resumed the debate on the motion for the second reading of the Railways and Harbours Strike and Service Amendment Bill. He said he was surprised at the mass of figures that had been given by the Minister of Railways and Harbours, and the absence of any information which would throw any light on the strike which had taken place, and what steps had been taken to stop it. They had no information whatever as to whether the Government took any steps to prevent the strike taking place. On January 6 an interview took place between the Government and the men, but not a word had they had from the Minister as to what had transpired at that interview. They heard some time ago the Minister say that the men had gone there in a very defiant attitude, but they were told that the Minister and his colleagues had also taken up a very defiant attitude. The suggestion had been made by one of the men’s representatives on that deputation that if retrenchment were necessary on the railway, and if it were desired to reduce expenditure in some way or other, he thought they might discuss the feasibility of reducing the hours of labour, so that all the workers could participate in a small degree. No mention was made of that by the Minister of Railways and Harbours. Apparently there had been a hostile feeling on both sides. The Minister had referred to the fact that there had only been 52 men dismissed up to last January from the workshops, but he had said nothing about the 400 odd that were to follow. The reason the rest were not retrenched was because the men went on strike. That retrenchment was unnecessary. The Minister had himself proved that. They had had from the Minister a good number of figures dealing with the increase of expenditure, but they did not have from him figures dealing with the increase in traffic. The Minister had referred to the report of the Workshops Committee, which had reported that there were too many men employed. That statement had been discredited inside and outside the House. It was discredited by two members of the committee, Messrs. Beattie and Hendrie, who said that the figures were misleading. He would have thought that the Minister would have been ashamed to have brought forward that argument. The basis of calculation had been the cost of material as against the cost of labour used on that material. That was all very well if the Minister had had any practical experience—it would qualify him for the position he held if he spent a few years in the workshops. In centres like Bloemfontein and Pretoria most of the work was taken from the stores. It was altogether different at Durban and Salt River, where the men had to make those articles. He quoted from the committee’s report the remarks of Messrs. Hendrie and Beattie. Mr. Beattie said there was a surplus of men of only 274. He said this reduction in the numbers of employees would not mean a corresponding reduction in expenditure, as the money would be required to pay the piece-work balances. Which was the most desirable to have—274 more men in the works drawing a wage or having those men out of the service and the men inside doing piecework? Mr. Beattie said that his estimated reduction could be allowed to work out automatically as wastage took place. Mr. Hendrie’s estimate of the reduction was 300.

The hon. member went on to quote figures from the General Manager’s report, to show how the traffic had been increasing during the last two or three years, necessitating an increase in expenditure. In 1911 the turnover of the Stores Department was £11,609,000, as against £8,034,000 in 1911, or an increase of 44.9 per cent. This went to show that the work was increasing to a considerable extent. The increase in goods carried in 1912 as compared with 1911 was more than 1,040,000 tons, and in spite of the increase in traffic of over one million tons there was a decrease in revenue of £77,000, this was accounted for by the reductions in railway rates that had been made on various commodities. Last year the Minister told them that in spite of the reductions the consumer would not benefit by one farthing; yesterday he said that the public would reap the benefit, and that in order to make these reductions he must correspondingly reduce his expenditure, and suggested that the only way was by reducing wages and dismissing men. Last year the Minister told them that though there had been a reduction on the rate of coal, the Rand consumer had not benefited by one farthing. In that speech he gave instances of certain commodities which were carried cheaper in South Africa than in other parts of the world, and showed that by doing so he was helping a number of industries. On page 12 of the General Manager’s report it was shown that the increase in passenger traffic over 1911 was 4,284,000 passengers more carried in 1912 than in 1911. The passenger earnings for 1912 over 1909 showed an increase in revenue for passenger traffic of £805,000. They could not have all these increases without an increase in expenditure. As to the £516,000 said to have been paid in increments to the daily paid staff he regarded those figures with the greatest suspicion. He wanted a lot more information before he could swallow them. He wanted a detailed statement as to who got this money, because he had a comparative statement showing the reductions that had been made in the pay of various servants on the Natal section of the South African Railways. In some cases there had been reductions of 4s. and 3s. per day.

