According to the Report of the Department of Labour for 1941, in that year no fewer than 1,298 accidents occurred in factories in connection with work on machinery, and as a result of those accidents 1,309 people were hurt, 73 of whom fatally — that is to say 73 of the people who were hurt died. As compared with the previous year there was an increase of 329 in the number of accidents. I feel the Committee will agree with me that this large increase in the number of accidents is alarming, and that it is essential to determine what is the cause of this increase in the number of accidents, especially in the number of fatal accidents; the Chief Inspector of Factories states that it has to be attributed, among other things, to the fact that many of the people engaged in the factories have had very little industrial training — that many of those people engaged on machines have had very little training in that type of work. He further says that it can perhaps be attributed to the number of women and other unskilled persons employed in the Factories, and he adds that many of those handling machinery are not fully conversant with the work, and that many of the employers are not thoroughly aware of the dangers attached to the risks. He states, however, that the large increase in the number of accidents is not attributable to any negligence or carelessness on the part of the employees. In the self same report it is stated on another page that on account of emergency conditions many apprentices are doing work of a very much more advanced nature than is ordinarily entrusted to an ordinary apprentice. The complaint therefore is that apprentices are doing work which ordinarily is done by skilled artisans — and they are doing that work while they are in receipt of only part of the artisan’s pay. Here we have an authoritative statement by the Department of Labour, by the Chief Inspector of Machinery, that the increase in the number of accidents is attributable to the fact that semi-skilled an inexperienced men and women are obliged to do a certain amount of skilled work. It is stated that they have to perform work for which they have not been thoroughly trained, and that apprentices of 18, 19 and 20 years of age, are obliged to a large extent to do the work of a skilled artisan. Then, — this is not stated in the Departmental report — a probable cause also is that these people are compelled to work an excessive amount of overtime. The Minister has the power, through the controller of manpower, to suspend all industrial legislation. A few days ago I pointed out that employees were fined if they were unwilling to do overtime. Consequently there is a great possibility of people, as a result of excessive overtime, meeting with accidents when engaged on work with machinery. They get overworked and over tired, and in that way accidents happen. It is noteworthy that those accidents have mainly occurred in connection with work with machinery and in factories, and that they have occurred especially in the engineering industry. It must therefore be assumed that those accidents have occurred largely in work shops where munitions are manufactured. That was the position in 1941. Unfortunately we have not got the 1942 Report from which we might have been able to see whether there has been any further increase in the number of accidents. One can, however, not refrain from accusing the Minister of neglect. He has to bear the responsibility for this large increase in the number of accidents. Under the Factories Act of 1941 the Minister has the power of preventing any untrained or unskilled person from undertaking work of a dangerous nature, work for which he has not been properly trained. The Minister has the power to prevent any semi-skilled person from doing the work of a skilled artisan. That power the Minister has under the Factories Act of 1941. Only skilled artisans are allowed to handle machinery. Clause 24 (3) of Act No. 22 of 1941 reads as follows:—

If the Minister is convinced that any person is engaged on work in a factory which is dangerous to that person, he has the power under the Act to prohibit that person carrying on that work. If we are to accept what the Chief Inspector of Factories says, namely that a large number of accidents are attributable to the lack of proper training on the part of people handling machines in the factories, then we must place the responsibility on the Minister for the large number of victims in 1941. The Minister could have forbidden dangerous work being done by people who had not been properly trained for such work. If that had been done we would not have had such a large number of victims. Now I want to know whether the Minister is simply going to sit still and allow things to go on. Is he going to allow further work to be done by semi-skilled people, by people who have not been properly trained — is he going to allow that class of work to be done by those people when it should be done by skilled artisans? The position will become worse and worse as time goes on and as more artisans are joining the army. There will be a greater shortage of artisans. Is the Minister simply going to sit still? [Time limit.]

The Minister of Labour is also Minister of Social Welfare. We have been urging during this debate, and also during other debates, that the Minister should see to it that there was an increase in the pay of labourers, and also an improvement in their conditions. Now I want to suggest to the Minister that it is not going to be any use at some places, especially a place like Johannesburg, to increase the wages of the workers and to improve their labour conditions unless at the same time the evils prevailing in those towns, evils to which those people are exposed, are removed. I particularly want to refer to dog races. I know that a commission is sitting at the moment to investigate this matter. But I think that the Minister of Labour in his capacity as Minister of Social Welfare, may perhaps bring his influence to bear with decisive results in order once and for all to remove that evil from the reach of people who simply cannot afford to indulge in it.

The hon. member is now advocating legislation, which he must not do.

No, Mr. Chairman, I am not advocating any legislation; I am merely drawing the Minister’s attention to this evil.

But the matter is not one coming under the Labour Vote.

I am addressing the Minister in his capacity of Minister of Social Welfare whose duty it is to see that not only better labour conditions are created, but also to ensure the removal of evils which possibly may absorb increased salaries to the detriment of those people and their families. I do not propose going any further into the question; I am merely bringing it to the Minister’s notice in the hope that he, as Minister of Social Welfare, will go into it and will do away with those evils so that conditions may be effectively improved so far as the families of those workers are concerned. The present position is very disturbing. The incomes of those people also give one cause for deep concern and I merely want to draw the matter to the Minister’s attention so that he may consider what action he can take.

On a previous occasion I was discussing the picture which the Minister of Labour had painted to this committee in regard to the scheme of providing one meal per day to school children. But I want to bring this question home on the subject of the general policy which the Minister adhered to for years and years in the days when he sat on this side of the House, and I think he will agree with me that the policy which he used to proclaim in those days when he was a member of the Opposition was this: give every man in the country who wants work a proper opportunity to get work, and then give him a decent wage. I was trying to explain to the Committee yesterday that when we speak of a decent wage, the Minister must not ask us, “what do you want? 5s., 7s. or 10s. per day?” When we put up a plea for a decent wage, a living wage, then we are pleading for the very same thing that he pleaded for in the days when he spoke of a living wage. It may be 10s. per day, it may be 7s. 6d. per day — possibly it may be 15s. per day — depending on circumstances, and on the cost of living in force at a particular time. But for all those years we were in agreement that our workers should be paid a living wage, and we want to know from the Minister whether he is still in agreement with this side of the House on the question that the citizen of this country who wants to work must primarily be given the opportunity by the State of securing such work, and secondly, that it is the duty of the State to see to it that that individual is paid a decent living wage. In that connection I want to point out that there was a time, shortly before the Minister of Labour entered the Cabinet, when he used to plead here for a minimum wage scale of 60s. per week. If we take it that a man has to work six days a week it works out at 10s. per day. That is what he told us he stood for, and he tells us that he still stands for that. But the question which now arises is this. He is now a member of the Government, he is the Minister responsible for this particular sphere, and if he is not in a position now of achieving the things which he has always told he stood for and which he has stood for for years, then he must tell us now when he expects to be able to put these things into effect. When the Minister sat here on the Opposition benches he could ask for anything because he had no responsibility. But now he is a member of the Government; he carries responsibility now, and if he is unable to obtain these things which he stands for now, then when does he expect to get them? I also want to draw the Minister’s attention to the fact that on the 22nd April, 1941, he replied to a question on the subject of wages. That statement of the Minister’s related to subsidised works by Departments of State. Labourers on departmental works were paid from 4s. to 5s. 6d. per day in addition to which they were given certain benefits which they did not have in the past, namely twelve days leave every year. Then we had those people who were employed on the eradication of noxious weeds; they were paid from 4s. to 5s. 6d. per day. In their case there was no provision for holidays. A large number of men were employed on soil erosion works; they were paid 4s. tot 5s. 6d. per day and were given the ordinary annual holiday. That was the position as the Minister told us in 1941. Since 1941, however, the cost of living has gone up, and in view of the fact that those people in the past were unable to make ends meet on those wages — and the Minister himself has admitted that they could not come out on those wages — I should like to know from him how they can possibly come out on their pay in 1943. We are nearing the end of the last session of this Parliament. We do not know whether the Minister will come back here. If he is not prepared now to give effect to that which he has pleaded for all those years, if he is not prepared now, even at the eleventh hour, while he is still a member of the Cabinet, while he is still a responsible Minister, to give effect to what he says he stands for, then I want to know whether he will ever in days to come be able to do anything in that direction? I only want to add this in regard to this question of the one meal per day — is the Minister not prepared to make provision for a family allowance? He has told us in this House that his heart bleeds for those people who have not got the means to feed their children as they should be fed; any right thinking person’s heart will bleed for those people. But even when we give the school child one meal per day, there may be four or five other little children at home who have to suffer the pangs of hunger. Why? It is because the Minister is not carrying out his own undertakings, is not seeing to it that the demands which he has made for many years, are given effect to, namely to give the father of the family a living wage so that he himself can see to it that his wife and family are fed and clothed as they should be. The Minister admits that the position today is such that the head of the family is unable to do what he should do. It is for that reason that the State is stepping in, in order to provide one meal per day to school children. The family life is one of the foundation stones of our national life, and if we break down, if we cause family life to become disintegrated, we are causing the foundations of our national life to become disintegrated, and we are tampering with the very foundation of the State. In order to keep family life going, to keep it together as a unit, it is an essential requisite that the father, as the head of the family, be placed in a position to look after the feeding and clothing of his children. We now find, however, that the father is not given that opportunity, and the family becomes disintegrated and disorganised because of the fact that some of the children are given a meal at school while others who are not at school do not get that meal. If we enable the father himself to look after his family that father will maintain his self respect; he will know that he bears the responsibility which God has imposed upon him to look after the feeding and the clothing of his children. I want the Minister to tell us whether this measure of supplying one meal per day is something of a temporary or of a permanent nature? If it is a temporary matter then I want to know how long he proposes carrying on with it? In all seriousness I want to tell the Minister that unemployment in this country will be on the rise when the war is over. I do not know whether he will still be a Minister when that time comes, but he bears the responsibility now and he must look ahead and give his mind and his attention to the question of what is going to become of these people tomorrow and the day after tomorrow when days of hardship and difficulty are ahead. My contention is that when this war is over we are going to find that those individuals who are making pots and pots of money as a result of the war, those individuals who are today in nice jobs in consequence of our participation in the war, will be unemployed, and the State will then have to see to it that work is found for them. Those people will be thronging our streets looking for work; has the Minister ever given any thought to the question that it is his duty to make provision for those people? And if he is not able now to make permanent provision, if he comes along with patchwork now, and with temporary measures, will he be able then, when those difficult days dawn, to make provision for the large numbers he will have to provide for? Will he be able to help when there is going to be a rush of unemployed, of people returning from the war, of people who are leaving the jobs which they are occupying today, as a result of our participation in the war? We have this position today, that people are drawing wages and salaries in the army such as they have never had before, and the Minister must give his attention to, and think of what the future is going to bring when those people return and are unemployed. I ask again, if he is not able to take permanent steps today, to do anything of a permanent nature, how in heaven’s name is he going to be able, when a depression besets this country, when there is a reaction, to make permanent provision? If he is taking temporary measures now how then can we expect him in the days which are ahead of us to be able to do anything of a permanent nature? I again want to tell the Minister that that duty has been imposed upon him. Not only has he a duty in regard to the feeding of the children, but the whole welfare of the population is linked up with a necessity of our creating conditions in South Africa which will make it possible for every family to be maintained as a unit, and we can only achieve that purpose if we give the father the opportunity of providing for his family. The father must be enabled to care for his offspring whom God has placed in his charge, and unless such conditions are created in this country we shall never be able to say that we have looked after the welfare of our people, and we shall never be able to say that we have laid down solid foundations on which the future of the Nation and the happiness of the Nation can be built.

It is quite interesting to hear our friends on this (the Opposition) side of the House beginning to talk like labourites. I think it is about time that we challenged them to produce their plan as Labourites, and get them to tell us what sort of wages they think should be paid so that men will be able to live in decency and self-respect …

We have produced a plan.

I have not seen it.

Perhaps you don’t understand it.

Yes, perhaps I don’t, and I shall be pleased if the hon. member will try and make me understand it. I have seen motions from the Opposition side of the House saying they want a living wage for all sections, but I don’t know what that wage is. And I want to see what their living wage is for all sections of the people, not just for one section—not just for the one section which my hon. friends have so far been interested in. I hope my hon. friend, the Minister of Labour, if he knows the figures which those hon. members have in mind, will tell us what they are, and if he does not know their figures, perhaps he will challenge them to produce them. I say, if the Minister knows what their figures are in regard to a living standard for all sections of the community, I shall be glad if he will tell us.

I shall be glad if they will tell me.

They say they have told us.

Well, I certainly don’t know them.

If the Minister does not know, surely it is time they were made available.

We are waiting to hear what your living wage amounts to.

I have put it forward repeatedly.

Well, give us a figure—not only for the Natives.

We have repeatedly given the figures.

If it is so easy, why don’t you give us the figures?

For the white worker as well as for the Native worker.

I have given hon. members my suggestions on various occasions, and I am quite prepared now to listen to the figures which the Opposition want to put forward. I am never going to the Government in this country; they are—or they think they are—and as the alternative government, they have to tell us what they have to offer so that we may consider how far we may be able to support them. Now I want to go on with the matter I have in hand at the moment. In the course of this last year the Minister has gradually extended the operation of the cost of living allowance over an increasingly wide field, and I want to say that we are very grateful for that move on his part. It has made an enormous difference to the smaller towns of the Union, where even the Wage Board has not penetrated, and the employees have been able to get some increase in their hopelessly low earnings. What I want to ask the Minister is this, is it not in his power to go a step further and to impose a cost of living allowance on the mining industry.

Hear, hear.

The mining industry, I gather, is not outside the scope of the control of the Department of Labour. The Wage Act does not exclude regulation by the Labour Department of the mining industry. Therefore I assume that the Labour Department have some say in the conduct of that industry. In those circumstances I feel that, if the Minister woud use the powers he has, to force the mining industry into line with the rest of industry, he would be doing a great service to the community of this country. It is a fact that, at present, the mining industry is paying a very substantial cost of living allowance to its European employees; it is making an ex gratia payment to these people on a higher level than is laid down by the Minister himself for private employment, but they have paid nothing to the great bulk of their employees who are non-Europeans, and those non-Europeans of whom the great majority are Natives, have not had increases in their wages—they have not had any real increases in their wages for the last twenty five years. At present the industry is claiming that these people do not need a cost of living allowance, because, forsooth, their families are provided for in the Reserves. By saying this, they admit that they are now paying only a single man’s wage to the man they employ full time. The argument that Native miners’ families are provided for by the land is an argument which does not hold water even in peace time, and it certainly does not hold water in war time. The fact is that the cost of living of the families of African mineworkers has gone up just as seriously as the cost of living of any other Native group. The Reserves have only been kept afloat on a poverty stricken level on the wages which the mines have paid and the pressure of rising costs of food and clothes is nearly as great in the rural areas as it it in the urban areas at present. I commend this matter seriously to the attention of the Minister, and I hope he will bring his weight to bear on the mines to extend their cost of living schemes to the Natives. I hope he will force the mines to do what he is forcing private industries to do for their employees. Now, there is another matter which I wish to touch upon. It has been brought to my notice by frantic telephone calls from Johannesburg, that a serious situation is developing in the distributive trade there. I think the Minister knows something about the past history of this. He knows, I think, that there has been a dispute — that a dispute has been developing over the whole field of that trade. That is on both the European and the Native side of the trade, and that a move was made some time ago for a Conciliation Board to deal with the matter. He is probably also aware that, in this case, the European and Native workers are standing more solidly together than ever before in a case of this kind, that they have been carrying on combined negotiations, and I know he is aware, and was willing to encourage, a common negotiation by a Conciliation Board, if the employers would agree, the employees, the European employees, being quite willing to negotiate with the employers and the Native workers. The employers have refused to accept representations from the Native workers on the Conciliation Board in spite of the attitude of the European employees; in any case, the negotiations have broken down, and I am told that there is a serious danger of an outbreak of a very considerable strike by the European employees. I am told also that the European employees are not anxious to strike, that they have asked for arbitration. But they are in this position, that they have no legal claim for arbitration as the law stands. The Natives, however, must apply for an Arbitration Board which means that there is a danger that at this stage, the employees will be divided into racial groups, which I personally think would be extremely unfortunate — and I think the Minister will agree. He has said that in regards to the matter of recognition of the rights of the Natives to negotiate, he wishes the Europeans and Natives to negotiate together, to have common machinery. Now, here, both groups are endeavouring to maintain a common basis of negotiation. The Conciliation Board has excluded the Natives, the Arbitration Board is likely to exclude the Europeans. I believe the solidarity is so great that the Natives may be forced into something against their own interest. I should be glad, therefore, if the Minister would use every endeavour to secure arbitration for both the European workers and the Native workers. I am told that the employers are refusing arbitration. I hope the Minister will see this as an instance of the way in which the present machinery is more likely to divide the European and the Native workers than to keep them together, and that he will do his best to get the employers to accept arbitration for the European workers as well as for the Native employees, so that the negotiations on these people’s grievances may be carried on simultaneously and if possible together.

