I move—

I may just add that as in previous years it is not at all the intention to at once make hon. members sit after eleven o’clock, but there are two reasons why it is desirable that the motion should be introduced now; one is that there is much important work to be performed this session, and in view of the financial matters coming on one of these days, it is very desirable that when we get to eleven o’clock, and it looks as if the matter can be completed, that it should not stand over for the next sitting day. Further, that there will be no doubt when we know that we can just conclude a matter by eleven o’clock it will often expedite us and will shorten the debate, when otherwise we should be inclined to extend it a little without its being exactly necessary. For this reason I have introduced the motion.

seconded.

I think this is an unprecedented motion at this time of the session. I do not think that ever in the history of the Union Parliament a motion of this kind has been brought forward at so early a stage of the session. The 11 o’clock rule was incorporated in our rules not only for the convenience of hon. members—it is, of course, a very great convenience for hon. members who have their own arrangements to make, and a great convenience for them to know the House will adjourn at a certain hour and not later; but the suspension of this rule is a definite restriction on the discussion of public affairs in this House. The Prime Minister has just said that one of the reasons for introducing this motion is that we have important matters before this House during this session. What possible discussion, what reasonable discussion, can you have on important matters when the House is sitting after 11 o’clock for three nights a week? Many—most—of our members come here in the mornings and have select committees, and if the House from now onwards sits after 11 o’clock in the evenings it is physically impossible for hon. members to give that attention to the conduct of public affairs that the country requires; but not only that, it is quite clear that the discussions after 11 o’clock cannot be reported in the press as they should be. Therefore, I say that to withdraw this rule at this stage is a definite restriction on the freedom of debate in this House. As far as I know this motion has been made only towards the end of a session—at a time when it is felt that the end of the session is approaching and public affairs must be got through. Under the present Government it has been the custom, at any rate for two or three years past, to suspend the rule in order to get through the business that had to be got through at the end of a session. I want to ask the Prime Minister what possible reason there is for taking a step like this at the present time? No accusation can justly be levelled against this side for unduly obstructing and delaying the business. Whatever the Prime Minister’s reason may be, he cannot say that for moving the motion at this stage. We have not yet had the Budget speech. The Minister of Finance has just given notice that he is to make it next week. Under the rules of the House a certain time is allotted to the Budget discussions, and if the 11 o’clock rule is to be suspended, and hon. members are compelled to speak after 11 o’clock or not at all, I say it is a most serious inroad on the freedom of hon. members to discuss financial matters. Under the rules we have five days to discuss the Budget; I say without hesitation that if this 11 o’clock rule is to be suspended while the Budget debate is taking place—

You need not be afraid.

I do not know about that.

What about the challenge thrown out by the other side?

What one?

That we sit here all night.

I cannot believe the Prime Minister has introduced the motion as an answer to some unknown challenge thrown into this House. Surely the events of last Thursday have been buried in oblivion, and this has not been introduced as a sort of hit back for what occurred on Thursday evening, but to expedite business. The hon. member for Wakkerstroom (Mr. A. S. Naudé) has let the cat out of the bag. It is a pitiful method of conducting public business, if this motion which is going to interfere seriously with the conduct of the public business of the country is brought in as a sort of challenge.

Cut it out !

I am glad to cut it out, and I hope hon. members will do so too, and that they will show that it is really necessary for the conduct of public business to introduce the motion. I say it is unnecessary. If there is no challenge behind it there is no reason for it at all. This 11 o’clock rule has been in existence since 1917, I think. There is machinery under the rules whereby, when any particular matter is under discussion and the Government wants to expedite it, the Minister can come forward at the beginning of public business and move in regard to that particular subject that the 11 o’clock rule be suspended, but there is a provision, and that is that if that is done, no other opposed business can be taken after that particular matter has been disposed of, and that is for the safeguarding of the privileges and freedom of this House; but under the Prime Minister’s motion there is no safeguard at all that new business cannot be introduced after 11 o’clock—new opposed business brought forward and disposed of without any safeguards for the rights of members at all. I see no reason for this motion, and particularly in view of the coming debate on the Budget it is a most inopportune time for a motion like this to be introduced when the finances of the country, business and agriculture have been in a more serious position than for years past. And this is the time for the Government to introduce a motion whereby discussions on public affairs will be to a large extent stifled! I would appeal to the Prime Minister to reconsider his proposal. We are not here to obstruct business, and we recognize the serious issues existing in this country. We do claim our rights as members of this House to express our opinions and those of our constituents who have sent us here, without such restrictions as this motion will impose on us. We regard a motion like this as unjustified and as a most unjustifiable restriction on the freedom of discussion we have had in this House. I do hope that the Prime Minister will not press this motion, and, if it is pressed, as far as this side of the House is concerned, we shall oppose it in every way we can.

The introduction by the hon. member for Yeoville (Mr. Duncan) of the budget debate into this motion is a clear proof to us how little there actually is in their objection. The hon. member has two points, one is the so-called curtailment of the holy liberty of speech in this Parliament—I am coming to that—the other is that the budget has not even yet been introduced, and that the motion has been introduced to curtail the budget debate. What a weak argument! The hon. member knows that there is a fixed time for the budget debate, viz., five days. Do you think we should be so mad to stretch out the debate even longer, and to sit every day after eleven o’clock on the budget? The House has five days for that debate. The hon. member at once sees how weak the argument is that the Government is introducing the motion to curtail the budget debate. But then the hon. member speaks of the curtailing of the liberties of members of Parliament. We know the old days when we heard so much of the liberties of Parliament, and the necessity of not interfering with the liberties of the public outside. What is the position to-day? The public to-day have a very different idea of government and the duties of Parliament. To-day the people require us to debate all kinds of matters here, and not only debate them, but regulate them; the public expect us to do the business of the country, not only to debate it. Whether we want to or not I say the time has long come for the alteration of the rules of the House to so reform the Parliamentary machine as to enable it to do the work of the country. The rules dating from the old days to guarantee the so-called freedom of debate are not calculated to expedite the business of the House under the modern acceptation of what is the duty of Parliament, and what Parliament has to do. We thought at the start that the normal time of Parliament would be three or three and a half months, but now we sit every year for about five months. We know how difficult it is for members to leave home and to make the sacrifice to work here in the interests of the country and the people, and then we have to do the work under the rules to-day in existence which will enable the Opposition of sixty or seventy members to demand at any time the right in the name of the holy freedom of debate that each member shall be allowed to speak for forty minutes on some important subject or other. We have had the proof in past sessions that this rule was a very useful rule to expedite the debates in the House. Any subject that arises here, we all know, is talked out after a certain number of speeches have been made. What comes then, what is said after that, cannot exercise the least influence on the vote in this House, or on the country outside. Now, however, in the interests of the holy freedom of debate everyone must have the right, whether it is necessary or not, of speech. Then the hon. member further says that under the rule the press cannot properly report everything. We know, unfortunately, that that is one of the reasons why debates are often unnecessarily prolonged here. The press! They are all only too inclined, not because it is necessary to contribute something to the solution of the question, but to make a speech for the sake of the constituents. It is the modern publicity through the press which is one of the causes why the business of the country can be discussed but not done. And this motion is at the moment one of the means by which the Government is enabled to expedite the work a little in certain circumstances. As for me, I think the time has long come for the committee on standing orders to investigate all our rules to see if it is not possible to draft standing orders under which the time of the House can be better regulated.

And the Opposition must be gagged.

No, they can talk as much as they wish, but there comes a time when the debate does not any longer assist the solution of a matter. It may be very nice for the hon. member, and for his particular constituents, but it is not for the advancement of the work and the interests of the country.

I must say that I could not believe my ears when I heard the speech made by the Minister of Finance. This then is the freedom-loving party. This is the party who represented that they stood for the liberties of the people, and who always told the public: “We are the people’s party.” To-day we see the Minister of Finance behaving like an autocrat. He tells the people that these things must not be debated in Parliament, because the speeches are only made for the people outside to read them. I ask Mr. Speaker what opinion the people outside will get of Parliament if our views are to be smothered here as is suggested by the Minister of Finance. There is the Minister of Defence also. Can one believe that the Minister of Defence sits in a cabinet on whose behalf a speech such as that has just been made? I ask the House, if we are to follow this line of policy as indicated by the Minister of Finance, whether we might not just as well close Parliament down? We are here as an Opposition to criticise. Does the Government think that it is almighty, and that we must accept everything it brings forward as if it were sugar cake, and when we have acted in the past as becomes an Opposition, then we are blamed ?

When was that?

Shortly after the present Government came into office. Hon. members opposite asked ns: “What is the use of the Opposition?” It was said that the Opposition had no teeth, were useless, and not able to criticise properly. Hon. members are possibly not so much afraid of the Opposition as they are afraid of the public outside. It was very easy for the Government to govern in days of prosperity. Now, however, the Government is experiencing days of adversity, and when we make speeches criticising the acts of the Government then it is said that we are taking up the time of the House, and our rights are curtailed. This standing order was passed in 1917. It was in the first place adopted to bear in mind the convenience of members. It enables hon. members when they come in the House in the morning to serve on select committees to know, at any rate, that they will be free in the evening, and will not have to sit later than eleven o’clock. If, however, we examine the application of this rule, or the suspending of it, we shall see that it was never suspended by this side of the House after 1917. It was only 1925 that it was suspended by the present Government, and permit me to say that it is an established practice of Parliament for standing orders to be suspended as little as possible. The practice is for them to be suspended in the most pressing circumstances. The position, therefore, was that this rule in the past had only been suspended towards the end of the session. We have now, however, only reached the 42nd day. We have not yet reached the middle of the session, and yet the Prime Minister moves for the suspension of the rule. Look at all the powers the Government has to expedite work without suspending this rule. The Government has the right to propose every afternoon at 2.15, when there is important work before the House that it wants to dispose of, to move as an unopposed motion that the eleven o’clock rule shall be suspended if that work is still before the House at five minutes to eleven. I ask whether the Government has the right in the circumstances of curtailing the freedom of debate at this stage of the session? Hon. members’ rights are still further being curtailed. According to the rules of the House a speech is limited to forty minutes, and to ten minutes when the House is in committee. Then where is the closure which is proposed? This is the 42nd day of the session, but this liberty-loving Government has already on six occasions moved a closure. The Minister of Defence lightly voted in favour of it. I now come to another matter. Can the Government rightfully say that we, on this side of the House, have so behaved as to justify this motion ?

You repeat yourselves too much.

I should like to see whether there has ever been a session where the Prime Minister at this stage could announce that eleven Bills had been passed and signed by the Governor-General. In addition Four important Bills have been read for the second time and are now being dealt with in select committee. Three important labour measures have been sent to select committee, but yet the Minister of Labour is going to vote for this motion. I want, however, to know what justification they have for it. I say again that I believe that we who have been some time in Parliament have never heard such an autocratic speech as that of the Minister of Finance. He is apparently suffering from nerves, but I want to ask him to keep himself under control. Our people have a free Parliament, and if we are going to surrender the rights of our free Parliament then I should like to see what respect the people will have for us. We shall do everything in our power to oppose the motion, because it is not just to. Parliament.

I must honestly say that if the hon. member for Caledon (Mr. Krige) has condemned anyone it is his own party. We hear the charge that we are curtailing rights and that the previous Government did not do so, but they had to deal with a different Opposition to what we have to-day. They did not at that time propose that the forty minutes rule about which the hon. member is so concerned, should be introduced. These are all things which restricted that holy freedom about which they talk so much. If there ever were any limitations of the holy rights of debate, who then is more responsible for it than they? Did not they do it ?

Why did you not alter them ?

No, the hon. member must not now run away from my question. According to them it is a terrible thing for the Government to curtail the holy principles of freedom of Parliament. Just read who introduced it. It does not matter whether the Government brings it into force in this way, or the previous Government in another way, the question is who has encroached on the holy liberties of Parliament ?

It was not an encroachment which was proposed by the previous Government.

Well, it is then no encroachment, and yet they now talk of it as if it was an encroachment on their rights. I am certain we shall now hear no more of it. Another point is that according to them the previous Government only found it necessary once or twice to apply this rule. But that Government could have had no reason for applying it, because the Opposition of that time did not abuse it, but now things are different. As for the sitting last Thursday there was possibly a misunderstanding, but the fact remains that the Opposition also had its responsibilities. The Government saw how the rules of the House were abused, but it was the good fortune of the present Opposition that when they were in office they had to deal with an Opposition which possessed a feeling of responsibility and did not abuse the rules of the House. Hon. members said on Thursday that the motion for the adjournment of the debate was intended to gag them, though the effect of the motion was just the reverse Then again they pretended that the date fixed for the continuance of the debate was too close by. That shows how the Opposition delay.

After you had commenced the trouble.

There you have an Opposition which ought to be responsible, and they are now trying to blame us. But let me assume for a moment that we acted wrongly on Thursday. Do not hon. members of the Opposition know that they are responsible to the public?

Yes, but we must also uphold the dignity of the House.

I can assure the hon. member that the behaviour of the Opposition on Thursday certainly did not add to the dignity of the House. The hon. member for Caledon said that we have now been sitting about forty days and have already made great progress. But he must not blame us for having such a good Government. We introduce bills with which the Opposition are absolutely satisfied. What is the complaint now? That we are going too fast with the work of the House? If hon. members opposite think that they are acting in the interests of the people, and if the bills in their opinion are not good ones, then they must oppose them, but they did not do so, because they were quite satisfied with the bills. But I want to ask hon. members another question. Why did they on that side show themselves prepared to vote for the suspension of the eleven o’clock rule when that bill was under consideration? No, I must honestly say that I cannot understand hon. members opposite.

But we did not approve of the general suspension of the rule.

So it is no longer holy principles which may not be curtailed. You can, therefore, curtail the liberty if hon. members opposite consider it right. If we want to expedite the work of the House we must move the suspension of the eleven o’clock rule, and if it suits the Opposition they will vote in favour of it, and if not they will vote against it. I must honestly say, after having heard them here this afternoon, and asking them the question, that I see they are in a hopeless position, and I shall therefore heartily support the motion.

I sympathize, to some extent, with the point made by the hon. member (Mr. Wessels) about the attitude of the official Opposition in having voted for the suspension of the 11 o’clock rule in connection with the Women’s Enfranchisement Bill. The philosophy of members on the Government side of the House seems to be that two wrongs make a right. Still, I have never yet known that two wrongs make a right. Therefore I think the Government should deal with the matter on its merits, and not because something has been done by the official Opposition, apparently justifying the action they are taking on a quite different motion. We feel that this proposal before the House is unfair, is unreasonable and is unnecessary. It is unfair because it places the Government in a very unfair position, for whilst they know all the time, or their members know all the time, whether they will get away at 11 o’clock of an evening, the Opposition, which is not in the good counsels of the Government are placed in the awkward position that we have to be here all the time anticipating the possibility that the Government, in its natural unreasonableness, will keep the House sitting after 11 o’clock. That is unfair. I submit that the resolution is unreasonable because so far no evidence has been given by the Government as to why a resolution of this sort is necessary at this stage of the session. I am sure I speak with the utmost respect for the absent Prime Minister who, having proposed this vital resolution does not think it is necessary to attend the House to deal with it. I do not think he knows what is going on in the House. I have been following very carefully what is going on in the House, and I find that the Prime Minister, more often than not, is immersed in a philosophical book. Then he comes along in a most unphilosophical manner and proposes all sorts of unreasonable proposals to the House. In this case he has given no reasons for introducing this proposal. I submit it is unreasonable, because while it is naturally bound to make discussion, the free discussion of important measures impossible, it is bound to curtail that discussion, and therefore it is bound to make that discussion valueless because many members are tired out after the day’s proceedings, and it is not possible for them to give proper consideration to the matters before the House and the country. After all, the Government must not forget that hon. members of this House, in addition to having to attend the sittings of the House, are very fully occupied with the work of select committees. It is quite true that the Government, in its unreasonableness and gross unfairness has definitely excluded members of the Labour party from service on select committees. Therefore, from that point of view we do not have to work on select committees— with that pettiness that characterizes the Government, they have even kept us from attending some reception or visit to the British navy—they may turn a blind eye towards us and say that this party does not exist, but there are other members in the House who have to attend select committees, and I submit that the Government should deal with the matter from the general point of view and the interests and requirements of Parliament. I realize that the Minister of Finance has put forward a new proposition. He has said that people are getting a new conception of governments and parliaments. That is perfectly true. People are beginning to look upon the Government as a dictatorship, and upon Parliament as a farce. The new conception of the Government is that it is a dictatorship, and members are guided largely by dictation. On the other hand, so far as Parliament is concerned, I realize that Parliament has become a farce, and the sooner the Government come along and say that, in its opinion, Parliament is not required, the sooner it will be giving an honest deal to the people of South Africa. If the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister can have their own way, I do not know how long Parliament will remain part of the constitution, but if the Prime Minister forgets that Parliament does perform constitutional functions I am sure such a great constitutionalist as the Minister of Defence will not forget it. In his heart of hearts I think he is a little troubled over this matter. He must remember that in days gone by he himself fought for the rights of Parliament and the rights of members. Unfortunately he has now become a political doormat. He is in a very awkward position, for the Minister of Lands went to the constituents on the Rand and advised his supporters to vote against the supporters of the Minister of Defence.

The hon. member must confine his remarks to the motion.

I am giving reasons why the Minister of Defence should oppose the motion. The Prime Minister has issued a manifesto calling upon his supporters to vote against the Creswellites. The political doormat is being kicked away very rapidly. As far as Parliament and the people are concerned, it is imperative that legislation really should be considered, although the Government has a docile majority. If the people are to know the pros and cons of matters debated here, it is essential that Parliament should have a full and reasonable opportunity of discussing matters. We are only at the beginning of the session, and yet we are faced with a motion of this kind. I cannot understand the reason. I have not seen any obstruction; if the Opposition wants to learn how to obstruct they should take a lesson from the Minister of Defence. I am sure the hon. member for Yeoville (Mr. Duncan) never obstructed—he is usually very apologetic to the Government. I submit with the utmost sincerity that there was no obstruction last Thursday. Only three points were dealt with. One was brought up by the hon. member for Klip River (Mr. Anderson). It referred to “jobs for pals,” and it was thought so important by the Government that three Ministers rose in their seats to reply to it. A second question was raised by the hon. member for Turffontein (Mr. Sturrock) and myself; it referred to the floating of Union loans, and we have not yet had a reply to it. The only other question was one which I and the hon. member for Langlaagte (Mr. Christie) brought forward with reference to miners phthisis. That we were amply justified in debating that subject was proved on the following day when the Minister of Mines decided to extend the terms of reference to the Miners’ Phthisis Commission as we had recommended him to do. That being the case, I fail to see how anyone can reasonably suggest that the Prime Minister’s motion has been introduced because of obstruction. That motion can have been mooted only for one reason, and that is that Government has come to the conclusion that it is so all-knowing and so all-powerful that Parliament should be treated as the Italian and Spanish Parliaments have been treated. I hope that not only members on this side of the House but some hon. members on the Government side as well will oppose the motion as a protest, and as an indication that some of them regard their position as being of importance, and to show the people that Parliament is not going to be treated as a farce.

I cannot understand that this motion is stifling free discussion. In the old days the members of the Labour party were very often the means of the House sitting after 11 o’clock at night, but we did not complain about that, and were quite prepared to sit all night. As a matter of fact, the rule was introduced, together with many other limitations of the rights of members, during the war period of 1917. When it is proposed to suspend the 11 o’clock rule the impression is conveyed that Government thinks matters have been discussed at too great length. Under the rules to-day a discussion may take place on the estimates, and all that members have intended to say is frequently very nearly completed at 11 p.m., so if we went on for another quarter-of-an-hour a vote would be taken. By adjourning automatically, however, at 11 p.m., members come along next day with a number of points which they did not think it worth while to put before the committee of the whole House the previous night. These points are discussed at length with the result that the time available for debating other matters, possibly more important, is curtailed. I do not suggest any obstruction on the part of the Opposition—not for a moment. I know the business of an Opposition is to criticize, but what they may think to be the necessary length of a discussion may not always coincide with what we on this side may think is necessary.

The point of view is apt to change.

The point of view changes with responsibilities. The press has been mentioned, one member saying that hon. members who spoke after 11 p.m. would not be reported in the press. That, of course, applies equally to both sides, but what does not apply equally to both sides is that hon. members opposite—who have no responsibility whatever for getting public business through are under no restraint as to the number of contributions they may make to a debate. But my hon. friends behind me are always feeling that they are not helping the despatch of business by giving a Roland for your Oliver on your side. I think it is an exceedingly healthy thing for each speech to be replied to. If this motion is passed, in all probability it will be only once in a way that we do go on after 11 o’clock. If occasions arise where notice has not been given, our friends feel that in justice to themselves, they should have the freedom to give one speech for a speech on the opposite side, and with a suspension of the rule, they will not be restricted and feel they are assisting the Government by keeping silent when they would like to speak. As far as the curtailment of the liberties of the House are concerned, and the point of view on which the hon. member for Troyeville (Mr. Kentridge) has spoken, if he refers to the experiences we have had together, I think he and they will remember that there was never any reluctance on our part to protract debates after 11, 12 or 1 o’clock! From the Opposition point of view he held, as I held, that nothing impresses the country so much with the “wickedness of the Government” as to afford the spectacle of an all-night sitting. We did that with a mere number of seven members, and with a tremendous phalanx as you have at present. Do you think that the Government is going to use a motion like that wrongly and unduly? It will allow both sides to debate instead of one side, and allow business to go through more smoothly.

