I move—

I wish to take this opportunity of asking my hon. friend the Prime Minister one or two questions. The first is in reference to the present position in South-West Africa, which territory was visited by my hon. friend in November last. He travelled all over the country from Kalkfontein in the south to Luderitzbucht and Grootfontein, and he received deputations from all classes of people in that territory. From the reports in the papers he appears to have promised self-government to that territory in the shape of a Legislative Council, composed partly of nominated members and partly of elected members. At the same time he distinctly reserved to the control of the Union Parliament the railways, the customs and the natives. I would also like to ask him what has been the effect of the Act which we passed last year, conferring British citizenship automatically upon the German inhabitants living there, unless they signed within six months a declaration that they wish to retain their old citizenship. Then he might perhaps give the House further information in regard to South-West Africa as to whether he is going to introduce legislation during the current session to give effect to the policy announced by him when he was in that territory. A further question I desire to put is in reference to deputations of Europeans settled in four different areas in British Bechuanaland who waited upon the Prime Minister, at Pretoria, I believe, to urge upon the Government the incorporation of British Bechuanaland into the Union. The Prime Minister is reported to have expressed himself as in full sympathy with that request, and in fact to have gone further and said that the time was ripe, and he thought it was in the best interests of the Protectorate and of the Union that such incorporation should take place and that he would, at any rate, consult first of all the Imperial Government with regard to the matter. It is reported that he also discussed the matter with Mr. Thomas, the then Colonial Secretary, when he was out here on a visit some little time ago. Perhaps the Prime Minister will be good enough to state whether he has opened negotiations with the Imperial Government; and, if he has, what progress has been made with those negotiations. At the same time the question of the future of Swaziland was brought to the front. Perhaps the hon. gentleman will let us know if anything has taken place with regard to Swaziland, in the course of his reply. I now come to my third and final question, which is whether the Prime Minister can make any statement now as to what he is going to do in regard to the segregation policy. It may be remembered that during the short session of July and August last, I asked him what his native policy was, and he then replied that he was not in a position to make any statement on the matter. I notice from recent interviews and speeches which my hon. friend made during the recess that he said he was seeking information through the Labour department and Native Affairs Department in regard to the matter. He also stated at the same time that the unemployment question was bound up with the native policy. He stated to a deputation, I think of natives, which waited upon him in October last, that he was coming to the conviction that the solution of this question lay in territorial segregation. I am quoting from newspaper reports. He also stated to the same deputation that the Government were endeavouring to secure land intended for native areas and was buying farms for that purpose, namely to convert into native areas. I also see from the press that the members of the Native Affairs Commission were in Natal quite recently to see if land could not be obtained in that province. The Prime Minister, also I think, gave special attention to the native question when he was in South-West Africa. I simply want to ask my hon. friend if he is now in a position to make a statement to this House and through the House to the country as to what the position is in regard to that policy.

I gladly take the opportunity to answer the questions put by my hon. friend. I should have liked to have been able to answer him more definitely, but under the circumstances I am afraid he will have to be satisfied with what I can give him. He wishes to know the position in South-West Africa regarding representative government. I would ask him not to take any notice of reports he sees in the papers for this reason. My hon. friend will remember that in September last I said to the House that I thought the time had arrived for some kind of representative Government to be given to South-West Africa. In trying to come to a solution as to what should be clone with respect to the powers that should be given to the representative body contemplated, I have naturally in the meanwhile set about ascertaining from individuals whatever I could as to what the views of the inhabitants are, in the first place. With that in view, I have asked, amongst others, the Administrator, with his advisory body in South-West, to put in writing what he and they thought should be the powers and the form of Government. They have of course done so. At the same time I followed the same path, and after what I gathered in South-West Africa, and after considering the whole position, I have also made a rough draft as to what I thought. Then I ascertained the feelings of the different people from various parts. Naturally with these discussions, especially in the case of the consultations that took place and the resolutions come to by the Administrator and advisory body, certain things got into the payer, but these were merely tentative, if I might put it so, more in the nature of advice tendered to the Government, so that nothing of what is eventually to come before this House—because I hope to bring it before the House eventually —can be gathered from those papers and from outside. I may say that I have this session been in close consultation with Mr. Hofmeyr, and I have discussed these matters with him very closely; that I have also in the meanwhile received further communications and facts and so forth, and I may say that I have almost concluded my labours as far as the constitution which I think should be adopted is concerned. I may be wrong, but I am still in the hope that my hon. friend, the leader of the Opposition, and the Opposition, will join hands with me to see that we treat this matter as absolutely a non-party question, and in close consultation with one another to give to South-West Africa something that will really be to the interest of the people with a view of course, to what we, of the Union, hope will be the ultimate results of whatever we may do now with regard to South-West Africa. I may say that it was my intention, perhaps within a few days, to approach the right hon. member for Standerton (Gen. Smuts), and to see in how far he and I and others might wish to consult and agree as to what should be done. I can look upon this as one of the question where we ought to set about absolutely in a National spirit to come to a decision that will be of a National character. As regards the acceptance of British citizenship by the Germans in South-West Africa, if I had known the question would be put I would have asked Mr. Hofmeyr for the information this morning, but I think I am fairly correct in saying that practically all have accepted. Then in regard to British Bechuanaland, what really happened was, I had been consulted by inhabitants of the Transvaal, on the border, and also through letters from others in Bechuanaland, along the border —Europeans—and they very earnestly desired an interview with me. Eventually I did give them the interview, and I said to them at the time that as far as the Union Government was concerned I thought that the time was approaching to consider these questions of Bechuanaland and Swaziland, and we would be quite prepared, if circumstances were favourable, to consider them. But with regard to both immediately told them that our position has always been as a party that we are not prepared to incorporate in the Union any territory unless the inhabitants of the territory are prepared to come in, and that was the position We were going to take up in regard to Bechuanaland. I believe my hon. friend knows there was a great outcry in the papers—for what reason I cannot understand, but probably there is good cause for taking the part that some of these papers did take—but I have nothing to do with that. All I can say is I consider the time has come, provided that the people— your natives as well as the Europeans— are prepared to come into the Union. If they are not, very well, I am not prepared to have them incorporated in the Union. I think also there are certain difficulties with regard to Bechuanaland which would make it less advisable to take any step of that kind to-day. With regard to Swaziland I have also been approached, both by Transvaal inhabitants who have interests in Swaziland, and by European inhabitants of Swaziland. With regard to this, I think that matters will be more favourable at present than they are with regard to Bechuanaland. But here too, as I have said, I have taken up the position that unless the people are prepared and desire to come in, well I am not going to insist upon their coming in. I must say with regard to Swaziland I have the fullest hopes that before long the inhabitants there will see that the best thing for them all is to come into the Union. Now I come to the segregation policy. I can see my hon. friend is very glad I am perhaps going to say something about this. I wish to say that as far as this policy of segregation is concerned, I have during and before the election, said that this question will take any party, who sets itself earnestly to work in that direction some two, or probably three years, before it can think of doing anything effective, and when last the question was put to me in this House I said the Government, as a Government, had not any segregation policy. By that, of course, I meant that segregation had not yet taken any definite shape so that I could stand up and say: this is what we are going to do. I may say, although I have progressed I think considerably since that time, I may almost repeat those words here to-day. In other words I may say that I have nothing definite that I can lay down immediately in the shape of a Bill and bring before Parliament now. But I can say something more or less definite enough to satisfy my hon. friend and all reasonable people who know what this question involves. I may say the following. The segregation policy we must not forget is a policy which was definitely adopted in 1912 and for the first time put into partial execution by this House through the Act of 1913. The whole object of that Act, the Land Act, was to lay down a basis of segregation in the Union. On that policy the Government tried to go for some years, but from what I understand, in 1922 the South African Party Government finally decided not to continue it any further. At any rate, I find that at that time a question was asked by the right hon. member for Standerton (Gen. Smuts) in his Department: What about the segregation policy? Evidently from that year, for what reasons I cannot say with any definiteness, segregation, as we know too who have been sitting in this House, became a more or less discarded policy. We remember too how from these benches it was practically repudiated. I know industrial segregation was, after being admitted by the one Minister, subsequently repudiated by the hon. member for Standerton (Gen. Smuts). This shows that the former Government saw considerable difficulties in the way of following out this policy. Since that time something has occurred which has complicated the situation still more. When in 1913 the Land Act was brought in by the South African Party Government, the position was such that the basis, namely, the territorial demarcation of land areas for the native, could be brought into execution. With that object that Bill was passed and the two Commissions, the Beaumont and the other Commission were appointed to demarcate those areas. Even the hon. member for Illovo (Mr. Marwick), who sat I think, as chairman of the local committee, brought out a report as far as Natal was concerned demarcating certain areas to be set aside for natives. So he, too, with the Government at that time saw there was an opportunity for getting the necessary territories for the natives to live in, or to have as their own. However, since that time, things have become very complicated indeed. I now find that the hon. member for Illovo, just to give an instance, has gone back and repudiated his report of 1918, on the ground, I believe, that these lands cannot now be got for the native, having been partially taken possession of by the European. I have sent, and it is for this reason I did send, the Native Commission to go, first through the Transvaal, and thereafter through Natal, to find in how far this territorial foundation for the segregation could still become an accomplished fact. They have gone to the Transvaal and they find there that these areas have since 1913-17, been taken possession of by the European to such an extent that the Europeans who at that time were quite prepared to have these lands set aside as native territories, are not prepared to have them set aside to-day. I sent them thereafter to Natal; and here may I just say that I was really very much astounded by the vehemence of the onslaught of the hon. member for Illovo (Mr. Marwick), on my sending this Commission down to Natal. He actually wrote a long letter making statements totally false.

Order!

For instance, his first statement in that letter was that I had sent down this Native Commission without giving due notice, stealing upon Natal in order to enforce some evil purpose that I entertained upon the good people of Natal. Now he ought to know, and he did know, that that was not correct. He knew very well, and in this very letter he went on to mention all the places which the Commission were going to visit and called upon the people to come to those meetings in order to ascertain the truth: and he went on in an uncalled-for way to make an attack upon me because I had taken the precaution of once more asking the Native Commission to go round these Provinces, to ascertain what the facts are to-day, and how far the setting apart of land for the natives for the purpose of territorial segregation can be ascertained. Well, I sent them down to Natal and there also they found the same objections as in Zoutpansberg and those places. It can readily be seen that the position is not that easy position to-day that it was eight or ten years ago, and I am very sorry that in 1918, when the second Commission’s report came out, the Government did not take the necessary steps to go on and do what really the Act of 1913 contemplated that they should do, namely, to demarcate more land for the native. Now I am in this position that we shall have to get the lands for the natives; that is very clear. We shall, at any rate, have to see that there is land which the native can acquire to an extent which will put him more or less in the position in which he would have been placed if, in 1917, the Commission’s recommendation had been adopted. I am very sure that the previous Government, too, felt that that was necessary, and for that reason they followed the policy which I had in 1917 specially advised to the Commission in this building, but which was rejected then. The late Government, in 1917, seeing that the way they had approached the subject was not the one which would facilitate their doing what they wanted, followed the following policy, namely, they laid it down that all lands within the second Commission’s area and also those covered by the Beaumont Commission, should be looked upon as destined for the purpose of natives as native holdings, and whereas under the Act the power was given to Government to allow natives in the meanwhile to purchase ground and to withhold their sanction if they thought it necessary, the Government followed this principle, it allowed natives within such territory to buy lands—that is, such demarcated areas. To my mind that is the only possible solution that could be found, and the one that should really have been adopted from the very start off. I had, in 1917, pointed out that it was the course the Government should have adopted, because to me it was very clear from the start that the course pursued or intended to be pursued by the Act would call forth objections alike from the white on the black, and from the black on the white. I have followed, and am following, the practice instituted by the late Government with regard to that, and I hold it is the only one. I say also this that I consider it right that all the Government ground, Government farms, within those demarcated areas—

Local areas, or Beaumont areas?

In the areas covered by both—by the local and by the Beaumont Commissions—that these should, in the first place, be reserved for native occupation. If they want to buy land they can, and let them buy. In the second place, it ought to be the policy—and let me say it is the policy I am following—that natives within those areas are allowed to buy within those areas private farms as well as any farm belonging to Government. If we go on in that way we have at any rate this—that it will depend upon the native’s will whether he will have eventually the necessary land to settle upon.

But can Europeans buy ground in the local areas?

No; as regards private ground I cannot prevent it, but Government ground I do not sell to Europeans unless there is exceptional reason for it. But Government ground is leased to Europeans, because naturally you do not allow this land to lie barren; but unless there are good grounds, no Government ground within these areas—as I have said, falling within both the Beaumont and the later Commission areas—is sold by the Government to private individuals. Of course, we cannot prevent their buying private farms. This is in rough the policy that was adopted in practice by the previous Government. It was the only policy they could adopt after their having been prevented by the will of the inhabitants, both black and white, from making the delimitations complete as demarcated by the two Commissions. As far as that is concerned I am simply following it, but with this addition, that as far as the Government alone finds those areas, they are in the first place held by Government for eventual acquisition by the natives. But I do not know how far the previous Government did it.

That was the practice.

I maintain today, even more strongly than I ever did before, that territorial segregation must not only be the basis of segregation, but that territorial segregation of the natives is the only sound policy that can be followed both for the natives and the Europeans in South Africa. But two things must be done as far as the native is concerned. In the first place the native must be taught to make better use of his ground, and it must not only be told to him but we must look upon it as part of our duty to see that there are instructors to show him how to make better use of his ground. In the second place I hold this, that even within these territories industrially your native is to be developed. Starting from his home national industries, he must be taught to develop and improve, and alongside of that he must be taught to make these lands or those territories as attractive for him and his family as possible. The living in those territories must be for the native of such a kind that he will find greater attractions in being there than in the slums of the towns. If he can succeed in that we shall have done a very great thing for the native and a very great thing for the European. So far as territorial segregation is concerned it is a policy of this Government to add on to that the native segregation, and I hope it will be the last time we shall hear the word “segregation” used as if we were going to drive the natives into any particular area. All we want is that the native shall not eventually find himself ousted from all ground and become the mere scavengers of civilization in the town. That is as far as the territorial question is concerned. Now I come upon ground where I must say I am still speaking for myself alone. By next year this time I hope I shall be able to have my colleagues with me in a definite policy, but speaking for myself alone, I say that with regard to the industrial development of the natives that the European in South Africa cannot be blamed if he says “In the first place I have to look to the wellbeing and the existence of myself.” Therefore, where you have to-day a certain industrial undertaking—I am again referring to your railway—which is almost exclusively the result of the labour of Europeans and European civilization—that there your white man shall, in the first place, be entitled to serve as a labourer. There are other lines of industry where the same holds good, and the native cannot blame us if in the first place we try to find work for our own class. That is the position the Government has taken up in regard to Europeans, that is really the policy which has been put into practice. Here, again, we fully admit that while doing that we cannot withdraw our hands or eyes from the requirements of the native, and we shall, consonant with the existence of the white man in South Africa, also have to see that we do everything that we can in order to help the native forward. The development of your native, and the well-being of your native is as much an asset to this State as the development and the well-being of the European. The more we develop him and the higher he gets on in his standard of life, the more he will be able to be a helping hand and a valued factor in the building up of the South African national existence. So far as that is concerned, whatever may eventually be the limitations of the industrial policy of segregation it will always have to go hand in hand in finding scope for the native to exist and develop alongside it. An endeavour has been made in the Bill to reserve certain work for Europeans. Well. I am at one with that, and I must say this that I am far more in favour, and I hope eventually this House if that Bill were to go through—perhaps I should not say so much, because I was going to accept the offer made by the right hon. member for Standerton (Gen. Smuts) to get his co-operation and make what we can of that in the best interests of the country. But I would like to say this that I feel that there it would be a big improvement if we could assign labour in such a way that it would give natives an opportunity of growing in the various courses from top to bottom, not having a vertical line nor a horizontal line of demarcation. I do not want to theorize too much, but I am merely putting before this House what more or less are the lines along which my thoughts have been going, and which I think will eventually be adopted. Now we come to the question of political segregation—that is the vote—but I won’t go into that because that will depend on all the rest. I feel one thing very clearly in South Africa and it is this. On the basis we are going on to-day we cannot go on. If this basis has to be changed it will involve many points of considerable interest and importance both for Europeans and natives. The question of the vote will necessarily be one of them. The hon. members know that. They know that with any Government in South Africa to-day, or for a considerable period of years in South Africa, to get the northern provinces to give the franchise of the Cape to the natives in those provinces is beyond belief. At the same time I feel that we shall have to recognize that these two extremes—the one operating in the Cape and the other standing still in the Northern Province—cannot go on. We shall have to adopt a policy eventually that will be a common policy. The white men in the country will have to leave off, now and again, attempting to make a party question of the native question. I say now and again, but I hope it will be the last question which is made a party question. As I have said time and again to my friend the hon. member for Standerton (Gen. Smuts) we have agreed to assist in coming to a non party solution of the native question. But these things take time. I hope eventually, before I come before Parliament and state definitely what is the position the Government is going to take up, to approach my friends and get their assistance, and I hope we shall mutually attempt to solve this question by coming to conclusions which will be fruitful and helpful to South Africa. I am very seriously going into this question. The Native Affairs Commission is busy with it day after day, and I hope it will not be long before I get in practical men from over the country to discuss the matter with me in all its various phases and points. Naturally before I ask hon. members on the other side to co-operate with us I must have definite ideas of what should be done. I hope next year at this time we shall be in a position to come to the House and say that we have arrived at certain ideas which we can ask Parliament to sanction in the country.