What I had suspected for a long time was proved to be true this morning, namely that the hon. member who has just sat down, the hon. member for Cape Eastern (Mrs. Ballinger) is going through this life wearing black spectacles—that she looks at everything in this country from the black point of view. Her black spectacles are so thick that the light cannot penetrate. While able to see, she is blind, though able to hear she is deaf. If she were not she should have heard from time to time, she should have seen in the papers from time to time, what this side of the House has put forward as a living wage for white labourers.

That is where the difference comes in—for white labourers.

Those are the people we are concerned with at the moment. If the light has not yet penetrated into the mind of the hon. member I would advise her to study the motion of the Leader of the Opposition and to read the speeches which were made subsequent to that motion, and perhaps she will eventually be able to see the light. At the moment we are dealing here with the conditions of the poor among the whites, but the hon. member over there can only see the natives and nobody else. So far as the Minister of Labour is concerned I want to unfold a story which will disclose not only the futility of his so called effort of improving the conditions of the workers, but which will also bring to light this policy of his of sending people from Pontius to Pilate, of sending people from pillar to post—that policy and mentality of the Government’s so far as the interests of the poor white workers are concerned. At Tohumba the Government has a sort of experimental farm and numbers of unskilled and semi-skilled married white men are employed there. Quite a number of people from my own constituency are employed on that experimental station. They are regarded as semi-skilled workers. There are also ordinary labourers who are domiciled there. They are engaged at a wage of 5s. 6d. per day. For the past year I believe they have been getting an allowance in respect of cost of living amounting to £1 5s. per month.

What people are those?

They are engaged at an experimental station which the Government has started there. It is an experimental station which goes into the question of grazing, and these people are used for the planting of grass and similar things. In spite of the fact that there has been a good deal of correspondence between the Minister and myself on the subject, he still does not seem to know anything about it. Quite a number of married white men are employed there, some with families, and they are paid the princely wage of 5s. 6d. per working day! They are now being paid an allowance of £1 5s. per month, so that their monthly wage amounts to about £7 2s. Out of that they not only have to provide food and clothes for themselves and their families, but they also have to pay rent. These people live in the dorp and they have to pay house rent. Their income is about £7 2s. per month and I want to ask the Minister now whether he imagines that white men with families can live in a dorp, pay house rent, and come out on £7 2s. per month? The story which I want to unfold to the House is this. I have been trying for the past year to improve the condition of those poor people, with the aid of the Government. I don’t want to go right back to the start; let me tell the story for the past three years and let me sketch briefly what has happened. On the 13th September 1940, about two and a half years ago, I wrote a letter to the Minister of Labour about the condition of those people. I received a reply on the 29th October, 1940—the reply did not come from him but from the Department of Agriculture which told me—because these people apparently come under the Department of Agriculture—that they had nothing to do with the wages paid to those people and that the wages came under the Department of Labour. On the 16th January, 1941, as a result of further correspondence, I received a further letter in which the Department of Agriculture again emphasised that the matter came under the Minister of Labour — that the fixing of the wages rested with the Department of Labour. And on the 25th August, 1942, after I had made further representations to the Minister of Labour, I received a reply from him that he would go into the matter. Two years have now passed. The Minister of Labour will now go into the matter. A few days later, on the 31st August, I received another letter, and do hon. members know what I was told in that letter? I was told that it was a matter which came under the Department of Agriculture. After the Department of Agriculture for two years had been writing to me, and after I had been writing to them, and after I had been told that the matter was one for the Minister of Labour, eventually, when I received a reply from the Minister of Labour he told me that the matter rested with the Minister of Agriculture. On the 3rd December, 1942, I again got in touch with the Secretary for Agriculture, whereupon I received a letter from him stating that they would go into the question. Meanwhile, those three or four people had to go on starving. The matter is receiving attention. A few months afterwards, on the 31st January, 1943, I eventually again received a letter from the Department of Agriculture, and I leave hon. members to guess what they wrote. They told me the matter did not rest with them but with the Minister of Labour. Has anyone ever beheld such a Pontius to Pilate farce in his life? So I again wrote to the Minister of Labour. On the 8th February, 1943, the Minister of Labour replied and told me that he would again go into the matter. On the 17th March, I again wrote to remind him of his promise; so far I have received no reply, and that is the sort of game that has been going on for three years. I hope it will not be taken amiss, and nobody can take it amiss, if I speak of the futility of the efforts of the Minister of Labour. And what is one to think of a Department which sends one from pillar to post over a period of three years? Let me say this to the Minister of Labour. I used to listen to him when he sat on this side of the House as Leader of the Labour Party. I want to remind him of his rhetorics when he used to declaim, and when he used to say to the then Government, “This Government will go down in history as the 5s. a day Government.” And now he has been a member of this Cabinet for three years, and what has he done to effectively improve the condition of the workers? If I had said what he used to say when he was in the Opposition, and if I had eventually got into the Cabinet and been able to achieve as little with the Government as the present Minister has been able to achieve, my self respect would have forced me to resign. As a self respecting man I could not have sat for another day in a Cabinet which treated my efforts with such contempt as is the case with the attempts of the Minister of Labour today? What has become of the great ideals and aims which the Minister stood for? I assume that he really sympathises and feels for the poor people, that he is really making efforts on their behalf, but apparently whatever he does is quite futile, and he is unable to achieve anything. [Time limit.]

It is not often that I find myself in agreement with the hon. member for Waterberg (Mr. J. G. Strydom) but I do feel that he has a good case when he accuses the Minister and says that the usual reply he gets when he asks him for different facts is: “We will go into the matter.” There I agree with the hon. member. That is the usual reply from the Minister’s department. I believe that during my absence yesterday the hon. Minister of Labour worked himself up into a terrible frenzy, and made a personal attack on me. It is deplorable, to my mind, that private affairs, private correspondence, between a member and his Minister should be thrown across the floor of this House, and I did not think there was a Minister on this side of the House who would use confidential correspondence and throw it across the floor of the House the way the Minister did. It is unbelievable to me. As a matter of fact, I think the Minister lost his temper. We are here as members representing the public. We are here to criticise the Government departments, where criticism is justified, and if the hon. Minister got himself into such a frenzy yesterday, it would almost seem as if the shoe did fit, and that it pinched him very badly, because I do not think that anyone can get into such a frenzy and make such deplorable statements across the floor of this House against one of his colleagues, unless the charge levelled against him was absolutely correct. Now I want to tell the Minister this: As he saw fit to being a personal matter into this House, I want to tell him a little more about the inefficiency of his own inspectors. That little incident happened a very long time ago.

I hope the hon. member will remember that the budget debate cannot be continued in Committee of Supply and that he is not going to continue the debate that took place yesterday.

I hope you will give me a little latitude.

It is not a question of latitude; it is a question of the rules of the House.

Let me put it this way then.

I hope the hon. member will not circumvent my ruling.

No, sir, I shall not do that. The incident which the Minister referred to yesterday was a visit by one of his inspectors to the engineering works, of which I am a director. One of the items was the screening of a wall that had to be built to a lavatory and lo and behold the inspector sent was a woman. The engineering firms take great exception, sir, to a woman coming along to their works and telling them how to run their business, someone with no experience in the engineering line. Now the hon. Minister deplores it that there was an attack made on the efficiency of his department. This woman came down to inspect the engineering works, and I found out that she wanted the wall raised to a certain height. This is how she gave her instruction: She raised her hand above her head and said: “I want the wall that high.” Well, the wall was raised twice on her instructions. I am on full time service and I was not there during the first two occasions. It was reported to me. But when she came the third time, I happened to be in the office. I saw her walk in and I heard her use these words to my foreman: “No, it’s wrong; I want it raised that high,” and here she pointed with her hands above her head. I looked at her and said to her: “You have been messing us about so much; now can you tell us what height you want the wall to be?” The hon. Minister has now attacked me personally. I was attacking his department. He is now forcing me to reopen the matter, and the only who is to blame is the hon. Minister. Is that protecting his staff? No, in no shape or form. I want to tell the hon. Minister that the hardest tumble a man can have is to fall over his own bluff, and the Minister must be very careful that he does not put himself into that predicament. He talks about the efficiency of his department. Well sir, I know of employers who want to employ returned soldiers. I can quote letters to prove what I am saying now. In one case an employer wanted an ex-soldier for a book-keeper’s job. He was prepared to offer a salary of between £300 and £400. He wrote to the department and asked them to provide him with a man, and the reply he got from the Labour Department was a card acknowledging his letter. The man needs this book-keeper, and he is prepared to pay a good salary. But that is the cooperation he got from the Labour Department — a card acknowledging receipt of his letter and nothing further. Then I have another letter here. I believe the Minister was quoting a number of letters. Well, sir, if he wants to see letters I will put down ten letters for every one he quotes. Let me show the hon. Minister how his department is co-operating with the returned soldier. I can produce 50 letters to show how dissatisfied the men are. Men have been put into unsuitable jobs. I know of one case where a returned soldier of 63 years of age, a highly qualified clerk, was put on to nail irons on a roof, and when he could not stand the job any longer he was thrown out of employment. Surely there was clerical work which could have been found for him. Surely there was congenial work that could have been found for the man. I want to tell the hon. Minister now that he does not know too much about his own Department. When I spoke previously on re-employment of soldiers to the hon. Minister, this reply was given to me: “I have got labour employment officers in uniform staying at Sonderwater.” I promptly told the Minister that the employment officer he spoke about had never been in uniform in his life. I gave the Minister the man’s name and told him that this man had left Sonderwater with the unit he is attached to, the C.A.T.D., in November last year, and still the Minister thought that this man was at Sonderwater and that he was in uniform. I charged the Minister before, and I charge him again — I want to use his own words — I feel that the Minister should poke his nose into his own department; I feel that it is long overdue. There was all this pin-pricking from the Labour Department against the business firms. We were sent numerous questionnaires to fill in. What was the result, sir? Instead of being able to curtail our staff, we had to increase our staff in order to cope with all these questions. If the Minister would only put these searching questions to his own department, and not bicker and pick on and annoy the firms outside, who are doing as much war work as they possibly can, I am sure the hon. Minister will be very much more popular with the general public than he as today.

I want to draw the hon. Minister’s attention to the unequal treatment of apprentices on the platteland and in the towns. These young fellows are taken on when they are about nineteen years of age, they are engaged in one or other district, and they are paid a wage which is not even enough for them to pay their board and lodging. If they live in town with their parents they may perhaps be able to come out; that is where they have the benefit if they can become apprenticed, because they live with their parents, while the young fellow from the platteland has not got that privilege, and is unable to become an apprentice in industry owing to the fact that out of the wage he is paid he is not even able to pay for his board anl lodging. I want to plead the cause of these young fellows from the platteland. Make it possible for them, too, to become apprenticed by giving them a subsidy so that at the very least they are given the same opportunity as the young fellows in the towns. If we do not do that it is only the young fellows from the towns who will be able to become artisans, while the boys from the platteland will be deprived of that opportunity. There is another matter I want to bring to the Minister’s notice, and that is that the Government is experiencing a considerable amount of trouble with unskilled labourers. The Minister is being criticised from all sides of the House, and rightly so. The unskilled labourer has to work now for 5s. 6d. per day, and as numerous hon. members have shown, if he has to live in town he cannot possibly come out on that. Would it not be possible for the Minister to make provision so that these unskilled labourers, especially the thousands who drift to the towns, can make a living on the platteland? Subsidise the farmer on the platteland so that he can pay those people wages which he is unable to pay today. How much can the farmer pay? Not more than 3s. per day. If a farmer pays more than that he is doomed—he will be ruined. He may be able to do it for a little while, but in the long run, he must go under. Why does not the Minister make provision for a subsidy to be paid to the people on the farms so that they can get 5s. by way of wage, which will bring up their total to 7s. 6d. per day? If that were done there would not be such a great drift to the towns. Now let me say a few words about housing. Every day we hear of the great demand for housing. I only want to mention this as an instance as perhaps it does not come under this vote. There is a great cry for more houses. The coloured people are drifting to the towns so that they may get better housing, because the farmer on his farm cannot provide housing. I want to ask the Minister to negotiate with the Minister of the Interior, and to arrange for a subsidy to be paid for the building of houses for coloured people on the farms, and also for poor white people, so as to enable them to stay on the farms. The platteland is becoming depopulated—it is not only the coloured people who are leaving, but also the whites. These people are drifting to the towns to make a better living and to get better housing. If the coloured men on the platteland could get 3s. per day they would stay there, because on the farms they get wood and water and a free house. They can do better on 3s. per day on the platteland than 5s. per day in the towns, and the same thing applies to the whites. If on the farms they get a bit of land, and a decent little house plus 5s. or 7s. per day, they will be able to come out better than if they get 15s. per day in the towns. I hope the Minister will go into these matters—it is essential that he should so because the platteland is becoming depopulated.

I think I had better reply to one or two of the points before I get too cluttered up, more especially as quite a number of them coincide each with the other, and the other with each. I propose to take these points in the order that they were hurled at me. The hon. and charming member for Vrededorp (Mrs. Badenhorst) who could not resist paying me a compliment — and I am always pleased to listen to her when she is in that vein — raised the question of returned soldiers, as she called it, walking the streets. It is quite possible that there are some walking the streets. I want to tell the Committee, and I suppose the majority of the hon. members of the Committee have realised in anticipation what we realised in anticipation, and are now realising in actual fact, that the war has had a tremendously unsettling effect on the men. When they go to the front, perhaps as clerks in home life and from various avocations, they are in an entirely different environment; they are in entirely different circumstances; they lead a hectic life — I do not mean from the point of view of absorption of liquor — and they get mentally unsettled, and they are unable to adjust themselves to their pre-war occupations, or for that matter any occupations at all. We place them, but they cannot settle down. They leave their positions; we have to find something else for them. It is found, and still they do not settle down. I anticipate that this thing will go on more and more as the years go on, and as more and more soldiers return, and one of the biggest problems we have to face, or almost one of the biggest is this psychological aspect, namely, how can we adjust the returned soldier to ordinary civilian life, and that accounts very largely for that. I do not want to be accused of minimising the position, but I think I can say that there are only about 500 of these soldiers wandering around. Hon. members must remember that the same people are not always walking the streets. We are endeavouring to adjust our departmental activities to these circumstances, and I think I can claim that we are succeeding reasonably well, and I hope that my hon. friend and other members of the Committee will bear with us in the trying circumstances with which we are confronted, so far as this particular aspect of the absorption of returned soldiers is concerned. There is a point raised by the hon. member, that on the face of it appeared to be serious. She says that no person is accepted for employment by the Labour Department if he is fit for the army. Now this only applies — and it does apply; I never hide anything — it only applies to those people applying for work in a temporary capacity, chiefly clerical, in the Government services, to replace those who have gone to the front; and I want to put this to the Committee; it is neither logical nor is it decent for us to take people to replace those who have gone to the front.

