maintained on the basis of the report. He would like to say before going on any further that it surprised him that the hon. Minister should have applied those figures, not as figures simply concerned with the general efficiency of the workshops of the Union, but as figures of relative efficiency, because if the Minister had simply said that general conclusions were to be drawn from them, or that the majority of the workshops were not as efficient as they might be, without quoting any names, nobody would have been able to take exception; but to say that the workshops of Pretoria and Bloemfontein were more efficient than those of the Cape and Natal was to create an uneasy feeling in the minds of the Cape and Natal that they had not been given sufficient consideration and that their side of the case had not been put to the House. So it was of the greatest importance, in his mind, that the conclusions arrived at by Messrs. Gilmour and Collins should be carefully considered to see if they could be supported. And it was not an easy matter for hon. members of that House when a report of that kind was simply laid on the table of the House and not printed for the benefit of members—it was a very difficult matter for hon. members in an intricate and long matter of this kind to get hold of a report in sufficient time to arrive at any right conclusions as to what it contained. (Cheers.) He would explain to the House very briefly the basis of comparison used by Messrs. Gilmour and Collins in arriving at their conclusions. They said in their report that there was one infallible method of ascertaining the efficiency of the men and that was to consider the value of the labour and the quantity of the material used. That was to say that Messrs. Gilmour and Collins laid down as an axiom that they could arrive at the efficiency of any workshop by seeing what proportion the cost of labour bore to the cost of the material used for an average period under the same conditions. That was to say, that the higher the proportion of the cost of labour to the cost of material used the less the efficiency of the workshop concerned. They took a period of five months and in any workshop where they found the cost of wages high in proportion to the cost of material there the efficiency was said to be less.

He would venture to say that that basis was totally fallacious and an erroneous method of arriving at the efficiency of a workshop. (Opposition cheers.) He would admit when it was a matter of turning out a large number of castings or wheels which could be turned out by the hundreds by an almost mechanical process that there they could estimate efficiency by taking the amount of material and the time taken to turn out the finished product. But when it came to a matter of repairs to coaches or wagons then it was a totally fallacious method, and one that did not do justice to the men themselves. Suppose there were two engines that came in with worn tyres. The engineer found in one case the tyres were not worn to such an extent that they required new tyres, but simply required turning up—he thought that was the correct term to use—but in the other case they needed new tyres. In the first case the cost of the labour would be high in proportion to the material used, and in the second the cost of the material would be high in proportion to the wages. Well, taking the efficiency of the workmen in the two cases, was it not absurd to say that the efficiency of the workmen engaged in the first case was lower? (Cheers.) That was not his opinion alone. He would like to quote to the House the remarks with regard to that basis of comparison which were made by the other two members of the Commission—Messrs. Beatty and Hendrie. Mr. Hendrie, who was now the Chief Mechanical Engineer for the Union, said that the comparative efficiency of the workshops at Salt River, Pretoria, and Durban was, in his opinion, unobtainable to any really reliable extent up to the present. Mr. Beatty also expressed a similar opinion. Now, not only was that basis of comparison, when examined in detail, a fallacious basis of comparison, but it could be shown to be specially fallacious when it was applied to a particular case of the various workshops of the Union, because, as the hon. member for Umbilo (Mr. Robinson) had already pointed out, the practice with regard to the repair work in the workshops of the Cape and Natal was completely different from the practice in Pretoria and Bloemfontein. (Cheers.)

Then, again, he would like to read to the House the opinion given by Mr. Beatty as to their calculations of the material used in these repairs done in the Cape and in the Natal workshops, as compared with the Pretoria and Bloemfontein workshops, Mr. Beatty stated that he looked upon these deductions as utterly unreliable and misleading. On ordinary carriage repairs, expensive varnish formed a big item in the cost, and if varnish, costing 10s. a gallon, were used instead of that costing £1 a gallon, it was entirely misleading to say that the efficiency in the one case was higher than in the other. The hon. and learned member also quoted from Mr. Beatty’s report where it dealt with old and new hair as stuffing for cushions, at which a couple of hon. members on the back Ministerial benches could not repress their amusement. The hon. member said he did not wonder they were amused, but it was only by reducing these general conclusions to concrete instances, that it was shown how unfairly they worked out. Here was also the point which had been brought up by the hon. member of Umbilo (Mr. Robinson) that the material referred to in the statement for the shops at Pretoria and Bloemfontein included manufactured and partly manufactured parts of locomotives, and the wages were included in that. The material had been made beforehand and passed into the stores, and instead of the wages being charged to repairs, they were charged as part of the cost of material, and so that reduced the wages cost for repairs. The Commission, again, in taking the wages cost of these various workshops had made an allowance in all oases, by which they brought every workshop to the salary basis of Salt River, as they called it; that was to say, they showed that the average wages for repairs in Pretoria was £272 0s. 6d. per repair and £279 1s. 6d. in Bloemfontein, and then they brought these two wages costs down to the Salt River basis, or 158.1 per repair for Pretoria and 182.1 for Bloemfontein; that was to say, in the case of Pretoria they had allowed practically 55 per cent. off the wages cost to bring it down to the Salt River basis. That was a very big allowance indeed—it might be a fair allowance to make when they took the point of view of efficiency, but when they took it from the point of view of the country, let the House remember that in order to bring the salary basis of the wages costs down to Salt River basis, an allowance of 55 per cent. had to be made in favour of Pretoria. Mr. Beatty, in his report, made an allowance of 46 per cent. In order to illustrate their general axiom, as worked out in particular cases, the Commission had taken certain repairs of a certain period and reduced them to a diagrammatic form. They said that the efficiency of the shops was to be estimated by the least cost of wages as compared with the cost of material. In each of these shops they grouped repairs into zones, then plotted them into the diagram round an “ideal line.” Well it was all very fine to group the repairs for each period into zones—it was a blessed word, and had blessed results, as far as the Commission was concerned; but let each individual repair be grouped round that line, which was quite possible, as was shown by the Commission itself, and he was betraying no confidence when he said that when that was done the result would be startlingly different from the result as worked out by the Commission. He would venture to say to the hon. Minister that if he would do that and show it to the House, the mere production of that diagram would blow that beautiful theory of the majority of the Commission as sky-high as that diagram was sky-blue. (Laughter.) The Commission also made the statement that there was very little difference between the equipment of the various workshops, and that their equipment was not sufficiently different to affect the results arrived at by the Commission. Mr. Hendrie said that the difference in equipment was considerable, and should be taken into account when arriving at a general estimate. Then, again, there was the transport of material from the coast to the inland workshops. The cost was there, whether it appeared on paper or not. He took it that one was justified in assuming, when one arrived, as it was difficult to arrive, at the basis of comparison taken by Mr. Gilmour and Mr. Collins, that that comparison was not only prima facie ridiculous when applied to repair work, but when taken in detail it could be shown to be absurd. He urged that the fairest and the only fair basis of comparison was that recommended in Mr. Beatty’s report, and that was a basis of comparison which he believed would commend itself immediately to every member of the House as being obviously the right basis of comparison. Mr. Beatty said that in order to make a fair comparison of the cost of locomotive repairs similar locomotives should be selected when possible, and the cost of as large a number of repairs as might be obtainable taken as the basis of comparison. Mr. Hendrie said exactly the same thing. Mr. Beatty took the cost of repairs which had been done in the workshops, and found out in each individual case what the total cost of repair had been, and then made an allowance of 46 per cent. in favour of Pretoria on the salary basis and brought out the comparison of the total cost per repair. He made a comparison between Salt River and Pretoria. He took certain classes of locomotives which had been repaired at those workshops during the 15 months ended August 25 last, and he found that the repairs at Salt River cost £95 per engine less than at Pretoria. If 46 per cent. were added to the Salt River direct wages, according to the allowance taken for Pretoria, then there was a balance of £1 in favour of Salt River as compared with Pretoria. Mr. Beatty said that the increased efficiency of labour at Pretoria, as a consequence of piece-work, as compared with Salt River could he shown at from 15 to 20 per cent. Salt River, Mr. Long went on to say, as compared with other workshops in the Union, was pre-eminently a white workshop. The whole of the skilled and unskilled labour at Salt River was white labour. At Pretoria practically the whole of the unskilled labour was native labour. (Hear, hear.) This was a remarkable fact which should give pause to those hon. members from the North who were accustomed to talk of the basis of labour at the Cape as being coloured. (Hear, hear.) Mr. Beatty thought if white labour was employed at Pretoria, that would be an additional cost which he estimated at 6s., or an additional cost of £30 an engine. Then there was the difference of making allowance for scrap. In Pretoria scrap was immediately put into the store and credit given. This would amount to about £10 per engine. So that, taking these and other considerations together, there was an amount of £75 per engine in favour of Salt River. Then with regard to the relative efficiency of Durban and Pretoria, they would find that the total repairs at Durban for the six months ending 1911 amounted to £72,699, averaging £598. The cost of similar repairs at Pretoria was £749, or a balance of £151 in favour of Durban, which would more than cover any additional expense for extra skilled labour in Pretoria. So that, whereas by the report of Messrs. Gilmour and Collins, it would appear that the efficiency at Pretoria was very much greater than at Durban, yet when they compared the cost, there was a balance in favour of Durban of £151. There were many other differences that could be brought out with reference to the efficiency of Durban and Pretoria. There were wagon repairs, coach repairs, and carriage repairs, as between Pretoria and the coast ports generally. Not only repair work, but actual construction work as well. For instance, a carriage could be constructed at Salt River for £3,050, whereas at Pretoria he believed that it cost £3,634. Again, there was one very important point which Mr. Beatty made, and that was his statement to the effect that locomotives repaired in the Transvaal had broken down twice as often as those repaired in the Cape. There had been 101 failures in the Transvaal during four months. It was, to his mind, a fairly good test where they had locomotives which were repaired and put into running again to say that the engines which ran the greatest mileage had been the better repaired, especially when the Cape locomotives had a more difficult line to run over, while the locomotives were also older than those in the Transvaal. As far as Natal went, the track was, of course, almost three times harder. These failures were attributed to the repairs not being carried out as thoroughly as they might, to engines being kept too long on the road, and to pooling. By pooling was meant that, instead of a driver and fireman being allotted to each engine, as had been the custom in the Cape, owing to the insufficiency of engines in the Transvaal, a system had grown up whereby an engine was sent out again as soon as it got into the shed. The system had arisen in America to meet emergencies, and should never be applied to a Government railway system such as we had. The only conclusion that could be arrived at after reading the report of Mr. Gilmour and Mr. Collins was that their basis of comparison was theoretical and deliberately chosen for the purpose of showing that piece-work had made the workshops more efficient than the coast workshops. It seemed to him an entirely academic theory which applied only to a certain class of work. It had been applied to the whole of the workshops with the idea of proving that piecework was a cheaper and more efficient system than day work. As the piecework system was highly technical, he was not qualified to say very much on it, but it seemed to him that it was absolutely impossible to carry it out in regard to repairs. (Labour cheers.) In the construction of an engine, where the materials and men were at hand, from the point of view of the Works Superintendent it could be said that the work should be done in a certain time. That was leaving out the effect the system had on the men, and considering the men as mere machines. From that view-point, there was no doubt that for construction piecework was the best system. When they came to repairs it was an entirely different matter. When an engine was sent in for repairs, the defect might seem a very simple one, but at any moment the workmen might come upon some latent fault which would affect the whole nature of the repair, and change it from a very simple to a very serious matter, requiring a great deal of time. Then it would be necessary to recast the whole calculation upon which the piecework had first been calculated. He believed that he was right in saying that in the big engineering works in Scotland construction work might be done on piecework, but repairs were never done on piecework, because the system had been found inefficient in dealing with repairs. Therefore one was almost compelled to come to the conclusion that the basis of comparison taken by Mr. Gilmour and Mr. Collins had been deliberately taken for the purpose of showing that piecework was more efficient than day work. He thought he had shown that this theory was wrong, and that, tested by results, their conclusions would fail to carry conviction to any impartial observer. There was one amusing instance of the way this theory was supported. If the Minister would look at statement No. 2 of Messrs. Gilmour and Collins’ report as to the relative efficiency in respect of coach repairs, he would find “Pretoria workshop 100 per cent.” Did he know that repairs to coaches there were not done by piecework at all? and therefore the whole conclusion drawn by the Commissioners from that fell to pieces altogether. They said that the efficiency of the shop was due to piecework, but the most efficient repairs were not done by piecework.

