praying that Ventersburg be declared a fiscal division, and that Odendaalsrust form part of it.

for railway extension from Klipplaat via Jansenville and Pearston to Somerset East.

from H. J. O’Leary, Customs Department.

from Johanna F. Louw, teacher.

from the widow of Francis Thomas Pengelly, who lost his life with others at sea whilst in service of the Naval Reserve Volunteers during November, 1911.

from Jan Petrus le Grange Lombard, senr., who obtained a concession from the late Transvaal Government to lay and exploit a tram-line in Johannesburg, which was immediately after the war built and exploited by another party, praying for compensation.

Statement showing death duties collected in the several Provinces, 1908-’09 to 1911-12; statement of receipts in respect of the disposal of mining rights under bewaarplaatsen (Transvaal).

Statutory Proclamations and Government Notices, Department of Native Affairs, 21st February, 1912, to 19th March, 1912.

Information in respect of the traffic dealt with at Butterworth railway station and at Ndabakazi, Toleni Bridge and Eagle Sidings, year ended 31st December, 1911.

Reports by Donald Macphail, Government Actuary, in regard to the Miners’ Phthisis Bill.

said that it had been the intention to proceed with the Miners’ Phthisis Bill, but he would explain why they thought it desirable to revert to the Land Settlement Bill at that stage. On Article 16 there had been a long discussion, and, in a certain sense, an unfortunate discussion. He made a most earnest appeal to both sides of the House not to regard it as a party question. It would be a great pity if it were so treated, and he hoped they would all co-operate to make the clause acceptable to all. He asked the hon. member for Ficksburg to withdraw his first amendment, and thus allow the clause to remain as it had come from the Select Committee, with one exception, which was contained in the hon. member’s second amendment, namely, to omit the word “exclusively.” (The clause read: The Minister may, by notice in the “Gazette,” or in one or more oversea newspapers, offer holdings for allotment exclusively to applicants from oversea…) In regard to the third question raised by his hon. friend, namely, that a list of applicants should be laid on the table, an opportunity would be forthcoming to insert this point later on. He hoped the leader of the Opposition would be agreeable to this course, as it was undesirable to have unnecessary discussion on this matter.

said that the Opposition had no intention of dealing with such an important matter as that of land settlement with any party considerations of any kind in view. There was never any intention of debating the Bill from the party point of view; but they were desirous of seeing that land settlement should be of a practical character, and while they recognised fully the premier rights of the people in this country, they also recognised the right of the hundreds of thousands of broad acres of which the Minister spoke so eloquently to secure to this country some of that very important settler element that was now going to Canada, New Zealand, and Australia; and they thought no Land settlement Bill would be of a character suitable to this country which did not, while providing, as he said before, for, first, the people in this country, also provide for a suitable class of settlers being attracted to it from oversea. He understood that one of the great objections was that the word “exclusively” might be considered to mean that practically the Land Settlement Bill was entirely produced for the purpose of bringing people from oversea. That was the intention of his hon. friend who moved the deletion of “exclusively.”

But so far as the policy of his right hon. friend and the Government was concerned, they desired to abide by clause 13, and would make full provision for the people in this country. He had never hesitated to do something to ameliorate the condition of these unfortunate people, the poor whites in this country, whose salvation rested on their being replaced on the land. He hoped it was thoroughly understood that it was the formed opinion of the Government, that while providing for the people already in the country, they would also throw out to suitable settlers from abroad such facilities as it was the intention of this country to provide, and to give to South Africa her fair share of that stream of settlers who were going from the Mother Country to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. If that was the intention, then he could say, on that side of the House, they were prepared to accept the proposal of the Government.

withdrew the first part of the amendment.

Mr. Alberts’ amendment was withdrawn.

said he would like to say he had never understood the word “exclusively” to mean in any sense what he understood his hon. friend to say it was thought to mean. What he understood was that unless they put aside certain allotments or holdings, and reserved them, how were they going to give a practical offer to people at a distance, when an offer was made and an invitation issued, if they did not reserve a certain proportion for them? He would accept the amendment, as it was not the intention to collar all the areas for the people not in this country; but unless they set aside certain areas, how were they going to be sure of having the land to offer to people? He was not going to object; but he thought it would be a great pity if it was allowed to go out that they intended that that construction should be placed upon it, which his hon. friend said had been placed upon it by certain people. The objections raised were three. First of all, there was the word “exclusively.” That was a misunderstanding. Secondly, there was the unlimited power given to the Minister, namely, that the Minister could allot these areas without previously getting the sanction of Parliament for each individual allotment. If it were the intention to get the previous sanction of Parliament for each new allotment, they might just as well tear up the Bill. No such precaution was asked in regard to the people in this country. They did not want to put a hindrance in the Minister’s way, but wanted to help him. The third and most serious objection was to immigration of any kind. To his mind, that was made clear because the intention had been shown by several gentlemen to adopt the words used by several members of the Government, namely, that not until the thousands and tens of thousands of people in this country had been settled on the land would they aid or welcome a single immigrant from oversea. Continuing, he said that there was no doubt they wanted settlers of the right sort in this country. To his mind there was a body of sufficient strength behind the Government to make it impossible for the Government to carry out a policy of immigration.

No.

Yes; that is my reading of it. Continuing, he said that on Friday the Prime Minister had given one explanation of the necessity for the amendment now withdrawn, and he did not see how he was going to allow the withdrawal of this amendment. He told the House that it was necessary, and that it would be a help to him, and presumably they who resisted the amendment were looked upon as people who were defeating this Land Settlement Bill. He utterly failed to see how the amendment which the Prime Minister regarded as essential on Friday should by Monday have become superfluous and even undesirable. It was most unconvincing, and he put it down to the caucus meetings which had taken place. Now the amendment was withdrawn. He agreed with what had been said by the hon. member for Graaff-Reinet, and he thanked him for his common-sense and his kindly contribution to the debate; it was very cooling at a heated stage of the debate. He admired his courage in saying that they wanted settlers in this country, and that he for choice would prefer English, Scotch and Irish to any other nationality, because they knew them and could work with them. He (the speaker) would say for himself and his friends that if it came to choice of other races than their own they would a thousand—aye ten thousand times rather see the Dutchmen than any other race settled on the land because they knew each other and had a common end. He agreed with him when he said that this amendment was not going to make or break the Bill, and he (the speaker) said that the Bill would not make or break things either. What they wanted behind the Bill was the good will of the people to carry it out and the belief in an immigration policy. He did not think they had reached that stage, or that the Government was strong enough to carry out such a policy. He (the speaker) listened to the hon. member for Dundee. Well, he reproached an hon. friend for not supporting the Government, and the reproach was really against the hon. member who sought election in opposition to the Nationalists. He said that they on that side of the House had frightened hon. members opposite by talk of flooding the country. He denied that emphatically, and challenged Sir T. Watt to prove what he said; but what was most amusing was that the member for Dundee did not seem to see he was admitting what the Ministers had tried to hide or deny, namely, that the intention of the amendment had been to exclude these immigrants whom they feared. They had two voices on the subject, and it was to them perfectly clear that there had been a surrender for a time, or for all time, of that policy which was explained by the Prime Minister in England and the Minister of the Interior at Pretoria. They knew there had been considerable discussion outside the House on this subject, and that a number of the hon. members opposite were genuinely alarmed, or out of consideration for their constituents had put out the order to the Ministry to toe the line. That was the reason why there had been such a climb-down with regard to the declaration of policy with regard to immigration into this country. What chance had they of having this policy carried out if there was that opinion behind? So great was the hostility to the idea that they would not even trust their own Minister and Government. A few members had said they would be willing to trust the Minister not to carry out such a policy—the policy which he publicly advocated—but he might have a successor. If he had a successor and that successor carried out a policy of immigration, he would probably only be carrying out the policy of the Government of the day. At any rate they had been shown that there was strong hostility to the idea. He would like to say one or two words in favour of the policy that was provided for here. If hon. members considered these words it might cool their hostility. They need not be alarmed that there was going to be any great flood of settlers into this country. Why should they come? Why had they not come? The truth was that they went to industries where they were always able to get work. They did not come here to settle on the land. The attraction did not exist here. They were not going to get settlers here by merely opening the door. Other countries not only left the door open, but used every device possible to attract settlers to their lands. They went where the journey was not so far and the journey not nearly so expensive. They were not going to get these people by merely opening the door. They would have to do a great deal more. Unless the Government of the day and those who backed the Government took this matter in hand and worked with a will they would not get what they wanted. He did not agree that all the people in the country were fit and ought to be made landowners. They might talk of the thousands and thousands, but they knew very well that there were many who were not fitted to be landowners. The idea of placing all these people on the land with a State endowment was fatuous and unworkable.

In every other country a large proportion of the men could only work for others. (An HON. MEMBER: “Shame.”) The blame went further back: it was in their creation. (Hear, hear.) They had not the ability—

Anyone can be a landowner.

The hon. gentleman seems to think that all people are capable of being landowners—

It does not require brains to own land.

It does not require brains to own land given to you by the State, but it requires some brains to keep it and to make proper use of it: (Opposition cheers.) The idea that you can make the fool of the family a farmer is an exploded one, and I advise anyone who still has that idea to acquire a farm at his own expense and try. He will have the experience and we will have the farm. (Laughter.) Proceeding, he said that some hon. members ridiculed this Bill because it did not make provision for a large immigration of people who had no means, and said that they could never make an immigration scheme if it was confined to those with means. There was a way of doing it, to introduce poor, white, unskilled labour upon a large scale. They had the Prime Minister’s advice that white labour might be employed in the industries more generally. But if they were going to import poor white labour on a large scale they would have to undertake the expense of bringing these people here, and the responsibility for them when they arrived, to maintain them when the particular opportunity to labour had gone from them. They had to see that they did not starve and that they had other openings, and in order to do that he could only see one way, which was not proposed by the most ardent advocate of white labour, to get in large numbers of white labourers under a kind of contract or indenture. They would require that to protect them. Hon. members on the cross-benches smiled because they knew that if they put the white labour policy to the test not one of them would be returned to Parliament. (Laughter.) They would not face the logical conclusion. If these people were to be brought here we must assume the responsibility for them. We had to see that they were able to live, and if the field of labour was not open to them we had to send them back or keep them at the public expense. That was not the way we could begin to increase our white population. He certainly would not favour a system of indenture or contract in that way. But it was the logical conclusion to which hon. members were driving, and from which they shied every time. He believed that, comparatively speaking, they could do a great deal to make a start to induce some sort of flow into this country of people fit to own land, and able to put a guarantee down that they would own it and work it. They should come largely at their own expense, although the Government might give them aided passages. But they could not be expected to dump people down who would be “on the rates” in a fortnight. The policy they had urged was only a beginning. The Bill provided some sort of machinery and the whole business rested in the hands of the Government. He agreed with the hon. member for Graaff-Reinet that the Bill would not work miracles. Settlement would be a slow process, but it would be slower unless they interested the people of the country in the matter. We had to make a determined effort, and this was a practical measure to get people from oversea to settle here who would have some help side by side with our own people. But if they were going to say, what had practically been voted for by the other side, that immigration must not be encouraged, until the thousands and tens of thousands in this country had places on the land they would postpone the salvation of South Africa for an indefinite period. (Ministerial cheers.)

said that the hon. member’s speech stood in very curious contrast to that made by the leader of the Opposition, and he thought that the only excuse for the hon. member who had just spoken was that he must have prepared the speech under the influence of the great feelings roused the other night. He assured his hon. friend that there had been no surrender whatever on this question. (Ministerial cheers.) As the Prime Minister said on Friday night, he stood by every word, and by every pledge he had given to the country. He (the speaker) said absolutely the same. The hon. member for Ficksburg had proposed an amendment to clause 16, and afterwards he (General Smuts) pointed out some mistake in the amendment, but approved of the first part providing for the reference to Parliament of any scheme of land settlement. He (the speaker) was not then aware of the speech his hon. friend had made some time before, in which he strongly condemned the coming of settlers from abroad. He was not aware that he had made that speech, and under those circumstances his amendment was liable to very serious misconstruction. He had supported it because it appeared to him to give a double safeguard to the country. We had two sections of opinion in this country, both fairly well represented, one resolutely opposed to settlers coming from abroad; the other strongly in favour. It seemed to him that there was a middle course which was perfectly feasible, and which would be in the best interests of South Africa, and when he saw the amendment for reference to Parliament he thought that was fair, and would be welcomed by both sides of the House. That was why he approved of it. Then the hon. member for Cape Town, Harbour, pointed out—he thought not quite correctly, he did not agree with the whole of what he said—that the effect of that amendment might be to hamper land settlement He had not the least idea when he spoke in the House on Friday in favour of the amendment that the effect of it would be to hamper Land settlement in this country. Unfortunately, after that, the debate took a very wrong turn, and a number of speeches were made, intended to show that people on his side generally were opposed to land settlement and that the Prime Minister and himself had changed their views. The Prime Minister stuck to what he had declared all along. It was exactly the same with regard to himself. The amendment moved by the hon. member for Ficksburg (Mr. Keyter) had never been intended, and had never been understood, by his side of the House to be a further bar to immigration. He quite agreed with his right hon. friend that the question of land settlement should be entirely above party politics—(hear, hear)—in this country. Nobody could read the last census figures without feeling that if the white population of South Africa was not strengthened from the sources from which it had been strengthened in days past, an evil day would set in for South Africa, and he did not think that any sensible man would have a different view about that subject. (Hear, hear.) He thought that the amendment would give that safeguard to the House, that if the Ministry asked Parliament for a sum of money, and Parliament voted that money, as the clause stood, Parliament would not know how the money was being spent. If the Government said that they needed so much for the settlement of South Africans, and so much for settlers from oversea, there would be some safeguard given to Parliament. The people of South Africa should understand that they had that policy of land settlement, to which they added a moderate amount of settlement from abroad. As there had been a very serious misunderstanding, he hoped that the amendment would be accepted in its present form, and that there would be no further discussion.

said that he spoke for his colleagues on the cross-benches when he said that he did not think the present time was the time to give an answer to that question. Important as immigration was, and necessary as it was that the House should take into serious consideration filling up the waste places in South Africa, they thought that that Bill did not, and would not, effect that object; and in order to test the feeling of the House, he would move that progress be reported and leave be asked to sit again.