You should take into consideration the fact that we are not all supporters of the war.

We certainly do take cognisance of it. We are not going to allow those who try to sabotage the war effort to take the place of those who go to the front.

Does that mean that when another Government comes into power, they will be justified in ousting all your supporters?

It is not a question of ousting; it is simply a question that this country is at war. The hon. member for Cape Western (Mr. Molteno) referred to the coloured girls in the munition factory at Kimberley, and he wanted to know why we do not take native girls as well. This was particularly established to meet the needs of the coloured community.

Is it in Kimberley only?

If there are enough opportunities, if we have the machinery, and if the requirements are such that we have to extend, then we will do so. But this is emphatically, specifically a coloured girls’ factory. The hon. member wants to know why we cannot have a Labour Exchange.

An employment bureau.

He wants to know why we cannot have an employment bureau in Kimberley. We have; for coloured people, but not for natives. That is what my hon. friend is getting at. Unfortunately, the hon. member is having the same experience as the hon. member for Waterberg (Mr. J. G. Strydom). It is a case of your being bandied about between one department and another, and the time is not far distant when we shall have to concentrate our Labour activities, wherever they are working and whoever they are working for, under one head, and that is the Labour Department. There is a great deal of discursiveness, if I may use that term, by reason of the disjointed method of control that we have. The Native Affairs Department looks after the natives.

But you administer the wage determination.

What has that got to do with an employment bureau?

You should look after the natives.

We do that, and we see that the wage determination if carried out. The hon. member for Albert-Colesberg (Mr. Boltman) who asked me to reply in his absence, waxed very eloquent and quite rightly, with regard to the application of this meal. I think I have, rather, by my language, misled the hon. gentleman and possibly several others in the Committee, on that side of the House particularly, as to the effect of this meal. I think hon. members rather got the impression that the butter scheme is completely wiped out by this. It is not. £100,000 is on the estimates for that. The £50,000 to which reference has been made, as the first instalment, is really a token sum to get the thing started.

Does that mean you won’t supply any meals during the present financial year?

We are going to try and do it. If we find that we can supply the meals—of course, meals are being supplied to-day—if we find that we require the money, it will be found and those meals will be provided. Then the hon. member raised a point which several other members have raised, and a very pertinent one and a very important one, that providing a meal to school-going children was only providing for 200 days in the year for one child. There may be half a dozen children in the family who are not of school-going age. That is perfectly true. I want to tell the House frankly that every effort I can possibly make is being made to bring about a state of family allowances to which my hon. friend referred. It is not logical just to feed the child at school, and for the time that child is at school, and leaving all the rest of the family high and dry on the shore of starvation.

What about higher wages; that would be better still?

I agree, and all my energies are being bent in that direction; and that replies to all the criticism that was levelled against me.

You agree that that is the proper solution?

I am coming to your points in a minute. As I say, I am bending all my energies in the direction of a complete uplift of all workers, especially in the Government services. The hon. gentleman then went on to complain that those engaged in the eradication of weeds and the subsidised erosion workers have not received any increase in pay.

He said in all the departments.

He specified those two; I did not catch the rest. It is my constant endeavour — that I have not succeeded up to now I sincerely and deeply regret — to uplift all the workers. But I have very great hopes at the present time.

Why don’t you amend the wage determination?

I have that in view too. The eradication of weeds comes under the divisional councils. I do ask hon. members to turn some of the eloquence they have directed against me, against their farmer friends, because the farmers employ these erosion workers, and we subsidise them up to seven-eighths, so there might be some excuse for hon. members to say: Why not subsidise them eight-eighths?

The farmer does not only pay one-eighth; he has to supply everything else.

What has he got to supply?

He has to supply the machinery and everything else.

Well, the farmer supplies the machinery in every other respect. My hon. friend on my right who castigated me a little while ago, also has to buy the machinery.

He even had to raise the wall.

Yes, he had to raise the wall, and I expected him to say it protruded through the roof. I shall come to my hon. friend in a moment; I am taking the points in categorical order. The hon. member for Albert-Colesberg also raised the question of lack of holidays for 4,500 subsidised workers. I am very glad he has drawn my attention to that, and I will do my very best to have that gone into. The hon. member for … .

Boshof.

I always regard the hon. member as Serfontein, and Serfontein only, which of course puts him on the scroll of fame. I want to say to my hon. friend that I accept with pleasure his kind invitation to visit the industrial school at Jacobsdal. I propose to work out an itinerary as soon as possible during the recess, and I shall visit all the industrial schools during the recess, not only with a view to ascertaining what they are doing there and how they are training the youngsters, but with a view to this comprehensive legislation to which I have referred in the course of this debate, in order that we will get legislation that will be on sound lines. The hon. member made one point, and other members on that side also made it — a very important point — and that is that those who have been trained or partially trained, whatever may be the degree of training, whatever may be the degree of efficiency they have achieved, are started by one of our Government departments, the Railway Department, at the bottom of the ladder. That again is a matter we have to go into.

How many years will you require to go into it?

A couple of months, my son. Provided you give your evidence in a helpful form instead of a critical form.

“My son!”

So much for yesterday. The hon. member started the ball rolling again today, and he wants to know what the reason is for the increase in the number of accidents, and he gave the reasons according to some people, namely, that the chief inspector of factories stated that one of the reasons was that they are not properly trained. The hon. member says that owing to the emergency, apprentices are doing journeymen’s work, and another reason, a third reason that was advanced — and the most important of all — was excessive overtime. Well all these considerations have been before us, and we had to arrive at what we regarded as a happy mean … No, I do not think I should use the word “happy” in that connection.

Certainly not in connection with so many deaths.

We had to get a means of getting as much out of the munition workers as we could, consistent with their safety. My hon. friend knows that during the period which that report reviewed, there was a tremendously great amount of overtime being worked. We have limited that now.

You have done nothing about the inexperienced workman.

Of course, they are gaining experience as they go on. All this has been done in consultation with the trade unions, and it is an unhappy circumstance that we have had to face. We have had to get the stuff out for the war. We had to do it, and we had to transgress a tremendous number of thoughts, ideas and beliefs that we hitherto had.

What are last year’s figures?

I have not got them. I am happy to say that they are improving, of course. I want to say to the hon. member that if and when any inspector of factories draws my attention, or the department’s attention to anything that is likely to cause injury or death, whether it is overtime, lack of experience or what not, we will certainly take steps.

You have women inspectors.

I will come to that in a moment, and I want to say in anticipation that this particular woman is infinitely more efficient than a number of men.

Why do you look to your right?

Why should I not? He brought the woman up — if I may use those words. The hon. member for Heilbron (Mr. Liebenberg) was concerned about the social welfare side specifically, and one thing he said was that it was no use having increased wages if those who receive those increased wages, go hiking round the country spending their money on the dogs.

My point was that these people should not be given the opportunity to do this sort of thing.

Is not this a matter for education? You cannot make people good by Act of Parliament. Education is what is required there.

I say you should remove the cause.

My hon. friend must be logical, if he is going to talk about dogs. That happens to be the poor man’s recreation. Are you going to stop horse racing and are you going to stop the Stock Exchange? You cannot just fight a little thing and leave the big things. It is a question of general education. I like to go to the dogs occasionally. My hon. friend over there considers that I have already gone to the dogs. Well, that is a matter of opinion, but I do like to see dog racing, and I will just whisper it in the ear of my hon. friend — other people are not supposed to listen now — but I have lost quite a bit on the dogs.

But you can afford it.

No, at that time I could not.

What a spendthrift.

There is not too much in that agitation. It is a case of education. But the hon. member did draw attention to a very important point and that is the question of housing.

You mean for the dogs?

Well, the dogs are housed too and better than many Europeans. But the hon. member referred to the housing conditions of many European people. Let me tell my hon. friend that the Government is very sensible of the necessity for that, as witness the Housing Bill which has just been passed at the instance of the Minister of the Interior. We are taking that matter up very seriously indeed. I just want to deal with this general attack that has been made upon me, as to my failure to uplift the general standard of wages. I hold equally strongly and perhaps more strongly, because of my years of effort, that this is the first consideration: Provide our human beings with the opportunity, the wherewithal to purchase their requirements and a good deal of the rest of our social welfare activities will simply fade away. I believe that most sincerely. Having that in mind with the legislative limitations that I have imposed upon me, I am doing my best for that uplift, and I repeat today what I said last year, that I cannot instruct the Wage Board, but I have suggested and repeatedly suggested to the Wage Board that they must work towards a minimum of 10s. a day for unskilled labour. It is not an instruction; I cannot do that; but I have made that suggestion repeatedly, and I know that they are working in that direction.

Is that for all unskilled labour?

Yes.

Black and white?

Yes.

What about farm labourers?

No, it does not apply to farmers. The principle is this — a principle that I have never departed from — that you have to pay for the work and not the colour of the person doing the work.

That is where we differ.

I know. You hold that view and I hold the other view, and I am satisfied that my view is the correct one, that employers must pay for the work that is done and not for the colour of the person who is doing it.

I understand that you have engaged on farming operations on a small scale?

Yes.

Will you try to pay your native labourers 10s. a day?

Yes, I will.

In that case you will soon be bankrupt.

But then you are a capitalist farmer.

Unfortunately I have to pay in instead of drawing anything. I have a tremendous amount of sympathy for the farmer. I have to pay in instead of drawing.

No wonder if you pay your natives 10s. a day.

No! I don’t, but will. It is not a question of production. It is a question of marketing. The hon. member for Cape Eastern (Mrs. Ballinger) wants me to insist on the imposition of a cost-of-living allowance in respect of the mine natives. As the hon. member knows, there is at present a commission which is going into this question—or does the hon. member not know?

I know; but they won’t report for another year.

I cannot help it. I have no control. These natives come under the Mines Department and the Government has appointed this commission because it has come to the conclusion that the natives are not getting a square deal as far as wages are concerned. They are being well fed and they are reasonably housed, but they are not getting a square deal as far as wages are concerned. This is rather important, because it affects such a large number of natives.

When that commission reports, who will decide to impose new conditions of wages in regard to the mine natives?

Frankly, I cannot tell the hon. member that. Does she mean “which Minister”?

Yes.

In all probability I shall get that; all the nasty things come my way. If it does, you can back your bottom dollar the wages will be raised. The hon. member quite rightly says—it is an argument that I use myself when municipalities have asked me to agree to exempt them from the payment of cost-of-living allowances to their natives—that they do not look after their families. They do not feed and clothe their families. The cost-of-living has risen as against the families, and I have always refused exemption on those grounds. Now in regard to the question of distributive trades in Johannesburg as the hon. lady quite rightly says the Conciliation Board has broken down. There is a criss-cross there; the Europeans want arbitration and they cannot get it; they are refused arbitration. The natives can get arbitration; and she sees in that a danger of a racial split. Well, it is most unfortunate; I always find myself day after day in the position of trying to resolve tangles, tangles that ought never to have occurred; but in this case I want to say that when the distributive workers had a conference in the Cape, when the Conciliation Board broke down, as it did, the employers were in favour of arbitration, but the representatives of the Union refused arbitration. In the other case the employers are refusing arbitration and the workers want arbitration. Where do I get to? In the same union I get two opposite conflicting expressions of opinion in regard to the setting up of an Arbitration Board. The hon. lady saw my limitation and my difficulty and she suggested that I should do the very best I could to bring about that arbitration—a general arbitration. I will do so. As a matter of fact this is a propos largely of the efficiency of my staff—she knows perfectly well that the Divisional inspector in Johannesburg is a remarkably tactful individual, very efficient and very persuasive, and I shall turn him into this job immediately, to see if he can persuade the employers to agree to arbitration of a general character. I think I have now dealt with all the points that the hon. member for Waterberg brought up, except that of being kicked from pillar to post as between the Departments. I agree with the hon. member that that is a most reprehensible state of affairs. I am trying to get these matters concentrated into my hands.

Is it true that you are responsible for the wages fixed?

No, if I were responsible, it would be 10s. I am not responsible.

Who is responsible?

The Department that employs them.

Surely the Government as a whole has the responsibility?

I know.

But you cannot take it any further?

No, I cannot.

Why don’t you lay down the condition that these people must be paid better?

Why don’t you resign?

Why don’t you?

Resign from what?

You cannot get what you want either.

But I shall when I get into your place.

Now don’t set up divisions between you and the hon. member for Fordsburg. He has got his eye on my job already.

If I should succeed in doing as little as you do, I should not like to be in your position.

If you could succeed here, I would be perfectly happy.

But you are doing nothing.

That is a statement without any foundation of fact. I am quite satisfied that I have done something.

You are satisfied with very little.

Why don’t you get out of it?

The hon. member for Ceres (Mr. J. J. M. van Zyl) made a very valuable suggestion, and it is a suggestion that reinforces a suggestion made by the hon. member for Gordonia (Mr. J. H. Conradie) that, in order to help the children of the platteland to learn trades in the towns, where they can get the best training, and to overcome the repugnance that the parents have of letting their children come into the wickedness of the city unattended, we might consider the question of instituting hostels. We have hostels. That is a suggestion that is worthy of consideration, and I assure hon. members that I will give that my consideration during the recess. Then he wants me to subsidise the farmer. Does he mean with housing schemes?

He said so.

Frankly, I am not in love with this subsidy system at all. It is really subsidising the poor employers. I am not picking out the farmers as a class at all, but this question of subsidising labour and sub-economic housing does not appeal to me one little bit, because you are merely subsidising poor employers. I think hon. members will agree with me that it is desirable to pay a wage which will make it unnecessary to have these things.

Not every farmer can pay 10s. to the natives as you can.

I cannot touch the farmers, but immediately you have a distribution of wages based on 10s. a day right round for unskilled labour, you have such a tremendous purchasing power in the country that the farmers can pay the same. It would be reflected in their budget. I cannot expand on that now. I think the hon. member also referred to the now defunct farmers’ housing schemes …

Bywoners.

… . where the Social Welfare Department advances so much per house to farmers to build houses for their farm labourers. I found that it was dead when I came into office, but I am very much in favour of it, and I am taking the necessary steps if possible to revive it, I think perhaps the hon. member may look for some result after this forthcoming general election.

Then you may not be there.

I may not; then I shall be enjoying a well-earned retirement. The hon. member for Rosettenville (Mr. Howarth) took me seriously to task for having dared to oppose his contention.

You made a personal attack upon me.

I will come to the personal attack side of it.

(Inaudible).