Continuing, he said that he had a telegram from East London stating that piece work had started in the wheel-tiring department already. So it appeared to him that the Government, acting on the report, had commenced to institute the system of piecework in the workshops of the Union, and it had been his (the speaker’s) endeavour to show that the basis upon which that policy had been adopted could not stand the slightest examination. The Minister had also pointed out the saving that might be made in personnel and wages if these reductions were put into force. The Minister had said that a large number of men were redundant, and he had said that it had been estimated that the saving that would result would amount to £236,000 per annum. He (the speaker) would point out that Mr. Collins and Mr. Gilmour stated that the men who were redundant from the point of view of repair work could be absorbed in construction work that was not being carried cut, but could be carried out. He pointed out that if such a course were followed, no great saving in salaries could result. Did he understand the Minister to convey such an impression?

made a remark that was inaudible.

continuing, said that the fact that the Minister now said that he did not intend to say that men would be retrenched, but that the country ‘would get extra value for this £236,000 would go a long way to reassure the men working in these shops. His impression was that the Minister intended to carry out these reductions without delay, and that there would be an actual saving of this large amount of money to the country. What the Minister had just said to him would allay a great deal of anxiety that existed in many of the workshops of the Union. He went on to refer the House to the statement made by Mr. Hendrie, in the course of his report, which went to show that, in his (Mr. Hendrie’s) opinion, the Commission was appointed at a wrong time, and that it was impossible for the Commission to arrive at any true basis of comparison of efficiency as between the various workshops of the Union. Mr. Hendrie had clearly indicated that the time was not ripe for the Commission to get at any reliable estimate of the efficiency of the various shops. He disagreed with the estimate of relative efficiency arrived at by the others. Both Mr. Beatty and Mr. Hendrie said that the basis taken by Messrs. Gilmour and Collins was ridiculous, and that it was impossible to arrive at any real estimate of relative efficiency. Therefore, he thought that before the Minister of Railways and Harbours or the Railway Board put these recommendations into practice the Minority Reports which had been presented by Messrs. Beatty and Hendrie should be carefully considered. He hoped he had succeeded in convincing the House of the necessity of such consideration being given. He hoped also that the impression left by the Minister of Railways and Harbours that these drastic reductions of staff would be carried out and that piece-work would be put into force immediately had been cleared away.

said he had been looking into the information which had been placed before hon. members of that House to see what section of the public was profiting by the railway reductions that had been made so far, and what section of the public was paying the big profits that were being made at the present time. It was a difficult matter to get to the bottom of these things, because he found that in the reports information was carefully concealed. He had also been looking at that section of the Union Act which dealt with the railways so far as it concerned the stimulation of agriculture and industries. He had found out what industries helped to provide the railway with these surpluses. In the Estimates for 1912-13 it was hoped to get £6,000,000 from goods and minerals, and from coal—the one industry—£2,086,000. This was an increase so far as coal was concerned on the estimate of last year of £285,735. It left a considerable amount to be obtained from the coal industry in spite of the reductions to be made. He had tried to find out what profit was being made out of the various industries at the present time. The only information they had before them was the statement which was made by the Prime Minister, and he did not think that the figures of the Prime Minister were correct; they were different from his calculations. According to the Prime Minister, the profits in the Transvaal were £1,800,000, Natal £500,000, Orange Free State £300,000. but there was a deficiency so far as the Cape was concerned of £130,000.

This deficit in the Cape he thought he would be able to prove was very much greater and he would show how the large profits in the other Provinces were made up. The Prime Minister himself said the rates in the Cape had been reduced too much. These things ought to be tackled within the next two years or else it would be extremely difficult to deal with them in the future. The Minister said that in the reductions he meant to make he was going to consider, first, food, and he would ask him if he thought if he took a grocer’s list in Bloemfontein this year and again next year he would find a real reduction in the prices charged to the public. It was the middle-man who got the profit. The Minister would place second shelter and necessaries which he said would include coal; but certainly first of all, all forms of agricultural produce. Here again the produce was going through the middle-man. But as far as coal was concerned high railway rates made an immediate effect on the consumer. It was consumed greatly, and nearly every large industry relied on the large quantities of coal that could be obtained. Coal was the life-blood of industries, and here in this country they had a wonderful quantity of coal which could be produced at an extremely cheap rate; and, therefore, everything was ready for the opening up of large industries in South Africa. And the reason they had not got the industries today was that the railway rates on coal were so high. They had an example of that by the opening up of large power plants at the collieries in the Transvaal, and by which the Minister was losing a great deal of revenue. There was another question which he would deal with, and that was the carrying of coal for export. The General Manager of Railways was somewhat vague on that subject. They only had the one report issued last September He lumped the goods and minerals together so that it was difficult to arrive at any figures. He must base his arguments on the 1910 report, as there was no other. The revenue from the coal trade, goods and minerals, for 1910, was over £8,000,000, which was a large increase over 1909—22 per cent. Further on in the report they got these results: there had been a production of no less than 3,785.000 tons in the Transvaal, 2,482,249 tons in Natal, 434,861 tons in the Free State, and 88,873 tons in the Cape. There had been a considerable increase since. The quantity of coal forwarded to Durban was 1,815,659 tons, and to Lourenco Marques 173,038 tons. The amount of coal bunkered at Durban in 1910 was 1,395,649 tons, at Lourenco Marques 120,306 tons, and at Cape Town 83,510 tons. And, as he said before, there was still an increase. The total amount carried in 1910 was over 6,000.000 tons.

It was a very large industry, and as far as the extent went, the coal industry came a very good second to the gold industry. The General Manager said: “It will be observed that the traffic in coal was responsible for more than half the total tonnage carried, the increase for the year, including the quantity carried for railway use, being 14.9 per cent.” He (Mr. Meyler) saw no reason why they should not expect the same state of affairs to-day. The General Manager went on to say that the establishment of uniform rates for coal presented exceptional difficulties, hut the matter was then engaging attention. He (the hon. member) had not seen any practical results yet. The General Manager went on: “In dealing with the coal question, two principal features stand out for treatment: (a) a reduction in rates which will encourage the transport of this traffic for long distances by rail, and (b) the more economical haulage and handling of the export trade through Durban. If a reduction in the export rate be determined upon to induce new business, the reduction in Natal must be contingent upon some arrangement being concluded with the colliery interests which will expedite the release of rollingstock and, at the same time, reduce the cost of shunting and other services. The present arrangements stand in need of radical reform. There are, on an average, 17,000 tons of coal under load at Durban each morning, and not infrequently trucks remain under load for weeks at a time, while certain collieries are urgently demanding trucks, to supply which the Administration is regularly incurring much extra expense in empty haulage. A remedy for this must be found, and a proposal with this end in view is at present under consideration; but I hesitate to advise the adoption of any course which might prejudice the colliery interests or in any way react upon the expansion of business. That being so, the matter will be carefully deliberated upon before any change is made.” The collieries themselves (proceeded the hon. member) were quite willing to assist the Railway Administration in the matter of trucks, but there was still a very great shortage, and boats were kept waiting for two or three days. He quite understood that the improvements being made to the main line would make it better, but he thought the day would come when, notwithstanding the improvements to the line, they would still need further railway facilities to carry the export trade. If the hon. Minister would only carry that out, there was no doubt they would get a large increase in the industry There were large areas which had hardly been scratched—500 square miles of coal land in the northern districts of Natal alone, and most of it with seams six feet thick, in addition to the main Natal coalfields. But to-day, on account of the railway rates, coal land was sold for a mere song. Continuing, the hon. member said that at present there was very little coal going to South America and the Far East, and it was quite possible that ships could carry coal to these places and bring back products at cheaper rates than the present ones; but the Minister had not told them anything about what he was doing to build up an export trade in coal to these places. Having quoted from the report of the Industries Commission, he said that coal was sold in the Transvaal as cheap as anywhere in the world, and the Commission found that the rates were exorbitant. A committee recently sat on railway statistics, but he understood that the Minister had not adopted their report, and, as far as their recommendations were concerned, was not going to make public matters concerning the coal rates. He was not surprised at that, because when they came to the actual figures, they saw what an enormous profit was made cut of the coal trade. His object had been to determine what amount each section of the line had been making, and to see whether there had been a profit or a loss. It was essential to have that information before them; and it had not been placed before them. He hoped he was not wearying the House, but he would like to put the figures before them. He found from another table that the coal produced in the Transvaal in 1910 amounted to 3,785,000 tons, of which 2,758,000 tons went to the Witwatersrand, 173,000 tons to Delagoa Bay, 389,000 tons to the railway, 437,000 tons to other Transvaal stations, including Pretoria, and 20,000 tons to Orange Free State, Natal, and Cape stations. The hon. member went on to quote the tonnages produced by the various collieries, and where the coal had gone to, and by what railways it was carried. The hon. member went on to refer to the profit on the working of various sections on the basis of multiplying the net profit per open mile by the average mileage of the railways in 1910. Among the principal figures were the following: Germison-Witbank, £878,000; mining zone, £225,000; Randfontein-Klerksdorp, £81,000; Witbank-Portuguese border, £917,000. The Salt River-Wynberg line made, according to his figures, a profit of £6,000, and the Wynberg-Simon’s Town line lost £5,000. The Free State line made a good profit on the ordinary trade, but they had to remember there that they had flat lines, easily run, and that they had three main lines converging. He went on to say that he thought he could prove that it was the coal lines and the coal lines only that made the profit on the South African railways. So far he had not touched the Natal line, which would only emphasise the figures that he had read. The line from Union Junction to the Natal border made a profit of £388,000. On the Natal line from the Transvaal border they made a profit in 1910 of no Jess than £880,000. The Natal line was earning £500 per mile more thin the Hermiston line. There was no reason why there should be this increase, except that the Natal line was carrying so much coal for export. The reason was obvious; Natal was carrying this amount of nearly two million tons per annum for export. It was making a large slice of the whole of the profits that the Union was getting out of railways to-day. The profit was no less than £2,897 for every mile of that Natal section. Then he had figures which showed what the lines in the different Provinces were making after allowing for renewals, betterment, and interest upon capital expenditure. He had taken these figures from the returns supplied to the National Convention, as no statistics had been published since. The cost of renewals, betterment, and interest on capital on Cape lines was £1.200,009 per annum: Free State, £200.000; Transvaal, £500.000; and Natal. £550,000; making a total of £2,500.000.

The net profits from the railways, after deducting these capital charges were as follows: Transvaal, £2.500,000; Free State, £300,000; Natal, £450,000. From the Cape Province, however, there was a loss of £250,000. In 1910. that was the position. They heard many grumbles from both sides of the House about this £80,000 which was to be given to Natal annually for the next ten years for Provincial purposes whereas nearly £500,000 was coming from Natal, yet people grumbled because Natal was getting this pittance. He recommended them to examine the figures, and he would request that the next General Manager’s report would show a statement of the profit and loss upon the railways. He noticed also that the Sea Point line lost at the rate of £3,000 per annum.

That amount is paid by the ratepayers.