The House is indebted to the hon. the Prime Minister for the frank, and I may add, fair statement he has made to us. The Prime Minister knows there is a great deal of anxiety in the country over this question. The segregation question has not only attracted the attention of white people but also the attention of the native population, and there is grave anxiety over it. To millions of people the segregation question is looked upon as a kind of sword of Damocles suspended over their heads, and therefore it is a great advantage to have this statement and to know, more or less, where we stand to-day. I did not know my hon. friend was going to raise the question today. I wish to make a few observations upon it. At a conference called by the Prime Minister some time ago of representatives of native opinion, the Prime Minister could not be present, but the Minister of Justice represented him, and the Minister of Justice said to the Conference that the Prime Minister was going to introduce his segregation policy during the session and he would make a full statement on that occasion and it was unnecessary therefore for the Minister of Justice—

I think you are wrong. I don’t think he said that.

Well, as far as I remember, he said the segregation policy would be explained by the Prime Minister during the session. I take it that the statement that has been made to-day carries out that promise. We know now more or less where we stand on the segregation policy of the Government, and I feel sure it will come in a re-assuring way to the people of the country. With regard to the territorial segregation the Prime Minister says that many difficulties have come across his path. What was possible in 1914 is not possible to-day. Difficulties are far greater to-day than they were years ago and he has frankly and fairly admitted that as things are to-day, in regard to the question of territorial segregation, they could go no further than carry out the policy which had been going on for years under his predecessors. I refer to the policy with regard to the Committee areas. That policy has been carried out by the Government ever since I was connected with it and it really means—public opinion being what it is and conditions being what they are—that it was practically impossible to go any further. It seemed to me impossible in regard to territorial segregation to go further. We could not get a law through the House and in the circumstances all the Government could do was to make use of the powers under the Act of 1913 to get natives into the Committee areas. Now my hon. friend is in the same position. He can now study conditions from the inside and he finds that is the only way out. I am very glad to have heard from him the admission to-day that he sees no way out of this question of territorial segregation, but the practice which has grown up and which is being continued by him as it had been settled by his predecessors. Let us leave it there. I take it that what the Prime Minister has said to-day is practically the end of that aspect of the segregation policy and I think it will come, as I say, in a re-assuring sense to many people in this country who have looked upon the segregation policy as a threat hanging over their heads. They will know that the policy which has been carried out will continue to be carried out and that no wholesale uprooting of the natives from large parts of the country where they are today living amongst the whites will take place and that, as far as possible, we shall let well alone and continue in the future as we have gone on in the past. I think I may fairly say that the Prime Minister has come to a wise conclusion, and that what he has said on this point will meet with the general assent of this side of the House and the people of the country. It may sound in a way as a climb down for him, because no doubt very much has been made of the segregation cry in the past. The segregation policy has rung from every platform in this country, but we are really outside all party issues in a great matter like this. And where the Prime Minister, on coming into close contact with these difficulties, sees that there is no other way, that any other way is much too dangerous for this country, and he makes that admission in this House, I think we should support him from all sides and we should acknowledge his action in making such an admission. I am not certain about the other aspect of segregation that the Minister has referred to, and that is industrial segregation. It is very difficult to know what he is aiming at; we shall not know until next year. He said that he hopes that there will be sufficiently tangible results from his enquiry by next year to be able to lay something before this House. Let me just utter one word of warning. The whole segregation policy has hung together as one whole. As far as I remember, his attitude in years gone by was this: give the native his own territory where he can develop on his own lines and as a result, therefore, curtail his industrial position and privileges in the white areas. The industrial part of the segregation policy followed as a logical consequence from the territorial part. And what I wish to point out to the Prime Minister is this, that where the territorial part of the segregation is now dropped he has got seriously to consider the balance of his policy. Is it possible for us, where we give no outlet whatever to the native in large areas for his own development and his own expansion—is it wise for us, is it fair and is it right that under those circumstances we should say “We cannot give you your own areas, but, at any rate, we shall depress you, we shall make you the depressed class in the white area”? I have no reason to assume that the Prime Minister is going to do that. We shall not know definitely what his policy is till next year, but I do utter this word of warning, especially with the Mines Bill before us, and the provision therein made, that I feel it would be in the highest sense unwise, unfair and improper for us to introduce legislation in this country which, while not giving the native people any outlet in such a direction as the Prime Minister had contemplated years ago, will take away rights which they have exercised all along. I shall not pursue that matter. I am glad that the Prime Minister is closely considering the matter, and I hope he will use an equal caution when he comes to this other part of the programme which he intends to go on with next year. Let me say a word about the question of the political franchise which the Prime Minister has referred to. He says it is impossible to get the people of the interior to adopt a general native franchise. We know that: we admit that: but the Prime Minister will agree with me when I say that an equally important aspect of this matter is the attitude of the people of the Cape Province. My hon. friend knows what took place at the National Convention on this subject. Amongst all the difficult matters raised at the Convention there was not a single one which stirred the representatives of the white community so deeply as this question of the native franchise. I do not want any one-sided impression to go from this House into the country to-morrow and create further confusion. There is grave anxiety; there is an impression amongst the natives that they are going to be treated as outcasts in this country. I have no reason to think that that is the policy of the Prime Minister. In the National Convention the settlement of the franchise question, as far as the Cape Colony was concerned, was fundamental, absolutely fundamental. It was not only looked upon as fundamental by the representatives of the Cape Colony at that Convention, but it was entrenched by the entrenchment clauses of the South Africa Act, and my hon. friend knows that if any change is to be made in regard to the native franchise in this country it has to go through that almost impossible procedure laid down in the South Africa Act, namely, the two Houses sitting together and an almost impossible majority making the change. I, therefore, think that it would be very difficult to deal with that question. It may be that in the years to come we shall be able to explore some other way out of the difficulty and we may yet in the years to come have some other franchise law, but we shall not be able to proceed, I am sure by way of taking away the political rights of the native people in this Province. If the Prime Minister is thinking in that direction—I do not know that he is and I do not hope that he is—but, if he is thinking in that direction, then I say this, that he will find that road is absolutely and finally barred by the white people in this country. You will not get a two thirds majority of the people sitting in this House or any other Parliament of South Africa that will take away those rights which were entrenched and entrenched in the fullest sense, by the South Africa Act. So, if we have to find another solution, let us explore for it, but don’t let us do it by way of taking away rights. I do not think we need despair of having some better franchise law for South Africa yet. I think it may be possible to have such law, but, do not let the native people think that the object, and aim is to take away the rights which they have in this Province. Let me say this in regard to some other points raised by the Prime Minister, that, as far as we here on this side of the House are concerned, we will give whatever co-operation we can in settling this question. If there is one question that should be above party politics it is the native question, and I am very sorry that the Prime Minister in the extreme attitude which he has taken in recent years on this segregation policy had made it impossible for us to co-operate as we had done years ago on this native question.

How?

Because the hon. the Prime Minister preached the doctrine of segregation, with which, so far as we understood it—we found it very difficult to understand—we found it quite impossible to agree, and found it necessary to oppose it; but if he cools down on that issue I do not see why in future we should not, on this most important issue in the politics and in the life of South Africa, co-operate as we did years ago. If it is his desire, in bringing forward native legislation of one kind or another, to have the concurrence of members on this side of the House, we should be only too willing to explore a better way with him and his supporters on the other side. My hon. friend has asked a question about South-West Africa, and the Prime Minister has replied that he is considering the terms of a self-governing Constitution for South-West Africa, and wishes to consult us here, on this side of the House, before he comes forward with that Constitution. Let me say there, too, that I entirely agree with the spirit in which he approaches this matter, and he will find that on this, as on every fundamental matter, we shall do our best to avoid taking a party attitude, and will give him whatever help we can on these matters of large national importance. I think in that way we shall probably be able to render this country a much greater service than by wrangling unnecessarily over issues in this House, and, perhaps, misleading public opinion by our differences in this House.

I have always endeavoured in this House to show to the Prime Minister the courtesy which is due to his high office, and, but for that, I should have risen to a point of order, to ask your ruling, Mr. Speaker, as to whether the Prime Minister was in order in accusing me of having published a false statement which I knew to be false. I preferred not to interrupt the Prime Minister, because it seemed to me that by doing so at that time I should not have given him an opportunity to refresh his memory in regard to the facts, and I thought it was preferable that I should produce the document I published and give the Prime Minister the actual facts and remind him of what I said in that statement.

Keep the discussion high.

As I understood him, the Prime Minister suggested that I had published a statement which I knew to be false, because though I asserted that there had been no notification of the meetings of the Native Affairs Commission in Natal, I gave a list of the places at which the Commission was to sit. The opening words of my letter, I think, will serve to satisfy the Prime Minister that that is an unfair interpretation of my remarks. I said—

and so on. At that time one advertisement had appeared in the Natal “Mercury” and one in the Natal “Witness,” and up to the time at which the Native Affairs Commission arrived in Natal, no other public advertisement had appeared in any newspaper circulating in Natal, with the possible exception of the “Guardian,” which is not always read by respectable people. Well, I do ask the Prime Minister to consider the fairness of that statement, and to consider whether it was right for the Prime Minister to say that I published a statement well knowing it to be false.

No hon. member of this House is entitled to say that another hon. member has made a false statement. He may say it is an incorrect statement.

May I immediately withdraw? In explanation, may I say that what I really meant was that the hon. member had made use of statements there which were not correct.

I have always felt that the Prime Minister is at heart a courteous gentleman, and that anything he said at the moment was, perhaps, due to political feeling, and possibly the same may from time to time be attributed to me, but I hope it will be done fairly. Some question has been raised as to the change of view which has taken place in Natal in regard to the question of the setting apart of Native areas, and I think I may usefully indicate, in the briefest possible manner, how that change has taken place. The Native Affairs Commission was directed to visit Natal and ascertain the feeling of Europeans in regard to setting aside, as native areas under future legislation, of the areas recommended by the Natal Local Natives’ Land Committee in its report of 1918. I was a member and that Committee sat at a time immediately after General Botha had introduced the Bill of 1917, and presided over the Select Committee of that time, when his influence had been brought to bear on this troublesome problem, and had brought us nearer to a solution than ever before, or since. At that time a Committee was appointed in each Province to consider how far we could get in the direction of providing suitable and sufficient areas for native purposes and the Committee, of which I was a member, investigated this question very closely. I want to make this point clear; that we explored the historical side of the native land question in Natal, and found that the whole design for which those areas were set apart had never been carried out; that the purposes for which the native lands had been dedicated by Dead of Trust had not been kept in view; that there had been an entire misuse of the generous grants made as far back as sixty years previously, and that the demand for more land on the part of the natives arose from their wrong use of this land, and, if acceded to, would minister to the continuance of wasteful methods on their part. Our direct instructions were to recommend a sufficient area for the natives for ten years to come, but before doing that we pointed out that it was quite impossible for any Commission to estimate the area that was required as long as the present wasteful methods were allowed to continue, and we indicated the lines under which the whole occupation of those native areas should be re-organized. We indicated that the man who became an industrial should be put in a village in which his services as a worker would be more readily available and where he would not be taking up the elbow room required by the pastoralist and agriculturist in the native area. We wanted the whole of this re-organization to be put in force. It should not be attempted to estimate what further area was needed, in fact, we were of opinion that a further area would not be needed if those reforms were first carried out. We also pointed out that in the purchase of land the natives had been allowed to purchase in amongst the European areas and that the process of elimination or segregation was one that was gradually going on, and that for this reason it would probably be desirable that neutral areas in certain portions of the Province should be set apart to allow evolution to decide whether such areas would ultimately become preponderatingly native or non-native. Those were the considerations we brought to bear upon our investigations, and our recommendations were conditioned by these considerations and were not unequivocal. It was not recommended unequivocally that the Government should set apart so many additional areas for natives in Natal. Neutral areas were recommended, or, alternatively, certain native areas. When in Natal we found the native commission was to visit us to ascertain merely what our feelings with regard to those recommendations being made final were, naturally the people of Natal objected. They also objected that the Prime Minister did not send the commission to the Free State. There was no suggestion that the commission should set apart additional ground in the Free State which already only reserves an infinitesimal area to the native. There was also a suggestion that the surplus of natives from the Free State should be accommodated in Natal. Was that fair?

Who suggested that?

The Orange Free State local committee, consisting of the hon. member for Bethlehem (Mr. J. H. Brand Wessels) and other members of that committee.

Did they suggest it?

Yes, and in these words: “If the surplus of natives be very great,” we recommend that they be provided for in the Bergville district of Natal. There was a similar recommendation in the report of the Eastern Transvaal local committee, which considered the requirements of the natives of Piet Retief and Wakkerstroom. They then said these people had kinship with the Zulus, and if they were to expand they should expand into Zululand. In other words, Natal was to be made the dumping ground for the Free State and the Transvaal. It was that we took exception to. Let me come to the comparative areas which Natal and other provinces have set apart for native areas. Let me remind the House that this Act was not applicable to the Cape Province in any shape or form. By its decision in the case of Thompson and Stilwell v. Kama, the Appellate Division declared that the Natives Lands Act, 1913, was inapplicable to the Cape Province. The Cape was not called upon to add to its native areas, and natives from East Griqualand and Pondoland are settling in Natal. The Orange Free State and the Eastern Transvaal local committees suggested the dumping of their surplus in Natal. In the Cape 8.47 per cent. of the whole of the Province is set apart for natives; in Natal 22.83 per cent, is irrevocably given over to the natives.

Have you included Zululand in that?

Yes. In the Transvaal 3.22 per cent. of the whole Province is set apart for natives and in the Free State 48 per cent.—not even half of 1 per cent. We in Natal have felt that a province which represents only 7 per cent. of the whole area of the Union was being unfairly treated by having any further land demanded from it and that was the sole and surely sufficient reason why every meeting in Natal declared whole-heartedly against any further land being set apart. I appreciate the statement the Prime Minister has made, but I wish it had gone further and given the people of this country some more useful hope in regard to this native question. It seems to me that, by reason of these frequent unprofitable discussions, this question has gone to the region of dialectics and as far as the native is concerned he is being argued about as though he had become as useless as the Dodo. We know he is by this means being carried out of his own sphere and is becoming the subject for argument and pitch and toss in this House. The place of the native has been by his backward state of evolution left for many years to come as that of a worker in the land, and a very useful worker, too, if only you treat him reasonably and fairly and do not put wrong ideas into his head. I do wish the Prime Minister would realize that the growing indiscipline of the natives, and the need for defining more clearly the relations between master and servant constitute pressing problems and are of immense importance to the farmer who has to earn his living in this country. Such questions as segregation we realize can only be taken step by step, but we wish the Prime Minister would give us some more tangible and practical statement to-day to go on with. We wish he would so legislate as to render the native more useful in his own sphere and accommodate him to the career he is fitted for. The native as a politician has no future in the present scheme of things and for many years his position must be that of the humble worker. The native must be brought under habits of industry and civilizing influences before he can be segregated to his own advantage in his own area I am not one who has ever been harsh or unsympathetic to the reasonable aspirations and wants of the native, but I do feel that we have gone miles ahead of what the native himself desires and of what the ordinary native approves. I feel that in putting us off to what is to take place in a year’s time the Prime Minister has not made clear to the native what his position is to be as a useful member of the community.