Will the hon. member allow me to continue? Why does he not allow me to say what I want to say? The hon. member said today that I made a personal attack upon him because he attacked the efficiency of my Department. There is nothing of the sort. The hon. member attacked the integrity of some of the inspectors of my Department, and said that they were sabotaging the returned soldier effort, and I was replying to that, and I said that it seemed a remarkable thing — that is the gist of it; I am not pretending to give you the exact language I used — that the hon. member chose this place to do it without giving me any information about it at all.

What were your own tactics? You went to the press.

The attack was made publicly here, impeaching the integrity of officers of my Department, and I said, and I say now, that the first thing the hon. member should have done was to come to me with specific cases in order that I could go into this matter. He made an attack that could not be answered straight away in the first place, and if those people were guilty of this sort of thing, he gave them an opportunity of hiding their tracks, and what I said was that the hon. member should have come to me personally. Now he has made a definite attack upon the inspectors who were inspecting his particular works. In view of the fact that he has brought it out in that fashion, I must reply to it. He said that we sent a woman, and he said it in such a sneering fashion as though this woman was incapable. I say that she is a highly, efficiently trained inspector.

She does not know anything about the engineering industry.

She did not have to know anything about the engineering industry. She had to see whether the sanitary conditions and the other conditions affecting the health of the workers were satisfactory. That was what she was sent for. The hon. member saw me at once about this and he asked me, and I met his request, to send the Chief Inspector of Factories up there. And I did send him.

And then the nonsense stopped.

Mr. Orkin reported exactly as the woman had reported. His report was exactly the same. I have the official report and my instructions were then that if these things are not composed, the owner of this property must be prosecuted.

There’s cheek for you.

These are the facts, and I do not want to persue it any further. The whole question turned upon sabotaging, not upon the efficiency of the Department, but the deliberate sabotaging by inspectors; and no case has been made out to prove this sabotaging. Immediately after the speech of the hon. member, a letter was written to him by my Department, asking for specific cases of this so-called sabotage, and we have not got any reply yet.

I wish to register a protest against the policy laid down here this morning by the Minister of Labour when he declared that people who were fit for war service could not get any appointments in his Department. Is the Minister now engaged on dragging the officials of this country into politics? If the Minister is doing that he will cause the strife which has been created in this country to continue for a long time after the war. His statement amounts to this, that in future we are going to appoint officials in this country according to their political convictions. We realise that the question of participation or non-participation in the war is a question of acute political difference in this country. We have fought bye-elections on the subject; several motions have been before the House on this matter, and if the Minister now insists in adopting the attitude that a person who does not adopt his political views, a person who is fit to take part in the war, cannot get a Government appointment, then I feel that the Minister has actually reached the stage that he is dragging officials into politics, and I say that if he carries on along that course it will mean this, that when a change of Government comes in there will also be a change of officials, and where is that sort of thing going to land us? No, I want to say this, that if what the Minister of Labour has announced here constitutes the Government policy, then it is the greatest hypocrisy in the world to say that members opposite stand for democracy. Then I have never experienced such a violation of democracy and of the rights of the people as is contemplated by the announcement of the Minister of Labour. I further want to say that the replies of the Minister of Labour really damns the Government’s policy as such. No case has been raised by this side of the House in the interests of the working classes in respect of which the Minister of Labour has not got up and said that he was in sympathy with us. He is in favour of family allowances; he is in favour of an increased salary scale for unskilled workers; nothing is done to give effect to those ideas. He is in favour of these things, the Minister feels that an injustice is being done, he feels that an improvement should be effected, but nothing is being done. Consequently, it must be clear to this House and to the country outside that there can be only one reason for the Minister for having failed in his efforts, and that is that the Government of which he is a member is unwilling to bring about any improvement in these matters. The Minister made an accusation in connection with the plea put up by the hon. member for Boshof (Mr. Serfontein), and he said this, “let the farmers pay the erosion workers more; the Government subsidises them but it is the farmer’s duty to pay them more.” And the Minister thereupon gave the example of industrialists who also had to supply their own equipment. But where the private business man buys equipment and equips a factory he does so for the purpose of securing an income for himself. Does not the Minister realise that when a farmer spends hundreds of pounds on soil erosion, it does not put a penny into his pocket, but it is a national work which he undertakes. The national workers are doing national work in South Africa. I am appealing to the Minister to see to it that these people get better pay. Being a man who lives on the platteland and who is not familiar with labour conditions in the towns at least I am not intimately familiar with them, it is difficult for me to say to what extent the conditions of organised and skilled workers in the towns have improved under the present Government. But if I take the type of worker with whom I get into touch on the platteland then I must say that their position has not improved one iota since the present Minister has assumed the responsible position which he occupies today. I want to put a straight question to the Minister. Does he believe that under present conditions it is possible for an erosion worker or for a subsidised municipal worker to live on the wage he is paid? Is it possible for a semi fit worker in the municipal service to live on the pay he gets today? And surely it must be clear that the semi-fits cannot be absorbed in the army. I further want to put this question to the Minister. Under Vote 32, there is a reduction of £8,000 in respect of employment of physically semi-fit people. Why is there such a reduction at a time like the present when high prices are ruling? One would have expected an increase in the vote. How can one possibly justify a reduction of £8,000 under existing conditions? I should like the Minister to give us an explanation. There is another direct question I want to put to the Minister: The Minister, I believe, on Wednesday last, in the course of the debate, stated that during the recess there would be discussions between representatives of various parties and bodies, about native organisations, and native trade unions. The question I want to put to the Minister is this — what is his personal view and what is his policy in regard to Native Trade Unions? We on this side of the House are very much in earnest in our sentiment that all workers should be treated fairly and justly, but I am deeply convinced that the time has not arrived for the recognition of Native Trade Unions. When one allows the workers to organise themselves in Trade Unions one must feel sure that these people have the necessary sense of responsibility. Organised workers and trade unions in the hands of people who have not got the requisite sense of responsibility can only be a danger to themselves and the community. Although there are natives who have had a good training and although there are numbers among them who have an outstanding sense of duty, the Natives as a whole have not yet reached that level of civilisation, they have not yet developed a sufficient sense of responsibility to be permitted to organise themselves into Native Trade Unions. We cannot blame the Native for not yet having the necessary sense of responsibility. We know that the civilisations of all nations in the world has not come about in the course of days — it has been a matter of centuries. As we have only been engaged for a short period of time in civilising the Natives of South Africa we cannot expect such a high sense of responsibility among them. I believe that there is a serious danger and a possible cause of friction in allowing people to travel through the Native areas attending conferences and then returning and posing as great experts in Native phsychology. They believe that if they attend one or two Native conferences, that if they have travelled through the country a few times, they are able to proclaim fine sounding liberal ideas to the world and they imagine that they can stand up as the champions of the Natives because of their knowledge of the Natives. [Time limit.]

The hon. member who has just spoken quite obviously entirely misunderstands the position. There is nothing in the Law at present to stop anyone from forming a Trade Union — whether he be a Native, Coloured man or European. There are in fact Native Trade Unions in existence, organised as unskilled unions. The point is not whether there shall be trade unions among Natives, but whether they shall be given constitutional rights of negotiation. That is the only point. And so far as we are concerned, and we have always put this forward — if what my hon. friend over there wants to stop — if he wants to stop industrial trouble, strikes etc., then the way to do so is to give constitutional rights of negotiation to the workers involved. That has been proved time and again in this country. The Industrial Conciliation Act which gave the right of constitutional negotiation to industrial workers other than Natives has considerably decreased the number of industrial disputes that have culminated in strike action, and all we want is the application of the same position to native workers. If there are bodies of native workers who are not sufficiently developed to form responsible trade unions, then these unions will not be recognised and they will not be registered under the Act, but the request for recognition of African Trade Unions rests on the basis of the existence of such unions that are capable of negotiation. I hope I have made the position clearer to my hon. friend than it was before. I don’t think the hon. member for Waterberg (Mr. J. G. Strydom) can expect us on these benches to be satisfied with his reply to the specific question put to his Party by the hon. member for Cape Eastern (Mrs. Ballinger) this morning. What she said was this: that his Party are demanding a civilised, and a certain, level of unskilled wages, and she wanted to know what their concrete suggestion was. That was a perfectly pertinent question and it deserved to be treated with more gravity than the hon. member for Waterberg treated it with.

We have given our reply on the Security Motion.

I shall deal with that. What the hon. member for Waterberg said this morning was this: “The hon. member for Cape Eastern knows perfectly well what standard we have been demanding for unskilled European workers.” Well, the point was this. The Nationalist Party holds itself out as being the official Opposition and therefore as the alternative Government for this country. They hold themselves out as a possible alternative Government.

They are going to be the next Government.

And the question was what is their policy in this respect, not only in regard to these European unskilled labourers in Government employ, but in regard to the general body of unskilled workers? The Minister gave his policy this morning when he said he would urge on the Wage Board—and I must say that I welcomed his statement as being the first direct statement on the subject—to work towards a minimum unskilled wage according to the work done of 10s. per day. Now, I support that statement of the Minister and I think that should be the objective. It would be to the advantage of the European workers as well as of the non-European workers if that objective were attained. At the same time I recognise that from the practical point of view there is no immediate prospect of that being attained. Therefore, we on these benches put forward certain alternatives. We have never attacked what is demanded by hon. members on the Opposition side for these European workers in Government employ. In fact, I am not sure that in some cases these demands are not too low. What we have demanded, however, is that there should be an unskilled, minimum basic wage for the general unskilled workers in this country who, hon. members must realise, are non-Europeans. It has been established by fact finding commissions that £2 per week, that is, 6s. 8d. per day, is the lowest that any worker of any race can be expected to live on in a town. Now, hon. members on the Opposition side say that they have stated their policy on this. It is true that on the Security Motion they have set out their policy. But what have they said on this unskilled wage subject? I take it that they are referring to commerce and industry. Are they prepared to support our demand for a general unskilled minimum wage of £2 per week in commerce and industry pending the attainment of what the Minister says is his object — which I fully support — of 10/- per day all round for unskilled workers? It cannot be attained at present, but what I feel can be attained is a minimum of £2 per week for unskilled workers and I want to know from the hon. member for Fordsburg (Mr. B. J. Schoeman), who I understands, speaks for his party on these industrial matters, whether he supports that? Now I want to say something to the Minister on this particular subject. As I have already said, I welcome his statement this morning as to the objective which he has before him as a policy. What I want to ask him is this: why is there this very serious discrepancy between the minimum wages laid down, by the Wage Board for labourers in Johannesburg and Pretoria, as compared with those laid down in the Cape Peninsula and the Coastal towns generally?

Business suspended at 12.45 p.m. and resumed at 2.20 p.m.

When business was suspended I was drawing the attention of the hon. Minister to the wide disparity between the minimum unskilled wage rates laid down by the Wage Board in Johannesburg and Pretoria, as compared with the Cape Peninsula and Port Elizabeth. To illustrate what I am referring to there have recently—last year—been two comprehensive unskilled wage determinations, one for Johannesburg and Pretoria and the other for the Cape Peninsula. In the case of the determination in the North the wages that were laid down were 25s. a week, rising later up to 26s. 6d. a week. In the Cape Peninsula the wage for municipal workers, a large body of men, was laid down at £2 5s. per week. In many industries it was £2 a week and in no case was it lower than 30s. a week. What is the reason for that disparity? I appreciate that, as the hon. Minister said this morning, he has no control over the Wage Board, but at the same time he can make suggestions to the Wage Board, and it would be laughable to suggest that Johannesburg, for instance, was a wealthier town than Cape Town, yet I say if Cape Town employers can pay £2 a week, Johannesburg employers can do the same. To contrast the attitude in the two places! Here in Cape Town I heard the representatives of the Cape Town Municipality themselves suggest to the Wage Board that they should pay their unskilled workers £2 5s. a week, and yet when Johannesburg Municipality was asked to pay £1 5s. a week, they started a most deplorable agitation. I say that something must be done to level up these wages as between the North and the South, because I can assure the hon. Minister that before the Wage Board the employers here are constantly using those starvation wage rates which are laid down in the North, and I do hope the Minister will use what influence he can within the statutory limitations to see that these unskilled wage rates in the North are scaled up, not only for the sake of the workers up there, but for the sake of the unskilled workers throughout the country.

I should like to take this matter a little further with the Minister. I leave it at that, that we find ourselves in this position that while the Department of Agriculture insists that the wages of these European labourers are fixed by the Minister of Labour, he gets up in this House and denies it. I ask you, Sir, what must one believe? The Department of Agriculture officially states that the wages are fixed by the Minister of Labour. The Minister of Labour gets up and denies it. Who does fix the wages? One does not want to use strong language but who must one believe?

It is fixed by the Department of Agriculture.

The Department of Agriculture denies it. There can be no ambiguity or doubt. I have their letters before me in which they write—

That is not true.

What must one believe?

I shall take up the matter with them.

This is not the only letter.

I am not going to be held responsible for something which I did not do.

The hon. Minister of Labour has been writing letters to me for the past two years, saying that the matter is receiving his attention. Now he again promises that this matter will receive his attention. I shall leave it at that and see what results from the attention the Minister is going to give to this matter; I hope a great deal. Now I come to the wages itself. The Minister and the Government fixed the wages of these Europeans at 5s. 6d. per day. Just in passing I again want to ask the Minister whether he is honestly of opinion that a married European with a wife and children can rent a house and live on 5s. 6d. per day, plus 1s. per day war allowance which they now receive? I want to constrast with this what the Minister is doing in other respects.

I have said this repeatedly.

The Minister must not become impatient. I know it is hard if someone treads on one’s toes.

Especially if one has corns.

I have before me the Government Gazette of the 20th November, 1942. The Minister fixed the wages here, the wages of natives who do the loading and unloading at the docks at Durban. I take it this comes under the Railways. Natives do not fall under the Minister. They fall under the Department of Railways. But who fixes those wages? It is Mr. Ivan Walker, the Controller of the Minister’s Department. He fixes the wages. The Minister told us just now that he had nothing to do with it. And on what basis does he fix the wages of these natives? Just listen to this: The kaffirs who do the loading and unloading receive a wage of 5s. per day plus a war allowance of 1s. per day; that is to say 6s. per day—and that is for ordinary raw kaffirs. The European gets 5s. 6d. per day and the Minister fixes the wages of these kaffirs at 6s. per day.

Blanket kaffirs.

Which Europeans are these?

These are kaffirs, not Europeans. And when they work overtime for longer than two hours, they receive 3s. 6d. extra. This is the man who is powerless to give a living wage to respectable Europeans.

There must be a mistake somewhere.

I do not know who is responsible for the other fixation. A day or two ago we read in the newspapers that the wages of coloureds, employed at the munition factories in Kimberley and Pretoria, had been fixed at £6 6s. per week; that is to say, £25 per month, and that is for coloureds. These poor Europeans earn £7 to £7 5s. per month, while coloured labourers employed at the munition factories, receive £25 per month. I do not know whether it is necessary for me to enlarge on this matter. If ever there has been anything which is to the discredit of any Government, then it is this tremendous difference between the wages fixed for coloureds and natives under this Government and the wages of Europeans who are in the service of the Government.

I am sorry that the hon. member for Smithfield (Mr. Fouché) is not in his seat. He attacked the Minister of Labour in this House because he wants to give preference to returned soldiers when there is work available.

No, he attacked the Minister because he refuses to appoint suitable people in the place of men who have gone on active service.

As I understood it, the Minister announced the policy that he was going to give preference to returned soldiers, and that he did not want to fill the positions of soldiers, because he wants to give preference to returned soldiers.

No, that is not so.