When this motion was tabled, hon. members on this side of the House were apprehensive that it was because of what occurred on Thursday of last week, and since listening to the speech of the Minister of Finance it is difficult to believe that is not the cause why it was introduced. The Minister claims that the time has arrived when the procedure of Parliament should be revised, and that revision should take the form of a curtailment rather than an expansion of the rights of hon. members. We see, on the other hand, that when they passed the motion in 1916, it was because they did not want the rights of hon. members to be curtailed. We had an interesting dissertation from the Minister on what should be the proper conduct, but may I point out that we have standing rules and orders, and while it is perfectly true that, in face of these, it is competent for the House to suspend these orders, nevertheless, we must show some respect and consideration for them. If it is the object of the ministry to introduce a new method of procedure, either by the method of curtailment or otherwise, what I do submit is that the matter should be brought before the Committee on Standing Rules and Orders, and the alteration of procedure made in a constitutional fashion. This motion is perilously close to an infringement of the rights of hon. members, and I would have asked your ruling, Mr. Speaker, whether it is not right to protect the rights of hon. members against the whims and motions of an overwhelming majority behind the Government. The Minister of Defence complained, I understand, that we have too much liberty and licence of talk. Taking the rules as they exist to-day, you have a restriction as to the number of minutes you may speak.

Proposed by yourself.

In a constitutional way. We have this specific rule that the debate shall be automatically adjourned at 11 o’clock at night, except by a resolution proposed by a Minister at a quarter past two. I ask the sporting Minister of Defence: do you think it right that you should know how long you are going to debate a question, and we do not know? While you have rules, deliberately adopted by your own Parliament, it is wrong suddenly to throw a motion like this upon us over-riding your own standing rules and orders. If the Minister wants to set himself up as a Mussolini, he should do it in a constitutional way.

This is a constitutional way.

Fortunately for the Minister, it is constitutional, but morally it is not, using your majority behind you to do something perilously close to doing something unconstitutionally. Since 1917, or since the rule was introduced, I find it has been brought into operation 15 times—I exclude the present session, of course—showing how sparingly Governments since 1917 have used it. When I come to the times at which the suspension of the standing rules and orders have been introduced, they completely confirm what the hon. member for Troyeville (Mr. Kentridge) has said. Invariably they have been introduced late in the session and for special purposes. In 1917, the House sat for 93 days, and it was only on the 92nd day that this rule was introduced. The rule was not put into operation again for something like eight years. In 1925, the House sat for 110 days, and the motion was moved in that case on the 84th day. In 1926, the House sat for 90 days, and the motion was moved on the 73rd day. In 1927, the House sat for 103 days, and the motion was moved on the 90th day. In 1928, the House sat for 100 days, and the motion was proposed on the 92nd day. We then come to the unfortunate special session of last year, when the Government first tasted the sweets of power by introducing this motion on the 2nd day of the session I submit that in the spirit and the letter of these rules, this motion should never have been introduced at this particular stage. We are only in the 42nd day of this session, and I do ask hon. gentlemen opposite to consider what they are doing. It is so long since they have been out of office that they have probably forgotten what they had to endure when they were in opposition. But they are coming out of office, and I ask them to ponder before they carry such a motion as this by the brute force of a majority with a view to getting through business without adequate discussion, and without deliberation. How can we discuss here whether it is better or worse to curtail debate? The Prime Minister has brought forward this motion deliberately to rebuke the Opposition for what took place on Thursday last. Nothing else. I say, not only is it wrong to do this, to propose this motion, but it is worse, because of the circumstances of that unfortunate incident. There has been no evidence of obstruction during the whole of this session. If debate has been unduly protracted, that is not obstruction, as it was understood in the old days, and I do not admit that too many members have spoken. The public outside this House will, I hope, realize that the position is what the hon. member for Troyeville (Mr. Kentridge) described when he said that this Government is a Government of autocracy, and the worst of it all is that the Government is quite unrepentant.

The most extraordinary part of this afternoon’s proceedings has been the speech of the Prime Minister in introducing this motion. It has been shown by the hon. member for Durban (Stamford Hill) (Mr. Robinson) that this motion is almost without precedent at this stage of the session. One would have expected that the Prime Minister would give some explanation of the reasons actuating him in this motion. He gave no explanation. He made a sort of apology. He said: “Don’t take this motion too seriously, because I won’t be too hard on you.” I have noticed that the Government is speaking with two contradictory voices on this matter. The Minister of Defence, speaking of the incident of Thursday night, has said that there was a genuine misunderstanding, and that he does not accuse this side of anything untoward in its conduct in the debate on the Appropriation Bill. He acquits us entirely of any conduct to which the Government could take exception. We were not guilty of obstruction or undue loquacity. But when he said that his colleague and acting leader in this House for the moment (the Minister of Finance) kept a gloomy silence, and when the hon. member for Durban (Stamford Hill) said what we all think, that this motion has its origin in Thursday night’s proceedings, the Minister of Finance kept a dead silence. I have a great respect for the Minister of Finance.

Still ?

Still, and always will have. If he will tell me that this motion has no connection in any way with what happened on Thursday night, I will accept the statement at once, and not pursue that aspect of the matter any further. On Thursday night we had the very unpleasing spectacle of the Minister of Finance completely losing his balance, and giving way to an exhibition of nerves that I have seldom seen on his part, all because of a misapprehension on his part of the action of the acting chief whip on this side of the House. After some hour and a half of recrimination and mutual misunderstanding, the matter was cleared up. The hon. member for Albany (Mr. Struben) made it perfectly plain that so far from endeavouring to prolong the debate, he was endeavouring to curtail it. We satisfied the Minister of Defence, and probably the majority of the members on the Government side, that the whole thing was due to a misunderstanding. I then hoped that the Minister of Finance would have said something which would have wiped the whole incident out. But no, the very next day, the Prime Minister got up with a smile on his face, like a man trumping an opponent’s ace, and gave notice of this motion.

Will you give me a chance to explain?

I am moving an amendment. That will give the Minister an opportunity of speaking again. If the Minister of Finance will make a statement, I will accept it, and a statement by him may remove the feelings of anger this motion has aroused on this side of the House. In the meantime, I must argue on the assumption that this motion was begotten entirely of Thursday evening’s incident. I certainly believe that to be the position, because of the stage of the session at which this motion is brought forward. It is so unprecendented. The hon. member for Durban (Stamford Hill) has given the facts with regard to the stage of the session when this motion has been introduced in previous years. I have looked up the length of time taken by the debate on the Part Appropriation Bills in previous years. The hon. member for Ceres (Mr. Roux) moved the adjournment of the debate when the Part Appropriation Bill had been discussed for only eleven hours. In the 1921 session, the second reading took eight hours and twenty minues. In the session of 1922, when the Minister of Finance was in opposition, it took 16 hours 27 minutes. In 1923, and the other side were still in opposition, it took 23 hours and 46 minutes to pass the Bill through all its stages. In 1924, it took 22 hours and 21 minutes, and they were still in opposition. Now we come to the South African party as opposition. In 1924, this Bill occupied hours; in 1925, 22 hours; in 1926, 20 hours 40 minutes; in 1927, 21 hours; in 1928, 8 hours; in 1929, 14½ hours in the first session and 2½ hours in the second session. This debate had gone on for only 11 hours, whereas the average is something about 20 to 25 hours, and after the debate had lasted 11 hours we had this exhibition of nerves—I will not call it anything else—on the part of the Minister of Finance. Could any member on that side of the House say that the same arguments were repeated? No, we covered the usual variety of subjects. Was any individual speech unduly prolonged? It was not, and, therefore, for no cause whatever this motion has been introduced. Why is the comfort of the House, the comfort of members and the comfort of the press to be sacrificed? All the Minister of Finance has said is that he is getting tired of Parliament; that these speeches are so much waste of time, and that you may as well let the thing go through. Parliament, he considers, ought to sit for three months instead of five. It is only three or four years since the Minister of Finance raised the salary of members of this House to £700 a year on the plea that the work of Parliament had increased to such an extent that it was necessary to increase our salaries. If the Minister reduces the session to three months—

I have no hope of achieving that.

Would be reduce our salaries pro tanto? If he did he would find himself very unpopular among his own backbenchers. I hope the House will realize what is behind this outburst. In my opinion the Minister of Finance has greatly changed. I suppose you cannot sit on the ministerial benches for many years without seeing old questions from a new angle. Everything depends on the point of view; but so long as this is a country governed by parliamentary institutions, and so long as he sits as a Minister in Parliament, he must listen to criticism of his actions and criticisms of the Government, of which he is a member. No Government is going to score by speeches such as he made this afternoon. If he wants to set up a dictatorship and institute the rule of Italy, that is another matter, but for the moment this is the Parliament of South Africa, and this is the way we get grievances off our chest. These debates are the vehicle for ventilating the grievances of the country. Ministers can only get money voted after having listened to the ventilation of grievances. That has taken place for less than half of the accustomed time. My hon. friend, the member for Frankfort (Mr. Wessels), had a lot to say. I remember the days when they were in opposition. I remember the Indemnity Bill in 1922, when 82 members spoke and took 74 hours to speak. The present leader of the Opposition, in moving that Bill, took one hour to do it. The present Prime Minister of this country—then in opposition—spoke for 3 hours 5 minutes. We listened to that eccentric member, Mr. Obermeier; I remember him going through the Old Testament and saying that each bad character in it was an angel of light compared with the hon. member for Standerton (Gen. Smuts). Mr. Beyers spoke one evening for three hours in committee, and then only was limitation of speeches taken in hand, because of the inordinate prolixity of those speeches. This limitation of speeches was sponsored in this House by the hon. member for Standerton, and, through the mouth of Dr. Malan, the House heard these words in condemnation of the proposal—

Mr. Wilcox, the then member for Potchefstroom, said he agreed with Dr. Malan, but deprecated the frequent application of the closure, which only lead to retaliatory measures in other parts of the House. The then member for Piquetberg (Mr. de Waal) said that those tactics would not make the session any shorter—exactly what we say. I see that Mr. A. B. J. Fourie, then member for Somerset, said that the South African party press had been busy telling people that the Nationalist members had been wasting the time of the House, a contention which he asserted was unfounded. He said that the motion came not from a desire to shorten the debate, but from The Prime Minister’s desire to muzzle the Opposition. He also urged them to consider the matter from a non-party point of view, and urged that the adoption of the proposal would not promote a better spirit between the parties in the House. I see there is another Minister present this afternoon. Mr. P. G. W. Grobler, then the member for Rustenburg, said that the fact that Parliaments were on their trial was not due to the long speeches made only, but to the fact that Parliament had become a mere registering machine. Mr. Fichardt, who was the chief financial critic of the Opposition, said that he objected to the rights of members being Whittled down any further. They were actually disappearing, and were getting down to the position of being a mere registering machine. They had the closure and the 11 o’clock rule and an all night sitting to reduce members to a state of physical exhaustion in order to bring the debate to a close. He submitted that 45 hours per year were not too much time to devote to matters of the country, and he maintained that the changes carried out would lead to bitterness, and he pleaded that fair play should be given. If after Thursday evening’s episode there had been a frank interchange of views between the chief whips of the two parties, it would have been perfectly plain that there had been no attempt or wish on the part of the Opposition unduly to prolong the business of the House. If instead of bringing down this fire brand in the House the Minister had adopted that course, it would have been in the best interests of the House, and would have tended more to promote the more expeditious despatch of business in the House. I want to utter a plea and to give a warning. I want to plead with the hon. the Minister of Finance not to press this motion. He will do no good. He will raise feelings of anger and bitterness on the part of members in this House, and he will not promote the better conduct of business. I warn him that any motion which raises the feelings of hon. members on this side of the House is absolutely unnecessary. And if any motion tends to raise these feelings it is this motion. My hon. friend, the hon. member for Yeoville (Mr. Duncan), has said that when this motion for the suspension of the 11 o’clock rule has been moved in the past it was merely to put a particular measure through. With this moved off altogether, we never know how much business will be taken after 11 o’clock. I remember an occasion last year or the year before after we had been debating a subject until 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning, the Government, out of sheer cussedness, went on to something else, and the House was kept for another hour. If we are to have this thing at all, it should be done subject to this proviso that only business under discussion at 5 minutes to 11 be disposed of, and after that the House shall adjourn. In order to meet this, I propose, as an amendment—

I think that is a perfectly reasonable compromise, and it will meet all that we ask for now.

I second the amendment. I should like to say that on Friday last when I opened the Cape Times and saw what had taken place on the previous evening in my absence, I said to myself at once, knowing the Prime Minister so well, that I guessed what would take place that afternoon, and that he would come down I move this resolution. I made no secret of it, and it may have reached the Prime Minister’s ears. Nobody was surprised on Friday afternoon to see the Prime Minister rise and introduce the motion that has been moved to day.

Was it not a question of guilty conscience?

Judging by the speech of the Prime Minister that evening we could see that he was very angry. He was in one of those moods he fortunately does not get into very often, but he was exceptionally angry and all for nothing. He was like a bee in a hornets’ nest. What was the result of last Thursday night’s debate? We have now been exactly two hours in discussing this very matter. Two hours have been practically wasted again. I think the amendment moved by the hon. member for Bezuidenhout (Mr. Blackwell) is a very wise addendum to the motion before the House if adopted. I appeal to the hon. Minister to withdraw the motion, failing which to accept the addendum. I ask the House to remember that we have a Hansard staff which has to report our speeches. We talk about the press. Well the press is deserving of consideration certainly and our staffs are worthy of more consideration even if we are not prepared to consider ourselves. I make an appeal to the hon. Minister to withdraw this motion. I should like briefly to point out to the House what happened in 1925 when the rule was suspended. The rule was suspended on the 19th of June, 1925, and the House sat until the 5th of July, 1925. In 1926 the rule was suspended on the 14th of May and the House sat until the 8th of June, 1926. In 1927 the rule was suspended on the 13th of June and the House sat until June the 29th. In 1928 it was suspended on the 22nd of May, and sat until the 4th of June. It will be seen from the record which I have searched that practically on every occasion only within three or four weeks of the end of the session was rule No. 26 suspended. Why should it be suspended now? We have only sat here from the 17th of January, just about two months and yet the Government comes forward and asks us to suspend this rule now. The Prime Minister assures us that the 11 o’clock rule will rarely be suspended. Then why not use the ordinary remedy and propose the suspension of the rule on the particular days when it is desired to sit late? Many hon. members live at Muizenberg and still further afield; is it fair to them that they should be left in a perpetual state of uncertainty as to the time they will be able to return to their homes? The matter should not be treated lightly; we want our legislation to be as wise and sound as possible. Hon. members pass the whole morning— some of them—in sitting on select committees, and they then have to be here throughout the whole of the afternoon and evening.

That has been said often.

I am surprised then it has not appealed to the hon. member for I thought he was a sensible man. It would save time if the Prime Minister said that he was not going on with this proposal.

I do not wish to continue the debate, but to reply to the point raised by the hon. member for Bezuidenhout (Mr. Blackwell). Whether hon. members abuse me or accuse me of interfering with the rights of speech, I am quite unrepentant. I am quite convinced that Parliament will have to revise its rules in order to expedite business, and Government is simply availing itself of rules which were passed by Parliament. I am deliberately of opinion that if we want to transact the business of the country which Parliament is supposed to do we will have to revise our procedure. What took place on Thursday night, and what is taking place here now, is sufficient proof of the necessity of action being taken on these lines. What did we find on Thursday? Members pointed out to the Government how at all times it is at the mercy of the Opposition, and how the Opposition is able at all times to hold up business if they so desire. The Opposition said that Government blundered because it forgot that fact. I daresay we shall have to finish the whole of to-day’s business after 11 o’clock to-night if hon. members keep this debate going until this evening. The rule was found necessary in order to place a weapon in the hands of the Government, for the Government wants to have some remedy if the Opposition desires to hold up the business. Before the discussion on Wednesday the Prime Minister had decided to introduce the motion.

Did Thursday precipitate it?

Thursday night and what is happening here now certainly must have strengthened the Prime Minister’s resolve.

Did he decide to bring this forward at once ?

Before Thursday night the Prime Minister had actually discussed the matter with the Clerk of the House.

Did the Prime Minister decide to introduce this motion at once?

Yes.

Then we must at once ask the reasons that led up to the discussion after which the Prime Minister ultimately decided to introduce the motion. We are led to assume by the Minister of Finance, reinforced by the Minister of Defence, that the whole object of the motion is to bring about the despatch of business. That is a high sounding term, and it is capable of several interpretations and, possibly, misinterpretations. We would like to know what the Minister means when he talks about the despatch of business. After all. I always had the impression that this House is a debating chamber—a house of representatives sent here after consideration—more or less serious—by the constituencies in order that the members might criticize legislative proposals put forward by Ministers. This is more particularly the case when we remember that no Government is returned on its actual legislative proposals, with the result that Parliament is faced with the task of examining Bills which are entirely new to Parliament, and thus hon. members have not had the opportunity of discussing these measures with their constituents. That being so, what does the Minister mean by the “despatch of business”? From the Government point of view, that means getting as much work as possible through the House in the shortest possible time. But that negatives the whole fundamental principle of a House like this, whose duty it is to consider within our poor capacity the possible ramifications of such legislation. How does the Minister propose to get the business despatched? He is evidently relying on wearing us out physically, mentally and I was going to add morally as well. But physically and mentally the Minister is relying on tiring the House out. Does that redound to his credit? When we are tired out, we cannot put up a fight any more; is that the way our institutions are to be treated? No wonder the Minister was able to say that a different conception was being held of government by the people outside, and they will know it, to their cost. If it is hard on members personally, how much harder is it on the constituents who sent us here in the fond belief that we are going to debate to the best of our power the matters on which they sent us here. The Prime Minister forgot entirely how the people outside are going to be treated in consequence—if ever he gave it any consideration whatsoever. How much harder is it on hon. members on these benches. It is all a piece with the general treatment we, on these benches, have received. I have never squealed about any treatment we have received, nor have my colleagues either, but we have a right to protest, not on our own behalf, but on that of our constituents who are speechless because their three representatives will be so tired that at will be impossible for them to present their views. Much has been made of the non-necessity of a motion such as this, and I want to emphasize that. You, Mr. Speaker, know in your person, as well as from your office, that efforts have been made, and successfully, in the past, to curtail what has been called waste of time. In the first place, the 40-minute rule was introduced, and it was said, and accepted, that it was done with the object of curtailing the speeches of those who were wasting the time of the House, and it would make all for the despatch of business. In committee we were limited to ten minutes, where we had had all the time, which was done in order to curtail “the waste of time.” In addition, but above all, there was the institution of the closure, which hon. members opposed as the most restrictive of restrictive measures, but this was infinitely better, much as I disliked it, and still dislike it, than this iniquitous thing that has been proposed this afternoon. With a motion for the closure, you had to take everything on its merits, if it was considered there was a waste of time, it was for an individual member to move the closure, and then it became a question for you, Mr. Speaker, to decide from your superior high office, and your experience, whether the merits demanded that the closure should be accepted. That is infinitely better than tiring hon. members out, and, from sheer lack of physical endurance on their part, getting your measures through.

You are now challenging and criticizing a rule of the House.

I think it will be better if the Minister refrains from objecting; he is not listening to me; I am not criticizing, but accepting it. The Minister said that something will have to be done and the House will have to revise its rules in order to expedite business, which may, or may not, be true. I myself have thought that some examination should be made of our rules whereby we can connote our best efforts with as little use of time as possible, and I have ventured in the past to suggest whether we should not adopt a modified French system of having committees in being, whether the House is sitting or not, which are in collaboration with the various departments, and have a sort of determining voice in the conduct of affairs, the Government always having its majority in the House. That has the merit of interesting all sections of the House all the time, in the government of the country through its departmental interests. The South African party would have representation on such committees, just as they have on select committees; but do not, if you really desire to revise the rules of the House, pass a motion such as this. I would suggest that the time has arrived for a committee, commission or some other body, to inquire into the conduct of the business of the House with a view to improving it, I think we should have the advice of experts on the matter, and that it should not be brought before the House in a piecemeal form like this. The Minister finds himself piqued and slings on the House a motion of this description. If you are desirous of doing the thing properly you can call in experts. Do not decide the fate of Parliament as the result of a motion having its origin in pique. The Minister of Defence intervened, and when he does he generally gets a brick on his head. I was very pained to hear the Minister tell us that he is going out of politics. He threw up his hands. He was singing the first stanza of his swan song. He did not use the actual language, but he caused us to infer that he was, in principle, opposed to this tiring out of members; but he said, “Of course, as a reason for my supporting the motion to-day I cannot forget that we Labour fellows kept the House up all night on occasions, 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning, and so on.” That is true. We had something to gain by it. But I do not think the Minister was serious in endeavouring to impress upon this House that we liked sitting up all night, because he, and I, and all other members of the Labour party protested very strongly indeed against those methods. It is a most singular thing that this keeping of us up all night and every night in the past, was on the very same question that I think the Prime Minister, and the Minister of Finance, and the Minister of Justice have anticipated, namely the Riotous Assemblies Act. All I can say is that things are very sadly changed. I do not accept what the Minister of Defence says, namely, that in the past we liked sitting up all night. We did not. We were forced to do so in order to express the opinions we held, but we were younger in those days, and some of us were more firmly fixed in principle. When principle no longer produces interest, then interest is lost in principle and principle goes. So far as the Minister of Defence is concerned his principle is gone. He has sung his swan song, he has given up the ghost, and he knows he will never get the support electorally of the Nationalists again. He is a sucked orange.

Order.

All I want to say is that this is making of Parliament a complete farce. The logical thing to do is to lay down a series of rules, or one rule will do it, deciding that in future as soon as a general election takes place that political party that has a majority shall elect the Government and abolish Parliament for the next five years. That would suit my hon. friend opposite, but he is not going to be there very long. This five years will see the Government out.

It is still long.

Some of us think so.

Where do you come in ?

We are quite content to go on preaching to the people what is the right thing to do, and when the people realize the position there will then he no curtailment of speeches. The fact remains that the time will come, and it is not far distant. Your own people are realizing it. Outside this House they have a very different conception of what the Nationalist party stands for, and what the Government is practising, a very different conception from what they had some time ago. My hon. friend the member for Vrededorp (Maj. Roberts) hears murmurings indicating how opinion is tending in the towns, and it will not be very long before the bywoners will swamp your nationalism. Even in my lifetime the South African Labour party will come into its own, and then beware. I am sorry the hon. member for Bezuidenhout (Mr. Blackwell) has moved this amendment. I would rather have a clear-cut issue on the principle. By the submission of this amendment the party that is moving it is accepting the principle that we shall go on after 11 o’clock at the whim and mood of an extraordinarily whimmy and moody Minister. I would rather have a clear-cut division on the principle, whether we shall be tired out on our legislative efforts, deliberately, by the Government, or whether we shall not, and then leave the whole of the responsibility with the Government.