I am extremely pleased to have listened to the very thoughtful and careful statement from the Prime Minister, and I can assure him, as one who knows the Eastern Province and the native areas of the Cape Province fairly well, and as I have certain native areas within my own constituency, I am perfectly certain that his statement will have a great tendency to remove a large amount of the unrest which unfortunately has existed in this country. I would like to tell him in all earnestness that the speech he made some 18 months or two years ago at Stellenbosch, and some statements in connection with his election manifesto, which referred to the doctrine of segregation without defining it and his intention if he came into office to remove the native vote in the Cape Province, caused a feeling of unrest in the native minds, which it is very difficult to imagine on the part of those who do not come into intimate contact with the native population. The native population of the Cape Province have enjoyed the franchise ever since the constitution was conferred upon the Cape of Good Hope, and I assure the Prime Minister it is one of the things that they cherish, and they rightly feel that this is the only means they have of having their views efficiently brought before the legislation of this country. There is nothing the Prime Minister could do more to allay the feeling of unrest than if he would, before the end of the session, make a further statement on the political situation and intimate that, so far as the Government is concerned, it is not their intention to tamper in any way with the native franchise in the Cape Province. As the right hon. member for Standerton has pointed out, does the hon. Prime Minister know, as having been a member of the national convention, this is one of the things that caused us the greatest difficulty? I have always regretted, and I think other members of the convention regretted, that the word “colour” was ever introduced into the Act of Union. As I dare say my hon. friend knows, during these discussions it was urged that this might be got rid of by introducing a higher property qualification and a higher educational qualification. The latter would have been fixed so that a civilized man of whatever colour would have a say in the elections of this country. I hope that the speech of the Prime Minister will be circulated broadcast in the native territories and will be read by all natives, especially those in the Cape Province, of whom I speak with more knowledge than of those in the other provinces; because I am perfectly certain that few people realize the anxiety that exists in the native mind. I was very pleased to hear from the Prime Minister that he is going to bar in every direction proposals which were made a short time ago to the House, and which, from information I have received from native centres, have caused an extraordinary amount of unrest. And you must remember that you are dealing with five millions of people who, as long as they realize that it is the intention of the Europeans to treat them fairly, are more easily governed than any other people you can possible imagine. Members may ask themselves whether if the Transkeian territories were occupied by an equal number of white inhabitants they could be controlled by the small police force which is kept in those territories. And that is due to the fact of the wise native policy that has from all time been carried out by the old colony and since then, and that means that these people enjoyed the feeling that they were going to secure justice from the Government. It is on that account that I am very glad the Prime Minster has made his statement, because, whether rightly or wrongly, the native had got into the back of his mind that he was not going to receive justice and the European was going to take advantage of his position, both in regard to the policy of segregation and the taking away of his vote. In dealing with five millions of people you must be extremely careful not to engender a spirit of injustice, because if you do there is bound to be reaction at some time. Nothing gives me greater pleasure than that the Prime Minister, in the responsible position in which he now finds himself, and with the information at his disposal, has intimated that with the assistance of the Native Affairs. Commission they have come to a wise conclusion. I think it was unnecessary to say that it is the greatest mistake in dealing with natives and bringing them under new conditions, not to give them the opportunity of meeting you face to face and discussing what you intend to do. I hope hon. friends will allow the natives to realize that they are going to have the fullest opportunity of expressing their opinion, because they have a perfect right to do so. Now with regard to the question of territorial segregation, I am not like my hon. friend going into that at the present time I think it has been impressed upon us by the Prime Minister that if we are going to carry out that policy gradually the white man must be determined to do justice to the native, and that the native must be given a reasonable area of ground on which he may reside with his family. In regard to the areas to which this refers a great deal of trouble has been experienced in the purchase of land by natives in certain parts of the country in the areas that have been defined as native areas. The objection on the part of many of the European farmers is owing to the fact that the farm where he lives is intended to be included within a native area. As I pointed out in 1919, if there are certain areas where a native farmer has come amongst five or six European farmers, the state has to take the responsibility of buying that whole block for native occupation. I have no doubt that my hon. friend will find that many cases of that kind have occurred. I feel as one who represents a constituency in which there is a very large number of natives, and as one who holds very strong views as to the necessity of making adequate provision for the natives that I should say that I appreciate very much the remarks that have fallen from the Prime Minister. With reference to the loose talk not alone of territorial but industrial segregation, everyone knows that under existing conditions that is an impossibility. If you were to propose to impose industrial segregation the whole of the farmers of the Union would be up in arms. I hope the Prime Minister realizes when he refers to work being reserved for Europeans on our railways and harbours, that we have not given sufficient credit to the natives for the enormous amount of bone and sinew they have put into these works which have proved of such benefit to South Africa. I am not at all opposed to giving the Europeans every possible chance, but I would say in all earnestness that when you begin to talk about curtailing the rights of the natives to rise in the scale of civilization, you must be extremely careful that you do with absolute justice to both sections of the people. There are many natives in this country—men with cultured minds—who have adopted all the ideas and all the principles of the civilized races and they surely should have, not only an opportunity, but every possible encouragement to rise in the scale of civilization. With that I think the Prime Minister agrees. With regard to the encouragement of a more scientific system of agriculture among the natives in their own territories, an American missionary—the Rev. Mr. East—went through large portions of the native territories carrying with him a plough and a harrow with which he showed the natives how to work, and he also explained the advantages of using proper seeds. At Alice, in my constituency, there is a training institution for natives, and I was surprised to see the ability of some of the natives who are going to become agricultural teachers in the native territories. I am convinced that with a policy of that sort being carried out we could, within a very reasonable time, double the natives’ production of maize and wool. The fairest portion of the Cape Province are the native territories, but there is a certain amount of over-crowding, and the way to deal with that is to send European and native instructors to show the natives how to improve their land. The native readily profits by example. Before I left office I wondered whether some of the machinery of the Agricultural Department could not be utilized for bringing about a better method of agriculture in the native territories. Finally, I would say that I am perfectly certain the Prime Minister’s statement will be read with the greatest satisfaction, not only in the native territories but certainly in the Province of the Cape of Good Hope.

I should also like to make a few remarks in connection with what the hon. the Leader of the Opposition (Gen. Smuts) has said in this debate. I think I have the right to say a few words. I have always taken the greatest interest in the native question, and I am one of those who was always convinced of it that there is no other solution of native difficulties in South Africa than the solution of segregation, so-called. There are of course great difficulties as to the execution thereof, but I think that it is the only principle which will make it possible to create a division in South Africa which will give both races, white and native, a chance of existence. I think that the hon. the Leader of the Opposition was also strongly of this opinion. As he knows, it was actually at my instance that the Bill which contained the principle of segregation was introduced into Parliament in 1913. And the Leader of the Opposition said to me in those days that it was one of the most far-reaching measures that had ever been taken with regard to native policy, and he was very much taken up with it, as he told me personally. Subsequently the position changed, and in recent years the hon. the Leader of the Opposition has opposed the policy. I think that during the election of last year he stated that it was impossible to carry out that policy. I cannot judge whether the change took place in consequence of the influence of friends who sit around him, but everyone who has made a study of the problem sees no other solution, and I know of no other solution which is suggested, except that of despair. There are already today in South Africa people who say that in the long run the kaffir will in any case be the master and that it is better to leave the country. The only solution is segregation. Morris Evans has explained this in his two books, “Black and White in the United States,” and “Black and White in South-Eastern Africa.” And there is another writer, whose name I cannot remember for the moment, who has also written on the same lines. Everybody sees in segregation the only solution. Naturally it cannot be carried out in a day or a year. In that I agree entirely with the hon. Leader of the Opposition. I would like to say this, that possibly a wrong explanation can be given to, and a wrong inference may be drawn from, what the hon. the Prime Minister has said, and that the hon. the Leader of the Opposition is wrong when he says that we can do nothing more than what the previous Government did. What is being done at the moment is only what the former Government did. There were two commissions, the Local Commission and the Beaumont Commission, and the former Government decided to give areas upon which the two commissions agreed to the natives, and not those that lay outside that area. That is now what is being done by the Native Affairs Department and also by my department with regard to the ground involved. But we shall not stop there. If we stop there, then in the first place, as far as I can see, there will not be enough territory for the natives, and in the second place it would not be actually segregation. About the further steps, the hon. the Prime Minister explained that he hoped to be in a position next year to state the policy with relation thereto.

Industrial segregation?

Yes, I think with reference to territorial segregation as well, because if we stop at what the former Government laid down, then the areas will be entirely too small. There may be some places where the area is sufficient, but in most cases it is quite too small and insfficient to carry through segregation. But the hon. the Prime Minister has, notwithstanding, already explained that further steps will be taken. I mention it here because the hon. Leader of the Opposition was wrong in his statement that the present Government are not thinking of going further than the previous Government. We are not stopping at what the former Government did. There is another point upon which I should like to say a few words, and it is also in connection with what the hon. the Leader of the Opposition has said. He did not say it but suggested, or rather I think that it is to be inferred from his words, that the franchise which the natives have in the Cape Province should be extended to the other provinces.

No.

If it is not so, then I understood him wrongly. I took it that that was his meaning that we must not speak of limiting the franchise to the natives in the Cape Province, but that we should rather see how we could extend it to the other provinces.

No.

If that is the case I am pleased, because I can give him the assurance, I am speaking now more particularly on behalf of the Transvaal, that we will absolutely and definitely refuse to allow the natives to get the vote. That is the feeling of everybody, whether they belong to the South African party or to the Nationalist party. It is absolutely out of the question. The hon. member also knows very well that nothing must be done to give the vote to the natives in the northern provinces.

What about the Cape coloured people there?

I am not speaking about coloured people, I am speaking about natives. I repeat that the only way I can see, and the only solution that is suggested, is segregation.

That is what I say.

I am sorry the Prime Minister has left the House, because I rose to ask him a question. He made a statement which we listened to attentively, and which will be hailed with delight by every native in the Union. He told us in future the Beaumont and local committee areas were going to be set apart.

He said they would be Incorporated in the report.

I want to be sure of that. I believe that segregation when boiled down will come to nothing but the present system of native areas. The commission finished their labours a good many years ago, and I wanted to ask the Prime Minister if he would be kind enough to table the diagrams. It is important to the Transvaal, Natal, and Zululand. There are diagrams showing the Beaumont areas, the Stubbs areas and the local areas and they Would be useful to the House and the country if it were known what was involved in the areas. There is more in it than meets the eye. In the last resort segregation will simply mean the fixing of these existing areas. Although the committee’s work finished a long time ago, the diagrams were never published. There is a complete set of them, and it will be useful and informative if we could have them laid on the Table.

I think the Prime Minister has acted wisely in advising the natives at this early stage what the policy of the Government is going to be. He has given the natives the assurance that they will be treated in much the same manner as they were treated by the last Government. I would appeal to the Prime Minister and the members of the Government to try to make themselves acquainted with the lives of the natives in their own homes and in their own country. It may seem strange in this country, but ever since the Act of Union, I don’t think one Prime Minister who has been Minister of Native Affairs has visited the native in his own country. The Prime Minister, in acting as Minister of Native Affairs, is acting in the right capacity, but he should take a little more interest in native affairs. Native matters are not theoritical. It is easy to sit down on the benches in this House and say that the policy should be such, that such a policy should be followed, but when you get to the practical part of it you find it often happens that theories cannot be put into practice. I cannot quite agree with some of the statements made on this side of the House. We in the Cape Province, have given the natives the franchise. In other provinces the natives are getting more enlightened and more intelligent, and they will not sit still and see the Cape natives with franchise rights whilst they are getting no political rights whatsoever. The time is ripe for the country to realize that the natives as a whole, not only the privileged natives in the Cape Province, should be given the right of reprecentation either in this House or in some other manner. I don’t advocate that they should have the same privileges as the natives in the Cape Province, but the time is ripe when we as the body of men laying the foundations of the Union should say whether conditions are not such that we can now justly say of the natives, not only of the Cape Province, but of the other provinces also that they should have some form of representation common to the whole Union. I feel that if this were to be put to the natives of this country, and some such scheme were evolved, the natives of the Cape Province might be prepared, perhaps, to forego certain privileges which they have to-day if they could get something in this way which would satisfy them and satisfy their fellows in other parts of the Union. To say that under no circumstances can the Act of Union be changed, and that under no circumstances will the Act of Union be changed, seems to me to be blocking the door to that development which, I think, in the interests of the natives themselves should take place in this country. I feel with the Prime Minister that the native question is not a question that can be taken up on party political lines. I feel that with this question being brought up year after year in this House, it is going to cause trouble not only amongst the different European sections in this country, but amongst the natives themselves. I welcome the statement of the Prime Minister that he intends to take a greater interest in the agricultural development of the natives. This has been very much neglected in the past, and the natives in the Transkei especially have had to help themselves to develop. The Prime Minister stated that he was assisting the natives to acquire land in the local areas. I would like to ask whether he will extend the same facilities to natives in regard to payment for those lands as he does to Europeans. It seems only right that, if he is going to encourage natives to acquire lands in these particular areas, he should grant them exactly the same privileges that he grants to Europeans. I agree with the statement of the hon. member for Fort Beaufort (Sir Thomas Smartt) that in acquiring land for natives it is useless to get a small farm here and a piece of ground there and place natives in the midst of farms occupied by Europeans. I believe that the ultimate future of the native lies along agricultural lines. I do not agree with the policy advocated by one of my hon. friends here, who said that the place of the native is simply to be a worker on the land and that he must develop in that direction alone. The native should be encouraged to develop on every line, and he should be assisted by the Government, by the House, and by the sympathy of the white people of this country. I think that the policy of procrastination and “wacht-en-beetje,” which we have been following, has been a fatal policy and that it is a policy which is going to land this country in a very serious position and, even though in acting we should act wrongly, it is better to do that than to do nothing at all, for we can always right any wrongs we may commit. Let us try to do something to solve this problem which every year becomes more difficult of solution. Until a solution is reached, we are going to have increased bitterness between black and white in this country. I believe that the feeling between black and white in this country at present is not good. The natives feel that they are not being treated fairly; for some reason or other, they have a feeling of suspicion. I do not know what the cause of it is, but there is no doubt that it exists, and if we are going to accept the invitation of the Prime Minister both for political parties, to meet to discuss the native question, then I say that we should come together as soon as possible.

I must say that, as far as I am concerned, I am extremely disappointed with the statement made by the Prime Minister in connection with this question. I thought this Government would have taken steps to have immediately prevented any further penetration of the native areas of this country by the white population. We have at the present time a white population penetrating our native areas because there happens to be mineral wealth or because land happens to be valuable there, and we are complicating the problem to a far greater extent by this process which is going on every year. I thought immediate steps would have been taken to at least preserve the native territories for the natives, so that they could develop in their own areas. I thought that steps would have been taken to assist the natives to make better use of the land in those territories so as to attract natives from a number of white areas, and that there would have been a system of land-settlement in these native areas and that everything would have been done to assist the natives to govern themselves and advance themselves, socially and economically, in their own separate areas. What do we find? As far as I can understand the Prime Minister, his proposition or idea is that we should continue in this country with a draught-board system, a black-and-white check board, all over South Africa. That is the policy, as far as I know, which has been adopted in the past. This is too big a question to be one of party. I feel that we have made a mistake as a white population in the past by attempting to set up little native areas and white areas all mixed up together. We have seen a great deal of friction recently in connection with this system. The thing that stands in the way of a settlement of the native question in this country is, to my mind, nothing more nor less than the selfishness of the white man, every section and every class of the white community, whether employers or employees, whether landowners or industrial employers. The selfishness of the white population is the biggest stumbling-block to the settlement of the native question on the lines of equity to both white and black. We find that the landed proprietors or the people who wish to go on the land are quite prepared to allocate to the natives, whether in the native territories or anywhere else, land that happens to be stony and unprofitable from a farming point of view.

No.

I know that a great deal of what I have to say will probably be unpopular in many parts of this country. So far as the landed community and the people who wish to go on the land are concerned. I have heard it said repeatedly in this country, that land is too d— good for a native. We hear it often, too, in connection with our locations and municipal areas. They will tell you that this or that piece of low-lying ground is where the native location ought to be. Let us be frank and face the position and face the truth. Continual attempts are being made to strengthen the laws which make the native useful as a cheap labourer, and the general desire is that we should have that cheap labour supply in order that certain people shall be able to make a living or make profits for themselves. We find, too, industrial employers of labour prepared to fight tooth and nail to keep the laws which make the native a hewer of wood and drawer of water. They will go so far as to lay down the wages for the natives while at the same time they say they are out to advance the cause of the natives. Employers of labour in this country, whether mining magnates or people running industrial concerns or commercial concerns—the employing class—take up an attitude based on selfish considerations. And among the working class we find the same thing, the same selfish material outlook standing in the way of the solution of the question. All classes are to blame. Many workers say they must have the cheapest available domestic labour, and the workers also say that the labourer, the man who does the dirty work of the country, must be the cheapest worker, and his wages must be below the civilized standard. It is all based on this idea, that if you have a low-paid class you can have a high-paid supervisor and a high-paid artizan. I find in all classes of the community a selfish outlook and the idea of material gain, causing the exploitation of the cheap paid native of this country, and that is the greatest obstacle to the consideration of this question and arriving at a proper solution. It is bad for both races that we should have, as in the suburbs of Cape Town, and even in parts of Johannesburg, whites and blacks all mixed up. Take a run out to Observatory, Salt River, etc., and you will find blacks and whites living cheek by jowl. The population as a whole degenerates under these conditions. I will say that there is not a man in this House to-day who is entirely free from colour prejudice. Every one of us has a certain amount of it.

What do you suggest?

I said that I expected to hear from the Prime Minister that the whites and blacks would be prevented from going into each other’s territory and that the natives would be assisted to develop their areas. The advanced educated natives have no more desire to mix with the whites than many of the whites have to mix with the natives. Then the Government should have taken up immediately the question of political segregation. It is no use the white community saying you have got to extend the franchise to the natives or that you must take it away, because you immediately find that it is made a party question. It has been put to me by men in the Cape that we should allow the natives representation in this House in order to do justice to the native. If we are going to do justice to the native we must allow him not only to elect representatives to this House, but to elect their own people to this House. Many persons say we will only allow them a certain number of seats. If you are going to enfranchise the native, in justice he must be put on the same basis as the white man. I thought the Prime Minister would have taken immediate steps to segregate the natives politically, not by taking away what they had. For example, you might have eastern, southern or western constituencies and each constituency would vote as a whole and send representatives to this House. If these native territories are not large enough, let us have land in the vicinity and let us have proper segregation, and in the native territories let the natives develop their own Government and later on say that in the white parts no native shall have a vote and in the black areas no white man shall have a say in the government of that area, and that the natives shall be assisted to the greatest possible extent by the white Government of South Africa. I have put the position as I see it, from the point of view of a man with a wife and family born in this country, and I am here putting forward the view of the man in the street, that if you are going to attempt to retain the native as a hewer of wood and drawer of water and attempt to keep him down by repressive measures, he is going to beat the white worker in the economic field and there will be no room for the white population. We have to provide, as in other countries, for every man who is not mentally capable of rising above the stage of a labourer. Some men are born better equipped mentally or physically than others, and there is a large white population in this country for whom there is no room in the artizan class or the professional class. We must provide for the unskilled or semi-skilled man, and we cannot do that so long as we allow a selfish, materialistic outlook to actuate us. Unless we eliminate the materialistic and class way of looking at these things we are bound to have failure. I hope what I have said will not be taken in a party spirit. We can work together, irrespective of party, to bring about a solution of this problem in the interests of both the black and the white inhabitants of this country.