The motion was negatived.

thereupon called for a division, but subsequently withdrew.

said that he had not intended saying anything further on that subject, but after what the Minister had said, he felt bound to say a few more words. The only speech he had made on the subject of immigration was word for word what the Prime Minister had put before them. He had said expressly that he would not vote for the second reading unless something were added to the Bill in the nature of the amendment. He was not against immigration. He stuck to what he had said, and he agreed with the policy of the Government. He had, therefore, moved his amendment to give expression to that policy.

said that he was glad to hear from the hon. member who had just spoken that his immigration policy was the same as that of the Prime Minister and the Minister of the Interior. He would ask the hon. member what he meant when he had said in so many words—he had taken them down—“We have enough population”? Now the plain meaning of that was that the hon. member thought they had enough population in (South Africa. Well, that meant that they did not want immigration. (Hear, hear.) But if hon. members were honest, and said that the only chance of keeping South Africa for the white man was to increase the white population, no such remarks ought to have been made by the hon. member, who said that he was in favour of immigration. He was quite in favour of preparing the land and making it possible for immigrants to make a living in this country, before they actually brought them in. He was in favour of doing all they could to reinstate the poor whites on the land. To be told that they must accept this amendment as meaning exactly the same as the amendment which had been withdrawn, and as meaning exactly what was in the original clause, was asking a little too much. If the amendment was to help immigration on Friday, why was it not to help immigration on Monday? If they did not want immigration, why didn’t they say so? He was sure that the effect was honestly meant by the hon. member for Ficksburg to prevent immigration into this country. (Ministerial dissent.) He would like to ask whether the Prime Minister was going to stand by a principle which he said he held dear? There was one authority on immigration in that House, and that was the Minister of Justice. He would like the Minister of Justice to explain whether he was in agreement with the Prime Minister? He would ask the Prime Minister why were he and his party so afraid that it immigrants came in they became Unionists? Why shouldn’t they become Nationalists?

They will all become Labour men.

continuing, said that the racial element had been introduced into this question by the other side. They were driven to this conclusion by the Census figures, that, unless they brought people into this country, the country was doomed and could not remain fit for a white man to live in.

said he would like to ask whether the Unionist panty as represented ion those benches were in earnest in promoting immigration into this country? If they were, why did they not accept the statesmanlike utterance of their leader?

said that anyone would have imagined that after the Premier’s statement and its acceptance by the leader of the Opposition, that the debate would have closed. The House should proceed with the next business.

The amendment to omit the word “exclusively” was agreed to.

The new clause was thereupon agreed to.

moved that progress be reported and leave asked to sit again.

said he believed that the other clauses of the Bill were of an entirely non-contentious character; therefore if they gave half-an hour’s discussion to them the Bill would go through.

said he had promised the hon. member for Jeppe that if clause 16 were passed they would go on to the next business. They could go on with the Bill on Wednesday.

said he desired to enter a protest against the manner in which the business of the House was conducted. They should finish the present Bill first.

said the Miners’ Phthisis Bill had been on the paper for weeks. It was a measure which required a great deal of study, and members who had come there prepared to discuss it saw with something like amazement on Saturday morning that the Land Settlement Bill had been put before it. The Miners’ Phthisis Bill was a measure on which a great industry and the lives of thousands of our fellow-countrymen, to a large extent, depended.

said that the right hon. member for Victoria West was not altogether fair. They were very much surprised to see that the Land Settlement Bill had been put down in front of the Miners’ Phthisis Bill, but as they knew all that on Saturday morning it would not have been surprising if the discussion had not been proceeded with that afternoon.

said he admitted the importance of the Miners’ Phthisis Bill, but that was not the point. They ought to finish off one Bill before proceeding with another.

The motion was agreed to.

Progress was reported and leave obtained to sit again on Wednesday.

rising at seven minutes past three o’clock, said that in moving the second reading of the Miners’ Phthisis Bill he wished to say that it dealt with a matter of vital importance to the whole country. It dealt with a difficult, complicated and very serious question, and he thought the House would agree with him when he said that the attitude with which they should approach the question was one of sympathetic handling. They could, with the very best of intentions, do a very great deal of harm unless they were careful. The Bill was intended to assist both the mining industry and the miners engaged in this industry. He said it was intended to benefit the industry because it must be clear to every man who had studied the question that the advantage of having men of experience in connection with this industry was of very great importance. But as things had been moving during the last few years there had been a scarcity of good men on account of this disease. It was only human that Parliament should discharge its duty in looking after the men’s interest. He would ask the House, in dealing with the question, not to enter into recriminations, because, after all, they were dealing with a question which was new and on which they were still gaining a certain amount of knowledge and experience as they went on. As a matter of fact, some phases of the disease had only been realised since the inquiry of the Medical Commission appointed last year. For them at that stage to throw stones at one another as to who was the cause of the neglect was altogether beside the mark. The House would bear with him if he gave just a short outline of the history of the disease and how far our knowledge of it had gone.

He found that it was only shortly after the war, or rather when the mines were re-opened during the war, that attention was drawn to this disease, the reason being that when the mines were restarted it was found that a large number of the men, the best men, who were engaged on this industry before the war had died, apparently of an unknown disease during the war; and also that several of the survivors who came back to the mines, although apparently healthy, when they went underground were attacked by a disease that carried them off in a comparatively short time; and he thought at this stage they should recognise that the first body to draw attention to this state of affairs was the Mine Managers’ Association. They brought the matter to the attention of the Medical Association of Johannesburg, and that association appointed, in 1902, a sub-committee that investigated the matter. Dr. Irvine and Dr. Macaulay he thought were members of that committee, and in that capacity did very valuable work. The majority of their conclusions, come to ten years ago, had by subsequent investigation been proved to be absolutely correct. The Government of Lord Milner then, when this report of the sub-committee came out, saw need to appoint a Commission, which was appointed towards the end of 1902, and they reported in 1903. As the conclusions of the committee of 1903 bore out entirely those of the Medical Association, the Commission was able to carry the investigation further. The report stated that at least 15 per cent. of the underground miners were certified by doctors to be infected by the disease; but by taking further prospective cases there would be 23 per cent., and as they estimated that of the proportion of infected men, 92 per cent. were men using machine drills, they recommended certain precautionary measures and preventives which should be used, more particularly in laying the dust, because it was recognised at that time already that the main cause of the disease was the question of rock-dust in the mines. In the meantime the Mines Department in the Transvaal had taken the matter up, and they issued regulations in 1902 or a little later. In the report of 1902-3, the Mines Department drew special attention to this question, and they found in 1902 that 16.75 per cent. of the rock-drillers had died during the war. The mining regulations under the Mines and Works Ordinance of 1905, for the first time gave the Government the power to deal with the health of miners underground. Before that there was no machinery for doing that. Then during the following several years, the taking of effective steps to prevent miners’ phthisis was complicated by a controversy that was going on, the relative efficacy of the “spray” and the “jet,” so he was informed by the Mines Department. Some maintained that the “atomiser” or “spray” was the right way of preventing this disease, and he might say that the Chamber of Mines, very much interested in this matter too, offered a prize for the best way of dealing with the dust in the mines. Mr. Britten was awarded the prize; but as a matter of fact this controversy, which lasted for a considerable time, prevented effective steps being taken, and it was found that working in the wet atmosphere caused by the spray led to rheumatism and other Complaints on the part of the men, which made the use of the spray practically inoperative. Still, the importance of the matter was before the Government, and in 1907 the Transvaal Government appointed a Commission to inquire into certain matters connected with the better protection of the health and safety of persons working in mines. The report of that Commission was not published before 1910, but already, in 1908, they addressed a letter to the Government pointing out the serious state of affairs in connection with miners’ phthisis, urging upon the Government the advisability of issuing regulations at once. The Government immediately acted on that, and mine regulations were then drafted and issued, which attempted, as far as the knowledge at that time went, to deal with that question. The report of the second Commission, which confirmed the report of the previous inquiry and was published in 1910, for the first time drew public attention generally to this disease; and at the General Election which was held in that year, all along the Rand, in the different constituencies, the question was seriously discussed.

The election before.

Yes, the election before also, but more particularly in 1910, and all candidates speaking at that election promised that they would, when in Parliament, deal with that matter more effectively than had been done in the past. Proceeding, he said that under the Works and Mines Act passed in 1911 new regulations were issued, towards the end of last year. In 1911 also the Government brought in legislation dealing with this matter. The result of that legislation was still fresh in their memories. The Bill that purported to deal with the general question and settle the matter, was ultimately withdrawn, and for it was substituted a Bill dealing with the disease on a temporary basis, and provided for the appointing of a Medical Commission. This Medical Commission had met, and was asked to send in a report as soon as possible, and he was just pointing out the main conclusions to which it came.

Might he say at this point that he felt he was speaking the mind of the House when he said that the Government and the country are indebted to this Commission—(hear, hear)—for the work it had put into this report. It was a very difficult matter they were asked to investigate, time was of value, and they worked at high pressure, and he thought the report showed that the work had been done in a most satisfactory manner. (Hear, hear.) The first point to which he would like to draw the attention of the House was the definition of the disease. It occurred on page 10, and the Commission stated: (1) Miners’ phthisis is a chronic disease of the lungs, characterised by progressive fibroid changes in the lung tissue and pleura, and accompanied by chronic catarrhal processes in the air cells and respiratory passages. The disease is thus primarily a fibrosis of the lung, and the essential factor in producing this condition is the more or less continuous inhalation over long periods of fine rock dust. Ail true cases of miners’ phthisis are thus primarily cases of silicosis; silicosis is the feature common to them all. (2) In the latter stages tuberculosis becomes commonly or invariably superimposed upon this condition, and the type of the disease becomes that of tuberculous infection in a fibroid lung. Pure tuberculosis of the lungs undoubtedly occurs to a certain extent amongst underground workers, particularly in the earlier years of their mining life. But such cases are not cases of miners’ phthisis as defined above—they are cases of ordinary consumption in a miner. The view had been held that there was no difference between miners’ phthisis ana tuberculosis, and the Commission pointed out that the sufferers from miners’ phthisis were also attacked by the tuberculosis germ. He thought that the report of Commission for the first time actually showed the difference between the two, and that miners’ phthisis could be regarded as an occupational disease and that the germ of tuberculosis only attacked the sufferer at a later stage. The second point to which he would draw attention was the character of the disease, and this was dealt with on page 25 of the report: “We consider that miners’ phthisis in the sense in which we have defined it is a definite, and in its intermediate and advanced stages a sufficiently distinguishable trade disease specific to the employment in the gold mines of the Rand. We consider also that a pure tuberculosis occurring in a miner cannot be so regarded.” Here the Commission laid it down in the sense in which it defined the disease that it was not tuberculosis pure and simple, but an occupational disease that arose more particularly in the gold mines of the Transvaal. Experience had shown that in the coal mines of Australia, and even the coal mines of South Africa, it did not arise. It was known in England, but there it was a very much slower disease. Now he came to the question of the cause of the disease, and on page 18 he found: “No class of underground worker is free from serious risk of attack; cases of the disease are found in every class. But those not engaged in machine drilling have, on the whole, a longer period of underground work before contracting miners’ phthisis, and, further, the disease, when contracted, is slower in development.” This, he thought, was a new point which had been brought to light by this Commission. Before the Commission reported, the idea was, so he was informed, that the people who were most likely to be affected by the disease were the machine rock drillers—those who actually worked at the face. Though that was true to a certain extent, yet, owing to the atmosphere, all the men who worked underground were affected by the disease. It had been shown that the dust that was thrown into the mine when blasting took place caused the ravages in the mine. Therefore it was a mistake to think that only the men working with the rock drills were affected. All the men who were in the mine were affected. This was a very important point, for up to that time it was thought that by using water the dust would be laid, and thus miners’ phthisis prevented. But, as a matter of fact, it turned out that the dust was distributed so evenly through the mine that the use of water at the face was not sufficient. Now, it might be said that it might be prevented by fresh air being pumped into the mine, but he pointed out that these currents raised the dust again. At any rate, this particular question of dealing with the dust was engaging the attention at present of the Prevention Commission which was appointed recently. Now he would come to the question of the extent of the disease. They found on page 17 of the rereport of the Commission the statement: The first of these occupational groups to be considered is that of “rock-drill miners” or “machine drillers.” As we have stated, all previous inquiries have shown that rockdrill work is of all underground occupations the most dangerous to health, and the results of the present investigation confirm this conclusion. An examination of the data contained in these tables regarding this class of men shows: (a) The percentage of those affected in the miners examined is much higher amongst “machine drillers’ than amongst “ail miners,” or amongst those in any other occupational group. Amongst machine miners, out of a total number of 987 men examined, it is 48 per cent. as against 32 per cent. for the general body of miners (including machine drillers) and 21 per cent. for those who have never done machine drilling. Further, reference to Table XVI. shows that after 3½ years of underground work, the percentage of those affected in this class consistently takes and keeps a much higher level, being throughout after the fifth year roughly double that of those who have never done machine drilling. Thus, for the division 9-10 years underground, we find 79 per cent. of machine drillers affected, as compared with 41 per cent. of those miners who, although they have worked underground for the same period, have never been engaged on machine drilling. The average number of men affected at the present time was 32 per cent. Of those who were affected, 48 per cent. represented the machine rock-drillers, and 21 per cent. the rest. Now, he would draw the attention of the House to the classification which the Commission recommended. They divided the disease into three stages for the purpose of the Bill, of which two stages had been accepted by the Government for the purpose of framing this Bill.