Amendment put and negatived.

I just want to say a few words with reference to what hon. members opposite have said. They spoke about the failure of the Union Loan which was recently issued in London. They were only too pleased and they thought that all the blackening of their own country had resulted in the financiers in England refusing to lend any money to the Union. The Opposition knew that the issuing bank had underwritten the loan of £6,000,000 to the Union on certain conditions, viz., at 5 per cent., and that they heard that the subscription lists were opened a few days. It was also known that the public did not immediately subscribe, with the result that the issuing bank had to take up 75 per cent. of the loan. Then hon. members opposite thought they had achieved a great success. They constanly raise the cry of stinking fish, running down our own country, and so they thought that the financiers would not subscribe to the loan. It was quite by chance that the loan was not immediately subscribed. During the few days that the lists were open in England there was comparatively little money available for investment for long periods, and this loan is, of course, a long term loan. Yesterday I read a Reuter telegram in the English newspapers. It also appeared in Die Burger and other papers, but I will quote from the English papers—

What does this mean? It means that that loan was not a failure at all. It was a great success, and the issuing bank who had the good sense to lend the money to the Union make a considerable profit. Here we had another instance when the negotiations were commenced with Rhodesia. In other countries we find that when the government is engaged in negotiations with a foreign country, newspapers and all parties stand behind the government of their country in order to get the best conditions, but here we had the case of all the newspapers of the so-called South African party, instead of standing by their own country so that the Union could get the most favourable conditions, chose the other side. Every paper we opened wrote on behalf of Rhodesia, and then that party still has the impudence to call itself the South African party. As is stated in this morning’s Burger, the South African party is just as little South African as what the present Roman empire is holy or Roman. Yes, honourable members laugh and say that we must buy from Great Britain because we get our money there, but go outside and look at the motor-cars of those hon. members in the grounds. Go to their shops, and we will find there all kinds of goods which, like their motor-cars, do not come from the British empire. If we go to the showrooms of an hon. member who sits opposite, we find American motor-cars there. The hon. member for Cathcart (Mr. van Coller) spoke about wool. It is true that wool farmers are losing a great deal because the price of wool has dropped. The hon. member, however, says that Australian wool fetches better prices. He is a man of common sense, and must be a man of common sense, otherwise he would not be here, and he must know that wool of the same quality is sold at the same price in England. The English, American, Japanese, and German buyers will not pay more for the same quality wool just because it comes from Australia and not from South Africa. He saw a little paragraph in the newspapers that a parcel of wool had been sold at a high price; was that not possibly one of those little reports that one so often finds in the South African party newspapers? They believe that the farmer believes in the end justifying the means, and when they want to abuse this Government then they see to it that such reports are published. We have a representative in Bradford, and he was not put there by the Nationalist Government; he says very emphatically that the same price is paid in England for South African as for Australian wool, provided it is of the same quality. The hon. member for Klip River (Mr. Anderson) attacked the Minister of Agriculture, and, according to him, the Minister of Agriculture’s great sin is that he maintains the principle of bilingualism in his department. There are still many inhabitants of South Africa—alas! some of them are seated opposite—who think that bilingualism is a right which must be made a right on paper. If it is not so, why then does that hon. member reproach the Minister for trying to make his department bilingual? He wants officials in the department who are not bilingual, and he does not want them to be transferred in order that bilingual officials should be got who can attend to the public in both languages. If a person comes who only knows one language, then an interpreter would probably have to be sent. I happened to go to a department and spoke Afrikaans; the official could not speak Afrikaans, and I had to speak in English. I should, however, like to know what the hon. member for Mowbray (Mr. Close) would do if he went to the Rondebosch Post Office and the officials there could not speak English. Will he say that he would be satisfied if the postmaster and his assistants could only speak Afrikaans and not English? What would hon. members say if the magistrate’s clerk in their village could only speak Afrikaans? No, hon. members wanted us to let language rights remain purely rights on paper. The Afrikaners are prepared to make their children bilingual. We should like to see South Africa a bilingual country, and many hon. members opposite look askance at that. The Minister of Agriculture is attacked because he sees that his officials are bilingual. Some time ago I visited an English-speaking district. It was a pleasure to associate with English-speaking farmers, and I heard nothing but praise for the Minister. The progressive farmers in the country, English-speaking as well as Afrikaans-speaking, appreciate the great services which the Minister has rendered us.

I do not propose casting any pearls of wisdom before the hon. member for Ceres (Mr. Roux). In regard to his very feeble apologia for the failure of the loan, I agree that one of the causes was due to sentiment.

How can it be a failure when it is quoted at a premium ?

The Minister of Finance himself told us it was a failure. In the opinion of many people, part of that failure was due to sentiment, the Union Government, what with flag Bills and German and Rhodesian treaties, having antagonized feeling on the other side. The Government is building up a day of retribution. We have quarrelled with all our neighbours, and the Government is like a hedgehog, showing nothing but bristles to the rest of the world. The subsidiary reason for the failure of the loan was the alarmist speech made by the Prime Minister a month or so before we went to London for money, his statement doing much damage. I wish, however, to touch upon a question upon which, through a misunderstanding, I was not able to speak on Thursday. I want to draw attention to the disastrous effects of the Mozambique treaty. I cannot understand why the Government acted as it did, and why it allowed the Portuguese to out manoeuvre them at every turn. I am not casting any aspersions on the Portuguese diplomats; in fact, I take off my hat to them. We have not yet had any explanation from the Government why we were dragged into this scheme, and more especially why the interests of the farming population in particular were so callously disregarded. Under the old agreement, the people of the Union could recruit as many natives as they liked in Portuguese East Africa. It is true that in order to cope with a passing phase of unemployment in the Union, the Government of the Union limited the number of Portuguese natives allowed to enter the Union to 75,000. So far as the treaty was concerned, however, we had the right to recruit unlimited numbers of natives from Portuguese East Africa, but that right has now been done away with. At the date of the new treaty, natives from Portuguese East Africa were employed to the number of 110,000 on the gold mines, 13,000 on the coal mines, and roughly 10,000 in other industries, so the new treaty is going to result in a decrease of 50,000 in the number of Portuguese natives working in the Union. The farmers will be the hardest hit, as they will not be allowed to recruit Portuguese natives in future. When the Minister of Native Affairs went to Delagoa Bay recently, I thought his mission was to secure a mitigation of the harshness of the agreement. The Low Country Farmers’ Association pointed out to him how much they were in need of natives from Portuguese East Africa, and the Minister airily told them he knew all about the conditions. Instead of ameliorating those conditions, he has put the screw on still tighter. I know three Cape Town boarding houses which last week were visited by officials of the Native Affairs Department, who inquired if any Portuguese natives were employed at these establishments, and, if so, they had to be deported. On every farm there is to be a smelling-out of Portuguese natives. A very large percentage of the natives employed in citrus, cotton and sugar-growing in the low country is composed of Portuguese East African natives. If they are sent back, it will be impossible to get other natives to take their places. Swazis, Basutos and Zulus will not work in the low country, so the result of this disastrous agreement will be the ruination of the cotton, citrus and sugar industries of the low veld. What have we got in return for this tremendous sacrifice? Can the Prime Minister tell us one single benefit we enjoy in exchange? Officials are going round the whole of the Union smelling out Portuguese natives. The international boundaries between Portuguese East Africa and Rhodesia and the Union cut right across the ethnographical boundaries. To-day the position is—I have had cases brought to my notice— that a native belonging to a Portuguese tribe who has affiliations on our side and marries a native woman on our side of the line is going to be repatriated to Portuguese territory, and his wife and children kept back in the Transvaal. I had at least one pathetic case brought to my notice, and I have no doubt there will be many cases where natives will be torn away from their families and repatriated by force. There is a greater principle involved in it—do the public of the Union realize that while a white citizen of the Union can go and settle in Rhodesia or Portuguese territory, or a Rhodesian or Portuguese citizen can come and live here, if a native citizen of the Union for any reason thinks he would like to go and settle in Rhodesia, or a Rhodesian or Portuguese native thinks he would like to live in the Union, it is not allowed. It is a new species of slavery. I am not an Exeter Hall negrophilist, but it seems an extraordinary fact that the native population are treated as so many cattle, and not allowed to choose their own domicile. I know we have had to make certain restrictions in regard to Asiatic immigration, but to make a regulation that you shall not shift over an imaginary line, I think, is a new species of slavery in South Africa, and seems to me a strange state of affairs. It is to be hoped more public attention will be drawn to it. I understand that reference was made to the subject by the Minister of Agriculture in his speech, when he said that it is part of our white labour policy scheme. I do not know whether I am right, but I see the Minister nods. Then I would ask him whether it is possible to initiate a revolutionary white labour policy by taking 50,000 Portuguese natives and trying to work the low country and sub-tropical industries by white labour. I have no doubt it is not possible in the low country, and it is a very unfeeling way of dealing with the farmers there. Where are the white men coming from? Why have the farmers been thrown to the wolves? Under the new treaty, the natives are to work on the gold mines only. The coal mines and the farmers are deserted. It is not a mere debating point, but it is a crying need in many a district in the Transvaal. I have received many telegrams from farmers in the low country that “the policeman has been there to search for natives.” I hope the Prime Minister or the Minister of Native Affairs will give us an explanation of this. I understand the treaty is now irrevocable, although we warned the House at the time not to enter into it; if the thing is done, I would ask the Prime Minister to tell us, is he going to help the farmers? People talk airily of north of latitude 22 degrees. I wonder where those teeming natives are north of 22 degrees? I know of no territory there where you can get labour. The territories there are shouting out for their own labour. The position is being made the more difficult by the ill-considered action of the Government in accepting this treaty with Mozambique. The Minister of Agriculture rightly judged that the Government would be criticized for its unsuccessful land settlement schemes. The Minister went in for the old expedient of getting his own shot in first, and on Wednesday last put up a cumbrous defence, the gist of which was, “Yes, we have blundered, but you fellows have done just as bad.” So I wish to refer to one of his statements. It has a very great bearing on the veracity of the Minister. I do not think he ever intentionally departs from the narrow path of veracity, but he does make extraordinary statements, and does handle truth in an extremely slovenly way. He made the extraordinary statement which, if proved, would damn any Government. He said the South African party spent £50,000 on a dam in Gordonia because an election was on, and left the dam the moment the election was over. That was the gist of his statement. If that were true, we would stand self-condemned as a government. But what are the facts? The facts are that that dam—I am not defending its construction, but defending the action of the South African party Government—the truth is that dam was placed on the estimates in 1918, three years after the last election and two years before there was another. There was no election near 1918. The Prime Minister laughs; it is not a laughing matter.

It is not.

I do not know whether the Minister of Agriculture was at large in those days, but every Nationalist of those days voted for it, including the Prime Minister. The irrigation report stated that since about 1913 this dam had been on the tapis. The dam was not hurried through by the Government during the election, but there was a concise and comprehensive report from the director of irrigation, with sketches complete, which had been before the House for years running, and it was passed by the House without a dissentient voice. I merely quote this as an instance of the slovenly handling by the Minister of Agriculture of that precious commodity named truth.

Is it finished?

It is complete except for the sluice gates. This dam was one of a series of projected dams, and I hope the Government will go on with them. There was to be a series of weirs, with sluice gates to impound as much water as possible, and to let it down in instalments. I hope that the Minister will tell us whether he is going to carry out the promise made to the Namaqualand and Gordonia people of completing this irrigation scheme. My object was to check the accuracy of the statements made by the Minister of Agriculture, and I say this is an outstanding instance of the wild manner in which he makes statements in this House and elsewhere. I want to drive home the difference between the unsuccessful schemes of the South African party Government and those of this Government. In every case I know of where the South African party was responsible for the failure of a land settlement scheme, it was owing to our technical advisers having given inaccurate advice. It is very difficult for technical advisers to give accurate advice when dealing with unknown forces. No one can help that, but my charge against the present Government, and especially against the Labour Ministers, is that they have acted contrary to advice. The Labour Ministers have been a most expensive luxury to this country. They have indulged in extravagant experiments against technical advice, and against the advice of this House. The average Labour leader is not a practical man; he is a theorist. He is generally in Parliament because he has broken down at his own job. What was the result of putting Labour members into the Government? I am not going to reopen the Doornkop affair, but there we know we warned the House and the Minister, and he said it was going to be the brightest and most successful scheme of social uplift the world has ever seen. It has cost about £100,000, and an expensive law suit for the luxury of having a Labour minister. The Nuweberg scheme was the same. I would like to know the Prime Minister’s opinion of his colleague’s interference at Haartebeestfontein. My information is that the thing has been a most unholy muddle. I am not talking about the Land Department’s share of it, but about the intervention of the Labour minister. I agree with the hon. member for Bezuidenhout (Mr. Blackwell) that if the whole of the Labour department were thrown into Table Bay it would not be missed. I hope the Minister of Lands will tell us what is going on. There have been promises that the Minister of Labour will not be allowed to continue to waste our money. These are no ordinary departmental mistakes. Even when I was Minister, the department made mistakes, but we never allowed the Labour Ministers to experiment in social uplift at ruinous cost to the country and without practical benefit to the people. I want to ask the Minister of Lands for a full statement as to why we are going to be saddled with a debt of £76,000 by the purchase of the Candover Estate, a bankrupt estate. The Minister, just towards the end of his period of office, breaks the good rule he has formerly preached with regard to the purchase of an estate proved to be a failure. The Government has accepted the principle that no more irrigation adventures are to be entered into on a large scale until they are thoroughly investigated. I would like the Minister to tell us why he has bought that ground, when we all know that the estate was a hopeless failure, that the whole area has been a failure, and that the land is malarial. Why are we spending £76,000 on land like that? Some months ago the hon. the Prime Minister made an alarmist speech which did almost as much damage as the depression itself. Still, it was a speech cautioning the public to economize. I thought that he would have insisted that the Government should set an example in the exercise of economy, but the very first thing our eyes fall on in this Bill is an item of £37,000 for plenipotentiaries. For such a sum 75 families could be maintained in South Africa in moderate comfort. I wonder what the Minister of Finance thinks of this piece of national snobbery. The sending of glorified flunkies to various parts of the world to tell other countries what a wonderful people we are! What is the envoy at Rome doing? Has the hon. Minister had a single letter from him from Rome? That little luxury is going to cost us £11,000. This envoy cannot even speak Italian, and yet he is sent to Rome, of all places in the world. The lift boy could probably do all that is required in that office. We do not want to make a laughing-stock of ourselves overseas. What are these men doing in Rome, at the Hague, and in New York? Merely because of empty bombast we are sending these men, and I would like to ask what these men do. I assume that at 11 o’clock they turn on the electric kettle and make themselves a cup of tea. Then take the trades commissioners. I am not opposed to sending out trades commissioners. They may be excellent lawyers and political organizers; but in the last few months farmers have suffered heavily from a drop in wool, maize, lucerne, tobacco, citrus, wine and hides, and, so far as I know, in no case did any trades commissioner warn this country of what was coming. I do not believe any trades commissioner knew enough of world conditions or of his own job—knew enough to get in touch with the sources of information in order to give the country timely warning. The ordinary merchant was better informed in many cases than these trade commissioners. If you send men like Mr. Spilhaus, who knows his job, that is a different matter, but we are sending out broken-down politicians who do not warn the country when a drop in prices, may be expected.

We had the Prime Minister’s warning.

His warning came very late. I would like to know if the Prime Minister’s warning if adequate, why do we require these trades commissioners? Take wool. Did any of them give any warning, although the drop had already set in? No, we were caught napping.

We were not caught napping; we knew it was coming.

My information from farmers—some of them pretty shrewd individuals—is that they had no warning of the drop in prices; if they had, they would not have been hanging on to their wool. I would like to draw the attention of the House to the type of legislation being introduced this session. I notice this phrase running through all the Bills like the refrain of a song: “a board will be constituted whose remuneration will be fixed by the Minister!” In these times we are spending £6,000,000 more per annum than before the present Government came into power, and the Government proposes creating 45 more jobs for pals, all with salaries to be fixed arbitrarily by the Minister. I see in the Fuel Research Institute and Control Bill, a board is to be appointed which will hold office for a period of three years.

Have you anything against that ?

We are suffering from an orgy of appointments of people living at the public expense. The country already teems with them and here we propose to make 45 more appointments. Then we have the Cinema Censorship Board; seven members to be appointed. The remuneration is to be prescribed by regulation and the Minister may appoint such other persons, as may, in his opinion, be necessary. Take the Public Auctions and Transactions in Livestock and Produce Bill. Provision is made to constitute a board consisting of 11 members, and once more the remuneration of the board, including secretary, is to be prescribed by regulation. Then take the Dairy Control Bill. Again 11 members to be appointed, and members of the board are to receive such allowances to meet reasonable expenses as the Minister may determine. That is a flexible term. I have worked out that there are 45 new appointments, and the pay is to be fixed by the Minister. Is that the way to go on?

What about the Quota Bill?

Under the Quota Bill, I think the number is only five.

You were in favour of it.

I was in favour of the principle. I am not in favour of this House giving carte blanche to Ministers. It is a very unhealthy state into which we are drifting. We are giving Ministers carte blanche to appoint these people. There is one other matter to which I wish to refer. It was very adequately dealt with by the hon. member for Turffontein (Mr. Sturrock). I should like to ask the hon. the Minister of Finance to tell us quite frankly and unambiguously whether they are going on with this mad scheme of a state steel industry in Pretoria. I think we are entitled to know what the position is. [Time limit.]

I can quite understand that my hon. friend on that side of the House thinks he has not spoken at such length because he talked so frivolously and irresponsibly that the time soon passed. I think that it will be clear to any impartial auditor in what a frivolous and irresponsible way this debate, as well as other debates are conducted. It looks as if the Opposition has increased in new force and that they are now out to take as much time as they want, especially with a view to the approaching election. Well, I wish them good fortune with the provincial elections, and if they want to let them take the time they need. The Opposition has apparently adopted the principle that in politics the great rôle of the Opposition is to consume time, although I must say that even for an Opposition there are certain limits, and that they ought to restrict themselves for the sake of decency. I have to-day, and during the debate four or five days ago, learnt something which, in my honest opinion, no one ought to be guilty of if he really intends to count as a responsible member of this Assembly. Just take what has happened here this afternoon. The hon. member for Barberton (Col. D. Reitz) spoke about our ambassadors and our embassies. I can quite understand the members of the Opposition differing from the Government on this point. I can also understand that they oppose the continuance of the policy. I merely want to point out to them that it is a policy which was adopted by the public at the recent election, and shall not go into it further. But I think that when members of Parliament try to foul their own national nest, as the hon. member has just been doing, then it is no longer a method which ought to be resorted to by any man who has any respect for his people. What I noticed recently is that hon. members opposite, I shall not speak of the English members because they still behave like Unionists, most of them are not Afrikaners, but Unionists, whose mother-country this never was, and who only identify themselves with our people to obtain certain things, but what I am talking about are certain Afrikaners, Dutch-speaking Afrikaners, who speak and act as only deserters to the enemy would do. They are political deserters, who do not show the smallest spark of respect or sympathy for their own country or people. I believe that if those hon. members would only realize what they are doing they would speak a little differently. I say again that it is hon. members who ought to know better, and who should not act like political deserters. Although I deplore it, I can understand that, as everywhere else, there are also flunkeys in Parliament, just as we find them in other sections of the public, but then we must also have the right to chastise them in the way they deserve. One of the things we have noticed in the Opposition is the frivolity and irresponsibility which the other day led to its assuming such a serious form that the leaders of the Opposition had to run out of the House in order not to be compelled to show how they disapproved of that frivolous irresponsibility. But now there is another thing, viz., how the spirit of the smouse, the bargaining spirit, is shown by the other side. When we come to ambassadors, then it ought to have been shown how many pounds, shillings and pence they produced, and how many they received, and it was further asked if we could say what these people were doing overseas, as if it were a question which the Government could publicly answer. It is the commercial instinct which controls them. The other day we had a nice sample of the commercial spirit from the hon. member for Turffontein (Mr. Sturrock). Hon. members should read his speech, and they will see that he said, inter alia, that I went and warned the people against the depression, but that I ought not to have done so. I ought to have given the speculator a free opportunity of ruining the farmers and the entire public. How dare I interfere with the speculator, and the smouse. That is the mentality of the hon. member for Turffontein. It is nothing else than the commercial spirit. Everything is commercialized.

Is the hon. the Prime Minister in order in referring to the hon. member for Turffontein (Mr. Sturrock) as a “smouse.”

The Prime Minister is referring to the spirit of a “smouse.” “Smous” means hawker.

I will put it in English. I merely pointed out that how the spirit of the “smouse” was the spirit conveyed by the Opposition.