He moved to delete all the words after “that” for the purpose of substituting the following: “In the opinion of this House the threatened retrenchment of a large number of railway servants last December, on the ground of decreasing railway revenue was not justified, and was the cause of the railway strike, and legislation should be introduced providing for the reinstatement and complete amnesty of all railwaymen who were concerned in the strike of January, 1914.” He thought it must be admitted that the Government went out of its way last December to provoke the railwaymen into striking. There had been unnecessary retrenchment, when there was plenty of work in the country, when men were working overtime, and when the shops were full. Constitutional methods had all failed. The men had exhausted every possible means of obtaining redress. They had appealed to that House time and again, but the House refused to take up the grievances of the men in earnest. There were various Commissions, Select Committees, deputations, but all to no purpose, and the fact was that the railwaymen were worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. By what methods did the Government meet this railway strike? It proclaimed Martial Law, a thing that had not been used hitherto in any part of the world in connection with industrial troubles. The Minister told them that 5,700 men had come out on strike, and that 24,000 remained at work. These men were going to receive four days’ holiday at the cost of about £10,000. The fact was that while these 24,000 were taking their holidays the other men would have to do the work. Their fellow workers who went out on strike and others would be compelled to do this work. The Minister had told them that the fines that would be paid by the men who went out on strike would amount to about £29,000. He hoped members would support this amendment, and would realise that the Government went out of its way to deal unjustly and to provoke the men into striking. The Railway Societies’ offices were raided and ransacked, the leaders were arrested and Martial Law regulations prevented the men from carrying on their strike business. Hon. members always talked about what they wanted to do for the railwaymen, and here was an opportunity of doing something. Nothing less than complete amnesty for those who came out on strike and the reinstatement of those who wanted to go back could meet this case. He hoped they would accept the amendment and show the railway workers that they would give them some measure of practical sympathy. (Labour cheers.)

said that the view they took, and he thought there was good ground for it, was that the cause of unrest in the railway service reaching such a pitch as to produce a strike was the Minister’s lack of understanding of the men and his lack of power in administering such a big department.

You always get that under Government control.

You may do so, but we live in an age of hope and in the confident expectation some day that we may have someone at the head of affairs who will have some real inside knowledge of industrial life. After all their arguments had failed, surely the Minister was furnishing in that Bill the best support they could have for their arguments. He ventured to say that if they went through the railways from one end to the other they would find there was a sort of feeling of offence that men should foe asked to accept some special reward in contrast to the penalty imposed on those who went out on strike—special rewards at the expense of their fellow workers. The Minister showed a lack of understanding of the men he had to deal with, and that was the case with the hon. member for Fort Beaufort. The hon. member for Fort Beaufort had twitted two of his colleagues on the cross-benches, but one thing that made the men of Salt River come out on strike was that the hon. member was allowed to address a meeting under special privilege in the works. That was the last straw. The men were quite prepared to listen to whom they liked on the square outside the works, but they refused to have political ideas drummed into their heads on their business premises. How pleased would be the men doing the work while the “loyal” men went off on holiday! They would create a nice spirit in the railway service by the passing of this measure.

It was futile to expect to do away with strikes by legislation. Parliament by this Bill sanctioned the punishment of railwaymen, but the major portion of the responsibility for the strike rested on the Minister and the Railway Administration. The Minister had spoken words of scorn at the idea of the Government being fettered when it desired to retrench men. The Minister had referred to the great engineering houses who retrenched their staffs when their work decreased, but it was precisely the fact that establishments of this kind threw men on the streets when they were not wanted, that was at the bottom of the labour trouble throughout the world. In a State-run concern the idea that they were going to depend on a reservoir of unemployed should absolutely be eschewed by the Administration. If the Railway Administration had constantly to change the number of men employed it showed want of foresight. Retrenchment simply to meet a passing difficulty was wrong.

He (Mr. Creswell) now came to the next preposterous notion of the Minister. What was there so preposterous in the idea that 35,000 men whose daily lives were affected by any change of policy should have representation on the board governing the railways? Was it not a good thing that the men should have a representative on the board who would have an eye to their interests? The Minister throughout his speech showed a complete want of understanding of what was at the bottom of all this unrest. If the Minister’s words had any meaning they meant that the railwaymen had full power to secure their interests by the exercise of the ordinary Parliamentary franchise. But merely to have a vote was only half of one’s political liberty, and it was ridiculous to say that railwaymen had full political liberty to have their grievances redressed if their political liberties were confined merely to putting a cross on the ballot paper. So far from it being a preposterous notion that railwaymen should have direct representation in the higher circles of the Administration, he (Mr. Creswell) believed that if such a thing were done it would do away with a vast amount of misunderstanding on both sides, and it was the only way in which to obtain real contentment on the railways. It was no use talking about an Industrial Commission. As long as they left the root of the causes unredressed, as fast as they remedied a number of specific grievances, so fast would another crop grow up.

Then the Minister had dilated on the high rate of wages which, according to him, the railwaymen received. He (Mr. Creswell) did not know what the object of those remarks was, but he did know what the effect was. The effect would be exactly the same as that produced last session when, in that lofty way of his, the Minister said that although 20s. a day was looked upon as a standard rate of pay for artisans on the Witwatersrand he and his officers had made up their minds that 18s. was enough. That was taken to mean an invitation to the Government’s friends on the other side of the House to reduce wages. Did the Minister consider wages too high? By what standard did he measure it—by the standard in other countries? Did he know that there was labour unrest in other parts of the world? The Minister kept on harping on the rate of wages, evidently with the idea of persuading the House that the men ought to receive less.

