from 2,900 teachers in the Cape Province, drawing attention to the low salaries paid to them and praying that the House may take their case into consideration.

from 1,096 members of School Boards and School Committees of the Cape Province, drawing attention to the low salaries paid to teachers in the Cape Province and praying that the House may take their case into consideration.

brought up a report of the Select Committee on the Rand Water Board Supplementary Water Supply (Private) Bill. The report stated that certain amendments further safeguarding the rights of riparian owners had been recommended by the Director of Irrigation. These would necessitate an alteration in the preamble of the Bill, and the Committee requested the leave of the House to make the amendments.

moved that leave be granted.

The motion was agreed to.

Government Notice No. 415 of 12th March, 1914, relative to the reconstitution of Committee of Management of Natal Police Superannuation Fund.

stated that when this debate was adjourned on Friday the Question before the House was a motion by the Minister of Railways and Harbours: That the Bill be now read a second time, upon which the following amendments had been moved, viz: By Sir Thomas Smartt: That the Order for the second reading be discharged, and that the subject-matter of the Bill be referred to a Select Committee for inquiry and report. By Mr. Boydell: To omit all the words after “That,” and to substitute “in the opinion of this House the threatened retrenchment of a large number of railway workers last December on the grounds of decreasing railway revenue was not justified, and was the cause of the railway strike; and that the Government should take into consideration the advisability of introducing legislation providing for the reinstatement of, and complete amnesty to, all railwaymen who were concerned in the strike of January, 1914.”

said that when the House adjourned on Friday afternoon he was pointing out that it would be difficult to ascertain how much advantage to the Treasury would accrue from the building of rolling-stock in this country. This should be ascertained, and payment made accordingly by the Treasury to the Railway Department, as provided by the South Africa Act. In view of the very large increase of the revenue of the harbours there were grave reasons for doubting the wisdom of the Minister in announcing a wholesale policy of retrenchment at a time of industrial unrest. If he (Mr. Fremantle) were rightly informed at the very time this retrenchment was announced very large additional expenditure was being incurred for the payment of overtime and bonuses on piece-work. If that were so how was it possible to justify retrenchment on the one side and overtime payment on the other? There appeared to be a want of sound management, and a strong grip of the finances, so that Government was to a large extent blameable for the unhappy circumstances that arose. The Minister said, rightly no doubt, that it was impossible to make good the surplus in one direction and have a deficit in labour another direction. Under the piece-work system they had piece-work in one department and a large spurt in that department, and in a month or two they found they had too many in that department. They had no piece-work in other departments, so that they could not keep this faster department fed, and he thought that was a mismanagement. It showed that there was some justification for the contention of the men that there had been no need for retrenchment. Moreover, why was no response made by the Minister to the offer of the men to go on short time so as to prevent retrenchment?

He did not understand why it was the Minister did not give more favourable consideration to proposals of that kind. He remembered that some years ago when a proposal of that kind was accepted by the Government. It resulted, in a large saving and the Minister of Railways congratulated the men on the result. He did not understand why the Government had altered its policy in that matter. But what was more serious was not that the Government went in for a policy of retrenchment, but the astonishing methods by which it was carried out. Why was it necessary for the Minister to make those alarming speeches that had been made which suggested to the men that there was going to be wholesale retrenchment, when there was nothing at all but the ordinary retrenchment? That was exactly the same policy as the policy of Mr. Poutsma. The Government had said that it was no answer on the part of the strikers to say that no great harm was done in January, but that applied equally to the Government. No great retrenchment took place in January, but a great deal of retrenchment was threatened. He could only regard the speeches as very ill-timed and very unfortunate on the part of the Minister. Further, he could not understand what induced the Government to dismiss men on 24 hours’ notice. To dismiss men who had been a considerable number of years in Government employment on 24 hours’ notice was a disgrace. Moreover, it was quite illegal to dismiss the men who were on Fixed Establishment without the consent of Parliament. Was it not an infringement of the privileges of the House that men who might not be legally dismissed without the sanction of Parliament had been dismissed without it? There they had a right which was guaranteed to the men by law, and it had been repeatedly discussed in that House and had been conceded with unanimous consent, but it was taken away by the Government. It was a most socialistic action, an illegal action, and a most unwise action, because it caused distrust among the men. It filled him with a sense of uneasiness. It seemed to him that things were going on in the Railway Department without the proper control of the Minister. With regard to retrenchment, there was a grave feeling among the railwaymen that there had been a great deal of favouritism as to the men who had been dismissed. No doubt it appealed to the House that married men should be maintained, also men who had been in the service for a long time. Also the best men should be retained, but that had not been done in all cases. There was a feeling, which he shared, that many of the railway servants were not given the credit they ought to have for proficiency in their work, especially in regard to inventions.

Instead of encouraging inventions, the Government regarded them with no interest, and it had not given any encouragement to the men. In some cases he believed that men who had made valuable inventions were dismissed. The result of the retrenchments had been the strike. It ought to be remembered as a remarkable feature of the strike that it was a sympathetic strike. If they went through the Transvaal and the Free state they found that the running staff came out, although it was admitted that the retrenchment was only a matter of the workshops. That was a phase of the matter that ought to be borne in mind. He did not say that the retrenchment justified the men going on strike, but he thought it ought to be considered in deciding how to deal with the actual strikers. When they came to the details of the Bill he ventured to point out several reasons in regard to all the chief clauses of the Bill why more information was needed by the House, and therefore why it was desirable to have some sort of a Select Committee. The hon. member for Queen’s Town had said that when dealing with a financial Bill it was extremely difficult to discuss details on the floor of the House. With regard to section 6 of the Bill they all considered that there should be some investigation. Irregular appointments and dismissals had admittedly been made. How was it possible for the House to vote fairly on that when it had no information before it? The only way to conduct that investigation was by means of a Select Committee. The question of rewards was the strongest reason of all for the appointment of a Select Committee. The Minister said that the cost involved was £10,000. On the face of it the cost was five or six times as much as that. He did not see how the Minister had reduced it to £10,000. In the second place, he wished to show that the proposed reward of the men was most unpopular. He believed most hon. members who had a knowledge of railwaymen would bear him out in saying that the idea of having holidays in consequence of the strike, and confined to those who did not strike, was extremely unpopular. He read a letter from a correspondent at Uitenhage stating that the writer believed that 75 per cent, of the men would refuse the holiday if they dared. The Minister would surely not force on the men a reward that was distasteful to them. Surely it was right that they should appoint a committee, which would ascertain from the men what sort of reward would be agreeable to them. It had been suggested that something should be done in the way of pensions He thought that would be a very difficult question, and he did not think it should be lightly undertaken. He thought a different sort of reward might be given. The Minister ought to have done what he had done in another connection. The line the Minister ought to have taken was this: There were men who had grievances, yet they did not go on strike, and the appropriate form of reward was to see that their grievances were properly dealt with in the future. He thought that was tin line he would suggest to the Minister if it commended itself to the railwaymen themselves. He wished to say a word or two on the clause dealing with the punishment of the men He wished to dissociate himself with what had been said by the hon. member for Braamfontein. It was not a vindictive Bill.

Continuing, Mr. Fremantle expressed great gratification at the Government not touching the pension rights of the men still remaining in the service, and said he thought that this was a very wise decision on their part. Dealing with the ringleaders, he said that the chief of these appeared first on the list of the men who had been deported from this country—that was if the Government was dealing with a conspiracy. If they were dealing with the conspiracy then he thought that ought to be borne in mind. Surely it would be a mistake to deal with these people twice. Considering that the House had decided to deport Mr. Poutsma, he said the question was whether they ought to deal again with these men. He went on to say that they were meting out justice in a different way towards the men who were taken back and the men who were not. Those who were not taken back lost their pension rights; those who were equally guilty of striking but were taken back did not. They were dealing with the two classes in an unjust way, and in a matter of that kind they must not show the slightest injustice. Then he would point out that no distinction had been drawn between the men who struck voluntarily and the men who were forced to strike. There was a great difference in the moral positions of these two classes. They were going to deal with those people in exactly the same way. On that point alone the Government should have a Select Committee, and see how far it was possible to distinguish between the two sets of men. He could not vote for the punishment of men who had been forced into a strike, and the only proper course of justice would be not to punish them at all. He pointed out that the ring-loaders they had in view in that Bill were entirely different from the real leader in the person of Mr. Poutsma. They could not regard men who had held positions in the Railway Society and who had been forced into prominence in the same way as Mr. Poutsma. He was bound to say that men who had represented the grievances of the railwaymen in the past, conservative men, should be taken back, because he thought they were of real service to the Government. He thought the Government would be justified in taking these men back.

If clauses 7 and 8 were agreed to they would be found entirely satisfactory to the railwaymen in regard to the extent to which the board would operate. These clauses now constituted a real grievances board. He congratulated the Government on taking such a wise step, but he thought in this instance, too, inquiry was most important, for they should take the step as well as it could be taken. He put it to the Minister as to whether it was desirable to have one body instead of local bodies. He suggested to the Minister it was well worth considering whether they should not have separate boards for the different departments and divisions of the railway service, This would reduce expenditure and the work would be done more efficiently. He thought the decisions of the board should be subject to the decision of the Railway Board instead of the General Manager, a course which he thought would be found more satisfactory to the railwaymen. He should also be glad to see the men allowed to choose anyone they wished, whether a servant of the Administration or not, as their representative on the board. Then he also thought they should have an impartial chairman. Now that the Government was making a conciliatory move, would it not be best to get the advice of the men themselves? There was hardly a clause in the Bill that did not require inquiry. Dealing with the amendments, he said he did not think the hon. member for Fort Beaufort would be well advised to insist on his principle that the Select Committee should be appointed before the second reading was taken, and for that reason he was disposed to vote for the proposal of the hon. member for Barberton that the second reading should be taken first. He urged the railwaymen and hon. members to look very carefully into the provisions of the Bill, and pointed especially to the question of the establishment of a grievances board, which went far to justify those who urged the men to press their cause in Parliament and not to strike, and which, he said, was a proposal that could not fail to have far-reaching results in the future.

said the speeches delivered up to the present had been very disappointing, not only for the House, but also for the country. Most of them were indeed misleading. The hon. member for Uitenhage had spoken for about three hours, and the impression conveyed by his speech was misleading, even for the working-man himself.

The hon. member should remember that the men were dependent not on him but on the Government. Addresses such as that of the hon. member for Uitenhage did not tend to encourage economy amongst the railway staff, but would rather play up to the desire to spend more money. The speaker thought that was quite wrong. It appeared to him that most of the speeches had been delivered with a view to the ensuing elections, and there was a lack of seriousness and straightforwardness in many of them. They tried to create false impressions amongst the public. He would rather resign his seat at once than feel himself bound to act solely with his eye on the elections. They had no right to obstruct the Government as the hon. member for Uitenhage was doing in order to gratify the feelings of the working-classes. A good workman would support the practice of economy, and in any case if it did not please him to go on working for the railway it was open to him to run his own business. Such speeches only tended to encourage the working-men to base all their hopes on a strike, with the natural result that the unfortunate people were plunged into distress. The members of the Labour Party were guilty of inciting the workingmen, and then when the latter got into difficulties, the only way that they could help them was to do still more in the way of frustrating the purposes of the Government. It was necessary to remember that this country was in a very peculiar position. There were millions of natives here, and if the white workmen did not take very great care they would find themselves face to face with the most serious difficulties. He hoped the eyes of the white working-men would be opened, and that they would see that it was necessary to live up to their contracts. If they did not do that, they ran this risk, that in the minds of the employers there would arise a preference for natives as workmen. He claimed to be a friend of the working-man, but he wanted him to behave properly towards his employer, in which case he would be willing to give him every possible help. The railways had to be run on business principles, and it was impossible to borrow money for the purpose of increasing wages and salaries. The workmen in this country earned more money than in other countries. The revenue paid into the Treasury amounted to about sixteen millions, and of that sum a great part was paid in salaries and wages, and it was very necessary that they should give some attention to the interests of another class of the population, namely, the taxpayers. He noticed that the hon. member for Fort Beaufort had moved an amendment, but the only object of it was to prevent the Bill from becoming law. He admired the attitude which the hon. member for Fort Beaufort and his Party had taken up with regard to the Indemnity Bill, and hoped the hon. member would withdraw his amendment as it amounted to nothing less than a motion of no confidence in the Government. He saw that a person named Tom Mann was coming to South Africa, and he hoped the Government would tell him to go back the same way he had come. The speaker said he was strongly opposed to strikes, which could never do any good to the workman. They cost a great deal of money, as shown only recently in Europe, where a strike had cost £300,000. He thought they could not allow the leaders of the Labour Party to play the baas in South Africa, and if necessary the Government should fight with an iron hand against anything of that sort in the interests of the country and the people.

said he hoped the hon. member who had just sat down would not think that he (Mr. Duncan) and others who did not altogether agree with the Bill were simply engaged in making election speeches. (Cheers.) Some of them did not like strikes any more than the hon. member (Mr. Schoeman) did and agreed that they would not do any good to South Africa, but still they differed entirely from the hon. member as to the manner in which industrial conflicts were to be avoided. It was quite clear from what the hon. member said that he believed in the iron hand. (Cheers.) The iron hand, unfortunately, had been tried in many parts of the world to keep down troubles such as they had in South Africa now, and it had not succeeded. It might be that South Africa could be the first country in the world where it would turn out to be successful. There were taxpayers in other parts of the country besides the fertile district of Oudtshoorn. If Oudtshoorn people were the only taxpayers their expenditure bill would be very much smaller than it was now. People who came from other parts of the country contributed a not inconsiderable portion of the taxes, and represented a not inconsiderable share of the market to which the hon. member who spoke last and his friends looked. Hon. members should get rid of the idea that those who were opposed to the passing of the Bill as it was now were going about the country making election speeches.