Sometimes one has had discussions with one’s friends as to what the real value of Parliament is. Sometimes it is measured by the output. In this matter I agree with Bacon. Bacon laid it down that the function of Parliament is too deliberate and educate public feeling and its value is not to be measured by the extent of its output. When we talk about such education included in that is the education of opinion in this House I could not help thinking of that while I listened to the hon. member for Brakpan (Mr. Waterston). I could not imagine that ten years ago he would have spoken as he has spoken to-day, and I do not believe he could have imagined it either. But people cannot advocate some of the views which the hon. member has just expressed, and at the same time, support a colour bar in industry or anywhere else. They could not advocate such things as the Wages Bill.

The Wages Bill?

If we are sincere and honest in these things we must not only preach these political doctrines; we must carry them out. We, on this side of the House, listened with the greatest pleasure to the speech the Prime Minister made this afternoon. The Prime Minister will appreciate that while we may differ from him in some of the details of the proposals that he may bring forward, we shall do so in a non-party spirit and where we differ it will be upon principle. Our Parliamentary growth as to native policy has been based on different principles in the south from those in the north. The function of Parliament is to bring together the people who hold those different views in such a way as to induce them to seek the national view. So we are with the Prime Minister in that. The greatest feature of the Prime Minister’s speech this afternoon was the part in which he endeavoured to emphasize the great fact that there must be justice in dealing with the natives. But it is obvious that principles of that sort must not be mere statements, or they are apt to become truisms and platitudes. They must be translated into practice. I differ from the Prime Minister when he says that the white man cannot be blamed if, in the first place, he looks after himself. I think that when we approach the solution of the problem in that spirit we are really approaching it in what the Minister of Lands calls the principle of despair. I cannot believe we are going to find a successful solution in that spirit. I do not think there is any necessary discrepancy between the interests of the black man and those of the white man. In looking after the interests of the state as a whole the white man will, I believe, find a solution which will also safeguard his own interests. I think that during the 40 or 50 years or longer that this problem has been of first rate importance in South Africa we have made enormous strides particularly in bringing together the two points of view which I have referred to, those of the north and the south. I should like to say something with regard to political segregation, particularly when the Minister of Lands indicated that the door must be bolted and barred against any idea of political development. The Prime Minister said we must give the native scope to exist and develop. But develop how? The lands must be such as will enable them to develop territorially, and there must also be industrial development. What reason is there that there should not be political development as well? I know we are dealing with different grades of civilization, but we have an admirable method to hand in what is known as the general council system, especially as worked in the Transkei. I do not know whether the Prime Minister has considered that system or whether it is applicable to the Transvaal, but I do know that it has been successful. Anyone who reads the annual reports of the proceedings of the Transkeian General Council will realize that We have there an example from which to develop as far as is consonant with the different conditions in different parts of the country. We have something there to develop along the right lines politically and industrially for the native I am glad to think that as far as territorial segregation is concerned, the tentative policy announced by the Prime Minister is really only the old policy of reserves for natives. The hon. member for Brakpan (Mr. Waterston) said that the white man must not penetrate the native territories. I do not know whether he knows that those territories are set aside by law in such a way that they cannot be penetrated. We only questioned the accuracy of the hon. member’s statement because it is correct by law that these lands are set apart for the natives. I do agree thoroughly with the hon. member for Brakpan that to treat the native merely as a hewer of wood and drawer of water would be a policy fatal to us as a white race, and I disagree with the views of the hon. member for Illovo (Mr. Marwick) as to restricting the scope of labour of the native. Apart from the native question, I should like to raise a point to which I hope the Prime Minister will reply in the absence of the Minister of Justice. On Monday in this House the Minister of Justice made a statement, which was regarded as very reassuring by members on this side of the House and by people outside, as to the method he proposed to adopt in regard to the language question in the service. He told the House what he had done in regard to certain Natal police, and we received his statement with great pleasure. He, further, said that in regard to the police force, as far as promotion, superannuation and entrance were concerned, he would be guided by efficiency, and would not allow the language-bar to affect them. I ventured to say: “Why didn’t you say this before,” as this would have avoided a great deal of misunderstanding. In yesterday afternoon’s and in this morning’s papers a notice appears to which I wish to draw the Prime Minister’s attention. While the Minister made his statement on Monday this notice—and I should like to know whether it is correct—was issued on Saturday—

That was the circular to which a great deal of attention was drawn in this House. The Order proceeds—

What we wish to know is what is the reconciliation between this general order and the statement of the Minister of Justice on Monday, because there is added significance in that the words “failing subject” and “official languages of the Union” are underlined. That hits directly at the very point which we were so anxious about in regard to pre-Union officials and men, and those coming under the Acts of 1912 and 1923, which give them a five years’ period of qualification. I should have liked to drop the subject after the assurance of the Minister, but I feel I cannot refrain from asking how these two statements are to be reconciled. Are there any general orders about entrance examinations? It would appear that this general order definitely bars those who are given five years for qualifying from promotion, although that is guaranteed by Act of Parliament. This general order probably acts as a bar in regard to the entrance examination. It means that a man may be barred though he is as efficient as possible and of long standing in the service; and we must remember that there are many pre-Union officials still in the police force who have come from some of the finest forces in the world—the London Metropolitan police, the Irish constabulary, and the Canadian North-West mounted—men who are top-hole men at their job. These are essentially the men whom the Minister said he was going to protect, by giving efficiency the first chance. This Order, as far as we can see, is entirely inconsistent with what the Minister said. Natal was promised special exemption, but according to the press, it is not exempt from this order. Here we have a new position and a new difficulty. We should like to know whether the Prime Minister can give us a statement once for all, so that we may have an authoritative pronouncement from the Cabinet on this point. I believe he can arrive at a solution by which, following the lines of the statutory rights that have been laid down, he can get all that is wanted without doing an injustice to anybody. The worst of all, possibly, in my opinion, is not the hardship that is involved, but the feeling of unrest, uneasiness and turmoil in the service, I submit unnecessarily. You cannot have efficiency when people fear an axe is going to fall on them. We want a happy and efficient service.

I was also glad to hear the statement of the Prime Minister’s policy in connection with the native problem. But in the first place I wish to take the opportunity of asking the Prime Minister whether I understood him correctly on a specific point. It is in connection with what we regard as native areas. The native strips which were recommended by the first commission, the Beaumont Commission, and those that were indicated by the local commission taken together or only the areas upon which the two commissions agreed?

So far as the two agree. I said so this afternoon.

I am thankful and pleased to have the answer of the Prime Minister. It is therefore quite plain that the areas where the two commissions agree shall be provisionally regarded as native areas. Well, this agrees also with the decision taken by the previous Government. To this extent great satisfaction existed at least in my district. Great satisfaction also exists about the resolution of the Prime Minister to send round the permanent Natives Affairs Commission into the various districts to find out what the wishes of the white population are about native areas. A large meeting was, e.g., held in my constituency of which proper notice was given beforehand, and at this meeting the various portions of the population were represented. I do not doubt but the Native Affairs Commission has already made a report about the matter. It appeared at the meeting that the report of the Local Commission, the Stubbs Report, was most unpopular. It appears that the commission did not act entirely according to the wishes and intention of the population in the fixing of the native areas. Why? I do not speak of areas where minerals exist. It goes without saying that the Government reserves those rights, but dissatisfaction reigns because the Stubbs Commission considered as native areas magnificent, irrigated farms which produce thousands and thousands of bags of wheat and which were given by the Beaumont Commission to whites, and precisely the same applies to the area where cotton is being grown on a large scale and which is known to us as the Bosbokrand. This also was included by the local commission under the native area. The hon. the Prime Minister will understand that great dissatisfaction arose in consequence. The population look to the Native Affairs Commission as an interpreter to bring its grievances before the Government. The explanation of the Prime Minister gives us a great deal of light, because we now know that the report of the Stubbs Commission provisionally will not be applied. In connection with this, I should like further to point out to the Prime Minister that it will be necessary to withdraw a circular of the Native Affairs Department. A certain circular was issued expressly instructing native commissioners that Government ground lying inside the areas indicated by the local commission could, as native areas, not be let to white people, but only to natives. I wish to point out to him that if only the areas about which the two commissions agree can be treated as native areas, it becomes necessary to withdraw the circular issued by the Native Affairs Department.

When was that issued?

Last year; but I cannot say if it was done under the new Government. But it makes no difference. It is a matter of fact.

What are the contents of the circular?

Instructions are given that ground set apart by the Stubbs Commission for native areas must not be let to whites, but only to natives. This is regarded as a departure from the principle that it applies only for areas pointed out by both commissions. I hope that the hon. Minister will see the necessity of going into the matter and withdrawing the circular, so that ground chat has been indicated by the local commission alone can again be let to white persons. This is the chief point that I want to bring to the notice of the Minister. When I say that great dissatisfaction exists regarding the report of the local commission, then I want to throw no blame on the chairman of the commission, Mr. Stubbs, who was then Native Commissioner for Zoutpansberg, and is now a magistrate. I have read a pamphlet of his where he deals with the native problem in a very capable way and he is very well informed regarding native questions. But dissatisfaction exists because the best land in the district is appropriated as native areas and which is particularly suited to Europeans. When we see how the natives have entirely neglected irrigation in the areas where they have been in possession for 70 to 80 years, how not even a little water furrow out of a stream is cut, then we should not proceed to give up our best land to the natives, with the consequence that the ground will be lying useless. Where can you find a native who takes any trouble to do any irrigation? We hope and trust therefore that the Prime Minister and also the Minister of Lands, in so far as his department is concerned in the matter, will not regard the report as a law of the Medes and Persians, but that they will themselves visit our district and observe the whole position, and also that the wishes of the population will be personally and carefully considered by them.

I think the whole country will appreciate the warning that has been given by the right hon. the Leader of the Opposition this afternoon. In very solemn tones he told us what some of us already knew, but it will perhaps come with more influence from him than from others, that there is a feeling of unrest amongst the natives right through this country. On every hand we have evidence that the natives feel unsettled and disturbed. I do not know whether the hon. member for Standerton (Gen. Smuts) has finished his great fight with the Chamber of Mines, Johannesburg, but if he has, I would like to ask him to pursue thoroughly an enquiry into what is causing this unrest. It may interest him from this point of view: he may find that those with whom he associated are the same dangerous characters who wrought so much havoc in this country in the past. He will find those he has thought to be friends are the men who wrecked Jameson, who brought down Rhodes, and who shook the faith of the people in Gen. Botha. I want to draw his attention to the kind of thing that emanates from the Chamber of Mines on this particular question. Before I read a short extract, so as to give the exact wording, I want to point out that “Umtételi wa Bantu” is a native paper to which the natives are turning their attention, and from which they seek guidance. That paper could not last a month if it were not for the subsidy which is paid by the very people from whom the right hon. the Leader of the Opposition draws inspiration, whilst his party, it is reported, draws more substantial assistance. Of course the Chamber of Mines at Johannesburg would at once deny that they subsidize it, “Umteteli,” but it is undoubted that the money for this native organ comes from the particular mining sources we choose to designate in the concrete term the Chamber of Mines. Once you make the assertion that the Chamber of Mines pay the money, they will at once say they pay no money at all. But those who run this paper could not run it unless they obtained money from the same source as has flung this country into danger time after time. “Umteteli wa Buntu” of February 28th says—

That, then, is what this paper exists for, and I hope the serious warning which the right hon. the Leader of the Opposition (Gen. Smuts) has given will reach those responsible, and that they will be brought face to face with the serious statement that we are to have ultimate domination of South Africa by the black races. That is the doctrine being preached by our capitalist friends. Is there anything more likely to drive capital from the country than this sort of teaching, paid for by mining money to unsettle the native of the country, and to keep things in a ferment on the understanding that the black is going to be paramount and dominant in South Africa. There are some others who are determined that we will uphold white supremacy in South Africa, and those who follow us will also be prepared to see that white supremacy remains unchallenged whatever these papers say. One thing is going to remain; we are going to be the dominant race. There is not going to be any question of dominance by the black. I hope the reading of an extract like this will awaken the hon. member to the seriousness of being associated longer With those who did so much to assure his own downfall in the electoral fight. I hope, indeed, he, and those associated with him, will realize what they are saying to the native races in the way of encouraging natives to suppose they can fill the place of the white man in industrial effort, and ultimately assume government of this country.

I don’t want to follow the hon. member who has just sat down in lowering the tone of the debate, but I want to ask the hon. member whether he suggests that any friends of this side have instigated or inspired that article. It seems to me very much as if the hon. member for Pretoria (West) (Mr. Hay) has the Chamber of Mines on the brain, and I will leave it at that. I would like to refer to the incorporation of Swaziland. I am not going to worry the House with the reasons why we on the border think Swaziland should be incorporated in the Union. I was one of the deputation to the Prime Minister, and we put our grievances before him. I may perhaps emphasize one thing. The Dutch community in my part of the world feel strongly Swaziland’s refusal to have bilingualism in any shape or form. All their documents have got to be in English, and I would commend to the Prime Minister, perhaps, if he puts in a word, they may take a friendlier attitude. We have got so many documents in Dutch and it irritates very much when they have to be re-drawn in English. I don’t want to lay all our grievances before the House, but I think it time to emphasize the position we have taken up in connection with Swaziland as one of three territories outside the Union, but treated as one under the Act of Union. We did not let it go by default at the time of Union. Swaziland is entirely different from Basutoland or Bechuanaland. I was very pleased to hear the Prime Minister say that he would treat these two territories on entirely different footings in trying to bring them in together or keep them out together. Sir George Farrar, speaking in the Transvaal Parliament when the Act of Union was under discussion, said:

I said at the time that I considered it my duty as a representative of one of the eastern districts of the Transvaal to give my hearty support to the hint given by the leader of the Opposition, and that it was our duty to see that Swaziland was united to the Transvaal, provided that the Union of South Africa was not imperilled. We felt that we should not do anything which would, in any way, imperil Union, or make matters difficult and it was left there. There is one other point. It may be only a rumour, but there is a considerable amount of fear in the Eastern Transvaal about a rumour which is going abroad that the Prime Minister intends, when Swaziland comes into the Union, to segregate most of it as a native area.

I thought segregation was complete there.

It is in so far as the natives have one-third and the whites two-thirds, but there is a fear that the larger portion of the white portion of Swaziland will be set aside to accommodate natives of the Transvaal. I do not think there is any justification for that fear, but there is no question about it that many people there say we should not agitate for the incorporation of Swaziland, because that is what is going to happen. Coming to the native question generally, if I understood the Prime Minister correctly, he said that the position was easy in 1913, and since then it has become more difficult. I happened to be one of the members of the Beaumont Commission, and I can tell him that on one point we are all agreed and that was that it was a great pity that we couldn’t tackle the question 25 years sooner. We felt then that it was almost impossible to arrive at any conclusion that would satisfy the natives to some extent and be acceptable to the white. That is 12 years ago. I agree with the Prime Minister that the lapse of time alone is making the matter very much more difficult to-day, but I hold that it is going to be much more difficult in 10 or 15 years, if we let matters slide. I would urge that we should push the matter forward. If we make mistakes, let us realize our mistakes and then try in another direction to settle this great question. That is why I was rather disappointed that the Prime Minister should have said that they would pretty well go on the same lines as at present, and let the natives remain in those areas where both the commissions have agreed. One of the great objections which the Beaumont Commission found on the part of white people against their ground being placed in native areas was this—

If there is still ground available in those areas where both the commissions agree, and the Government intends settling the natives there, it seems to me that it is high time that we considered the question of the Government purchasing or expropriating this ground at fair prices. If the natives do not buy them the European will buy those private farms. I venture to make these few remarks because I know what a difficult subject it is. I know the outcry there was in the House in 1917 when the report of the Beaumont Commission was brought before the House. As the hon. member for Lydenburg (Mr. Nieuwenhuize) says, it gave more satisfaction than the subsequent one, but it was not acceptable to the natives and it caused such an outcry that although we spent the whole session, in Select Committee, to try to bring something out of it, at the end we could not come to any conclusion. That is why I think he should consider the matter of purchasing, either by expropriation or otherwise, the ground which to-day belongs to private people in these areas where both commissions agreed. And, of course, these grounds are becoming more valuable and I do not think the Government would be doing bad business by so doing. The Prime Minister has stated that the Government ground in these two areas will be sold to natives.

Will be reserved to be leased or sold.

Well, then, the Prime Minister is not yet in a position to say how that ground would be sold to the natives.

As a rule it is leased.