That is how I understood it.

You were not here. He attacked the Minister because he refuses to appoint physically fit people, and tells them that they must rather go and fight.

In any event, I understood that it was the policy of the Minister of Labour to give preference to returned soldiers, and I want to support that policy. The attack of the hon. member for Smithfield was directed against that policy. That is the Minister’s policy and I want to show why we on this side support that policy. In the ordinary course of events the hon. member would have been quite correct in saying that the government of a country should not give preference to its own party people when it comes to appointments. Nor was that done in this country in the ordinary course of events. But where the Minister’s policy is to give preference to returned soldiers, I would like to support him. And that is the policy which was accepted by this Government and by all of us on this side. If we had lived in normal circumstances, it might have been a different matter. But there is not a normal state of affairs in our country. We have this position here, that a section of the people are undermining the war effort. In the ordinary course of events every government of every country in the world will surely give preference to its returned soldiers. That is not a new principle, but something which is done throughout the world, and we know that in South Africa that policy is criticised because we have the unfortunate position in this country that a section of the people are not only opposed to our participating in the war, but they are actually opposing us. I support the policy of the Minister and the Government in giving preference to returned soldiers during and after the war. The soldiers should know at this stage that if hon. members on the other side get into power, they (the soldiers) will not get preference; they will be treated on a par with other people or quite possibly they will be pushed in the background. That is the spirit amongst members on the other side, to push those people into the background. Hon. members on the other side may say what they please, but the fact remains that in every respect they have opposed everything in this House which has been proposed in the interests of the soldiers. To say now that they will give preference to returned soldiers, well, no one will believe that. It would not be logical on the part of members on the other side to do so. I also want to give the Minister the assurance that, as far as I am concerned, I appreciate the fact that he is encouraging people to organise themselves into trade unions. If the Minister adopts that course, and if we get organised trade unions to look after the interests of the workers, we shall have a source of negotiation in those trade unions whenever there is trouble.

That does not agree with what you said last year.

I have always been in favour of trade unions.

Also trade unions for natives?

Trade unions for all workers. It is much better to have the workers organised.

Thanks very much for that reply.

That has always been my reply. When the workers are organised we have an organised body which can act and with which we can negotiate. The fact that the Minister is encouraging trade unions, is one which I shall always approve of and wholeheartedly support.

I am sorry that the hon. member for Vereeniging (Lt.-Col. Rood) was not here when the Minister spoke. What we objected to was the fact that the Minister said here that he was not going to give employment to any person who is fit to go and fight.

Then the hon. member for Vereeniging should not get employment.

The Minister need not have told us this because I have letters from his Department which told us that as far back as last year. If a man is under a certain age and he is fit to fight, he will not be given any work. The hon. member for Vereeniging imagines himself to be a business man, but we know everything in connection with that.

I do not descend to low personalities.

He can well understand that we on this side of the House do not take much notice of him. We know the history. The country may not know it, but we know it. I should like to put a question to the Minister of Labour in connection with the Workmen’s Compensation Act, which was passed by the Government and under which the Government must undertake the insurance. When this legislation came before the House, we on this side of the House felt that in view of the fact that the insurance companies had acted beyond their limits in so far as profits were concerned, we were in favour of the State undertaking this industrial insurance. On the other hand, we also felt that the department did not have all the officials with the necessary experience in this work, and that it would take some time to get matters going. We were afraid that the Government would not immediately be in a position to do this work very efficiently. We felt that the Minister of Labour was not sufficiently qualified for it, and we were also a little afraid of his department. We had to take them, however, as we found them. We were afraid that there might be difficulties, and the Government did apparently experience difficulties. We also thought that it would probably take the Government a year to arrange matters. This Act was passed in 1941. We are now in 1943 and we expected that by this time these matters would be in order. Now I understand that that is not the case. I have here an extract from the Natal Mercury, in which I find this—

Informed by whom?

By representatives of the big commercial firms. It does not concern me who lodged the complaint. I am dealing with the complaint, and I should like to have a reply to it from the Minister. It does not assist me at all to know who made the complaint. When a man lodges a complaint with me, whether he is a thief or a murderer, that does not matter — he has to appear before the judge. It is only in South Africa that that does not apply in the case of Afrikaners. Then I come to the complaint—

We know that in the past the complaint was that there was delay, and it was said that if the Government took over the matter there would be no delay in making the payments. They tried to show that the companies delayed payment for a long time. It was later proved that that was not true. The Railways have their own insurance scheme, and they took even longer than the companies. That was one of the arguments which was used by the Minister and other people, namely that there was delay. Now the complaint is that the people who enter into the insurance have to pay out the people themselves, when obligations arise, because it takes such a long time before the State is able to pay. I should like to know whether that is so, and if so, why it is so. Then the complaint goes on—

That is the second complaint. The people who wanted to insure, had to submit forms. They did so, but as yet they have heard nothing from the department which has to fix the premiums. Today they are in this position that they have to pay themselves. They cannot obtain the protection which was given to them by the Act. Then the paper goes on to say—

Who is your informant?

It makes no difference who the informant is. I mention this complaint because I want to give the Minister an opportunity of replying to it. It does not matter who lodged the complaint. It is a specific complaint, and I want to know what the position is in connection with it. If the complaint is well founded, then the Minister must tell us that that is the case, and why it is so. If it is not well founded, he must deny it. The complaint is that in drawing up this scheme they departed from the system which was in force in the country for a long time, namely that the more dangerous the work is, the higher the premium is. We cannot expect the same premium to be paid in the case of a clerk in an office as in the case of a man who works on a tower. If they are going to do that and fix the same premium throughout, it is going to cause trouble, because it is an impossible position. [Time Limit.]

I want to say a few words in connection with young boys who leave school and then have to seek employment. Every year many of them leave school and have to seek employment. I often receive letters from them, telling me that they have passed the matriculation examination and that they cannot obtain employment. They first have to pass the Civil Service examination, but even if they succeed in doing so, they still cannot get work. Now hon. members on the other side are pretending to be champions of the returned soldiers. I can give them the assurance that we on this side receive more complaints than they do from these so-called “skunks in uniform.” I notice that the hon. member for Kensington (Mr. Blackwell) has now been made a judge because he insulted the soldiers in this House.

The hon. member must withdraw that.

What must I withdraw, Mr. Chairman?

The hon. member must withdraw the statement that an hon. member has been appointed as judge because he made a certain speech in this House.

I thought that that was a recommendation for him to be appointed to the Bench. If that is not the case, than I am sorry. I thought that this was a recommendation to give him an elevated status. If that is not so, then I withdraw what I said, and I am sorry. I just want to say this to Minister on the other side. I know that he is sympathetic towards the poor people. I have known him for many years. I have gone to him already and he has helped me. I know that he has a tender heart for these people, but he must not allow the war to turn his head. What does he offer to the returned soldiers? Six shillings per day. Last week I received this cigarette case per post. I do not smoke, but returned soldiers sent it to me because I had obtained employment for them. I mention this in order to show to hon. members on the other side that these people come to us. I just want to say that in this country we have to take into account the background and the history of South Africa. Today I am called a rebel: tomorrow I shall be called loyal, and vice versa. We must take into account the history and the past of the people of South Africa, and if we do that and bear those things in mind, we shall not make all sorts of charges against each other, and then we shall pass our Acts in a true South African spirit. That is what the Minister forgot today, and that is what the hon. member for Vereeniging (Lt.-Col. Rood) forgot when he made certain charges against the hon. member for Smithfield (Mr. Fouché). He distorted his words altogether. He was not in the House. While he was in the lobby he heard a little of what was said here, and then he came here and talked nonsense. That sort of thing leads to trouble. Let us act in this House in a South African spirit; let us be honest and upright, and let us do only those things which we consider to be in the interest of the people of the country. We are not for or against other nations. We are for South Africa. We do not ask which nation is going to win. We only want South Africa to win.

One of your friends says that Germany must win.

If he said so, he spoke for himself. No one must win in this war; only South Africa must win. Please do not let us come here with arguments which ascribe motives to others. Do not let us come here with motives and refuse work to people when they really need that work in order to make a living. I feel that we should tackle matters in this spirit, and then we shall make a happy country of South Africa.

It is possibly a good thing that the hon. member for Fordsburg (Mr. B. J. Schoeman) has returned to the charge which he has so persistently made on this vote since the war. That charge is that the Labour Party, through collaboration with the Government, has by some means let down the working classes of this country, which by some still more extraordinary means the hon. member assumes that the Nationalist Party represent. When one looks at them, when one goes into details and find out how many thousand morgen they have spread all over the country, when one realises the amount of financial backing behind the Nationalist Party, one is rather astonished that even in South Africa, a country where a great deal of political bluff can be put across, one is astonished to find they still have the audacity to claim that they represent the working classes. I want for a moment to examine the two charges in the light of the possibility that they are reasonable charges. Let us look at what has been achieved on the lines of Labour legislation since the outbreak of the war. Actually as a member of the Labour Party, I have an insatiable appetite, I am never pleased, I am always wanting something more. That, I believe, is the job of the Labour Party, and when a Labour Party is satisfied then that Labour Party must obviously go out of existence, because our job is to push for concessions and reconstruction all the time. Now what has been achieved in the three and a half years in which the Labour Party has been collaborating with the United Party? One is the Workmen’s Compensation Act. In the days when the hon. member for Fordsburg was very much of a political stripling—I do not know that he has gone very far beyond that now because he talks like a child on occasions — before he was heard of, the then Leader of the Labour Party, Col. Creswell, considered that his whole career would have been justified if the Labour Party could have got a Workmen’s Compensation Act under the aegis of the State. In fact, a Bill was on the stocks, it was called the Creswell Bill, and the country generally was prepared to agree that Col. Creswell’s whole political career, which was a very long one and a very able career at times, would have been justified if he had achieved this one particular piece of legislation. He did not achieve it, and he did not achieve it because of the actions of the hon. member for Fordsburg, and of his colleagues who are sitting on that side of the House. Because when the Fusion Party was originally formed, and of which the hon. member for Fordsburg was one of the shining lights, one of the first things that Gen. Hertzog did was to go back on a promise which he had made to the whole labour movement of South Africa, and instead of getting the Creswell Bill which was actually introduced in the House and left to a Select Committee, Workmen’s Compensation was again placed in the hands of the private companies. One of the first things that was introduced by my leader, the present Minister was a Workmen’s Compensation Act which was placed, as it should be done, under the aegis of State funds, and the workmen are benefiting accordingly. Not only was that achieved, but the benefits under the Act were very considerably increased. So that if it is true to say that Col. Creswell’s whole career would have been justified if he had got this one Bill placed in the statute book, surely it is similarly true to say that the collaboration between the United Party and the Labour Party has been justified if it only obtained that one thing. But that is not the end of the story, because the hon. Minister has also introduced, during his three and a half years, the Factories Act. One knows that again, representing the workers in this country, the hon. member for Fordsburg made himself very vocal during the passage of that Bill. But in the days when he was not representing the workmen, when he was representing the mine magnates and sitting under Gen. Hertzog, of course, he had a different story. But despite him and despite the deliberate obstruction employed by members of the Nationalist Party, the Factories Act was placed on the statute book, and has conferred very considerable benefits on a very large number of workers. Then we had a Rent Act, for which my leader was also responsible, and that Act, despite again the objection of my hon. friend, the estate agent friend from Fordsburg, that Act is also functioning in a way that has benefited very considerably the working class people of the Union. Then recently, sir, one of the things which has agitated the members of this House has been the question of how we treat our soldiers. I am not going to claim that it was our political influence which accomplished this, but what I do say is that a committee composed of certain members of the trade union movement in South Africa and certain members of the Labour Party, saw the Prime Minister, and we discussed with the Prime Minister several things, the chief of them being this question of soldiers’ pay, and also the question of social security. It is on record, sir, that shortly after the debate initiated by the hon. member for Illovo (Mr. Marwick) the Government appointed a Select Committee to consider the question of soldiers’ pay. That committee has now reported. Despite the fact that hon. members, for some extraordinary reason are not permitted to say what the report is, I am going to tell you that if that report is accepted, we will have the best paid army in the world.

Order. The hon. member must come back to the vote. We are not discussing soldiers’ pay.

I know that, sir, we are discussing the question as to whether the collaboration between the Labour Party and the Government has borne fruit in so far as the country is concerned. Although I was not in the House, I understand the hon. member for Fordsburg was allowed to travel very widely in saying that this collaboration had been to the detriment of the country. I am trying to show, particularly on this vote, that this collaboration has been of benefit to the country. We shall have the best paid army in the world, and we have got the best Pensions Act of any country in the world, which is also the result of that collaboration—at least I hope so—between the Labour Party and the United Party. Then we have also this question of social security.

Yes, tell us something about that.

Yes, unfortunately the hon. member spent the whole of this session in thinking about cost-plus, and one of these odd days I shall suggest to you that it is really plus-minus that you are concerned with. Social security is a matter which is interesting all the democratic countries in the world, it is something which is arousing the attention of the United States of America to a considerable extent. In England we have the Beveridge Report, which has been accepted, not entirely, but accepted in part, and in South Africa we also have our problem of social security.

After an absence of some days the hon. member for Umbilo (Mr. Burnside) has now once more deigned to confer the honour of his presence upon the House.

I hope you duly appreciate it.

Oh, yes, the House is duly flattered, and the House conferred the honour on the hon. member of listening very attentively to his vapourings. The hon. member came to deliver an election speech. He is on the eve of his departure to his new love—Fordsburg.

That’s the love which is jilting you.

I am afraid his first love has discarded him very effectively, and he is now making overtures to a new love.

Are jou jealous?

I might say in passing that I must congratulate the hon. member on his new love. I know Fordsburg very well.

That is why you leave it.

And they know you too well.

And there are conditions—there are parts of Fordsburg that bear a very striking resemblance to Billingsgate, and I am sure the hon. member for Umbilo will find himself perfectly at home there.

Order. That is an improper inference.

Must I withdraw the fact that Fordsburg resembles Billingsgate?

No, the hon. member should not make remarks like that.

If the hon. member for Umbilo intends submitting himself to the electors of Fordsburg surely he should endeavour to feel at home there. I am only endeavouring to show him in which parts he will feel at home most. The hon. member in his prelude to visiting Fordsburg and making his presence known and coming into contact with the electors of Fordsburg came here to make this election speech, telling the House that hon. members on this side of the House had the audacity to claim that they represented the workers of South Africa, whereas that is the sole right of the Labour Party, and then the hon. member went on to endeavour to show the House and to show the electors of Fordsburg what the Labour Party had done for the workers in the last three and a half years. The hon. member was out of the House for some days, and apparently missed most of the debate. The hon. member, like other hon. members on his side, hawked the two Acts which were passed by this House under the aegis of the Minister of Labour—the Factories Act and the Workmen’s Compensation Act—across the floor of the House. Evidently the hon. member has a very guilty conscience.

Oh, no, I have no conscience at all.

The hon. member says he has no conscience. Well, one can expect anything from him then. The hon. member evidently feels, even if he has no conscience, that he was guilty of very grave neglect of duty to these workers whom he is supposed to represent, in that when these Bills were before the House he, and his Leader, and his colleagues, rejected all the amendments proposed by this side of the House to improve the lot of the workers.

Because they were dishonest amendments.

I can assure the hon. member that the voters of Fordsburg will hear all about it. These members were so dependent on their capitalistic friends of the United Party that they did not have the courage to accept any of these amendments. Let me tell the hon. member this, that the electors of Fordsburg have more need for improvement in their social conditions than they have need of the Factories Act or the Workmen’s Compensation Act.