He would call attention to the fact that the discussion on the Bill seemed to him not to altogether bear out the impression given by the members on the cross-benches, namely; that they were the only people who had the slightest interest in the railwaymen of the country, and that when they made any suggestions for their welfare they were met with contempt. Those were statements that were spread about the country without any foundation. The amendment proposed from the cross-benches could not be supported by hon. members, no matter how much they would like to see the effects of the strike mitigated. It was urged that the Government must bear a large portion of the responsibility for the events that led up to the strike. With that he agreed. The feeling of dissatisfaction which existed prior to the strike, and made it possible, was something for which the Government could not escape a share of responsibility. Last July the Government made an agreement with the Federation of Trades—they might like it or they might dislike it—they came to these men as representing not merely the Government, but also the mining employers of labour, and they made an agreement in those capacities, an essential part of which was that the grievances of those men would receive inquiry and consideration. He must say that when it appeared that the only consideration those grievances were going to get was by the appointment of a Commission, he felt that the Government had not carried out what the men expected them to do. One must remember what experience the country had had of Commissions, not only as to delay, but as to the uncertainty as to whether any recommendations would see the light at all. A Commission had no means of settling grievances such as led to the disturbances of last year. He thought that a Commission should not have been the only avenue the Government promised to open. The answer to the railwaymen had been exactly the same—the Government promised a Commission to their own servants. They must remember that the Government had already been faced in that House and elsewhere with complaints from the railway servants of grievances. In that House the appointment of a Grievances Commission was forced on the Government against their will. After a very long inquiry the Grievances Commission presented a report. They were told by the Minister that out of so many hundred matters the Government had given effect to 90 per cent., but they could not estimate the value of a Commission of that kind by a mere enumeration of what they had done. They must remember the matters the Commission had not dealt with matters like piece-work, the question of hours, the question of a minimum wage, which was a very important matter, and the recognition of the men’s Union. Those were matters not dealt with by the Commission and not given effect to by the Government. When the trouble started in July those were the actual points brought forward by the men. Could they wonder that the men were not altogether satisfied when the Government only promised an inquiry?

He thought the Government did not understand or were determined to resist the feelings which had actuated the railwaymen. If the Government had understood the situation as they ought to have understood it, the Government could have removed that feeling of dissatisfaction. After all the trouble which arose in July had more or less died down, there appeared reports in the newspapers that 1,000 men were going to be retrenched. Supposing it were the intention of the Government to retrench men on a large scale, was that the time to bring in the pruning knife and was it the way to do it? If the Government had deliberately intended to cause those unsettled feelings, they could not have gone about it in a better way. They knew that the Minister said later that there was no intention of going to anything like the length mentioned in the reports, but why were the reports allowed to come out at all? Government had got that on their shoulders. It seemed to him that the real feeling at the bottom of all that discontent was a profound want of security. A man did not know what was going to happen to him the day after tomorrow. If the Government wanted to bring about a better state of things they must set about getting that sense of insecurity removed. Another thing they must do was to get themselves out of the position they were in now with regard to the working-men of this country generally. The Government had appeared as a combatant. The Government ought to represent the community as a whole. They would not have the confidence and moral force which they ought to have so long as they acted on the doctrines the Minister of Finance had expounded in another place, that it was the duty of the Government to strike first. The Government ought to get itself into a position in which they would be looked upon by the people of the country as being impartial. It seemed to him that they could not support the amendment moved from the cross-benches that those men should go back as though nothing had happened. One could not shut one’s eyes to the fact that a railway strike was illegal, and that a law had been made for a deliberate purpose and a deliberate reason. Railwaymen, in the first place, were State servants, and in the second place, a railway strike was not an ordinary strike. If it took place in anything like a complete way it meant striking a blow at the vitals of the community.

You must protect the railwaymen, too.

said of course they must protect the railwaymen, but even if the railwaymen had grievances they should have sufficient sense and responsibility not to strike. The last thing that led to the strike was that the men controlling the Railwaymen's Union lost their heads and rushed the whole service into a strike. Punishment was a very poor motive to guide the Government in an Administration like that. The first thing the Government should do was to see how they could treat those men so as to get the utmost confidence and loyalty from the men.

Continuing, he said there were some things in that Bill which were not compatible with such a position. There had been a good deal said with regard to the punishment of the rank and file, and he thought that the fines that were proposed to be imposed under that Bill were far too heavy. The Minister had said that he thought that the fines under the first category would work out at about £5 per head, so he (Mr. Duncan), took it for granted that the fines in the second category would work out at about £10 per head. Considering what the men had lost he thought that these fines were far too heavy. He wanted to say something about the men who were going to suffer the most, and were not only going to lose their daily bread but were going to lose what they had paid into the superannuation fund. It might be that some of these men had taken such a violent part in the strike that the Administration was justified in taking the action it proposed to take, but he could not believe that there were as many as 500 men who deserved to be treated in this way. Even if that number were reduced by half, he said that to visit 250 men with the extreme penalty was far too severe a penalty. He asked the Minister who were the men being dealt with in that way. It was not the men whose service was short, not the men who had records of disturbance and trouble, but the men who had been for many years faithful servants of the Union, and very often men who had done their utmost to stop the strike, and had only come out at the last at the call of their associations. He asked the Minister to look at those cases from the point of view of gaining the most confidence and loyalty in the service in the future. He hoped that the Minister would personally go into the cases of these men in the light of their records of service in the past, and if that were done it would do more to build up a loyal service in the future than anything else. He knew some of the men, and they were men who would be pillars of loyalty to the Service in the future—was one mistake to blot out a whole record of faithful service?

If that principle was followed it would not tend to loyalty and confidence in the future. Then the Minister had said that he had appointed a Committee of Inquiry which had gone into all the cases before the House. He (Mr. Duncan), accepted that statement in the fullest possible way, but he would call attention to the fact that cases had been brought to his notice where men had not been faced with charges and not been asked to say a word in their defence.

Those cases have been brought to my notice.

said he had brought two cases to the notice of the Minister. He would call the attention of the House to the fact that many of these men had suffered very severely in the courts for what they had done. He drew attention to what had happened in Volksrust, where Martial Law had not been in force, but where things had been done as though that law had been in operation. There was a case of half a dozen railwaymen who were charged with striking and with inciting to strike. They were first kept for twelve days in prison, then released on bail, and then kept waiting for two months before their cases were brought up. They had been dismissed from the Service, and they were practically penniless. It took the Attorney-General two months to decide to remit these cases to the magistrate, and he (Mr. Duncan), was sorry that the Attorney-General did not take this action sooner. The magistrate inflicted fines ranging from £2 10s. to £13 10s. per man. He (Mr. Duncan), did not know what the evidence amounted to, or the amount of guilt that attached to each of these men, but he was assured by one of them, who was fined £10 10s., that he did nothing of a violent nature. He hoped the Minister would bear this in mind, because this was not the only case. He thought that these fines after men had been dismissed added very severely to the severity of the way in which these men had been treated.

They had been told that all these cases were coming before the Railway Board, and he hoped that the Board would take the broadest view of these cases of men, many of whom had been misled for a period, and that the Board would deal with these cases with the minimum amount of hardship. Even if a man had been a member of a strike committee and he had a long record of faithful service he thought he should not be turned out into the street penniless. He was glad to see that the Minister had extended the provisions of the Bill. He regarded the clauses dealing with the grievances board as evidence that the mind of the Administration had been touched on this point, and as evidence that it had not gone far enough on this point in the past. He regarded it as an indication that the mind of the Government was open. He hoped the Minister would study carefully what was done in the United Kingdom in regard to the establishment of Conciliation Boards in 1907. He did not say that these boards had done everything or removed every possible grievance, but he said that the constitution laid down by the Royal Commission that went into the matter would give the Minister an idea of what an appeal board should be, and the necessity of some such board or boards on a service as large as this. On a service as large as the one in this country, no Minister or General Manager would be able to redress every grievance, but in every country that had faced things of this sort boards of the character he had indicated had been found a necessity. The Board in that Bill differed fundamentally from the Boards in the United Kingdom, and he thought the Minister should approximate more to the ideas laid down by the Royal Commission in the United Kingdom. He welcomed the section in the Bill not for what it was but what they might hope for in the future. The Act last year rightly made strikes on the railway illegal, but it was necessary that they should have machinery for redressing grievances much better than it was at the present time and must deal with grievances more expeditiously. On the ground that the Bill demanded careful inquiry he supported the amendment of the hon. member for Fort Beaufort.

said the hon. member for Oudtshoorn had gone a little too far in casting doubt on the earnestness of the speeches which had been delivered on the Bill. That was wrong, as the speeches were most earnest. With the exception of the Labour members, the speakers had expressed disapproval of the strike, and the speaker also disapproved of it. He was glad that the Government had not yet replied to the amendment, as they should first ascertain what was the opinion of the House. Some hon. members had spoken a good deal about the grievances of the railwaymen. The speaker had listened to those grievances, and could not allow them to pass unnoticed. The hon. member for Durban, Greyville, had stated that the scheme for the wholesale dismissal of men was one of the grievances. But dismissal was not a grievance. Last year they had been warned to get ready to meet new taxation, and he had replied that before that was done there must first of all be more economies. There was room for more economy on the railways. Natives and others who had worked on the railways had got so out of the habit of working that they were no longer willing to work on the farms. Half of the overseers were too big, and the workmen became lazy. There was a chance there for effecting economy. It was not just to the country to maintain superfluous public servants. If one took a man into one’s service, one was not married to him. Then they had been told that they should pay these people proper wages, but proper wages was a relative term. Some people could live respectably on a small salary, whilst others did not have enough even when they got a big salary. The country was suffering owing to the payment of those big salaries, and in any case if people were not satisfied with what they got they could go away. Some were able to make a good living on 3s. 6d. per day, whilst others could not live on 10s. a day.

The man who objected to piece-work was a man who was too lazy to work. It had been stated that piece-work led to bad work, but a man who could not produce good work on the piece should leave. Another of the grievances was the reduction of wages from 19s. to 17s. a day, though it was a fact that 17s. a day was a good deal too much. The complainants would talk in a different way if they had to work hard in order to earn 2s. and 3s. a day. In regard to the placing of contracts abroad, it seemed to him that they had forgotten the taxpayer, because if the work could be done here he was strongly averse to sending it abroad to be done. Still, it was not for the workmen to talk about that.

If they preached to their officials year after year that they had grievances, they of course believed it. Why did not they lay their grievances before the Government? If they did that in a proper way the Government would certainly be able to remove them.