I didn’t know that. I am afraid I’ll be dropping into a hornets’ nest unless I’m careful. (Laughter.) Continuing, the hon. member said there was another point that he wanted to mention, and that was the question of the form of labour that was being used. The General Manager, in his report, soated that no more Indian labour was to be used on the Natal railways. But he noticed that 895 Indians had re-indentured, and that there were in all 3,741 Indians engaged on the Natal railways. When the last lot of indentured Indians arrived, there was a general scramble for them, and the Minister scooped up a large number of them. Several Natal industries had been built up on Indian labour, and although he would not be sorry to see that kind of labour go still it was rather hard upon employers when the Minister was taking Indians away from these industries. These Indians did all sorts of skilled work, and some of the large profits which the Minister received from Natal might be used for the employment of more white men, and to release those Indians for employment on the sugar estates and dairy farms. The natives and Indians on the railway were getting on an average about £30 per annum and rations as well, whilst the natives employed on the trains got £60 per annum, and those on cartage work £72 per annum.

He thought that more whites could be employed in connection with cartage and to replace the natives on the trains. Even if the number of whites taken on was only twenty per cent. they would have greater efficiency. It was not pleasant to have natives making beds for ladies. Further, the carriages would be kept cleaner by the employment of whites. The natives were not acustomed to the European idea of cleanliness, and some of the Natal carriages were at present in a shocking condition. In reply to a question he had put, the Minister had denied that these carriages were in a filthy condition. He had no doubt that that was the Minister’s information, but complaints were numerous and continuous. The system of cleaning the carriages in Durban was a good one, bur the carriages from other parts of the Union arrived in a disgusting state. Some of them were riddled with vermin. That was one of the benefits they derived from Union., (A laugh.) Natal had only a small voice, as so many of her members were muzzled Thus it came about that the fine coaches made in Durban were sent to other parts of the Union, and they were getting an extraordinary conglomeration of stock.

said that when the Minister made his startling statement in regard to the relative efficiency of the railway workshops he felt instinctively that there must be some mistake. He could hardly believe that there was so great a difference between the efficiency of the work done by the men at Bloemfontein and Pretoria and that done at Durban and Salt River. He did not think that the Minister would be unfair to his workmen, and therefore he took it that when he made that statement he had not seen the Minority Report. In computing the relative efficiency, the absence of modern machinery at Salt River, Uitenhage and Durban had to be taken into account. Another important factor was that at the coast workshops many men were employed in selecting old material for future use. The labour was debited, but when the material was used it was not credited. He then dealt with the question of the vigilant oversight required in the case of piecework to ensure the work not being scamped.

There was the danger that accidents might result. Men might turn out more and earn better wages by piecework, but the men would wear themselves out prematurely through this cause. Although the Pretoria shop was supposed to be so very efficient, he knew of the case of an engine which was turned out from that shop and which broke down at Charlestown, and had to be sent back for further repairs. That had been due to inferior work, and if the Minister liked, he (the speaker) could supply him with the number of the engine and the date on which it came to grief. He also pointed out that a carriage made at Durban cost £500 less than one made at Bloemfontein, notwithstanding the fact that superior machinery was used at the latter place. With regard: to what had been said about the coal trade, he would commend the figures quoted to the attention of the Minister, and he pointed out that if certain reductions in rates were made and more rolling stock were provided the position of the industry would be improved, and there would be an appreciable increase in the railway revenue derived therefrom. Dealing with the question of relative efficiency, he thought that it was unwise on the part of the Minister to quote figures which had been proved to be unreliable, and pointed out that Natal was at a disadvantage so far as the cost of repairs and wear and tear was concerned. Then he advised that there should be a repair station at Ladysmith—it was the most suitable point between Durban and the old border line—and sheds should be built in order to protect rolling stock that was at present exposed to rough weather. The Minister of Finance had told them that, he was burdened with a deficit and yet they had been spared taxation. He thought they might congratulate the Minister and themselves on this fact; but they could not go on unless rigid economies were effected. He thought that Government should observe economy in every legitimate direction. They were receiving a princely revenue from the mines and a big amount from the railways and harbours and yet they were faced with a deficit. The hon. member for George pointed out that this year they spent £126,000 more than they received. That was bad finance. (Opposition cheers.) He thought that for the benefit of the country economy should be exercised. They were grumbling away and criticising, but none of them suggested methods by which effective and legitimate economy could be made; not even the ex-Ministers of Finance had suggested a scheme by which they could save money. He thought they should husband their resources. When they had that magnificent income from the mines and when they heard that it might diminish, and was likely to diminish, in a few years’ time, he thought they ought to anticipate that time and cut their coat according to their cloth. They should do all they could to foster industries; to develop agriculture and develop their coal trade would be found of great importance in repairing the loss they would experience owing to the diminishing gold output. He noticed that notwithstanding the large sum they were spending on tick fever, the Prime Minister was enabled to save £135,000. He thought he was to be congratulated, and if he was able to do it, surely others would be able to do like wise. The Prime Minister had dealt with tick fever in a most effective manner, and he believed that it was now possible to effect some further economies. He hoped the Minister of Finance would not forget that in economy there was safety; in economy there lay progress and the development of this country and the welfare of the Union. (Hear, hear.)

said he had not spoken on the Budget last year, but after the extraordinary statement that came from the Minister of Railways and Harbours in his attack upon the railway men in this country he felt it was his duty to rise upon an occasion such as this and say something in defence of the Cape workshops. When one came to consider the speech made by the Minister of Railways, one could hardly believe that he could have read the report. It almost looked as if some faithful servant had gone through it and given him the main points from which to argue his case. When he saw the hon. member for Uitenhage (Mr. Fremantle) sitting with the Minister of Railways and Harbours, he thought of the lion and the Lamb, and it reminded him of when the hon. Minister for Railways paid a visit to Uitenhage just before the election, and made a great speech in support of the hon. member for Uitenhage. He wondered if the Hon. the Minister would do the same next election. He was afraid not. He was afraid that the hon. member had come to the parting of the ways. If the hon. Minister had read the report fully he would have found that one of the principal men stated that the report was not complete, as all the information was not available. They found in that report that piece labour had proved not to be a success. He had always been the friend of piecework, but if one thing had converted him against it, it was that report. On page 12, it was stated that there was an actual gain of six per cent. in labour. Let them take a locomotive. It ran 70,000 miles in the Cape, but in the Transvaal only 32,000 miles. He found that a saloon carriage—he supposed they were much the same—cost £3,697 in the Transvaal, and £2,243 in the Cape.

Uitenhage.

said that he was going to say so. The hon. member for Uitenhage seemed to want to make another speech. (Laughter.) The position, he continued, was that they gained £1,454. There was another consideration: in Pretoria there was a larger proportion of coloured labour in the workshops than at the Cape. (An HON. MEMBER: Oh!) An hon. member said “Oh,” but he was going by the report. The one went by piecework and the other went by a day’s wages. The hon. member for Port Elizabeth, South-west (Mr. J. Searle) informed him that none of the large shipping companies ever thought of getting repairs done by piecework, because the public safety was dependent upon the repairs being properly carried out; the public safety was dependent upon the safety of the ship; and the public safety was also dependent upon the condition of the railway carriages and locomotives; and why save 1s. 3d. in the £ on the repairs of locomotives when the safety of the public was at stake? The railways were paying well enough, and they need not try to drive a better bargain than they had at present. Why did that question of piecework now come up? Was it necessary? The men of the Cape Civil Service had made a contract, and the Minister of Railways could not make them break that contract. If there was any man in the House whom he had found to be sympathetic with the railway men it was the Minister; and why that sudden change when they had two millions to the good of profit? It almost appeared as if the Minister were leaving behind him all the old traditions. He would appeal to the Minister to go back before it was too late. The very fact of the Government initiating piecework and seeking to have it in the principal workshops, tended to spread the system through the country. The hon. member proceeded to read a letter asking that the Act dealing with wagon competition against the railways might be repealed. He asked whether hon. members knew that under the Act a farmer was not allowed to transport goods by his own wagon?

said that was only on the coast.

asked how farmers in the Orange Free State and the Transvaal would like that?

asked if it was a constituent who had written the letter?

Yes. I look after my constituents. Does the Hon. the Minister look after himself? (Laughter.) Proceeding, he said that that was one of the Acts which could be repealed now, now that the railways were so prosperous, and the Act had been passed in a time when the railways were not doing so well. Coming to the Department of Justice, he said that it had done more to ameliorate the condition of prisoners to-day than had ever been done before. He thought Mr. Roos was entitled to praise for the work that he was doing in that direction.

He welcomed the work that was being done to improve the lot of prisoners, for, after all, they had to remember that in many cases they were an unfortunate class of people, who had no control over their circumstances. Many a good man, in consequence of his surroundings, got into prison. In reference to the closing of small gaols, that might, he remarked, seem a hardship to those connected with the prisons, but there was no doubt that putting a larger number of prisoners together would tend to discipline, and tend to better the condition of the prisoners. Referring to the appointment of the Licensing Boards, Mr. Brown urged that the Minister of Justice, in making these appointments, should always keep in mind the desirability of appointing men who had the welfare and good of the community at heart. He could do much to make this a happy country, and a better country, if he would eliminate all thought of political influence, and have regard only to the best interests of the people at large. The hon. member next referred to the grievance of a farmer in the Eastern Province who had applied to the Agricultural Department for dip, and, in consequence of the dip supplied being too strong, had lost some 35 milk cows. The Department, he said, stated that the contents of the dip were clearly stated on the label, but he submitted that the Department had been guilty of laches, and it was no answer to the man’s claim to draw attention to the label. In closing, he again alluded to the question of piecework in the railway workshops, and said he was sure that this House would not shirk the responsibility of refusing to introduce piecework into the service of this country until it had been proved beyond a doubt that piecework tended to efficiency and daily-paid work tended to inefficiency. (Hear, hear.)

said that after the speech just made he did not wish to harp a great deal on this question of piecework, but there were a few remarks he intended to make on the subject. The Minister of Railways and Harbours, who was so fond of charging hon. members with making ex parte statements, after quoting a few figures, based upon them the most tremendous conclusions. But they now had the full report before them, the minority reports and even the majority report, and he said that the conclusions the Minister drew’ were altogether out of proportion to the evidence upon which he was going. The next point he wished to make was that of all the arguments which could possibly be adduced to convince the public of the utility of the public ownership of great industrial undertakings, this discussion had been the most convincing, because he said, without the faintest tinge of cynical criticism, he thought they would fully agree with him that it was the fact that that House was, so to speak, the employer relative to the railways, and that the railwaymen, besides being employees, were also part-owner of the railways, and as such were represented in that House—it was this fact which explained a great deal of the interest taken in this question. He wished to revert to something which the Minister said in the first series of those figures which he gave. He took the question of cost. Referring to the fact that Durban appeared in loco repairs to be far below the other shops, a conclusion which had been shown to be wholly inaccurate and wholly unfounded, the Minister took advantage of that to launch into a tirade on the subject of Durban railwaymen’s (political rights—(hear, hear)—and he said that, as long as he occupied the position he did, the railway servants of Natal should never enjoy the same political rights that they had before Union. If that were the Minister’s attitude, he (Mr. Creswell) could only hope that his occupancy of his present position may be brought to a very early termination, or that he might see the error of his ways at an early date. Did the Minister recollect that these men, besides being employees of the railways, were part-owners of their railways as much as he was and as much as his constituents were, and as much as the constituents of any member of that House were? They had as much right to the fullest possible political rights as any other men in the country. There was another point. It was perfectly clear, it was admitted in a grudging sort of way in the majority report even, that the men themselves were highly apposed to piecework. (Hear, hear.) The only ground for pressing this piece-work was that it was supposed to be going to procure an imaginary increase in efficiency. Against that, they had the almost unanimous feeling among the men that two dangers were in front of them.