In the first stage of the disease, when the men were still capable of doing work underground, and only showed slight signs of the disease, there were 5½ per cent., and the average time a man was engaged underground before he entered the first class was six years. The second stage was entered after seven years—that was to say, one year after the first stage, and the number in the second stage was 21½ per cent. These men were very seriously affected. Perhaps they could still do a little work underground, and their life might be prolonged for a certain time on the surface; but, as a fact, the disease was already showing serious ravages amongst this class. The third stage—the last stage—comprised 4½ per cent., and that class arose from miners who had done ten years’ underground work. The average life of a man who was in the third stage of the disease was from one and a half to two years. The remedial measures which the Government contemplated in connection with the disease were of a twofold character—first preventive, and secondly curative, dealing with the disease as they found it, and seeing what could be done to alleviate the sufferings. As regards prevention, he had already stated to the House what regulations had been issued from time to time. In this connection, he might say that a Commission appointed in Western Australia went so far as to recommend that raising should be abolished. (An HON. MEMBER: “What is that?”) That was cutting a tunnel from below upwards. In cutting upwards with a drill, a man found it very difficult to use water, and the dust fell over him. As a matter of fact, it was also our experience, as in the case of the Western Australian mines, that raising was the most dangerous part of the work underground, from the point of view of phthisis. He did not know how far they would go towards prohibiting raising, because it had its compensating advantages. Before any steps were taken, the question would have to be fully investigated. The Government had also appointed, in conjunction with the Chamber of Mines, a Commission—the Miners’ Phthisis Prevention Commission. Half of the expense of the Commission was borne by the Government, and half by the Chamber of Mines. It was comprised of twenty-five men, representing the Government Department of Mines, the Chamber of Mines, and also active workers of the mines.

How many?

There were three active miners. The work of that committee had been divided into three sections. Three sub-committees had been formed, one dealing with ventilation, another with the appliances to lay dust, and the third with the regulations. He was informed that at present the committee was actively engaged, and as a new light had been thrown on the disease by the report, their labours might reach a definite result in the near future. In the Bill itself, clause 25 was inserted for the purpose of enabling the Government to appropriate moneys voted by Parliament in connection with the investigation and for the better carrying out of regulations for miners’ phthisis. The provisions in connection with the regulations for miners’ phthisis on the mines would also require a certain expenditure from time to time. He might here mention that the Chamber of Mines had, with the assistance of the Government, started a sanatorium for miners suffering from miners’ phthisis who were in the serious state of the disease. It provided accommodation for seventy persons, and was now full. The establishment, which cost £50,000, was opened in September. The Government gave the site and buildings, valued at £9,000, and contributed one-half of the running charges, up to £5,000 per annum. The problems in connection with the prevention of miners’ phthisis were, first of all, the laying of dust. That undoubtedly was the main thing. As regards the drillers, he thought that it would be found that by the judicious use of water a great improvement had been effected. In connection with the use of water during the past few years, he need only draw attention to a very simple appliance now used. Instead of putting water through the hole, a part of the hose itself was introduced into the hole, and that came in with the drill and kept the water at the point of the drill. This made the creation of rock dust impossible. It was a very simple arrangement, and the wonder was that it had not been thought of before. As he had indicated earlier, a more serious question was the laying of the dust generally in the mine, and more particularly the dust thrown into the atmosphere by the blasting. When they dealt with a driller, a great deal could be done by applying the water carefully, but as regards the dust raised by blasting, that was a problem that required a great deal of investigation before they could be satisfied as to the course to take. The other problem, that of ventilation, was also being investigated at present. It was all very well for a novice to say that it was easy to send a strong current of air through the mine. Experience proved that that was not very satisfactory, If they drove a very strong current of air through the mine, dust would more likely be raised. Careful investigations would have to be made to secure the best means of ventilation. He now came to the provisions of the Bill itself. In the first place the Bill had been drafted on the findings of the Medical Commission’s report. The Bill was practically confined to the gold mines on the Rand. Clause 2 would give the Government the power to frame a list of mines to which the Bill would be applied. It would not apply to the coal or to the diamond mines, because if coal or diamond mining led to miners’ phthisis at all, it was certainly not to the same extent as the dust of the hard rock of the mines on the Witwatersrand.

As regards the probable number of applicants, the preliminary report of the Government actuary had been handed to the Government a little while ago and laid on the table of the House some weeks ago, and he had that day distributed further copies of the report of the Government actuary; and the House would see that the figures as Laid down in the Bill were in accordance with the calculations of the actuary. The Bill contemplated paying benefits to the two latter classes—those who were in the secondary and the third stages of the disease—and it was estimated by the Commission that from 1,000 to 1,200 claims would be made annually, and that the mean expectation of life would be from 1½ to 2 years. The amount that would be required for those men for whom benefit was asked under that Bill would absorb for the men, £200,000 per annum, and it was estimated by the actuary that the sum necessary for the wives and widows would be £282,000. In a later report of the actuary he contemplated that these figures would probably be found to be below what was actually required, but certainly for the first year they need not contemplate that; and as there was a clause in the Bill by which power was given to the Government to increase or diminish the amount, according to the solvency or not of the fund, he thought they could deal with that matter in that clause. Having read clause 5, he said that that raised the question of contribution by the miners, and it had been asked why, in the face of the findings of the Commission that miners’ phthisis was an occupational disease, the Government now proposed to ask one-fourth from the miners, or one-fourth of the contribution was deducted from the wages of the miners? He wished to give reasons why they had decided to do that. One was that it had been found in other countries, and would be found in this country, that it was always a very difficult matter indeed to settle the liability of any particular employer. If they dealt with that question from the workmen’s compensation point of view, there were 69 gold mines in the Transvaal on the Witwatersrand so closely connected both geographically and by the men continually moving from one mine to the other, that if one attempted to deal with the question from the Workmen’s Compensation Act and settle responsibility for each mine—not for an accident, which was a momentary thing, but for a disease which took six years on the average—it became impossible to do that, and some other method had to be adopted, and the Government had adopted the insurance fund rather than compensation. He thought that the men should contribute to the insurance fund for two reasons; firstly, because it was known that the men who were engaged on that work were, on the whole, rather improvident, although there were, of course, exceptions, and did not provide for themselves unless asked to do so, or unless it was done for them. But there was another and a more important reason. He thought it would be advisable to warn the miners, not once but continually, that by going underground and working in the mines as constituted at present, they ran a certain risk. (Hear, hear.) If their wages were high they could afford to contribute something; and where they found that they could not provide for themselves or for their families sufficiently they did not blame them for that, it would be a wise provision for the State to step in and say that there was an insurance fund to which they might, and ought, to contribute for a rainy day. The majority of the white miners were very well paid. Compared with the pay of white miners in other parts of the world, he was informed that their salaries were very good and extremely high; and he thought that the experience they had gained in the past would be that it would be wise to introduce that contributory system. He knew that on that point there was a great difference of opinion, more particularly on the part of the miners, and he would refer to that in greater detail later on.

But then it was asked, why did the State not contribute something? (Hear, hear.) His first reply was that the State did contribute. The State would contribute in the form of administration expenses under this Bill something like £5,500. (A laugh.) Then the amount which the mines would contribute towards this fund would come out of their profits, on which the State would lose the 10 per cent. profits tax. He thought that that would amount to some £30,000 to £35,000, according to the amount which they contributed. Then he foreshadowed that it was possible that, by the appointment of men to supervise the carrying out of the regulations in connection with the prevention of this disease, a further sum would be required. He thought, on the whole, he would be well within the mark if he said that from £40,000 to £50,000 annually would have to be found by the State in connection with this matter. He thought, as this was a disease which was incidental to a particular industry, the major portion of the expenses in connection with this matter should be borne by that industry. (Hear, hear.) Now, there was the question of the scale of benefits. How much was a man going to get out of this fund? That was regulated in clause 11 of the Bill. As far as the benefits were concerned, no difference was made between the rock-driller and the other men working underground. They were placed on exactly the same footing. If a man was in the second stage of the disease and applied, he got £8 a month for 12 months, the object being to enable him to look out for some other employment either in this country or elsewhere. The idea was that he could still work. It was very likely that if he got employment outside the mines his lungs would sufficiently recover to enable him to do useful work for a number of years. If, on the other hand, he continued to work underground his life would be of very short duration. Then take miners’ phthisis in the third stage, in which the men, according to the report of the Commission, had got an average life of from 1½ to 2 years, it was proposed to give them £8 a month for an indefinite period, i.e., until they no longer applied for it and it was provided that for the widows of the men who died of miners’ phthisis they should be paid £3 a month for ten years or until they remarried and for the children an amount of £1 a month until they attained the age of 16 years. This benefit would absorb, according to the report of the actuary, that they had provided for the men £200,000 and for the women and children £282,000, in all an amount of £482,000. But, as the actuary pointed out, this amount would not be sufficient in a few years’ time, unless the special measures which were now being taken to deal with this disease were found to be effective. He might point out at this stage that provision was made that if a man applied for a lump sum instead of this monthly payment he could get it. That would enable him to start a shop or some other business of that kind. If the wife and children left the country, if they went back to England or wherever they came from, their passage money would be paid and deducted from this amount, but they did not propose to pay them the benefit or pension per month, but to capitalise the amount to which they were entitled and pay over that amount on arriving at the other side.

Then the Bill provided that no new man would be allowed to work underground without first producing a certificate that his lungs were healthy. (Hear, hear.) That, he hoped, would effectively prevent men with weak lungs or suffering from tuberculosis from entering the mines—(hear, hear)—because these men, perhaps not knowingly, threatened their own lives and were a source of danger to other people. In the recommendations of the Western Australia Commission, they intended to go further and they recommended compulsory inspection for the disease of all men before employment as regarded tuberculosis. That he had adopted. Secondly, compulsory inspection of all employees within three months of the passing of the Act, all the men already underground to be inspected three months after the passing of the Act. Thirdly, periodical inspection every six months. (Hear, hear.) Fourthly, that it should be an offence to employ any miner diagnosed as suffering from tuberculosis. As regarded the second and third, he had decided not to adopt suggestions of that kind. He felt that if they were to do anything of that kind at the present moment, before they knew exactly to what extent the disease was rife through the mines, they might arouse the hostility of the miners and very seriously injure the industry without knowing what the effect of it would be. Therefore, he had accepted the first and also the fourth, that no man who was suffering from tuberculosis, whether a new man or a man who was working in the mines already, if it were known that he was Suffering from phthisis, should be allowed to continue at work. But he was not prepared to go so far as to have a regular inspection of the men underground.

Why not?

For the reasons I have already stated. Proceeding, the Minister said he also took powers to prevent any man who was drawing any benefit from this fund from entering a mine again. If a man had once accepted a benefit under this fund, then he would not be allowed to go back into a mine. He also took powers to inspect other mines not in the list and find out whether miners’ phthisis was prevalent there or not.

Then the Bill provided in clause 19 for natives. The natives lived and worked under quite different conditions from the white man. The natives did not, as a rule, work continuously underground for several years, but they came and went, and perhaps that was one of the reasons why they were not affected by the disease to the same extent as the white miners were (Hear, hear.) He felt from a purely logical point of view the difference was difficult to defend, but from a practical point of view, if they were going to do anything for the natives at all, it must be on a compensation basis, and not on a basis of insurance. The question arose: how about the native who did not discover that he had the disease until he had left the mines for his home, say in Pondoland? That man would probably not return to the mine again, and that was practically what was wanted, and they said to the native, “Remain where you are, and there is an end of it.” But if the native went back to Johannesburg, and was there found to be suffering from miners’ phthisis, then he would apply to the Protector of Native Labour, and get compensation the same as the man who discovered that he had the malady before he left the mines. He thought that was a simple and effective way of dealing with the situation, although, to a certain extent, it was a temporary way. The natives would not get the higher compensation or benefits that the white miners would get out of the fund, but the natives would not contribute, and they would get workmen’s compensation. There would be a Board to administer the fund. He believed the Board’s duties would not be very arduous, and it had been suggested that they could dispense with the Board altogether. Whatever might be done in the future, he thought at the outset it would be very advisable to have a Board which would carry those interested in the industry with the Government.

His last point was: how would this legislation affect the industry and the men? He had a return prepared of the number of men working underground at 60 of the mines on the Rand, the total contributions of each class, the working profits and dividends in 1911. He found that the contributions of the mine-owners was estimated to absorb 3 per cent. of the aggregate gross profits of these mines, or 4½ per cent. of the aggregate dividends paid by them during 1911. There were 60 mines working on the Rand, and 37 of them were dividend paying at the present time. He had put the question to the department of what would be the effect of the levies, and it was said that there might be four mines which would feel this additional tax seriously, but these four mines were in a very weak position as it was—(Labour cheers)—and he understood that one or two of them were thinking of liquidating in any case. Whether that was so or not, he was not faying, but the vast majority of mines would not be very seriously affected by this additional burden. He might, in this connection, point out that there might be other ways of saving on the mines. At the last meeting of the Lancaster West Mine, the Chairman said “there had been a great increase in the cost of native labour. Comparing 1910 with 1909, the increase was 17 per cent.; comparing 1911 with 1909, 26½ per cent.; and comparing 1911 with 1910, 8 per cent. A part of this extra expenditure was due to increased cost of food, housing, etc. In so far as that was so, no serious objection could be raised; but by far the greater portion thereof was due to competition for labour, which had increased wages and the cost of procuring labour. The total cost to the mines for native labour in 1911 was probably £1,200,000 higher than would have been the case if the rate which obtained in the first part of 1909 had been maintained, and of this huge sum, perhaps a million might be attributed to avoidable competition.” If that were so (continued Mr. Malan), perhaps the additional burden which would undoubtedly be laid on the industry by the Bill would not be felt to the full extent.