The Government was acting very fairly towards the strikers. He was sorry that the strike had been compared to the Jameson Raid. The Jameson Raid was made by volunteers, whilst the strike was declared and carried out by people who were under contract. Those who entered into a contract were not free to lay down their work whenever they felt inclined to do so, and those who committed a breach of the law would have to be punished for it. Next it was stated that the Government party had no sympathy with the working-men, but he denied that emphatically. They now asked the Government to treat the strikers fairly, and he personally was quite in agreement with that, remembering the position of their wives and children. The unmarried men could be punished severely. The strikers would willingly submit to punishment, though he thought it was wrong to reward and to pay the non-strikers for their loyalty. A better plan would be to keep a record of their names and give them the first chances for promotion later on, whilst for their services during the time of the strike they should be well paid. It was certainly true that they had enabled the country to escape large losses.

The hon. member for Fort Beaufort was in earnest with regard to his amendment, but it was impossible for the speaker to support it. The Government ought to stand by their Bill. When a Bill such as that came back from a Select Committee very little of it could be changed, and it was better for them to discuss the matter there in public. To suppress with an iron hand was a wrong thing. There were real grievances in existence, and it was necessary to appoint an appeal board of an impartial character. He hoped the Bill would be agreed to.

said not long ago that House was ringing with condemnation of what was called the lawless acts of the Government. Now they had a proposal to ignore the law once again. There was a law on the Statute-book which was as clear as the noonday sun, and in it was laid down what should be done with the citizens of this country under certain circumstances. That was provided for in section 20 of the Railways and Harbours Service Act. It laid down that any person going on strike might be fined on conviction £50 or be sentenced to six months’ hard labour. The Government was proposing to push that law on one side. Where were those gentlemen on both sides of the House who wanted the law and nothing but the law? This time the ignoring of the law was in favour of the men. The hon. member for Fordsburg had said that the Government should be impartial, that it should serve out impartial justice. Did he want impartial justice now—the impartial justice which was contained in the law on the Statute-book? The Government had twice ignored the law. He would much rather have seen a discussion on the deportations before the men were deported, but the condition of things made this impossible. Here was another case on all fours but in an opposite direction. How many threatening letters would they receive now, saying that they were taking an un-British and unconstitutional action? He was going to act this time as he had done last time. There could be no question of the guilt of a great many of the men, but once more he was prepared to push the law on one side so that the men might be judged according to the circumstances in which they found themselves. They were told that those poor deluded men did not know what they were doing. He did not believe a word of it. He believed a number of them would never have gone on strike had they been left alone, and in those cases he would be chary of inflicting any punishment at all. The railway workers were an intelligent class of men, and it was no compliment to them to say that they did not know what they were doing. He would support the proposal that there should be no punishment at all for the rank and file. With regard to the ringleaders, there seemed to be too large a number of them—250 out of 5,000: but he hoped, the Government would say: “We have started on the path of forgiveness we won't fine any of the men. ” He thought the hon. member for Fordsburg had made the most illogical speech he had ever made. He did not think the fines were too heavy, but he would not fine one man He would go along the path of conciliation to that extent. He was inclined to agree with the hon. member for Fordsburg with regard to the question of rewards. He thought that provision for a holiday should remain in the Bill, and let the men take it if they wanted it. He hoped they would not take it. It would show some spirit to say: “We don’t want a holiday because we remained loyal.” Could any member of that House get up and do that country a service by snowing a better way of settling disputes between employers and employees? Anyone who had any love for his country could only grieve over the terrible results of the strike. He admitted that he could not find any method of settling those disputes.

Continuing, he said the time had gone by when they could treat workmen like mules or asses. If those connected with the railway, from the Minister downwards, would only look into these grievances and expose grievances which were not really grievances, because it had been his experience that 50 per cent, were not grievances, but became grievances because they were not attended to, they would get better results. He frankly confessed that he could not meet the difficulty that faced them. It was not so much a question of wages; it was a question of relationship between workman and master in the future. Agitators would find no place when the masters found a proper method of treating their men. He hoped the Minister would succeed in bringing every railwayman into touch with him, and that was the only thing that would keep them from strikes in the future. They might crush the men, might shoot them down, might send them to gaol, and might send them to England, but not one of these things was going to help them in the long run. The workingman looked for a short cut, but there was no short cut for any man or woman in this world. Any movement for the betterment of the working-classes could only succeed by slow and steady evolution, and not by strikes. The strikes in Johannesburg had made things worse for employer and employee, and now there were all the makings of a big revolt. Continuing, he said that they were all lawbreakers. They laid down a law last year for dealing with such a situation on the railway, and that had been swept aside for this measure. The hon. member for Barberton and the hon. member for Ladybrand had the other day talked about the lawlessness of hon. members of that House, and yet they had not said a word on this occasion. He asked the Minister to seriously consider remitting the fines against the rank and file. If he had anything to do with the ringleaders he would not let them come back. That would show that they would be prepared to take a big view of things.

said that one section of the House was in favour of complete amnesty and the other section in favour of the punishment of the ringleaders only. It had been argued from one side that the Government was responsible for the unrest and that retrenchment was ill-advised. He thought it required a very big imagination to throw such a responsibility on the Government. He had come to the conclusion that the men at the head of affairs were determined to bring about a strike, and thought that the railwaymen afforded the best opportunity of doing so, and he made bold to say that no strike had been declared in any other country on such slender grounds. The question was whether they should draw a distinction between the rank and file and the ringleaders. He thought the rank and file should be dealt with leniently, as it was impossible to consider their cases without considering the fact that they had been forced out. When he dealt with ringleaders he meant the men who were actively engaged in pulling people out, and he thought that the punishment provided for in that Bill erred on the side of leniency. Dealing with the question of rewards, it seemed to him an unhealthy principle to reward railwaymen for doing what was only their duty. Some members thought that the amount of £10,000 was very small, and considering the number of men among whom it was distributed, he thought so too. They had been told that the giving of these rewards would accentuate the bad feeling between the railwaymen and the Administration, but railwaymen he had met with said that they did expect that Parliament would recognise the services they had rendered.

Proceeding, the hon. member said he had always been in favour of giving men on the railway the best possible treatment, and considering the unrest which existed, he thought it would not be a bad idea to establish an impartial tribunal to which the men could take their grievances. There ought to be some tribunal outside the Administration altogether so that the door would be open to any man to take his grievances, however small, and have them redressed. He was not satisfied that those in authority had always been as sympathetic or as accessible as they might have been. It was a curious thing that while here they had a huge Railway Administration admitted to be the best paying in the world, the service was seething with discontent. He thought there should be full inquiry into the causes of discontent, and it would not have been a bad idea at the commencement of the session to have appointed a Select Committee representing both sides of the House to go thoroughly into the matter and find out what was the real cause of the discontent. But they must not forget the real object of the railways. If they listened to the hon. members on the cross-benches they would think the railways ought to be a charitable institution, to serve the purpose of employing the largest possible number of workers at the highest possible salary; whether there was work or not there must be no retrenchment, and they must pay the men by the day so that a lazy fellow would have the chance of getting a full day’s pay whether he did a full day’s work or not. The taxpayer had not been considered at all in that debate. He did not appear to have had anything to say in the matter at all. The hon. member for Jeppe, in the course of his speech on the second reading, said he had a good remedy to provide more money for the employees, that of raising the rates for agricultural produce. The effect of such a course on the people of the North does not seem to have struck the hon. member at all.

When Union came into being they were led to believe that the railways were going to be run on business lines and they looked forward to a reduction in the rates, especially those living in the North. But although the Treasury no longer levied toll upon the railway revenue, they found that the reductions they looked forward to had gone. The cost of administration was undoubtedly too high, and after they had made provision for interest, maintenance, etc., there was practically nothing left, but if the Minister or officials exercised a policy of retrenchment they were violently attacked and criticised in that House. He could not understand how it was that the interests of the men were solely considered and the interests of the taxpayers in this country were left in the background. The only sound system to follow was to run the railways on business lines. Did the business man make a charitable institution of his business? No. When there was not work for the men he let them go. When the Government did that, their action was hostilely criticised by hon. members in that House. He would like to know how far the men should be allowed to go in joining their Unions. If the railwaymen’s Unions were allowed to affiliate with the Federation of Trades and then come out on strike, they could hardly be blamed, for the strike was the most effective weapon those Unions had got. If the Government as employers were going to allow the men’s Union to go into this affiliation, the first thing they ought to do was to repeal that section of the Act passed years ago which deprived men of certain privileges. He was surprised when he heard that the hon. Minister of Railways had allowed the railway employees the right to stand for Parliament while in the service, because if they allowed it to the railwaymen it should be allowed to the other departments of the service. He did not agree to the subject matter of the Bill being sent to a Select Committee, and he could not support that motion. What was going to happen if they did that was that they would have a majority and minority report, and the responsibility would ultimately be again thrown upon the Government to say what was to be done in the matter. When they considered the Bill in committee he hoped the hon. Minister would give the men every consideration and let the rank and file off as leniently as possible.

criticised the last speaker’s remarks that the railways of this country should not be a charitable institution. The hon. member rather inferred that they were to some extent an institution of that character. He (Mr. Andrews) was inclined to agree with him from one point of view, but he believed that the gentlemen on whom the charity was exercised were gentlemen similar to the hon. member himself and members of the land-owning and farming community. The reductions in railway rates had been largely of benefit to the hon. member and his friends, not forgetting the coal-owners in the country. What the hon. member would have them believe was that the railways were in a sense a charitable institution so far as employees were concerned. He did not think that opinion was based on facts. They on the cross-benches were in a somewhat different position in discussing that Bill than rested with other hon. members of that House, almost without exception, because it would be remembered that they opposed most strenuously a great deal of what was contained in the Railway Service Act of 1912. The bulk of that Act they were in no sense responsible for. They fought it in the Select Committee and in the House both in committee and in the House itself. They failed, and therefore they had not the same feeling with regard to the legality or illegality of the men’s attitude as the great bulk of hon. members in that House. It would be remembered in regard to clause 47—that clause which dealt with men who refused to serve, who absented themselves without lawful cause or reasonable excuse—he opposed that, and moved the deletion of that proviso. He was beaten by 89 to 9. The hon. members on the cross-benches examined this Bill from rather a different point of view to the rest of the House. They were, in supporting the amendment of the hon. member for Greyville, voicing the opinion of those who sent them there and also a very large proportion of the electors who sent other members to the House under a misapprehension.

The discrimination between one section of the railway employees and the other section was calculated not to do good but to inflict a considerable amount of harm. The Ministry believed, he (Mr. Andrews) supposed, in military government, and if that were the case it might be quite justified in creating dissension among the members of the railway service on a principle of dividing and conquering, and thus preventing anything like the possibility of organised effort to resist oppression and remedy grievances. The Minister told the House that this ought to be called the Strikers’ Relief Bill, because the punishments in the Act of 1912 were not going to be put into force. But he (Mr. Andrews) did not think the Minister dare put these punishments into force on the wholesale scale that would be necessary under the circumstances. He did not think the men, the House or the country had anything to thank the Minister for on these grounds. No leniency was shown, but it suited the Administration not to inflict the full penalties, otherwise the Minister would do so. But even under the present Bill some of the men would be fined £8, and in this connection he would like to call attention to a newspaper inaccuracy. In a leading article, the “Cape Times” had stated that these men were to be fined one day’s pay and one and a half days’ pay respectively. He dared say that suited the book of the Government very well to minimise what it was doing to these men. The Minister had not told them that many of the men taken back were recommencing at a less rate of pay than that which they received prior to the strike.

4s. a day some of them.

said the disabilities under which these men were labouring were very considerable, and there was no justification for the Government saying that it was acting in any magnanimous spirit. Most hon. members, particularly those representing constituencies which consisted to a large extent of railway employees, had stated that some of these disabilities should be mitigated or not enforced. But all hon. members, so far as he could remember, had agreed that the 250 ringleaders had deserved all they .got. (Opposition cries of “No.”) Hon. members had not said it exactly in those words, but many of them had said they had he sympathy with those who had caused the men to strike.