The first was that the standard would be lost sight of. That was recognised in the Majority Report, but it was said that there would be a safeguard if the system of piecework was instituted on proper lines. It was clear, however, that the Commissioners would be strongly against the Minister recognising the Union of the men concerned. The second point was that there was a tendency in human nature in the case of piecework for the work to be scamped, and the public safety might thus suffer. He would not say that these men did habitually scamp their work. The answer to any such charge would be that the foremen exercised adequate oversight. But if that was so, surely efficiency could be acquired by the exercise of this oversight in the case of day work also. (Hear, hear.) He thought that they must admit that in the case of piecework there was an ineradicable tendency in human nature to scamp the work. Suppose that from the whole country they took one hundred men, or say 120, they would within a very short time see a striking tendency to let their own domestic convenience possibly outweigh their sense of responsibility for the work they had to do. Though in the first flush of enthusiastic patriotism they might agree to subordinate their domestic convenience, they might see a keen desire for these 120 men to get away, say, in the early part of June. He thought that a majority of them would take that view. With that tendency to scamp work, he did not think the House should enforce the principle in respect of the railway workmen. But there was no real ground for it, and the grounds in the Majority Report were so nearly baseless as to be quite out of proportion to the trouble the Minister wished to embark upon. He did not think that the House should sanction the upsetting of the railway system. Further unrest might be engendered amongst the railway men by the Minister’s bureaucrative desire to acquire slightly greater efficiency in the workshops. He would next deal with the statement of the Minister of Finance. They had listened to that statement and to the criticisms on it in the hope that they might get some glimmering of plans for the future which would deserve to be dignified by the name of financial policy. He did not think that the Minister would claim for his Budget proposals anything so high-sounding in name. If he did it was clear that the Government, in matters of financial policy, were just as prone to follow a policy of drift as in dealing with any other problems. Broadly speaking, his statement was that the past year had been very prosperous, and he hoped that the present year would be prosperous, too. He agreed with the right hon. member for Victoria West that, al-though it was charming pleasantry to describe the Minister as a sort of Lady Bountiful, any profit on the railways was taxation, and when the Minister said he was going to reduce it by £750,000 per annum it was mere remission of taxation. He forecasted a deficit of £650,000, which he informed the House he proposed to meet by taking the little nest egg that had been given him eighteen months ago. The right hon. member for Port Elizabeth had rightly, in their opinion, called attention to the crudity of his proposal that when the barometer was set fair he should go to this nest-egg, which should have been left for bad times. That did not seem a great feat of finance. While they agreed on that point, they were rather struck with the crudity of the criticisms levelled at the Minister.

And your own. (Laughter.)

I am dealing now only with those that have been delivered. Proceeding, he said that the suggestion in those criticisms was that the Government was spending too much, and that there was great need for economy. Nearly every hon. member pointed out that these economies should take the form of paying less for the public service of the country. It appeared to him that nothing in the world could be more pleasant than the type of economy that involved no self-denial. They on those benches considered that a labourer was worthy of his hire whether he was a Civil Servant or any other worker. He did not think it was calculated to make Civil Servants feel more secure to have these continual discussions calling attention to their high salaries. In his view, and he believed that a close investigation would show it to be correct, economy must take the form of doing without some forms of service we were at present receiving. Those who wished to reduce the expenditure would do well to see whether we required all the services for which we had to pay. The direction in which economy could most readily be effected was in seeing that the various portions of the public service were properly adjusted to the needs of the country, and that there was no waste. That idea was strengthened by an incident of which he was an eyewitness a few months ago at Pretoria.

Continuing, he said that he was present at the Whittaker trial, and there were three judges on the bench. Well, the trial went at a snail’s pace, while one of the judges took down the evidence in long hand. It did seem to him absurd that such an expensive piece of machinery should proceed at a snail’s pace owing to the absence of a shorthand writer. That was a direction in which there might be real economy. He thought that the only way that the Public Accounts Committee could do genuine and good work was to turn itself into a sort of Public Service Commission, and make a thorough examination of all the departments. When one read the proposals of the Minister of Finance, one tried to find in those figures some explanation of how he supposed the public expenditure which he proposed was going in some automatic way to lead to an expansion of the public revenue. He thought that the revenue and expenditure system of the country was in an unsatisfactory condition. He went on to refer to the main divisions of the public expenditure, and said he believed that in the purely administrative departments the Treasurer could find ways to economise to a great extent. There were certain classes of expenditure that were supposed to lead to an increase in the productive capacity of the people. That spent on agriculture would increase the productive capacity of the land and the people. The amount spent on agricultural education must, in the end, prove reproductive. He asked the Minister to explain by what channels these sources of revenue would be swollen; if he could not he did not think that the Minister could possibly say that his proposals represented an exposition of financial policy. He thought that if the Minister looked into the matter he would find that the revenue would be diminished rather than increased. The prime sources of revenue in this country were mines and agriculture. The former represented £2,261,000. A large part of this came from the profits tax and amounted to a million, and the rest represented income from real estate. Was the two millions spent on education going to increase that item of revenue? The right hon. member for Victoria West, in alluding to come men who had tried to persuade others from working for a starvation wage, said that these talkers should have been put in prison. That was the individualist’s way of looking at things. The better way and one which he would commend to his right hon. friend would be to forbid education of any kind to those children whom his right hon. friend described as the children of the working classes, because if they were going to go on spending two millions on giving these children education and making them think, these children, when they grew up, would put a question to Society which Society had not yet answered. They would ask: “Why is it that we who are always increasing, have to spend the whole of our lives going from place to place selling our labour and receiving as little as possible over what we require for the bare needs of life?” The result would be that they would form unions, by collective strength, to rescue from owners of property something more than a mere subsistence. Therefore, as time went on the profits on which the Minister depended so much would be a diminishing quantity. He proceeded to refer to the fact that much discussion had taken place in the House concerning the exports, and much attention had been paid to the mineral exports as compared with the total exports.

Proceeding, the hon. member said that the figures of the exports mainly represented those things which were produced in this country, but which could not be consumed in this country—coal, copper, tin, and so on. He did not for a moment want to detract from the importance of the mineral industry. It was undoubtedly of immense importance, but he wanted to protest against the impression that practically the whole productive wealth of this country was represented by those figures. There was another thought induced by those figures. The exports exceeded the imports by 19 millions. When they regarded that 4½ millions was interest on something like 80 million or 90 million pounds sunk in the railway system in this country and they had to pay something like 8 millions per annum in return for a matter of 45 millions for the money spent on the gold mining industry, he thought it should suggest to the Treasurer the advisability of extending their collective enterprises in the new mining areas he had or was putting up for auction. He wished the hon. Minister would consider the establishment of certain mines on the Government’s account. He wished it was possible to expropriate the whole of the Witwatersrand gold mines, or rather that some far-seeing statesman long ago had been able to get them into his own hands and make them what he should have instead of having all the huge profits sent out of the country. In speaking of mines, he wished to point out further, with regard to the probability of the taxes increasing or decreasing, that when it came to such a question as miners’ phthisis or Sunday labour again they were between two alternatives. Either they were going to take the Treasurer’s point of view of sticking to the last penny or they had got to see that the mines were run under conditions they approved of and under those condition the profits of the mines might be considerably less, and the Treasurer’s share of them decreased.

He would take this opportunity of remarking that the expenditure which he had incurred upon mining inspection and administration was altogether too small for the efficient carrying out of the work. The Minister of Mines had not a sufficient number of inspectors, and the Minister and the Government should cease to look upon the mining industry as a thing to spend as little money as possible on, and to get as much money as possible out of. Then they came to agricultural expenditure. They spent nearly a million on agricultural education, irrigation, and so on. How was that expenditure going to increase the Minister’s revenue? Where was the corresponding increase in any of his revenue channels from that increase of expenditure? The only place he thought it was likely to increase in was in the revenue of the Customs. It was not going to increase the amount the Treasurer derived from any other item on the revenue side. No one grudged that expenditure; but surely, however, when these huge sums of money were spent on increasing the productive capacity of the land and the productive capacity of the people on the land, they should not grudge giving quid pro quo in the shape of increased taxation. There was one item in the revenue channel which should increase as the country became more prosperous, and that was the Customs. But when they investigated it, they found something like out of 4¼ millions was really in the nature of a poll tax. The Customs duty was raised on food, clothing and so on. A very good thing indeed; but was it a quite fair system which gave huge advantages to certain individuals as against the rest, and that they should levy their duty upon a basis which was very much like a poll tax. The Customs revenue was a tax which came down upon the rich and the poor alike to a very large extent. He wanted to point out to the House that the system of taxation which they had at present seemed to him to have no regard at all to the trend of the social and national development of the country, and as the people became more educated that system was bound to be worn away when they heaved it off for a more scientific system. That system of revenue and taxation was dependent upon the profit tax and getting the money accumulated in the hands of the few, and then going to those few hands. In conclusion, the hon. member drew attention to the case of a widow, whose husband had died of miners’ phthisis, and who received £8 15s. from the Miners’ Phthisis Board. She had a considerable amount of domestic trouble, tand was trying to make a living by having boarders. She was living near the Bose Deep Mine. Each of the boarders had received a letter from the manager of the mine that on and after May 1 they were expected to board at the mess. The men were quite willing to board with the woman, but the result of that notification would be that the poor woman would have to lose her boarders. He instanced this as one of those cases of petty tyranny which arose. He hoped that before the Minister of Finance came up with his next Budget he would have taxation proposals to lay before the House which would not only deal with the year, but also with the possibilities of developing the country.

said that he did not intend following the hon. member who had just sat down and dealing with miners’ phthisis, because they would have an opportunity of dealing with that very fully next week. As regards the sad case which the hon. member had just mentioned, he did not know that the Government could do very much in a case like that. It did not appear from the statement of the hon. member that the case had been brought to the notice of the authorities of that mine—

It was.

And it was just possible that if it were brought to the notice of the right person, and the facts stated by the hon. member were correct, some allowance would be made. Until the right persons had been approached it did not seem to him that they could do anything at all.

They have been approached.

continued that he had risen for the purpose of saying a few words more particularly about what had been said during the debate on education. The Provincial Councils had come up a good deal, because the work of the Provincial Councils, as far as education was concerned, and that of the Union Government did, to a certain extent, overlap; and it was a matter of interpreting the Act of Union and working together as best as they could. He believed that when the new arrangements were effected things would work more naturally than hitherto. In this connection he would say to the hon. member for Cape Town Central and others who had spoken about the equality of taxation that equality of taxation was only possible for Union taxation, and could not be secured as far as Provincial taxation was concerned. Supposing that they had made transfer dues over all the Union, it was in the power of the Provincial Councils to lower that revenue if they wanted. It seemed to him that the hon. member for Cape Town Central had not realised what equality of taxation meant. If they were going to spoon-feed the Provinces out of the Union Treasury always, he could understand the position, but as long as they had Provincial Councils which had the power to tax, then they could not have equality of taxation. If they wanted to do away with such taxation then they must abolish Provincial Councils. He could understand that it was quite easy for a Provincial Councillor to go to his constituents and tell them that he would be only too glad to do certain things for them, but he could not get the money and it was a matter for the Union member. He believed if a vote were taken now there would be a majority in the Cape Province for the abolition of the Provincial Councils. Of course he was only referring to the Cape Province. The question of education was very closely associated with the Provincial Councils, The Act of Union contemplated that the whole matter should be taken into consideration five years after. This was most unfortunate because it hampered development to a very large extent. It would have been a great advantage if Parliament could make up its mind to know what to do three years hence. Until that final decision was arrived at, any hard and fast rule binding upon the Provinces would not be maintained. How many speakers had tackled this question of education? Take the question of the medium of instruction and the language of the schools. The question was raised last session by the hon. member for East London. A Select Committee was appointed and a report brought up and accepted practically unanimously by that House. Why had they heard nothing more about what had been done in the Provinces? The correspondence was laid on the table of the House, but nothing was heard about it.

Do you want to hear more about it?

Are you looking for trouble?