I want to say a word in regard to the reference made by the hon. member for Ermelo (Col.-Cdt. Collins) about the hon. member for Pretoria (West) (Mr. Hay). I do not think for a moment that he could have given the question mentioned by the hon. member sufficient thought, or I am certain he would not have made the remark he did. I want to assure him that it is not simply a question of a certain paper being backed by the Chamber of Mines, or anybody else, that is disturbing the minds of a considerable portion of the population of the Transvaal, but the fact that the paper is being used to-day to create a certain amount of friction, distrust, and mischief between the two races, the white population and the black population of South Africa.

That was not the chief point.

That is the chief point of his bringing up this particular matter in the House, and I want to assure the hon. member that those of us who have kept a collection of the leading articles of that paper for a considerable time, have been very much disturbed about its tone, and I cannot help feeling that it is not in the interests of the native population or the white population, and certainly not in the interests of their harmonious working together in South Africa, that that kind of literature should be disseminated in this country. I want to say further that, if I am not very much mistaken, it is simply in order that certain people may be able to exploit a couple of hundred thousand natives—cheap labour—not caring a scrap about the white population and the disturbing influences of the cheap labour element in the development of our industrial life in South Africa. I hope that something can be done. I am certain that if any labour paper had published some of the things that have been published in that paper we should have had the hon. member for Rondebosch (Mr. Close) on his feet long ago, talking about Bolshevism and of its disturbing influences, upsetting the economic and industrial life of this country. But here is a paper which goes far beyond anything I have seen emanating from Russia, and it emanates, I am told, from the Corner House. So that evidently the Corner House is really the Birth place of this Bolshevistic spirit in this country.

Are you sure about your facts?

But not only that, they are infusing the spirit of Bolshevism into the black population of South Africa. That is one of the alarming effects. With regard to the native question, I can quite understand the great caution that has been exercised not only by the present Prime Minister but by the right hon. member for Standerton (Gen. Smuts) in dealing with this question; because, after all, we have all agreed for quite a long time, and it has become a commonplace, that this is about the biggest question we have to tackle here in South Africa. Personally, that has always been at the back of my own mind in approaching this question—that it should be approached with a great deal of caution and handled with a great deal of delicacy. The question of suitable areas for the native population is said to have become more difficult every year, but I cannot help feeling that unless we do tackle this question of suitable areas there is very little hope of ever coming to an adequate solution of the native problem. Ultimately we shall have to tackle it, and the sooner we do so the better it will be in the interests of the settlement of the question. The question of segregation in many ways is engraved in the minds of the population. We have already segregation to some extent. I find nobody in South Africa who believes it is a good policy to have; and I find very few people who have any idea of bringing the native into more intimate relations with the social life of the white community; so that in the mind of the people there is this fixed belief, that to some extent segregation is the only policy upon which we can proceed. The question arises, can we accomplish segregation when it effects the various industries in the country? We are prepared for segregation socially and to some extent in other ways, but when it comes to dealing with segregation and industrialism, that is exactly where we have failed, and yet I am convinced that it is in the interests of the native population that we should have a larger measure of segregation than we have to-day. I look at the native population as being in an entirely different stage of development, and while we have a certain number of natives fairly highly developed—say 10 per cent.—we have 90 per cent, in an entirely different stage, and we have to face the whole question of the evolutionary development of this race, and the question arises as to whether that development is best to be attained in close touch with a population which has been elevated and developed to a certain extent for hundreds of years, or whether they shall develop according to the principles of evolution in a place separate from this white population and guided according to the best principles, and the highest education and from the knowledge we have gained during those years. I believe that is the right line to go upon. It will of necessity be slow, but I think that slowness will be all to the good, and that they will be built up far more securely if we were to segregate them territorially, give them the advantage of our experience, help them to develop along their own lines, to develop instincts of Government for themselves and link the educational system more and more to the needs of their life. I had hoped the Prime Minister would have given us a little more information about the possibility of extending the native territories. The question has concerned us for many years, and I want to ask hon. members like the hon. member for Rondebosch (Mr. Close) to realize that the working man has a point of view on this matter. He is not necessarily opposed to the native or to his development, but he can see that the present policy is going to make it impossible for the European to remain in this country and for his children to have an opportunity of development here. The matter has two sides, and at present it is going almost entirely against the European’s chances of developing in South Africa. Those of us who know anything about industry, know that you have to begin at the bottom. But at the present time nearly all the rough work is done by natives and the sons of South Africa are losing their chances of mastering the details of industry in this country. If this is to be the policy of South Africa, we must face the inevitable position that we are going to annihilate the white man so far as industry here is concerned. We have no love of a colour bar or any artificial barriers. We know that a colour bar gives nothing but a temporary protection. It is a temporary measure to stem the tide. There is nothing morally wrong for the white man to ask that at least he should have an opportunity in industry equal to the ratio of population. Who created the industry, who put the capital and brains into it? Did not the white man do that, and is he now to be crushed because a certain element asks that the industry shall be run with the cheapest labour obtainable? In the old country to-day half the population of Lancashire are on the streets because the capital is being transferred to India where labour can be got at 6d. and 9d. a day.

Whose fault is that?

The Labour party’s.

These people worked from the beginning on miserable wages, and now they can live with a measure of decency they find that capital is transferred to a country where there is cheap labour. I would fight for the rights of the native people, but at the same time there is nothing morally wrong in defending the rights of the white community. We are not against the native. We are against the man who is exploiting the native in order to crush the white workers.

Do you apply that statement to the farmer?

To the whole country. Why differentiate? The farmer is employing more white people to-day. I have a letter here mentioning a farmer who has employed a white man and has gained through his superior skill and organizing ability. I hope the farmers will come to see that the white man can work as an agricultural labourer and give better service on account of his greater ability than the black man. Why should we always think the only man who can work effectively as an agricultural labourer should be a black man? They shall have their place in the days to come, and I know when that day comes the farming community will have no objection to employing a large measure of white labour. What we ask is for a fair chance in industry for white labour, and that the native and white shall be able to work in their various communities harmoniously without such papers as have been mentioned sowing the seeds of discord and mistrust, and upsetting the whole of the racial relations of the people.

The hon. member for Rondebosch (Mr. Close) asked a question in regard to the general order issued by the police which was published in the “Argus” yesterday. This general order states that in the examination for promotion the two official languages of the country shall be failing subjects. I asked Col. Truter about this order this morning, because, of course, a good many of these things seem to appear in the press before a Minister knows anything of the orders in his own department, and we are becoming accustomed to this state of affairs. Col. Truter told me that the news is correct—this; is a general order issued by the Police Department. I may say at once that the order will not be allowed to come into conflict with the law in any respect whatever, or to interfere in any way whatever with the exceptional cases in which one allows promotion according to my police circular. Hon. members can rest assured that no police circular exists which is not governed by the terms of my general circular. I am now speaking about the old entrants into the service. As far as new entrants are concerned, I have felt that one should not make a definite rule that such entrants should be bilingual, but so far as new entrants are concerned, I do not think there are many cases in which promotion will be allowed to take place where such new entrants do not qualify themselves in both languages.

During the five years?

In practice you are not likely to have promotion of a new recruit within five years.

You will allow them to enter?

I have made that clear. I have actually approved of several such entrants. Very possibly I shall find men whom I have allowed to enter are men of a very special type, as I know we are attracting a superior class into the police. I want to make this finally clear, that so far as the present men are concerned the big test is efficiency. I anticipate that we shall have a fairly large number of exceptional cases for which I must provide and possibly with regard to the new entrants some exceptions, although certainly not so many. There may be men, for instance, in a finger-print bureau, not coming into contact with the public. You may be able to make exceptions in regard to new entrants, but as a general rule, they will have to become bilingual before they are promoted. I think that is a fair rule. Therefore, whatever the terms of this general order, they are governed by my circular, which makes provision for exceptional cases.

It would have been much more straightforward to withdraw this circular.

I am not going to withdraw the circular for this reason, that it has already done a vast amount of good. I had a discussion with Col. Truter this morning, and he told me there is no trouble in the police. He says the men in the police to-day are laying themselves out to learn the second language, and that they began to do so much more seriously after that circular was issued. I am very much afraid that these discussions in the House may cause them to lose that desire to learn, and I do not wish to take away the incentive from them to learn the second language. Nor do I want to give our police the idea that there is going to be any harshness. I must steer a course between these two roads.

The last circular said the official languages would be failing subjects.

That is not a circular; it is a general order by the police officers which cannot over-ride my circular, and must be read in the light of that circular. If a man is thoroughly efficient he will get promotion even if he fails.

Your circular says they must pass a viva voce examination.

It does say so.

Why not modify it?

Its own terms modify it, because it provides for exceptional cases. I have not the faintest intention of withdrawing the circular or altering its terms in any respect whatever.

I wish to refer to the chart which was attached to the Beaumont Commission’s report. This gives the figures, so far as the four provinces are concerned, of the areas which have been set aside in perpetuity for native occupation, but also the areas occupied by natives on privately-owned land. In the Free State the area is 1.5 per cent. of the total area of the province; in the Transvaal it is 15.2 per cent.; in Natal it is 43.1 per cent.—nearly half the whole area of Natal— and in the Cape it is 9.4 per cent. From this it will be seen that so far as Natal is concerned we have treated the natives very fairly, as they are occupying and using nearly one-half of the total area. I wish to point out the fact that owing to the equable rainfall which we have always been blessed with in Natal, you will find that none of the descendants from the original stock of Voortrekkers and English pioneers who settled in Natal have become poor whites. It would, therefore, be very wrong if any further land were taken away in Natal for the purpose of native occupation. There is undoubtedly a certain amount of infiltration from the Free State into Natal of surplus natives which should be stopped immediately.

When the House adjourned I was giving figures showing the total area of land in the various provinces available for native occupation. These figures are different from those given by the hon. member for Illovo (Mr. Marwick), who dealt only with areas set aside in perpetuity for native occupation, but mine included those areas in the various provinces which are occupied by natives on private farms. Natal has always endeavoured to deal fairly and justly by the native. That has been the policy from the beginning, and we in Natal naturally feel that we have given far more land to the natives than any other province in the Union, and we object to any further land being taken When the commission came to Natal the people there were, naturally, very much concerned when they found that the object of the commission was to ascertain whether there was any other land in Natal available for native areas. The people in Natal naturally asked the question how it was that the commission was not visiting the Free State but was confining itself to Natal and the northern part of the Transvaal. The rest of the Union did not come under the enquiry which the commission have to deal with. We know, in the Cape Province, that the Native Land Settlement Act does not apply, under a judgment of the Appellate Court, and it finally decides that this policy of segregation can never apply to the Cape Province unless we alter the Act of Union. The local commission in the Free State suggest in their report that surplus natives in the Free State should be dumped into Natal, and they actually went so far as to suggest what they considered suitable areas. The Eastern Transvaal local committee suggested that their native surplus should be dumped into Zululand. There was great perturbation in the minds of people in Natal after these reports. Natal will with mixed feelings and misgivings receive the Prime Minister’s statement this afternoon, when he told us it was not the Government’s intention to take further areas for natives, but would carry out the policy of the late Government in this respect. The Natal people will, I believe to a certain extent, welcome that statement because they felt there was an intention on the part of the Government to take further land in Natal for native occupation. They are opposed to a further inch of land being granted to the natives. The hon. member for Ermelo (Col.-Cdt. Collins) made a suggestion, that the Government should take into serious consideration the acquisition of land within the native areas owned or occupied by Europeans. I believe that is a suggestion which should be fully explored because the unfortunate landowners in these areas are placed in an impossible position owing to the restriction placed on them in the sale of their land. They cannot obtain money from the banks, and are unable to develop their land as they don’t know what their future position will be. They are restricted in every sense of the word. In the neutral areas I threw out the suggestion that the Government might seriously consider the acquisition of all the land owned by natives in these neutral areas. I now come to what I consider a very serious position in the native locations. There is no proper system or organized control in the native locations. There is a tremendous waste of land owing to the lack of supervision. There is no restriction as to the number of stock natives may run. I speak more particularly with regard to Natal, but I presume the same applies to the other provinces. They plough the sides of the hills, with the result there is a tremendous amount of erosion. Instead of adopting the system of making terraces to stop the erosion, they plough and plant without any proper system all over the country. I hope the Government will accept the suggestion to train the native so that he may use the land more beneficially than at present, as I believe that under a proper system of supervision the native locations could hold more than double the number they do at present. I was sorry to hear the remarks that came from the hon. members on the cross benches. After the suggestion of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, one would have thought that they would have desisted from the perpetual cry of “war on the capitalists.” One would have thought that they would have left this pet cry of theirs in the background, but they insist upon raising it on every possible occasion. This is a question which should be discussed unbridled by party politics. It is a vital national question, to be dealt with by each member honestly and freely, and we should bury all party feelings and try together to find a solution of the greatest question this country has to face now, and will have to face in the future. The Prime Minister said this afternoon that the native should be taught industrially in his own area, and instead of a horizontal bar there should be a vertical bar. What will be the ultimate result if this policy is adopted? If you give the native a fair chance he will come into serious competition with the European, and members on the cross-benches will then agitate for an embargo to prevent him from sending the goods he manufactures in his own area into the European area. The time will come, if you carry out that policy, when the native will become a greater menace than he is to-day. If you are going to make the native an agriculturist and a pasturist, you may solve the question temporarily, but the time will come when you will have an overflow of natives and you will have to take further land from the European. Whichever way you go you will find difficulties. It was suggested by the hon. member for Roodepoort (Rev. Mr. Mullineux) that eventually the farmers in the country will have to employ European labour. I would like to put a few points on this. Take, for instance, the wattle industry, which originally came from Australia. It is an indigenous tree from Australia, and we in Natal, to-day, are sending wattle bark to Australia because, owing to white-labour in Australia, they cannot produce the wattle bark at a profit to the grower. The wattle industry is worth one and a half million pounds a year, and it has only been possible to develop this industry on cheap native labour. In Australia, where only white labour is used, the land is very much better than it is in South Africa for the production of sugar, and yet they have had to subsidize their sugar very heavily. Then we come to the cotton industry. If we are going to employ white labour in the cotton industry, I can assure the House that that industry will go to the wall. It is only due to the cheap native labour that we have for picking the cotton that we have every hope or making that industry a great and prosperous industry in this country. I can tell hon. members on the cross-benches that the farmers of this country will never agree to do away with the native labour on the farms, because, if they had to do so, they could not possibly exist. South Africa is a poor country agriculturally; there are only small pockets in South Africa which are really first-class agricultural ground. It is only due to the cheap native labour which we have on the farms that the farmer is able to make the small living that he does. Let me tell hon. members on the cross-benches that the man who is a skilled labourer is making a very much better living than the majority of farmers in South Africa. He has got a better income at the end of the year than the majority of farmers in this country. There is one more point, and it is one that I would like to call the attention of the Prime Minister to particularly. I think the time has come when we should once and for all decide to alter the laws of this country governing the social relations as between the whites and blacks. The law to-day provides that any white woman who has immoral relations with a black man creates a criminal offence, but this does not apply to the white man and the native woman.

The hon. member must not discuss matters which will require special legislation.

I am only making a suggestion that this be taken into consideration.

The hon. member may ask a question or refer incidentally to it, but he must not discuss the matter.

I would, therefore, ask the Prime Minister whether he will take into consideration this very vital matter, which is one that is creating a great deal of trouble and unhappiness throughout the country.

There is no doubt that when the policy of segregation was given voice to during the last election, a tremendous wave of excitement went through the native areas of this country, and I think there is no section in South Africa that will welcome the Prime Minister’s declaration this afternoon more than the natives themselves. I do hope, however, that before the legislation which he has foreshadowed is introduced next year, he will make a personal visit to the territories and see for himself the actual conditions which prevail there and the development which has taken place. I would like to say to the hon. member for Brakpan (Mr. Waterston) that he need have no fear of white men penetrating the native territories to the disadvantage of the natives. There is no European penetration in those districts. He also need be under no apprehension that the worst land in the Union is devoted to the natives, since the Transkeian Territories comprise some of the finest grazing, arable, and pastoral lands in South Africa, and those lands are sacred to the natives for all time. There has been a tremendous development in those Territories under a very high form of self-government. You have in the Transkeian district councils self-government in its very best form. The revenue, which is derived entirely from the natives themselves, amounted in 1924 to the large sum of £92,237. That amount is administered under the directorship of some of the most capable officials in the Union by the natives themselves in their councils. They spent on roads £38,000, on scholastic education £18,000, and on agricultural and industrial education £23,800. They have three agricultural schools there. At the school at Tsolo they have 50 native students who come from the four provinces of the Union to obtain agricultural training, for which they pay a fee of £10 a year annually. I would very strongly urge the gradual extension of this council system to other parts of the Union. I believe that it is very largely on the lines of agriculture development that you are going, I do not say to solve the native question, but you are going to do a tremendous lot in that direction, and I think, bearing in mind that the native is an agriculturalist by nature, if you give him an opportunity of developing himself agriculturally you will to a very great extent relieve the pressure which is now felt in industrial centres owing to competition from native labour. Many natives will always choose to work in the towns and in industry, but I firmly believe that the love the native has for the land and all it means to him will always induce the very great majority to choose the life on the land, but our policy must be framed on the methods of agricultural education so soundly started in the Transkei, to teach the people to get the most and the best out of the land. In this way we shall obviate the necessity of much of the objectionable and drastic legislation which we have before us framed to exclude the native from the right to develop as a skilled workman. I do feel very strongly that if the white man’s supremacy in this country is to be bolstered up by artificial barriers it will only be a temporary solution of the question. The barriers will come down in the end, and in that day the supremacy of the white man is going to be in far greater danger than if we had developed the natives on their own lines and treated them with that justice which is their due.