The ringleaders were permanently to be denied work on the railways, and he was given to understand that their discharges were so endorsed that they showed that they had gone out on strike—that they had done that terrible thing, cease work for a cause they believed to be right. They were doomed to starvation so far as the Government was concerned. It might be exceedingly useful to those men to be able to handle the money they had paid into the Superannuation Fund, but the Government refused to return them the amounts that had been deducted from their hard-earned pay. What were these ringleaders, and now were they produced? This was a matter of which he had some knowledge. It was not argued that they were these terrible people called paid agitators. They were working for their living, and had taken certain offices in certain Unions or, perhaps, they might have been a little prominent—convened meetings, addressed meetings, or led deputations. How were these men produced? These men seldom sought positions. In every department there were certain men who, through their reading, their steadiness, or clearness of thought, were looked up to by their fellow-workers, and consulted on points of difficulty. Gradually and unconsciously they thus began to assume the position of leaders in their own little department. If they happened to belong to Trade Unions they were asked if they would become office-bearers. Very often it was exceedingly difficult to induce men to take these positions, and frequently it was only a stern sense of duty that led a man to take up a position of danger. He had been through this experience himself. The men did not get into these positions of their own free will, but were practically compelled to fill them by their comrades, and they accepted these positions of danger from a sense of duty. Yet for this they were now penalised and were given what amounted to a sentence of death.

Among the ringleaders were some of the finest men they had in South Africa. Among them were men whom they could not afford to lose. Looking at it only from the point of view of policy, it was bad policy to dismiss those men. He was not going to plead for mercy for them, but it was not good business to drive those men to desperation—because they were all men, they were not worms—those were men who would strike back, or, being men of resource, they might find it possible and desirable to leave these shores. He had yet to learn that the Australian Government would bar those men from entering Australia. He took it they would welcome them. They were robbing those men of money that was rightly theirs, notwithstanding the law and the regulations. The Railways and Harbours Service Regulation Act of 1912 was an iniquitous Act. It stood as a blot on the statutes of this country, as so many others did. Reductions in railway rates had been made by the Government in favour of the hon. member for Bechuanaland and his friends, and for the coal owners of the country. They had it on the authority of the General Manager, in his report for 1912, that the reduction of rates had not benefited the ordinary householder one iota. The fact was that no benefit had been felt at Johannesburg or by any other towns in the North. That was proof positive that the railway was a charitable institution, but its charity was extended to those who had and not to those who had not. Who was the taxpayer? They heard of 20,000 coming out on strike from the mines, and they were reminded that they ought to consider the tax-payer. They heard of thousands coming out on the railways, and they were again told they must remember the taxpayer. Surely those numbers added together represented a considerable portion of the tax-payers of this country.

What do you pay in taxes?

said that the man who required the whole of his salary to live upon paid much more in proportion than the hon. member who had interrupted. On the authority of the Economic Commission, it was shown that in Customs alone the average working-class family paid 3s. 6d. per week Imagine that from a man who got 3s. 4d. a day. It was estimated that 4s. 2d. went in railway rates. A man who had a small income spent it all, and therefore paid a large proportion to the taxes of the country. The Minister had told them that there had been a large increase in the number of men employed on the railways, and that 50 per cent, more coaches had been built in South Africa than before Union. He took it that that would mean an increase in the number of wagon builders. New lines had also been opened and work undertaken which would need an increased wages bill. The Minister went on to tell them that fewer men were retrenched in 1913 than in the previous two or three years, but he went on to say that 1,100 were dismissed. He would like to know the difference between dismissing a man and retrenching him. Nobody had argued that the Administration should not retrench men when they were not required. But there should have been no need to retrench any men at all. The Minister had said, in regard to the criticisms of the Administration, that the heads of departments should be allowed to know their requirements better than the public. But he gathered that the heads of departments did not originate that policy of retrenchment. They had every reason to believe that orders were issued from headquarters that all departments should make certain reductions, and the heads were instructed to report as to how that could be done with the least possible friction.

The point the Minister made was therefore no point at all. The heads of departments had very little to do with it. To show how popular the Administration was, the Minister had stated that 5,000 men had made application for appointments on the railway.

This had nothing to do with the popularity or unpopularity of the service. It simply meant that 5,000 men were willing to work because otherwise they would starve. It meant absolutely nothing. The Minister had talked to them of high wages, and said that some men were earning as high as £40 a month. He wondered how many hours a day those men had to work before they built up a cheque of £40. All this was preposterous talk on the part of the Minister and had no bearing whatever on the average wage of the workers, and if the railway did pay a man that on the maximum rates for drivers it did not understand its business. He could not agree with the hon. member for Uitenhage in his eulogy of the Government with regard to the last clause. The Board was no good at all and equal representation meant nothing, because the ultimate decision rested with the General Manager of Railways—he was to adjudicate on his own policy. He thought the Minister should study what has been done in other parts of the world, and instanced the case of New Zealand, where the men of the Railway Society there made a presentation to the retiring General Manager, who said that since recognition had been in force it had been his policy to decline to deal with individuals. He thought the Minister or somebody who came after him would have to do the same one of these days. When the Minister said that railwayman were the same as soldiers and sailors, he said that he was misleading the House and the country. Thousands of these men had no more security of tenure than the casual labourer. To liken them to soldiers and sailors and say they were guilty was carrying argument to an absolute absurdity. He considered that the men who had gone cut had done no wrong. Government had done the wrong. The men who went out were loyal to their fellow-workers. They put their loyalty to their workers and society before loyalty to the capitalistic class of this country. He reckoned that a strike was just as constitutional as any other means. These men had not the full rights of citizens, and they got nothing in return except to be told that they were the same as soldiers and sailors. He looked upon the ringleaders as amongst the most respected men who had been in the service, and he would be proud to shake them by the hand and call them friends. He supported the amendment of the hon. member for Greyville and he thought the Government would do well to depart from its intentions of penalising not only the ringleaders, but the men who had gone back to work.

said he was interested in the speech of the hon. member for George Town because it disclosed the attitude of mind of members on the cross-benches. They had heard from those benches that it was an unheard-of principle that the Railway Administration should have the right to retrench. The whole basis of the strike was that the Railway Department was retrenching, and they said that they would call a strike if 25 notices were handed out. It was only another instance of how hon. members changed their attitude. (Labour dissents.) A few days ago the hon. member for Roodepoort and the hon. member for Springs denied they had anything to do with the strike at all.

I have not spoken.

said that the hon. member on another occasion read a letter giving the impression he had nothing to do with it. He (Mr. Struben) knew a man at the Docks who was employed in charge of the refrigerating machine. He was given to understand that the hon. member came to the Docks and urged this man to strike. This man said he had 80 tons of fruit, and if he stopped it would be destroyed. He understood that the hon. member for Springs replied: “That is exactly what we want you to do. Show the Government what we mean.” That man had said that if the hon. member did not get out he would turn on the ammonia. That evidently was not done, because the hon. member was still in the House. (Laughter.) Next day the man went to his work. He was riding his bicycle, and the hon. member and his friends were waiting for him. They threw a stone into the wheel of his bicycle and brought him down. He went and reported to headquarters in Cape Town, and said he could not get into his work. They provided him with an escort, which saw him through the Dock gates. That man was marked out as being on strike because he was two or three hours late, and he still thought there was a black mark against him because he had not turned up at the hour he should have done. Surely if anybody required consideration that man did. He (Mr. Struben) had told the House of that particular instance to show how genuine the disclaimers were when they were contested by actual facts. He was entirely satisfied that his information was correct, because it came from an extraordinarily reliable source, from a man who had had long years in the service without a black mark being registered against him.

The hon. member for George Town had also laid down the proposition that they should give a complete amnesty to those men. The hon. members on the cross-benches fought against the Railway Service Act of two years ago, and therefore said they were not responsible for it at all, and the Government was responsible for the whole thing. The hon. member laid down that extraordinary proposition that a member might vote against a Bill in all its stages, and then, because he was opposed to the Bill, might go into the country and preach near and far that the law could be broken, because it had not the sanction of the whole House when it was passed. If they in that House did not vindicate the law they might as well have some other form of Government. Proceeding, the hon. member said they should not go the length of complete amnesty, for if they did that they would stultify the House. Two years ago hon. members of that House placed the railway service on a different footing to the servants of any private concern. It was argued that the railway servants should have practically life-long billets in the railway service, and they must at the same time be allowed to go on strike whenever they liked. If they put the two together they would see that the contention was an impossible one, having regard to the safety and stability of this country. It would mean that a huge service would be put practically into the hands of the railwayman’s society. He understood from men of long service that, as compared with the old days, it was extremely difficult today for a man to get any complaint or grievance taken to a quarter where it could be heard or settled. Under the old Cape system, for instance, a man might go to the locomotive superintendent or traffic manager, who would have authority to deal with small matters on the spot, and there was no necessity to take it further. But under the transportation system the thing had been so centralised that complaints and grievances were passed on from one official to another—mere registering machines—until they reached the General Manager. It was easy to see how that sort of thing led to irritation. A system where responsible officers had no power was bound to lead to irritation amongst the men. The hon. member instanced the case of a man who asked for a few hours’ leave to bury his wife. That was in Cape Town, and he could only get provisional leave, which had to be confirmed from Pretoria. That did not seem to be the way in which an enormous system like the South African Railways should be conducted. There was too much centralisation and not enough power in the hands of responsible officers. There were many things which appeared to the men to be of great importance that did not get the consideration they deserved. For instance, there was the question of weekly wages. The hon. Minister had disposed of that by saying that the Commission was not unanimous about the matter, but it would give the men satisfaction if the Minister would take a ballot amongst them. It was the piling up of small things that made it possible for the agitators to bring about the position they did a few months ago.

Business was suspended at 6 p.m.

said there was a hopeless waste of time and energy involved in men working at the Cape Town Docks having to go to Salt River when they commenced work and when they left off in order to sign on and off. He alluded to the case of an officer of 55 years of age who formerly filled a position at Salt River drawing a salary of £410 a year. This officer had under him one clerk, and as the work had increased he asked for, but was not given, the services of an additional clerk. Subsequently he was retrenched and the work that he and one clerk had done was now carried out by three officials, each drawing £360 a year, and each of whom had a clerk. It may have been a coincidence that all these three officials came from Durban.

A very good place, too.

said these officials from Durban were given the appointment although there were already at Salt River men of stability and experience who were perfectly entitled to be promoted. The displaced officer had been placed on a pension of £270 a year, and he reckoned that the transaction had resulted in an apparent wastage of £1,285 a year. The impression was abroad that men were retrenched because they might have expressed too strongly opinions as to what was taking place in their departments. Such things must be taken notice of by the authorities if peace and progress were to prevail. Continuing, Mr. Struben related an incident of a man engaged at Salt River at 8s. 6d. per day who made up his mind to get employment elsewhere. Another man in the same department earning 6s. a day was told that his services would no longer be required. The man drawing 8s. 6d. a day thereupon offered to leave at once if the other man could thereby be retained. The foreman agreed to this, but on condition that the man who was to be retrenched and who, by the way, had five children, should agree to accept 5s. instead of 6s. a day. Mr. Struben next referred to an engine-driver in the Midlands with 12 years’ service who was retrenched because of defective eyesight. But no opportunity was afforded him of working in some other capacity such as that of a cleaner.