Why are you leaving Fordsburg?

Well, as a matter of fact when I heard that the hon. member for Umbilo with the support of his capitalistic friends intended contesting Fordsburg, I started seriously considering staying there and fighting him there.

Fight — you can’t fight.

Oh, yes I can fight two of you. The hon. member for Umbilo will find that the voters of Fordsburg have much more need of food and clothing and decent housing than any of the provisions of the Factories Act. But the hon. member tries to induce the House to believe that the Labour Party and the Labour Party only represents the workers of South Africa. How can we test that claim better than by proving that they have not the courage to stand on their own feet in the next election without the support of the United Party. They know perfectly well that without the support of their capitalistic friends of the United Party they have no chance anywhere. I challenge the Minister of Labour in a three cornered contest to meet me anywhere on the Rand.

You challenge me—come to Benoni.

Not one of them have the courage to stand on his own legs, and fight a three cornered contest in spite of the ostensible support which they boast about. The hon. member for Umbilo has never yet told us why he is deserting Umbilo If the Labour Party is so strong …

You have not told us yet why you are leaving Fordsburg.

Oh, yes, I have told you, and I have also told the hon. member why I am quite prepared to go back there and fight him, but the hon. member has not told us why he is deserting Umbilo, and especially why he is going to a place where he is absolutely unknown. Or possibly that is one of the reasons why he is going there. I know that in regard to the hon. member for Umbilo it is a disadvantage to be known too well. That is why he is so anxious possibly to leave Umbilo and why he is so insistent in his negotiations with the Government on standing in a constituency where he is unknown. Well, I tried to do the hon. member a service, when I heard he was going to Fordsburg — I kindly offered to give him the name of the one Labour Party supporter in Fordsburg, and he thanked me and said that at any rate he would know where to make a beginning.

So that he might be sure of one vote.

Well, in spite of all that, he claims, in spite of the support which the Labour Party is going to receive from the United Party, and the United Party from the Labour Party, I hope within a few months to have the pleasure of meeting the hon. member on the hustings. The electors in Fordsburg and other constituencies will then be in a position to judge as to whether the Party of which he is a member and whether his Leader have done such wonderful things for workers of this country.

May I intervene in what the hon. member for Gezina (Mr. Pirow) describes as a “private fight”? I wonder, Sir, whether the two brave participants in the fight realise how amusing it is for hon. members of the House to hear today of their boldness for the fray when we know that both of them have turned tail in their own constituencies, and decided that there in any case discretion is the better part of valour. I have come to the conclusion, as each of them has deserted his own constituency, that the fighting is going to be very much like that of the Pondos who start fighting at safe distances from each other, and who after seven days of warfare, are able to report their casualties as being nil. I think we shall find that by the time these gentlemen have emerged from the fight neither will be much damaged. The hon. member for Fordsburg scarcely paid his own constituency a compliment when he said that some of that region resembled Billingsgate. I regret that. It even goes further than the former jibe which was used against Fordsburg in the days when Charlie’s Aunt was a popular play — in the days when smallpox was supposed to be endemic in Fordsburg, and when Fordsburg was described on the stage as “Fordsburg? Oh, Fordsburg, where the smallpox comes from!” The hon. member has described Fordsburg as Billingsgate — and he rather seems to me to be hitting below the belt in doing so. The hon. member for Umbilo is scarcely the champion for the doctrine of the Labour Party — if in a well-known labour constituency like Umbilo he decides to quit — we can only regard him as the runaway champion of a doomed cause. That is the description which a kindly public will attach to him when he is gone. The hon. member for Umbilo recently referred in terms of hatred to the Dominion Party — perhaps in view of the reply he received he would rather not be reminded of it. He regards that Party with an intense amount of hatred, and I know that that hatred of his is extended to all the members of the Dominion Party.

Order. I must remind the hon. member that the Lavour Vote is under discussion.

There is one other question I want to direct to the Minister of Labour. On Wednesday he told us that it was his intention to call a conference to deal with the question of organisation of Native Trade Unions. With some experience of former results of Native Trade Union Movement I would ask him not to do so. I maintain that he is embarking on a very dangerous programme if he deliberately sets out to organise Native Trade Unions in this distressful country. I should like the Minister to be a little more specific in regard to his intentions. Is it his intention to organise Trade Unions in this country with the object of giving them the right to go throughout the country preaching the doctrine of industrial war against the white people? Because nothing will prevent the native from doing that. Already I have had letters from Natal saying that Champion is visiting farming areas to proclaim this very thing. And I hope the Minister with the responsibility which we like to think belongs to a Minister will refrain from doing so.

I do not want to say very much about the hon. member for Illovo (Mr. Marwick) except to draw the attention of the House to the fact that only a few days ago we had his Party following a new course—sailing a new course of warfare and inaugurating an anti-Indian campaign. Now, they have apparently set sail again in an anti-Native campaign. I don’t know whether the House is really interested, but there seems to be a lot of curiosity as to why I am leaving Umbilo. The hon. member for Fordsburg (Mr. B. J. Schoeman) is leaving Fordsburg. The hon. member for Illovo seems to have forgotten that he is also leaving Illovo, or rather under the new delimitation Illovo has left him. And I understand that he made grave claims to a constituency many hundred miles away from his original constituency, but did not get it, so he is now going to represent Pinetown—if he gets in—which is in Durban itself. So the hon. member will find himself in the same position as myself.

It has always been portion of the Illovo constituency.

But it has never been in Durban.

Umbilo was never in Johannesburg.

I think I was in Johannesburg before the hon. member for Fordsburg was born. I am not making an irresponsible statement. I am persuaded to think that I was in Johannesburg before the hon. member for Fordsburg was born. I went to Johannesburg first of all forty years ago—a very long time ago—before most of the members of the Nationalist Party were born—even though they feel that they and they only are South Africans—but half the time they don’t even know what they are talking about.

You must have been in the perambulator.

Yes, I was, but even the hon. member for Brakpan (Mr. Trollip) at one time must have been in a perambulator. The most extraordinary statement by the hon. member for Fordsburg was that I am going to a constituency where I am unknown. Now I want to challenge the hon. member—is there any part of the Union where the hon. member for Umbilo is unknown—I doubt it. There are a great many places in the Union where the hon. member for Fordsburg is unknown, and the place where he is known—I don’t want to use the phrase Billingsgate, but in the place where he is known his political prescience is not valued at a very high rate. There is only one place where I am unknown. My idea of going to Fordsburg was because I understood that the present member was going to fight his seat, and if he will look up Hansard he will find a statement somewhere in which I said that at the next election I was prepared to go and fight him. Well, the hon. member for Fordsburg is a new type of South African politician. His job is to try and persuade the working people that the Nationalist Party can represent them.

And so we do.

Before we reached the stage when the electors in the towns were in the majority …

I must warn the hon. member that he is wandering away from the vote.

But I am not even as far as Billingsgate …

I cannot allow the discussion to continue.

I shall make myself relevant now.

Quite impossible.

The point at issue is that the hon. member for Fordsburg has attacked the Labour Party because of our collaboration with the Government. The hon. member for Fordsburg represents in the Nationalist Party a particular idea, that idea being that the Nationalist Party represents the working, man in South Africa. I am only dealing with the question to show the relevance of this argument. Previously the Nationalist Party were quite prepared to depend on the votes of the country. They were prepared to represent the rich land owners who exploit their fellow Afrikaners—they were prepared to represent the man who reaped ten, fifteen, twenty thousand bags of wheat at a £1 or 25s. a bag, and kept his bywoners — whom the hon. member for Humansdorp (Mr. Sauer) talks so much about — in a state of absolute misery. They are the people—these bywoners—whom the people represented by the Nationalist Party exploit. Now the hon. member for Fordsburg comes along and now that the towns are going to be in the majority, now he pretends that the Nationalist Party represents the industrial workers. And he has a scheme now — he wants to have Nazi Trade Unions — he wants the Nationalist Party to be elected to govern this country on the Nazi system, and he wants all Trade Unions to be on the Nazi basis. He has said so himself. He wants a Nazified idea of Trade Unions with himself, I presume, as Minister of Labour, and then I suppose you will have to prove that you are a good Nationalist Party man before you can become a member of the Trade Union.

No, you’ve got to be a Nazi.

Yes, quite. And in concert with the hon. member for Illovo — who is playing the game of the Nationalist Party — we shall have a very fine state of affairs now. Well, let me say that the people of this country and the Trade Unions are quite satisfied. They know that in the last three and a half years they have received more in the way of benefits for the workers than ever before. The Trade Unions with one or two outstanding differences of opinion, which the hon. member for Fordsburg continually quotes — yes, the hon. member for Fordsburg quotes the one as an authority whereas the hon. member for Beaufort West (Mr. Louw) quotes that same man as somebody who should be deported. But the fact remains that the workers have never received so much consideration as they have done in the last three and a half years. And it is because of that that at the last annual conference the Trade Unions agreed to enter into collaboration with the South African Labour Party. And despite what the hon. member for Fordsburg wants the House to believe we have in being a committee composed of a number of members of the Executive of the Labour Party and a certain number of members of the Trades and Labour Council, and that committee does function, and functions admirably and we consider South Africa’s social problems, and through the Minister of Labour we bring these social problems to the attention of the Government. We have been treated with considerable courtesy on the occasions we have done so, and from our representations much good has eventuated. That is the position. I am not going to claim that the Government has done everything we want. I am a Socialist. We are collaborating with the Government, because we want to win the war. That is our primary object. We are not like the Dominion Party. We do not make any reservations.

You have pretty good jobs.

While we try to win the war we do not have any side issues. Neither do we make any advances to the Nationalist Party. We realise that the war has to be won. All that has been gained has been gained in many instances by the Labour type of individual in the past. Democracy was at stake three and a half years ago. It is still at stake. We still have to win this war and until we have won this war the Labour Party, I am sure, will continue to collaborate with the Government; we shall continue to use our influence with the Government, to impress upon the Government the need for social reconstruction, and we shall continue to get for the workers benefits far beyond anything we are likely to secure from the racially dominated Nationalist Party, or from the hon. member for Fordsburg.

I have not much to say in answer to the hon. member for Umbilo (Mr. Burnside). There is only one interesting statement he made, and that is where he asked the House whether there was any place in the Union where the hon. member for Umbilo was not known, and he implied that the hon. member for Fordsburg was not known in many places of the Union. I admit that there are some places where I am not known. I have, for instance, never been in gaol. I do not think the hon. member for Umbilo has either, but he is evidently well known there.

Well, you should have been.

I said I did not think the hon. member for Umbilo had been in gaol either—although he probably has tried very hard. The hon. member protested too much about the support he has outside this House. I think it is due to the scandalous neglect of duty on his part, and on the part of his colleagues during the past three and a half years that the hon. member now tries to convince himself that he still has the support of the workers. He tells us that all we have to do is to look at the collaboration there is between the Trade Unions and the Labour Party to realise the fact that the Labour Party represents the workers. That is no criterion of the position. I know of one big Trade Union which has repudiated all collaboration with the Labour Party.

Yes, Sachs-Schoeman.

Yes—the political co-religionist of the Minister. Sachs at least controls a very large section of workers, and one of the largest women’s organisations throughout the country. They have in very definite terms not only repudiated collaboration with the Labour Party, but they have repudiated the Minister of Labour himself and the whole of his Party.

Yes, and very much to my satisfaction indeed.

The hon. member for Umbilo says that they are in the Government to win this war. I think, as regards the four Labour politicians, they hope that the war will last another fifty years. They are not anxious to win the war very soon. They might eventually win the war, or want to win the war, but they are in no hurry. They are in clover while the war lasts.

I think that’s very mean.

The hon. member has no conception of what mean is. If he listens to himself he will know what mean is.

I suppose that’s very clever.

The hon. member for Umbilo also created the impression that that they are supporting the Government unconditionally and merely with the one object in view, and that is to win the war.

Exactly.

But that has been proved to be incorrect. They did start to support the Government unconditionally at the beginning of the war, but there is no question of unconditional support any longer.

You have a lot of wonderful information.

I am convinced that the claim of unconditional support during war conditions can no longer be maintained. I am convinced that if the Government had refused to give them the additional seats they asked for they would have been quite prepared to fight three-cornered contests, not in the hope of winning these contests but in the hope of the United Party losing them.

And you are very sorry.

And then they have the impudence of talking about unconditional support of the Government. What they have done is scandalously to neglect their duty to the workers. They were in a position to demand great reforms for the workers. They could have demanded improvements of all kinds, but they were not concerned with improvements for the workers—they were only concerned with their own position.

And you think the workers are going to swallow that.

I don’t think the House will be very much interested to hear more about their aspirations and about their so-called unconditional support of the Government. I want, however, to illustrate only one case of many of how they have represented the cause of the worker. I have here before me the report of the Department of Labour for 1941. This is a report of the Department of Labour, and among other things it is stated here that apprentices were being employed to do the work of skilled journeymen in a large number of engineering firms. That is young boys of 18, 19 and 20 years of age being employed to do the work of skilled men in these trades. That fact was brought to the notice of the department, which says that the wage rates prescribed for apprentices in engineering are among the lowest for any class of apprentices. These apprentices were actually employed to do the work of skilled men. Now what did the department do when this was brought to their notice? Did they decide that the employer should be compelled to pay these apprentices the wage of skilled journeymen? Did they do that? Surely a Labour protagonist like the hon. member for Benoni should have seen that these people who do the work of skilled journeymen, should receive the wages of skilled journeymen. What they did was this. They had a conference with the Apprenticeship Committees, and they came to a decision that these apprentices who were doing the work of skilled journeymen should receive an increase of pay. Mr. Chairman, it may interest the House and the country to know what increase were granted. The scales were as follows: For the first year 20s. per week, which is £4 a month; the second year £1 10s. per week; and the third year £2 5s. per week. That is the scale laid down for those who were doing the work of skilled journeymen, who are paid at the rate of £30 to £32 per month. They came to an agreement that these apprentices should be paid these scandalously low rates of pay, and now these gentlemen have the impudence to stand up and proclaim to the world that they are conferring benefits upon the workers. This, Mr. Chairman, is a glaring instance of how they neglect the interests of the workers, actually paying wages to apprentices who are doing skilled journeymen’s work, a wage of £2 5s. and less per week.

[inaudible].

The best authority I can quote in regard to that is this report, which says that owing to emergency conditions many apprentices are employed on work considerably in advance of work usually entrusted to apprentices. Further complaints were made that in many workshops, apprentices were actually performing journeymen’s work at a fraction of a journeyman’s rate of pay. Mr. Chairman, that is the report of the Department of Labour. The report goes on further to say that the wage rates prescribed for apprentices in the engineering industry are among the lowest for any class of apprentices, and after consultation with the Apprenticeship Committee, and other bodies concerned, it was decided to issue an order requiring employers to pay their apprentices an allowance which would bring their wages up to the following scale. That is the scale I have just read, Mr. Chairman. I want to know from the Minister whether he agrees with that, whether that is in accordance with his Labour principles, that men should perform work and not be paid for that work. The Minister only said this morning that he believed in paying for work done and not the individual. He also said he was in favour of a minimum rate of 10s. a day, apart from any question of race or colour. He says pay for the work that is done, and he states that he is in favour of 10s. a day as a minimum wage. These men are not receiving 10s. a day, they are doing a journeyman’s work for which wages are paid of approximately 3s. 4d. per hour, and receiving only 1s. per hour therefore. These men are not being paid for the work that they do, they are being paid 20s. to 30s. a week. I want to know whether that is the Minister’s policy, whether he is prepared to allow this, or whether he is going to put a stop to this scandalous position.