But now there was the question of the miners themselves. What attitude would they take up over against this Bill, which he thought was an honest attempt of Parliament to do something for their benefit? He understood from the meetings that had been held on the Witwatersrand, and the resolutions that had been passed, that the Miners’ Association were opposed to any contribution by the men at all. They thought that this matter should be dealt with upon the basis of workmen’s compensation, and not on the basis of an insurance fund. Well, he had given reasons why the Government had adopted the second alternative. But he would like to say this, however, that he had some investigations made as regarded the opinion of miners outside of the Miners’ Association. They constituted the great majority. (Hear, hear.) He knew and recognised that that organisation was always valued and powerful, and that they had very often the leading miners and men in the organisation; but that could not take away the fact that the majority was on the other side. Well, as he said, he had investigations made as to the opinion of the men outside. Some representative mines were taken, and 120 men were asked as to their views of the basis of three-fourths by the mines or mine owners and one-fourth by the miners. Their opinion came to this—he might say this in addition, because he wanted to be quite clear, the amounts put to these men were much lower than the amounts contemplated in the Bill because the extent of the disease and the amount required was at that time not sufficiently known, and besides that, they did not want to complicate matters by giving too high figures. He would give the tables of the mines from which the men were taken. They were the Village Main Reef, Wemmer Section, Village Deep, Randfontein (Porges, South Robinson), Ferreira, Ferreira Deep, Van Rhyn, Crown Mines, Langlaagte Estates, and the Nourse Mines. One hundred and twenty men were asked, and 53 were in favour of a contribution by the miners, and 58 were against, and 9 were undecided. So that out of 120 they might say that half were in favour and half against; but he would say to hon. members on the cross-benches, and generally to the miners on the Witwatersrand: “Do not lightly throw away the benefits which were intended to be given to the miners.” It was not an easy subject; it was a difficult subject. It was recognised that the burdens that would be thrown upon the industry were serious; that all mines were not rich and all were not paying high dividends, and that unless there was a policy of give and take they might find very great difficulty in dealing with it. He would say: “Let us give this Bill a fair chance.” He did not say that no criticisms should be given. There were several points on which he thought the Bill was open to criticism; but let them try and accept the general principles as laid down, and see if they could not deal in a practical way with this matter. He sincerely hoped that it would be in that spirit of helpful criticism and sympathy that the matter would be dealt with in the House. (Cheers.)

said he thought they could all congratulate their new Minister of Mines on the grasp he had shown of his new undertaking. He had placed before the House in the most lucid way possible his views upon this question, and though he (the speaker) could not agree with all the things the Minister said, the Bill was welcomed in the House. The opposition hitherto was directed at ill-considered legislation. Even now he thought it would be found advisable to make a good many changes in the Bill before them. He would first deal with the last points raised by the Minister. He said that the burden upon the industry would amount to about 4½ per cent. upon the dividends. Surely he was basing that calculation upon the first report of the actuary and not the second; because he found that the anticipated cost in time of the Miners’ Phthisis Bill had risen from £482,000 a year to £718,000; and, of course, that would make a very material difference in the amount that would be represented by the profits of the industry; and in that case it rose to some 7 per cent. It would mean a very momentous amount even after taking the miners’ contributions.

Continuing, he said he was glad that the Minister had referred clearly to what had been done in the past to prevent the spread of the disease. He was glad to see that this was acknowledged, for it was common for charges to be hurled against the mineowners to the effect that they did not care about the miners. The report of the Commission was a most interesting document; but there were pointe upon which one found oneself in disagreement. Though it had proved an effective Commission in some respects, it had arrived at conclusions which were entirely opposed to the conclusions of other Commissions on the subject. It did not tally with reports from Australia, from New Zealand and from England. Silicosis would not—and he could quote the West Australian report on the point—would not be so dread a disease if the germ of tuberculosis were not introduced. It was not silicosis alone.

No.

I will take the West Australian report on the subject.

No.

It differs from other reports on this point. Continuing, he said that if it were silicosis alone the disease would be infinitely less serious even on the Rand. He thought that the Government had been ungenerous. The Government had drawn in taxation from the mines during the last five years something like £4,500,000. These oases of miners’ phthisis had been accumulating, and he thought that the Government, which had drawn this large amount of money, should bear a larger share of the burden. He would quote page 19 of the report.

Quote page 20.

I will quote page 19, and leave the right hon. gentleman to quote page 20: “We have seen that in the general examination only 5 per cent. of the miners suffering from miners’ phthisis were returned as having tuberculosis; but that this value is, probably, too low. The rate found in the special examination was 10 per cent. Amongst the board cases the value has risen to 30 per cent. of demonstrated cases in the total group. It is instructive, however, to note the very rapid increase in the rate as we pass from one stage to the next. Thus in Stages I. and II. 6 per cent. were found affected, in Stage III., 12 per cent., while in Stage IV. the rate had risen to 44 per cent.” Surely it was clear, he thought, that the tuberculosis germ made this disease so terrible. He thought that if they could only catch a man in the first or second stage of the disease they would be able to cure him. He said that the Government was not acting in a generous spirit and was treating the mining interests unfairly. Mentioning the bewaarplaatsen question—(the MINISTER OF FINANCE: “Are you interested?”)—he said although he was not dealing with his personal share, he thought that this was a flagrant attempt at plunder—(Ministerial cries of “No, no”)—on behalf of the State. His own share of the bewaarplaatsen was very insignificant and he would be pleased to have an estimate made, and give his share to any charity the Minister liked to name.

He thought that he had shown that the horrors of the disease were more attributable to tuberculosis, and secondly, that seeing that they derived an enormous revenue from the industry the Government should contribute more. Still, he was not going to attempt to wreck the Bill. Whether the Government contributed or did not they were getting onto the right road. (Cheers.) Costly as it might be to the industry and to the men, the Bill would have the effect of stamping out this terrible disease, and that was what they were all after. In Australia a Commission had suggested that the tripartite scheme should be introduced. That Commission laid down that silicosis was not an accident and could not be described as such without opening the door to much litigation. That was a point of the utmost importance against placing this measure within the Workmen’s Compensation Act. He feared that more trouble than they anticipated would be caused if the Bill as now drafted were put under the Workmen’s Compensation Act. Continuing, he said that in Australia insurance companies treated the risk as a gamble rather than a business matter. They therefore could not hope for insurance by insurance companies here. It would have been quite another matter had a suggestion he made Last year been given some consideration, namely, that they should endeavour to get a general insurance scheme for industrial diseases. He noticed that the Australian Commission’s report favoured that. Failing that, he hoped that the Bill would be passed, with certain amendments that he would move. He entirely agreed with the Minister when he said that the men should contribute, not because it would save them money, but because it would have the effect of stamping out the disease, which was the essential thing. The Commission stated in their report that some of the men were careless, and there was no doubt that they were sometimes culpably careless. They added that the fact that phthisis was found amongst the supervisors as well showed that the habits of the miners had no great effect in regard to the disease. He maintained that everyone who worked underground Jed a careless life. That was corroborated by everyone who had anything to do with the mines. The Mining Regulations Commission of 1910 stated in their final report that there was incredible carelessness on the part of the men. In whatever report they read they noticed this complaint about the men being careless. He did not think they should put that down as some heinous offence, but they had to take steps to make these men different. He thought the Bill would have that effect. The report spoke of a certain number of supervisors getting the disease, but the fact of their contracting it was no proof that the bulk of the men were not careless. The supervisors were comparatively few in number. While he held that the miner should contribute, and whether the Government would assist the industry or not, he hoped to put up a case that would make the Minister agree to a modification of his Bill in one particular. He did not think that men earning from 5s. to 10s. a shift could afford to contribute to this insurance fund. He suggested that in these cases the Government should give, say, half of the contribution. He thought that it would ‘be only just and that it could easily be arranged on another basis that would be fair to the men and to the State. He proposed to say a few words about the Bill itself. Before he did so he would refer to some very interesting data which the report supplied and which would be interesting reading to everyone in South Africa. They said that 35 per cent. of the underground men on the Rand were South Africans. That was a much larger percentage than he imagined they had. They said that 57 per cent. of the underground men were married, and that 84 per cent. of those married men had their families in South Africa. On an average each of these men had a wife and two children.

One other point which seemed to him to be of some interest was that 56 per cent. had some surface training, and he drew special attention to that because it was an argument in favour of their getting hold of a diseased man as early as possible and getting him out of the mines. (Hear, hear.) That brought him to a radical defect of the Bill—that they were going to expel men who were suffering from tuberculosis from the mine, and there was no report dealt with that on pages 26 and 27. provision for any other occupation, and in that respect it seemed to him that a great hardship might result. He saw that the They knew that it was very difficult to investigate cases of hardship arising because the managers had to look after the mines and make all the profit possible, and it was not human nature to expect that these managers would shoulder any needless burden, and they must therefore conclude that a good many men would be deprived of their employment in the mines; and in that report they also said that a general insurance scheme was beyond their scope. Well, he hoped that the Minister would not lose sight of that point, because he might find, if he investigated that further, that he might replace that Bill by a general insurance scheme which was better for all concerned. In Australia they provided land settlement for these people suffering from tuberculosis, and gave them assistance from the agricultural bank; and he thought help of that kind might also be given here. They went further in Australia, and took up a man suffering from tuberculosis in a sanatorium or a hospital for consumptives and retained him there at the expense of the State and provided for his dependants as long as required. He did not suggest that here, but it showed how far Australia was prepared to go when a man was deprived of the sources of his livelihood, or whenever they took it from him. They drew a great distinction between silicosis and tuberculosis there, and coming to the Bill itself, on the definition of miner, he thought that there should be some limit, and a man earning £500 a year should, he thought, be able to put enough aside without having to be assisted by that Bill, and he thought that there should be a limit under that Bill. A man having risen to a certain standard of earnings should provide for himself. As to the definition of contractor, he thought that it wanted further consideration, and as the clause stood there was a certain incentive to employ contractors who in their turn employed sub-contractors, and he thought they ought to do something to prevent that. In regard to clause 2 he thought that there should be an appeal in that case, and he thought that the Minister should be safeguarded against possible charges of favouritism or error by there being an appeal. Then there was a pro-vision which he did not think would work at all. The employers and the workmen were each to nominate three persons and in each case one would be chosen by the Minister for representation on the Board, but the mining industry and the men had no machinery for that nomination. A section of the men had, no doubt; about one-third of them belonged to the Union, but the other two-thirds had no machinery for doing it, and therefore he suggested that instead of asking the industry and the men to nominate representatives in that way, the Minister should have the power to appoint one representative on behalf of the mining industry and one on behalf of the men, which would be more satisfactory. Clause 5 provided for contributions. He could not help feeling that that arbitrary fixing of £6 and £3 must be entirely wrong. It was based upon conditions as they had been, not as they were, and as according to the investigations of the Commission, appliances had been found to lay the dust, surely there was no need that they should ask the rock-drilling miner to pay any more than any other man working underground, and he thought it would be better if they added the two amounts and halved them, so that the contribution should be £4 10s. per man. All the lives were of the same value—(hear, hear)—when it came to a question of that kind, and he did think that that provision in the Bill was not correct. There was another thing also and that was a question they should seriously consider: whether they should draw contributions at all from men earning small wages, or whether perhaps in proportion to the wages earned, or whether they should not make some discrimination between the man earning high and the man earning low wages.

Then clause 7 (3), by which power was given to increase the contribution by the Minister, imposed an indefinite liability. He questioned whether that should be left as it was; whether it would not be better, if the case arose, to come to Parliament and discuss the question anew. He thought there might be some injustice done, too, under clause 2, where a miner, if he applied in the earlier stages, had to draw £8 a month for twelve months. One could conceive a case where a miner might work underground for ten years, and pay 30s. a month. That man would have contributed no less than £180, which, together with interest, would amount to a great deal more in the ten years, and he would only get back £96. (Hear, hear.) He did not think that was fair. He thought they must find a way of modifying that. He was all in favour of getting hold of the man as early as possible, and getting him out of the mine. There was another point in regard to the widows. He thought that imposed a very serious liability. He would take an extreme case, to show how onerous it was. Take the case of a widow with five children, the eldest of whom was six years of age. That woman would draw £1,060 in ten years. They had been urged over and over again to employ married men as far as possible in the mines, but this provision was not an encouragement of that. If they compensated a man under the second basis, i.e., at £8 a month, to be continued, he thought they would find that, in many cases, especially when they were compensated, the men would improve enormously in health, in spite of their having consumptive trouble. He submitted that in those cases where a man was compensated, whether under the £8 a month for one year, or whether the £8 a month for an indefinite period, if any of these people recovered and were able to take up occupation again, then the compensation should cease, or should certainly be reduced. He thought it should cease. It would depend a great deal upon how much the man was able to earn. Then as to examination of men, he did not think the Minister was quite right there. He thought it would be better to face the situation straight off and examine everybody, whether he came with a discharge certificate from another mine or not. He believed the Western Australia suggestion was better in that connection. It would be better to make some provision for dealing with these men in some way, and it was much better to examine them all and deal with them as may be necessary.