A real attempt should be made to single out a few cases of those who could be called the ringleaders. In that Bill the Administration admitted that the machinery for the redress of grievances had broken down, and that they had had to resort to a new method of dealing with them. The Government had had to turn to other methods to try to meet the difficulties which had arisen in regard to their servants on the railway. It appeared to him that that clause in the Bill which dealt with appointments should have more attention from the Minister, or he should have given the House more information than he had done. They were asked again to ratify appointments of which they knew nothing and about which no information had been given. He certainly could not be a party to a clause like that until he knew more about this matter. He had failed to follow the hon. member for Oudtshoorn (Mr. Schoeman) when he said that the motion of the Leader of the Opposition was a vote of no confidence in the Government. Because the Opposition had supported the Government in another matter in regard to a serious crisis in the country, must it be assumed that they supported the Government on every matter? If they referred the matter to a Select Committee before the second reading it could bring in an amended Bill of a more satisfactory nature. It seemed to him that the simplest method of dealing with the matter was to accept the amendment of the hon. member for Fort Beaufort. He thought that the more that discussion came on the more abundantly clear it was that they wanted not only repression in that country but a statesmanlike way of dealing with the conditions. It still seemed as if the Government was living in the backwoods, and the sooner the Government realised that the time was ripe to push on with measures which had been promised the better it would be for the country.

referred to the guilelessness of the hon. member for Uitenhage, and said that what the Government liked was not ability but routine and that sort of thing. He would like to say that he did not like the tone of that Bill. He believed it was on mistaken lines. It had been introduced with the best intentions, but he thought it would fall short of the intentions which the Minister had He did not like to look a gift horse in the mouth, and they should be prepared to accept the Bill in the spirit in which it had been offered. He wanted to know how the Minister proposed to separate the sheep from the goats—the men who had actually done wrong and the men who had been more or less led. He did not think it was wise to attempt it, and it was utterly beyond that House to do anything of the kind. He did not like the Ministry coming to Parliament to ask advice as to how to manage their own men. Perhaps it would be an impertinence on his part to suggest a better course to the Minister. These men had discharged themselves, and what he would like to see the Minister do was to take all these men back on new agreements under the terms and conditions of the Railways and Harbours Servants Act, and with all the penalties and conditions which that applied, and having taken them back he could introduce a Bill that after good behaviour for 12 months he could reinstate those men to their former positions.

He did not like to see the Minister down on the rank and file. (Hear, hear.) Let him take back the men, the followers, one and all. Whether they had come back to work late or early or they had not come back at all was hardly the point. The Government must not forget that in this matter they had to shoulder a considerable weight of responsibility themselves. He thought the Government when they failed to protect the man who wanted to work in his right to work had a considerable responsibility upon their own shoulders. He protested against the filthy names which had been applied to these men by hon. members sitting beside him. Outside this House, when a man insulted another by calling him such abominable and filthy names he did not think a week in gaol would be a bit too much for such behaviour. In that case the wrongdoers were allowed to return to work, they were petted and pandered to by the Government, and not only that, but £47,000 of the taxpayers’ money was taken to get them back into their jobs again. No wonder the men, when they were called out on strike, thought that the same thing was going to happen again, and they came out meekly like lambs. As to the rewards, he thought they should be accepted in the spirit in which they had been offered. They had been offered in a spirit of liberality and friendliness. He thought they should not be down too much on the slow-moving men, the men who did not rush back to work the first time they had an opportunity, those who came back last and those who did not come back at all. They were, no doubt, prepared to take their gruel, but he maintained that it was not the part of this House to administer it.

This matter of fines on the railway servants was a far more serious thing to him than the deportation of the nine men whom they had sent away from this country. These small amounts of £6, £7, or £8, on top of the wages that these men had already had to sacrifice by not going to their work, made a very great difference, especially to the women and children, who had perhaps not been offenders in this matter at all. They meant perhaps a considerable amount in human misery. He knew many of these men who were affected and he knew that many of them were not like the men whom they sent to that House, and who were often Socialistic wolves in sheep’s clothing. They had waited till the fires had burned down,” but the gas was still blowing off. While the gas had been blowing off in that House, the business of the country had been at a standstill. They had wasted too much time already on Socialism. It was high time that they had the closure applied in that Assembly—(Ministerial cheers)—to put an end to the talk, the long useless harangues they had in that House which took up time that could be better spent in discussing matters of greater importance. The whole business of the country had been hung up by about half a dozen members in that House. These hon. members seemed to think there was something new about Socialism, because they had only happened to hear of it lately. He believed the country was to-day calling for an end to be put to this state of affairs. A member of the labour Party at Bloemfontein the other day said he would vote for a baboon if it were a member of the Labour Party. He (Mr. Fawcus) had long wanted an explanation of the election of Mr. Poutsma against the hon. member for Fordsburg. He could only say that that was an explanation, to his mind, for the railwaymen’s very misguided action on that occasion.

Continuing, he said that the hon. member for Greyville, in dealing with the cost of production, took England, which was the dearest country in the world. If he had gone to Germany it would have been a different story, because in England they had adopted the doctrine of the limited output, and raised the cost to such an extent that England was out of the market at the present time. That was why rail-, way contracts sent to England took 12 months instead of six, and that was the reason why South Africa had to go behind the old Mother Country when contracts were placed overseas. There was nothing wrong with the principle of constructing rolling stock in this country, and if it were handed over to private enterprise it would work out far more economically than at present. With regard to the fines, the hon. member for Roodepoort had said that the Government would make a profit of £26,000 as a result of the deal, but the hon. member for Roodepoort had forgotten how much the Government lost during the few days of the strike. A good deal of the responsibility for the strike rested upon the Government for the reason that the railwaymen had been led to believe that strikes could be carried on and that afterwards they had only to ask to be taken back and everything would be all right. The fact that the Government did not protect the men in July was the reason for the strike in January. He did not believe in rewarding some men and punishing others. He would do neither. He thought the leaders should be punished and should be made to suffer for their folly. He pleaded for mercy for the poor women and children, who would suffer more than the House thought owing to these fines. He was opposed to the amendment of the hon. member for Fort Beaufort because he did not think there was anything about the Bill that necessitated inquiry. The only point was the fines question, and it somebody else did not do so he would move for their deletion when the Bill was in committee.

said he would like to draw attention to some of the wild statements that had been made in that House. The hon. member for Umlazi had said that the reason that there was so match delay in the delivery of material from England was because the workmen had learned the doctrine of the limited output. He would refer his hon. friend to the General Manager’s report (Stores Department), which stated: “During the year considerable difficulty has been experienced in obtaining material from Britain owing to the congestion in most of the works, the increase in trade, and the inevitable Labour troubles.” That statement did not square with the one made by the hon. member for Umlazi. Continuing, he said that the story told by the hon. member for Newlands was only another case of uninvestigated romance. He hoped he would believe him (Mr. Madeley) when he gave a total denial to the statement. The only engineer he knew he met at the Trades Hall, and that was after the man had come out on strike. There was nothing he had done in the whole of his career that he was ashamed of. It had been stated that the hon. member for Roodepoort and himself had gone to Salt River to induce the men to come out on strike. The facts of the case were that they were walking up Adderley-street on the momentous day, and they were met by an individual who informed them that their presence was required at Salt River, the reason being that the men had gone on strike; and when they got there they found the hon. member for Fort Beaufort with the Mayor inside the pale. The hon. member was addressing the workpeople of Salt River. After that meeting another meeting was held on the Market Square, which was attended by 300 or 400 men, the majority of whom were evidently in favour of a strike. The “Cape Times” report said that he (Mr. Madeley) then proceeded to address the men, and went on to say that he said to them: “Boys, I think you had better go back to work after the hour’s grace.” They had been granted an hour’s grace to listen to the hon. member for Fort Beaufort and the Mayor. They were to have a meeting in the evening, and he had advised them to wait until then to decide what their policy should be. He thought it was undesirable they should come out in sixes and sevens—they should either come out en masse or else not at all. They had already declared themselves on strike. He did not want to get away from any position of responsibility. All he wanted was that the historic facts should be known. So far from the hon. member for Roodepoort and himself pulling those men out on strike, the hon. member for Fort Beaufort had pushed them out.

Proceeding, he said that many remarkable statements had been made in that House, but he noticed that, with the exception of the hon. members on the cross-benches, hon. members were agreed upon apportioning the blame for the late unrest and strike on the railways to the men concerned. They on the cross-benches on the contrary, and they claimed rightly, placed the whole blame for anything that had transpired on the Government through the individual who was the Minister of Railways at the present time. The decision of the Minister of Railways to retrench at the time he did, and to publish the fact was the approximate cause, at all events, of the strike on the railways. The men had many grievances. Hon. members in that House were agreed on that, but the culminating point was the decision of the hon. Minister to retrench men. It was stated in public by the General Manager that 1,000 men would have to be retrenched. He was probably called over the coals for that statement, which led to a good deal of commotion in the country. So much so that the Minister found it necessary, in order to ease the situation, to state that the retrenchment would be only of 500 men. This simmered down to 70 later, and now he had told them in the course of the debate that it was only 52. That was the cause of the trouble on the railways, and following upon that the arrogant attitude which the Minister adopted when he was interviewed by the representatives of the men. He would not discuss the situation with them either calmly or in a decent fashion. It was a case of the great “I am ” on the one hand and the representatives of the men whom he was employing. Did they expect men were going to take that sort of thing lying down? He showed himself not adequately able to fill the shoes of the late Minister of Railways (Mr. Sauer), who, by the introduction of piece-work, anticipated there would be a redundancy of 700 men, whom he said he would absorb in manufacture. The deceased Minister was a statesman, but he (Mr. Madeley) would leave the House to guess what the present Minister was. He had succeeded in carrying out the former part of the late Minister’s policy when he introduced piece-work with its consequent retrenchment, but he wholly failed to grasp the statesmanlike intention of the then Minister of Railways to absorb the men by increasing his manufacture locally. On the contrary he was going anywhere throughout the known world to import the necessary rolling-stock required rather than they should be built in South Africa. An hon. member had mentioned the interests of the taxpayer; that was not in the interests of the taxpayer. The Government was absolutely unable to introduce a policy which was likely to be of benefit to the people of this country, either in the railways or in any other department.

“State control.”

proceeding, said that was not State control, it was plutocratic control; control by a little coterie of individuals running this State in the interests of the class they represented. He went on to allude to the policy of the administration in reducing the freight to certain sections of the community.

On coal alone Government had surrendered revenue to the extent of £300,000, but that had not benefited the country at all, ordinary consumers having to pay more for coal now than they did formerly. All these railway reductions had been made in the interest of a certain little coterie which was absolutely running this country—the Chamber of Mines which had the Government on the hon. There were cheap freights to the coast for export purposes, but the country got no benefit from that. They heard of South African coal being quoted at cheaper rates in London than in South Africa. Cheap rates were given for the conveyance of coal for bunkering purposes which was a very questionable advantage to the country. In order to benefit a certain little coterie, Government Went to the length of throwing hundreds of men out of work. It was a strange thing that in spite of the increased production of coal and the decreased cost of carriage, the net increase in the number of men employed on the coal mines throughout the Union was only 18 whites and 308 coloured men.

The Minister of Railways had made some very interesting comparisons in the rates of pay here and in other parts of the world. But in spite of all the increases in the wages, he (Mr. Madeley) found that the top rates were being paid to drivers, firemen, and guards, the increase provided for in the Estimates being to engine-drivers an addition of 2s. 21/4d. a day, firemen 1s. 6d. a day, guards and conductors 1s. 3d. a day, and ticket examiners and collectors 3s. a day. Notwithstanding these additions, in no case did the total amount of pay to these men exceed 15s. a day. We had working on the railways 9,000 white men, who were receiving 5s. a day or less. In Australia, where there was no such thing as poor white labour, the lowest pay on the railways was 8s. a day. In making comparisons, why did not the Minister inform them that the real comparison rested not with the top-rate men, but with the cheaper men? Even the cleaners in Australia received 8s. a day, while here they were paid only 4s. 41/2d. a day.

In South Africa the men worked 11 or 12 hours a day, while in Australia it was an eight hours day all round. In regard to the figures that had been given about South Africa overtime had been included, but in regard to Australia overtime had not been included, and that must be taken into consideration when comparing the rates; and they had to add one-eighth to the rates when comparing Australia, to make matters quite fair. If they did that it gave 6d. a day in favour of the Australian artisan. The Minister of Railways had not informed them that house rent, food, living, and the like were infinitely cheaper in Australia than in South Africa. They found that the wages in Australia invariably exceeded the wages paid in South Africa. The hon. member went on to refer to the reduction in freightage, which he said had benefited one section. Who benefited?