It is deplorable, sir, when you have an hon. member getting up and talking about something that he knows nothing about. The hon. member may have been reading from a report of the Labour Department — as I said this morning, I have not too much love for the Department myself — but when the hon. member makes a statement that the engineering industry pays its apprentices the worst in the whole country, then I say the hon. member is talking absolutely through his hat.

He does not say that; he read the report.

I did not interrupt the hon. member, and I hope he will allow me to proceed. Well, he was quoting from the report. If the Department was talking through its hat and you quote from that report and throw it across the floor of the House, I say you were also talking through your hat.

The hon. member must address the Chair.

Then through the Chair I say the hon. member for Fordsburg was talking through his hat when he quoted that. Anyhow, I want to ask the hon. gentleman just a pure logical, sane, reasoned question. I believe the hon. member for Fordsburg used to drive an engine at one time. I wonder if after one year’s experience on the footplate he could drive that engine. I only hope to goodness that if he did I would not be on the train. I am an engineer myself, and it took me five years to learn my trade. I was under the impression after five years that I knew something about my trade, but Mr. Chairman, it took me another five years to learn that actually I did not know as much as I thought I knew, and I was not the good mechanic that I thought I was. Now, Mr. Chairman, the hon. member who has run away from Fordsburg, the hon. member for Umbilo (Mr. Burnside) and the hon. member for Illovo (Mr. Marwick) have been having a three-cornered contest here this afternoon, so much so that I wondered if I were not at a political meeting, whether these gentlemen had not started a general election here in this House. Nevertheless, after a matter of about one and a half hours, this point relative to the vote has emerged. The hon. member for Fordsburg is now accusing the engineering branch of the industry of exploiting apprentices; that is what it boils down to, exploiting apprentices so as to get journeymen’s work done cheaper. Now I want to tell the hon. gentleman that steel is very valuable, all metals are very valuable, and if the hon. gentleman thinks for a moment that we can afford in the engineering industry to put apprentices with only one or two years’ experience on to using these valuable materials and doing fine work, he is quite wrong.

The Department of Labour say so. I quoted from the Department of Labour.

He keeps throwing it back on to the Department of Labour. I am not here to defend the Department of Labour, I am defending the engineering industry. It is a deplorable thing for the hon. member to stand up in this House and insinuate that the engineering industry is exploiting their employees, using sweated labour, if I might put it that way. We have always been above that in the engineering industry, the engineering industry has always been above that, and I want to remind the hon. gentleman that the new scale for apprentices for the first year is 20s. per week, and the first year apprentice is a very costly boy. It was the practice many years ago for the parents of apprentices to pay a premium to the firm by whom they are employed, and who trained them, and the premium was purely to cover the cost of the material the boy spoiled in his first year. The hon. member for Fordsburg must realise that there is no exploiting as far as the engineering industry is concerned, of first-year apprentices. We do not squeal about the £1 a week to first year apprentices but we do squeal when hon. members get up and say we are exploiting apprentices, and in fact using sweated labour.

Mr. Chairman, there is one question I would like to ask the Minister. The hon. Minister has been telling us what a splendid Minister he has been, what wonderful things he has done to improve the lot of the working classes, and what wonderful things he still hopes to do if the fates are kind to him, and Benoni returns him again to grace the House with his presence. The Minister is particularly proud of a few social enactments he has had passed, particularly the Factories Act. Now I just want to tell the Minister that it is no use passing a good Act if that Act is not carried into effect, and if a really good Act has been passed and is not carried into effect, the Minister is guilty of a very heinous crime against the people he wishes to serve. I ask the Minister whether he can state with a clear conscience that the Factories Act is being applied. I remember raising this question last year. We know that the Factories Act applies to all Government departments except the Railways. Now the Department of Forestry has established a number of sawmills, and these sawmills are factories in terms of the Act. When I raised this question last year, the Minister told me that there was a sort of tug-o’-war going on between himself and the Minister of Forestry.

He is always engaged in a tug-o’-war.

Quite true.

A trial of strength, the Minister was trying to have the Act applied, and the Minister of Forestry was trying to resist. Last year when we discussed the matter in the House no decision had yet been arrived at, the tug-o’-war was still in full swing. I would like to ask the Minister how it is with the tug-o’-war now; who has won; the hon. Minister or the Minister of Forestry?

I have just pulled him a little bit over the line.

This is a very important matter for all Government servants, who have been looking forward to this Act, and to whom it means a lot if it is applied. We would like to know whether the Minister has succeeded in inducing the Department of Forestry to have the provisions of that Act applied to the Government sawmills. I want to ask the Minister whether he is aware of the rate of wages paid in these Government saw mills. The Minister told us this morning that he is preparing legislation to have the Wage Act applied to the Government Department. Let me give him an example of what is happening in the Government sawmill at George.

Where is George?

Well, George was named after a King of England, and surely the hon. member ought to know where it is, it is a terrible reflection on his loyalty not to know it. I find that the position in the sawmill is this, that the workers in that factory start at 5s. 6d. a day.

What sort of work?

They are the ordinary labourers; they are described as “algemene arbeiders.” They start at 5s. 6d. a day, and then by annual increments of 6d. per day, they rise to 10s., and that means that it takes them ten years before they get 10s. a day. The first year, of course, they do not get an increment, but after that they have to serve another nine years to get 10s. a day, ten years altogether before they get 10s. a day. Then they are probably shifted up to Grade 1, a higher grade, and in that grade the scale of pay is 10s. by an annual increment of 9d. a day up to 15s. It takes a workman another nine years to rise from 10s. tot 15s. That is to say, the man has to serve 19 years to get 15s. a day. These are the official figures of the scale of wages supplied to me by the Department of Forestry. It is a very gradual process for these people to rise from a start of 5s. 6d. a day. The same applies to mechanics, men working on machines. They also start at 5s. 6d. a day, and after the first year they get 6d. a day rising up to 10s. Then the man is promoted to Grade 1, and rises by annual increments of 9d. up to 20s. It would take him just 28 years to get £1 a day. These are the official figures supplied to me, and I want to know from the Minister whether he is aware of this, and whether he is satisfied with it. I would even ask the Minister, is he quite sure that even these rates are being applied. My information is that they are not.

I think hon. members have been firing at me a sufficiently long time.

You have been completely riddled.

Completely killed, I am stone dead, it is only my corpse that is speaking now. You know what they say about the British Army, the British and South African Army, they are always beaten but they won’t admit it. You have smashed me to fragments, but I won’t lie down, I insist upon telling you what I think of you. Now may I refer to the hon. member for Smithfield (Mr. Fouché) first. He brought up this question of the semi-fit. I had explained this in the House before, but my hon. friend of course was not a member of the House in those days when I outlined the process I was proceeding in regard to the semi-fit. We have a rather loose way of deciding what semi-fit means. The Committee must know that municipalities are subsidised for employing semi-fits. In a loose sort of way we include not only a man who is actually physically semifit, but any man who is over 50 years of age, however fit he may be. The hon. gentleman wanted to know why it is I have a lesser sum this year for the semi-fit, that is for subsidising them, than I had in the previous estimates. The reason is not far to seek. First of all, a lot of these so-called semi-fits, that is to say those over 50 years of age, are finding work elsewhere at more remunerative rates, and I am very pleased that that is so. Secondly, I am not satisfied that it is the proper policy to subsidise municipalities of any other employers of labour in order that they may employ semi-fits in dead-end occupations, with no future to look forward to until the grave. I am more and more developing the settlement idea for the semi-fits on the lines of Karatara, and as I obtain the money these settlements are being extended, and more and more semi-fits are being taken in. I hope my hon. friend will accept that as a reasonable explanation. The hon. member for Cape Western (Mr. Molteno) who unfortunately is not here, is quite right in calling attention to one of those standing bugbears, the differentiation in wages officially recognised by the Wage Board. This not only applies to coloureds and natives but to Europeans as well, and it makes for a tremendous amount of confusion. I hope it will be urged upon the Wage Board to approximate these wages more and more until ultimately we get uniformity. The hon. gentleman made great play on my having fixed a wage for the natives in Durban, the stevedores, at a higher rate even than the Europeans. Of course he knows that I am absolutely with him in that. Our European rate must not be that miserable rate, that is common cause between us. The wage that was laid down for dock workers in Durban was the result of a committee which came to the conclusion that that was the wage which ought to be paid, and the order was over the signature of Mr. Ivan Walker, the Controller of Manpower, not Mr. Ivan Walker, the Secretary for Labour. Now I have nothing to do with that.

To whom is he responsible?

The Ministerial control is jointly the Minister of Defence and myself, but the declaration of such a wage rests absolutely in the hands of the Controller of Labour, and he in his wisdom as the result of a very close investigation of the committee, said that this wage should be applied. What the hon. member wants to point out is this comparison with the European wage, and there I am with him.

Put the Controller of Labour out.

No, he is doing fine work, and I have no fault with that award, none at all.

And the European?

That is the point, the European is not getting enough. The hon. member for Swellendam (Mr. S. E. Warren) has brought up a very important question, namely, the operation of the Workmen’s Compensation Act. We all recollect that the hon. member was never in love with this idea.

I was never against it.

You were rather lukewarm, and I remember the hon. gentleman was never averse to getting arguments against the Act. In regard to this correspondence in the paper, from a representative of a big commercial firm. That quotation that he read states that the administration of the Workmen’s Compensation Act is completely chaotic. In order to demonstrate that that is the fact, this firm makes the following charges, first of all that in order to avoid delay the employers are asked to nay in anticipation of the fund. Well, is there anything wrong with that? It only shows that the administration of the department is what we claim it to be, anxious to avoid any delay in payment.

I think you ought to pay it.

We do pay it, but the fact is employers are not by any means coming up to scratch, and we have had only three months administration of the Act, yet this commercial firm finds itself able to say that the administration is completely chaotic. I take that as rather a compliment. We are doing it in Cape Town and everywhere, not only in Durban, asking employers to co-operate with us and to pay their employees any compensation that may be due to them pending ultimate settlement. The next point of objection is that the Department has departed from well-stabilised rates. I have the report here by a very competent and efficient man in the Department, Mr. Du Rand, whom the hon. member has had the pleasure of meeting. I am quite sure that the hon. member was impressed with him.

I was impressed but I may have been wrong.

Any way, the hon. member has not had any ground to alter his opinion yet. He deals with that exhaustively in a report which he has just put up. The report reached me on the 19th of last month. I was very pleased to get it. Mr. Du Rand says this in regard to the method of assessment. He says the method of assessment conforms to three requirements, and then he sets out those requirements. I make no apology for reading this—

Then he says this in regard to the cost of collection—

And I want to say here quite frankly that we have completely departed from that. We have devised a scheme of our own—

I want hon. members to appreciate those figures. In order to get at their assessments they had to make 1,680,000 calculations each year.

A mere bagatelle.

A mere bagatelle. He goes on—

1. (b) On the same basis of 60,000 employers, the Accident Fund, through regarding the business of an employer as a unit . .

One mean whole, the assessment being the mean one over the whole lot of them.

That is rather a nasty word.

Shall I say “average” so as not to wound the artistic susceptibilities of my hon. friend—

That is roughly one-sixth of the number of calculations as contrasted with that employed by the insurance companies—

I have not the pleasure of knowing what they are like; I mean the calculators—

I think my hon. friend will appreciate that too—

Now here is a very important point, under the heading “Equity”. I am sorry to keep the Committee so long on this point.

No, it is all right; we want to know it.

I go on to quote—

And this is very important—

I suppose this commercial firm is one of them—

I do therefore submit that that rather masterly review of the already-discovered operation of this new Act, shows that if there are many disadvantages — and there probably will be to the individual employers at the beginning — they are more than outweighed by the general advantage most of them will derive therefrom. I am sorry to have kept the House so long on that question. Now the hon. member for Fordsburg (Mr. B. J. Schoeman) brings up what, on the face of it appears to be a well-founded charge, namely, accepting the report of the Chief inspector of Factories, that complaints were made that apprentices were doing journeymen’s work. In the minds of my hon. friends who are not closely acquainted with the engineering industry, that seems to me that second and third year apprentices were employed on journeymen’s work. That would not be permitted. There were cases last year where apprentices were employed just a little bit ahead of their apprenticeship.

But you have raised the wages of all the apprentices.

Yes. Representations were made to me that the wages that were being paid to apprentices were far too low; and I want to reinforce the argument of the hon. member for Rosettenville (Mr. Howarth) in this connection. When I started serving my time, I received 6s. a week. Apprentices are by no means so badly off as they were in my days. As the hon. member for Rosettenville said, at one time you had to pay a premium for your youngster to learn a trade, particularly in the engineering industry. The fact is that they are learning a trade; and this is one of the matters that is going to engage our serious attention in relation to the apprenticeship question during the recess. I come now to the hon. member for George (Mr. Werth).

Have you won the tug-o’-war?

Oh, yes

Who is the referee?

The hon. member spoke of the slow progress. I agree. There is one rather illuminating process attached to it, and that is that they do ultimately get 10s. a day for unskilled labour. That is one of the things that I am concerned in in our Departmental relationship, and it is not only engaging our attention but our determination to get a vast improvement.

Does the Factory Act apply here?

I am coming to that. I want to read to the hon. member the conditions. He has a copy of it, but he wants me to read it to the House. The Factory Act applies, with these variations, which are to the advantage of the workers concerned—

That payment applies after they have worked the extra 1 hour and 40 minutes?

Yes. But then they have this other advantage in place of it. We have to fit the peculiar circumstances of the sawmills vis-a-vis the farmers. The farmer will squeal if you make it apparent that you are doing too much, because they say it will have a reactionary effect on their workers.

They get a house allowance of 6d. per day.

Yes.

When did that come into operation?

At once.

On the 1st January?

Yes. The holiday provisions are not quite the same. The sawmills must close down once every twelve months for not less than two weeks and no employee suffers any loss of remuneration as a result of such closing. So they get a full fortnight’s holiday with pay. That is the position.

Amendment put and the Committee divided:

Ayes—32:

Badenhorst, C. C. E.

Bekker, S.

Conradie, J. H.

Dönges, T. E.

Erasmus, F. C.

Fouché, J. J.

Haywood, J. J.

Labuschagne, J. S.

Le Roux, P. M. K.

Le Roux, S. P.

Liebenberg, J. L. V.

Loubser, S. M.

Olivier, P. J.

Schoeman, B. J.

Schoeman, N. J.

Serfontein, J. J.

Steyn, G. P.

Strauss, E. R.

Strydom, J. G.

Van der Merwe, R. A. T.

Van Nierop, P. J.

Van Zyl, J. J. M.

Venter, J. A. P.

Verster, J. D. H.

Viljoen, D. T. du P.

Viljoen, J. H.

Vosloo, L. J.

Warren, S. E.

Wentzel, J. J.

Werth, A. J.

Tellers: J. F. T. Naudé and P. O. Sauer.

Noes—61:

Acutt, F. H.

Alexander, M.

Allen, F. B.

Ballinger, V. M. L.

Bawden, W.

Botha, H. N. W.

Bowen, R. W.

Bowker, T. B.

Burnside, D. C.

Carinus, J. G.

Christopher, R. M.

Clark, C. W.

Collins, W. R.

Conradie, J. M.

Davis, A.

Deane, W. A.