Then, there were some provisions in clause 15 which, he thought, needed some amendment, about knowingly employing people. He thought it would always be extremely difficult to prove that anybody knowingly employed a tuberculous person. Altogether he was satisfied that something could be made—it would take some little time—of the measure now before the House; he was sorry that the Minister felt it necessary, lest he should be charged with hobnobbing with them, or something of that kind, to hide away this Bill until he launched it suddenly upon the House. He believed if the Bill had been in his hands for a month to think it over, he could have made suggestions, which would not have been against the Bill, but which would have made it, prior to its introduction into the House, a much more practical measure than it was as it stood to-day. One or two gentlemen on that side could have done that perhaps with the aid of the members on the cross-benches—(hear, hear)—though he was not prepared to answer for them. (Laughter.) He thought there was another point that the Minister had got to remember. Under the clause of the Bill by which they were going to take a larger sum per man for rock drillers, they were tending to avoid the use of mechanical appliances. They all knew that the mines were short of labour, and one of the best ways of getting over the native difficulty was to employ, as far as possible, mechanical appliances. On the one hand they said employ mechanical appliances, and on the other hand they brought in a direct obstacle to their employment.

There was no provision in the Bill for the encouragement of those who, at considerable expense, perhaps, provided the best of ventilation, the best of appliances, and, indeed, had mines that were, as far as possible, model mines. He thought they should be encouraged, and the way to do it would be to allow some kind of exemption, some percentage of exemption—not, of course, entire exemption—when it was proved in any given mine that the percentage of dust in a certain volume of air had been reduced. (Hear, hear.) It was perfectly easy to determine the quantity of dust in a given volume of air, and instead of lumping the good and bad mines together there should be a decreased scale of contributions for those mines which took proper precautions. He intended to support the second reading of the Bill, which he would be very glad to see become law. At the same time he saw certain grave defects in the measure, and he was not sure that they would not find that the Bill would have various effects of which they little dreamed to-day, but they must be prepared for that. The mining companies would do everything they could to make a success of the Bill, and he hoped the Labour people would ask those they represented to work with a good will and not to make difficulties because there would be hardships under the Bill, and the only way would be to face the matter in a fair spirit, and try to make it successful. He would certainly do everything in his power to assist the Minister when the Bill reached the committee stage. (Cheers.)

said the House had several important matters before it that session, but nothing so important as the Miners’ Phthisis Bill, and nothing so very pathetic in its nature as the provisions of that measure. He could hardly imagine a more dreadful state of affairs than was disclosed by the report of the Commission, a state of affairs for which they were all more or less responsible in that House. He thought they were indebted to the Minister of Mines for bringing the Bill forward in a very temperate speech, and also to the hon. member for Yeoville (Sir L. Phillips) for the reception he had given the measure. He did hope that the introduction of the Bill would not be taken advantage of to hurl envenomed charges across the floor of the House. (Cheers.) As to the difficulty of dealing with the matter he would not go back into ancient history—he would go back no further than last year. This was the fourth time they had to deal with that question. They had the Bill introduced by the Minister of the Interior last year. It was put on the paper, and certain amendments were introduced by himself (Mr. Merriman) and others. The Minister then put on the paper, by way of an amendment, an entirely new Bill. W ell, that was put off—a fate which he hoped would not happen to this Bill, because it would be a public scandal if it did. The measure was put off to the end of the session, when it was withdrawn and an emergency measure was brought forward introducing some dangerous principles, but rather than see a calamitous state of things go on the House agreed to it. Now, he was glad to see that the Government had redeemed its promise and had introduced something like legislation on a fixed basis. He hoped hon. members had carefully studied the report of the Commission. The report was an able one, and certainly the Commission had devoted a great deal of pains to it, but he regretted that it did not include an actuary’s report, and it was almost impossible to deal with the tables.

He took the tables to a trained actuary—there was no better in South Africa—and that gentleman said that the tables were so difficult to understand that no actuary would be able to form—from an insurance point of view—any tangible opinion. Since then they had the report of the Government Actuary, who, no doubt, was in possession of information which was not within their reach. The report of the Government Actuary was not reassuring as far as he (Mr. Merriman) was able to judge. The final report, in which the Government Actuary contemplated an annual expenditure of £718,000, was, he (Mr. Merriman) thought, overdrawn. The total charge of £418,000 on the first page included annuities—they were not an annual charge—on a 4 per cent. basis. That was a very different thing from an annual charge of £718,000. There was a nonrecurrent charge of £372,000, and an annual charge for a short period of £100,000. He thought the whole Bill, as far as the actuarial calculations were concerned, was a leap in the dark more or less, and he distinctly thought that the contribution anticipated by the Government was on the safe side. He hoped so with all his heart, because it would be a terrible thing if it were not. He thought the saddest part of the report was that passage which dealt with the expectation of life of these miners. In classes 3 and 4, which included a large proportion of those affected with this disease and seemed to be a natural concomitant of class 2, the maximum expectation of life was two years, and some of these unfortunate people had an expectation of life of less than six months. He should think that that would make every man in that House shudder.

He dared say many of them had seen that picture by a famous French artist of the gladiators defiling before the Roman Emperor shouting “Ave Caesar Imperator! Morituri to Salutant,” before entering the arena. Well, they might just imagine that these wretched miners were going down into the mines smitten with disease, and saying the same thing. And they were here dealing with a preventable disease. If they had no machine drilling, they would have very little miners’ phthisis or other respiratory diseases in the mines. It was chiefly attributable to the use of machine drills. That they found in this report. They found it in the West Australian report, and in every report that dealt with this matter, that machine drills and miners’ phthisis were cause and effect; so he meant to say that when they were dealing with the whole of this question, they must never forget that the majority of these men were doomed to die, because machine drilling was a necessity to carry on this industry. That was the plain truth of the matter. If they regarded men’s lives as of more value than the industry, they should say there should be no machine drilling. They would then do away with this disease; but it was not practicable. He knew the resources of civilisation must go on; gold must be turned out, and men must take their chance. He would like to point out that the present measure ought to be in many respects welcomed—he would give it his support—because of one great principle, and that was that it treated this as an occupational disease, and it said that for an occupational and preventable disease the employers should be liable in the first place, and then those who chose to risk their lives against enormous pay should also contribute in the form of insurance. He thought that was a sound principle. But if they came to the limitation, to the dust-producing mines of the Witwatersrand, there he thought they were wrong. And there he thought the Bill was open to the criticisms of the hon. member for Yeoville (Sir L. Phillips); that it was open to the possibility of favouritism or mistakes. He thought all mines on that field should be included in any measure they took up. (Hear, hear.) Then he thought the principle of contribution was a very paltry one indeed, because they were now only going to the men, the machine drillers, who were really the forlorn hope of this army of industry—a large percentage of these people were doomed to death—and said that these men must pay; but that those of the men who profited most must pay nothing. That was wrong. The men who worked in the mill profited as much from the machine drilling as the machine drillers who were risking their lives, and it seemed to him they should therefore deal with the whole mines as one large industry all involved in this, and all responsible for it, and all liable for a contribution. Then he thought it was a mistake to trust entirely to any Board. There would be no appeal from its decision. And he also thought it was a mistake to limit, if they were going to do anything at all, the benefits received by a widow to a certain time. If she would get anything at all she would probably, at the end of ten years, be in more dire distress than at any time. But those were details.

He also thought that the provision for the natives—it seemed low, but, on the whole, if they considered that a native got, by way of compensation, double his annual pay, he did not think it was at all so insufficient as it seemed. But it was easy to criticise a measure like this. The difficulty of framing a measure the aim of which was a saving of humanity, and at the same time did not err too much on the side of sentiment, and was not unjust to the industry, was enormous. It was said first of all, particularly by his friend over there (Mr. F. H. P. Creswell) who had been, he noticed, and, he thought, very unwisely, addressing large meetings in Johannesburg on this subject, that they ought to have this registered as an occupational disease. Well, he was once of the same opinion; but on more careful study, after listening to the remarks made in the House, he had come to the conclusion that as an occupational disease—to treat it on the basis of an ordinary occupational disease would be a very grave mistake from the point of view of the men, because a man would then be liable to be turned out of his employment upon mere suspicion. A man in every individual case would have to go and get his compensation from the Courts. He would have to take his employer into court and sue for it. It would be a prejudicial thing for the men. It had been found so in New Zealand for this very reason. Anybody could go into the library and read the debate that took place, when, at the request of the miners themselves, a year after this thing had been brought forward as an occupational disease, a scheduled disease, the Bill was repealed.

How many deaths?

I cannot say, but it was repealed because it was found prejudicial to the miners getting employment. Proceeding, the right, hon. gentleman said the only way he thought they could deal with it was to form a kind of benefit fund between the miners and the mine owners. The mine owner was naturally interested in keeping this disease down. His contribution would act as a stimulus to do that, and the contributions of the men would act as a stimulus to see that the regulations for their safety would be carried out; and in that way it seemed to him they had got a very fair basis for the contributions. In England they found it impossible to schedule this disease as an occupational disease—a mining disease. They had only one mining disease scheduled, he thought. Therefore, that was an additional reason why they should not now schedule it. Now, a great point was that they thought they would say, “You must adopt the same system of insurance in every country where the State participates.”

What did the State contribute in Germany? It did not pay more than one-tenth part—just a tenth. The amount came to 20 millions, 9 millions being paid by the men and 11 millions by the owners, and then two millions were added by the State. The fact was that the State made a very small contribution to that fund. He wanted to know upon what ground they proposed that the Government should give a contribution. This was a preventable disease; this was for the joint benefit of the miners and the mine owners. What benefit did it confer on the Government? He said that it was for the benefit of the mine owners and for the benefit of the men who got enormous wages. Why did they not get the Australian wages? He did not think that the contribution was sufficiently spread. He would suggest that the whole of the wage earners—from the highest to the lowest—should make a moderate contribution. They were interested in it. The machine rock driller went to the face and risked his life. The big salaries which were paid above ground came from the work of the machine rock-driller, who was gradually losing his life. However, he thought they all should contribute—moderately. The amount paid Europeans on the mines in wages was £8,226,000. Let them take 2½ per cent. of that—6d. in the £—which was not very much. That would come to about £205,000 in the course of a year. Then let the mine holders—the shareholders—pay an equal sum, and they would get £410,000, which would not press unduly on anybody, and be a fair basis. He would go further, though he knew he would get into not water with his friend the Treasurer. He (the Treasurer) did not convince him the other day in his speech on bewaarplaatsen. (Laughter.) He (the speaker) had been reading the report of the Commission, and it did not seem to him that it went too far. By the report, the Treasurer found it clear that half the amount of money was due to him. Let them take the other half and put it into the fund. The Treasurer was convulsed; but if they did so they would have all the money they wanted. It did not seem to him to be a bad policy, but one that was worthy of consideration. Taking the figures of the salaries and wages which were paid, he did not think that if the Government acted on his suggestion they would be making an extravagant claim on one section of the community. It did not seem to him to be wrong to ask all the people to pay 6d. in the £ on their wages. It was a very small percentage on the dividends. How would it work? He had a number of figures dealing with the men and their wages on a particular mine. There were 56 machine men, who drew each close on £400 a year. They had some learners. Well, he must say that, after reading the report, he felt very sorry for the learners who only got £105 a year. There were 191 underground men who got 17s. 10d. per day, or £256 a year. If they took all the men in the mine and worked it out, each got £280 a year, which he thought enormous wages. When they tried to put these men on the same basis as industrial insurance in England, they found that not one of these men would come into the scheme. They would be income-tax payers. They would be paying for insurance and not receiving it. That was the whole difference. In Australia a miner got from £2 to £2 10s. a week. These wages were always double here, and when they asked him to put these men on the same basis as a poor man struggling for a bare subsistence—well, no man in his senses could agree to that. A man getting £400 a year ought to have made some provision for his wife and family. He was sorry to say that in many instances they had not done so. What percentage of the population got £400 a year? It was very small. If they gave the men drawing these high wages their mere pound of flesh he was afraid that some of them would go rather short. Leaving wages outside their view, they found that the minute these men left their occupation they led a miserable existence, as described in the report. It was wrong, but when people were in that state they did not go narrowly into the question of whether they were wrong or not. That they should contribute seemed nothing but plain and common justice. Knowing that the discussion was to be raised, he had been looking into the matter, and he supposed his friend the Minister had often noticed the same thing, and that was the enormous number of accidents on the Witwatersrand mines. He had taken the trouble to take the large number of, men working on the Witwatersrand mines and comparing it with the total number of men working in the gold mines in the Commonwealth of Australia. There were three and a half times as many killed in the Union of South Africa as there were in the Commonwealth. That was a very serious thing. And when they remembered that 988 people were killed by accident every year on the mines on the Rand, and that there were no inquests in the whole of the Transvaal—(hear, hear)—he said it was a blot on our civilisation, one that should be removed at the earliest possible date. They were so fond of talking of the consolidation of laws. There should be a uniform inquest law for the whole of South Africa. He would not say there was no official inquiry—the Minister would probably tell him there was a Mining Department inquiry. They talked about protection in the mines, but how were they to have that unless, they had inquests, where the Magistrate would take down evidence, and in the case of a preventable accident bring to book the negligent party, and so have such things prevented in the future. It seemed to him to be one of their greatest blots in the civilisation of this country of which we were so proud.