The poor.

went on to say that the poor did not benefit. How did the poor in South Africa come off by that cheapening of freightage in fruit? The consumers in South Africa suffered every time and had to pay more for their fruit and got the worst grades. Let them ask any people who had anything to do with the sale of fruit, and they would tell them exactly the same thing. As to mealies, they had a cheap rate and a flat rate. They sent mealies out of the country at a cheap rate and the taxpayer had to pay the difference, and they had to re-import mealies to feed their own people! The Minister wanted to introduce piece-work, but the result would not be what he bargained for. It would set the whole of the railwaymen by the ears, and the Minister was fostering trouble which would break out very shortly, if he went on the course he was following. Invariably piece-work worked out at a continual reduction of wages. Men were thrown on the streets and nobody benefited. Piece-work also led to scamped work.

How was the Minister benefiting the country or benefiting anybody at all by buying rolling-stock oversea? He saw by that evening’s paper that he had placed orders for 34 coaches in Hanover. This was in addition to orders that he had placed in various parts of the globe. Did hon. members not see, those who claimed to be business men, that money that went out of this country was lost to it? He would ask hon. members to look at the report of the Stores Department, where they would find the Chief Storekeeper complaining that all goods bought through the High Commissioner had to pay 1 per cent. He found that they had to pay £22,000 on last year’s purchases in commission to the High Commissioner, and a lot of that went in freight, duty, etc. He found on investigation that of the sum spent in order to bring rolling-stock or anything else that was required for the railways into this country no less than 121/2 per cent, went for costs. He was prepared to back the productive enterprise in this country to procure articles under the circumstances quite as quickly, quite as cheaply, and with a much greater life than articles bought from oversea. The Minister had no right to inflict pains and penalties on any one of these strikers. They talked about “constitutional action” and “constitutional methods,” but ever since this Parliament had been in being these men had been adopting “constitutional methods.” It was only as a last resort that they flew to the weapon of the strike, and he said quite rightly under the circumstances. The Minister himself had proved in his Bill that what the agitators, as they were called, had argued, was correct. For four years they had unceasingly pleaded with the House to introduce into the administration of the railways a Board composed of representatives of the Administration and the men concerned. That had been consistently refused. Now, as a result of one week’s strike on the railways, they had got this very principle introduced in the Minister’s own Bill. True, it only dealt with those matters that were laid down in the Railway Service Act, which were a general alteration in wages and a general alteration in hours. They wanted the scope of that Board extended. This had shown these men that the way to get what they wanted was not by “constitutional methods,” but by striking. If this House were prepared to bring about a more sympathetic state of affairs as between the Administration and the men they would have no need for agitators or for strikes. He trusted that the House would accept the amendment moved by his hon. friend (Mr. Boydell), and would not agree that one of these men should be victimised.

said he had always thought that the members on the cross-benches were the protectors of the workingmen, but after having listened to them he had to change his opinion. He had expected the Labour members would have applauded the introduction of the Bill. What would have become of these strikers if the Minister had strictly enforced the law? If the Minister had applied Law No. 28 of 1912, clauses 19, 20, and 47, the men would have been much worse off. In clause 19 the punishment for striking was laid down as six months’ imprisonment or a £50 fine, or both.

At this stage Mr. BOYDELL drew attention to the fact that there was no quorum.

A quorum having been obtained,

said the strikers had voluntarily committed a breach of the law. When they were taken into the service they had to sign a contract. It was the Labour Party who had advised them to commit a breach of their agreements, and now the same hon. members were arguing for hours at a time against the Bill, though the Bill was intended to protect the men. They heard a good deal about grievances, though it had appeared that there were no grievances. With regard to the dismissal of 52 men it was admitted that a deputation had gone to the Minister and demanded that the 52 men should be taken on again and that a promise should be given that no more would be discharged. When that had been refused, there came the strike. Well, he had railwaymen in his own constituency, but they had never yet made known any complaints. The strike had been caused by the Trade Unions, and all the members of those Unions ought to be dismissed; men who drew their salaries from the public funds ought not to be members of Trade Unions. Many of the men went on strike out of fear of the Trade Unions. Now that the wives and children of the men were suffering, the Government was blamed for it. First they asked the Government for work, and then when they got it they went on strike. The hon. member for Fort Beaufort had proposed that the subject matter of the Bill be referred to a Select Committee, but the speaker hoped that the Minister would not agree to that and that he would stand by his Bill.

said he supported the principle of the Bill, though he had not such an unlimited confidence in the Government as had the hon. member for Oudtshoorn. The Government could not have been very much gratified at the praise which the hon. member had showered on them. They knew very well that they had the usual human weaknesses.

The Minister of Railways and Harbours had no doubt had a good deal to put up with during the time of the strike, but he had emerged from it as victor. He could, therefore, afford to be generous and abandon the fines. He would do most by generosity, and he would then make a good impression on the railwaymen.

The Minister should remember that many of the men had gone on strike by direction of their Trade Union, that others had been over-persuaded by their leaders, and that still others had gone on strike because they were unable to judge for themselves. The Minister should help those people and not insist on fining them. It was not worth making them dissatisfied for the sake of the small sums which would be imposed on them as fines.

He could not support the amendment which had been moved by the hon. member for Fort Beaufort. In principle he supported the Bill, but it would be a good thing if after the second reading they referred it to a Select Committee. They would then be able to go more deeply into details, and if that were done and they got an amended Bill it would be easier to get it adopted.

The hon. member for Oudtshoorn said that the other hon. members who were not entirely in agreement with the Government were holding election speeches. Well, it seemed very much as if the hon. member himself was a little alarmed at the chance of an election. He had certainly got an attack of election fever. But if hon. members expressed their opinions honestly they were not making election speeches. They were all there for the express purpose of stating their opinions, and it was quite unnecessary to talk about delivering election speeches.

said the Bill was more important than appeared from the provisions it contained.

There were two amendments before the House. One asked for complete amnesty, but he did not think that any responsible section of that House were in the least likely to accept that. There was also the amendment moved by the hon. member for Fort Beaufort, the necessity for which amendment had not throughout the debate seemed quite apparent to all hon. members on that side of the House, but he would support that amendment, and he hoped it would be accepted by the House. As the Bill stood it was one that afforded a great deal of relief to a very large number of people who had unwisely and wrongly entered upon a strike in this country. But there were some hon. members in that House who thought that in dealing with those men who had been loyal to the service they should be dealt with on lines other than those suggested by the hon. Minister. If any changes were to be made they would probably take the form of increased expenditure, and it was impossible for hon. members after the second reading of the Bill to move any amendment which would entail expenditure, for Mr. Speaker would rule them out of order. So that if anything was to be done in the direction desired by the hon. member for Fort Beaufort and by them on that side of the House, it must be done before the second reading. It could be done through the medium of a Select Committee. If, on the other hand, the second reading was passed they were left in the position that while they could move anything which would reduce expenditure they could not increase. In the interest of the country and in the interest of the services of the country, especially the railway service, the hon. Minister would be wise if he would accept the assistance of the Opposition.

The advice and assistance the Opposition offered to the Government was worth accepting. The Opposition had shown by its recent votes that it was not animated by party politics or by a desire to gain temporary advantage, but to see the best interests of the country protected. He urged the Government to consider the advisability of accepting the advice offered from the Opposition side of the House, so that a better and more satisfactory Bill could be introduced. Two or three speeches made that day called for some criticism. The speech of the hon. member for Oudtshoorn (Mr. Schoeman) conveyed the impression that so long as the Opposition agreed with the Government they were patriotic citizens, but that the moment they did not agree with the Government their patriotism had vanished.

The hon. member for George Town (Mr. Andrews) had asked the House to grant the ringleaders a complete amnesty, on the ground that they were men chosen for their clearness of thought and steadiness of vision, that they were men to whom their fellow-workers went for advice, and that they were gradually forced into the position of becoming leaders. Surely no more complete justification of the necessity for punishing these ringleaders was ever given. (Hear, hear.) These men should obey the law and should do their duty to the Government which employed them. The leaders should have explained to the men what the law was, what the penalties for striking were, and they should have warned their fellow-workmen how urgently necessary it was that they should obey the law. Surely the country should look to the leaders to guide their followers aright. To-day hon. members had had an opportunity of reading an extraordinary speech made by Kendall in Australia, in which he stated what he hoped would have happened here in South Africa.

Is it true?

You can’t say it isn’t. (Cheers.)

You can’t say it is.

The speech had been telegraphed over by an impartial agency, and was therefore more likely to be true than any statement the hon. member can make here in this House. (Cheers.) Continuing, Colonel Crewe said they had hoped they should get from the hon. member for George Town a clear statement that would give them a further reason for the attitude they had taken up in pleading to some extent for the men who had gone out on strike. But all they got from the hon. member was the pernicious doctrine that if the men had obeyed the law and remained at work they would have been disloyal to their fellows. That was to say that the men who stuck by their contracts were, according to the hon. members on the cross-benches, nothing but scabs. In the Cape Province there was a large number of men who were loyal to their duty who would not thank the hon. members on the cross-benches for their speeches. (Cheers.) The House could not too clearly show its appreciation for the loyalty and steadiness of these men under peculiarly trying conditions. (Cheers.)

The hon. members on the cross-benches had openly advocated a class war. But nothing could be more fatal to the workers of this country than for that class war to be carried into effect—(cheers)—for in that case they would be beaten before they started. The majority of the people in this country, who were equally workers with the people the hon. members on the cross-benches represented, were the farming and commercial communities, with their dependents and their associates, and if there were to be a class war they would be compelled to stand by their own and fight it out to a finish—cost what it might. (Cheers.) He hoped, however, this would not come, for he knew who would suffer in the end. He knew what it was to have to work, and he sympathised with the workers more than did some of the hon. members on the cross-benches, whose speeches would be far more appropriate delivered from the top of a tub in Hyde Park than in this House. (Cheers.) He had listened to the speech of the hon. member for Springs (Mr. Madeley). What was the use of abuse and vituperative language? It helped no cause. The speeches did infinite harm to the people the hon. members on the cross-benches honestly desired to assist, but the result of the speeches from the hon. members for George Town and Springs could only do infinite harm to the country and the people they wished to serve. He was amazed at the style of the oratory of the hon. member for Springs, who informed the House he did not believe that 10 per cent. of the members read the Estimates. That was not true. Why hold the House up to ridicule? He (Col. Crewe) did not believe there was another Parliament the members of which were more anxious to do their duty than were the members of the Union Parliament.

The impression left upon one from the speeches was that the hon. member for Springs and the hon. member for George Town had happened to come upon a strike by accident and had instantly set to work to urge all the men to return to work. “Never had they by act or deed done anything in that country which would induce people to go on strike,” was the impression they left upon one, “nor had they been connected in any way with the movement which had caused trouble in South Africa.” The House knew much better than that.

Dealing with the speech of the Minister of Railways and Harbours, the hon. member said that it had been extremely useful and full of information, and had given what was undoubtedly valuable knowledge; but the tone of the speech had been most unfortunate, and left one with a feeling of regret, when they were hoping that there would be some sympathy shown. In a morning journal in that town the speech had been described as “acid.” The speech had left a very unpleasant impression on them in that House. The hon. Minister in desiring to do his duty had an unfortunate way of expressing himself so as to drive away sympathy and confidence. In regard to another Bill the Minister had talked of mutiny—and no more unfortunate word could have been used.

It is the truth.

It is not the truth, mutiny was a different thing altogether. There was a clause, dealing with the possibility of strikes, in the Railway Bill, but not in the Army and Navy Ordinances, where men had to swear an oath of allegiance to the King, and where there might be a “mutiny,” but in regard to the railways the term “mutiny” was entirely a misnomer.

Continuing, Col. Crewe said that he took a very serious view of the strike and so did other hon. members on that side of the House, and he must say he had been appalled that things in South Africa had moved so far that they had had the disturbances in January following so closely upon those of July. They took a very serious view of the position, and they were of opinion that there should be some punishment for the ringleaders and the “die-hards ”; but the punishment should end there, and it was no advantage to the country punishing the men who had returned by the 16th of January and 23rd of January. If they imposed those fines, the result would be to create an irritating sore and to lead a number of people to watch others beside whom they worked, but who were in a more fortunate position than themselves. He read an extract from a letter from one of the leading railwaymen in East London, which was to the effect that the general opinion was that the Government had not been generous to those who had come out, and that the men felt it impossible to accept the four days’ leave at the expense of their less fortunate fellow railwaymen. Col. Crewe added that the Minister knew that it would be administratively impossible to grant all that extra leave to several thousands of men and have the service continued in a proper and satisfactory way.