*The other day we had this motion on the order paper which obliged the leaders of that party to run away, and if we want to see an example of the commercial spirit then it is this motion. They have brought up the whole thing for the election, they have practically said: “Vote for us.” Is not that the spirit I have spoken about? That it was so is proved by the fact that the leaders of the Opposition ran away. The Opposition benches are filled with the commercial spirit. I do not say that that is so in the case of every hon. member opposite, but I want to say this that not one member of the Opposition exhibited the spirit of a statesman who is not imbued with the interests of a certain section of the population, like the railway workers, but who has actually shown that he maintains the interests of the whole of South Africa. The leaders of the Opposition have not shown that inspiration. I do not say that they do not possess it, but however much, e.g., the hon. member for Standerton (Gen. Smuts) may possess it, he cannot plead innocent about the attitude of the back benches. He ought to say that he does not agree with them, but the lead of that leader has disappeared. He has entirely surrendered it. If the hon. member for Barberton thinks that I am going to reply to all his questions he makes a great mistake, because it is very clear to me that there was practically nothing in what he so earnestly enquired about. The provincial elections are at hand, and everybody is entitled to speak as he wishes, if he thinks that he can catch a few votes by it, but then he must forgive me if I speak a little frankly, and say what I think of him. What I actually wanted to say was in connection with my department, to rebut the arguments which were used by hon. members opposite. My department was attacked on the ground that the expenditure had increased in a so-called astonishing way. It is said that the expenditure has suddenly increased by £38,000. Those figures stand, but what I object to in the Opposition is the want of honesty, and the untruth in the statement in this House and possibly also out of it. I confine myself to the statement made in this House. When they say that the expenditure of my department has increased, and that there is and has been extravagance, then I say that it is not only untrue, but that those who say so know that it is untrue, or ought to know it. The amount which is spent on our embassy in Europe is £38,000, but hon. members, know, or ought to know, that that includes posts which I took over and which had existed for years. I have already explained this once before, but I will do so again. I took over from the Minister of Mines and Industries. Milan and Hamburg, which actually have trade offices, and the expenditure connected with them amounts to £10,767. I also took over in New York work that runs into £7,293. I took over from the Minister of Interior the amount of £1,000. Altogether it amounts to £18,960 out of the increase of £38,510. Thus of that amount there is only about £19,544 for which I am responsible. What I complain of in hon. members who made a fuss about this matter, if it is not merely their intention to bring the public under the impression they are so anxious to produce, is that they bring these matters before the House, although they must have known that they were not correct. They could easily have ascertained the true state of affairs if they had gone into the question. That is all I want to say in this connection to rectify those statements. Flunkeys have been referred to this afternoon in a way I disapproved of.

It was I who spoke of flunkies.

Yes, a flunkey understands so well what it means that he cannot help accusing others of being the same. The hon. member for Barberton (Col. D. Reitz) was a responsible Minister of the Crown for years and he is trying to become so once more, but I must say that I have never yet heard of such a groundless attack by a responsible person on a foreign power. He got up and attacked a neighbouring state as a country which continued slavery. That is a little too bad, and I must say that I want at once to take this opportunity to express my strong disapproval of that conduct. This attack was as unbecoming as we have ever seen in any House of Parliament. Then he comes and wants to know why this neighbouring state did not want to treat us more favourably when we entered into the Mocambique agreement. I am convinced that only a few speeches like this are necessary from men who can be considered responsible members, or at any rate ought to be considered among responsible members, to bring about that, instead of getting 50,000 less Portuguese natives, we shall have a 150,000 less in a short time. That is the frivolous, irresponsible spirit which inspires members on the Opposition benches.

Are you not making it worse by repeating it?

I hope it will appeal even to the heart of the hon. member for Mowbray (Mr. Close).

No.

Of course. But I hold the view that I am dealing with reasonable people, and we know that the hon. member for Mowbray is one of the most unconvincable persons that can be found. He is a man who should have been a South African long since, but is he one ?

Yes.

I should so much like to think that what he says is really a fact, but when I found that he always supports everything which, in the first place, does not make for the advantage of South Africa, but of—

“Home.”

Yes, of “Home,” one sometimes gets wisdom out of the mouths of fools.

I do not do so, but it makes no difference.

I know that he always was, and probably will remain until his death, a dear good Unionist.

An enemy.

Politically yes.

It is not necessary to add “politically.”

We do not stand here with rifles opposed to each other, but as Opposition versus Government.

Do you stand there as Prime Minister? Then you ought to feel ashamed.

I surely have no less a right to speak the truth than the Opposition. I have told the truth, and I simply say that the hon. member for Mowbray has always shown himself to be a Unionist and not a South African as I understand the term. I only wish to add that the hon. member for Barberton (Col. D. Reitz) and the other members of the Opposition can go on with that flunkey business—as I must call it again. Why do they not want the ambassadors? Simply because they are so taken up with the English ambassadors, and Great Britain, that they—we know it—fight us with anything which is meant to raise respect for our own country. We know how they fought me up to the eve of my departure for England in 1926. I should not secure, and ought not to secure the freedom of South Africa. They are still opposed to it to-day, because they still always love to hang on to grandmother’s skirts, because they are still always happy to be flunkeys. I can quite understand English-speaking people putting nothing higher than England, and what belongs to England, but when I come to Dutch-speaking people taking up this attitude then I must say that I think it is time to convert these people from their evil ways if it is still possible—I think there still are hopeless cases. I am convinced that if I have done nothing else this afternoon than penetrating a little to the heart of some of them, then I have done a good deal, and I hope that even the hon. member for Barberton will another time exhibit more responsibility.

It is rather grievous to one coming new to this House to find the Prime Minister seeing fit to make disparaging remarks in regard to hon. members on my right and on my left. It seems extraordinary. At the same time when it suited him he took a suggestion from his own back-benches in regard to the adjournment of the debate. I do not think the Prime Minister was really quite genuine in his remarks this afternoon. At least, I elect to take it that way. We have been asked in regard to this debate to vote considerable sums of money for the use of the Government. Before we are satisfied in that direction we do want to satisfy ourselves that the money is absolutely needed and will be spent in the right direction. We have at the back of our minds that the condition of the country is not what it should be. It has been pointed out to us so far as the provincial councils are concerned that they are in a bad way so far as finance is concerned, so it makes us doubly eager to get all the information we can before we vote all these various amounts asked for. That is why, to a great extent, this debate has been prolonged rather longer than the Government thinks necessary. I wish, in that direction, to refer to the remarks made by the Prime Minister last year on the position of the country. I felt then and still feel that he was perfectly justified in making the remarks he did. In certain quarters he has been blamed in that he was inclined to bring about a panicky state of affairs. I do not think it should be looked upon in that way. There is no doubt that we must look at the position of things fairly and squarely so as to adjust ourselves to the change of conditions. I think the remarks of the Prime Minister were justified for that reason. There is no reason why anyone should get panicky.

Unfortunately the Minister of Agriculture has seen fit to go back on the endeavours of citrus growers to export a type of orange that would be unacceptable on the other side. Some time ago the Carolina farmers asked him to withdraw the east coast fever conditions, but the Minister refused. We commended him for the attitude he took up on that occasion, but I am sorry to say that his attitude over the export of sour oranges has not been so firm. The Minister of Lands defended the action of the Minister of Agriculture, but the friendship of the former must have been severely taxed to do that. The men who were exporting oranges were doing their best to meet the keen competition on the other side of the water, but, unfortunately, the Minister has given way. The Minister has been preaching organization, but in this instance he disregarded the wishes of the organized citrus fruit exporters.

The hon. member is not allowed to discuss a matter already disposed of by the House.

I am very sorry, because I Hoped the Minister would reconsider his decision.

Is it not competent, Mr. Speaker, for an hon. member to refer to certain instances as an illustration of the point he is making?

The hon. member may make such a reference, if only by way of comparison.

What I was trying to illustrate was the unfortunate position of the farmers and the placing of an additional burden on their shoulders. The department should guide and direct opinion in regard to the endeavours of agriculturists. It should not have to come to undue restrictions, which bear hardly on the producer; it seems to be wanting in consistency. It comes to this—the whole trend of legislation to-day appears to me to put as much power in the Minister of Agriculture as possible. Co-operators are at a disadvantage compared with ordinary trading companies, which, I think, is deplorable. When one of the members of this House, an old farmer who knows his job, was speaking on a special matter, relating to the Agricultural Department, the Minister went elsewhere, but he should have remained here to hear the criticism, to which he could have replied, or profited by the criticism, so that he could make amends in future in that particular direction. I am sure if the Minister has given this matter a little further thought, he will share this disappointment with myself. Every married man in this House realizes who is his master’s voice, but in this case it seems to me it is his Minister’s voice. This has a depressing influence on the producer. I hope that the Agricultural Department, in which I am keenly interested, will act in such a way as to assist farmers, but not destroy that initiative which is so necessary in the producer. The Minister of Labour, if I may say so, has been robbing the Railway Department of certain funds to deal with unemployment in this country, and the Agricultural Department and the Lands Department also. Cuckoos lay their eggs in other bird’s nests, but do not make their own nests and leave their young to be reared by the foster parents. Mention was made of an effort by the Labour Department, but £26,000 was lost. I think the Minister of Labour ought to explain that. With regard to the Irrigation Department, it is one of the most interesting and necessary departments, and far more attention should be paid to it, because whatever wealth the country has, it is got off the land somehow. If anything is done in regard to irrigation in the right direction, it will help us considerably. We have had considerable writings-off in land settlement, and other schemes; but, to my mind, we have started at the wrong end, and there will be no finality until we get to the other end of the business. We should find out what the land is worth to the man on it. It is no use charging a man more money than he can make on the land he is occupying. If any irrigation work costs £120,000, and the value is only £20,000 to the occupier, the charge should be only on that, and £100,000 should be paid by the ordinary taxpayer, of whom I am one, because a man cannot make a living on that land if he is charged on the £120,000.

To what land are you referring ?

Irrigation land. I hope the Minister of Lands will bear this in mind in regard to writing-off, which, to my mind, does not get to the root cause of the trouble. With regard to drills, I was told by the Minister that there was only one of the new pattern drills in the north-west. Every hon. member knows too well we have many applications to the Agricultural Department, the Railway Department, the Minister of Finance and almost every Minister for relief, and I think it is the solemn duty of the Government of the day to give every attention to that particular part of the country for several reasons, and one reason is it has not had the attention to which, in the past, it was entitled and which it deserved. There are a few of these patent drills eminently suitable for this part of the country, and the Minister might give the matter more attention, so that farmers do not trek as much as they have done in the past. You can cut out nine-tenths of the trekking in the north-western areas of the Cape Province if the farmers are provided with water Tor their stock. I would like the Minister of Finance to lend a sympathetic ear to the Minister of Irrigation when he comes to him for further funds. The expenditure I have advocated in this direction would be a wise investment, and would save us money in the future. The hon. member for Ceres (Mr. Roux) referred to wool this evening. I don’t know if he was talking as an advocate, because, if so, I have nothing to say to him, but if he is talking as a farmer, I suggest that he has not got the matter quite right. He referred to the disparity in the prices of wool in this country as compared with the prices for Australian wool. The position is that the Australian wool was at one time far in advance of the Cape wool, but recently we have been ahead of them. When you look at the prices, it is on the clean scoured basis; you have to get at the relative value of wool as between South Africa and Australia. The present position is a gassing phase in the market, and wools from the Union can hold their own because of the extra quality we can grow here which the conditions will not allow Australian farmers to grow. As to our market, £2,200,000 worth have gone to Germany, £2,600,000 to France, and £6,800,000 to England. We know where to place our wool, and the figures I have given are significant. Thursday afternoon was a time when the agriculturists of the House felt that they ought to express their opinion on certain matters, but unfortunately the Prime Minister said we were wasting the time of the House. I am sorry that view was taken.

The hon. member cannot discuss what has already been disposed of by a previous debate.

I do hope the Agricultural Department and the other departments I have referred to will heed what I have said, because it is my earnest desire that the best that can be done by the various departments should be done for the farming industry. We are a pastoral country, and if we have men who are big enough, I am sure we can work out our salvation in spite of the present depression.

I should like to make a few remarks in reply to what the hon. member for Barberton (Col. D. Reitz) said about the purchase of certain ground, but before I do so, I want to reply briefly to the arguments of the hon. member for Fort Beaufort (Mr. Hockly) on writing down of irrigation schemes. I can say that what the hon. member recommended is already being done. The writings-off on the ground of those people on irrigation schemes is done exactly as the hon. member has recommended. We do not calculate what it costs in dams and improvements, but the cost of the ground is reckoned according to the value it now possesses. The hon. members know that it is the Government’s policy when dams are built to subsidize the building, and therefore to practically write off a portion of the cost of construction. Now I come to what the hon. member for Barberton had to say about the purchase of the Candover Estate. I can assure the hon. member that that ground of which he spoke, according to all the people I have consulted, and who know ground there, was a bargain. In the first place, we only bought the ground after the whole Land Board of Natal and other experts had carefully examined and valued it. The Land Board valued the ground at £103,000. The capital spent by the company was £500,000, so that they, of course, were in a hopeless position. We bought it for £78,000, although we almost bought it for £64,000. I will tell hon. members the reason. The hon. member says that in his time he no longer bought ground for settlers if the farms did not come entirely under the irrigation schemes, because it would end in failure. That was also my policy, but there are exceptional cases where the Irrigation Department intends to build a dam, and asks us to buy ground. That was the policy which the late Sir Thomas Smartt always recommended, and it is very good to buy up beforehand as much as possible ground coming under an (irrigation scheme provided more is not paid than the ground is worth. The Minister of Irrigation informed me that they intend to build a dam there, and he, asked me to buy the ground. The ground was to be sold by public auction by the company which had gone into liquidation. We did not go to the company, we gave instructions for the ground to be bought at very favourable conditions at a public sale by someone whom no one knew was representing the Government. The purchase price was £64,000, but, unfortunately, they were not all farms coming under the irrigation scheme, because the company was clever enough to include one of the farms which would come under irrigation with the dry farms. We, therefore, had to buy the dry farms to secure the irrigable farms. Several hon. members know that the farms are on the Rooirand, which is fairly good, and the rainfall is good, so that the dry farms can actually be used. The farms adjoining the river we shall now keep back, but the dry farms will be surveyed, and allotted. The hon. member complained that I had bought up a bankrupt company, but the land is surely not bankrupt. The hon. member, at any rate, did the same thing during his period of office with the Sundays River company which was also bankrupt.

That was under other circumstances.

No, that is not so, my hon. friend knows that that company was also bankrupt.

The Government had already put £800,000 into the scheme before we bought it.

The dam was not built by the Government, but the irrigation company, and they had to repay the full amount. But, as I have said, the ground is not bankrupt, and I am certain it is worth more than the money spent. I can assure the hon. member that if we only sell all the dry farms we shall get more for it than we paid. There is, therefore, nothing wrong with this purchase. Now I want to assure him that I agree with him that I do not want to buy farms of that kind, and I should not have bought these farms if they were not connected with the whole estate. A report has been made on this ground by the irrigation commission. I do not however, want to say that I am going to buy all the ground where the irrigation commission recommend works. If the price is greater than the value I shall not buy them. But I agree with him, and the hon. members who say that when we start an irrigation work we ought to buy up the irrigable ground as far as possible. There are two important experiments afoot on that ground. My hon. friend, the Minister of Agriculture, is making experiments there with cotton and other things on that very farm that I have named. Then the British Empire Cotton Growers’ Association is making an experiment with cotton on dry ground. I approached the Agricultural Department and asked whether it was any longer necessary to give this ground to that association. I have not yet had a reply, hut Mr. Warner, a very capable member of the Natal Land Board, thinks that it would be advisable for me to allow the association to continue the experiments, because he points out that the Agricultural Department’s experiment is being made under irrigation conditions, while the other experiment is being made on dry ground. In the meantime the irrigable farms are being held back until such time as the irrigation works are completed, when it will be allotted to probationary lessees. The dry farms are being inspected to see how large they ought to be for the purposes of settlement. The hon. member will, therefore, see that his criticism that I had bought ground from a bankrupt company has nothing to do with the case. As I stated, he also negotiated with a bankrupt company and the ground was not bankrupt. I have not got the figures here with regard to his transaction, but I can give the position more or less. There are approximately 1,800 morgen of irrigable ground and about 7,000 morgen of pasture land. All the 1,800 morgen will not be irrigable, and a considerable part will have to be cut out on the recommendation of the irrigation commission. The commission is making enquires to find out for how much ground there will be enough water. The whole area will have to be considerably reduced probably to a 200 morgen irrigable area. He paid £100,000 for the ground. To that must be added the burdens as well as the assets, arrear water rates, etc. We wrote off £23,000 under the Act of 1926; I had to spend £20,000 there after the flood, and then I had to spend money on the maintenance of the barrage and furrows. I now have to make another tunnel through a hill, and altogether it will amount to about £48,000. The whole place, therefore, costs us about £175,000, and I doubt whether we shall get back £75,000. This ground was bought shortly before we came into office, but still I want to tell the House that the hon. member for Barberton made a remark here this afternoon that I can agree with. He said that land settlement was not an exact science. The Minister can only go on the reports of his technical officers, ground is bought and allotted to settlers, and subsequently the undertaking fails. My department is now making more use of Section 11 of the Act, but even in that case we cannot say that no mistakes will be made The Land Board values the ground, and subsequently it turns out that the ground is not worth that amount. Possibly boreholes and fountains dry up, and we have already had cases of that. One can therefore never say that no mistakes will be made, and if the House thinks that land settlement must be done without losses, then the House had better scrap such undertakings. This is not so in our country alone, but in other countries. I have, e.g., received a report on land settlement in Australia, there £23,500,000 was lost in settlements for returned soldiers alone. We are, however, trying to do our best, but we must remember that the people who are settled on the land are from the nature of the case poor people, and if there is a failure, then they have not the financial capacity to stand against it. If the House expects the Minister of Lands never to come and ask for money to be written off, then the House had better not give him any money for settlements. We are trying to restrict the mistakes to a minimum, but I fear we cannot avoid all mistakes. The department can only go on the reports of its technical advisers. We must not, however, only look to what we get back from the settlers directly. We must remember that we are putting a man on the ground, and that we are making part of the ground fruitful, and in this way the state can in the long run indemnify itself. That is the whole position. I know that in connection with Sundays River other considerations were on the boards. The people were enticed with all kinds of nice advertisements in England. They were told that they would be making a great success. It turned out that the venture was a great failure, and if we do not intervene now, it will give South Africa a bad name in England. The hon. member never said so, but I think that is one of the reasons why he bought the ground. It is a thing which I also am trying to avoid, and I do not encourage the private companies, because they may possibly come to the Government when their undertakings prove a failure. I think that was a factor in connection with the case.

Yes, it was a factor.

That is what I said. It was one of the considerations. We are assisting in putting the settlement right so that the people will not have thrown all their money into the sea. I hope the hon. member will see that his criticism was not well grounded.

I did not criticize. I only asked for information.

Yes, I understand it so, and I think that the hon. member will now see that it is not our policy to buy ground unless it is irrigable. Hon. members opposite are constantly speaking about “jobs for pals.” The hon. member for Barberton also refers to the jobs this Government was creating for pals. He knows well enough that it is not true. If we were to reply with a similar reproach we might be able to ask how many Nationalists were appointed during all the time the South African party were in office? No Nationalists were appointed, and the few there were were discharged and others put in their places. This Government does not act in that way. Why must we always be told that we are creating jobs for pals?

You are always making the same fault in still appointing Saps.

These are not things that raise the tone of political life, all these kinds of accusations without justification. Of course, when vacancies occur we appoint our people because during the 15 years of the South African party Government no Nationalist was appointed. Hon. members know that very well. Let us look things in the face. We are very far yet from half-way, very far from equality. That cry of “jobs for pals” is just to throw dust in the eyes of the public.

Who is the chairman of the Transvaal Land Board?

I did not wish to make any alteration. He is a very capable man, and does his work well, and who was accordingly reappointed by me.

Is he a Sap?

I think so, but I do not know. I think he is a man doing good work in a post we should retain him. I hope we have had the last of “jobs for pals.”

Arising out of the statements made by the hon. member for Langlaagte (Mr. Christie) some days ago, and to a few of the misstatements made by him, I should like to correct one or two of those misstatements. The hon. member dealt with the Miners’ Phthisis Commission. He referred to the details of a scheme represented to the commission by the Nationalist representatives of the Witwatersrand on behalf of working miners and phthisis sufferers. The hon. member inferred that the Nationalist representatives did not put the schemes before the commission, as they were instructed to do by the miners and phthisis sufferers. I want to contradict that. It is not true. I want to say this also, that the hon. member has not even any idea, I think, of what the Nationalist members of the Witwatersrand tried to do for the miners. I do not think he has any idea of what the miners instructed them to represent to this commission. But what strikes me as very peculiar is that the hon. member for Langlaagte can almost give in toto to the House the conclusions that the commission is about to come to. He can almost tell the House matters which came before the commission which up to now are a secret to the rest of the House. At the time when the Nationalist members of the Witwatersrand gave evidence, the hon. member said that the attention of members giving evidence before the commission was drawn to the terms of reference. I want to contradict that too. No reference to the terms of reference was made by the commissioner or by any member of the commission at the time we gave evidence, and only last week did it come to our notice that the terms of reference were so narrow that the grievances of the miners could not be properly and thoroughly investigated. The hon. member for Troyeville (Mr. Kentridge) stated on Thursday afternoon that the Government was bluffing the miners. I think that is a very serious statement for any responsible member to make, when such members have not made the least attempt to assist the Government in doing their duty to the miners of the Witwatersrand. I want to tell the hon. member that if anyone is keeping a hawk eye upon this question, I am, and if it is at the expense of my reputation or at the expense of my membership of this party, I will not allow the Government to bluff the miners on the Witwatersrand, and I have no occasion to think that they were bluffing them.

Straight words.