I have a question to put to the Minister, but the debate has been so protracted on this question of native policy that, before I put my question, I cannot ignore what has been preceding, and I would like to make one reference to the question which is before the House. I trust later on, that an opportunity will be given when one can fairly deal with this native question, or rather, as some people call it, the native problem. It is only a problem because we are always hesitating to take the right course. In reference to the policy of repression let me say that repression will eventually react against us as a white race. Another phrase I have heard today is that we are going to be the dominant race. I would like to ask what is dominance. Is dominance of the white race going to depend upon a policy of arranging that skilled labour shall be reserved for white people? I will not deal with this question now, but I am asking and seeking information on a matter of grave and great importance to the farming industry of South Africa, more particularly to the cattle industry. It seems to me futile, and almost farcical, for me to ask for this information when I see constantly so very few of the Ministers on their benches here. We know, as the hon. member for Parktown (Mr. Rockey) stated last night, that the sound of the pibroch brings the tune to us of the “The Campbells are coming,” and that may, perhaps, partly account for the absence of some of our Ministers. But the Ministers of the Crown are, after all, Ministers who ought to be prepared to show some consideration and some courtesy to members in this House. I have, on behalf of the farmers, more particularly the cattle farmers to bring this particular matter before the House. It is a complaint of the cattle farmers, and perhaps some of the Ministers here will be able to rectify a very serious and deplorable condition which at present is before us and which is possibly going to be carried out. And I make this appeal with some hope and confidence because I saw last night the attitude of one Minister in not carrying out what a previous Minister had declared to be his policy. We have all seen in the papers an advertisement of a dispersal sale of Shorthorn cattle in charge of the Agricultural Department at Grootfontein. This sale came as a thunderbolt among farmers, who felt dismay and disappointment with the action of the Government, and to some of us who are breeders of the Shorthorn it gave a nasty jar. We have been trying to keep the flag flying in spite of the disappointments and losses incurred in trying to maintain the cattle breeding in this country and in attempting to keep up the standard of breeding. We have had discussions, not only here but in congresses and commissions, in regard to the fact that at present there is practically no export trade for the beef of this country. We are also well aware that the slump in the cattle and beef trade is world-wide, and as farmers, we always look to the Agricultural Department to give us advice and direction as to carrying on our farming operations. And now, what is the Agricultural Department doing in the way of giving a lead to the farmers? They say, sell out at all costs. Here is a breed of cattle prominent in the world for its impressive qualities on the ordinary cattle of the country. The Shorthorn is known throughout the world for this quality. The breed of cattle and the supply of beef to European markets is to a very large extent from Shorthorn breeding, and here we have a Government with an agricultural department which has decided that this breed shall not be maintained. They have publicly condemned the Shorthorn as a breed for the purposes of this country. We have been told that the scrub cattle will never be fit for the export trade, and yet here the Agricultural Department are, so to speak, condemning this particular breed in the eyes of the world. I do feel that it is a matter which the Minister should investigate and see if it is not possible to make some redress in regard to this particular breed. I suppose the Agricultural Department are mainly responsible for that decision but I would appeal to the Minister to get from the department the reason for this condemnation. I make this appeal also because I feel that this is the breed that we shall have to look to improve the stock of this country, so that we shall have the export trade which we all hope to see. I feel our Agricultural Department has failed to realize the position in which we, as farmers, are situated in regard to the cattle industry. In South Africa we have a million and a half trek oxen, so that we have to breed not only for beef and for dairy production but also for the trek ox, for he will be a factor as a draught animal for many years to come. When I speak of the trek ox I can assure hon. members that I have the greatest admiration in the world for that ideal ox for trek purposes, the grand old Afrikander. This is one of the breeds which ought to be maintained in this country, but it is not only trek-oxen we want. We want the beef type and the dairy type, and I hope more attention will be paid to them, for on them depend an export trade that will make the cattle industry a success to all concerned.

As a representative of a constituency which contains upwards of a quarter of a million of natives and about ten thousand Europeans living isolated lives in the midst of them, I feel it is incumbent upon me to say something on this native question. There is no political theory amongst all the current political theories so difficult to put into practice as segregation. We have always had segregation. It is nothing new. All that is new about it is its name. Ever since the white man landed he has been segregating the native into locations, and that practice has gone on for many years. The native problem also has been discussed by all manner of men for over 100 years without getting us much further. This theory of territorial separation first saw official light in a report of the Royal Native Commission of 1903-’04 which toured South Africa as far north as Rhodesia. That commission, among other conclusions, came to the conclusion that some relief of the problem might be found by advocating a policy of territorial segregation. We are 20 years in advance of those days. The members of the 1903 commission were all experienced administrators, not economists. They had not seen the native in our economic system of to-day. They showed no real appreciation of the effects of economic contact between black and white, which is inseparable from our environment in this country. Because that commission in 1903-’04 came to that conclusion, there is no reason why we should come to it in 1925. But segregation became a political catchword. It is sufficient to speak of territorial segregation, to give the impression that we have solved the native problem. It saves a lot of thinking. That was the position when Union came about, and the Union Government, searching for a native policy, took the one ready-made force. In 1912, as the Prime Minister said, a resolution for territorial separation was brought in and in 1913 the Native Lands Act was put through. But it was a political theory only. Nobody knew anything about it. We set up a statutory commission to rove round the country and find the territory in which the natives were to be segregated, and then the trouble began. The commission travelled about collecting evidence here and there without many people realizing what it was all about until the Bill of 1917 to give the commission’s recommendations the force of law. The Government of the day had agreed to that political theory, and so the Bill was forced through this House. But by that time the country had begun to understand where its political theory was leading it, and the people were up in arms The division on that Bill was purely a racial division. Every Dutchman sat on that side of the House, and every Englishman on this. The ideas of the two races differed fundamentally on this question. What has happened since then? In 1917 the law of this country was segregation, and the Government could not carry it into effect. The opposition all over the country, from British and Dutch and native, was far too great. A commission was appointed to try and harmonize the views of the natives on the one hand and Europeans on the other. There then followed constant agitation throughout the country. Then, as to-day, the Prime Minister was unable to do anything except leave the whole native reserves practically as they existed before ever the political theory of segregation had been heard of That is the position to-day. Despite the commission’s finding, the Government found it expedient by special resolution of Parliament to adhere to the previous delimitations Zululand, containing million acres, had been delimited by the Saunders-Dartnell Commission of 1905 into areas containing 3½ million acres for natives and 3 million for Europeans. That is the position which exists to-day, despite the Beaumont Commission. I know there are all kinds of professors in carpet-slippers who surfeit us with these political theories. Every budding politician has theories on the native question. We are surfeited with theories, but when we come down to practical statesmanship we find we cannot advance one step I want to say a word in reply to the hon. member for Brakpan (Mr. Waterston). This is one of his economic theories which in the light of actual practice at once falls to the ground. My hon. friend has held that the white men of Johannesburg working in the mines should be everywhere increased in numbers and should get a civilized wage, higher than that which they are receiving. What is the actual fact of the mining industry of the Union? There are 25,221 white men employed in the mines and 241,644 natives. 9.45 per cent of the workers in the mines are Europeans and 90.55 per cent are natives. Those 90.55 per cent get £6,917,000 in wages and the 9.45 per cent get £7,423,941. In other words. 90.55 per cent of the workers receive 48 per cent of the wages paid and 9.45 per cent of the workers receive 52 per cent. The mines spend £30.000.000 in this country. The hon. Minister shook his head when I said the whole of Johannesburg, every workman, trader and professional man, lives on those natives, but that is so Why my hon. friend, the member for Brakpan (Mr. Waterston), lives on those natives in the mines. Where would he be if those 241,644 natives were not working in the mines to-day? Where would the whole of Johannesburg be? What would happen to all the farmers who supply the mines with their produce, and to the kindred industries which have sprung up round the mines? The average wage of the native in the mines including the cost of his rations is £42 a year. The average wage of the European employed on the mines is £291 a year. That is one economic phase which is beyond dispute, and if my hon. friend insists on the substitution of white men to do the native’s work at the native’s wage, he is basing his argument on a fallacy, and duping the people on the Rand who listen to him. Let us take, as an example, our manufactures in this country, which are in a primitive condition owing to our lack of the organization and skill and standardization possessed by other countries There are 59,995 Europeans and 109,950 non-Europeans engaged in manufactures in the Union. The wages of Europeans amount to £14,777,000 and those of non-Europeans to £5,352,000, or an average for the white man of £270 and an average for the native of £48 a year, while the general average is £122 a year. In New Zealand the average factory wage is £195 or £75 below what they are getting in this country, and in Australia the average wage is £169 a year.

What is the purchasing power of the sovereign in Australia and New Zealand?

The hon. member can get those figures for himself. The average wage in Australia is £101 below what it is here. In Canada the average is £244 or £30 below our £270. And may I also point out, in regard to the cost of living, that the Canadian workman adds over 100 per cent more to the value of an article in the process of manufacture than is done by the individual employed in industry in this country.

Get your premises right.

I am taking these figures in the bulk, because that is the only way to obtain any sound result. In regard to agriculture, the most complete information we have is from the 1921 census. This shows that there are in the Union 85,242 farms, which employ 54,621 Europeans and 430,441 non-Europeans, and if we add 85,000 owners we have a total of 570,304 people engaged in the agricultural industry as a whole. The value of the farm produce after deducting railage and agency rates amounts to £55,745,000. You have to deduct the cost of upkeep of machinery, interest on capital of improvements and rent, etc., on the same basis as allowed in manufacture, that is, 45 per cent. This leaves £30,360,000 available for wages and division amongst the farming community. This brings the average for all workers on the farm, including the farmer, to £53 per head per annum. This is much lower than is the case in manufacture where the average is £122 per head. The reason is very easy to see; we are a country suffering from locusts, drought, soil which is very often indifferent, and all manner of trials, troubles and diseases, which reduce our value as an agricultural community. My hon. friend, on my right, has referred to two aspects —cotton and sugar—and I should like to say a few words about them. Cotton is a crop produced all over the world by cheap labour, not by white labour; and, of course, the white workers of Lancashire do not exist on the sweated labour in the cotton-fields of Egypt and India. A blue book which has been issued in Uganda shows that the average person can look after one and a half acres, producing 150 lbs. of cotton lint a year. The value of that 150 lbs. of lint is about £15. A white man cultivating 10 acres might get £50. I ask whether it is possible to create a cotton industry in this country without the plentiful use of native labour? My hon. friend has also taken sugar as an example. In Australia there is a duty of £8 6s. 8d. per ton on sugar, and we have a duty of £3 10s. That counts.

Is that an export duty?

It is an import duty.

That has nothing to do with the price it is produced at.

It is quite easy to see if hon. members were not so full of theories. South Africa cuts a crop every two years; Queensland a crop every year. Australia produces six tons of sugar to the acre, and we produce only two. It is not because of black labour; it is because we have not the rainfall. We cannot grow the rich cane which is grown in Australia. Here we have my hon. friends who are existing on the natives, and yet come forward and tell us that industrial segregation should take the place of competition as it exists at the present day. The hon. Minister of Railways and Harbours asked me the other day: “Why didn’t you advocate this policy to your own Government?” Perhaps he does not know that I have advocated that policy ever since I have been in the House, behind my own Government and in disagreement with my hon. friend on the front bench. I say that if we are going to continue the policy of creating white navvies we are stirring up trouble for ourselves; we are not going to maintain our prestige as a white race amongst the natives, and we are not going to train up our white population to become good citizens.

What is the alternative?

The alternative is to subsidize white labour working on the machines in our industries. The white man should be employed in work in which his intelligence will be of more value than his muscles. Instead of entering on this futile policy of putting Europeans to perform natives’ work, it would be far better to subsidize industries out of the money we are wasting in creating European uncivilized labourers, which would maintain white workers round the machine of industry, and thus enable them to do civilized work on civilized lines.

Motion agreed to; Bill read a third time.

I wish to know on whose instructions did the Secretary for Agriculture stop the reception of “graded” fruit at the docks. I also wish to refer to a matter on which there seems some little difference of opinion among members of the Government.

According to the Auditor-General’s report, there was a reduced deficit on March 31st, 1924, of £770,000—that is a profit for the previous year by which the previous deficit was reduced, of 1½ millions. The Minister of Agriculture, speaking at Bospoort yesterday in support of the Nationalist candidate for Klerksdorp, is reported in the press to have said—

This is a serious misstatement, and I trust the Minister of Railways will give us some explanation. The Minister for Agriculture went on to say—

Here, again, is a statement which, according to the Minister of Railways’ previous assurances to us, must be devoid of truth. But what is far more serious is the statement by the Minister of Agriculture, that—

We understood the Minister of Railways to say that he had dismissed no natives from the railway service, but had merely replaced native wastage by Europeans. The Minister should tell us either that he agrees with the Minister of Agriculture, in which case his previous statements are quite wrong, or that these statements are absolutely wrong. Seeing that we have contrary statements on the same subject by two different Ministers, the country is entitled to a very clear explanation, and I trust the Minister will enlighten us.

The general manager of railways, in his report of 1923-’24, states that the catering department showed a gross profit, but the catering on the trains showed a loss. Probably this is due to the fact that the prices have not been decreased so far as meals served on the trains are concerned, although, we have been told, that the cost of living has fallen all round, and consequently wages have dropped. Yet the price of food in the trains still remains the same. It is because the charges are so high that the dining-saloons do not pay; the department fails to meet the requirements of the ordinary travelling public, many of whom carry their provisions with them. I think the real reason that the catering does not pay is that people are not supplied with cheap fare. Then the saloon stewards are instructed to refuse to issue anything but what they call a full meal. There is another matter which might appear to be a small thing but there is a big principle involved. You put on full length saloons of an elaborate character. I congratulate the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger) who incepted it. With the ornateness of them we have imparted an amount of snobbishness. The chief steward, second steward, chef and ticket collector have their meals in the saloon, but the ordinary steward, who does all the work, is not good enough to have his meals in the saloon. I draw the Minister’s attention to that, and I ask him to see it is altered. They have inspectors paying “snap” visits to the train to see whether chief stewards are allowing their men to have their meals in the holy of holies where the ordinary passengers are. I notice also in the general manager’s report that there is a vague suggestion, which I hope the Minister will not adopt, of the “caboose” system. He says trains are run from Mafeking to Bulawayo drawn by the same engine. Use your valuable and costly machinery as much as possible, but change your crew at the ordinary eight hour intervals. Now here is a suggestion of the “caboose” system. Two crews are running the train, one working and the other resting in the train waiting their turn. Now engine drivers, firemen and ticket collectors are men with a right to have a home, and a right to go to it, and all the time they are off from work they should, as far as is reasonably possible, spend in their own homes and not be travelling about waiting their turn for work. The natural result of this system would be to have a funeral coach attached to the train so that arrangements could be made to bury them if they died on the train. With regard to victimization that has occurred on the railways, I believe the Minister is going to wipe that sort of thing out. Most of the trouble between the administration at the top and the men working at the bottom is due to the “bosses,” the men working in between. When I visited Bloemfontein a month or two ago I was visited by men in the workshop, and I was told they are terror-ridden. If it was known a man was an active worker on the Pact side he gets pin pricks, and if he is out he will never get a job. All these matters should be questions for a committee or commission of enquiry. I ask them to try and find out where the pin pricks are coming from, and ruthlessly wipe out this use of their authority in a personal or political sense against the men who are against them. I know it is the feeling of the Ministry and the desire of all of us that we should forget about the strike business. If you urge upon the men to forget it we have a right to ask you to forget it, but it will never be forgotten so long as the entry “went on strike” appears on their discharge certificates. Although it is crossed out in red ink it is not expunged, and anybody can read it. I ask the management to draw in all those certificates and replace them with new certificates containing only a record of service. By so doing they will be doing a service and will remove an injustice many of the men are feeling.