Where did the responsibility lie? He did not take the view that the entire responsibility was on the Government. The first responsibility lay on the men who had broken the law and had come out, and he declined to believe that they did not know what they were doing. They had believed that they were going to obtain a victory, but now that victory lay with others than themselves, and their protaganists in that House came and pleaded that the men should not be punished at all, but had not liked to put up the plea that the men had been foolish and misguided. They now pleaded for a general amnesty. On the other hand, there was no doubt that some responsibility did rest upon the Government. The men had been emboldened by the temporary success of their efforts in July. There were reasons to believe that a number of the men were not being dealt with fairly by the Minister of Railways and Harbours.

In the House there was only one person responsible, and that was the Minister himself. At the bottom of a great deal of this trouble was the lack of confidence in the Minister and the Administration. First of all there was the secretaryship of Mr. Poutsma, the unchallenged medium between the railwaymen and the Minister. It must be remembered that that was the man who declared the strike on the railways, which was the first beginning almost of the general strike in January, and that he did so in defiance of the rules of his own society. Then there was a far more serious point to be made against the Minister. He referred to the interview between the Minister and Mr. Connerty and others at Pretoria on January 6. In the course of his statement, the Minister said that in connection with the instructions (as to retrenchment), notice had been given to 70 men, distributed throughout the Union, out of a total approximately of 35,000 European servants. The men concerned were without exception purely temporary employees, having been engaged from time to time at 24 hours’ notice. With one exception, they had been taken on since Union.

Not in the workshops.

The word “workshop” is not used in the statement. Proceeding, he said this report was telegraphed all over the country by Reuter’s Agency. In the whole of that statement there was nothing to show that the hon. member desired his remarks to apply to the workshops. At that time they were in East London faced with the possibility of a general strike. There were four men in East London, two of whom had been in the service from 1902, and two others who had been engaged since Union, not temporary men at all, who were under notice to quit. They were told that they would be retrenched, their posts having been abolished, or that they could resume duty on a lower grade than they had occupied and in the position that they had originally occupied, from which they had been promoted. Did the Minister think that that statement coming at such a time was a wise statement? Some years ago when the hon. gentleman himself was in office, the old Cape House of Parliament passed an Act by which the railways took over the harbour service of the country, and in that Act a clause was inserted to safeguard those men who were in the employ of the Harbour Boards of Table Bay, Port Elizabeth, and East London. That clause stated that the contract of service of these men should be continued in all respects as if this Act had not come into force. Now there had been constant changes in the pay and conditions of the men in the harbour services. He ventured to say that these were reasons which the House should know and that they should be brought to the notice of the Minister, not in order to discredit him, but when there were wrongs done and when there were injustices done, he was perfectly certain that the proper place to mention them was in that House and face to face with the Minister himself. He hoped the Minister would learn the lesson that was to be learnt from the unfortunate condition of affairs through which they had passed and show more considerateness for those under him in the service.

With regard to the fines, hon. members on his side hoped that a certain portion of these would be remitted, because it would not be wise to have a number of men suffering from these penalties, and he thought that if remission took place a great deal would have been done to remove trouble in the future. He did not, however, desire to see the ringleaders go unpunished. Since Union came about a great deal of attention had been paid by the Natal members to the strike that had occurred in Durban. He thought that every disability was removed by that House from these people. The result had not been too pleasing because they had had a recurrence of the strike mania in Durban. They had come to such a state of affairs that an example must be made of people who violently broke the law and endeavoured to overthrow the transportation system of the country. They felt bound to deal seriously with the two sections of the men that he had mentioned, because some differentiation must be shown between loyalty and disloyalty. He did feel strongly on the point that those who sat in Parliament at present were there faced with a very serious duty. They had had in South Africa a condition of affairs which nobody would have predicted was possible two years ago. Labour was here organised and was going to continue organising, and they had to consider that position and meet it. It was no good passing repressive measures, and saying that they were prepared to take a strong line. The Minister of Defence was, he believed, the exponent of the strong line, but yet he (the Minister) knew that the strong line would not succeed by itself. They had to recognise that these people had the right to organise and it was their business to meet that movement and guide it. If that was done, they would have a chance of getting rid of the trouble. Let them endeavour to guide labour and to meet it, because there were many sensible people in its ranks. He thought that hon. members on both sides were honestly desirous of seeing the condition of the workers improved, but that would never be done by repressive measures or systems of punishment. It could only be done by meeting troubles half way.

said that those men who had been found to be disloyal ought to be punished. Men who had entered the service on certain conditions and had not kept those conditions were bound to expect that they would be punished. That was a sound principle, and if it were not applied, the affairs of the State would get into a condition of chaos.

The Bill further provided that awards should be given to those men who had been loyal. Certain persons had remained faithfully at their post, but they had done nothing more than their duty, and if they were to be rewarded for that, then they would also for example reward the police who had done more than their usual work. They had performed military service as well, and they ought to be paid for it. The servants of the public, such as the postal officials and others, had done more than their duty, and they ought to be paid. And then there were the citizen forces. The national reserves had been called up, and those men also ought to be rewarded. The citizen forces had been called up in a critical time. In his own district there was a good deal of drought prevailing, but the burghers responded to the call. They also would be entitled to a reward, as well as the railway servants. Then overtime should also be paid for. But they ought not to pay extra for the mere performance of an ordinary duty. He did not agree with the hon. member for Barberton that it was wrong to punish the great mass of strikers. They knew their obligations, they had neglected to perform them, and they would have to be punished for it, otherwise they would be making the same mistake again.

The speaker did not wish to say that there were no grievances amongst the railwaymen. They had been referred to those grievances from all sides, and it was impossible to overlook them. Moreover, if they wanted to prevent further disturbances they would have to remove those grievances out of the way, so that there might be rest and peace. The attacks which had been made on the General Manager were out of place, as he was merely the tool in the hands of the Minister and the Railway Board. It was the Board, therefore, which was jointly responsible for the disturbances which had arisen. Personally, he was opposed to the strike. Whenever there were grievances in existence they ought to be dealt with in a constitutional manner, and nobody had the right to commit acts of violence. The public would not permit it.

The hon. member for Oudtshoorn had thrown no particular light on the subject before the House, and the speaker could not say he was any the wiser after hearing what the hon. member said. The hon. member had merely accused other hon. members of delivering election speeches, though he had made himself guilty of the same offence. The hon. member had further stated that it was the speeches which had been delivered by the hon. members for Barberton and Uitenhage and the Labour members which were the cause of the disturbances. That was quite wrong. The speeches came after the disturbances. How then could they have brought about the strike? Speeches such as that delivered by the hon. member for Oudtshoorn filled the workingman with distrust. The hon. member advised the Government to act with an iron hand, but that was wrong, and they would never solve a trouble in that way. The Government would certainly not accept his advice, as they had more intelligence than that. He regretted that the hon. member should offer such advice, as any attempt to rule with an iron hand would inevitably result in failure. The hon. member had further discovered that the hon. member for Fort Beaufort was not the great statesman that he had formerly considered him. The Leader of the Opposition had moved an amendment to the motion, and anyone who was not entirely in agreement with the Government was lost, so far as the hon. member for Oudtshoorn was concerned. The hon. member had a deep affection for the taxpayer, and he feared there were going to be more taxes. If the hon. member would move an extra tax on ostrich feathers, there would be no risk of other taxes being required. The speaker would himself support such a motion.

rising at two minutes to 11, said that at that late hour he would not detain the House longer than was necessary in replying to the debate. With reference to the complaints that had been made as to his speech in moving the second reading, the House would have rightly blamed him if he had not made some such statement as he did in bringing the Bill before the House. The question of grievances was discussed very fully by hon. members when they were dealing with the Indemnity Bill. With regard to the statement made as to the extent of retrenchment, the hon. member for East London had unintentionally done him an injustice in quoting from a Reuter report as to what took place between the deputation of railwaymen and himself at Pretoria. They would see from the rest of the report that he had told them that there were probably a dozen men in the stores who might have had notice, but that had not been in connection with reorganisation, and was really not connected with the question at all. It was in connection with the workshops that that statement had been made. He found now that when he had stated a dozen he had been wrong, with the exception of three. In a big service like the railway they could not put their hand at once on every individual who had had notice. Proceeding, Mr. Burton said that a great deal had been made of the solution they might have found by placing men on shorter hours, a solution which they had heard from various quarters, and that very deputation that had met him on January 6 at Pretoria, by the mouth of Mr. Nield, had advanced that theory, and he told Mr. Nield and the deputation that he was prepared to get the Railway Board, the General Manager, and the other officials to discuss that matter, and if they could satisfy him that they could practically carry it out, he was prepared to consider that offer. But what regard had been paid to that offer? The ultimatum had been fired at his head. As soon as he, had said it Mr. Poutsma turned back to his few solitary points—no more men to be retrenched and those who had been retrenched to be put back. The answer to that offer had been the strike. Let him say that that question of putting the men on shorter hours was not by any means as simple and as easy as it looked. There was no doubt that it had been tried in England and elsewhere.

It has been tried here.

said that he knew that; and it had been tried here, to a small extent. As a matter of fact, the railway experts had told him, from the General Manager through the Chief Mechanical Engineer downwards, that the matter was by no means as easy as it looked on the surface. The hon. member for Uitenhage suggested that they should solve their difficulties by not doing so much relaying and regrading, so as to keep men in the workshops. If they did not do so much relaying and regrading, what became of the men they employed on that work?

He was asked in the course of the debate the real meaning, and the accuracy of some of the figures which he gave the House in his opening statement. The hon. member for Barberton asked him in regard to the increase in the number of white men employed on the railways since Union, and wanted to know whether the increase was not to a large extent attributable to the increased mileage that they had had since Union. He would give the House the figures as to the number of white men employed and the increase of mileage. In 1909 they had a white staff, excluding white labourers, of 21,773 men; while in 1913 the number was 27,804, an increase of 6,031. Now the white labourers represented only an increase of 1,446. There were 3,049 in 1909, and in 1913 they increased to 4,495. The increase in mileage from 1909 to 1913 was from 6,891 to 8,231 miles. Out of the increase of 6,031 which, if they included the white labourers, was increased to 7,447, the number of men who could be calculated as being attributable to the element of increased mileage was only 1,842. The reason for the large increase in the number of white men employed was not so much the increased mileage of the railways, but the business on the railways. The number of passengers since Union had increased by 53 per cent., and the increase in goods traffic was 43 per cent. In the matter of increase of traffic, which was the point made by the hon. member for Barberton, this was almost entirely on the main lines. He would now give the House the percentage of their expenditure to their revenue, and whereas the earnings had increased since Union by 18.4 per cent., expenditure had increased by 57.9 per cent.

Lower rates.

And lower rates. There is a radical fallacy in the argument that has been addressed to this House. Far from a reduction of the rates leading to a reduction of the number of white men employed, the reduced rates mean the employment of more white men. Continuing, he said it had been the experience of every country, and it was one of the unhappy things they had to face, that in a nationalised system they tended invariably to have more men than they actually required. He referred to the case of a French railway company, which in 1908 employed 1,527 men, and was taken over by the State. In three years this 1,500 had been increased to 2,500 under the management of the State. Of course, this was owing to pressure—political and other pressure—on every side. There was an element quite apart from current finances, and that was the important necessity of placing their service on a basis of efficiency. Under that element of nationalisation there was undoubtedly a large number of men in the railway service entirely unsatisfactory for the work they had to perform at times. If one was touched there were members of Parliament springing up and making attacks upon the Government and Administration. With regard to the statement that since Union the emoluments of the railwaymen had been improved by nearly one million sterling, the figures he gave the House were the figures of the increments alone. It meant that the men on the railway service had had their financial position improved to the tune of nearly one million sterling. Last year he gave the figures as £750,000, but they did not realise those things until they were brought sharply before them. It was a question of increments; it meant that whereas the wages bill on the railways for the current year was approximately six millions, he wanted rho House to understand that that six million represented an improvement in the financial position of the men throughout the railway service in South Africa of 231/2 per cent. That was due largely to the new system of grading in the new staff regulations which had been so frequently attacked in that House last year. The truth was that, except for a section of the men in the Transvaal, practically the position of the whole of the other men in the service Lad been improved; they had been levelled up, and he wanted to add that the figures he had given did not include the wages paid to white labourers at all.