Instead of coming into the House and kicking up a shindy and needless dust in regard to the matter of drawing the attention of the Minister to the narrowness of the terms of reference, I drew the attention of the present Minister of Mines and Industries and other members of the Cabinet to it, and the Minister was only too pleased to listen to me and my colleagues, and immediately consulted his Cabinet colleagues on the matter of widening the terms of reference, and I am glad to say that the air has now been cleared. The hon. member for Troyeville went so far as to say that, but for him raising the matter in the House, supported by the hon. member for Langlaagte, this matter might never have received the Minister’s attention, and the miners would not have received their due. I really could not think that the two hon. members mentioned could stoop so low as to make such grave charges without proof. They have tried to do anything but justice to these men. Although one morning I had told the two hon. members that the terms of reference to the commission had been widened, yet that very afternoon the hon. member for Langlaagte (Mr. Christie) asked for a statement from the Minister in the House as to what he was doing in the matter. What is behind the minds of men when, regardless of all these assurances, they make a lot of misstatements regarding people they promised to help? Did not the hon. member for Langlaagte come to the Nationalists of the Witwatersrand for help to get back into Parliament after he had lost his seat as a consequence of going against this Government? And did he not promise to assist the Government, and represent the needs of the miners by working in co-operation with the Government and not in opposition to it? Does it not indicate very clearly that it was all an attempt to coin political capital by a broken party on its downward path? And is it fair, I ask, for a party to select so important a question, which is in fact a national problem, to save themselves from that sinking feeling? The hon. members only tried to irritate the miners into a sullen mood to make it easy for them to stir these men into revolution against the Government. I appeal to every member in this House, irrespective of party, if they wish to make political capital, not to do so out of miners’ phthisis, for that is a serious national problem. The time when political party ends could be fashioned on the strength of the hungry stomachs of the starving unemployed, or out of the diseased miners of the Rand, has long since passed. I want to ask the Minister of Mines to suggest to the Miners’ Phthisis Commission that it should waste less time, for it has been sitting only three days a week, and to my mind unduly delayed their work. There is no reason why the commission should not sit five days a week, so that some form of legislation should be introduced this session to ameliorate the sufferings of these unfortunate people. Now I am afraid it is going to be too late to do so, and seeing that the terms of reference have now been widened, the matter may not receive legislative attention this session. To impress on hon. members the urgency for legislation to mitigate the serious plight of victims of miners’ phthisis sufferers and their dependents, I will read the following letter I received from a lady at Springs—

I wish hon. members opposite would take this matter more seriously. I will quote a letter written to “The Sjambok,” which first enquires into matters before publishing anything. The letter is described by “The Sjambok” as a “tragic one, and a monument of shame to the State and the mining industry.” The letter is as follows—

The editor of “The Sjambok” appended the following footnote to the letter-

I appeal to the Minister and every member of the House to forget party interests when miners’ phthisis comes under Consideration. The State owes a great deal to these martyrs of the most important industry on which the country depends. But for the gold miners, how many of us would be sitting here tonight? The time for the discussion of miners’ phthisis is once again approaching, and I will appeal to hon. members to prepare for the discharge of their responsibility we owe these people who depend on us to do them justice and give them the consideration they are entitled to.

The “agterryers” to whom the Prime Minister referred have caused some commotion. The criticism has come from farmers and business men, which the Government perhaps feel more acutely than criticism from the doctors and lawyers. If our criticism is in a helpful spirit, it ought to be welcome, and for that reason I am here. I wanted to have a lazy time, and if it had not been for the Minister of Agriculture, I would not have been speaking now. When I made the remark the other day about protection and lazy farmers, the Minister of Agriculture at once jumped up and said I was making a racial speech. If he will pay a visit to Port Elizabeth, he will see that it has found more jobs for their pals from the platteland than most towns.

What has the platteland not done for Port Elizabeth ?

What has it done? You want me to say you are the backbone of the country? If you work you are, but not if you take up all the relief money of the country. The Minister should not have made the remark he did make. He has a lazy mind, because he should have known whom I represent. An hon. friend on this side also has a lazy mind; he remarked that “the bysaaier could not make wheat-growing pay,” and stated that he paid no higher rent than formerly. The bysaaier has to pay an annual rent of £2 a morgen, and yet the hon. member says he pays no higher rent.

You know nothing about what you are talking.

If the bysaaier gets £6 for six bags from a morgen, and he gives £2 as rent, is that not correct? From what I have heard from various speakers, our wine is too bad or too dear, because I do not see it drunk outside the lobby. Our women are too good, because they "do not deserve the vote,” and our droughts are so severe and frequent that they are beyond tackling by the present Government, and were also beyond the South African party Government. Wine, women and drought are apparently three burning questions. When I tried to help the Minister of Mines and Industries, when he was administrator, by means of having officers of the Government to see that dongas are stopped before people get relief money, he said that you cannot delay relief because the people are in distress. He said, "Work out a drought insurance scheme.” I did so, and it was published, but yet nothing was done. Constant relief is given, but when it comes to anything practical to stop soil erosion, nothing is done, and now an hon. member says, “Talk sense.” You must get the people back on the land, because from the land everything comes; does that satisfy you? From the census department report, it appears that six districts in the Karroo, according to the 1926 census, have lost 26 per cent. rural population, and those people flock to the towns and cause housing problems, but the Minister of the Interior is starting at the wrong end with his housing scheme. It is production on the land we want. I hope the census department will tell us how many of the 3,597 people who left South Africa last year, of whom over 2,600 were born in the Union, have come off land. It would be very interesting to know. Where the Government has gone wrong is in forcing industries too quickly, instead of allowing them to grow naturally. Some years ago the Minister of Finance made a sound and wise statement, and hoped that people would stop buying articles of luxury, but buy agricultural machinery, and live more simply. "I hope the Government will set an example,” the Minister said. This was met with Ministerial cheers and Opposition laughter, according to the report. To-day, it is Opposition cheers and Ministerial tears. For all these years we have been following the example of other countries by introducing foreign ideas and rapid transport, but in this slow-moving country our natural development should have followed a slower and sounder course. The Prime Minister made some remarks about education the other day, and I notice that our education vote has gone up by nearly £900,000. Our police vote has also gone up, but I always thought that as we educate our people our police vote should become smaller. The question is whether our education is on sound lines. Our general expenditure has also advanced considerably. South Africa has been living beyond its means. Things are not so depressed but that we could straighten them out if we were to reorganize and adapt ourselves to the changed conditions with regard to world markets. I received a letter from a leading trader in London the ether day, in which he referred to the mad scheme known as the iron and steel enterprise. He asks if there is any possible chance of stopping it, and points out that, if it is proceeded with, it will be a terrific drag on South Africa.

What do you know about it ?

This is a letter from a leading business man in London. I would ask the hon. member who interrupted whether he has read the report, which shows the wrong starting foundations of this industry. I also have a letter here which shows that what has happened in Australia should be a warning to South Africa. Australia has been following a dangerous policy, according to all I have read.

What letters are these ?

You can have them if you want them. Both are from eminent commercial men. Evidently Australia has been following the same course as South Africa, living too extravagantly and buying too many motor-cars. That is what the writer says. He also says that there will be a reaction, and that there are many people driving cars who ought not to be owners of such vehicles. Australia, he adds, is also feeling the effect of the drop in wool, more especially as operating and production costs are high. That is our trouble in South Africa. Our operating and production costs are very high. The men on the land will feel the effect of this, and I am glad that they are shouting, and that they realize that something is wrong with their Burdens. Enquiry will show that the troubles of Australia are just the same as our own, and the reason of those troubles in South Africa is that the cost of governing this Country is too high. I am glad to see that the defence vote is coming down, but the costs of some of the departments are high indeed. For instance, Labour department costs £92,000, the Board of Trade £16,000, the Assize department £26,000, the Division of Economics £28,000, External Affairs £82,000, High Commissioner, London, £65,000, and so on. With regard to the Division of Economics, I notice that they have made a survey of the jute position in India, and have come to the conclusion that South Africa cannot influence the price of grain bags to any appreciable extent. A business man could have told them that in a minute. When the Board of Trade do make reports, the House does not listen to them, as indicated by the recent suggested levy on imported butter and cheese. The Board of Trade talk about the equalizing of domestic and overseas prices. How can the South African Government equalize these prices unless there is going to be a tremendous burden on somebody? The Government must take stock of the position with respect to the Wage Board and all the various boards they have to-day. They cannot go on bolstering them up much longer. I would like to know whether the result of the appointment of these boards is what the Government anticipated, and whether the country is getting value for the heavy expenditure involved in the setting up of all these boards. When we want to give them help, the Ministers do not seem ready to take suggestions. In the way of production, we want to take every ounce out of the ground that we possibly can. The loan has been mentioned. I am very glad the loan has been taken up. One wants to see South African loans going well, because at present money in England is going into deposits instead of industries. On the question of provincial councils, I must join issue with the hon. member for Johannesburg North (Mr. Hofmeyr). I look upon these as useful institutions. Perhaps they can be improved; if there is anything wrong, it is not with the provincial council system, but with our councillors. When the Government realizes that provincial authorities are the people who get the first brunt of any development, they will be loath to do away with them. You will get a surprise when I mention that in five years the total increase in connection with Cape education has been £526,000, but the increased subsidy only £82,000. The Cape finances are sound. I have no quarrel with the question of appointing trade commissioners overseas if they will bring us trade, but this country cannot afford plenipotentiaries in countries where we are not likely to get any trade, and it is only wasting our money in these countries which are not likely to buy from us. The Minister of Finance has said we have to live simply, but is this living simply? What is the use of bothering about the United States? We want to sell sugar, and no country will take it but Great Britain: and she gives us a preference. To whom can we sell our wines and tobacco except Great Britain? I hope the Minister of Agriculture will not say I am racial because I point out a few hard facts. A few points I wish to touch upon under the heading of the honour of South Africa. There are many things in the minds of the public which they do not fully understand, but there is a feeling that something is wrong. I always try to uphold the Government as much as I can to the public outside. I am asked to explain a lot of things, and I try to be sympathetic.

We are not getting much sympathy from you now.

There is that enquiry in connection with the Requisite Store muddle. A man once asked at a meeting why Mr. Brunt was not brought before the court. It was said the Government dare not prosecute him. All these things get the Government into bad repute, such as the Government using men as I.D.B.’s.

The matter was dealt with last session.

I have not seen it. The question is that it did happen according to this statement and you cannot rectify the matter by dealing with it. Then there is the question of Mr. H. Oost. I do not know if he is the present member, but he received £320 in connection with certain expenses in England.

That was 10 years ago.

I have not got the date.

Is this what you collected for your unopposed election ?

I have had many of these given to me by friends. Another serious thing is the question of the courts convicting native women and letting off white men under Act 5 of 1927. There are several of these cases and if there is one thing a native does respect it is the courts of justice. These things have been sent to me and some I have collected myself, and I should like to impress upon the Government that all these things must be cleared up. That is why this change of opinion is coming over the country. Then there is the case of a gentleman at Onderstepoort who was told that if he became bilingual he would be retained. He took his language certificate and after that they said, “Oh no, you must take a higher examination.” So we lost his services. That was in 1927. Is that correct or has it been disposed of? I am telling you that this is having an effect upon the mentality of the people. Then there is the Camps Bay case. I know about that. That teacher, I am glad to hear, has passed his examination. It would have been much more dignified if he had been given the opportunity to take it without being forced to do so. This force will always rankle in his mind against the Minister of Mines, because it was when he was administrator, that this man was forced to learn Afrikaans for the position in a unilingual school.

Did I do wrong ?

You did wrong in trying to stop his appointment because he was unilingual. You should have given him a chance and encouragement. All this has culminated in an outburst in the press. When railwaymen write openly about their troubles, there must be an accumulation of dissatisfaction in the service, for they would not do it unless they had something serious to complain about. When the Herald writes about these things in the way it does, I should have thought if the charges were untrue they would have been had up for libel. A leading article says that political public morality has suffered as the result of spoliation on a wholesale scale at the expense of the taxpayer. When these things are published abroad, you can hardly wonder at one becoming nervous and losing confidence and getting anxious about the Labour Department and its ramifications, and the Government’s handling of the country’s finances. The outburst of the Minister of Agriculture surpasses all others, he remarked. His policy is to insist on the appointment of Nationalists in his department because a man who is a political partisan of the Government makes a better public servant and political opponents in the service are always stabbing the Government in the back.

I had not intended to take up the time of the House in intervening in the debate, but for the attack made on the Department of Labour, the attack made by the hon. member for Bezuidenhout (Mr. Blackwell) and the member for Gardens. The hon. member did not give a fair statement of the case in his criticism of the Labour Department. I shall repeat the old statement that the hon. member did not like about the part the hon. Minister of Posts and Telegraphs took in framing the Conciliation Act. The country is indebted to-day to the hon. Minister for the part he did take. I am not going to take up the time of the House going into the history of it. When the hon. Minister moved his amendments the hon. member was not there and I was not in the House either, but I was closely connected with it and gave evidence before the select committee. I remember when the committee considered the first draft of the Bill, there came the Easter adjournment, and after the Easter adjournment, the hon. Minister of Posts and Telegraphs came back with the Bill re-drafted. His colleagues in caucus agreed with it and he took it to the select committee. It was sent to the parliamentary draughtsman and not 20 per cent. of the wording was altered, and the Minister for Mines and Industries who presided at the committee was the one who moved the Bill as it was drafted by the Hon. Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. We are indebted to-day to the hon. Minister for that Bill. In reply to the hon. member for Bezuidenhout, I would say, speaking as a trade union official as well as a member of this House that, if it were not for the Labour Department, functioning as it is to-day we should not be in the position we are in. Through the Labour Department functioning as it does, it has saved time which would have been lost through strikes and disputes. I know the value of the work done by the Labour Department. The Minister was challenged and asked if he went to Johannesburg in 1922, to urge conciliation on the workmen. Is the hon. member ignorant of the fact that the Rand miners did their utmost to get the dispute settled by conciliation? I went right through the strike and was put in prison, so I know what I am talking about. During the whole of the war period, several conferences took place between the employees on the mines and the Chamber of Mines. The cost of living was rising, and we felt there should be some increase in wages, but both the representatives of the chamber and the trades unions had in mind that the time would come when we must return to normal. When the downward movement in the cost of living began, the trades unions again met the Chamber of Mines, and put forward a scheme providing that for every 5 per cent. reduction in the cost of living, there would be a reduction of wages to the extent of 6d. a day. This was agreed to by both parties, and was very satisfactory, so much so that we received a letter from the Johannesburg Chamber of Commerce congratulating the chamber and the men on the scheme. This proves that if the scheme had been carried out, there would have been no upheaval at that time. However, a very well-known mining magnate came out from England, and he practically accused Sir Evelyn Wallers of giving in far too much to the men, and he insisted that something must be done to counteract the power of the trades unions. This is history. Subsequently we received a notification from the Chamber of Mines that the wages of the men on the coal mines would be reduced by 5s. a day. We tried to negotiate, and asked Gen. Smuts, the then Prime Minister, if he would come over to Johannesburg and discuss the question with us. He replied that it was not convenient for him to come over, but that he would send Mr. Patrick Duncan, who was then Minister of the Interior, to represent him. We sent a deputation to meet Mr. Duncan, and we told him that we were authorized by the men to ask the Government that the whole case should be submitted to arbitration, and that we would loyally abide by the decision of the arbitrator. Mr. Duncan turned to the delegates and said, “I have never heard anything better in my life, and Gen. Smuts will be delighted at the attitude you have taken up.” He said he would go to see the Chamber of Mines at once. He was absent about an hour, and when he returned he said, “I have put the case to the Chamber of Mines, but they will not agree to arbitration, and the Government can do nothing.” This shows that we did our very utmost to get the matter submitted to arbitration. We were fighting for conciliation, but the matter was left to develop, but it developed so far that the strike was actually in progress before the Government woke up and appointed Mr. Justice Curlewis to bring the two sides together.

What are you talking about?

I cannot give the hon. member brains if he has not got them. It was agreed that the 5s. a day reduction should take place and then the Chamber of Mines sent us an abrupt letter, choosing Dingaan’s Day as the date. On Dingaan’s Day they sent an abrupt letter to men, 80 per cent. of whom were Dutch-speaking, saying that the mines were going to dismiss 2,000 white men, and put kafirs in their place. It was just as plain as that, and it was absolutely impossible to hold the men in check.

So you had a revolution.

We did not have a revolution. I had the thanks of one of Johannesburg’s magistrates for what I did in the matter.

Do you remember my coming to your headquarters the day before the revolution broke out ?

No.

The hon. member cannot now discuss the events of 1922.

An attack was made on the Minister of Labour and the challenge was made that he should have got the men to arbitrate, and I am trying to show that we did all in our power to get the matter amicably settled. If we had had a Labour Department such as we have now, there would have been no upheaval at that time, because instead of Mr. Justice Curlewis being brought in at the end of the dispute, he would have been brought in at the beginning, and there would have been a toning down on both sides. We are indebted to the Labour Department for having peace in industry now. The Minister in charge of the Labour Department and his officials are very keen. The country is indebted to the present Government for having a Labour Department functioning as this one now does, and I hope it will go on. An hon. member in referring to wage determination quoted a few words from the report of the Wages Board, but those words were torn from their context. The report of the Wage Board states—

There is growing up a feeling both amongst employers and employees that through the Department of Labour, which is part of the Government, they can now, without resorting to strikes and matters of that kind, have disputes properly enquired into and settled, and the value of that cannot be calculated in £ s. d. —the value of our industries running without a stoppage, is untold. The Labour Department is going to continue to function, and still continue to bring these blessings to the land.

The hon. member who has just spoken let out one interesting fact in his resumé—of rather ancient history—that the Department of Labour has done “the great job” because the trade unions are in a position they would never have been in but for that department. The country can ask itself very well whether it is an unmitigated blessing. The hon. member may well be so pleased with that dominating power. With regard to the speech of the Minister of the Interior, a great portion of it was welcomed in most quarters, and particularly by myself. One point of criticism which may be made is that, as is sometimes the case when he speaks on the subject of housing, he will mar his speech by unfair reflections on Cape Town, and the part it has played in dealing with housing. The Minister forgets that Cape Town has had a very special set of difficulties to cope with, and has a legacy far older than other places in the form of slums and conditions which make for bad housing and overcrowding—difficulties which it has inherited from very far back. But he might have made an acknowledgment of Cape Town’s efforts in trying to cope with that evil: and particularly of the fact that the Cape Town municipality has been the first to recognize that the root of the trouble to-day is due largely to the difficulty of finding houses for those who cannot pay an economic rent. So it has adopted a specific municipal policy to provide houses for that class of person on a noneconomic basis. The Minister will agree that that is so. A strong resolution was passed, and the Cape Town Council has acted on it. The Minister took up three special points as his reason for not having a commission to enquire into the problem he said the powers of the Housing Board were ample at the present time, and there are large sources of knowledge and information, in the shape of reports from medical officers of health of various towns, made since the Health Act of 1919 was passed. I am glad that information is there; I had the honour of proposing the very clause for insertion in that Act to which is meant to get the knowledge of medical officers of health as to housing conditions put on record from time to time. But the powers of the Housing Board are entirely inadequate for the required investigations, and are confined practically to enquiring into and reporting on the necessity for the provision of dwellings in areas of a local authority and so on. Those of us who have spoken of a commission have in mind a much wider scheme than that—we have in mind the idea that the Act of 1920 was an experiment, under which a great amount of good work has been done. The conditions were very difficult and novel, and it has been found in the course of experience that there are ways in which that Act could very well be developed. What I would like to see is a royal commission to enquire into the working of that Act and to see what amendments could be made. I do not think that the reports of medical officers of health, good as they may be, would be so valuable as the information that would be obtained by a royal commission which could get the witnesses on the spot, and to take an example here for instance say Dean Lavis and Mrs. Steyn, in Cape Town. It would enable succeeding Ministers of Public Health to deal with the problem more accurately. As to the point raised of the amendment of the law, incorporating something in the way of provisions such as are in the English Statute of 1925, the Minister said it was not necessary to have that because wide experience in England has shown the futility of the clause; but that is not so, as they have not had sufficient time for experience since 1925 to prove futility of the clause in question. The Minister is thinking of previous legislative clauses—closing and demolition orders. The provision made for closing orders was found inadequate. For demolition orders it was found the cost was too great. That is why in 1925 the clause was put in to enable municipalities to cope with the demolition problem on the only basis on which it could be dealt with, that is, by treating properties on which are buildings which ought to be demolished as being of the value of the ground after demolition had taken place—the bare value of the ground. Slum tenements or buildings are often found most profitable because of the high rents and their expropriation value but for this clause is far too high. The Minister dismisses this clause and says that the alternative is to build houses to be let at a sub-economic rent. I welcome the latter point in the hon. the Minister’s speech, but there is no contradiction between the two things. They are not alternatives: they can be co-ordinated. Why not give the municipalities the powers they want? There are areas where the only cure is the reconstruction of the buildings, and the only way is for the municipalities to expropriate. This can only be done if the municipalities can expropriate at a price they can pay. I think the municipalities should have the powers they ask for. Various cures are suggested for this evil. Some people say that the slum dwellers must receive higher wages, and other people say that the cure lies in these poor people being educated in the duty of keeping their houses clean in principles of hygiene and so on. Other suggestions are made. All these things may be necessary, but they involve indefinite delay and we must do one thing at a time, and must get on with it even if we must recognize that no one of these things is going to be a panacea. The proposition of the Minister of the Interior is going to mean a large and sensible method of alleviation, but it is not going to be a panacea. We shall have to face the position by dealing with every aspect of the problem that requires to be dealt with. With regard to the statement of the Minister that the town planning reports were ignored at Cape Town, I ask how Cape Town can possibly be blamed. I would point out that under the Provincial Ordinance of the Cape it is only the Administrator who can allow the reports of the Housing Board to be departed from. The present Minister of Mines was the Administrator—and responsible for any departure. With the Minister’s statement that the slums must go everybody in the House is, of course, in absolute agreement who has knowledge of slum areas in Cape Town and other large centres. I would now like to refer to the dismissal of public servants over the age of 55 years.

Dismissal?

Yes. The Minister has to ask such a man to go.

It is non-retention. He can demand to go.

Of course. But if he does not demand this and the Minister does—well I don’t want to quibble about the word. I call it dismissal or discharge, but you can put it how you like. Now the Minister of Justice is on the surface more correct than the Minister of Agriculture. The Minister of Justice does not say anything about Nationalists having the preference, “other things being equal,” like the Minister of Agriculture. The Minister takes as his test the public interest. No one will quarrel with that, but we want to be quite sure that we all have the same sort of idea of the public interest. The public interest, however, is obviously right as a test. But when the Minister says that these public servants are all of average but not sufficient efficiency, but must have some special qualification, either in regard to discipline or administration or bench work, then all I can say is that the Minister is asking for a number of admirable crichtons in the service. I wonder if the Minister is going to apply that test to his colleagues in the House or in the Cabinet.