Perhaps the hon. member for East London is looking for it. Continuing, the Minister said that after the Ordinance had passed the Transvaal Parliament, one of the papers in Pretoria attacked the Opposition for consenting to the introduction of an amendment. One of the Councillors was then interviewed by that paper, and stated that the leaders of the Unionist Party in the Transvaal—amongst them the hon. member for Fordsburg—had been consulted about the amendment, to which they had agreed. That Ordinance was passed without any division in the Transvaal and it became the law of the Province. The hon. member for Fordsburg (Mr. P. Duncan) and the hon. member for Pretoria East (Sir P. Fitzpatrick) went upon a political campaign and began blackguarding the Government for not taking action to get done in the other Provinces what had been done in the Transvaal, but they did not refer to the amendment as a serious departure from the majority report.

Business was suspended at 6 p.m.

said that, when business was suspended at 6 p.m. he was dealing with the effects of the majority report on the language question in the different Provinces. He regretted very much that the draft Ordinance had been defeated in the Natal Provincial Council. He did not wish to say any hard things against the Natal Provincial Council, or the members who voted against the Ordinance. It was hoped that the adoption of the majority report in all the Provinces of the Union would lead to a solution of what was recognised as a very difficult question. He would like to say that he had not given up hope that the Natal Provincial Council would ultimately see the advisability of adopting this Ordinance, the same as had already been done in the Free State, to the satisfaction, as he understood, not only of the Provincial Council of the Free State, but also of the Council of Education of the separatist schools. As regarded the Cape, a draft Ordinance had been published, and the Provincial Council would have an opportunity of going into the matter, but he hoped when they met they would follow the example of the two other Provinces which had adopted the majority report.

The Government and the country looked more particularly to the members who served on the Education Committee to use their influence not only privately but also publicly, to see that the majority report as adopted by this House was carried and accepted right through the Union. (Ministerial cheers.)

Yes; without any change. (Hear, hear.)

How about the additions?

They need not adopt the additions if they don’t like them. Proceeding, he said that what was done in the Transvaal was accepted by the leaders in the Transvaal.

Were they? We will answer you on that point.

I can only give your public statements, which were never contradicted.

My public statements were made in September.

That was after the Transvaal Province had accepted the report. Proceeding, he said that the hon. member for Queenstown had referred to the matter of the training of teachers, and had used an expression by which he said that the Minister of Education was putting himself up as the University of South Africa. What the hon. member meant by that, he (Mr. Malan) did not know. As a matter of fact what had been accepted by the Provincial Council of the Cape was this, that third-class teachers—

What has this got to do with the Government finance? (Hear, hear, and “Order.”)

The hon. member should turn to the hon. member for Queenstown, who introduced it.

It is like side-tracking the debate. (“Order.”)

I was saying, before the hon. member for Port Elizabeth rather rudely interrupted me, that the training of teachers as regards third-class and second-class teachers remains with the Provinces, and the only part of that which will be undertaken by the Union will be the special T2 and T1.

That is what I said.

said that in no sense could that be regarded as other than higher education. The hon. member for Ficksburg had said that the Government should do more in regard to technical education. On the other hand, it was argued that it was not higher education, and that, therefore, neither the House nor the Government had anything to do with it. He might go further and say that the Government had allocated the industrial institutions to the Provinces and the whole administration of the technical schools must fall under the Provinces and not under the Government. The hon. member for Queenstown had referred to the question of the University. He said that he understood the fault for no progress having been made, rested with the Minister of Education. He had to ask the hon. member to continue to have patience a little longer, because although there had been a great deal of misrepresentation in connection with the University question, he was prepared to wait until such time as he saw a reasonable opportunity of obtaining a satisfactory solution. He would not anticipate the answer that could be given to the misrepresentations already made. He should, however, like to read a letter he had received from the legal representatives of the prospective donors in London. It was dated “London, March 16,” and had been received by the last mail. It read: “I have to acknowledge the receipt of your letters of the 13th and 27th of February. Unhappily, Sir Julius Wernher is too ill to be communicated with. Mr. Otto Beit, who is abroad, will be home before Easter. You may, therefore, expect a cable communication before the close of the Easter recess.” Well, the recess had closed, but no cable communication had been received, and the position was that until he had a further communication he must ask the House and the country to have patience. He did not think that disclosing the facts at present would serve any very useful purpose. He regretted, perhaps more than anyone else, that that was the case, because what the hon. member for Queenstown said was perfectly true, that the development of the higher education in the Union was delayed and hampered by the uncertainty in regard to the University. But it could not be helped, and therefore patience was the only virtue under the circumstances. There was one further question with which he would deal, the applicability of the mining regulations to coloured people to which the hon. member for Tembuland and the hon. member for Queenstown referred. The mining regulations followed the example set in the South Africa Act. As far as the franchise to coloured people went, the Act preserved the status quo, and in regard to the mining regulations the position was parallel. Whether the continuance of the system was wise or not was a matter of opinion. As far as the Transvaal members went there was, perhaps, no difference of opinion. But they certainly differed from the hon. members for Tembuland and Queenstown, who wanted the coloured bar removed. At present that was not practical politics, and as they had the excellent precedent of the South Africa Act, which left such matters as they were, he thought it would be unwise to make a change at present. Concluding, he expressed the hope that what he had said with regard to the language question would not raise a hot debate, because it was their intention for the welfare of South Africa to remove the language difficulty once and for all out of politics. (Ministerial cheers.)

That is why you sent for us I suppose.

congratulated the Minister of Education on the intention to remove the question of the language difficulty in schools from the arena of politics. He hardly congratulated him on the method he had adopted. Why the question had been dragged into the discussion, not necessarily but provocatively, he could not see, unless there were some intention on the part of the Government to side-track the House from matters more-germane to the subject now under discussion. The Minister of Education in an unjustified manner had launched out into a most controversial topic and had charged them with failing to carry out the solemn arrangement entered into last session, to carry out the compromise in the letter and the spirit. If that charge had come from his side of the House and had been directed against the other side he could have understood it. (Opposition cheers.) The Minister had wondered why they had refrained from making it. It was because, like him, they had hoped that this matter would be removed from the sphere of party politic, and he thought they on his side had adopted the better method. The Minister had first of all accused him (Mr. Duncan) and the hon. member for Pretoria East (Sir P. Fitzpatrick) of having gone through the country, after the Transvaal Ordinance was passed, making speeches attacking the Government for showing no sign of giving effect to their part of the agreement, namely, that they would use their influence in the other colonies to see that the compromise was accepted. He pleaded guilty to that charge. He had said that if the Government did not show some signs of giving effect to their compromise, of using their influence with the Provincial Councils to have that carried into effect, they would be guilty of a breach of trust. He maintained that he had been justified in saying that. (Opposition cheers.) After the House rose last session not a single member of the Government stood up and advocated that the compromise embodied in the Majority Report should be carried into effect. On the contrary, they sent round a member of that House with a certain document, who spoke in a spirit of hostility to the Majority Report. They sent the hon. member for Uitenhage round the Cape Province with a letter signed by the Prime Minister to represent their views.

That is absolutely untrue. My right hon. friend did not ask me to represent his views. The document has been published. I read the document several times and it had no reference to the education question. If my hon. friend will allow me I will get the document and read it when he has concluded.

Am I to understand that he represented the views of the Government on other matters? Whether he represented their views on other matters, this is what he said: “The majority report is dead—”

“Majority report is dead—”

“—and I’m glad it’s dead.” And now the Minister of Education accuses us of not carrying out our part of the compromise. An hon. member of the Government who represented a constituency in the Free State had said that the Free State Act had been passed with the consent of the people of the Free State, and though it might be altered in details it would not be altered in principles. That was the only utterance upon which they on that side of the House had to go upon at that time. He thought he was justified in saying that if the Government did not use its influence it would amount to a breach of faith so far as the country was concerned. Even when the Prime Minister came from England and addressed his constituents at Losberg he did not make a speech recommending the majority report. Later on, however, a more definite attitude was adopted. Continuing, he proceeded to refer to the Transvaal Ordinance, which contained certain parts of the minority report, and added that he had been accused of urging the acceptance of that Ordinance. Well, he would like to explain his attitude upon that question. He had said, when he saw the draft Ordinance, “This is not the majority report, and the majority report ought to be adopted as it stands.” At the same time he came to the conclusion that the Ordinance, as it stood for the Transvaal, could not do any particular harm. He held those views then; he held those views now. That was a very different attitude to the attitude (adopted by the Hon. the Minister, who said that as they did not object to the amendment in the Transvaal Ordinance the Government had the right to introduce the amendment into the other Provinces. It was hard for him to believe, knowing the relationship that existed between the Government and the Administrators of the Provinces, that if the Government had held out firmly for the Majority Report, and had adopted it, this amendment would have been introduced into the Transvaal Ordinance.

Impossible.

said that subsequently in the Free State, the Cape, and Natal the same amendment was introduced.

Not the Cape.

Nothing has yet come from the Cape Provincial Council. I understand that a proposal much on the same lines is to be laid before the Executive of that Council, or has been laid before the Executive, if we are to believe what the Administrator has stated in public.

It has been published, and it does not contain that amendment.

My case is good enough without including the Cape. I say that if the Government had kept firmly to their part of the arrangement, and used their influence in favour of the Majority Report, this amendment would not have appeared. The undertaking they gave on that side of the House, and the undertaking which the Government gave the House was that they would use their best endeavours to secure the adoption of the Majority Report. He said that they on that side of the House had carried out that undertaking to the letter. Whether the Government had carried out its part of the compromise, he would leave the House to judge. The Minister had said that the Government had carried out its pledge in the Free State. So it would seem—on paper. But he would like to put this point before the House. In the Free State there was an Act passed in 1910 containing certain provisions to the effect that the holders of certain important posts, the principals of certain schools, the headmistresses of certain girls’ schools, and so on, should be competent to teach in both languages. That did not deal with the qualifications of teachers, but it laid down definitely that no teacher would be appointed to any of these important positions unless able to teach in both languages. One would have expected that when the amending Ordinance came into being, these provisions would have been repealed. What would be the use of saying that a teacher could pass his examination in either language when there was a law in existence which laid it down definitely that he or she could not be appointed to certain important posts if incompetent to teach in both languages? These sections had not been repealed. He said that the adoption of such a course had been deliberate, for the reason that the matter had been brought to the notice of those responsible. Then the Minister of Education taunted hon. members on his (the speaker’s) side of the House with failing to carry out their part of the arrangement. He had never heard of a more ill-judged or more unjustifiable statement. The last straw was when the Minister said that those poor independent schools of the Free State were satisfied, and so it must be all right. Poverty had to submit to many hard things. It had also been said that the Council of these schools had accepted the Ordinance. They did not say they would not accept it, but they did not say that they were satisfied, and they ought not to be quoted as saying that they were satisfied.

Read on.

He would read on, but the Minister knew it as well as he did. They said that their main object had been attained. (Ministerial “Hear, hears.”) But to say that they were satisfied that that was a fulfilment of the promise given to the House last year he left to the House to judge. (Hear, hear.) He said that he regretted Natal throwing out the ordinance, and he (Mr. Duncan) also regretted it, because he believed that the Majority Report did offer a way, which, if it could have been accepted by the Provinces of South Africa, would have led to a settlement of the problem. It had not, as yet, been accepted by any of the Provinces, but he was not without hopes that, after all, the good sense of the people would do what the Minister said would be done. He hoped that even now, taking things as they were, they would be spared the pain and the national disgrace, he might almost say, of having that controversy raked up again; but if that were done, it would not be aided by what the Minister had said. In view of what the Minister had said, he felt it necessary to digress so far.