But there was no greater mistake in dealing with labour troubles than to regard the matter purely as one of wages. It was not a question merely of 1s. a day more or less, but whether a man felt he had a fair deal and was assisting at the determination of his wages in accordance with some reasonable grounds or whether, as at present, he had to shut his eyes and open his mouth and take whatever was given him. The Minister showed a complete misunderstanding of the position. It was not wages so much as status that the wage-earners required. If the Minister recognised that, he would be able to introduce a greater degree of contentment than existed now. The Minister should frankly recognise that Trade Unions were chosen channels through which wage-earners preferred to make their representations to their employers. A great deal of responsibility rested on the House, for when, two years ago, the Labour members proposed the establishment of a Railway Appeal Board, which would be outside the administration and adjudicate with equity, the Government and Parliament refused to have anything to do with it. The Minister and the hon. member for Durban, Central (Sir David Hunter) would insist on retaining the old idea of master and servant, instead of adopting the new idea of employer and employee, each with their rights and status. They did not question the Minister’s fairness as a man, for he had the same instincts as they had, and liked to see justice done, but unless there was some machinery entirely independent of the railway administration the Minister would never have matters brought before him so that he could adjudicate according to the facts.

The Minister said in a plaintive way, “How am I to reduce railway rates if I do justice to the men?” The Minister was in a position to which they were all subject—that in a position of great difficulty he took the line of least resistance. He would meet with much more resistance if he took back some of the rates he had remitted on agricultural produce and coal. Had not the men just as much right to their wages as the hon. members behind him had to the price of their agricultural produce? If the Minister hesitated to take off a few shillings in railway rates he did not hesitate to take a few shillings from the wages of the men who had to do the work. The question was between the user of the railway and the man who ran the railway, it was not the question of the taxpayer. The Minister asked how could they reduce rates if they gave the men proper wages. It was just as much a reduction of wages to make a man work harder and longer as actually taking away his money. Apart from the report of the Committee which was now so much discredited, they had never yet heard that the railway workers were other than men who did a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay, and retrenchment was therefore equivalent to a reduction of wages. With regard to Mr. Hoy, he agreed that the General Manager was probably one of the hardest worked public servants in the country. He did not deny it. Still one had a feeling that the man at the head of affairs had too little human understanding of the men under him. They had a man at the head of a big administration who was too much of a bureaucrat, and it appeared that he was a little too strong. He was stronger even than the Minister. He wished to show how the general attitude of the administration exemplified itself in the present instance. The Minister had given them a number of figures showing a very large apparent deficit in railway budgets at different dates last year. If the administration had been prepared to place its cards on the table and take the Railwaymen’s Society into its confidence and tell them what the position was, consult them as to bow any necessary retrenchments should be carried out with the least amount of hardship, taking as an alternative, if necessary, that a certain number of men should go on short time— would not that have had the result of getting round that corner with the least possible hardship to those involved? Instead of that the Minister said: “I am the Minister of Railways, and my General Manager is my General Manager, and between us we are the only persons who must judge.” The refusal to recognise that the men had a real right to a say in the matter had been the cause of those difficulties.

They had had that tremendous deficit continually mounting up, and then they said they were going to meet it by retrenching 52 men. Then there was the announcement that there was going to be retrenchment of 1,000 men, followed by a reassuring statement, and then came the knowledge that in spite of the reassuring statement that policy was to be carried out. That was what caused the strike. The Minister should Not fasten it on the railway-men that the cause of the strike was simply that 52 men were retrenched. Then there was the manner in which the announcement of the retrenchment was made, the Society being kept at arm’s length, combined with all that other retrenchment—those things were looked upon by the men simply as a matter of retaliation. It was almost as great a crime to convey an impression like that as to be guilty of the motive the impression gave. Then they had the men “fed up” with that position. For years they had been continually making complaints and continually there were the same little arrangements by the Administration to put everything right, but it had to be left in the hands of the Administration. In that matter, whichever way they approached it, they came back to the underlying fact —the insistence of the Administration to keep everything in its own hands, and the refusal to take advantage of the men’s organisation to get into friendly touch with the men. Some hon. members would insist that there was no discontent because they could not see any discontent themselves. If the men found a frank attitude on behalf of the Administration, then he ventured to say that the railway institutions would cause very little trouble. The Minister in that very Bill, in his own speech, only saw one side of the question. He spoke of it as a Striker’s Relief Bill. How would he have got on with the railways if none of the men had gone back? Could he have dispensed with those men? No, the Minister had taken them back because he wanted them. He had taken them back entirely to suit himself. He could not help thinking that if it had not been for the desire of the Administration to get the railways running again as soon as possible, very few of those men would have been taken back at all. They were told by the Minister that the retrenchment of a few men was the absurd pretext for so great a measure. The retrenchment of those men had been merely the last straw, and it was hardly worth while replying to an argument like that. The Minister had disclaimed any idea of victimisation, but there had been victimisation, and he read extracts from one or two letters to prove it.