Supposing I apply it to the Opposition ?

That is a to quoque which does not do the Minister much credit. I want to suggest that he might see whether any or all of his colleagues will comply with the test that they must be above the average in one or other of the qualities he says are necessary. Another thing I would like to know is whether the Minister thinks that the reputations of these state servants are in any way enhanced by their being asked to go. Is that not in itself a slur upon them? Yet when we bring these things into the open we are told that we are damaging the reputations of these men. No, sir, anyone listening to the explanation of the Minister would, I think, come to the conclusion that the reputations of these persons have been anything but damaged by that explanation and that a service has been done them by bringing out the real cause of the dismissals. The Minister states that he and Dr. Bok and Mr. Bateman consulted together in regard to the non-retention of these men. I would like to ask did Dr. Bok and Mr. Bateman concur with the Minister in the case of every man.

They concurred that these men were not above the average.

In every case then I take it that Dr. Bok and Mr. Bateman concurred that they were people who ought not to be retained. Did they concur that they were not above the average ?

They had to say whether these men were below or above the average, and they concluded that they were just average.

And not below the average?

There may have been some below the average. The general average in this class is too low.

I have not been approached by any of the people on this list, but I press this because I was amazed to see some of the names when I read the list a few days ago on the papers put before the House.

Then you cannot judge of their ability.

However that may be, I know that some of them have gone through a good period of service, and I have never heard anyone say anything but good of them.

The opinion of the public cannot come before considerations of public interests.

I am trying to find out how it can be held that these people were not fit to be retained; I am not at all satisfied about this test of average efficiency.

Will you give me the names ?

No, I will not do that.

Give me the names privately, and I will see whether any injustice has been done.

I want to know whether this is going to be made a precedent for carrying out this principle in other departments. Since Union the Ministers of Finance in the Government have set themselves to keep on members of the public service even if they have reached the age of retirement, because of the heavy burden entailed by an early retirement that is absolutely necessary. I ask the Minister of Justice and I ask the Minister of Finance whether that has not been the definite rule set by successive Ministers of Finance?

That is certainly the policy being followed. Unless it is necessary for a man to go at 55, we retain him.

That is a very fair and frank answer. I would ask him has that not been observed as a principle by all Ministers of Finance.

I cannot speak for my predecessors.

I ask the Minister whether that was not a specific policy laid down by Sir Thomas Watt and others. If so, how is it to the interest of the public that they should not be retained? The Minister of Justice was asked questions and as to the extra cost of these dismissals, and though he claimed that there was no extra cost involved, his figures and statements were too vague, and in any case he did not guarantee them. But is it not a fact that inspecting officials of the Public Service Commission have constantly to ascertain and enquire into the efficiency of all members of the public service? In what single case has any Public Service Commission inspector, in the course of the exercise of his duty, made a report against any one of these men ?

I told you;

I do not know if they have.

Will the Minister be prepared to lay on the Table of the House the reports of Mr. Bateman and Dr. Bok on each of these cases ?

Hon. members must not carry on a conversation across the floor of the House.

I am dealing with a very important matter of public interest. I want to ask the Minister to lay the reports of Dr. Bok and Mr. Bateman on the Table of the House, and here is one other point. The Minister of Justice has most unfortunately dragged in the matter of defalcations; everyone will agree that this was a complete red herring. I deeply deplore that the Minister referred to the matter of defalcations at all, although the Minister when pressed did make the point clear. At the same time, I wish to record my protest, because obviously he could have seen that the whole thing is capable of misconstruction. I am sorry the Prime Minister is not here. I wish to refer to the unhappy speech he made this afternoon. I think that there were few people in this House, except, perhaps, one or two, who did not listen to his speech with shocked disgust at the language used, and at the attitude taken by the Prime Minister this afternoon. Coming from the Prime Minister, I venture to say that there are many people in this House who were simply amazed at the nature of the speech, the attack made, and the language used by the Prime Minister. As one who is the leader of the House, we expect from him a high standard of language and thought, such as we are entitled to. I have been here 15 years, and never before in my time have I heard any language used like the Prime Minister used this afternoon. It is deeply to be deplored. It might be excused if it were used on account of the heat of the day, or in the heat of passion. One might have excused it in those circumstances, but to come here this afternoon and make that speech and use that insulting language as he did was an aggravated offence, because I say it was a speech made with great and calculated and cold deliberation. It was a painful and unhappy speech.

It is a matter of opinion.

There can be only one opinion on questions of decency in the mind of the ordinary decent man like the Minister of Finance, for instance. I think the language is unparalleled during the last 20 years, since this Parliament has functioned. We have the Prime Minister coming here and setting this example as a leader of the House, where the proceedings should be marked with dignity. When the Prime Minister used the scurrilous language he used this afternoon—

Order! The hon. member is not permitted to use that expression.

I do not wish to challenge your ruling, sir, but when the words used were—

I must ask the hon. member to withdraw the expression.

If it is unparliamentary, I withdraw the word “scurrilous,” and I say it is language that it is difficult to find words fit to produce in this House to describe. When he tells hon. members of the Opposition that their speeches are “onverantwoordelik” and "licht— zinnig”—that may be his opinion—not that of men of judgment. But it was intolerable language to refer to us as “smouses.” The Minister of Finance denies that he said so, and says that the Prime Minister said he had the “mentality of a mouse.” What a quibble! When the Prime Minister tells hon. members that they have the mentality of smouses, does the Minister of Finance say that there is any difference between that and calling them "smouses.”

Yes, I do.

Then I am as much amazed at the Minister of Finance too. I deeply regret it, and am deeply amazed at it, and can only put this down to his well-known loyalty to his leader. Did he call us “agterryers” or not? Of course he did, and supplied his own interpretation—“flunkeys.” These words to use indiscriminately to a body of men such as are on our benches. Then he called the Dutch-speaking Africaners on our side “oorloopers” —deserters or renegades who had run over to the “vijand.” In effect he said that such members on this side are renegades and deserters, because they dare to stand by the side of the old Unionists—the “vijand.” The Prime Minister later on tried to soften it down by saying it was a “political vijand.” What are we going to do when the leader of the House uses such language about the Opposition? Why did he do it? I will tell you why he did it. It is because of the criticism of this Opposition which has been most serious and most drastic. I knew that would make the hon. the Minister smile. I say that because there has been such drastic criticism and because as a result there has been much uneasiness and restiveness on the part of hon. members behind the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister thought he had to do something dramatic in order to re-galvanize the party into life. He had to do something dramatic to re-galvanize and re-vitalize the party in order to make it more homogeneous than they are. So he resorted to the old methods of abuse in the hope that he would whip up the feelings of his followers. It is a pity, sir, that he could not see the faces of his own supporters while he was doing this, so that he could realize how it failed to appeal to numbers of them and how their faces showed this. The insults, however, will not affect us. The Prime Minister professes to say that we have been wasting the time of the House, and he has talked about our criticism. That criticism has already drawn two Ministers this afternoon, the Minister of Lands and the Prime Minister himself. Both have felt compelled to answer the powerful crticism made by hon. members on this side, and particularly that of the hon. member for Barberton (Col. Reitz) on whom the Prime Minister poured such scorn. No, the real offence is that he and others are with the old Unionists —the “vijand.” But that charge is nothing but racialism again, and that is at the bottom of the whole thing. When he says that we from the old Unionist party have no love for our fatherland, it does not affect us in the least, because we know how untrue it is. The man who knows more than anybody else how untrue it is is the Prime Minister himself. To say that we have no love for the fatherland is pure racialism. It means that we are alien to our land here, and that we belong to another land. It is a false charge, but it goes down for the particular purpose of the Minister, and a certain section of the people behind him. These sort of insults may satisfy some people, but when the reasons given are the reasons advanced by the Prime Minister this afternoon, then these insults become matters of pride. If being called “agterryers” means that the Government is being affected by our criticisms— criticisms by people who desire to sink racial differences and to bury the evils of the past forever and to look to the good of the country alone—if, when we are told that we have the mentality of a “smouse,” by that is meant the mentality of hon. members who can deliver such splendid speeches as that delivered by the hon. member for Turffontein (Mr. Sturrock), then when these insults are hurled at us because of these things, couched in the words I have quoted, we say that we are proud of having the mentality of a smouse, and of being “agterryers” of that kind, of being “oorloopers” of that kind.

A new member cannot help but be amazed at the tremendous variety of subjects dealt with in a debate of this nature. The Government is asking for £10,700,000. I wonder what they propose to do with this money, and whether they propose to put it all to useful purposes. One useful purpose to which some of it could be devoted is that of finding markets for the primary producers, for on them ultimately all the other citizens of the Union depend. I have the privilege of representing a large number of employees in the secondary industries, whose means of livelihood depends on the success and economic progress of the primary producers. These employees realize that, and for that reason I raise the question this evening. There are many other people whose means of livelihood hangs directly, or indirectly, on the progress of the primary producers. It is because the matter is of such great importance that I raise the question to-night. When I speak of markets I mean markets in which these products can be sold at a reasonable margin of profit. What is the position of our wool farmers? The prospect is that millions less of new money will be circulated than normally would be the case, because there is not a steady market for our wool. The case of our maize farmers is precisely the same. Our maize is the finest in the world, but the growers know they will have the very greatest difficulty in disposing of it at a price which shows even a small margin of profit. The position is extremely difficult, and it is a matter which concerns the Government very acutely. What is the position with regard to sugar farmers? They are receiving to-day less than was agreed upon in the agreement a few years ago. They are having increasing difficulties in disposing of their exportable surplus produce, and so it is with every one of our primary producers. Go through the whole list, and it is the same story. In the aggregate millions of new money less are in circulation, because of the absence of sufficient markets. But the result is seen in gluts and low prices, and the prospect is appalling not only for our farmers, but also for that large number of very worthy citizens of this country whose livelihood is indirectly, if not directly, dependent on the successful functioning of the primary producer in his economic progress and development. Surely under these circumstances it is necessary that this farmers’ Government, which I have heard described as the Government of all the talents, should devote itself to this very urgent and important problem, and find adequate markets for the productions of the primary producer. Lest I may be accused of criticizing and not offering suggestions of a constructive nature, I offer a suggestion which, if followed up, would lead to an amelioration of these difficulties. Recently we had in this country Lord Melchett, who has been preaching the doctrine of empire unity. Has the Government remained entirely uninspired by this doctrine? I do not say for a moment that it should be adopted in its entirety, but the road was shown, which the Government can follow if it wishes to do so. Have not our Ministers read the campaign of Lord Beaverbrook, and having read it, do they still remain uninspired? These gentlemen with the valuable empire marketing board have held out brighter prospects to the farmers of this country than have ever been held out before. I would suggest that this farmers Government in failing to take an interest in this, is failing in its duty. On February the 28th a resolution was passed in which the Government had to consider the desirability of co-operating with the Empire Marketing Board and other organizations in other parts of the world. I do not propose to dwell now on whether the Government was influenced by the rather amazing declaration made by Mr. Pringle in the Natal Coast election, but I do say the decision of the Government, belated as it was, at least to consider the advisability of co-operating with the Empire Marketing Board must be considered to their credit, and I hope they will do more, get on with the job, and form the co-operative association of that motion. I would like to quote two examples of what the Empire Marketing Board is doing for South Africa’s primary and secondary producers. The first is with regard to the exhibition at Glasgow. “The city is plastered with South African posters.”

The matter of the Empire Marketing Board is not before the House. The hon. member must not refer to the previous debate on the subject.

Have I your permission to read these two extracts? I do not propose to refer to the debate—

So it goes on to say how satisfied the grocers are, and how pleased Mr. Dimond is, and so on. There is a reference to the disposal of eggs which I wish to quote—

So urgent is this matter, and so much have the farmers of this country realized the value of such organizations as this, that I claim that the state of things is that the farmers need the assistance of this organization, the employees of the industry need it, and the country needs it. If the Government were to take full advantage of the Empire Marketing Board, we should go a long way to getting all our products disposed of to the best economic advantage within the empire, and if they went further in the direction I have indicated, only outside the empire products would be allowed to be disposed of after all the empire products have been sold. What the United States has done for itself, and the prosperity America has achieved, is infinitely less than what the empire can do, for our resources are so much greater. Does the Government remain unconvinced that there is a practical and immediate likelihood of finding that market which is needed for the products of this country? America and other countries must marvel at our failure to make use of this economic advantage that lies to our hands. What is the consequence? Instead of utilizing our markets to our advantage, we are allowing foreigners to come in. I know that certain sacrifices are necessary in the first instance, but I do suggest there are valuable intermediate steps which should be taken. More use should undoubtedly be made of the Empire Marketing Board. Beyond this, there is the possibility of reciprocal treaties within the empire. Why not a reciprocal treaty with Great Britain in regard to textiles and chemicals which we cannot produce ourselves? In this is to be found the salvation of the farmer and primary producers of this country.

I only intervene in the debate because of the importance of the issue to the Witwatersrand. There are three features in connection with the Mozambique treaty; the first is native labour for the mines, the second the division of the rail traffic, and the third that of commerce. The reduction of the number of natives during five years and the limitation of the maximum has caused considerable apprehension. With regard to the division of the rail traffic in the area, I consider that nothing has been gained and nothing lost; but on the third question, perhaps in many respects the most important, because it affects the well-being of a large number of people on the Witwatersrand, the House will remember the old treaty on which business was carried on. Since 1909 traders on the Rand have built up sound businesses from end to end of the Reef. The result of the new treaty is to send them to the insolvency court.

What would have been the position if there had been no treaty?

The position would have been, it might have been better, but could not have been worse. I am dealing with the one section just now. We know that up to the treaty there was no deferred pay, except in the Transkei; it was spent within the borders of the Union. That position has been practised all these countless years until the new treaty. That is part one. But a more important part of the treaty, a more dangerous part of it, is the new arrangement with regard to natives entering Portuguese territory. It is accepted, and one of the facts, that the Union hitherto paid 7s. 6d. for each native on returning from service and re-entering Portuguese territory, for this payment of 7s. 6d. by the Union Government, he was permitted to take 136 lb. in weight free of duty with him when he went over the border. If the native spends any of his money in the Union he must meet the Portuguese officials at the customs border. I do not want to repeat any of the tales one hears of what happens at the border. I cannot verify them, but there are many and varied statements in that connection. This Reef trade has been built up under the old treaty, consequently it was surely something that belonged to the Union. It was an asset of the Union. In addition, surely it was something that belonged to the people who built up that trade. What I ask most respectfully is, has the Government the right to take away these people’s assets and their living, and take them away completely and absolutely and leave them stranded and ready for the insolvency court?

Are the interests of the mines to count for nothing?

They are to be considered in the first instance, but I am past that now. I have come entirely to the interests of the traders, who have been so badly treated under the convention. The Prime Minister must not argue that, because we have been able to satisfy the requirements of the mines —as a matter of fact, we have done nothing of the kind—that we are justified in sacrificing these good people. There are a very large number of people, and very good people they are, and good citizens of the Union, men who have struggled hard to pull a business together. I submit that it is fair to say that they are completely wiped out by this convention. It will be interesting to look at the position which exists with regard to the money available from these Portuguese natives for spending in the Union. Here is a report which, after full investigation, shows us the large amount of money that is available for spending, if not on the Witwatersrand, then within the borders of the Union. It says that the approximate earnings by Mozambique natives is £3,000,000 annually. Of this amount, between £600,000 and £700,000 is remitted by the native during his contract years to his wives and family in the Mozambique province. £1,250,000 every year is lost to the trade of the Union. It is estimated that the pay deferred under the agreement will approximate another £500,000 annually. Yes sir. In addition to the one and a quarter millions of pay of these natives, there is, by virtue of the treaty, an extra £500,000 which is going out of the Union annually.

Have not the natives as much right to that money as the traders of Johannesburg?

No, sir. The position to which I have referred has existed for countless years. We have permitted these traders to invest large sums in buildings and stocks, and now we take the trade away from them. It is absolutely wrong, I can see no defence for it, and I can see no corresponding advantage to the Union. It is argued that because a certain number of natives have been secured for the mines, everything else should be sacrificed, but the position of the mines is considerably worse than it was before. The Government’s action has ruined between 100 and 200 traders, and we have not gained any compensating advantage. I say, with all due respect, that it is a bad business, and that these traders are being driven rapidly to the insolvency court. There is no question about these good people being ruined. The importation of goods from overseas during the past year has decreased by 47.7 per cent., as compared with the previous year, and the sale of South African manufactures by this particular trade shows a decrease of 44 per cent. Here is a trade which has been bartered away under a treaty. I doubt very much that any Government has the right to do that. The question of compensating them has not been considered. The suggestion has been made that the east coast natives should be given what is known as their deferred pay while they are still on the Rand. I believe that is quite impossible, as I cannot conceive of a country getting a trade worth a million pounds or more annually agreeing to give some of it back. The mischief is done, but what I do ask the Government is—what are they going to do in the matter? Are they going to allow these honest worthy traders to become insolvent and swept out of existence because of this bad treaty? It is perfectly clear it cannot be left where it is. I am bound to acknowledge the position seems more or less hopeless, and we must leave it with the Government. I do think the Minister has to take this seriously. It is not for me to make a suggestion whether it shall be compensation or what it shall be, but the position cannot be allowed to remain where it is; these people have some right to protection. There is provision in article 54 for a review of the treaty, and to this I direct the Government’s urgent and immediate attention.

I would ask the Minister of Finance whether he will take the adjournment now. Many of us—I for one— have been on duty in the House since 10 o’clock this morning, having been on a select committee.

Do let us go on for another hour.

The atmospheric conditions to-day are absolutely impossible in which to carry on. The Minister of the Interior is not in the House, and I want to deal with a subject with which He has dealt— housing loans.

We wasted a full evening the other night, and two hours this afternoon. Let us go on and do something.

I do suggest to the Prime Minister it is not fair to hon. members on both sides. Give us a chance.

You have had a chance this afternoon.

Some of us have been on duty for 13 hours. I only want to deal with one subject, and that is the question of the housing loans. I should like to be quite clear as to what the position is. It seems when one reads the reports in the papers, and the remarks made by many members, that it is not perfectly clear what the Minister of the Interior has done for them. The position is—I think I am stating it correctly—that in 1928 £1,000,000 of money was voted to be spread over a period of four years; that is, an amount of a quarter of a million per year was to be provided. The whole of that money has been allocated, but the whole of the money has not been paid out. Therefore, at the present time there is no money for any new applicant. If any man or any authority to-day asks for any allocation from the Central Housing Board, the man or the authority, as the case may be will be advised that there is no money available, and nothing can be done. That is the position with regard to the million. Now the Minister proposes to provide another half a million, which he proposes shall be used for what he euphemistically calls a “sub-economic scheme.” It is what would be called by any practical man an uneconomic scheme. He proposes providing half a million over three years for uneconomic schemes, that is, at the rate of £166,000 a year for three years. The position is that he is stopping supplies of new money under the old 1920 Act. No new money on economic schemes will be provided. So the position is that, instead of a quarter of a million a year, which has been provided for the last four years, he is now reducing it to £166,000 a year, and everybody is saying “Hear, hear.” Well, as far as I am concerned, it seems to be a very retrograde movement. Instead of doing anything better for housing, he is doing a great deal worse. Instead of supplying a quarter of a million a year for economic schemes, he is supplying £166,000 a year for uneconomic schemes, and I do not join in the chorus of praise which has been raised in this House and outside it. That is how I see it, and I think the facts, as I have stated them, are correct. Let us take his scheme by itself. First of all, as everybody has said, the amount of £500,000 is merely a palliative. It is no cure for slums, or for the people who cannot pay an economic rent; £500,000 would not be sufficient to deal with the case of one big city alone. The position to-day is that if you gave half a million to Cape Town, it would not be sufficient to break the slums. He refers to the Addison Act, the English Act. I have been to England several times since that Addison Act was enforced, and I must say I do not find that the Addison Act has proved that by uneconomic schemes you can break the slum trouble. The slum trouble there is acute. Our slum trouble will be just as acute after the expenditure of this £500,000 as it is to-day. It is a palliative; a little medicine for a diseased man, but not sufficient to cure him. I particularly object to the policy of supplying money for non-economic schemes to the detriment of economic schemes. I agree that the housing position is so dreadful that I will acquiesce in the suggestion of those people who believe that non-economic schemes should be applied if that is the best that can be done, but not to the detriment of economic schemes. Since the 1920 Act was passed, some 10,000 houses have been built, and are in the course of building. The money paid back on capital forms a new source from which new housing can be carried on. The 1920 scheme has proved a success in every way, and has done a great deal of good in providing houses for people who would not have had a roof over their heads. The Minister of the Interior is proposing to put a stop to this sound scheme in favour of an unsound one. It is true the Minister said the system must not be regarded as a permanent element in our economic policy. I cannot think the Minister has really thought over this subject if he speaks of stopping the system when once it has been started. Before he uttered these words, two criticisms of protagonists appeared in the paper. One said that the Minister was prepared to plead the cause again when the £500,000 had been used, and the Mayor of Cape Town said that the Government of the day, no matter what it is, will make further advances in time, and that we shall get the £2,000,000 we asked for. The Mayor of Cape Town said that no Government whatever would dare to stop money for non-economic schemes. Therefore we are to be saddled with providing money for non-economic schemes to the detriment of economic schemes. I want to say one thing about non-economic schemes. It is quite clear that there will always be agitation going on between the Government and local authorities. I cannot see myself, in dealing with the economic position, how people who have to rent them are going to deal fairly and justly with the people who will occupy these houses. I will give you an instance. There are two men, each in the same business, each doing the same work exactly. One man has a house in the suburbs, for which he pays £2 10s. a month, and the other man is living in the slums. A house is put up in the centre of Cape Town, where no transport is required, at £2 10s. a month. Has not that man who lives, say, at Athlone not got just as much right to occupy that house as the man living in a slum in Cape Town? Is it not probable that the man in Athlone will get that house, and the only result will be that instead of one family living inside the city of Cape Town proper, you will have one living in the slum and one living in a house provided by the sub-economic Housing Board? The same remark applies to the suburbs. Supposing these houses are put up in Athlone. There will be two men with exactly the same wages doing exactly the same work, one man living in a house paying £2 10s. per month, and his neighbour will be favoured by having got one of the sub-economic houses and is only paying £2 per month. If the money was sufficient to put up houses for all these people, it would get over all these difficulties. If you succeeded in doing that, you are simply subsidizing the employers. That is what it amounts to. If every man of the labouring class has one of these sub-economic houses, you are simply subsidizing the employer and the employer, instead of paying more wages, will be enabled to get his labour cheaper simply because the rents are cheaper. That is the difficulty of interfering with economic laws. Supposing you put up 2,000 houses on this principle, you are going to give a rent bonus to 2,000 persons, and then the Minister suggests that these houses should not pay rates. If 2,000 people do not pay their rates the rates have got to be paid, and if Jones does not pay the rates on his house, Smith next door has to pay his rates on his own house and on Jones’ house as well. That is another injustice. There does not seem to be any reason why you should select 2,000 or 1,000 favoured individuals and allow them to live rate free when every other poor man in the town has to pay rates. Therefore, the difficulties of carrying out the scheme equitably are almost insurmountable. It is a most extraordinary thing to say to a man “We will not help you with a building loan at 3 per cent. unless you can prove that your scheme will not be economically sound.” The proper way to do it is to lend a man money at 3 per cent., provided he can show that he will not lose money over the undertaking. It is, however, an absolute anomaly to make it a condition that the money is to be provided only when the scheme is bound to result in a loss. My experience in these matters shows that it would be very much better for the Minister to say that he will continue the present scheme on the 5 per cent. basis, say, for houses costing not more than £700. For houses not exceeding £500, the charge should be 4 per cent., so as to induce people to build lower-priced houses, while the 3 per cent. money should be advanced to encourage the construction of £300 and cheaper houses. But it should not be a condition that the houses must be built on a noneconomic basis. If a man can erect houses for £300 apiece on money borrowed at 3 per cent., and can let them at an economic rent, let him by all means do so. I repeat that it is very unfair to stop the provision of loans to men of small means. The Housing Board are of the same opinion, as in their report they say—

The Housing Board evidently appreciates the fact that shop assistants, artizans and other persons of very moderate means should not be dropped at one fell swoop and receive no help in obtaining houses. The money now used in building houses costing from £600 to £800 helps not only the people who occupy them, but also other persons who have to live in houses erected at a lower price. This is an argument for continuing the general housing scheme. Every man who builds a house helps indirectly every other man who wants a house at a lower price to get it as the first-mentioned by building a dwelling for himself relieves the general demand for houses. If more houses were built, rents would come down very quickly, and the slum position would be relieved correspondingly. I do not want to condemn the non-economic scheme, although I do not believe it will be a success, nor will it cure the housing trouble or get rid of the slums. But I do not desire to criticize too severely those people who are trying to do their best to assist in alleviating the position. At the same time, the Minister will be most unwise to scrap sound housing schemes. Do not let him kill a good scheme in order to provide money for a bad scheme. If he insists on doing the latter at any rate, let him continue to provide money for sound schemes which have been in existence from 1920 and have been in the cause of the erection of 10,000 houses.