I should like to draw attention to a question or two I have raised many times before. It is rather monotonous having to do so year after year, but they remain as true to-day as when I first raised them. The first question is that of the overhead bridges and level crossings between Cape Town and Wynberg. The crossing at Belmont Road, Rondebosch, is a particularly bad one. There is a very great amount of traffic there, and statistics show a worse state of affairs this year than last year, with the result there is a tremendous waste of time and money and interruption to business. The solution of the difficulty bristles with other difficulties. The Wynberg line however is on a special footing because of the old Act under which it was constructed. The Cape Town to Wynberg line presents a different case from what has been put up for level crossings in other places in the Union. I have seen that the crossing at Observatory is similarly congested, and there is a great deal of loss of time. I ask the Minister to give a sympathetic hearing, and that his reply will have a little more than sympathy this time, because he recognizes the justice of the claim. Another thing I would like to ask him about is the question of railway stations on this line For some years for financial reasons we have not been able to put forward our request for improvements at these stations, stations like Rondebosch, which require improvement in the buildings and otherwise. The platforms are very poor at Rondebosch for instance, and this is noticed on Saturdays when there are often sporting crowds about, particularly from the schools. I would like to ask the Minister what is being done about the subway on the Wynberg side of Rondebosch station, in regard to which the Railway Board, I believe, made a recommendation, and for which there was a Vote of £2,500 on the Estimates for last year. That is very badly needed. If the work is not actually in hand, I would suggest to the Minister if he has a spare half-hour, that he should pay a surprise visit to that spot between 8.30 and 9 o’clock any morning in the week. I am also reminded about the Plumstead crossing, where a number of accidents have occurred, though I cannot, from personal knowledge, say very much about that I would like the Minister to consider the question of an additional railway station, especially with the electrification of the line coming on, between Rondebosch and Newlands, where there is a long stretch of line, and you have between the stations a considerable population. The building of houses is actively going on in areas between the main roads and the railway line. Then there is need for an overhead bridge between Rondebosch and Mowbray. I wish the Minister to bear in mind, in connection with the remarks I have made about Rondebosch station, the warning I have given on previous occasions. The Cape Town university has been proceeding with its new buildings as fast as it can, and the result will be that, before the Minister of Railways has made a decent station at Rondebosch to cope with the traffic, there will be a large university traffic there. I would again mention the Question of having special artizans’ tickets for short distances, for instance, to Woodstock. Salt River and places like those, not regular season-tickets but tickets entitling people to so many rides which can be punched for each journey. These are people who cannot get the full value of a season ticket because very often they cannot go home to their mid-day meal. One final point I would like to bring forward is as to the Railway Bill which was under consideration last year and the year before. I would be glad if the Minister would state whether the Government has any intention of re-introducing that Bill.

I entirely agree with what the hon. member for Fort Beaufort (Sir Thomas Smartt) said here yesterday about the standard of the fruit we get on our trains, I travelled recently to Johannesburg and the fruit that was given us was simply a disgrace to South Africa. I asked what the reason for it was and I was told that the person appointed to buy the fruit is incompetent for the purpose, but is a friend of certain officials. If he did not buy it in a coolie shop then he just bought it there at the station or in a shop of no consequence. I would like to ask the Minister of Railways if the contract for the supply of fruit cannot be given to a white farmer or a suitable firm. Then I should also like to ask if other arrangements cannot be made in regard to the railway crossing at Volksrust. An unfortunate accident has already taken place and I should like to ask if booms cannot be provided such as we see here in Cape Town.

With regard to the question of fruit export and cold storage facilites, I am sure the fruit-growers will very much appreciate the statement made by the Minister last night, I hope and trust that in the Bill which he states that he is going to bring in to give effect to the Commission’s report, he will set up, as the Commission recommends, some Board of Control representative of the fruit-growers. The first essential for the fruit export trade is sufficient accommodation on your vessels. We have not got and we shall not have that sufficient accommodation on the mail-carrying vessels, and contracts will have to be entered into with the Australian liners passing through our ports, and unless you have got some body with authority in control who can act on co-operative lines, you cannot make those contracts. We have been preaching co-operation, the Government has been preaching co-operation, and almost every department preaches co-operation. Your Agricultural Department very properly preaches co-operation, and is it not the natural thing, when you have your representative body of the fruit-growers, the Fruit-Growers’ Exchange, which has been doing a great service for the fruit-growers, that they should have the full say in this control board, or whatever you wish to call it—some body with statutory authority on which the fruit-growers are well represented? It may be said that we are emphasizing this matter too much, but you must consider the immense losses of the fruit-growers, which one of the members stated last evening to be about £50,000 this year through not getting their fruit away. I do not blame the Minister for it, but I do urge upon him to put the matter right, and the only way, as far as I can see, to do that is to appoint the board of control as early as possible. You have your citrus fruits coming on, and during the months of July and August and you will have, unless something is done soon, the same block again. There is another matter I wish to bring forward. I wish to endorse what the hon. member for Wakkerstroom (Mr. A. S. Naudé) has now said. The railways are advertising for tourists to come to this country and when those tourists come here and travel along our railways we should show them South Africa’s best. The fruit which is sometimes offered on the trains Is of a very poor quality. As a fruit-grower I feel ashamed when I see the fruit that is offered on the railways. Then the fruit could be offered at all the meals instead of at only one. I wish again to impress upon the Minister the necessity of introducing, as early as possible the legislation foreshadowed last evening, in giving effect to the recommendations of the Fruit Commission.

The hon. member is now discussing new legislation, which cannot be done under this Bill.

I wish to ask the Minister whether he is aware that about 95 per cent of the deciduous fruit growers are in favour of the control board.

I do not wish to detain the House but I have a few points that I would like to bring to the notice of the Minister. There is one thing which has been complained of for years, that is a safety bridge at Braamfontein Station above the station at the working places. All the people have to walk over the metals there to get to their work. Further, children going to school have also to cross the metals—I think there are about 20. The mothers have not always the time to take their children to school and the danger is very great. There have been many accidents in crossing the lines. I should like the place to be made safe. A case has recently been brought to my notice of a little child having met with an accident. The mail train also comes along there and it is very rapid. The hon. Minister should really take into consideration the building of a bridge. Then there is another question and this concerns Park Station, I wish to urge that money should be put on the estimates for this station,—

I must call the hon. member’s attention to the fact that he cannot now discuss the building of new bridges. He can now only discuss questions in connection with the section under consideration.

Yes, I will do it when the main estimates are on. But then there is another question that I would like to ask the Minister, and it is in connection with the eight hours day. Many grievances exist about this and I continually receive letters of complaint from people. Under the previous Government the men worked eight hours per day but now they have to work much longer hours and have not even as before their Sundays free regularly. They have to work from the early morning before sunrise until late in the evening and so it goes day after day. It is like animals that have to pull from early morning until the late evening, then go to the stable and the following day the same thing is repeated. I shall be glad if the hon. Minister will also consider these people. The carriage cleaners, overseers, etc., have very long working hours and I hope the Minister will bring about an alteration. Then I only want to say a few words more about pensions. There are men who have been in the railway service more than 20 years and when they retire they get £3, £3 10s. and £4 per month, a pension which is of no use to them.

I wish to make a statement arising out of what the Minister of Railways and Harbours said last night. He stated in his speech last night in reference to cold storage at the docks that the Government took steps to deal with the whole position. No steps had been taken by the late Government. It is true they had talked about the whole position but there were so many questions about which they, talked but never took action, and so on. I am sorry my hon. friend made a statement like that, because it is entirely incorrect. If he had thrown his memory back he would have recollected that a similar statement was made to a deputation of fruit growers and the statement was promptly corrected. The position is this: We had been taking an interest in this matter and we had definitely decided to put in cold storage accommodation on the east pier as the Minister is doing now, and before I left office definite instructions had been given for that to be done. The general manager assured me that he was getting down, if he had not done so already, draughtsmen from Johannesburg to prepare the plans. After I left office I am given to understand that some difficulties were raised.

Is the hon. member advocating the building of some new works?

No, I am just correcting a statement made by the Minister. The late Government did certainly give instructions for the installation of cold storage or pre-cooling plant to be gone on with at once and the only thing the Minister has done is that he has certainly pushed it on since he took over the position. That I will grant. I think the Minister will recall that such was the case.

There are a few small grievances that I would like to bring to the notice of the Minister. The first is the undesirable state of things on the line which is being built between Knysna and George. When the line from Ladismith had been completed some of the workers went there to look for work. They were told that the railway engineers could not beacon the line sufficiently fast to give them work. It was also said that preference would be given to people from George and Knysna. The people went there to earn bread for their wives and children. They are there unemployed and cannot return. If it is so that a preference is given then I must say that it is wrong. The railways are a national asset. They belong to the people as a whole and are built for the people. When the railway to Ladismith was built all that went there got work without distinction and I cannot see why preference must be given to the people of Knysna seeing the people of Ladismith are suffering more than those of Knysna. In August the Resident Engineer of the transport labourers at Ladismith took off 3d. per ton per mile. The Minister agreed that this was a wrong step and instructed the engineer to refund the money to them. This has not yet been done and I shall be very glad if the Minister will now give instructions that refund be made. Where the people have already gone away the money should be paid to the magistrate on their behalf. When it became known that the railway would be built at Touws River we thought that it would be a good opportunity to have the telephone line erected. We knew that this would be a great work. I then approached the Ministers of Posts and Telegraphs and of Railways to plant strong posts. Í obtained the promise from both Ministers and negotiations took place so that the extra wires could be added later, but wooden posts were planted. I thought that they would be strong enough for the wires hut the engineer says that wooden posts are such bad conductors that the wires cannot be attached. I would like to know who is responsible for this mistake.

I should like to refer to the question of level crossings. There are several in Pretoria and quite lately there have been several fatal accidents alt these level crossings. I understand the surplus of the railways is increasing every month and I would like to ask whether the Minister will take into account the doing away with these level crossings and if possible to lower the railway line. I would also like to ask whether an increased contribution from the staff is being asked for, for the superannuation fund. There is also a provision for a special cost of living allowance in Durban. I should like to know if that is to be paid to the single men as well as the married men.

I want to support the remarks made by the hon. member for Benoni (Mr. Madeley) about the catering department of the railway. I think all the stewards should be allowed to have their meals in the dining-car. At present some of them have to take them in their sleeping quarters. This is an invidious distinction we ought to get rid of. I think everyone travelling on the train, including the staff, should be allowed to take their meals in the dining-car. Then the catering department came off very badly in connection with the recent increases of pay. The new men are taken on at a wage of from £9 a month upwards and some of them remain there, and married men at that. I say that is a scandal, considering the high prices charged for meals. With regard to pay of the staff generally I want the Minister to go into the question whether there are not too many classes and grades in the service. In certain classes of work there should be only one class, namely, efficiency. If a man is efficient whether he is a short service or a long service man, he should have the one rate of pay. Although the conciliation board agreed upon certain rates of pay that is not the final word of the men, among whom there is a great deal of dissatisfaction. Because artizans, fitters, and others, join the service at a certain date, they have to work at a certain rate. I think here should be equal pay for equal work, irrespective of the length of service, as the longer service men are entitled to certain privileges. In regard to the artizans I would urge that the Special Notice No. 1409, issued by the Administration on 25th July, 1923, should be withdrawn, and that the present system should be done away with, of employing artizans, doing equal work, at different rates of pay. It is a system that would not be tolerated in any European shops. Then there is the question of grievances. One learns, whatever railway centre one visits, that there are still many men suffering from grievances, and I would strongly urge upon the Minister to take into consideration the appointment of some impartial body to visit the different railway centres and investigate these grievances, many of which are real. It is useless to conduct these enquiries by officials. That has been tried and there has been no remedy. I believe the appointment of an impartial body such as a grievances commission would give a good deal of satisfaction. The trouble is that there is a large number of officials who are imbued with a certain way of dealing with matters, and they are mainly responsible for the unrest.

It would be a Pact Commission?

I would rather have a Pact Commission than a packed Commission such as we had from the late Government. The hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger) knows that while he was Minister there were hundreds and thousands of cases of complaints, and what I am suggesting would relieve the Minister of the work which these complaints entail. There is another matter, which concerns the Cape Peninsula. At the present time very extensive alterations are being carried out on the suburban line and stations with the ultimate view of electrification. I should like to know whether the local authorities and the Publicity Association, for instance, have been consulted in regard to both the practical and to the aesthetic side of the scheme. We have to take a long view in these questions and if the Government commits itself to what I would term a tinkering policy, we may have a repetition of the Durban elevator scandal, instead of completing an electrification scheme which will provide for the traffic requirements of the Peninsula for many years to come, and be a credit to all concerned.

I should like to ask the Minister in regard to the provision of additional engine power and rolling-stock, whether this will be available to deal with the coming maize crop, which I believe will be one of the largest we have had. In 1923 we had 19 million muids, and I think we can expect at least 23 millions from this season’s crop. South Africa’s home consumption is 10 millions, which means that the railways will be called upon to deal with 1¼ million tons. It would be a great misfortune if the marketing of this crop were jeopardized through any lack of rolling-stock. I hope the Minister also will tell us what stage the Durban elevator has reached, and whether it will participate in the handling of maize this year. Will the Minister further give me an answer in regard to the change of the name Zwartskopskloof? He must not think it is a local matter, as it has been raised by four members, including one from the cross benches.

In the rather admirable speech which the Minister of Railways made last night he was rather unfair to the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger), for he insinuated that the delay in providing extra cool storage accommodation at the Cape Town docks was largely due to his predecessor in office. In February, 1924, a telegram was sent to Johannesburg for two of the very best draftsmen in the department to be sent down to get the drawings out for the store and for the carrying on of the work with the utmost despatch. A certain amount of delay, however, occurred in regard to a large shed on No. 7 quay. The idea of the hon. member was that a second storey should be devoted to cold storage, but when the hon. member went out of office certain difficulties were raised, it being feared that the piers might sink under the heavy weight. Experiments were carried out. It was at first said that the building was all right, but a second report stated that owing to further experiments the pier sunk four inches. Now the blot on the Minister’s speech, which was otherwise so admirable, was that he tried to make a little party capital by insinuating that his predecessor in office did not really set the machinery in motion for the provision of this much-needed cool-store. It was only after the hon. member went out of office that there was a difference of opinion among the technical officers on the question.

That proves my point, that there was no definite scheme.

The fact that the cold storage chamber is now located on the second storey shows that the plans of the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger) are being carried out in their entirety.

Quite wrong.

Does not the Minister remember that I urged upon him to order extra machinery from England? I hope the Minister of Railways is not going to act the part of the Minister of Agriculture whose absence electioneering we regret so much this evening. Surely my hon. friend is not going to say he was handed over an incubus of debt by the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger). The surplus he got is due to the policy of my hon. friend, and the paying off of £770,000 was also due to what my hon. friend did. There is no way the Minister can use it better than in connection with the cold storage. I agree with the hon. member for Worcester (Mr. Heatlie). There was an extraordinary feeling of pleasure amongst the fruit farmers after reading the remarks of the hon. Minister last night. He recognized it is essential we should have a shipping board of control to deal with the export of fruit. Every fruit farmer I have met to-day has had a weight moved from his mind, and I congratulate my friend upon the steps he has taken in the direction of the report of the Commission, and assure him he will get support from every fruit farmer in the country.

I want to make a few further remarks on the question of the electrification of the line between Cape Town and Simon’s Town. I should like to know what steps have been taken in the direction of consulting the local authorities with regard to this big scheme of electrification. It will involve you in having to make more adequate provision for your level crossings, and all sorts of things, and I want to draw attention to this aspect of the scheme. In many cases as you know at the present time traffic is held up for long periods. Even in your ordinary suburban traffic there is an ever present danger from the crossings. Would it not be possible to consider the question of the general layout of the line in consultation with the local authorities, and go thoroughly into the problem of making proper provision for overhead bridges, etc. If you will invite public bodies to go into the scheme and let them know the plans which you propose, I am certain that the invitation would be accepted, and such a conference would be bound to bear good results so far as the future of the Cape Peninsula is concerned. When one considers that it is proposed to spend millions of pounds on the scheme, no pains should be spared to make it a success.

I express my sympathy with the member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger) in the support he has got from the member for Fort Beaufort (Sir Thomas Smartt.) If my statement stood by itself, the House might have had a doubt about the position, but after the statement of the hon. member for Fort Beaufort, the statement I made last night is shown to be absolutely correct. Let me traverse the statement by the member for Fort Beaufort. He laid stress on the fact that he saw me on several occasions and he pressed this scheme upon me. If the member for Cape Town (Central) had given instructions for the scheme before leaving office it would not have been necessary to come to me.

My hon. friend told me that difficulties had arisen and that the piers after the second trial had sunk four inches. I told my hon. friend I was anxious to give him every support, and in the interests of my hon. friend himself, in order to have the support of fruit farmers, I told him it was the best thing he could do to push the work on. Does my hon. friend remember? He was a young man and I gave him good advice.

I can quite understand the hon. member now trying to get out of his admission. If the scheme had been actually decided upon would it have been necessary for him, and the fruit exchange and the farmers to have had interviews with me and impress upon me the necessity for the scheme? Out of his own mouth the late Government stands condemned. Unfortunately for the hon. member, he has not taken the trouble to find out that there is a difference between No. 7 quay and the east pier.

I know there is.

Those are two quite separate deep-water berths. It is true my predecessor had in mind the making available of the second storey of the shed of No. 7 quay. But that is just my point, that the whole subject was in the position when I took office, that no definite decision had been taken.

That is wrong, absolutely wrong. It had been taken and instructions had been given.

Well, that is the information I found in the office at the time and I am quite prepared to allow my hon. friend to see the file, if he cares to do so, in my office.

But the other members of the board have already corrected you.

If my hon. friend will consult the Railway Board he will find that that was agreed upon.

The whole position was in the melting pot and it was only after very exhaustive tests had been made under the new administration in regard to the possibility of erecting the cold storage accommodation on the east pier that it was ultimately decided to erect it there. The late Government had the whole scheme in mind and I do not doubt that the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger), if he had remained in office, would have carried it out, but my point is that the late Government should have taken steps in regard to this matter not in 1924, but years before.

How could they have done that?