From all parts of the country they had men writing in this strain. Mr. Creswell proceeded to allude to the men who had held offices in the Railway Society, and asked the Minister whether he did not expect these men to come out on strike in a time of trouble, and whether he was going to visit worse penalties on these men than the others? If the Minister had looked upon the society as he should have done, these men would have been most valuable to him. It seemed almost inhuman, because these were the most manly of the men, to look upon them in the way that had been suggested in that measure. The strike in Durban, he would point out, hung fire until the Government arrested Mr. Poutsma and Mr. Nield, and by taking these steps incensed these men to such an extent that they went out, and stood out longer than the men in any other part of the Union. It was the Government that precipitated the strike; it was the action of the Government that extended the strike, and the Government was more to blame than the men who took part, in the strike. He had received another letter from a Pretoria railwayman, who said they would have to pay something like £18 odd in fines. The Government was guilty of a far greater crime—the injury it had done to the country through the measures it had taken was enormous, and they asked for and got indemnity for their actions, and came off scathless. The writer of that letter commended to the Minister’s notice Verse 33, Matthew 18, “Should not thou also have compassion on thy fellow servant, as I had pity on thee.” The Government not only infringed the laws of the country, but the liberties of the people, and they got off with a clean slate. If the Government wanted to play the manly game, let them recognise that it was their wrong that had caused all the trouble. He thought that if the Government allowed the men a clean slate it would be a happy day and mean a brighter future for South Africa.

said that apparently this Bill was framed when the fires were burning high, and that the Government now expected them to pass the measure before the fires had burned down. If this was really a Bill to give relief to strikers, then it seemed to him that the Minister must have changed his mind between the time he drafted the Bill and his second reading speech. So far from being a Strikers’ Relief Bill, the title really showed what it was. If the Minister meant them to take his statement seriously that this was a Relief Bill, then it was his duty to alter the title of the measure. He thought that the Minister, in his second reading speech, introduced a lot of irrelevant matter, and in many respects was anticipating his Budget statements. He (Mr. Hull) could not follow the object of the Minister in quoting the figures which he did. Some of the figures placed before the House were entirely misleading—(Labour cheers)—and he could not understand the Minister putting the figures before the House in such a way. The Minister explained at considerable length the increase in the number of white men employed between 1909 and 1913. Those figures taken alone were very startling, because they showed an increase of something like 7,000 men, but the fault he found with the Minister was that he did not tell the House that between 1909 and 1913 the railway mileage had increased by no less than 20 per cent.—from 6,800 miles to 8,280 miles. Surely if the Minister desired to place accurate information before the House it was his duty to call attention to this large increase in railway mileage of 1,400 miles. Another matter was that the Minister omitted to state that of the 32,000 men four or five thousand of these men employed to-day did work that was formerly done by natives. The first question he would like to put to hon. members was this: What was going to be the effect on the railway service if this Bill became law in its present form? Would it remove the discontent? There was only one reply to that, and that was that it was going to make the discontent infinitely greater. A Bill of that sort would only have the result of creating bad blood among the men and aggravating the bad feeling that already existed between the Railway Administration and its employees. Instead of getting a contented service they would have a discontented and disloyal railway service. Then was it wise, was it politic, was it just, to punish the rank and file or to punish them at all? He went on to refer to another case where the circumstances were more serious and the right to punish greater. He referred to the case of the Jameson raid, and said that the rank and file were allowed to go free while Dr. Jameson and his officers were handed over to the British Government to be dealt with by a special tribunal. In the case of the Reform Committee the Transvaal Government selected 50 or 60 of the leaders for prosecution, and the rank and file, who were equally guilty, were not punished at all.

The House should not entirely lose sight of the fact that it was not merely one lot of men that were to blame. Was there a single member there who would dare to say that Government was entirely free from blame? The failure of the Government in July last produced the events of January. Grievances existed—whether they were sound or substantial he could not say—but it was almost impossible to assume that there was no substance in those grievances. They had existed for years, and, he supposed, would continue to exist for all time, and the railway men were entitled to say that their complaints had not been treated with proper consideration. (Hear, hear.) The action of the Government towards the mine strikers was totally different from the action it proposed to take with regard to the railway strikers. Under the Bain-Botha treaty the Government insisted that the miners who went on strike should be taken back and should not be penalised, and that the men who had remained loyal to the mine-owners should be dismissed. (Hear, hear.) But was there not a complete reversal of that policy now? Yesterday the Minister, in giving the reasons which led to the strike, led the House to understand that the approximate cause was the action of the Government in sending notices of retrenchment to 52 people.

That was the pretext.