Continuing, he said that he would like to say what somebody ought to say; they ought to recognise, and express their recognition, of the very large amount of solid, unostentatious work which had been done by the Treasury of the Union in bringing the Union accounts and finances in the position in which they were to-day. He was not thinking of what the hon. member for Jeppe (Mr. Creswell) had called “financial policy,” but of the actual spade work of accounts, balances and statements, all of which to-day, as far as his knowledge went, were perfectly clear and orderly. (Cheers.) Very few hon. members, perhaps, understood the amount of labour and time to which that result was due. It was a form of labour and ability which did not emerge into the public eye very much. They did not see the newspapers talking about it very much, probably because they did not understand it. (Laughter.) But the fact that they heard so little about it was a testimony of the ability and the zeal with which the work had been carried out. (Hear, hear.) Proceeding, he said that he was sorry that the Minister had introduced another Budget of expediency. He had come to them and told them that he was going to budget for a deficit, but that statement had not been accompanied by the natural consequences of that—taxation. He had said that he had saved the country that because of the surplus of the previous year. Now, he (Mr. Duncan) thought that, strictly and technically, there had not been any such surplus at all. (Hear, hear.) That had been absorbed in the previous year’s Budget, and the Minister had told them in so many words that it was no surplus at all. He quoted the Minister as saying that it was idle to regard it as a surplus, when the country was crying out for public works. The Minister had swept it into his revenue. Of course, he had seen as time went on that he was going to get enough money from the revenue of the year to make him independent of that surplus; so he said he would take it out and go on with the money which the revenue of the year was bringing in. So it followed that that surplus was like the widow’s cruse.

The money is there.

Oh, the money was there; but why did the Minister do these little operations? Because if he had not done so it would have had to be put into the Sinking Fund; and the money would not have been there. Why was it undesirable? Not because anybody liked taxation; nobody liked to be taxed.

You want me to tax, and you want to make me unpopular? (Laughter.)

No; but; because taxation will bring home to the people, as nothing else will, the expenditure they have to bear. (Hear, hear.) Continuing, he said that neither the Public Accounts Committee nor that House would reduce the Estimates, but only the Government could. The only thing they (the House) could do was to stir up public opinion so as to get the Estimates reduced He thought that there were two distinct questions to be considered, the first whether these Estimates were too large, and the second, even if they were not too large, whether they were getting their value.

He listened with great interest some time ago to a very eloquent speech made by the hon. member for Uitenhage (Mr. H. E. S. Fremantle) about the state of elementary education in this country. His statements were not in the least overdrawn. They were sending out people—men and women and boys and girls—to teach the children of this country (absolutely unequipped and unqualified. They were spending vast sums on education in this country, more, perhaps, than in any other civilised country, and what were they getting? They were sending out, as the hon. member truly said, these uneducated boys and girls, or men and women, to teach the children of this country, when, as a matter of fact, a large number of these children, would be just as well at home. They were, spending hundreds of thousands in building schools in which to teach these children, and the teachers were not fit to teach them. (Hear, hear.) Might he suggest, in the direction of getting a sound system of education, first to insist upon a proper standard of qualifications for teachers. It would be far better if these schools had not been built, and if the money spent on them had been spent on setting” up a proper standard of qualifications for teachers. (Cheers.) He ventured to think they would have been better off if they had spent the money on more adequate training and seeing that persons were not sent out to teach unless they possessed proper qualifications. They should not neglect—as well as securing that he or she was born in the right place—to let them see that he or she possessed all those qualifications which were required to be able to teach properly. Then they came to higher education and what did they find there? They found a very large amount of money asked for—£111,000. He ventured to think that nobody who went through that vote would but regard it with a kind of despair as an instance of the expenditure of money without thought, without organisation, and without co-ordination of any kind. They were building institutions in all the Provincial capitals whether they were wanted or not. Anyhow, first of all they built them, then when they had put up the building they were going to expend further large sums of money in what practically amounted to paying pupils to go there. They were raising these institutions not upon the needs of the country, but on local jealousies and local ambitions. In one of those institutions they were paying a professor £650 a year to teach pedagogy, and he taught that interesting science or whatever it was to two pupils—(laughter)—and they were spending that while the elementary teachers were going out absolutely unequipped and starved. (Cheers.)

They were building a beautiful roof and putting on cupolas and ornaments without looking at what was under it. It was another instance of what he had before said, that they regarded education as a matter of buildings and not from the point of view of the students who were going to go there to learn. (Cheers.) With regard to the question also of whether they were getting value for their money, it seemed to him, notwithstanding the vast amount spent on agriculture in this country and the prevention of disease, it was very melancholy to hear that 140,000 cattle died of East Coast fever in the Eastern parts of the Cape. They were bound to ask: “-Are we going to benefit by this vast expenditure on agriculture?” They were not opposed to it so long as they were getting full benefit from it. It was never waste of money to pay a good salary to a head of department if he were a good man. What did concern them was to see that they were really getting value for their money from the heads of the departments. He wanted now to come to one or two matters in connection with the railways. First of all, with regard to the adjustment of the railway rates, he hoped before the Minister decided to give effect to his generosity in giving away a large sum of money in reduced rates, they would have some indication of how these reductions, were to be arrived at. Other hon. members on that side of the House had spoken about the coal rates. He did think the profits that the Railway Department were making out of the carriage of coal was one of the most iniquitous things. They were simply strangling industry. (Opposition cheers.) He knew, of course, what might be said, that if they reduced the coal rates they were going to increase the profits of the mines and other industries. Well, after all they were taxing those people on their profits. The hon. member for Weenen (Mr. H. M. Meyler) quoted some figures that afternoon. He only wanted to emphasise one of those figures, and that was the profit of the line from Witbank to Germiston on the carriage of coal. It was built for the carriage of coal. What was the result? A return per mile of £13,654 and an expenditure per mile of £2.694—a difference of £10,970 per mile. Let them compare this with the whole of the railway system, the average earnings per open mile of which were £1,734 and the average expenditure £949—a difference of less than £800 per mile. Just to show that the Witbank-Germiston line was economically worked, he would mention that the expenditure per train mile was only 4s. 1d., although the loads hauled over that section were heavier than those hauled over any other section in South Africa. The average expenditure per train mile for the whole of the system was 5s. 7d. On the Witbank line the railway authorities were simply bleeding the industries of the Transvaal to their utmost extent. (Opposition cheers.)

Another point that he wished to bring to Government’s notice was that they ought to have a proper statement of capital account. Certain experts in the railway service stated that the capital account of the railways was inflated to the extent of about six millions. The rates of depreciation on rolling stock, etc., adopted by the Railway Board after consultation with the experts were not observed because the Minister of Finance wanted more revenue than he would get if these rates were observed. That did not appear to him to be running the railways on business lines.

The rates of depreciation were not given effect to by the C.S.A.R. either.

If the C.S.A.R. authorities had been responsible to this House, I should have said the same thing to them. But they are dead and gone.

You didn’t do it yourself.

I am sorry you were not there to tell me that. (Laughter.) But in those days we were not working under the Act of Union. (Hear, hear.)

You laid down a scale of depreciation.

Yes, and that has been followed by our successors. But we were not bound by that scale of depreciation, as this Administration is, or ought to be.

The Act of Union says nothing about depreciation.

It does.

Not the scale of depreciation.

No, but what it does say is that the railways are not to earn more than is necessary to pay working expenses after allowing for depreciation. If you are going to cut down the rate of depreciation, then you are not complying with the Act of Union. (Hear, hear.)

Continuing. Mr. Duncan said they had from the Minister of Railways a curious interlude on the subject of the railway workshops. He (Mr. Duncan) was not going into the matter now, because it had been abundantly discussed. But it seemed absolutely inexplicable that a responsible Minister should come down and throw out a challenge to the men and those who represented labour in that House on the subject of piecework, and should fortify that challenge by allusions to a report which had been drawn up by men who had expressed differences of opinion on the subject. Knowing how open to dispute the facts were, it was surprising that the Minister should have thrown out the challenge in the careless manner he did. He (Mr. Duncan) was not going to pronounce an opinion either one way or another on the subject of piecework, but he did think that if piecework were going to be adopted successfully, the Administration must follow the lines that were followed by the big industries in England and elsewhere—that was, that the rates must be fixed after consultation with the men in their Union. (Opposition and Labour cheers.) It was no use following the principle that you could deal with the men individually in this matter. The men had just as much right to form an association as the employers had—(Opposition and Labour cheers)—and the proper thing to do was to deal with them openly and frankly. Then the Minister had told the House that the grievances of the railway men did not amount to very much. After what he (Mr. Duncan) might call a long wrangle in that House last session, a Commission was appointed to inquire into the grievances. That Commission had now been sitting for more than a year, and if the grievances had been as unreal as the Minister would have liked the House to suppose, the Commission would have finished its work some time ago. Why had the House not had a report from the Commission? (Hear, hear.) Why was that report not presented? Simply because the Commission was going to make a second report, and if they laid their report on the table now there would be the extra expense of binding and printing the two. There was a committee sitting upstairs, which, he hoped, would put their railway service on a satisfactory basis. Why was not that report of the Grievances Commission before them? This discussion had wandered over a wide range, and that was only right, because it was only in the House that members could bring their views before the Government. It was in the interests of the constituencies that these views should be made known.

said he rose to make a personal explanation. He understood the hon. member who had just spoken to say that he (Mr. Fremantle) had repeatedly spoken against the majority report. He admitted that he had repeatedly expressed satisfaction with the Transvaal Provincial Council in passing that Ordinance. At Kimberley he had said that the majority report was dead. In saying that he spoke as the representative of the Prime Minister, the hon. member was under a misapprehension. He regretted that he had not the Prime Minister’s letter with him, which, however, he sent to the papers, and in which he was designated as representing the views of the Cabinet in connection with the coming Conference at Bloemfontein.

Why did you challenge me to come on to your platform when you discussed education?

said that he wished to take the opportunity of the presence of the Hon. the Minister of Railways and Harbours in the House to lay before him some matters affecting Natal. Perhaps he thought that Natal was always complaining about something or other, but that was not to be wondered at. Natal had to complain to make her grievances known. She was not represented by powerful Ministers in the Cabinet, the same as the other Provinces. (Cries of “Oh.”) Well, the Cape was represented by four, the Transvaal by three, the Orange Free State by two, while Natal had but one. One grievance that he wanted to bring forward was that there was a belief, he did not know how well-founded, that the railway administration was biassed against Natal. He did not say that the Minister shared that prejudice, but his manner of referring to Natal, and the evident gusto with which he read from his statement regarding the railway workshops, that Natal workmen only averaged 38 per cent. of efficiency, showed that the Minister was not sympathetic to that Province. It was very necessary for those of the Natal members who were (free to express their opinion, to take the opportunity of bringing their various matters before the House. He would not go into the various points raised in the Minister’s statement; there was but a small number of railway men in his constituency, but he must say this: that a more ill-judged, ill advised statement could not have been made by a responsible Minister. He thought that the Minister, having thought over the matter, should take the first opportunity he had of making an amende to a lot of respectable, hard-working men and thus follow the example which had been set on that side of the House. If his statement meant anything at all, it was that the railwaymen in Durban were lazy, inefficient, and neglected their work for the sake of prosecuting their political rights. Proceeding, Mr. Henderson dealt with the question of Port Natal’s share of the trade to the competitive area, pointed out that, despite representations which had been made over and over again, she was not getting her promised 30 per cent. of that trade, and expressed a hope that the Minister would go still further into the matter and see that Natal got the share of the trade to the competitive area which was promised to her upon entering the Union.