Is the Prime Minister prepared to accept a motion for the adjournment of the debate?

Do let us go on.

Doubtless the country as a whole, and more particularly the larger urban centres, will have welcomed the Minister of the Interior’s announcement in regard to the proposed provision of money for housing the poorest classes. He was admitted that it is partly a national responsibility to make this provision and not a responsibility that should rest wholly on the long-suffering shoulders of the local authorities. The disappointing feature is that the Minister has intimated that we must not look to this as a permanent feature of our economic policy. We will let it go at that for the moment. Let us take one fence at a time and when the time comes to take the others I think the Government will find that they will have to assume it as a national responsibility and that it is not a burden which can or should be born by local authorities alone. Let us consider what £500,000 means translated into houses. From our experience, it means 2,000 houses. Spread over our large urban centres, it touches only the fringe of the question, and Cape Town itself would be quite prepared to utilize the whole amount. We in Port Elizabeth have erected houses of three rooms, and others of three rooms, kitchen, bathroom, water and sanitary services, at £286, the rentals being 15s. and 17s. 6d. per week. They have been erected for the poorer, not the poorest, classes and can only be occupied by men on receipt of at least not less than 10s. per day. Doubtless the public will also welcome the Minister’s adopting this slogan, “The slums must go,” but will wonder whether £500,000 is sufficient. I am pessimistic on that, and it is not striking at the root cause—I do not think housing is the principal cause of slums. One particular cause is evident—you have only to look at the corners of some of your streets and the neighbouring country on Friday nights and Saturday afternoons to find one of the main causes responsible for the creation of slums. Regarding the influx of natives, in Port Elizabeth, that has nothing to do with the creation of any slums, as the great bulk of the natives, whether they are voters or not, prefer to live in the locations and in the cleanliness of their surroundings are, an example of how to avoid the creation of slums. Unless we can deal with the way in which they are created, you are not going to do away with the slums. The only way is to educate the people to make the best use of what they have, and unless you do that, I am afraid we shall always have slums with us. Last session the Minister of Finance made a statement regarding the funds provided for housing loans, which I think was somewhat misunderstood by many hon. members, and also by the country. He said that local authorities had not availed themselves of the facilities given by the Government, and the impression he gave was that the local authorities were to blame. I think he would have removed any doubt if he had said that the million would be spread over a period of four years, and only about a halt of it had been available up to the time he spoke. During the debate on the Budget, I put a question to the Minister of the Interior, and my impression was that the whole of the money available had not been used. The Minister replied that a considerable sum had been allotted to Port Elizabeth for housing—about £175,000—which had not all been used, that £103,000 was still available and there would not be any difficulty about getting the money as soon as it was required. The exact position is that in 1928-’29, £35,000 was allotted; in 1929-’30, £40,000; in 1930-’31, £50,000; and for 1931-’32, £50,000; therefore at that time only £3,000 of the £175,000 had not been used, the £100,000 could not be said to be available as it was only available to the municipality half in the year 1930-’31 and half in 1931-’32. The Minister gave the impression that Port Elizabeth had £103,000 available, but did not make use of it. But following up what the Minister of Finance said in the House previous to that, the Port Elizabeth Council, to show how keen they were to get on with their housing scheme, had decided to raise £100,000 on their own account, but thinking from the remarks of the Minister of Finance that more money was available, wrote to the Central Housing Board asking for a loan of £250,000 for housing accommodation for the poorer classes. They had utilized all the money available up to that point. On the 9th October, a telegram, dated 9th October, was received informing them that no further money was available for housing the poorer classes, apart from the £1,000,000 new money promised by Government in four yearly instalments commencing last year. Did the Minister of Finance say the other day that local authorities had not applied for the loans when they had been made available? If the Minister said that, then I can only conclude that the Minister does not know of the existence of this correspondence dated August and October of last year. There is one other point I would like to touch on, and that is with regard to the statement by the Minister of the Interior respecting the drift from the land. He said that we must make the countryside more attractive. That is a sentiment which will be appreciated by the whole country. What has caused the drift to the towns? I suppose that in the coastal towns it has been the industrial developments which have taken place. But those industries can only absorb a certain number, and I suppose that by this time they have reached saturation point as far as labour is concerned. One of the best things the Government could do would be to help these people to remain on the land. I think it will be admitted that if our primary industries are capable of development, and if the country is worth developing, and all of us as good South Africans believe in our country and that it is worth developing, and that money spent to keep these people on the land would be well spent, it would not only he good for them, but it would be good for the country, the more we develop and the more we produce the bigger the market we create for our secondary industries and the larger opening for the employment of labour. I hope the statement of the Minister of the Interior is a true indication of the Government’s desire, and I hope they will try to stop the drift. The Minister of Railways is largely responsible for the drift into the coastal towns, and I think the responsibility for housing his own people rests more upon him than on the local authorities. I suggested last session, and I still hold, that the department could house their men comfortably and much more cheaply than any local authority could do it, because, after all, the local authority has to take the responsibility for the loss of rent and risk of houses being unlet. If the Minister were to see that his people were properly housed, his rent would be secure. I say that the responsibility rests with the Minister of Railways, and that it is his duty to make proper housing provision for his own men. The lower rent he would be able to charge would be as good as an increase of wages to his staff, and would result in his having a more contented staff. I hope the Minister will realize that in bringing people into urban centres where there is no housing accommodation for this increase in the housing difficulty and it is not reasonable to expect local authorities to shoulder the burden, but he himself should bear it. I commend this to the consideration of the Minister.

We have heard this afternoon the hon. the Prime Minister launch a very severe attack on hon. members on this side of the House in language of a most extraordinary nature. He has told us that we have the spirit of a smous, and that is certainly a gross insult. I think we may be pardoned if, in these days of government by exhaustion, we put this sort of thing on one side, but there was something underlying the Prime Minister’s speech which one regrets very much. New members of this House have been led to believe that a better spirit prevails in it now than in previous sessions. We hoped that we had got away from the old boiges of the past, and it was most disheartening to hear the Prime Minister come out with them again. The hour is late, but I hope to be able to impress on the Prime Minister that there are thousands of young South Africans, English- and Afrikaans-speaking, who want to get away from the bickering of the past. The young generation do not want to dwell on the things of the past, we want to look to the future. We are prepared to admit that there may have been faults on both sides in the past. I want to make a frank confession. I was brought up to believe that the present Prime Minister was the evil genius of South Africa.

Do you believe it to-day?

No. There was a time when political prejudice went very far, but to-night I am prepared to admit that the Prime Minister is a great patriot, even though I cannot agree with his actions in the past; and I am prepared to admit that there are others on the Government benches whose actions in the past I cannot approve—that is why I sit on this side of the House—who acted as they did from patriotic motives according to their lights. If a member on this side can make an admission of that kind, surely hon. members on that side will admit that men like the late Sir Thomas Smartt, men like the present hon. member for Yeoville (Mr. Duncan), and the hon. member for Mowbray (Mr. Close), are not men whom the Prime Minister should besmirch as not true South Africans because they once belonged to the Unionist party. Surely he must realize the hurtfulness of the words uttered. Members of the Nationalist party may have done wrong in the past according to our ideas, but I do not malign their motives, and the Prime Minister should not malign ours.

I never questioned their motives.

One of the most terrible accusations levelled at us during the last election by supporters of the Nationalist party was: “You stand on the same platform as the old Unionists.”

Is that a term of opprobrium?

That was the question I put to those who made the allegation; it was certainly intended by them as a term of opprobrium. Those who try to build up a new South Africa may say it with their lips, but they do not mean it in their hearts of they indulge in such tactics. I want the Prime Minister to realize that when I attempt to criticize the Government I confine myself to what has happened in the last five years. Surely the Prime Minister must have a guilty conscience if, when members on this side offer legitimate criticism, he has to go back to the unhappy days of the past? Whose fault was it that a debate such as this has been delayed? Why has it been necessary that members on this side had to get up in succession to speak? The people of this country are looking to Parliament for guidance in the difficult days that are upon them. It is the duty of members on this side, just as it is the duty of members on the opposite side, to put forward the views of their constituents. The Minister of Railways and Harbours called me a soap-box orator on a previous occasion when I criticized his administration. I may be that, but, at any rate, when I apply myself to criticism of the Minister and the present Government, I am not a soft soap-box orator. I want to ask the Minister of Finance what steps the Government is taking to deal with the present depression so far as farmers and industrialists are concerned, and why it was not until the elections were well past that the country heard anything about this dire depression. We have oar trades commissioners overseas; our plenipotentiaries in foreign countries, yet not one word of warning came from the lips of the Prime Minister. I am not going back to the days of 1910 and 1912. But I ask the Prime Minister to remember his address to his constituents at Smithfield in May, 1924, before the general election. The Prime Minister said—

You cannot get your own leaders to go with you.

The Prime Minister says that I cannot get my leaders to go with me. The motion we voted on the other day concerned rates of pay which the South African party was responsible for in times of depression, and Mr. Jagger was criticised at the time when he brought it forward. Since then the present Government has had five years of prosperity, and it is not our leaders who sit at the head of the Government now. It is the hon. the Prime Minister and his party. It was they who made promises in 1924, and who said that, when the Nationalist Government came into power, they would rectify the alleged wrongs of the South African party. The other day we gave the Government the opportunity of putting those promises into effect, but, after five years of prosperity, they approved the attitude of Mr. Jagger in 1923. By voting as they did the other day, the Government gave its tacit approval to the attitude of the Railway Minister five years ago. I will now read a further extract from the Prime Minister’s Smithfield speech in 1924—

Shades of Doornkop! The speech goes on—

There is one other extract—

The Prime Minister went on to say that the state of poverty and unemployment in our country could no longer be regarded passively on the part of the Government; that a penetrating and comprehensive attempt should be urgently made to remove the roots of the evil; and that for this reason it was necessary that there should be an independent portfolio of Labour established, associated with the other Ministerial departments in constant touch with each other. No mention was then made of those expensive and costly enlargements of the Department of Labour, about which we have heard in the present debate. That, however, was the Prime Minister in 1924. He said that Gen. Smuts had failed to warn the people of this country of the approaching depression, and that, in any event, the depression was not due to post-war causes, but was entirely due to ill management and maladministration.

I did not say that it was entirely due, but it was due for the greater part.

Well, I have here another extract, and I shall read what the Prime Minister said in 1923, when moving a vote of no-confidence in this House [translation]—

May I not now, with justice, for those words substitute the following [translation]—

In other words, it does not help our own people one little bit to send ministers plenipotentiary abroad, and thus increase the expenditure of the country, if you do not come down to the basic facts of poverty and unemployment. The Prime Minister, speaking at Smithfield on April 18th last, just prior to the 1929 election, said—

The Prime Minister went on to deal with the farmers, and said—

Hear, hear.

This, sir, from the Prime Minister, who has paraded himself as the palladium of truth !

Tackled.

The Prime Minister in that speech also said, “We have faithfully fulfilled our political promises.” But did he faithfully fulfil the promises to the vast bulk of the people who can look only to a change of Government as a possible means of relief? Then comes the most interesting extract, which must surely appeal to the hearts of the farmers at the present time—

On this statement my only comment is that the Prime Minister was rather modest, because he forgot to state that during the regime of the Pact Government, the drought was broken. I shall read one other extract from the Prime Minister’s pre-election speech of 1929 at Smithfield. He said—

And this, with a Government whose expenditure has gone up by over £6,000,000! The Prime Minister said that “finance is the muscle of the nation.” This muscle must be bulging. I have not the time the Prime Minister had at Smithfield, nor can I hope that the House has the patience of the electors at Smithfield, and therefore I will refrain from reading more. Now before the election you had this glorious picture painted by the Prime Minister, and he said that the farmers, industrialists, railwaymen and all classes of the community were all happy; unemployment was cured; only put the Nationalist Government in power for another five years, and you would have heaven on earth. But what a metamorphosis after the election. At Bloemfontein, within two months after the election: the Prime Minister warned the Nationalist Congress that we were about to have a depression, and he spoke of the farmers extravagance in buying motor cars. But why, I should like to ask him, did he mislead the country before the election into believing that we were about to enter another phase or era of financial prosperity, when he must or ought to have known that we were on the verge of a depression?

Why did not you know?

I predicted that if another Nationalist Government came into power we would soon be on the verge of a depression, and I am happy to say to-night my words have come true! It was a very grave breach of political faith on the part of the Prime Minister, and if he had given the warning before the election you would not have had the state of political parties you have to-day.

What would the hon. member for Turffontein (Mr. Sturrock) have said if I had said that?

I am not here to answer for the political conscience of the hon. member. I have been in touch with some of our farmers in the Platteland who are grievously dissatisfied with the attitude taken up by the Prime Minister—their cry is, “Where have the prices of our products gone?” and “What has happened to our markets?” I ask the Prime Minister what is the Government doing at the present time for the farmers? Those of us who live in the towns sometimes do not realise what the farmer has to go through. Yet it seems a strange anomaly that the representatives of urban constituencies now have to plead for the farmers. But why has this anomaly come about?

Because there is a provincial election on.

No, because the people of the platteland were mislead, and the farmers have not farmer representatives. I do not want to be personal, but I want to point out that if you take the Midlands, the platteland, the constituencies of Gordonia, Hopetown, Colesberg, Prieska, Victoria West, and Graaff-Reinet, all those great midland Karroo constituencies where wool farming is the essential business, all represented by Nationalists— you must ask yourselves: Where are the farmer representatives of those constituencies? In every one of those constituencies the South African party put up experienced farmers, but we find that Gordonia is represented by the Minister of Mines and Industries, who may be an excellent miner but who is a very poor farmer. The constituency of Hopetown is represented by Dr. Stals, a medical doctor who lives at Worcester. My accusation is not against Dr. Stals’ abilities, but is that these constituencies are represented by men who are not farmers and who do not know their interests. Colesberg is represented by Dr. Lamprecht, a very excellent theologian, but what can he know about sheep excepting gathering the lost human ones. You have Graaff-Reinet represented by a doctor of medicine, while Victoria West is represented, not by a wool farmer, but by a very excellent fruit farmer who lives at Stellenbosch! The electors of the platteland were so misled at the last election by this talk of prosperity that instead of returning experienced farmers who would adequately represent their interests they returned men, excellent in their individual line, but not fit and proper to represent farming constituencies. I ask the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister what they are going to do in the present financial crisis for the farmer?

The hon. member for Salt River (Mr. Lawrence) is under a misapprehension in his reference to me. I have farmed sheep, and made a profit out of them, which is more than the hon. member has done. There is one thing in the speech of the hon. member which I appreciated, and that was his excellent attempt at quoting Afrikaans. I want to congratulate him very honestly on that. I was amazed at the hon. member telling us that the election promises of this Government made in 1924 were not carried out. One of the most phenomenal successes ever achieved by any Government has been the fulfilment of the election promise that the National party would attempt to give work for the workers. If the hon. member has been to Graaff-Reinet and those districts he has mentioned, and if he knew the conditions existing there before 1924, he would know that hundreds and thousands of men under the S.A.P. régime could not earn half-a-crown a day, and the hon. member would not have the face to come to this House and say that the Government has not kept its promises. I say this sincerely that these men have not for years been able to earn 6s. a day. From the moment the Nationalist government came into power, these men were able to earn that and more. When asked to vote for the South African party candidate, one of these men said “my brother in 1924 was earning 2s. 6d. a day, and I had to support him; now he is earning a better wage than I am.” This promise has been kept to 12,000 men, and that is only in one branch of Government service. This promise has been most magnificently kept, but there is another side to it. No section of any country has suffered so much in English literature as the poor Dutch of South Africa who have been repeatedly told that they are too lazy to work and prefer to sit on the stoep and drink coffee. When I was in London, they tried to produce a play in which this theme was worked out. I say that this Government has proved to the world that this allegation is untrue; that men are willing to work with the sweat of their brow. We have, once and for all, removed that stigma and proved that the South African was willing to work. It was shown the other day by the Minister of Labour that rates of pay had risen to 9s. 4d. a day. That has been a magnificent achievement, and nothing that will be said or done will detract from it. Some people may still believe that they are not being paid as much as they should, but if the S.A.P. Government came into power, it should tell them the truth that 10,000 people will be out of work.

Is that the truth? It is not true.

I say it is a magnificent achievement which will stand by itself in the records of this country. Many men have got out of the service into better positions—9,000 of them. That has been a magnificent achievement, but greater than the achievement, we have removed that unworthy stigma from the people of South Africa which has been said for the last 40 or 50 years.

Criticism is always helpful, but during the last three days we have listened to hopeless criticism, as in the case of the hon. member for Salt River (Mr. Lawrence). I ask hon. members if they have ever heard so much unbaked nonsense. The hon. member for Graaff Reinet (Dr. Bremer) pointed out that they were out to charge the Government with not fulfilling its promises of 1924, but how did things go up to 1924. The land swarmed with unemployed, and the finances of the country were on the verge of bankruptcy. Minister Burton in his last budget tried to mislead us in the country. He got £500,000 borrowed money, and put it into the budget to make it balance. But the object of the criticism we have heard during the last few days was nothing less than to lower the good name of the Government. Take the hon. member for Turffontein (Mr. Sturrock) a man for whom I have the greatest respect, but his criticism on the iron and steel industry is hopeless, a few years ago we dealt with the details of the industry for weeks. It was explained to us minutely, and now the hon. member tells the House that steel can be sold in our country for, I think, £4 7s. 0d. a ton, and then he wants to make us and the country believe that the factory will not be able to sell steel under £12 a ton. How does the hon. member arrive at that when experts have worked out everything in detail? Another point of criticism was the fact that the loan was not fully subscribed in London. If the hon. member had waited a few days then he could have said something different. Their whole criticisms point to the fact, as Minister de Wet once said, they do not care a “continental damn,” we have two races in South Africa who are trying to co-operate and to fuse into one people, but then hon. members opposite say that English speaking officials are illegally retired, and discharged. The Minister has, however, explained the position and the whole house of cards has collapsed. I do not think there is an Opposition in the world that paints the position of the country worse than this Opposition does. They want to spread that kind of thing overseas. Take, e.g., the German Trade Treaty, it has been debated now for the last two years in this House, and it is still said that it is the cause of the bad market there is for our produce. England has made the same contract with Germany, and Canada has nine treaties with foreign countries. It is done to blacken our good name, and then to allege that it is this Government that is responsible for the bad market. The hon. member for Salt River (Mr. Lawrence) spoke about the railways. What does he, an advocate, know about them? The hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (North) (Mr. Deane) introduced the motion on the service conditions of the railway men.

That matter is disposed of, and the hon. member may not speak about it again.