I listened to get some explanation in regard to some extraordinary statement made on behalf of the Administration shortly after July, but not a word was given. Shortly after the Bain-Botha treaty, went on Mr. Hull, the Government and the railway employees had to set up a joint board to inquire into the railwaymen’s grievances. It was notorious that Mr. Poutsma was not regarded as a very acceptable person by the Government. The result of the election of a member of the board to represent the men came as a great surprise to most people in South Africa, Mr. Poutsma being elected by a large majority. Immediately after the result of the ballot was known an announcement was made to the effect that it was the intention of the Railway Administration to get rid of a thousand men. Naturally such an announcement created great consternation both in the minds of railwaymen and of general traders in the Transvaal. A few days later the Minister said that the statement was wholly exaggerated and that 500 men was nearer the mark.

I said less than half.

If the Minister was serious yesterday in asking the House to believe that 52 men were those they had in contemplation why did he not relieve their anxiety by saying “We intend to retrench only 52 men.” No sir, one cannot help forming the opinion that it was the intention of the Administration—I will not say to inflict an act of vengeance on the men for the election of Mr. Poutsma, or for what took place on July 6, when the railwaymen went out on a sympathetic strike— it was the intention of the railway administration to show their feelings towards the men by retrenching five hundred of them.

Continuing, Mr. Hull said, he recognised that some legislation was necessary to deal with the men who had been guilty of breaking the law of 1912, but the House ought to adopt a generous line. The Government had been victorious, and victors could generally afford to be generous. Do not let them punish the rank and file. What was the use of fining a large number of men £5 each? What would be the effect? The men concerned would never forgive Parliament or the Administration. Let them be generous—over generous if they liked. Nor should men forfeit their pension rights. As for the ringleaders let them be taken before the magistrates and tried, and if found guilty let them be fined £50, or imprisoned for six months. The Minister said he did not want to take the ringleaders back again, but the law of 1912 did not contemplate that.

With regard to the proposal to reward the men who had remained loyal he (Mr. Hull) remembered quite well shortly after the last war there was some suggestion made in certain parts of South Africa that loyalty did not pay. He remembered a very significant rebuff was administered by Lord Milner to the men who advocated the pernicious doctrine that men should be rewarded for their loyalty. That was the object of his (Mr. Hull’s) sneering interjection yesterday. The Minister wanted to reward men who had remained loyal, and to reward them rather offensively in an Act of Parliament. The Administration had full power to reward the loyal men, but it was a pernicious principle to lay down in an Act of Parliament that men who had remained loyal should be paid for their loyalty. It had this further disadvantage, that it was calculated to breed bad blood among the members of the railway service. In conclusion, Mr. Hull said he would suggest to the leader of the Opposition that he should accept the motion for the second reading upon condition that the Bill be sent to a Select Committee, which could make such amendments on the lines he (Mr. Hull) had indicated, which would meet the justice of the case.

expressed the opinion that the responsibility for the strike rested on both the Government and the men’s leaders. The former had for a long time neglected to take proper notice of the men’s grievances. In pre-Union days the Cape railwaymen had an opportunity of putting their grievances before their superiors, which they had not today. What was at the bottom of the discontent was the hopeless view the men took of the possibility of getting their grievances remedied. That state of affairs could be remedied if the Government provided machinery to deal adequately and quickly with any grievances. The sympathy that existed between the subordinates and superiors in the old Cape days should be continued in the Union service to-day. The despair among railway-men had had a great deal to do with the strike, because those who fanned the flame in Johannesburg had a great deal of material to work on. It was idle to suppose that the leaders in Johannesburg could have caused the strike without it. There had been profound discontent in the service and that had provided material for the agitators to work upon. They had got to recognise the fact of that profound discontent. They asked the Minister why there had been such a long delay in regard to filling up the vacancy on the Commission which was appointed to go into those grievances. There was still a vacancy that had not been filled, and the whole matter of grievances was hung up, and it was fanning more discontent. He did not think the Minister was justified in calling the Bill a Strikers’ Relief Bill and saying that the men could have been punished by dismissal under the Act of 1912. The Minister must remember that that Bill was not designed with a view to the disturbances which took place in Johannesburg. In voting for the Bill, hon. members had not in mind any occurrences of the magnitude of those that had since occurred.