He complained that Port Natal was unfairly handicapped in regard to the rates on fertilisers to the interior of the Transvaal and O.F.S. He welcomed low rates so as to encourage farmers in the use of fertilisers, but the rate of 17s. 6d. per ton to any part of the Union which had been introduced worked out unfairly to Durban in this sense, that Durban had to pay 4s. 6d per ton more in sea freight than Cape Town had to pay. Consequently, Cape Town had an advantage of 4s. 6d. per ton as against Durban. That was a matter which, he thought, should be adjusted. Then as to the rates on mealies for export, the Government had fixed a special rate of 10s. per ton from any part of the Union to the coast. This, he contended, was not a sound business proposition, because one rate was fixed, irrespective of the distance from the ports. Some limit as to distance should be imposed, otherwise they would be carrying mealies at the same rate for a thousand miles as they would for five hundred miles, at no corresponding advantage to the exporter. Then the Natal people had another grievance against the Railway Department in regard to the rates on soap. The Johannesburg manufacturer could get his materials carried on the railway from the coast to Johannesburg, 486 miles, for 35d. per 100 lb., and from Johannesburg to Kroonstad, 134 miles, for 5d. That was a total distance of 620 miles for 40d. But the coast manufacturer in Natal had to pay, for the carriage of 100 lb. to Kroonstad, 404 miles, 59d., a difference which amounted to a protection of 19½d. per 100 lb. in favour of the inland manufacturer. There was another matter to which he wished to draw attention, viz., the difference in the railway rates charged by the Administration against Natal. He would only pick out one or two cases. In regard to Class I. traffic, he would show how Natal was handicapped against the other ports. He would take Klerksdorp. Port Natal was 77 miles nearer Klerksdorp than Algoa Bay, and the rate was higher from Port Natal by 17d. per 100 lb. Germiston was 229 miles nearer to Durban than to Algoa Bay, and the difference was only 5d. less to Natal. He mentioned other cases, showing that in spite of the difference in the distance of certain inland towns from the ports, all in favour of Durban, this was not reflected in the rates. He admitted that these towns were partly in the competitive area.

Mostly.

said Delagoa Bay got the advantage of its geographical position while Durban did not, and that the Government could not have it both ways. They were going to devote £750,000 to the reduction of railway rates, and he was anxious that they should not forget Natal in making those reductions. Now, he would turn to the loss on the harbours. The Minister said that they were not paying. Yet they were diverting traffic to Delagoa Bay from the Union ports. If they would only insist on the Union ports getting their percentage of the traffic as stipulated in the agreement these ports would not have reason to complain. It was hardly fair that the inland people should not bear a share of this loss.

They should pay.

said that he had understood the Minister to say that they should not. He was glad to hear the Minister admit that they should. The Minister had suggested that one way of meeting the deficit was to put dues on certain imported articles. Incidentally, he might mention that he did not believe that the harbours did not pay. It was more a matter of bookkeeping. The harbours performed certain services for the railways, for which they were not paid, and this was responsible for the apparent loss. But, apart from that, he did not see how the Minister’s proposal would work. Could he impose those dues on articles imported through Delagoa Bay?

I wish we could.

said it would be a false move on the part of the Government to impose those dues, for it would only have the effect of diverting more traffic to Delagoa Bay, and to counteract this tendency they would have to reduce the railway rates still further. There was no advantage to be derived from these dues. Another grievance that they had was that the Railway Administration charged them one per cent. for wharfage duty in connection with goods imported at Durban, whereas at other ports the charge was only five-eighths per cent. They trusted that the time was not far distant when the Government would remedy this. In regard to the remarks made by the Minister as to the committee appointed to inquire into the working of the different ports, he agreed that the appointment of the committee was a very proper step. But the Minister might have appointed a proper and impartial committee. Instead of that, the members were all officials connected with his own department, except one, who was made the chairman; Mr. Wiener was an authority on commercial matters, and a man for whom he had the highest respect. But he was a man strongly devoted to the interests of Cape Town, and he had for a long time tried to increase its shipping business. It was very noticeable that when the Commission arrived in Natal they had already made up their minds as to the nature of their report—judging by the tenour of their questions. They found everyone satisfied with the working of the port, and that no change was wanted. The Commission reported, and the Minister took credit for having sent a copy of the report to the Chamber of Commerce and to the Port Advisory Committees to study. He thought that was an excellent thing to do, and the Minister might well follow the practice in the case of other reports. The committee’s report was severely criticised in many parts of the country, especially in Natal. It was so severely criticised that a supplementary report was issued, correcting some of the statements and withdrawing some of the suggestions made in the original report. Their first report was most unreliable and misleading. It made things appear as if the Cape Town system had the advantage. When analysed that was found to be utterly misleading. Therefore he trusted that the Minister did not intend acting on the suggestions made in connection with that report, because it would have a bad effect on the country generally. He was glad to notice that in his speech the other day the Minister acknowledged that among the ports of the Union Durban was the best managed. He trusted that the system that prevailed there would be continued. He would next turn to the Treasurer’s statement.

Continuing, the hon. member said he would like to allude to one point that had not been touched upon during the course of the debate. His hon. friend the Treasurer had said that he had budgeted for a decrease of £95,000 in connection with Customs revenue. Were they to expect from that reduction that the Government had no intention of bringing into force a Customs tariff until next session? If the Government intended to bring in such a measure during the present session there would be an increase in that branch of revenue. Continuing, he said he presumed that the hon. member for Caledon represented the views of most hon. members on the other side of the House when he alluded to the question of Free-trade and Protection. If so, then they would know what to expect with regard to wheat. The effect of the hon. member’s remarks was that he would be opposed to any taxation unless a measure—a liberal measure—of protection was previously granted; in other words, he objected to the Government taking 1s. out of his pocket in taxation unless they gave him 2s. or 2s. 6d. worth of protection. Continuing, he Said that Cape members had objected to the contribution of £80,000 to Natal. On the other hand, he would point out that the Cape had received a much larger sum, even to the extent of ten times £80,000, without taking into account the £9,000 in Ministerial salaries over and above the amount paid Natal representatives. (Laughter.) The Cape had received more than a million in one way or another, and it took a long time to wipe out such a big sum even at the rate of £80,000 a year. Dealing with the figures which had been put before the House by the Treasurer, the speaker said that his hon. friend had budgeted for an increased expenditure and a decreased revenue. The Treasurer had been twitted about underestimating expenditure, but he pointed out that this was a good principle, for if expenditure was over-estimated it encouraged extravagance. The point was that the ordinary expenditure of the country was increasing, and when they considered the size of the white population £17,000,000 per annum of ordinary expenditure was a very serious item indeed. It had been said that the fact that they had two capitals was responsible for this increase in expenditure; but he would draw attention to the fact that the expenditure was higher than before Union, when they had four separate capitals and four Administrations. Since Union salaries and wages had increased by over £800,000 a year. He would like to ask the Minister to explain the salaries on the schedule attached to the report of the Public Accounts Committee. Did those salaries include allowances, and would pension rights be based upon those salaries?

The Prime Minister, in the course of his long speech, had said that everything was going on all right in the Union; but the Union was now two years old, and the time for soothing syrup was past. (Hear, hear.) The members of the Public Accounts Committee were in a better position to deal with the expenditure and the economies which might be effected than the ordinary members, but what did that committee do in its report? The hon. member for Fordsburg (Mr. Duncan) had said that the Select Committee could not reduce expenditure any more than the House could, but surely they could have made recommendations as to the lines on which the expenditure should be reduced. (Hear, hear.) They had recommended reductions of £500 and £900, or a total of £1,400, out of an expenditure of 17 millions! Who was to help the country to economise? Hon. members on the other side of the House could help, and if they insisted on more economies, the thing could be done, and that high, and as he thought extravagant, expenditure stopped. There must be additional taxation in future when the Minister of Finance could no longer avail himself of the railway surpluses. He warned hon. members opposite that if they allowed that heavy and extravagant expenditure to go on, they would have to pay their share as well as others, and they could not always get off. As to the question of primary education, he was not going to go into that, and he thought that the House had made a big mistake the previous year in raising the question at all, and that under the Constitution it should not be raised in that House. He thought that the Minister had made a mistake in raising that question again that evening, but as he had mentioned Natal, he would like to say that Natal had a perfect right to deal with that Ordinance as it thought proper. (Hear, hear.) (An HON. MEMBER: Under influence.) There had been no influence at all. Natal refused to be dictated to, either by the hon. member for Fordsburg (Mr. Duncan) or the Prime Minister; but it had stuck to the terms of the Union, and he thought it had done wisely.

said that he had not intended to say anything on that subject, if it had not been for the obliqueness of the vision of the present Minister of Mines, either caused by perverseness or natural causes—(laughter)—it did not matter which. It was a most unfortunate thing. He could not remember that in the whole of his Parliamentary career, he (Sir Henry) had ever got up to address them on the two languages; he had tried to avoid it as much as he possibly could, and he had felt the previous year that they were approaching a very critical time in the history of their country. That was all very well if it was under the Constitution, it was above the Constitution, and that was the welfare of the country. Both sides of the House had felt—they all knew perfectly well, without the Prime Minister telling them in that speech, that he could not put his finger in the pie. They had all known that they could not force the Provincial Councils to do anything, but they all felt, and he for one did, that they were approaching a very critical time in the history of their country, and, therefore, he welcomed, although he did not think very much of it, the compromise, which he understood would be accepted by both the races of the country, because he had hoped that by that they would put an end to any further discussion with regard to the language question, specially as to the medium of their education in their schools. He did not agree with the hon. member who had last spoken (Mr. Henderson) that it was a matter of so little importance that that House could not take upon itself to deal with the subject. (Hear, hear.) He thought it was of greater importance, and of much greater importance than mining, stock thefts, or anything of the kind; and, in his humble opinion, they had been approaching a crisis.

Now they all felt, and everybody knew, that no one could force the Provincial Councils to adopt any particular compromise which that House might lay down. It was not provided for by the Constitution, and could not be done. But there was one thing they did rely upon, and that was: that the right hon. gentleman at the head of the Government would use the mighty influence which he had in this country amongst the Dutch-speaking people to get them to accept that compromise.

So they did.

He says they did. Just wait. Don’t be in a hurry. I say that is what every person relied on. The Minister of Mines thinks it is a matter for laughter. I can assure him that when I saw some of the organs of the Press during the last few weeks saying what he dared to repeat tonight, that that compromise was broken by the party to which I have the honour to belong, I can assure him I could hardly keep quiet, and if it was not for his repetition to-night, even now I would not have got up; but I could not sit here and listen to one of the most serious charges upon one of the most important matters ever brought before this country, namely, the settlement of the language question, and hear a Minister get up and say we have broken another compromise. I hurl it back at him. They are the people who broke that compromise.

I never said anything of the kind.

I am getting older, and do not hear quite as well as I did some years ago, but I still understand the meaning of the word language. Continuing, he said they had a right to expect that the right hon. gentleman the Premier, with the mighty influence he had over the Dutch-speaking people, would have used it to carry out the compromise. How was that done? How did he carry out the compromise he made? He (Sir Henry) made every allowance for the fact that after the rising of Parliament a number of Ministers, among them the right hon. gentleman, had to go to England, and he did not know whether, on his side, they could apportion the blame. They could only put it upon the head of the Government, whether he was personally responsible or not. He (Sir Henry) attributed it to him as the head. They had laid upon the table of the House the correspondence which took place between the Government and the various Provincial Councils with regard to the compromise which was come to last year. He found that on May 5 the Acting Undersecretary for Education addressed a letter to the Provincial Secretary with regard to the report of the Select Committee on Public Education, forwarding the terms of the compromise made between the two parties, and on April 24 the Clerk of that House sent a letter to the secretary to the Prime Minister asking that he would be good enough to direct the attention of the Right Hon. the Prime Minister to the resolution the House of Assembly adopted on the consideration of the report on the Select Committee on Education, and stated the resolution. That was on the 24th of April. It was not until the 11th of October of that same year that the circular letter was sent by the Premier to the various Administrations.

But what had happened in the meantime? A certain gentleman, an hon. member of that House, was going about the country, and, unless there was a unanimous conspiracy on the part of the Press of this country to state what was not so, it was represented by that hon. gentleman that he was the representative of the Prime Minister. He had heard it said that evening that the gentleman said he was the representative with regard to certain matters. (Laughter.) Now, in ordinary everyday life, when a man came to them and said that he was the representative of A to deal with them, and he might be, for all they knew, the representative to deal with, say, sheep; but if he came and dealt with horses, an ordinary, everyday man would believe that he was the representative to deal with horses.