It had been said that they failed to recognise the Trade Unions, but, on the other hand, the hon. member for East London had belaboured him (Mr. Burton) because he had done so. The truth of the matter was that at the beginning of his administration of the railways—which was about 18 months ago—he was quite prepared, to recognise the men’s societies and to deal with their secretary as their mouthpiece, and he did so until he found that the secretary was not to be trusted and was not there to represent the men fairly, but to sow discord between the Administration and the men. That attempt, in which assistance had been given by hon. members of this House, had unhappily been only too successful. They had succeeded in making sympathetic consideration almost impossible, because they had dinned it into the men that the Administration was hostile to them. That was the doctrine, and so long as it was preached, and so long as the railway men accepted that doctrine, so long would it be impossible for them to get back to what he quite agreed was the proper attitude of sympathy and understanding.

The hon. member for Durban, Central (Sir D. Hunter) had spoken of the loss of the personal touch. It was quite true that it was desirable to have a personal touch but he would remind the hon. member for Durban, Central, that he had not succeeded in avoiding a railway strike in Natal. This personal touch and sympathy, which were so vaguely spoken of were not everything. Hon. members had found fault with him (Mr. Burton) because they said he was not sympathetic. He had had a hard task since he became Minister of Railways, but his object was not to slobber the men with sympathy, his object was to see that they were treated fairly and justly—(hear, hear) —and to see that they got what appeared to be due to them, and then sympathy would follow of its own accord. The hon. member for Jeppe (Mr. Creswell) had said that they had attached a lot of silly conditions, but they were the conditions that had been proposed and had been accepted by those who had made the agreement, on both sides, and the conditions were perfectly fair and proper. They had informed them by letter, but not the faintest notice had been taken. Mr. Poutsma had made no bones about it. He said he took no notice of it and did not intend to do so. There was no approach whatever from their side, and it was the old attitude of dictation, and terms which were entirely unacceptable. In regard to the other accusation that the Government welcomed the strike because they wanted to reduce the men’s wages and let them kick themselves out and they could get them back at a reduced wage, the effect of the Bill was that nothing of the sort would be obtained. It would have taken place if their attitude had been a harsh one and if they had had no legislation at all and let the law take its course. (Hear, hear.) Then they would have found the men’s wages reduced and they would have had to come on again as new men at reduced wages. They now allowed the vast bulk of the men to come back at their old wage, and practically every man came back under the old conditions and at his old wage.

Not in Durban.

said that with regard to the hon. member for Uitenhage (Mr. Fremantle), he seemed to have a very mistaken view of the finances, and had got hold of one of the railway returns, which he had not construed correctly. There was no doubt that in August, September, October, and November last their revenue had been dropping, and in January it improved a little again; but unless there was an extraordinary development the position, as far as the revenue was concerned, was that they would be £240,000 short at the end of the financial year. In regard to locomotives the hon. member for Uitenhage (Mr. Fremantle) had criticised the statement that he (Mr. Burton) had made. He did not know where the hon. member had got his information from, but he did not know evidently that locomotives had been designed in that country for the past 30 years or more, and that no single locomotive had been built in South Africa. Proceeding to refer to the Bill, he said they were advised by the lawyers that these things should be put into legislation, and that it was necessary to do so to protect the men.

There were precedents in other countries, and there was quite a recent precedent in Natal. After the Natal strike the men who remained loyal got a week’s special leave on full pay. It had been said that the men themselves did not like this. He had heard a good deal to the contrary, and he believed that, but for the harm which had been done to the railway service by some of the observations made in the course of this debate, the men would be quite pleased to take this holiday. He now came to the punishments. The hon. member for Fort Beaufort had suggested that there should be a general amnesty for the rank and file. Let him say as emphatically as he could that he had not, the Administration had not, and the Government had not the very faintest tinge of vengefulness or vindictiveness about this matter. They had not the least desire to go out of their way to punish men, simply because they had come out on strike, but if they were going for sentimental reasons—and they had had a symposium of sentimentality about this matter, they had had a lot of electioneering—to say that every man who went out on strike was to be allowed to return without anything being done to him, then he would say to the House they would be making one of the gravest mistakes. If they did that they would be stultifying this Parliament. They might as well tear up the provisions they had made in regard to this matter last year. They would be committing a grave mistake if they departed entirely from the position taken up in the Service Act.

He had had an opportunity of discussing the matter with a gentleman from New Zealand, who knew what had happened in connection with the recent strike there. That gentleman told him that it was a curious feature of the strike that while practically nearly every workingman was out not a single railwayman came out on strike. This was attributable to the fact that in their law they had a penal clause of a sharp and severe character. He (Mr. Burton) said that that was very instructive. Do not let hon. members delude themselves that all their troubles were past. So long as the present propaganda was allowed to circulate, so long would they not have done with these troubles. If they now departed from the principle of this Bill, because of humane motives, he said that they would go a long way to make the position of the railwayman who stood to his post and the man who did not, very difficult. This was the second strike at Durban. After the first strike generous treatment was meted out. This time they had been taken back in spite of the law. If they made a clean sweep again with the exception of a few people, they would have lost completely the sanction of the law gave them now. The doctrine preached by the hon. gentlemen on the cross-benches would be that it was all right and that they would guarantee to see the men through. He said that if they did what some hon. members wanted they would lose the sanction and the restraining effect of the law, and this in the interest of the service and the community should to some extent be regarded. How did they regard it? Did they apply the law? What would have happened if the Government had sat still and allowed last year’s law to be administered? How could any marking of what had happened be done more mildly than was proposed in the Bill before the House? The men retained everything. A man walked through the workshop door to his old place. He got his old privileges, he got the wage he had been receiving, he had his pension rights, and he was fined £5. It had been stated that there were too many ringleaders. There were 529 men whose cases had been examined, and it was found that 250 should be classed as undesirable that they should be taken back. These were men who had incited others to come out on strike, men who had taken a prominent part in the strike, and leaving out those who were classed as ringleaders, what were they going to do with the men who not only came out on strike themselves but incited their weaker brethren to do so and smash up railway property? Such a man was not a ringleader in the sense in which hon. members had discussed the term, but he had taken such a part in connection with the strike that no railway administration could be blamed for saying they would not take him back again. He (the Minister) was criticised in indignant tones by the hon. member for Jeppe, who was speaking of victimisation, and he stated a case of the stationmaster at Britten, in the Transvaal, and said there was a man who had been victimised and cruelly dealt with. The stationmaster at Britten was placed in a responsible position, in charge of a station, and it was his duty to see, above all things, to be loyal. This station-master went out on strike, and not only that, but he saw that every man on the station went out also. It was an example of the cruel conduct and victimisation on the part of the Administration when he said that he would decline to have that man back. They were perfectly justified in refusing to have back men of that type. The Government could not accept the amendment of the hon. member for Fort Beaufort. They understood the friendly spirit which was at the root of the amendment. He approved of the mover’s motive, but such an amendment was tantamount to a vote of no confidence. He well knew what would happen if the Bill were sent to a Select Committee-Advantage would be taken of the opportunity to open up the whole avenue of grievances. The committee would sit for weeks, there would be a majority and minority report, and when these reports came before the House there would be just as much discussion in the House as if there had been no Select Committee. It had been pointed out to him that it would be difficult for hon. members to propose amendments in Committee of the whole House which would involve an increase of expenditure. The feeling of the Government on the main points of the Bill were that they should stand, but on matters of detail he was willing to accept any reasonable and workable proposal which was not in conflict with the main proposal of the Bill. And if difficulties should arise in connection with the financial aspect of the matter, the Government would see that facilities were given for including anything which it thought should be included. In conclusion, Mr. Burton trusted the House would accept the second reading.

rose at eleven minutes before midnight.

It is very unusual for a member to speak after the Minister has replied.

I was going to preface my remarks by saying it was very unusual, but I feel constrained to depart from the usual course, and I must insist upon my right to speak.

Continuing, Mr. Fichardt said that his many efforts to catch Mr. Speaker’s eye failed unfortunately, and it may have been that he had not been sufficiently assertive.

The hon. member went on to say that he had listened with a great deal of interest to what the Minister had to say, in his reply; and it struck him that the attitude of the Government in the matter was that it was wholly blameless. The Minister had begun by stating that there had been a vast increase in the business of the railways, and had then advocated retrenchment. There had been an extraordinary increase in expenditure, and 52 men had been retrenched! He did not think any hon. member would raise a fuss if an incompetent man was retrenched, but competent men had been discharged. The hon. member for Troyeville had made great play with the speakers who had charged the Government with lawlessness while he defended the Government when it broke the law. When they pleaded for leniency, the hon. member said that they must follow the law and that justice was laid down! by the law. Would the hon. member allow that it did not follow that because a thing was law it was right? He would have liked to add his voice to the appeal which had been made to the Minister that there should be some little leniency. He believed that the case was one for mercy, and that mercy in this case was politic.

at 11.58 p.m. called attention to the fact that there was no quorum present.

A quorum having been obtained,

proceeding, said that they passed a law in that House, and he ventured to say that if hon. members who spent most of their time in the billiard-room—

The hon. member has no right to make reflections upon hon. members of this House. It is not Parliamentary.

I withdraw that. I would like to ask whether the term “schande” is, in terms of your ruling, Parliamentary? The term was used by the Minister of Mines.

I did not hear the hon. member make use of the expression.

I give you my assurance that he did use it.

The hon. member can proceed.

said he must plead guilty of not having remembered this particular part of the law. There were a great number of young men concerned in the matter who were not likely to have known the law. They were led away by the agitators, and told that it was a loyal thing to do. Some of these men came to him with their high falutin’ talk and he told them to go back. But they did not. Surely they were not going to draw them through the same harrow as the other men. He thought the attitude of punishing wholesale was not going to bring peace to this country.

He hoped that in the circumstances mentioned the hon. Minister would adopt the suggestion mentioned by the hon. member for Barberton and amnesty the whole of the rank and file. With regard to the ringleaders, he thought that even 250 was a large number for five thousand strikers. The Minister wanted fairness and justice; he did not want sympathy. He (Mr. Fichardt) mentioned the case of a man who was considered a ringleader; he was a stationmaster near Bloemfontein, who struck in obedience to instructions of his society. And how did he strike? He explained the position to the Assistant General Manager of Railways, and told him he was under orders from his society. But he would be in the vicinity in case of urgency while on strike, and would not leave his post until relief was sent. He had been 18 or 20 years in the service, a steady man, with a good character. But he had been dealt with with the utmost severity; he was summarily dismissed, although he had not asked anybody to strike nor had he tried to blow up any railway. He was turned out of his house at 48 hours’ notice. He also lost his pension rights and had to leave for England with his whole family. Was this the way to make South Africa prosperous? We did not want to lose this class of man. (Hear, hear.) This man ought not to be dealt with as a ringleader. There might be many other cases like this, and the punishment should be made to fit the crime. If our railwaymen received higher salaries than did railwaymen in other parts of the world, how was it that there was so much dissatisfaction? A sympathetic Select Committee which would divide the strikers into different grades would do a great deal to bring about some sort of contentment and peace among the railway workers. He agreed there must be some such Bill, and he would vote for the second reading, but only in the hope that after the second reading had been taken there would be a Select Committee which would classify the strikers before they were punished. In conclusion Mr. Fichardt apologised to hon. members for detaining them at that late hour, but he was not disposed to allow his right to speak in this House to be taken from him under any circumstances or by anybody.

Sir T. W. Smartt’s amendment was declared to be negatived.

then put the question: That all the words after “That,” proposed to be omitted, stand part of the motion.

then put the question, that the Bill be now read a second time, and declared that the “Ayes” had it.

called for a division, but subsequently withdrew.

The Bill was then read a second time, and set down for the committee stage on Wednesday next.