The Minister was not right in calling it a Strikers’ Relief Bill, having regard to all the circumstances that had taken place. He thought that the way the Bill was drafted might justify one in calling it “A Government’s Patronage and Punishments Bill.” It was, for instance left to the Minister to say who had been loyal. He thought the rewards provided for were ridiculously inadequate. The men who were to get those rewards would much rather have nothing at all. Then again, the punishments were excessively severe. The Minister had admitted that there were certain people who had led those unfortunate men to their ruin. He had said that, in his opinion, those men had not been responsible. It was not easy to see, therefore, why he should punish those men —he should punish those who had been leading them. He would also utter a word of caution with regard to the ringleaders. It was an extraordinary army—out of 5,700 strikers there were 529 generals. He had never heard of an army in which there were so many generals and so few soldiers. With regard to the rewards, when would a man get the leave he was promised? Would he get it at all? It was provided that the leave must be taken in accordance with the requirements of the department. Leave was not a matter of right, it was a matter of privilege, which was granted when the requirements of the department allowed it. Certain men who served in the Defence Force were to get three days’ extra leave. Why should those in the Defence Force get that when those who had remained in the offices had had to do twice as much work as usual? The whole question of leave was absurd. Referring to the words in the Bill, “the Minister’s discretion,” he said there was an enormous amount of patronage given into the hands of the Ministry, and he thought that was very undesirable, especially as a general election was not very far off. It was very undesirable to give that enormous power into the hands of the Government. Coming to the clerical staff, the words, “in the opinion of the Minister” again occurred. It certainly was a Government Patronage Bill. They would be able to exercise that patronage how they liked through the Minister of Railways. To pay men for being loyal might not be a good principle, but some recognition should be given to the men who had remained behind in a time of great difficulty, but better no recognition at all than the absurd recognition provided for in the Bill. He would like to say on that question of rewards that he thought the opinion of the men was that they would not like to benefit at the expense of those who went out on strike. He did not think any percentage of the men who had remained at work wanted the men who went on strike to be punished. He thought it would be a pity to punish the rank and file who went out, but it was quite right that those who took a leading part should be punished. He referred to a couple of cases of men who had not been taken back although nothing was alleged against them, but they could not be re-employed and would have to wait until the Administration sent for them. One had been on the Fixed Establishment and had been in the service for 14 years.

Has he been told he will not be re-employed?

No, but he was to wait about Cape Town until he was sent for.

Exactly there was no work for him at present.

proceeding, said there was no guarantee that the man would be taken back at all. There was another, a boiler-maker at Salt River, who went out on the 12th, and applied to be taken back on the 16th, but he was told that although he was not dismissed they were unable to start him and he would have to wait until he was sent for. There was nothing against that man either. In his opinion the rank and file should not be punished at all. Those two men were not ringleaders and should have been taken on. According to the Minister the rewards would amount to about £10,000, but, on the other hand, the value of the fines, including loss of contributions for superannuation funds, amounted to £35,000—consequently the Minister was going to pocket for the railways £25,000.

How much have the railways lost by the strike?

said that surely the hon. Minister did not seriously suggest that those men had to pay the cost of the machinery of calling out the Defence Force, what he (Mr. Alexander) had suggested was that the Minister in one part of the Bill was rewarding the men to the tune of £10,000, and in another part was fining them £35,000. It was wholly irrelevant for him to introduce the Defence Force. With regard to the Natal men, Mr. Alexander said it was only fair to assume that they would have gone in when the other men did had they known the facts. There should have been no punishment in their cases, so far as the rank and file was concerned. There was another point. The Minister had referred in section 6 to certain appointments which the House is asked to ratify. There was no mention of those informal and illegal appointments and no schedule had been laid on the Table. They were asked to ratify them without knowing what they were. There should certainly have been some information on that point. He hoped the hon. Minister would agree to the motion to discharge the order for the second reading, and that the subject matter go before a Select Committee. There should be an entirely new Bill in which the rewards would be adequate and not illusory, and in which the punishment clauses would only deal with the leaders and not with the rank and file. Such a Bill should only be brought forward after calm consideration in the Select Committee. Of course, the rank and file would be punished in a certain sense because the other men would get rewards while they got nothing, but the rewards was a matter which should not be left in the hands of the Minister, who should take away from his mind all feeling relating to the recent strike, for which both the men’s leaders and the Government were responsible.

said that he represented a number of railwaymen in his constituency as well as those who were not railwaymen, so that he had to speak with a dual sense of responsibility. During the time he had been in that House he had closely watched the conduct of the Administration with regard to the railway service, and he could not help feeling, and the feeling had grown on him through those years, that the Railway Administration had not kept that close touch with the railway service that it ought to have done. One great factor had been that Union had meant a closer combination of the services of the four Provinces, but the railway service had failed to grasp the fact of the closer association of the men on that account. Last year he (Mr. Orr) urged upon the then Minister of Railways and Harbours the necessity of recognising the railwaymen’s Union, which was then in its infancy. He believed that if this recognition had been given to the men’s Union in those early days a great deal of the labour troubles would have been avoided. (Labour cheers.) That had been his firm conviction, which he had stated over and over again.

Immediately after the Union they had the introduction of the transportation system, which had the effect of throwing the whole administration out of gear with the men in their true relationship to them, whereas before Union in the various Provinces the men were familiar with their managers and their heads of departments. The introduction of the transportation system did away with all that, and there was a lack of touch and the want of sympathy in consequence. They had had various Commissions to inquire into the grievances of the railwaymen, and they had the Railway Service Act of 1912, and it was not true, as the hon. members had given out, that that House had no sympathy with the railwaymen or their grievances. He thought there was every desire on the part of the representatives of the people in that House to sift the grievances to the bottom and to try to bring the men as employees and the Railway Administration as employers into closer touch and harmony, so that the relationship would be conducive to the greatest good of the community as a whole.