One word more. It was on the question of the natives. Little was said in that book (the Commission’s report) about the natives; little! Nothing! Yet those people were always in the most dangerous places. The House was asked to believe that they did not get phthisis. These natives were hustled off to their homes, and died there. They were proud to say that they were exercising a general control over 204,000 of these people. They were not considered worth while to be represented in that House. Hon. members represented them and took a paternal care of them! There was not much evidence of paternal care in that book. They were now dealing solely with the white people. The native did the work. If there was a dusty place the native was put into it; the miner got as far from it as he could. Who ran the drill machines? The native. Who did all the worst work of shovelling? The native. Yet they said nothing about him. It was one of the most serious things in this country, because not only were these affected natives a source of danger to themselves. These poor wretches, who were as ignorant as children, knew nothing of tuberculosis. Not only were they a source of danger to themselves, but to the whites, because they left the mines and spread the dreadful disease all over the country. There was no examination of them. He hoped that there would be now. Because it seemed to him that, seeing we claimed to be the superior race and had these people in our charge, it was nothing but our duty to look after them. He should be sorry to see any of his friends treat his children as they did these natives on the mines. They were shocked the other day when his hon. friend the Minister of Native Affairs read out some figures. This report had shocked him a great deal more. But let them take the two together and think of what they were doing for these natives. Their relative numbers were eight times as many natives as whites on the mines. It was rather curious when they looked at the wages paid—and the figures he would read would put them down at the very foundation stone of the industry. The white people got £8,226,000; the natives’ share was £5,488,000. Surely with those figures before them and the fact that they could not carry on the mines without the native, surely they owed them some debt, and it was right that their case should be inquired into. He hoped that it would be, and that some care would be taken to show that we did recognise the duty we owed them in this South Africa of ours. The whole system was built up on native labour. They knew it. It was a misfortune, but it was so. They were obliged to build it up on native labour. If they had no natives the mines could not go on for a week. Let them just think of the responsibility on their shoulders. He knew that his hon. friend (Sir Lionel Phillips) was anxious to discharge his duties as master, but he urged him to study the question of phthisis as it affected the natives. It would be cheap in the end. We were not only exposing them to the disease. What were we doing for their lives and their morals? Let them read the police court reports in the Johannesburg papers, of the traps set to take these miserable fellows, and to corrupt them. He had his pocket full of cuttings from these police reports, showing how white people made a prey of these natives, and taught them crime. Then we thought we were doing our duty to them, and said that because of the conditions in Johannesburg the same care could not be taken of them as was done in Kimberley. He said that it was a scandal. We were teaching them to spread vice and crime and disease in every kraal in South Africa, and then we called ourselves a superior race, and imagined that we were doing our duty to these natives.

He took that opportunity of drawing attention to that fact because it was a blot upon their system. Now he considered himself that they were going to have a serious effect that year and what his hon. friend said—that that would have a very far-reaching effect—was quite true—to contemplate the turning adrift of a large number of the present miners. They could not get on without them. They were there now drawing their large salaries because they would not allow the natives to do that work. There were managers who said that they could work with one-tenth of the white labour if they could utilise their natives to the fullest extent, but he could see, unless they could arrange that thing upon a system of mutual insurance and upon the mutual importance of the mines, that they were going to have a crisis in the mining trade, and that he did not want. One of the first remedies they had got to adopt—because it was more important to have a remedy than patch up afterwards and pay conscience money—was to have an inquest law, so that they could know what was going on and have an inquiry conducted by an impartial man. The second thing was to have dust arresters; and no effort should be spared to have dust arresters, as well as ventilation, gone into. They should enforce the law—(hear, hear)—which he saw they had got in England in the Coal Mines Bill, with regard to dust arresters. The right hon. member quoted from a section of that Bill, which was to the effect that the owner, agent, or manager of the mine should be deemed guilty of contravening the Act—unless he could prove that he had used every reasonable means to prevent that contravention—if any drill, driven by mechanical power, were used to drill silicate rock, and a water jet or other efficient means were not used to allay the dust. Proceeding, he said that they wanted that rigidly enforced on the Rand, and they wanted something more than half-hearted supervision. They wanted most able men as inspectors, and a strong staff of them, and the Government must pay a large sum to get them. At present accounts reached him that the inspection was not what it ought to be. Such evidence was not allowed to creep out into the papers, and it was seldom allowed to creep out, and there was hardly a case which did not show that there had been an absence of proper inspection. He dared say that they had good men, but they had not enough of them, and he had got complaints all round that the system of inspection in the mines was lax, and not looked after as it ought to be. The right hon. gentleman went on to read an extract with regard to miners’ phthisis and the meaning of it. It stated that “Every mine on the Rand is affected by this scarcity of good men, and to my mind the industry is as hard, if not harder, hit by the scarcity of really skilled white underground workers as it is by the much more generally recognised scarcity of unskilled labourers. And to what is this scarcity attributable? There can but be one answer—miners’ phthisis. This hits at the root of everything. Miners’ phthisis is destroying our best miners just when they are reaching the point when they are most valuable to the industry. After seven or eight years underground there are but few, if any, who come out untainted with this dread disease. We should by this time have a reservoir of good experienced men from which to draw—men who have had good experience here and have decided to make this country their home—but what do we find in the reservoir after all these years during which our mining industry has been going—nothing but miners’ phthisis. It hits us in every direction. We must pay bigger wages to try and blind men to the risk which they take. We get inefficiency in most of our underground work despite our tremendous wages. We find our Rand filled with miners who don’t mean to make the country their home, but only come to snatch what they can from the jaws of disease, and we find the very heavy accident rate under which we labour, and which we try to attribute to a hundred and one things, but which lies really at the door of phthisis—a door, mark you, which can be closed if the effort is made.”

These, he added, were serious words, and had been written by a mining manager. Proceeding, he said that they in this House were very much like the children before the flood—they ate, drank, and made merry—and then the flood came on Everyone of them who had got to legislate on the subject was responsible for that; and do let them remember that it was life or death to the people they were legislating for to-day. Let them remember what the poet said about the Sixth Commandment: “Thou shalt not kill, but halt not strive officiously to keep alive.” They let these people die. They were now building up a nation. But upon what were they building up a nation if they built it up upon things like this, which they had before them, and for which they had got a means of redress if they used it? He hoped this Bill would go through. He would recommend his hon. friend to get the largest and most representative committee he could, so that they might discuss these details, not on the floor of the House, where it was sometimes very difficult, but in a committee, so as to try and knock out some tangible thing to put an end to what they all felt was a great national evil. (Cheers.)

said that he had hoped to have an earlier opportunity of addressing the House, so that the two sides of this question might be put before it. He recognised, however, that the hon. member who sat in front of him (Sir L. Phillips) had made undying efforts to have this matter dealt with by legislation, if it could possibly be done. The right hon. gentleman (Mr. Merriman) had expressed a hope that this would not be made an occasion for an envenomed attack upon any other section of the House. That was wholly unnecessary. He hoped that in the remarks he had to address to the House he should avoid anything which might prejudice the arguments they had to use. Fine phrases, “mooi praatjes,” did not do much good to those who were outside that House, and who depended upon the results of the decisions at which the House arrived. Every day they had been sitting there since this Parliament first met, from the beginning of last session, something like three or four men had been falling by the wayside having to leave their work with a few months of suffering and distress before they faced the end, so that he did not think the House would grudge any time for a thorough thrashing out of this subject. But what was the position to be dealt with? The Commission—and he would like to associate himself most heartily with the remarks of the Minister as to the tremendous debt which that House and the country owed to the Commissioners who had placed this very valuable report before them—had found that something like 32 per cent. of the underground workers were in some degree or other suffering from this disease. They found that, as to 26 per cent. of those, their expectation of life or physical capacity was very materially affected, and those in classes 3 and 4, to which the right hon. gentleman had referred, had only a mean expectation of life of one and a half to two years. Further, that melancholy army was every day being recruited from the ranks of the 68 per cent. who at the time of examination were not suffering from the disease.

Now, on this basis, he was going to examine the position, so far as this Bill laid down, with regard to compensation. Let them look at its pecuniary action. Taking the last return of the Government Mining Engineer, published in February last, there were 10,678 men working underground, excluding samplers, etc. According to that, it would appear that there were something like 2,000 or 2,300 in what they called stage “A,” corresponding to sub-section (a) of the benefits clause of the Bill and 400 or 500 in the second stage would come up for the higher scale of compensation. Added to these, they had the people who were not working to-day, people who had to leave off during the last few months. They had to make an addition of a few hundreds for those. If, as the right hon. gentleman indicated, they were going to take all these people out of the mines and take such measures as would make the whole of them come up for compensation at once, it would mean a very difficult crisis in the mining industry. That they all recognised. But he just wanted to point out to the House that, if this question were dealt with on sound lines, much as they might desire to see every man who was subject to this risk come out of the mines, they would not, possibly, be consulting the real wishes of the persons themselves. If this matter were not dealt with on sound lines, the ordinary tendencies, they might be certain, would continue to act. The men in class 2, large numbers of them—they knew what human nature was—would still go on rather than take medical advice and face the inevitable that would dome afterwards. In the Bill they had before them, he would put it to the House that, so far from opening any door to these men, under clause 2, to induce them to leave the mines and get into some other occupation, this Bill did everything possible to tell them to keep at their work as long as they possibly could. (Hear, hear.) Take the majority of them, they were not able to earn their living in any other occupation. They went into this work attracted, no doubt, by the high wages, but also in many other cases because of the lack of other openings and finding that that was a place in which they had a good chance of earning a living. This Bill, if passed into law, would place this before them, if they went and claimed compensation they would only get £8 a month, it might be that they lived another year, and after that an absolute prohibition of any opportunity of earning their living in that direction again.

Business was suspended at 6 p.m.

said he wanted to point out what a mockery the Minister’s proposals were. Those who would have the right to benefits under section (a) were those whose physical capacities were impaired, but who might have a long life if they left the mines. What were they to do under the Minister’s proposals? Take a young man who had been mining seven or eight years, and whose capacity was becoming impaired. Not having any money, he was offered by the Minister £8 a month for a year in which to look around to find something else to do. Again, let them take the case of a man with a wife and family. Last May he met a miner who was married and had a family. This man told him that as he had miners’ phthisis he was trying to find some other occupation. He (Mr. Creswell) met the man again seven or eight months later, when his condition was worse, and the man told him that he had to go back to the mines as the little business he had started had proved unsuccessful. Although the man was told that he was incurring grave risks by so doing he had to go underground simply in order to obtain food for his family. The men under class (b) were to get £8 a month if they lived, and in the event of their death the widow was to get £3 a month for ten years and £1 a month for each child until it attained the age of 16. The expectation of life of the men in section 4 was only from 18 months to two years. The men were exceedingly reluctant to admit that they were beaten, and they remained at work very much longer than they ought. How could a man with, say, only 12 months’ life remaining, exist on £8 a month with a wife and family to clothe and feed and house rent to pay? Then the widow and children, £3 per month and £1 for each child. Did anyone who knew the Rand think that was a sum on which a woman and her children could live? It might be said, and possibly with reason, that the small amount would assist her towards earning a bit to eke it out. But could they? There was the case he brought to their notice the other day of a widow who had received some allowance from the Miners’ Phthisis Board who had started a small boarding-house, but owing to the boarders being ordered back to the miners’ mess she was unable to carry on. He had no doubt her case would be put right by a member to whom he had spoken, but it was not every case that reached the ears of the House or of those at the very top of the mining hierarchy. And hon. members must remember in contemplating these provisions that the road was an exceedingly difficult one for women and children in that position. So he thought on the grounds of the inadequacy of these proposals they had the most just possible grounds for condemning them. Now he came to the injustice of the proposals. He had asked himself frequently: What was this Bill? Was it insurance, compensation, or what was it? It was not insurance on any terms which would commend themselves to any business man in the House. Supposing the hon. members for Cape Town, Central (Mr. J. W. Jagger), for Randfontein (Mr. J. W. Langerman) were machine-men, would they insure themselves in any institution on the terms laid down here? According to the report of the Miners’ Phthisis Commission, the average time a man was at work before he came into that class to be paid earlier compensation was 6½ years, and he had to pay £18 per year. At the end of that time he had paid £117 into the fund, and the scheme offered him £8 per month for 12 months, or, in all, £96—less than he paid into the fund, leaving alone interest. Was that just? Then supposing a man said it was not good enough and he was going to gamble with life a little longer. They found from the Commission’s report the average working life in classes 3 and 4 was 9 1-3 years, and £18 per year for that period amounted to £168.

If he claimed compensation at that stage he got £8 per month for life, which according to the report was placed at 1½ to 2 years—he got £168 back without a farthing interest. Then there was a gruesome provision that in case a man died while he was a beneficiary under this Act, the Board could contribute as much as £10 to his funeral. According to the record, he thought the chance of a man living for 21 months was very small, and it did seem to him a gruesome mockery to say they could give him £10 towards his funeral. He wanted the House to bear in mind that for a single man, every single penny he got was money he had paid in himself, less the ordinary interest that would accrue; but if he was a married man and had a wife and two children, the widow and two children got £3 and £1 for each child, unless the widow remarried or the children reached the age of 16 years. He had worked it out, but not having the benefit of the actuarial report, it made him a little high. He worked it out to ten years, whereas the actuarial report gave eight years. At the time of the payment, the value would be about £400. What it meant was that taking a machine man, whether he was married or single, under this scheme he paid every farthing of the money he got back—without interest. The fund was the beneficiary, and not the man. After his death his wife received an annuity, and it meant that at the time the claim was put in to the Board it was valued at £400, the whole of which was paid by the mine owners. And seeing that only 57 per cent. were married men with a family, it appeared that the mine owners’ contributions were extraordinarily small. Therefore the widow and children were left with a pittance which was wholly inadequate. He was trying to impress upon the House the injustice of these proposals. One injustice was the amount of benefit derived as against the amount that was contributed by the men. There was a further injustice perpetrated by the Government. Let them take the distribution of the payments; and he went on to point out that the contract system underground was piece-work of the most evil character. It was this contract work that made men take greater risks. These piece-work machine men were, according to the evidence, the greatest charge on the fund. They paid the same as the day men of the same class. All the men paid the same amount. The men who took great risks paid the same as the men whose work was less risky. All paid 15s. a month from the highest to the lowest—the shift boss at £35 a month or the labourer at £10 a month. He had been treating this as a proposal of insurance, and he hoped he had shown that as an insurance proposal it was a mockery and a farce to put such a proposal before a man who possessed a reasonable amount of common sense. What would any hon. member of that House say if an insurance company came to him, asked him to join an insurance scheme, and said that the whole of the payments would not go to an accumulated fund, but would be used for the purpose of paying liabilities that had already been incurred. The Government in its better days recognised that such a principle was inadmissible. The money that was paid in would be used for the purpose of paying the claims of those who contracted the disease in the past. He wanted to recall the Government to its senses and better principles. The Minister of the Interior, when he was Minister of Mines, said, when he moved the second reading of the last Bill, “Contributions were to start at a later date. In the cases of those at present suffering from the disease the contributions would only be paid by the employers and the Government.” Then there was the hon. member for Germiston, whom he also claimed as an ally on this point, who said: “It was not suggested that they should be asked to participate in the expenses.” The more this question was studied in the comfortable offices of the Minister the more the views of the Government corresponded with the views that were held in the comfortable offices of the Chamber of Mines. Although there was a great deal of injustice with regard to the European workers the Government had still a degree of principle left in dealing with the natives. Here he thought the House would recognise the touch of the Minister of Native Affairs, whom they knew could put his foot down in defending the rights of those he was protecting. How had the Government got in to this hopeless mess—if this were a hopeless mess? The proposals were absurd, unjust, and inadequate, as between the white and the coloured man and against the white man. He went on to quote the Minister of the Interior as saying that he did not wish for a fund.