It is a great pity because I just wanted to refer to the kind of criticisms which the hon. member had made here. Where were the leaders of that Party when that matter was debated? It seems to me there are four parties opposite. The back benchers do not vote with the front benchers, they preach another doctrine. It is for that reason that the Prime Minister spoke about flunkeys. This caused the hon. member for Mowbray (Mr. Close) to choose a long text for a sermon to the Prime Minister, but what the Prime Minister has said was only the truth. That hon. member is one of the old Unionists who will never become an Afrikaner. He always looks across the water to “Home.” He has not yet discovered that charity begins at home. He will go to his grave with imperialistic ideals. Fortunately times have changed. The public of South Africa have woke up hence the country is progressing. It is said that we are now faced by a crisis but the Government could not stop it. If the opposite side were in office would they have been able to stop the crisis? No, they would have made it worse. No one who is not wilfully blind would deny that the country is much better off to-day than it was in 1924. Hon. members want the Government to be able to regulate the markets overseas, that it should be responsible for over production, etc. I hope this kind of criticism will stop. The Opposition must criticise the Government, hut we do not want that kind of criticism. The hon. member for Port Elizabeth (South) (Mr. McIlwraith) has spoken about many things of which he knows nothing. He also refers to the iron and steel industry. If he had been here two years ago he would have known something about it. He is, of course, speaking as a merchant and is pleading here for the benefit of the merchants.

I am astonished at the audacity of the last two members who have addressed this House. If there is one subject more than another on which the Government have failed, it is in redeeming a promise to deal with the problem of unemployment. The only idea of the Government of dealing with unemployment is to rope in everybody who is unemployed into the Government service. The figures I quoted some weeks ago front the returns of the Labour Bureau show that for every applicant who is absorbed into the ordinary ranks of industry, there are three that have had to be taken into the ranks of public employment, either Government or municipal. I say it is an utterly unsound method of curing unemployment. It is the simplest thing possible if you have funds at your disposal to employ as many people as you like, but I say that one of the most deadly signs of the present atmosphere of depression which is stealing over South Africa is the fact that if a man wants employment for himself or for his son, he has to look to the Government or to the provincial council or to a municipality in order to get it. All of us know perfectly well that those who beseech us to get them employment, who come to us in our rooms day after day and week by week and year by year, beseech us to get them employment as a last resort either on a tram car or in a Government billet. To say that that is a remedy is trifling with the question, and it is attempting to impose on the common sense of this House to say that you have made a contribution towards the solution of unemployment in this way. If there is one thing in which the Government have failed, in redeeming their promise, it is in dealing with unemployment, and the test of their failure is the impotence of the ordinary ranks of industry to absorb the men and the youngsters who are coming forward. If you have not failed, why is it that the Juvenile Advisory Board is sending out circulars to every sort of man asking that youngsters from the schools be taken on, and that in most cases their requests are met with the cold reply “no vacancy?” Why is it? It is because the Government have failed. The Government are spoiling our markets and have done nothing to foster the bringing in of fresh capital and industry. We have over-production and an underpaid population.

Where?

In Cape Town, and in every town in the country you have an underpaid population to a great extent. A great proportion of the population have not got the food they need ?—Why? Because they have not got employment, or they have got employment at such a miserable wage. This shows your utter failure to deal with this question. You got into power on the cry that you would deal with the problem, and you have not done anything to it at all except rope them into the Government service. Your remedy is going to fall, I am afraid, and you will find that this avenue of employment is now closed. I am told, and it has not been denied by the Minister of Railways, that they are not recruiting further at the present time. If that is correct, why is it so? What are you not continuing this policy of roping in all the youngsters into the Railway department and the other Government departments? Because there is a time when that must reach saturation point. You cannot put all the youngsters in Government employment. No, you must broaden the basis of your industry, and leave as much of the wealth of the country as you can in the hands of the taxpayer, in order that he may be able to extend his individual business. Why, this very question the Minister of the Interior is dealing with, and has laid such stress on—the question of housing—illustrates the very point. What is at the root of our slum problem? It is not the absence of houses: it is that your population cannot afford to pay for a house because they are either unemployed, or, in employment so miserably paid that they can only afford a house in a slum. It is a question of wages, not of housing I will develop that point in a moment. This is an illustration of the failure of the Government to deal with the question of unemployment,

No wonder, after 14 years of your administration.

I thank you for that. You said you had dealt with unemployment. Yet your Minister of the Interior is coming forward with the proposition that he is going to advance £500,000 of public money which will be used to let houses at less than economic rents. It is a commentary on the policy of the Government which speaks for itself, and stamps their claim as a radical failure. You are playing ducks and drakes with our markets. Markets do depend on co-operation, on bargaining, on buying as well as selling. If South Africa thinks she can carry on an export trade without an import trade, then she is living in a fool’s paradise. That seems to be the policy held out to us. They speak of South Africa being regarded as a dumping ground for English goods. If goods are dumped here, they have to be paid for. They can only be paid for if people have the means to buy them; exports must correspond with imports. Trade is good for both parties; it is not a case of beggar my neighbour. Trade is mutually remunerative, and that is not sufficiently borne in mind by the advocates of this high protection which is based on getting the maximum of exports and checking the trend of imports. It is only by fostering trade on those lines that you will get your industries on a sound footing, and balance the capacity of one section of the population to purchase the products of the other section of the population. What we are suffering from now is this, you have a section of the population, of the farming community, in particular, which is producing very largely indeed, and you have another section of the population which wants their products but is unable to buy them. I want to deal more particularly with this question of the slums which is a test, which is being launched by the Government with probably an expenditure on a very large scale in many directions. My friend, the hon. member for Turffontein (Mr. Sturrock) dealt—and as far as I as a layman and not an engineer can see—very effectively with one of the projects. That is, in setting up a steel industry in Pretoria. His figures went to show that this, if carried through, would mean the investment of a large sum of money taken from the pockets of the taxpayer in the long run, and investments of that money in an unremunerative enterprise. I hope the figures he gave will be searched and studied, and it will be found to be in many cases based upon information which may take on a better complexion when details are gone into. So far as I know, up to the present time his criticism is unanswerable, I certainly cannot answer it. I think that is the case of most hon. members in the House. I do not know anybody here who is prepared to give a detailed and reasoned answer to it. However, let it pass. I wish this matter to be answered, and I am waiting for the answer. During the course of this debate we have been told by the Minister of the Interior that he intends to launch out in a fresh direction for the purpose of overcoming and dealing with the slum problem. I subscribe very heartily indeed with every faculty and power that I have to the slogan “Do away with the slums.” But I am not going to be beguiled into assuming that any measure brought forward under the heading of that label is going to be successful. I do hope that this House will settle down this evening to a very thorough consideration of the proposition brought forward by the Minister of the Interior in this respect, because I can see from the speeches which have been made, that it is the opinion of those who represent urban areas and important municipalities, that, if the policy that is launched by the Minister is to be carried through, £500,000 will be merely the first instalment, and we shall find ourselves committed to an expenditure of an untold amount. Million will follow million, and that gives us again very great cause for searching of heart. You cannot fritter away millions without taking them away from the pockets of the taxpayers, and money left in the pockets of the taxpayer is the corn seed which if sown will produce crops for the following year. If you take out of the pockets of the taxpayer large sums of money which are spent in a unremunerative way you are going through the process of eating up the corn this year which should be sown to produce a crop in the following year. It seems to me that the policy of the Minister is just another example of eating up another large instalment of our seed corn. Let us examine the Minister’s definition. He defines the slum as overcrowding under filthy conditions, in houses which may be good or bad or indifferent. But the filthy conditions were the natural sequence of overcrowding. While I am not disposed to quarrel with that definition at all, I think probably it is substantially accurate, I think it is true if you take any people and crowd them into a palace and leave them without an income or an insufficient income you will find slum conditions creeping into that place. The problem therefore is not a problem of the want of houses so much as the problem of the want of income, money and means of livelihood. If the people had the money they would rent good houses, and I am confident that the population now crowding into slums would live in decent houses if they could afford to do so. That strikes at the root of the contention which the Minister has laid down as being characteristic of his scheme, which he admitted was uneconomic and unsound, and he justified it only as a temporary measure to meet extraordinary conditions. The whole of his proposition falls to the ground if I am right in saying that the real cause is the want of income on the part of the population. What, then, becomes of the temporary character of the problem? It is only temporary until you have abolished unemployment, and until you have raised the general average of income to a very much higher level than that which exists at present. That is the only way to abolish conditions which create slums. What chance have we of doing that? The Government has tried and has failed. The problem before the Minister and the municipalities is not a temporary one, but shows all the signs of being chronic. If it is chronic what a path of squandering of money on uneconomic schemes are we being led along. As the hon. member for Newlands (Mr. Stuttaford) very cogently pointed out, in so far as you spend public money on houses let at an uneconomic rent then you are only subsidising the employer who pays an insufficient wage. How does the Minister reconcile this with his statement that the problem is temporary in its character? He argued that the bad housing conditions were an aftermath of the war. Let the poor old war be blamed for many things, but not for our slums, which we had long before the war. What becomes of the crucial condition at the base of the proposition that this is a temporary problem. Yet the Housing League is actually falling for a public department to deal with the housing problem. The Minister’s statement is fundamentally untrue, and we have to face the position that the slum problem is not temporary, but has all the symptons of being chronic, although I hesitate to say permanent, but it will exist indefinitely. Until everybody is in a position to earn a fair wage and thus be in a position to rent a decent house, then the bottom is knocked out of the whole argument put up by the Minister of the Interior, and the basis for voting £500,000 as a first instalment goes by the board and the Minister’s scheme is self-condemned in the very terms of his speech. As to the causes of unemployment the dwellers in slums in the large towns, and particularly in Cape Town, are the Cape coloured population. They have gone through very hard times and have been placed between the upper and the nether millstone—between the white man and the Bantu who has recently been introduced into the Cape Peninsula. Other factors which have aggravated the position are the substitution of motors for horse drawn vehicles, the substitution of deep sea trawlers for fishing boats and the problems of drink and disease. That a section of our population so poor as they are should spend so large a proportion of their slender income on the purchase of wine should make every hon. members think. How are you going to do away with it? If you put up good houses, you will accentuate this flow from the country into the towns, and as fast as houses are emptied, there will be an influx from the country. The public authority has to undertake the housing of the whole of the population which is unable to build houses for themselves or pay a fair rental. The Minister of Finance would decline it just as firmly as he can. Why has private enterprise failed? Because it has not paid anybody to build houses for that class of the population. The very fact that the municipality or Government are going to use public funds for rehousing, is going to drive the private builder out of existence. It is a prospect we certainly cannot face, and it means that the sum which is absorbed will be far more than the half million mentioned by the Minister, and the rest of the population living in the slums will still be living there. Another potent reason is the comparatively high rents which have to be charged to give a return even to the most philanthropic of housebuilders. The cost of building is materially affected by customs duties, railway rates—

And the cost of labour is a big factor.

It is a very big factor. You have a protected trade, and in so far as you are putting up wages you are increasing the charges. I am not complaining in the least of the wages which are paid, but I do complain of some of our customs duties and some of our railway rates. Are we justified in expending half a million on these lines? I suggest that the Government had better consider the problem in its deeper elements, to see whether there is any better and truer remedy. I believe the advent of the Bantu population, in the Cape especially, has been one of the contributing factors both economically and in regard to the occupation of houses, and that is one of the lines which should be dealt with. But the lines to which they are committed are heaping up more trouble for themselves. The slum conditions give rise to phthisis and to venereal disease. Both those are serious problems, and your housing remedy does not touch them. The Government should think out a way of moving upon the lines I have indicated. In conclusion I say again that this whole problem is an instance of how the Government have failed to deal with unemployment. It is an outstanding failure, and the fact that you are voting half a million for building houses at uneconomic rents, and bargaining with the municipalities that they also shall contribute towards the uneconomic basis, stamps this as being unsound. I submit that this House and the Minister should think very seriously before they commit us to heavy expenditure which will fail to achieve the very good object it is sought to achieve.

I should like to ask the Minister if he will accept the adjournment.

No.

If the hon. member is the last speaker, I think we might accept the adjournment.

I take it this House and the country realize that the country is faced with a financial position to-day which is of the utmost gravity, and it is amazing that in any reference to the financial position of the country, the comments from this side of the House are generally received with levity by hon. members opposite. In all this debate, one has not heard one serious speech from the Government side, dealing with the financial position, or indicating that there is an appreciation in the minds of members opposite of the position of the country at the present time. So it falls upon members on this side of the House to endeavour to see daylight through the position, and to try to discover the cause, and if possible, some means of overcoming the difficulties which will face this country for the next few years. We have heard from speakers opposite of the excellent work which the Government has done for the unemployed. It has always been a boast on the part of Government supporters that this Government has done much for the poor whites, and for the poor farmers. This is rather strange, because I see on the order paper a motion put forward by a Nationalist member in which he draws the attention of the Government to an appalling state of poverty and distress in certain districts.

Order! The hon. member cannot discuss that motion now.

I do not propose discussing it, but I say that it discloses an appalling state of affairs, and in view of that state of affairs it is a perfectly legitimate line of argument to investigate as to how far the Government themselves are responsible for conditions which exist to-day in our farming industry. If the Minister of Agriculture were here, one would like to ask him what he has done to provide fresh markets for the farmers, farmers who are to-day in a state bordering on bankruptcy largely because they have no markets for their produce. I am discussing the question of how far the Government is responsible for the state of affairs which exists to-day. We have in the Agricultural Department a division of economics and markets, which appears to be merely a home for the destitute, but this applies to a good many other new departments which exist chiefly to find jobs for pals and which are to-day a tremendous liability to the country, then we have the people who are masquerading as representatives of South Africa in the courts of Europe, another useless waste of money. To return, however, to the Minister of Agriculture, it is well to note that when he took charge of the Agricultural Department, that is when the Nationalist Government came into office, we were developing a good export trade in meat. A bounty of ½d. per lb. existed, and the export of the Union had risen in 1924 to no less than £60,000. Now one of the first things the Minister of Agriculture said he was going to do was to cancel the ½d. bounty, and he did it promising to deal with the matter in a more effective manner, which he has not done, but within three years, he had reduced the export of beef from £60,000 per annum to £9 per annum in 1927. If the policy of the S.A.P. government had been pursued, and the 1d. per lb. had been continued, the stock farmer to-day would have been in a very flourishing condition instead of his present parlous state. The Minister now admits by inference that he was wrong, and that he did not know anything about his job; and he is going to re-establish the bounty, but who is going to pay that bounty? Not the Government, the farmer is going to pay the 1d. lb. for the trade to be re-established. That is the first thing. The next thing is when the Nationalist Party came in we were doing an excellent maize export trade to Australia. We were sending to Australia 500,000 bags of maize per annum when the Nationalist Government came into power, The Australian handlers of maize preferred South African maize to that grown in the Argentine or any other part of the world, and as a consequence, our maize was worth 1s. 6d. per bag more in the Australian market than the maize of any other country. The Nationalist Government came along and knocked out the 3 per cent. Imperial preferential tariff, and despite leading articles in the Australian papers, warning the Government that the policy would lead to retaliation—and the fact that Australia was our best customer for Cape wines—the Government destroyed the 3 per cent. preferential tariff, and within a few weeks the Government received a cable from Australia that in view of the fact that South African maize was being produced by black labour the Australian Government had decided that maize in the future would have to bear a duty of 7s. 6d. a bag. I appreciate the precious applause of the members opposite, but I am glad they have the decency not to applaud that. They ought to be ashamed of the fact that our farmers have lost a market which would have placed them in prosperity, through the deliberate stupidity of this Government. That is another of the direct acts which I say the Government are responsible for in respect of the state of depression which exists. I think I have made it clear to hon. members opposite that they first of all destroyed our export trade in meat and then destroyed our export in maize, and this has now been followed by the loss of a still more valuable market which at the present moment is of the utmost importance to the fruit farmers in this country. I refer to the export of jams and dried fruit to New Zealand. The spirit aroused in the dominions throughout the British Empire is such to-day that they are not tolerating any more of this scurvy treatment from us. They not only place a duty on your jams and on your dried fruits, but they have placed a dumping duty on that which you know has struck out that market from you for all time. I cannot understand anyone who belongs to this country and realizes that its prosperity depends entirely upon these outside markets and realizes that its own markets have reached saturation point, and that there is nothing more to get out of them, should have embarked upon such a policy as this Government has done to destroy the very best markets for the articles of the primary producer. The Nationalist Government, I know, is a luxury Government, and all luxuries must be paid for. The Minister of Agriculture is still pursuing the same mad, benighted, pig-headed course which has lost us this valuable trade to which I have referred. Not content with that he is striking now at one of the most important industries we have, namely the citrus industry. Under the greatest stress and care we have tried to develop an orange trade in the European markets. That can only be developed provided that the article you send is of the best possible quality, but because of a few political friends the Minister is actually allowing certain people to export a type of orange which is unsaleable in this country, and sending it to the European market marked “sour oranges.” It is the most disastrous and stupid and mad thing ever conceived. Yet I presume the people behind him are willing to see him go on and do this thing. This is going to damage our citrus trade more than anything else that can be conceived. Again last week a ship from South Africa discharged a load of offal in Scotland. Offal is the more or less succulent parts of a bullock, tongues, tripe, and so on, but it was landed in such a condition that it had to be condemned by the inspector, and that stuff was labelled “South African.” I should imagine that the Minister of Agriculture, had he known about it would not have stopped it going there, but he would, I assume, have labelled it as “rotten” South African meat. It is the same policy as that in regard to the sour oranges. I am now going to deal with wheat. Wheat and the wheat farmer are exactly in the same position as the maize farmer. He has found that he has a plethora of his own articles. The Government proposed to deal with it by prohibiting the import of wheat into this country. But flour, the manufactured article, can come in in unlimited quantities. I ask hon. members opposite, as presumably sensible men, how on earth that will benefit one single wheat farmer? Do you imagine it will benefit him to the extent of one single shilling per bag? How is it going to affect the millers? Here in this country the millers have spent large sums of money in the establishment of first-class mills. You will see no better mills in any part of the world, and many of those mills are to-day almost standing idle. This new departure is going to make matters worse, and it does not end there. Bran is of value and is used in many directions, so you will find that the next thing you will have to do will not only be to import flour, but to import bran and sharps. That will affect the price to the consumer. You should have said to the millers if you really wish to safeguard the wheat farmer, “We will allow you to bring in any quantity of whole wheat you like. We do not care where it comes from, and it shall come in duty free, but we make this stipulation that for every bag of imported wheat you grind you must grind three bags of South African wheat.” The problem would then settle itself. If you do that you can allow the wheat to come in in unlimited quantities. You will have the offal and the bran, and you would have three bags of South African wheat sold for every bag of imported wheat, the consumer would have got his bread cheaper, the mills would all be busy, and the farmer would have been satisfied. Why was it not done? To my mind it was entirely disingenuous action. The real reason you do not do it is that you get £250,000 duty off the imported flour, and it is what you are really after. It is utterly unsound. I say that no industry has suffered more on a grand scale than the agricultural industry has suffered from the stupidity of the Nationalist Government policy since it came into office. I go further, and I say that the end is not yet in sight. I see the Minister of Mines and Industries smiling. I will promise him that I shall deal faithfully with him directly in his own department. I am now, however, dealing with the agricultural policy. To turn to another factor. Take the German treaty. That is probably something you do not understand. I doubt whether there are ten members opposite who have ever read it. I am perfectly certain that not one of them can point out a single advantage to be found in the German treaty as regards South Africa. It is an instrument which has done the gravest harm, and is of the gravest possible danger to our future prosperity. It is an instrument which is growing increasingly dangerous as time goes on. The Government entered into that treaty in order to establish something which they thought they had a doubt about. They wanted to show the world that they were a sovereign independent state, and had the right to enter into a treaty with a foreign state, despite what other portions of the empire might think. The Government on that occasion parted with something which they will never regain, and in striving after the shadow of independence, they missed the bone. They had parted with their independence for all time, and have tied this unfortunate country to the cart wheels of Germany, which does not care a snap of the fingers for them, and they have no bargaining powers left, for whatever facilities they give to any portion of the Empire they have bound themselves to hand over to Germany. We come now to another phase of the Government’s policy—the providing of labour for a large number of poor whites. The pitiable conditions of the Government’s employees in the large towns have only to be seen to be appreciated. Men with families of four or five children are expected to live on 5s. or 6s. a day in large towns like Durban. Not only on the railways are the Government offenders in this respect. In fact the Government have proved themselves to be the biggest sweaters of labour in the country, for if any private employer were to treat his employees as the Government do, he would be in gaol within a month. At Alexander Bay are the Government alluvial diggings. The workers are 340 in number; they are confined within a barbed wire entanglement in an inhospitable region. There is one policeman to watch every four diggers, and they are not allowed outside the barriers once in the six months of their contract. These people are treated like criminals and their food consists principally of goats’ flesh and potatoes.

Where did you get hold of that information—you are entirely wrong.

If the Minister will wait he will hear more. Occasionally they get a sheep or a bullock and very few vegetables, and very little fruit. They are paid 7s. 6d. a day. The staff number forty. An attempt has been made to establish gardens on the Orange River, but the wind is so strong that nothing can grow. There is no anti-scorbutic remedy for boils, and sores are prevalent; there is no hospital, although there have been cases of paratyphoid. There is a motion before the House to extend the sale of liquor to natives, which is supported by hon. members opposite, but in this camp where a bottle of wine would be a blessing it is absolutely prohibited. I believe these men are specially chosen for their good character, and in view of the motion to which I have just referred, hon. members opposite might want these men to have a bottle of wine. When the Minister visited the camp he had to go in an aeroplane. There is only one bathroom for the staff and no drainage. No comfortable recreation room, nothing to do, but work. The week ends are a nightmare, but the men are allowed provided they take relatives with them to bathe in the sea once a week. There is a tennis court but the prevailing gales render tennis as a rule impossible. They are never allowed to visit their friends and no one, not even the Parliamentary representative, is allowed to visit them. [Time limit.]

On the motion of the Minister of Finance, the debate was adjourned; to be resumed on 19th March.