It was the members on the cross-benches who had always been trying to create trouble between the Administration and the men. There was one point on which the railwaymen should have a clear explanation from the Government and the Minister. Undoubtedly there had been large reductions in railway rates, and those reductions had affected seriously the revenue and the expenditure on the railways. He found from the General Manager’s report that the gross expenditure on the cross earnings came to something like 64 per cent in 1912, as against 54 per cent, in 1911. If the Administration had had to effect large reductions in the rates on goods and coal which had brought a decreased revenue, the men wanted to know how far the Government was going to make up that loss by reducing wages of the railwaymen. It was up to the Administration to meet the men on this point and to prove that the reductions were necessary in the interests of the general community, and that they would have to bear a share in bringing about equality. The railwaymen were a singularly astute body of men, and if the Railway Administration had met them frankly he thought that better relations would have prevailed. Proceeding to deal with the amendment of the hon. member for Fort Beaufort, he said that he gathered from that hon. member’s speech that the Select Committee would take evidence in the 250 cases of ringleaders and report to the House. No committee could undertake that with satisfaction to the country or the men. Then the suggestion of the hon. member for Barberton would have precisely the same effect, and they would not be able to get any further with the Bill. He had shown that the Administration was somewhat to blame in dealing with the men, but it was a different question when they asked him to approve of the suggestion that the rank and file should escape without punishment. Unless some punishment were meted out to these men they would have a recurrence of the trouble, and the result would be that the men who had remained loyal on this occasion would come out on the next.

The offence of these men was far too serious a matter for the country to lightly pass over. He did not think that the country or the men expected that the railwaymen would be given a clean slate. The men knew the risk they ran when they went out on strike, and that they were liable to a greater punishment than had been proposed by the Minister in that Bill. The men must be made to realise that with their great privileges—and they had great privileges—in carrying on an honourable service they must have some sense of responsibility to the State they served. Dealing with the election of Mr. Poutsma to the Railway Commission, he asked: “Is he on that Commission today? ” (Labour laughter.) He contended that Mr. Poutsma abused his position as a member of the Commission, and forfeited the confidence not only of the country but the men, and had rightly been exiled. He supposed that hon. members on the cross-benches would follow him to Maritzburg and hold him up to the execration of the railwaymen, but if he did not believe that the pernicious influence of members on the cross-benches had had a great deal to do with bringing about trouble in that country he would not have voted as he was doing. He believed that if the Administration and the men came into closer touch confidence would be restored. He supported the second reading of the Bill.

said he thought that hon. members should have sympathy with the large number of men who had been misled. He did not believe that the Government was to be blamed for the general strike. It was quite outside their sphere of operation, and he thought it was only fair they should be held blameless in that matter, but it was impossible to say as much for the railway strike. As he had a number of railway employees in his constituency he could speak with some authority, especially with regard to the state of affairs in the Transvaal. He supported the Government in the deportation of the leaders, because he believed that in a time of great crisis the Government rose to the occasion and saved the country from a dire catastrophe. He considered that the strike was caused by the apathy of the Government, the callousness of the Railway Administration, and the ceaseless agitation of the Syndicalist leaders. The Government was perfectly aware that this agitation was going on, but they had no evidence that either the heads of the Administration or the Minister responsible for the department interfered to try and bring about a better understanding between the employees and the heads of departments. He agreed with all the Minister had said with regard to Mr. Hoy, but he believed that for some months past that gentleman had been lamentably wanting in sympathy with regard to the men in the Transvaal. The railway service in the Transvaal employed a large number of indigent persons, and railway work was greatly sought after by men of that character. The result was that on the slightest provocation a man was discharged, and somebody else was put in his place. That gave rise to so much discontent among the railwaymen in that Province.

This was a very unsatisfactory condition of affairs. Some time ago there were ceaseless complaints of men being discharged from the police, but today there were no discontented police, and no men were being dismissed from the force. That was due to the fact that the police force was something like 600 or 700 men under strength. The result was that the authorities were anxious to keep the men in the service, and the men were given fair play and fair treatment If the railway employees were given the same measure of justice there would be wider contentment, and we should have a better service. The Administration was to blame because it was not in sympathy with the men in the manner in which an Administration should be in a large undertaking such as the railway was. (Hear, hear.)

It was generally admitted that the men were misled. The agitation was not started to redress railway grievances, but to stop the food and coal supplies, and so to bring the Transvaal mines once more to a standstill. The railwaymen were used as tools, and they were played on by the agitators until at last they believed they were justified in doing anything to come to logger-heads with the Government. But the Ministry and the Administration should have used their utmost endeavours to bring about a better understanding.

One was very much struck by the revengeful spirit of the Bill. The majority of members were in favour of deporting the ringleaders because they had been guilty of a vast amount of mischief, and would do a great deal more unless they were removed from South Africa. But if the Bill passed in its entirety it would be very discreditable to the Government and to the Administration, which he believed was responsible for the terms which figured so largely in the measure.