The onus was placed upon the employer to reduce accidents to the fewest possible. They were regarded as incidental to employment, and compensation had to be paid by the employer. In the case of occupational disease, compensation had to be paid by the employer. He recalled the Government to their innocent days, when they were more closely in touch with the electorate, and drew more for their principles from their own consciences. Before the General Election, the Minister of Railways and the Minister of the Interior had declared that miners’ phthisis should fall under the Workmen’s Compensation Act, while the Prime Minister pledged the Government to protect the miner and to see that the disease fell under the Act. Why had the Government abandoned their position? The first departure—a minor one—was contained in the Bill brought forward last year. The Government shrank from giving justice to the poor man at the expense of the wealthy man. What they asked for was compensation, not insurance, to be paid wholly by the employer; they wanted compensation, not charity. (Labour cheers.) These principles were, to some extent, contained in the first Bill. Let them examine the arguments used in the House which caused the Government to surrender. First of all, he would take the minor reasons. The hon. member for Cape Town, Central, said that there was no reason for the Government to contribute, as the underground men and the mineowners divided the wealth between them. The right hon. member for Victoria. West had enlarged upon that. The right hon. gentleman disclaimed the designation of Tory, and owned to that of a Whig. He thought he would agree that the oldest of Whig principles was: no taxation without representation. If these men were taxed, they should also have some say, exclusively from the rest of the public, as to how the industry was to be managed. After allowing for wages and dividends, a sum of 15 millions remained, and they had to consider that, besides the underground worker benefiting, there were others, such as the man who made the dynamite, and the man who sold limbo to the natives. Following that line of argument, it appeared that if they were going to tax the men, they must exact that contribution not only from the men immediately employed, but from the whole State. When they were only coming half-way and only picking out a few of these men, and say that they were to be taxed, they said that so much of that Bill was what many hon. members had accused them of doing—it was nothing but a piece of class legislation. The Minister had harped on these men getting so much money; and one had seen a speech by Sir George Albu—that great authority on mining—who said that the men averaged between £35 and £50 per month. The actual facts were these: The report of the Government Mining Engineer—last December’s figures—showed that the piecework hands, who constituted 25 per cent. of the whole underground force, averaged £35-£42 per month, working every day of the month all the year round. Nine and a half per cent., including supervisors and shift bosses, received between £27 10s. and £35: 60 per cent. of the workers underground received less than £27; 38 per cent. less than £25; 28½ per cent. less than £20; and 40½ per cent. less than £12. He asked whether hon. members who were well off and were injured did not claim compensation; and when they did not then he would be prepared to discuss the reasonableness of what they said. As to what the hon. member for Yeoville had said about the miners squandering the money they had received as compensation in the canteens and on the racecourse, in every collection of men they would find those who were improvident, but the hon. member had no right to say that of the miners as a class. The hon. member had also said that it was a great injustice on the mineowners to ask a measure to be enacted which would place upon them the necessity for compensating men who had come here already diseased. As if men would come to the Rand when they knew they were to die of that disease The Commission had stated that a thorough investigation of the returns showed no evidence that men seriously affected with miners’ phthisis were recruited—individual cases did come, but it was not a factor of general importance. The hon. member had said that tuberculosis and miners’ phthisis were so mixed up that it could not be regarded as an occupational disease.

He wanted the House to go back to the position it was in April last. After quoting from the speeches of the hon. members for Yeoville (Sir L. Phillips), Germiston (Mr. Chaplin) Beaconsfield (Sir D. Harris), and Beaufort West (Dr. Neethling), he said doctors proverbially differed, but he thought the House was bound to accept the verdict of the strong Medical Commission which was appointed to go into this matter. He would read to the House a few extracts from the report of the Commission. They said: “Pure tuberculosis of the lungs undoubtedly occurs to a certain extent amongst underground workers particularly. But such cases are not miners’ phthisis.” “The return from the general examination showed that amongst miners unaffected with silicosis, and therefore appearing in class I., 0.69 had tuberculosis. … We may, therefore, conclude that tuberculosis amongst miners at work who have silicosis is comparatively rare.” Then, on pp. 24 and 25 they had an exceedingly able analysis of the question as to whether this may be regarded as an occupational disease specific to the employment. He said that that House would not go wrong if they accepted, and would go clearly wrong if they refused to accept, the clear finding of this able Commission on that point. “We consider,” said the Commission, “that miners’ phthisis in the sense in which we have defined it is a definite, and in its intermediate and advanced stages a sufficiently distinguishable, trade disease, specific to the employment in the gold mines of the Rand. We consider also that a pure tuberculosis occurring in a miner cannot be so regarded.” (Hear, hear.) Hon. members on the Opposition side of the House asked for a Commission; the Government, in response to their arguments, had gone from their old ground and appointed a Commission, and that Commission had found that hon. members were wrong, and he called upon the Government again to go back to the position in which they were at the time of the election and give judgment according to the verdict of the jury. Mr. Creswell next dealt with the objection that was raised against the treatment of miners’ phthisis on the basis of workmen’s compensation, viz., that it was the men’s own fault. He quoted from the speeches brought forward in support of this view, and remarked that against that they had the arguments which he and his colleagues brought forward that the conditions which produced the disease were conditions which were outside the control of the men. They had the support of the hon. member for Boksbung, who said that he did not see why the miners should contribute. The Minister had now changed his views; he had climbed down from the position that he took up formerly. It was stated by the valuable Commission appointed that some of the men were careless and culpable, but because a few were culpable and careless, was that any reason for finding them all culpable and careless? In view of the verdict that had been given he asked the House to dismiss from their minds this charge of recklessness. If this disease were not a critical factor, what would it matter whether the men were careless or not? He had gone carefully over the main heads of the arguments that had been laid before the House last year, and from the right position which they took up the Government seemed to have departed. The hon. member for Yeoville said that the attitude they took up was not because they did not want to pay their full share of responsibility, while the member for Germiston, who obviously was representing the mining houses, said they were willing to pay their share, and had said that a hundred times over. As it was clearly proved that the owners’ fair share was the whole, let them stand by their responsibility. He believed that the Minister who moved the second reading of this Bill was a member of a great Church, a Church which he (Mr. Creswell) respected highly. He could not believe that that Church would endorse such an action as taking £150,000 a year out of the pockets of the workmen. To change the canticle, if they said, “Ye have given the wealthy all good things, but ye have sent the poor empty away,” that, he believed, would aptly describe the situation.

They still hoped that the Government had a remnant of conscience left. They hoped that the Government would take the right course at last and see that the Bill was amended in the proper way. They (the Labour party) did not propose to vote against the Bill, but to place on the paper amendments which would show the House the lines on which they believed the question should be dealt with. He earnestly asked members to consider this matter fairly and dispassionately, and to give the amendments their most serious consideration. They had been told that their criticisms were destructive, but he would point out the lines on which he would ask the Government to accept amendments. They had two objects. The first was to get rid of this frightful scourge by placing the whole of the liability on the mine owners, for thus they would bring the strongest automatic pressure to bear on those who alone could prevent the occurrence of miners’ phthisis. They wanted to proceed on the principle that the money payments should be regarded as compensation. That was the only possible way in which they could hope to bring about a permanent amelioration. The Minister should recognise what the Commission brought out as a suspicion, that it was not so much the machine dust as the blasting dust that did the damage. (Hear, hear.) The machine dust would have been got rid of long ago if the mine owners had to pay compensation. Was the dust caused by drills or by dynamite explosions? The identification of the liability for this disease with rock-drill work was probably due to something which was incidental, not so much to rock-drill work, but to development work, when the dust was allowed to accumulate in the workings. Attention should be paid to devising a system of ventilation—an articulated system—which would suck the air into pipes and take it right out of circulation. Such a scheme would involve expenditure, but schemes of that sort were the only ones which eventually would bring about the abolition of this fell disease. Merely to schedule the disease under the Workmen’s Compensation Act would not meet any of the difficulties. The principle of that Act was right, but the Bill must provide proper machinery clauses. (Hear, hear.) They did not want to pass an Act merely to enrich the lawyers. They would be inclined to accept the idea of a Board, only with very different functions from those proposed by the Minister. The Board, having satisfied itself that a claimant had contracted the disease in a mine within a specified time, should pay out a certain sum without the intervention of an attorney.

Let the Board have the function of paying out. The second function should be to recover from the employers, in proportion to which they were liable, the amounts so paid out, and thirdly, they did not agree that this was to be looked upon as charity to be doled out. They did recognise, however, that there was something to be said for establishing some authority which would act towards the men who had dependants as a sort of solicitor or benevolent trustee. The Board should have the function of paying out either the annuity or a lump sum at the discretion of the claimant, but it should exert the influence which a family solicitor would have, and advise him how he should deal with it; but the ultimate decision should rest with the man. Then they did not want them to wait. Surely it should be sufficient in establishing machinery such as this to provide that when a claimant had satisfied first of all the medical advisers that he was in a state which entitled him to compensation, and secondly by the Board that he had worked underground, he should not have to wait for his money. So they suggested that the Board should be endowed with a certain sum; an initial sum of £50,000; not on so much a man basis, but, say, on a penny per ton of the rock hoisted on the Witwatersrand. That would give £10,000 per month. In six months they would have £60,000. The sums to be awarded should be on the same basis as existed on the Witwatersrand in the case of an accident under the Transvaal Workmen’s Compensation Act. Let those under Class A receive the sum allotted for total partial disablement, £375, or 1½ years’ wages, whichever be the lesser sum; and those under the other classes receive the sum allotted for permanent total disablement, £750, or three years’ wages, whichever be the lesser sum. What liability did that place upon the mines? The actuarial report brought out the sum of £728,000. On the basis of 12,000 men being employed underground, the Commission anticipated that some 1,000 men would come up for compensation, or 7½ per cent. They would say, that a matter of 800 would come up for higher compensation. Under the Minister’s clause he thought they might rake it as absolutely certain that hardly any man was going to get himself medically examined and pronounced unfit for the sake of £8 per month for 12 months, and a prohibition from ever exercising his calling there again. Under the scheme of £375 it might affect a man more than the Minister had in view. It might persuade a man to get out and make for another part of the country, and keep him long enough to enable him to take up some other occupation. But he would put down the probable number of men who would apply in that class at 400 or 500, so if they put the liability at £750,000 he did not think they would be placing it very wide of the marsk. Was that too much to insist upon the mine owners to pay?

It might be said that this was not a heavy burden to place upon the mines. They took this ground—that if all the dividends for one year—the seven millions and more—were hypothecated for this purpose for one year it would not be taxing the mines one farthing more than the merits of the case deserved. It had been argued that, by coming down on the mines they were hitting at shareholders—parsons and widows, and so forth—but when these facts became known in Europe the conscience of the country would tell against the price of those shares. Another difficulty that had been presented was the case of a man who had been in more than one company’s employ, but they might say that the payment should be in proportion to the period which the man had been in the company’s employ. Then there were the cases of liquidated mines and those which had become absorbed in other companies. Let the company that acquired the assets of other mines meet the liabilities of those mines as well as take over the assets. With regard to medical examination, he thought that the House should face the matter squarely. At the present time it was not the custom to examine miners. Let it be within the power of every mineowner to demand from a man wishing to enter his employ a certificate of health, not from the company’s own doctor—he did not say this out of disrespect to the professional gentlemen concerned, and they would see this later—but from one of the medical officers attached to this Board. The certificate which prevented a man earning his livelihood on the mine would act as a document for the Board to consider his case. Then it was argued that the good employer—the employer who attended to the welfare of his men—would suffer by the actions of the bad employer. Any company that took care of its men would not employ a man who came from a bad company, and the men would recognise this fact and act accordingly. The speaker went on to refer to the reports of Commissions in other countries, and said the House had not been told that the Labour Ministry had put this West Australian report into effect. He thought that the precedent which had been quoted might be dismissed, for the state of affairs which prevailed on the Rand and the state of affairs which existed in other countries were entirely different things. He appealed to the Prime Minister and he appealed to the members of the Ministry to see that the exigencies of Parliamentary business did not delay the passing of this measure. It was a matter that must be dealt with urgently, and he asked that there should not be the slightest delay.