I said I was not.

You said you were the representative.

I rise to a point of order. I wish to know whether the hon. member is in order in refusing my statement.

The hon. member must not refuse the statement.

All right, sir. If he says he did not, I will repeat the words he did. Proceeding, he said that he had a copy of the speech the hon. member made at East London. He would not forget his chairman, nor would he forget what he said and wrote, when the hon. member denied the truth of the report, and the chairman wrote and said that it was a correct report. His chairman—it was Mr. Searle—in introducing Mr. Fremantle, announced that Mr. Fremantle was present that evening as the authorised representative of General Louis Botha. (Of course that might have been about East Coast fever.—Laughter.) He was chairman of the Parliamentary Education Committee, and would refer to the burning question of language. Now, proceeded the hon. member, he was introduced as the authorised representative of General Louis Botha, and they were told that although he was the authorised representative, the programme, he understood, did not include education. There were four and a half columns of a speech delivered by the hon. gentleman (Mr. Fremantle), and there was not one word in it that did not refer to the education compromise. When a man came down into a public meeting and said he was the authorised representative of the Minister and began to talk about nothing else but the one question, what was the ordinary man to think? This was not the only speech the hon. member made. At Queenstown it was the same. Whatever the credentials may have been, the speeches were all on the Education Conference.

It was never contradicted by any member of the Ministry, although he did not blame the right hon. gentleman at the head of affairs, but some of his colleagues. If a man got up and said he was the representative of the Premier, was there as his authorised representative, and talked about nothing but education, the public must necessarily come to the conclusion that he was the authorised representative to talk on that subject. No other deduction could be drawn from it. The Premier was here on October 10, because it was on October 11 that his circular was issued. If the whole country were labouring under a misapprehension, owing to the language of the hon. member for Uitenhage (Mr. Fremantle) who talked about a programme, it was the duty of the Premier and his colleagues to disabuse the public mind. (Hear, hear.) There was no getting away from the fact that intelligent men, accustomed to politics and to dealing with the affairs of the country, were under the belief that the hon. gentleman (Mr. Fremantle) was going about as the representative of the Ministry, and it had this effect—be (Sir Henry) knew it from his own personal experience, to his sorrow—because it made people begin to go away from that compromise which the two parties had made for a settlement, as they hoped for ever. (Opposition cheers.) When the right hon. gentleman issued this circular, the Transvaal Provincial Council had already dealt with the matter. He was more than surprised that the Minister of Education should have said—as he (Sir Henry) understood him—that the Majority Report had been accepted, with a few verbal alterations. Out of the mouth of his leader did the hon. member stand convicted. It was not a little verbal alteration.

You are quite wrong again.

I can only repeat what the hon. member said.

If the hon. member will allow me, I said that the Ordinance published in the Free State was that passed by the Transvaal Provincial Council, with a few verbal amendments.

But the hon. gentleman also gave the House to understand that the Transvaal Ordinance was practically the Majority Report.

I said nothing of the kind.

Does he, or does he not, say that the Transvaal Ordinance is the adoption of the Majority Report?

With amendments.

Before he can accuse the Natal Provincial Council of not agreeing with the Majority Report he will have to show that the adoption by the Transvaal and Free State is a matter of no importance. I have heard it said over and over again, and it has been cast in the teeth of our party, that we have not adhered to the compromise, because the alteration is a matter of no importance whatever, and that it is a mere quibbling in order not to abide honourably with the compromise we made last year.

These words are absolutely unfounded, and I refute them by the words of the right hon. gentleman himself, in his circular of October 11, 1911, in which he says: “In the meantime the Provincial Council of the Transvaal has, on the recommendation of the Executive Committee, and with practically the unanimous support of all sections in that Council, passed an Ordinance adopting the recommendations of the Select Committee, with one important alteration taken from the Minority Report of General Beyers.” When the Prime Minister upon such an important question issues a circular in which he deals with this alteration as an important one, it is idle for his colleague, or for the Press which is under his control, to attempt to make it out to be a matter of no importance. It is a matter of the greatest importance, and the right hon. gentleman was perfectly right—it is an important alteration, and we know how it works in practice. If there has been an important alteration in that compromise, how dare any Minister throw it in our teeth that we have not abided by it? (Opposition cheers.) By what words, or by what speech, can any Minister or any member on that side of the House point to show that any member on this side said anything about not abiding by that agreement before the alteration was made? (Hear, hear.) I challenge contradiction on these two statements—that before the alteration was made in the compromise not one word was said by a member of this side advocating any alteration in it.

Not by me. (Opposition laughter.)

I do not know upon whose credentials the hon. member is now speaking. (Opposition laughter.) I only know that the Press in every part of the country where the hon. gentleman made his appearance had contained nothing else but this: “The majority report is dead.” I think the Ministry is responsible for allowing him to go about and letting the public believe that his credentials did include that subject. The point is this—that the Minister of Education has thrown it out as an accusation against this side of the House that we have broken the compromise.

Nonsense.

I appeal to everybody if that is not what he said to-night. That is the impression he conveyed; if I misunderstood him I am only too thankful. I understand him now to say that we have not broken the compromise, and I hope he will use his influence to put a stop to these mischievous articles in the Press over which he has control, and that it shall not repeat that slander that it was this side which broke the compromise (Loud Opposition cheers.)

said he sincerely regretted the statement made by his hon. friend the Minister of Education He recollected that at the first meeting of the Union Parliament the Prime Minister congratulated the country that this important question of education had been settled amicably, and having settled it, they could go forward in peace and amity. He would say that there were many on that side of the House as well as on the other side of the House, who did not agree with the majority report, but they had been loyal to the agreement arrived at. In all their constituencies they had advised that although they did not agree with the majority report, they should accept it. He regretted that the matter had been introduced into the House. Only twenty-four hours ago me Unionist party decided that they should not introduce the subject again. He wanted to have a few words to say regarding the Financial Relations Commission. Personally, he was disappointed with the report. He had thought that, judging from the composition of that Commission, the report would have been different. If the Provincial Councils were not to be responsible for taxation, then they were in a worse position than the Divisional Councils. If this report were carried out at all, then no self-respecting man would sit upon these Councils. He was not going to argue that if a vote were taken, the majority in the Cape would vote for their abolition. He was not prepared to say that, because he believed that the majority would vote to give them a trial. He believed that it was necessary to relieve Parliament of some small matters of detail, and such a body as the Provincial Council was suited to deal with these. Personally, he had objected to the establishment of Provincial Councils, believing that County Councils and Divisional Councils would have been better, but it was their duty to give their Provincial Councils a fair chance. In dealing with the Act of Union and the question of the Provinces, he was under the impression that the first thing that would be established would be equality of laws, taxation and rights.

He did not grudge the Provinces one single atom of what was granted to them; he would like to see the Provinces granted as much as possible, provided that it was equally distributed for the benefit of the country. He found, on the Provincial Estimates for this year, including the re-votes of last year, that the Transvaal was getting £1,801,946, the Free State was getting £632,000, Natal £610,000, and the Cape £1,049,000. He had worked this out on the basis of population, taking the natives as 34 to one white, and coloured as two to one, with the following result: Transvaal, £2 6s. per head; Free State, £2 5s. 6d.; Natal, £1 7 s. 7d.; and the Cape, 17s. That was the difference in allocation upon the Provincial Council Estimates. He would now take the figures as they appeared in the Budget of the Minister of Finance for the next financial year, upon the basis of the taxation that the Provinces would have to bear in future. The Free State would get 19s. per head, the Transvaal 15s., Natal 13s. 1d., and the Cape 11s. 2d. That was upon the new basis of allotment which the Minister proposed to make, according to the recommendations of the Financial Relations Commission. He would like to know upon what authority the Government had even entered into negotiations with the Provinces upon this point. The Act of Union distinctly said that until the inquiry by the Commission had been completed and Parliament should have made other provision, the Executive Committees of the several Provinces should annually submit Estimates of their expenditure. The Ministry, he contended, had already compromised the House, and had gone behind the Act of Union in dealing with the Provinces before coming to that House on the matter. The Minister, again, in dealing with the figures, had somewhat under-estimated the deficiency that the Cape would have, and he hoped that the House would not accept the figures which had been put before them by the Government as final. Then let them take the question of the Provincial Estimates for school buildings. He found on the Provincial Estimates that the Transvaal were getting a free grant of £512,745 for school buildings, and, in addition to that, they were getting on the Loan Bill £100,000; the Free State got a free grant of £150,000 and £12,000 on the Loan Bill; and Natal got a free grant of £92,230; while the Cape got no free grant at all, and simply had £150,000 on the Loan Bill. Now, he did not grudge the other Provinces any grant made to them for the furtherance of education, but what he complained of was that the Cape Province, which required money for education just as much as the Free State and the Transvaal did, should be penalised to that extent.

He drew attention to the condition of schools even in the Cape Peninsula as revealed by inspectors’ reports. In one school there were 150 children in an iron building, and the classes were divided by curtains. On many occasions the school children had been dismissed through heat in summer and cold in winter. Two schools were overcrowded and condemned by the municipal authorities as insanitary. Yet they had to keep them on. Another school was conducted in what was practically the vault of a church, another in a hall attached to a hotel, and others in a private house and in an old shop. In reply to the hon. member for Barkly, the Minister had asked what the Cape had to complain about, as they got all they wanted, £200,000. What were the facts? The Administrator asked for £600,000 and he was refused. He was told that he would get it in three yearly instalments of £200,000. The sum of £200,000 had been placed on the Estimates for 1911-12, and the Minister had said that even that sum the Cape Province had been unable to spend, but why had it not all been spent? The Minister was aware that every obstacle had been placed in the way of School Boards to utilise this sum. One of the conditions laid down was that no money should be paid to School Boards until the schools were actually finished. How was it possible for the School Boards to go on without any money, or to erect those buildings? It was as much as if the Government had said that they would not give the money. That was the reason why many of the School Committees could not take up the money. The Cape School Board had endeavoured to raise money by private loans. They went to the banks, and with the support of the Superintendent-General of Education they got loans to a certain extent, but even that course had been blocked. It was utterly futile for the Minister to say that they (the Cape) had nothing to complain of. The speaker went on to refer to the need for fostering the fishing industry. They heard much of the economical conditions of the country, but one of the most important factors in that connection was the food supply. He had studied the question, and realised the value of this industry. In the Estimates for 1911-1912 a sum was set down to form a department, but it was cut down, and only £1,000 left. That was utterly inadequate, and had spoiled the whole scheme.

Continuing, he said that the amount set down had been ruthlessly cut away, and the Administration was powerless in the matter.

What are we to do?

I will tell you. Continuing, he pointed out that the value of fish taken and sold last year in Great Britain amounted to thirty millions sterling, equal to the total annual output of gold in this country. There were 90,000 men employed, and the total tonnage was about a million. They in South Africa had a fish supply that was unequalled in the world, and all they wanted was a little encouragement so far as its development was concerned. First of all they wanted harbours.

Do you want boats?

I don’t want the hon. Minister to build boats. Continuing, he said that the other day the Minister had to pay £40 to a fisherman for damage done.

That was generosity.

It was an act of simple justice. He pointed out that if protection were not given to the boats used by the men they would lose their industry. During the debate the Minister of Finance had deplored the fact that such a great amount of fish was being imported into the country. Their waters were teeming with fish and all they wanted was £2,000 on the Estimates to provide inspectors for the purposes of supervision. If something were not done the industry would disappear. Hon. members on the other side only seemed to think of the farmers. He was not opposed to the farmers, but he said that all industries should be encouraged. He hoped that something would be done in the matter.

moved the adjournment of the debate until Thursday.

The motion was agreed to.