I make the definite statement, that the members of the late Government were not doing their duty to the fruit farmers. The members of that Government knew perfectly well or they ought to have known, that the fruit farmers were concentrating on the export trade and they knew that the existing cold storage accommodation was only 540 tons. The present administration had to cable for machinery in order to increase the existing cold storage accommodation from 450 to 900 tons. I know the hon. member consulted me and I was glad to have his advice, but we ought to give the country the facts with regard to this whole matter. Several questions have been asked. In regard to the catering, I had not known that the stewards were not allowed to have their meals in the double dining saloons. I see no reason why they should not have their meals there. In regard to level crossings and overhead bridges, the principle has been laid down that when local bodies contribute half the cost, and we have the money available we undertake the work.

That means hanging them up altogether.

No, we have built many overhead bridges in the past. The hon. member will find we have done this and that the local bodies have recognized their responsibility.

You persuaded them with a big stick.

No. I do not now want to enter fully into the merits of this question, but I think local bodies should contribute to the cost. The local bodies must study the interests of the local community, and it is only right that they should contribute a share of the cost of providing the necessary facilities.

But the railway kills the people.

But the municipality are responsible for the people living in those areas. I have been pressed by the hon. member for Salt River (Mr. Snow) to appoint another grievances commission. I dealt fully with this question last year and I have only to repeat that I do not think that the appointment of a grievances commission would be justified. Hon. members know that I have appointed a staff and labour inspector who is doing excellent work. He is going from centre to centre wherever there are grievances or difficulties in connection with staff matters, and examines these difficulties. I am glad to say that as a result of his good work a very good feeling has arisen in the places he has visited.

I hope he is a member of the S.A.P.

I did not make enquiries with regard to his political views, but he is a very good officer and has justified his appointment.

No one man can deal with the matter.

I think Mr. Volsteedt has been doing excellent work and that his appointment has been justified but if he cannot overtake the work we will have to appoint another. The hon. member for Salt River (Mr. Snow) has raised the question of different rates of pay. I admit this is a very unfortunate position, but what is the solution? Does the hon. member suggest we should pay all our artizans the old rate?

Yes, certainly.

I am sorry I cannot accede to that request.

Why?

The position is that my predecessor reduced the wages of the whole staff. Artizans and other employees who come into the service after 1st April, 1923, came in with their eyes open on the lower scale. For artizans it is 18s. a day at the coast. I admit it is unsatisfactory that one man at the bench should be working for 18s. and that another with longer service should be getting 20s., but cannot increase the basic rates of pay. We desire to manufacture more rolling stock in this country? I hope that as a result of the Workshops Commission’s report we will be able by concentration and other methods to cut our costs of construction. The position is that at present we cannot compete with overseas prices. My predecessor guaranteed the old rates of pay to employees who joined the service before 1st April, 1923, for one year. I do not know if he had remained in office whether he would have continued those rates after the year or not. However, I have definitely decided that the old men will remain at their old rates of pay, and will not be affected by the new rates. The hon. member for Umvoti (Mr. Deane) has asked a question with regard to the expected maize crop, and as to whether we have made sufficient provision for coping with it. We have taken every possible step. We have ordered additional rolling-stock, and I hope we shall be able to deal with the traffic when it comes. I wish to say a few words with regard to this very famous station in Natal, Blackridge, now known as Swartkopskloof. I want to correct him in one statement he made. He represented to the House that when I was in Natal a promise was extracted from me by a certain gentleman with a Russian name. I do not know why he should characterize Mr. Herschensson in that way. Mr. Herschensson is a good South African. As far as I can remember I did not meet that gentleman when I was there. This matter we, raised on the 7th October last by Prof. Bessollaar, who is the president of the Natalse Saamwerk Unie, which he tells me has 1.200 members, and on behalf of that body he asked me to go into the question of historical station names and more particularly “Blackridge.” I was not impressed by the speech of the hon. member who accuses me of racialism. If that is his only evidence of racialism in my administration he is in a very sorry position indeed. There can be no question of racialism when a historical name is restored at the request of a very responsible body of opinion in Natal.

Why did you have a referendum?

I want to ask the hon. member and others who have raised the matter whether they have ever given consideration to the feelings of the Dutch-speaking people in Natal, who feel very strongly that this historical name of Zwartkop should not have been changed to Blackridge.

When did the change take place?

Some considerable time ago.

At Union.

I think that is so. If hon. members will endeavour to place themselves for one moment in the position of the Dutch-speaking people they will agree that a great injustice was done when that name was changed. How many hundreds of names have been changed in the same way? Wherever a case is brought to my notice where a Dutch name has been changed to the English form Or an English name into the Dutch form, I am going to restore the original name, whether it is in Natal, the Free State or any other place in the Union.

Call it Zwartkop then.

I congratulate the hon. member on having some sense left. I would have been only too pleased to do that if it had not been that it would have meant complication with the station near Port Elizabeth.

Even now it will mean complication.

No, it will not. The change was made in order to restore the name originally given by the Voortrekkers. There is in the constituency of the hon. member for Umvoti (Mr. Deane) a station the name of which was changed by me from Sandy Mount to Wartburg.

At the request of the people.

The name of Wartburg has been restored for historical reasons. Is the reason why the hon. member did not refer to that case possibly because he is concerned about the votes of those people? This hon. member talks of high principles, says we are racialists, but I describe him as nothing but a vote-catcher, The hon. member for Rondebosch (Mr. Close) has raised several questions with regard to the suburban line. These are very important and I assure him they will be looked into. The hon. member for Salt River (Mr. Snow) raised a question in regard to electrification and asked whether we are adopting a comprehensive scheme. I give him the assurance that we are going into the whole question of lay-out and propose to take a long view as regards the future development under electrification more especially at Cape Town station. So far as consultation with the local authorities may be necessary, we are quite prepared to consult. The hon. members for Wakkerstroom (Mr. A. S. Naude) and Worcester (Mr. Heatlie) have raised questions in regard to the more extensive use of fruit on the trains. That is a matter which has been dealt with by the new Government. I agree that we are not doing our duty to the fruit-growers, although we have talked about it year after year We have already taken tangible steps, as the result of which I hope hon. members have seen some improvement. I am not, however, satisfied to let the matter rest and am taking further steps through the publicity department to co-operate with the fruit-growers and dried fruit companies. We can take many a lesson from Australia and America in this regard where they have slogans such as “Eat more fruit.” The railway publicity department has taken up the whole subject. I only regret that the bodies concerned are so slow to respond to our action, and I would appeal to the hon. member for Worcester (Mr. Heatlie) to induce them to come into closer touch with the railway publicity department, which will be only too ready to co-operate in order to push the sale and consumption of our fruit, both dried and fresh. The matter raised by the hon. member for Fordsburg (Mr. J. S. F. Pretorius with regard to Park Station is under consideration. With reference to the George and Knysna railway we give preference in the matter of employment to local people, but if a sufficient number of local inhabitants do not apply for work we take on men from other districts. The matter of the telephone will be looked into. As to the superannuation fund the Government has decided to guarantee its solvency, and with regard to increased pensions, is prepared to contribute a larger amount with increased contribution by the employees. In reply to the hon. member for (Rondebosch) (Mr. Close) enquiring about my intentions in regard to the Service Bill, I may state that I hope to have the Bill gazetted within short. As to local allowance payments at Durban, we do not pay those to single men unless they have dependents. I agree with the hon. member for Benoni (Mr. Madeley) that the caboose system should only be introduced in exceptional cases.

I am sorry I cannot accept the Minister’s statement in regard to cold storage at the Cape Town docks. How could we have done it years ago, when the fruit industry has only developed to a large extent during the last two or three years? We appointed a special officer last year to look after the business, and the whole thing worked smoothly. We got out an expert who has revolutionized all ideas in regard to cold storage and pre-cooling, and it was on his advice that we took action in regard to providing cold storage on the east pier. The Railway Board discussed the matter and also sanctioned the scheme.

Did you sanction any definite scheme?

Yes. The General Manager of Railways had to wire to Johannesburg to get down some draftsmen to prepare plans. Of course, I have heard this story before, when my word was questioned as to having sanctioned the scheme. It was stated to a deputation of fruit-growers, but two members of the Board confirmed what I had said, that we had taken action before coming into office. I am not blaming the Minister for delay, but only for an incorrect statement. There was some difficulty about officials, and the question of putting it there. But that we sanctioned this scheme whilst I was still in office and was going on with it there can be no question at all. If my hon. friend will consult the two members of the board he will find what I say is correct.

I forgot to reply to the member for Cape Town (Harbour) (Maj. G. B. van Zyl). and I think in justice to the Minister of Agriculture, I ought to mention the question of the export of fruit. That was a matter dealt with by the Agricultural Department. Graded fruit that is, fruit of the fourth grade of which there was 120 tons in cold storage, in addition to 1,500 tons of cold fruit, was stopped because, according to export regulations, other fruits of higher grade had to receive preference. These recommendations were framed by the fruit growers themselves. The Government laid themselves open to a claim for compensation from the shippers of higher grade fruit if lower grades were shipped whilst other grades were waiting shipment. As to the remarks of the hon. member with regard to a newspaper report, of a speech delivered by the Minister of Agriculture, I await Confirmation of that report.

Personally I have always tried to treat the hon. Minister with consideration, but my friend must get out of the way of occasionally losing his temper and attributing motives to this side of the House. In my hon. friend’s young ministerial career he will find these tactics will not help him.

Do you want to lecture me?

With regard to the increase in the harbour cold storage, that was brought about by advice of Mr. Griffiths after scientific investigation. It was only after he carried out his experiments that we learned that the cold storage supposed to be sufficient for 900 tons was only sufficient for 400 tons, unless we increased the cold storage plant, and my hon. friend remembers I suggested he should cable for the extra machinery, and I suggested putting that machinery in the existing harbour bar. I hope my young friend will not in future try to take all the credit to himself. With regard to the delay, I do not say that he was responsible.

Who was responsible?

There were differences of opinion amongst the officials, but I was largely responsible in bucking up my hon. friend into making a decision in the matter. Between March and July or August there was a period of interregnum during which the machinery was not ordered. I told him he had better order machinery, and he would then have all the fruit-growers of the country behind him. I do not say who is responsible for the delay, but there were different opinions. I am afraid there was a certain amount of jealousy in regard to the advice which Mr. Griffiths had given, because Mr. Griffiths is a cold storage expert of the very highest possible standard.

I do not question Mr. Griffith’s capacity, but I must strongly object to the reflection on the officers of the department. What happened? I will give hon. members the facts. When the present Government took office they said to the officers of my department, the officers of the Agricultural Department, and others interested, “You must come to a decision. Stop that dilly-dallying.” And thereupon they did come to a decision.

There was no necessity for that. It was only when I left office and my hon. friend did not know the officials that this dilly-dallying arose. That was the decision. We had given definite instructions, with the approval of the Board. My hon. friend came into office, they thought he did not know much about it and the dilly-dallying started then.

The interesting fact of the matter is that with the usual false economy of the late Minister of Railways and Harbours they had stopped the development of the port in that direction. I do not want to allow by my silence to go unchallenged the position in regard to graded fruit. I want to know who is responsible for the policy which lays it down that choice and super-choice fruit shall go before what you call your graded. Is it the policy of the Government in power, of the Minister concerned, or is it a policy which has been allowed to become such by custom which has been instituted by some interested person: There is no question that the vast bulk of the fruit that the European markets want is not of the very best grade at all. They cannot afford it. The biggest market is that provided by the masses of the population overseas, who cannot afford to buy the very best stuff. I do protest most emphatically against your allowing stuff which is not graded as choice and super-choice to rot, and giving preference to the big men’s stuff.

I move—

In moving the third reading of the Bill I wish to fulfil a promise I made to the hon. member for Riversdale (Mr. Badenhorst) and the hon. member for Swellendam (Mr. Buirski) in regard to the taking over of the new Cape Central Railways. One of the first matters to which my attention was directed soon after assuming office was the demand of the residents in the area served by the new Cape Central Railway for that railway to be acquired by the Government. Those demands were not new and as hon. members are aware they have been made regularly for a number of years now. The subject has also been before the House on several occasions. My investigations disclosed that negotiations for the acquisition of this line had been entered into by former administrations from time to time but they have invariably proved abortive. A deputation— thoroughly representative of all the districts affected—recently waited upon the Government and urged it to take over the railway. The deputation was informed that the Government was determined that relief should be given to the residents of the South-Western districts. The Government has now fully considered the matter and it has been decided to offer to purchase the railway and steps in that direction are now being taken. Let me trace briefly the history of this line. It goes back to 1882 when the Cape Government was requested by the Cape Parliament to construct a branch line connecting Worcester with Roodewal (now Ashton). Although that resolution was not acted upon, the Government encouraged the formation of a private company to construct the line from Worcester to Ashton which was authorised by special act of the Cape Parliament in 1883. In 1885 the work of construction commenced and four years after the passing of the Act authorizing its construction, the line to Roodewal, a distance of 42 miles was completed and opened for traffic. The Cape Government having contributed as a subsidy the sum of £75.000 towards the cost of construction. In 1894 the directors of the Company applied for powers to extend the line from Ashton to Swellendam. The necessary authority was given by the Cape legislature under Act 37 of 1894. The actual work of construction, however, remained in abeyance until early in 1897, and two years later the extension to Swellendam, a distance of 41 miles, was completed and opened for traffic. Towards the cost of the construction of this section the Cape Government contributed £61,500. In 1898, that is while the construction of the Ashton-Swellendam construction was still in progress, the company applied for power to extend the line from Swellendam to Riversdale and a Bill authorizing this further extension of 64 miles was passed by the Cape Legislature in 1898. In this instance, as in the two earlier Acts, provision was made for the Government to contribute towards the cost of constructing the extension by means of a subsidy, in this case fixed at 2,000 per mile. This section of the line was opened for traffic in February, 1903. The total subsidy granted by the Cape Government being £128,000. In the same year the company again sought powers to link up its railway with the sea by an extension from Riversdale to Mossel Bay. The necessary powers were conferred upon the company by Act 2, of 1903, which again provided for a Government subsidy towards the cost of construction. In January, 1904, construction of this extension commenced, and exactly two years later the line was through and opened for traffic to Mossel Bay. The subsidy paid out of public funds towards this extension was £116,703. That briefly is the chronological history of the construction of the 205 miles of line which comprise the New Cape Central Railway, towards the capital cost of which the public Exchequer in the aggregate has contributed as I have shown £381,203, which sum is included in the interest-bearing capital of the South African Railways and Harbours. In each of the four Acts empowering the building and operation of the four sections of the New Cape Central Railway power was retained to the Government to expropriate the section on giving due notice and a limited measure of control over the tariffs charged by the Company also was given to the Government. From the standpoint of the public the main cause of dissatisfaction with the existing state of affairs is due to the comparatively high tariffs which prevail on the New Cape Central Railway, and, particularly those charged in local traffic in the company’s lines. As I have said, the Government’s power to control those charges is limited, and is subject to the net earnings of the company being sufficient to give to the shareholders of the company a return of five per cent, upon their investment—a return which, I may say, has never yet been secured by those shareholders. Therefore, the Government is not in the position to force a reduction of tariffs upon the company and if the areas served by this company are to be afforded relief from the high tariffs prevailing which the Government is satisfied is stifling development, then measures which will place absolute control of the tariffs in the Government’s hands are necessary to give to the public of the Southwestern districts the relief they have a right to look for. Several courses are open whereby that object could be secured. The Government is, however, satisfied that the purchase of the line is the proper course to follow and that only in the event of its efforts to do so being unsuccessful upon terms which are fair are equitable to both the taxpayers of the country and the debenture and shareholders of the company should the Government have recourse to other measures to bring to this large area of the Union the relief to which it is entitled and which in the general interests of the country is long overdue. At the same time I wish to state clearly and definitely that should the offer now to be made by the Government to the company not be accepted, the Government will immediately submit the necessary measures to Parliament for approval in order to safeguard the interests of the public in the south-western districts. Officers of the Administration have made a fresh valuation of the assets of the company and steps have already been taken to initiate, at an early date, negotiations for the purchase of the company’s assets. This is not the moment therefore, for disclosing more than the fact that the Government is prepared to pay a price for the line which is fair and equitable to the taxpayers of the Union and the shareholders of the company. It is hoped, also, to be able to provide for the purchase price to be paid to the company in such a manner that no reduction in the money available for the construction of new lines, etc., in other parts will be necessary, and so overcome one of the reasonable objections hitherto raised to earlier proposals to acquire this railway. Any agreement entered into by the Government will, of course, be subject to the ratification of Parliament. I need, therefore, add little more. On behalf of the Government I desire, however, to place on record our view that the New Cape Central Railway Company, by its enterprise in sinking its capital in the construction of the railway from Worcester to Mossel Bay has rendered valuable service to the country. If, as the Government believes, the time has arrived when the New Cape Central Railway should no longer control the transportation services of the districts between Worcester and Mossel Bay, it is only because the development of the country” served by it cannot any longer be retarded by the company’s inability to meet the demands of the country for tariffs equivalent to those which operate on the Government railways. It is with some confidence, therefore, that I look forward to the closing chapter of the operations of this company in the Union being characterized by an agreement for the acquisition of its assets in terms satisfactory alike to the public of the Union and to the company