He referred to the admission made by the Minister of the Interior last session that a serious responsibility rested on the country in this matter. It was about time that the blot was removed, and the matter dealt with, not from the point of view of seeing how the wealthy would be let off, but to give adequate compensation to the poor man. The Minister of Railways also said that a continuance of the prevailing conditions would be criminal. They had sat still for a year. There should not be more delay for the sake of filthy lucre. Let the Minister take these amendments and ask himself whether they did not really meet the case infinitely better than the Bill. The right hon. member for Victoria West alluded to his having addressed a meeting in Johannesburg during the recess. He had been mistaken in his remarks, not that he (the speaker) would not have been quite justified in addressing such a meeting, and he made ‘no apologies for his action. But it had been thought best that the feelings of the miners on the Rand should be expressed spontaneously. He had recognised that the men who were to receive this pittance were not members of the House, and he went to hear their views. He made a final appeal for these considerations of filthy lucre to be left out of the question, and for the Government to consider only what was right and just to the men. He appealed to the Prime Minister to abide by his election pledges, and to see that compensation was awarded to these people on the lines of accident compensation, as laid down in the Transvaal measure. The question was of equal importance in its political aspect. It admitted of no subterfuge. The demands of justice, the rights of men who were wage-earners and citizens of this country, were in question, and the securing of justice for these men should come first in the eyes of hon. members, or did the convenience of the wealthy and the powerful come first when they were forming their judgment? Were they going to do justice? Were they going to look after the lives of their citizens, or were they going to think of the effect his proposals would have on the mining industry as represented by a few men in that House? He believed that hon. members on both sides were much more than mere party politicians, and they could appeal to them with some degree of confidence to take the amendments, consider them on their merits, and give them hearty support. (Cheers.)

welcomed the assurance given by the Minister of Mines that the Government were at last determined to take some active measures to prevent what was, after all, a preventable disease. Last session the Minister said that the Government had received notice of the serious nature of the disease, and yet they had failed to take steps to alleviate it. He was glad that the Minister acknowledged that they had been remiss. It seemed to him that the Government had failed in the essential principle of good government, which was, after all, the protection of the lives of the people. He had predicted that the report of the Commission would make startling reading. And was it not startliner to read that 32 per cent of the underground workers were affected with this disease?

He believed that if they had a Department of Public Health the disease of miners’ phthisis would not have obtained the great hold on the miners of the Rand which it had. The hon. member for Jeppe had drawn a pathetic picture of the cases of the widows and children—of the men who had died of the disease—a picture not overdrawn; but as to filling the mines with white labour, he forgot that the natives recuperated for six months, while the poor white miners could not afford to do so, and got no chance. He would like to impress upon the Minister the importance and the urgent necessity of taking precautions to prevent that disease. Attention should be paid to better ventilation, the laying of dust and better housing accommodation, because he thought that there was no more prolific cause of the spread of tuberculosis than some of the rooms he had seen—built back to back without adequate ventilation. As to the contribution, in his opinion the employee ought to go free and the State ought to be called upon to contribute towards that fund. The Minister had said that one of the most important points which had influenced him in asking the men to contribute was to bring home to them the risks that they ran. The report stated that 32 per cent. of the men suffered from that disease, and if that did not bring home to them the risks, he did not know anything which would do more. The Commissioners had said that it was an occupational disease, and he accepted their statement, because it was quite in accord with his knowledge of the subject; and therefore he said that the men should not be called upon to contribute anything towards the fund. The right hon. member for Victoria West (Mr. Merriman) had asked on what principle the State should contribute. He replied that as the State derived such a great benefit from the mining industry it should pay its share towards the fund, because the mines practically contributed seven-tenths of the revenue of the country, and without them the country would be practically bankrupt. The second reason was that up to the present the Government of the country had absolutely failed in their duty to the country in regard to the disease. The third reason was that the Government were practically partners in the industry. The hon. member for Jeppe had said that he wanted the full burden to fall on the employers. He thought that would be wrong, because it would recoil on the men; and if the employers were to pay £6 and £3 per man respectively, it would lead to a reduction in the wages of the men. He hoped when the Bill came into committee an amendment would be moved in the direction of changing the incidence of the contributions.

said that he hoped they would have some expression of opinion from hon. members on the other side of the House with regard to this Bill. He welcomed the Bill. He traced the history of the question, and remarked that upon successive Governments in the Transvaal first and upon the Union Government afterwards a great responsibility rested, because the state of affairs which was now so appalling apparently in the eyes of the House was revealed to the world in the middle of 1903. In 1903 they knew that the condition of affairs was as bad as it appeared from the report of the Commission just issued. Therefore, nothing, in his opinion, could absolve the Government from blame or from taking a share of the responsibility. He had hitherto, he was bound to admit, been unable to satisfy himself that they could class this as an occupational disease, but he wanted to impress this upon the House, that in considering this last report the gentlemen composing the Commission had at their disposal not only material but means to diagnose which were not vouchsafed to any of the previous investigators, and further, they had a report from England of a few years back and reports from Australia also, not quite so recent as this, and he must certainly, not only as a member of that House, but as a member of the profession to which these gentlemen belonged, pay the highest attention to the report which they had presented. He was bound to tell the House that, as a result of the investigations which he had formerly carried out in association with a gentleman who was one of the most influential members of the recent Commission, they felt, in justice to all parties concerned, that they should advocate a tripartite arrangement in reference to contributions to the fund, but in view of the fact that this Commission had, decidedly and without any hesitation, classified it as an occupational disease, he was bound to change his mind and to admit that the fund should not call upon the men to contribute. In view of what he knew of the negligence of successive Governments and also in view of the share which the Government derived from the profits of the industry, he thought the Government should contribute a share of the contributions. He regretted that the right hon. the member for Victoria West should have made any implication that the natives were badly treated on the mines. He did not think that talk of that sort would help the solution of this intricate problem. He hoped the Government would take the view that they had a serious responsibility in the matter. He did not think there was any need for undue alarm at the magnitude of the disease, as disclosed by the report of the Commission, because they must remember that they were now called upon to face a legacy of at least nine years. In the report submitted in 1903 they predicted that if there were a continuance of the conditions then prevailing on the mines, when the miners had died who were then dying off so plentifully, they would have a fresh recrudescence of the disease after the lapse of nine or ten years, and sure enough that prediction had come true. He hoped they would see effect given in this matter in the direction which everyone who had investigated the disease had advocated, that was that the disease was preventable.

said he was glad that the right hon. member for Victoria West had forcibly pleaded for consideration for the natives in this matter, and to see that there was some reference to the natives in the Bill, and that they were also going to receive compensation. Their compensation, however, he found was to be as set down in the Native Labour Regulations Act, but when he turned to that Act, he, found the compensation for partial in capacitation was ridiculously small. It amounted to not less than £1, and not more than £20 in one lump sum. There was no comparison at all between the amount to be paid to the native and the amount paid to the white worker. He hoped the Minister would endeavour to remedy this. At the same time it must be remembered that it was not proposed to call on the native workers to contribute. As had been well said by the hon. member for Boksburg, the natives did not suffer from this disease in the same way as the white men, because they returned to their own homes to recuperate after six or nine months’ work; but he had advocated, and he hoped the Government would insist, that a native should not work underground more than nine months out of the year, and would prohibit his re-employment underground within six months from the time he had been previously so employed. If this were done, he was sure it would largely prevent phthisis among the natives in the goldfields. He wished that white miners could be prevent red by law from working underground more than a certain number of years. He felt that the Government might make a certain contribution towards this fund. They received a considerable amount of taxation from the mines. The Government received ten per cent. of the profits, and he thought they ought to contribute a tenth of the amount payable by the mine owners; but, if the miners were relieved from all responsibility, they might become more careless than they were at the present time. As to the proportion to be paid by the employers he thought that it was rather high. Two-thirds would be fairer than three-fourths. What he really desired to say, however, was that he hoped the Government would make such amendments as would make the measure more just to the natives.

said that matters coming from the Rand did not occupy the attention of the House that they ought, seeing what the Rand was to the community and to the State. When hon. members pleaded the cause of those they represented, they were charged with touting for votes or with speaking from purely personal motives. It had been admitted that the present prosperity of South Africa was due to the mining industry in the North. Every man, woman, and child in South Africa had benefited, or would benefit, by that great industry. It would be a calamity if that great industry were to close down. But when hon. members came to speak on a question affecting the lives and welfare of the men who had built up the great prosperity of South Africa, they found those empty benches. It was a very lamentable thing. (Hear, hear.) Was it conceivable that the State owed no duty to the men who had helped to build up that great industry in the North? Was it possible that there were persons who took such a narrow, parochial, and sectional view as not to admit that they owed obligations to these men, who had spent, or were spending, their lives to build up the future of South Africa? Hon. members on the Government side could not divest themselves of this obligation, which was as much a personal obligation to them as to hon. members on the Opposition side and to the people at large. Was it nothing to that House that men’s lives were being sacrificed? Of course it was. The State had a very real obligation in this matter, and he believed that the good sense and justice of that House would put into the Estimates a sufficient sum to enable compensation to be paid to the miners, not only by the companies but by the State itself. Hundreds of thousands of pounds, perhaps millions, had been spent for agriculture, animal diseases, and insect pests. Was it too much to ask that human life should be held as more sacred than animal life? He hated to appear to bring in anything of a racial nature, but if that question had been one affecting a large number of Dutch, instead of British miners—(Loud Ministerial cries of “Oh.”) He was very glad that he had succeeded in waking hon. members up. The mines would pay whatever was required, but he was anxious about the men themselves. The right hon. member for Victoria West had said already that the men were too highly paid, but that he would deny. For any man who went in there and took his life in his hands, no compensation in the world was adequate. The tax in the Bill was rather cruel. The Minister did not seem to realize that some mines were richer than others, and he was very much afraid that to tax a mine on the number of men employed on it was rather harsh. There were a great many mines just struggling on, and just as they taxed them they might close down, and a great many men would be out of employment. It had already been dealt with, that learners receiving £7 10s. or so a month would have to pay the same as a miner receiving £40 per month. The real question that affected his view was the policy of taxing affected and unaffected men alike. He thought it was wrong. There was no hardship in taxing the affected man, because he would ultimately receive benefits; but the question of the unaffected man was very different. He thought the unaffected men should contribute on a percentage basis to a pension fund—the Government and the mines jointly contributing on a basis to be arrived at. The aim was that a man should be induced to pay into the pension fund as much as he possibly could, and then after a number of years he would receive a pension on which he could live. He thought that was the only solution of that question. But if a man left the country or occupation he would be able to get the money he had paid in plus a small interest. What the men wanted was some incentive to become more fit, and he thought a pension scheme was the only scheme by which that could be done. There were some who said that the men should make no contribution whatsoever; but he would say if a man was going to get married he would insure his life, and therefore any man who was going to enter a service with an occupational risk he also should insure his life. They had a good deal of sympathy expressed by the right hon. member for Victoria West (Mr. J. X. Merriman), but it was not sympathy that was going to carry this matter through. They wanted something more practical than sympathy; they wanted that sympathy in a practical form, and the only practical form was by the State realising that they also had an obligation to these men. It must be so. Years ago, had the State realised its obligations, this matter might easily have been dealt with. They could not blame either the Government or the mines. But it was imperative that the State should contribute something. Everything that had been done in this country, every merchant and farmer, and every road and its extension owed something to the gold mines. They wanted practical support, and it was not good enough that while they were spending millions of money on agricultural matters and animal diseases they should be doing nothing for human life.

In conclusion he said that if they were going to build up a good nation they must see that the foundations were sound, and the essence of that foundation was that justice should be done those men who had done so much for the prosperity of the country.

said he did not think that hon. members on his side of the House were heartless; but that they had been diffident about joining in the debate for the reason that they had not had the opportunity of studying this important and highly-technical matter. It had been said that there were empty benches on his side of the House, but he pointed out that when agriculture was being discussed the empty benches were on the other side. He agreed that the matter was serious, and he regretted with the last hon. member that there were empty benches on both sides while such an important matter was being discussed. He regretted that so little interest was displayed in the sufferings of these men on the Rand. His hon. friend the member for Jeppe had suggested that the contribution which the men were called upon to pay was a high one, but he would point out to that hon. gentleman that no insurance company would undertake the risk of a man who was suffering from phthisis or who might be affected by the disease. If they were to make this a business proposition the contribution which the men would pay would be very much higher. The burden should undoubtedly fall on the mine owners, and he did not think that the miners should contribute anything. The responsibility was on the mine owners, but he would point out, as happened even in cases under the Workmen’s Compensation Act, that the burden eventually fell on the men—in the way of wages. Continuing, he said that this had been proved to be a preventable disease, and he suggested that stringent regulations should be framed and should be carried out underground by police and inspectors. He did not believe that the fact that a contribution was being made would make the disease less prevalent. He thought that the mine owners would work out a system where by the contribution would fall evenly on all the workers. He would like to ask the Minister whether the annual contribution, based on the figures of one year, would be less than the figures that were submitted to the House at the present time. With regard to arrears, as the State had been lax, he would suggest that in the initial stages the State should contribute to the fund. Another point he suggested to the serious consideration of the Minister was in regard to the distinction between single and married men in the matter of contributions. The result would be that the mines would employ single men. It was in the interests of the country to encourage white people to come here and to bring their families with them. In the case of a man with a family the Government might contribute half the difference between the two contributions. These steps should be taken to prevent what was becoming a serious calamity for South Africa. He hoped that from whatever point of view, whether British or Boer, they looked at the matter, they would seriously endeavour to bake some steps to alleviate this terrible disease, which at the moment was one of the most serious blots on our civilisation. He admitted that the prosperity of South Africa largely depended upon the mines, and they should do something for the miner who worked them. (Ministerial cheers.)

moved the adjournment of the debate until Wednesday.

Agreed to.