He had intended to refer to the precedent quoted by the hon. member for Barberton (Mr. Hull. He (Sir Aubrey) was a member of the Reform Committee, and he was struck by the leniency of the British Government and of the Transvaal Republic in merely banishing the leaders and allowing the rank and file to go scot free. That was a precedent which the Union Government should follow with very great credit to itself. It would be impossible for fair-minded men to go further and after punishing over 500 of the railway workers by dismissal to fine the rank and file. If we took action in that direction we should destroy the good feeling which we hoped to establish in the railway service, and he hoped that members on the Opposition side of the House, at all events, would make it clear that they would endeavour to amend or defeat the Bill. To do the latter would be a misfortune, but it was impossible for the Opposition to accept the terms of the measure now before the House. When one remembered the services that many of the railwaymen rendered to the State during the war one should be moved by a more generous feeling than that displayed in the Bill. Men who could drive trains full steam ahead over lines which were probably mined were heroes, and were an asset to the State. The Government had achieved a great victory. It had got the Opposition to join it in punishing the ringleaders, and now that it had the railwaymen under foot, for God’s sake don’t kick them and cause further discontent. Whatever he railway workers might have done they had in the past proved themselves to be brave men and men who deserved the consideration of all fair-minded people. (Hear, hear.)

The second portion of the amendment of the hon. member for Greyville (Mr. Boydell) appears to me not to be in order, but it would be in order if it read “and that the Government should take into consideration the possibility of introducing legislation providing for the reinstatement and complete amnesty of all railwaymen who were concerned in the strike of January, 1914.”

I ask your permission to move it in that form.

said the reward offered by the Government to the men who had remained loyal was four days’ leave on full pay. What a magnificent reward! If the Government were in earnest let them reward the men in some way in which they would appreciate it—by adding a year to their pensions. That would be something that would be useful to them in their older days when they retired, and something which would be useful to their wives and children. His next point was with regard to the men who returned before the 16th January, who were to be fined a full day’s pay for every day they were absent. The Minister had told them that that meant about £5. There was a feeling that those men should be punished in some way—was it not fair to say that those men had already been punished? Many of them were not allowed to go back for several days after they had signed on, so their loss was already some £6 to £8 per head. That in itself was a very substantial fine. That would also apply to the next stage, the men who returned up to the 23rd. With regard to the men who signed on up to the 26th, those men have been allowed to return, but they would lose their long services. They were to be treated as new men or temporary men for two years, and would get 13s. a day in place of 14s. Was that fair to put such a heavy punishment on those men? Many of them had put in twenty years’ service, and yet they were going to lose all that. The reason those men did not return was because they were not satisfied that the men in Pretoria had returned. There was a certain amount of honour among the working-men, and he thought there was something manly about it. On Saturday, when they got a reply from Pretoria, they met and decided to go back on the following Monday morning, the 26th. Because they were two days later than the other men they were to be punished in that way. Was not that too severe a punishment? If it was done they would have discontent among those two classes of men in the works, and they were punishing the men’s wives and families. He intended to fight to the last, so that those men should be treated in the same way as the men who returned before the 16th and the 23rd. The Government, having crushed the strike, ought to be merciful. If they had a discontented service they could not expect to get satisfactory work. Two men who had lost their employment after the Natal railway strike had subsequently been taken on, and on this occasion they had remained loyal to the Government. With regard to the contention that there was no work for these men, he thought that as much work as possible should be done in the Union, which would give more employment, and even if it did cost a little more it would be beneficial, as the money would circulate here instead of oversea. It was not fair that men should be fined for going out on strike, but should be taken back into the same positions as before the trouble.

said that he was going to vote for the second reading of the Bill, as, in his opinion, very little came out of Select Committees. There should be some opportunity for the men to meet and give their own views on the matter. If they were allowed to do that the House would be very much surprised. If they wanted the feeling of the men they must go to the men themselves. To his mind a Select Committee was going to do no good. What had got to be done was to fight out the matter on the floor of the House. (Labour cheers.) There should certainly be some recompense for the men who had been loyal to the Administration. They ought to be paid, but there were two ways of paying them, and they had to take into consideration also the temporary men, those who could not lose any pension, because they were not entitled to any pension. They should therefore, have a monetary consideration. It was only fair to the men on the fixed establishment that they should have some period of time added. Some ran greater risks than others, and should be paid accordingly; the other method was wrong in principle, and would lead to the position that if one was not called a scab he would be dubbed a bloodsucker, and there would be continual friction. In conclusion, he said that he would vote for the second reading of the Bill, and said that if the Minister and the General Manager decided that some of the extremists should be taken back they would be justified in adopting that course.

moved the adjournment of the debate.

The motion was agreed to.

The debate was adjourned until to-morrow.