De Wet, H. C.

Dolley, G.

Du Toit, R. J.

Fourie, J. P.

Friedlander, A.

Goldberg, A.

Hayward, G. N.

Henderson, R. H.

Higgerty, J. W.

Hirsch, J. G.

Hofmeyr, J. H.

Howarth, F. T.

Jackson, D.

Johnson, H. A.

Kentridge, M.

Lindhorst, B. H.

Long, B. K.

Madeley, W. B.

Miles-Cadman, C. F.

Molteno, D. B.

Mushet, J. W.

Neate, C.

Payn, A. O. B.

Pocock, P. V.

Raubenheimer, L. J.

Reitz, L. A. B.

Robertson, R. B.

Rood, K.

Shearer, V. L.

Smuts, J. C.

Solomon, V. G. F,

Sonnenberg, M.

Stallard, C. F.

Sturrock, F. C.

Trollip, A. E.

Van Coller, C. M.

Van den Berg, M. J.

Van der Byl, P. V. G.

Van der Merwe, H.

Wallach, I.

Wares, A. P. J.

Warren, C. M.

Waterson, S. F.

Tellers: G. A. Friend and W. B. Humphreys.

Amendment accordingly negatived.

Vote No. 32.—“Labour”, as printed, put and agreed to.

On Vote No. 33.—“Social Welfare”, £1,518,000.

There is a certain point in connection with this vote which I wish to bring to the Minister’s notice. His department is a department that must rapidly grow in the future. I am afraid that it is quite inevitable that as time goes on and as expansion takes place, there will be greater expenditure of money on this department. I think there are definitely gaps which still remain in our machinery for dealing with child and social welfare activities. I want to explain to the Minister very briefly where I consider the greatest gaps to lie. Sir, I think myself that we are not doing all we can for that section of our children whom we commonly call maladjusted. These children are not necessarily of bad character, but through faults of environment and for other reasons they do in later life become men and women who cause the State a great deal of trouble, and cost the State a great deal of money. Even at the time I was sitting on the Commission that drew up the Children’s Act I felt that we did not make enough use of our school system with regard to these children. Although this is not an educational matter but is a matter for the Department of Social Welfare, I wish to deal with it along educational lines. I have changed my mind a good deal. I can see now that we did not go far enough in that. Act, on the lines I wish to explain. This question of maladjustment really has its origin in the very early years of the life of the child, and it should be tackled in those early years. I want to suggest to the Minister that before the legal machinery set up under the Children’s Act is resorted to, every opportunity should be given in the schools for dealing with the matter. That is its right place. Logically, the Minister of Social Welfare should do all in his power to encourage, especially in the poorer parts of our towns, the setting up of nursery schools. I think the hon. Minister will agree with me that it is in those very early years that the problem of maladjustment arises. The State is, of course, deeply concerned in this matter. These children will, in later life, cost his department a great deal of money. I think the hon. Minister should take a hand in encouraging that policy of initiating a national system of nursery schools. The municipality of Johannesburg has been very forward in this matter, but that is not true of a great many other municipalities. I then logically carry on this idea to the ordinary schools. I know that this problem of maladjustment is fairly adequately dealt with under the machinery of the Children’s Act, but by that time the deviate behaviour of the child has become too fixed. I think if the Minister will endeavour to explore along the lines I suggest it would be found maladjustment could be more easily dealt with. First of all, I think that teachers, whether they come under his department or under the Provincial Council—that is a detail—should be trained to detect deviate behaviour in children in their school years. The task of the ordinary teacher is a difficult one. They have to act as policemen, at the same time maintain enough discipline over the children in order to be able to impart the desired information to them. They are worked very hard as it is. They have a very difficult task now; they are not specialists, trained to detect and deal with deviate behaviour in its easy stages. Some of them should be trained along these lines. Then in all our big towns there should be child guidance clinics. They might be separate institutions, or, as in the case of Cape Town, where we have great assistance given by that section in the University of Cape Town. That is a matter which is very urgent. The teacher and the school have a function to perform in my opinion which goes beyond the mere imparting of knowledge. I think it is necessary to set up these child guidance clinics in our bigger centres. A most valuable point is that we should have visiting teachers. The Minister will know that this problem is largely a problem of environment, and it is most likely in the home of the child that the causation of inadjustment will be found, the conditions that are causing that child to behave in the manner it does. And if it is known that a child is behaving in a manner which is anti-social, the way to deal with it is to get into touch with the home of that child and find out what causative conditions are there, and how these conditions can be adjusted. Then, I should like to make a proposal which perhaps is far-reaching and revolutionary, but I believe it to be necessary. It is this. I think the Director of Education should have the right to send an unmanageable child to an institution falling under his own department, without intervention of the machinery of the Children’s Act. This would be viewed as revolutionary in this country, but there are a great many examples in various States of America where they do deal with this matter in that way. I feel strongly that maladjustment in a child should be dealt with by means of the legal machinery set up under the Children’s Act only when all other educational methods in the school itself have been tried and failed. Every means should be sought to deal with the child during its school career. Now, there is another matter which I think the Department should consider. Its policy must develop more and more in this particular direction which I wish to emphasise. We have two ways of dealing with children—institutionally and non-institutionally. Both these means of dealing with children are often rendered, not valueless, but not all embracing and effective as they should be, because we have not got a system of sufficient after care work. [Time limit.]

May I have the privilege of availing myself of the half hour? This is one of the most important votes on the Budget. It is a vote which made its appearance on the Estimates only a few years ago, and already it amounts to £1,500,000. I hope the day will come when this vote will still be doubled, and that it will rise to £3,000,000; for the Minister who has to deal with this vote has to deal with the poor people, with the poverty-stricken section of our people, with the people who are physically unfit, with the people who cannot work, with those among us who are dependent upon the State. In connection with such a vote, and in such a department, it is necessary that there should be a broad national foundation as the basis of everything that the Department has to do. In this Department there must be proper co-ordination in all the stages, for instance of a person’s life, from before his birth until the stage when he is old, and the State must care properly for all those who are not in a position to care for themselves, for the poor section of the people. Before the child comes into the world, if its parents are not in a position to give it the best, the State ought to intervene and to ensure that that child comes into the world healthy, and then the State ought to ensure that that child is properly fed, that the mother who must feed and educate the child shall be able to do so and shall know how to deal with such a child. The State ought to go further and not to abandon the child when it is taken from its mother’s arms, but the State must keep a vigilant eye on it until it has become a useful citizen of the State, and when we can say that then we can say that there has been success in connection with the work of the Department of Social Welfare. But it is felt that there is no co-ordination in this Department, and I shall tell the Minister of Social Welfare in the course of my speech what I think he should do to obtain that coordination. Since the creation of this Department the rôle of the State as the guardian of the poverty-stricken in the country has become more and more prominent. But we feel that as a result of the existing difficulties political influences are being exercised to make the poverty-stricken feel that only one Party is their friend. We ought not to do this. Cases have come to our attention where the Department was keen to take over charitable work, and we know that this was also done on the insistence of hon. members on the other side. I hope that the Minister, who has a sense of justice, will prevent that evil from striking root in our national life, that the people should look to the Government alone for help and consider that they should support that Government in consequence of that help they receive. It is also essential that sight should not be lost of the useful work that is being accomplished by private charity; we must not exclude private charitable activity. That feeling that exists between human beings and their fellow human beings, that feeling of sympathy of the more privileged to the less privileged, that we should help people who find themselves in less-privileged circumstances, must be awakened and must be kept awake. Before the State entered this sphere it was the charitable organisations and the Church and other social institutions that accomplished the great work of charity, and there is an attempt today, particularly an attempt by this department, to consider those charitable organisations and charitable institutions as subservient. We can get complete unanimity and satisfaction only if we work together hand in hand for the upliftment of the people, only if we view it as a national task that rests upon us to educate every section of the people so that every section shall exist on a civilised standard of life. It is also the work of this Department to ensure that the conditions in which our people live, the conditions in which they sleep, in which they live and in which they find themselves daily shall be of such a nature that they are uplifting and not humiliating. I feel that we cannot emphasise this matter sufficiently. If I should tell what my experience was last week in respect of a court case in George, what evidence was submitted in that case as a result of the fact that in one family a father, a mother and five children had to sleep in one apartment, and eat and do everything there, then this House will feel shocked. They are European people, and they had all to live and sleep in one apartment. Conditions came to light during this court case that were absolutely staggering, and no civilised nation can allow that children of such tender age should already know what their parents do. It is essential that the Minister should apply to the Minister of Finance to help him to remove those conditions. That is his task. I know that the Minister has a difficult task, because he has not the money. He has to go hat in hand to the Minister of Finance. But I hope that he will keep up a standpoint so determined that it will almost amount to the deliverance of an ultimatum to the Minister of Finance to extend to him the necessary financial support to improve those conditions in which that section of the people must live, and not only the conditions in our cities and towns, but also the conditions on the platteland. I want to ask the Minister in all seriousness to consider once again the restoration of the housing schemes on the platteland. We find today that thousands of people depart from the platteland because there are not enough houses for them. A farmer may be able to take on more labourers, but he has not the accommodation for them. Those people go to the cities, and when they get there they find themselves in circumstances that are strange to them, and very readily they go to the slums to which they are even more unaccustomed, and to prevent that influx from the country to the cities I want to ask the Minister to help in providing housing for the platteland so that those people shall be able to remain there in healthier circumstances. I have referred to the co-ordination that should prevail in the Department of Social Welfare. A Social Welfare Council should be appointed representatives of the State, the Church, approved women’s associations, charitable societies, rehabilitation societies and cultural societies, a council whose duty it shall be to bring about co-ordination and consolidation of all welfare services. When we have this, when we have such a council on which all those bodies are represented, then we shall not find what we find today, that the one overlaps into the sephere of the other and all the difficulties about which the Minister spoke. This council can then act in an advisory capacity towards the Department and towards the Minister concerned. The basis of representation, if the Minister does not know how the representation should be arranged, could be the services rendered in the past by those bodies. If the associations contributed something to the uplift of the people then they can get representation on the Social Welfare Council to serve the Minister and the Department with advice. Then there is another matter, and that is that it avails nothing to do rehabilitation work if one finds at the same time that Government officials come along with alms to distribute in an area, or if the persons have to go to an office to receive alms or an allowance. Then there is no personal contact. The Department of Social Welfare should be reorganised in such a way that national service is rendered in the most practical sense of the word. There should be personal contact with everyone of those to whom help must be extended, with everyone in that national section that are needy and that have to be assisted by the Department. I have been informed that the personal contact contributes much more to the rehabilitation of the people, particularly in the cities, than when those persons have to go and get an allowance for support and assistance and when no further attention is being paid to them. The person who has to bring about that personal contact must go inside those people’s homes, must investigate every case, must go into the history of every case, and in that way it can possibly be found out what the cause is why those persons find themselves in those circumstances, and therefore I want to stress to the Minister that he should appoint social workers, men and women. Our universities are now yielding qualified men and women to us, and the Minister must ensure that those university graduates who have had the necessary training should each be placed in these posts, particularly where the less-privileged section of the people need the help of such persons. In this Department we are busy trying to enhance the standard of living of the people. We can succeed only if we can make the person in less privileged circumstances realise that he is not an animal but a fellow human being, a fellow citizen of ours. I have referred to housing conditions, in respect of which we take up the standpoint that housing is one of the functions of the State. In this respect it is absolutely essential that the Minister should devote his attention to those thousands of boys and girls who cannot find a living on the platteland and who go to the cities. Our country is being developed industrially, but before those boys and girls can occupy their place in the community as skilled workers they must first of all undergo a period of apprenticeship, and I want to emphasise that the low-paid young men and women workers, that the apprentices, must be assisted. All this can be done through the erection of hostels in the various big industrial centres where men and women social workers can keep an eye on those boys and girls. I want to advise the Minister, since he evidently knows nothing about that institution, to go to the Monica Home at Mowbray. I also want to ask him to go and see the institution of the A.C.V.V. at Salt River. There he will be able to see what the A.C.V.V. does to ensure accommodation for low-paid girls employed in our factories.

Is that the institution at Mowbray?

Yes, and there is also the one at Salt River. If the Minister does that he will contribute greatly to prevent our young children arriving in unfavourable circumstances in the big cities. The Minister of Social Welfare is the Minister who should have at heart the duty to ensure that slums are eliminated. He must ensure that the sub-economic housing system should be better developed, so that the different races, Europeans and coloureds, can live apart. What the Minister should also ensure is that there should be an easy system of repayment, at a low rate of interest, for the poor section of the population who want to purchase their own houses. We have the class of man today who gets £15, £20 and even £25 as a labourer. He is not being well cared for. We speak on behalf of people who get 10s. per day and less, but we must also care for the middleclass man. If that man gets sickness in his house and has to call in a doctor, or if he is out of work for some time, then he is put back years, and quite possibly he can never again rehabilitate himself. We must devote our attention also to that section of our population. Then there is another matter that I also want to bring to the attention of the Minister, and that is the institution and maintenance of rent boards in consultation with the Social Welfare Council which I have mentioned here. The Minister must institute rent boards that can co-operate in conjunction with the Social Welfare Council and ensure the maintenance of those boards, and then these boards can supervise rentals throughout the country in order to provide better protection for the tenants. Then there is a matter in respect of which I feel the Minister is not paying sufficient attention; I have already mentioned it in connection with the Rent Act. I said that there were numbers of our boys and girls who live in boarding houses at £6, £7 and £8 per month, and they are not protected in such a way that they may remain there. The owner can increase the tariff. I have been told that in some of the rooms in which such boys and girls live a new piece of furniture is put in and then the owners say that the room is worth more and that the occupants must pay more. I would like the Minister to give his attention to this. Then there should be more State-aided housing for the aged, for the less-privileged section of the population, and for the moderately-privileged portion of the population. When I speak of the less-privileged section of the population, I want to say to the Minister that a scheme is being carried out by the Church at Rhenosterkop, near Kakamas. It is a scheme for semi-fit who are subsidised to a certain extent by the Department. The Minister should extend that type of housing and settlement in respect of that class of person. We find that small houses are built with two or three apartments, and with half a morgen of ground in addition. On that land the people grow vegetables, keep a cow, etc. They get an allowance of from £2 to £3 per month, and those people are completely content. Particularly where we have an accumulation of that sort of people in the cities and on the platteland, I feel that the Minister should work in that direction. But there is also another matter, and that should be the task of the Department of Public Health. Our people today work from 1 January to 31 December with a short holiday of 14 days. They are poorly paid, and they cannot go away to enjoy their holiday. They do not have the money for it, and there are also no places for them to go to, and I want to ask the Minister that his Department should make a start with the provision of holiday resorts for the low paid section of our population. These resorts can be provided in our coastal areas. I can refer the Minister to what the railway staff have done on their own at Mossel Bay, namely at Hartenbos. If such places are provided, then those people can go there at very small cost. What I also feel, is that there should be an intermediate division between the Department of Public Health and the Department of the Minister which can deal with border cases so as to investigate these, and what I also feel is that there should be better co-operation with the Department of Public Health in connection with advice regarding nutrition, child welfare, and other relevant problems. There should be such a link between the Department of Public Health and the Department of the Minister of Social Welfare, and when the Minister has instituted such a link then we can place national nutrition, child welfare, mothercraft, family welfare, and other such matters on a sound basis. But we have the position today that the Department of Public Health is busy working, in one direction while the Department of Social Welfare works in another direction, or does little or nothing. When I speak of this, then I want to say that it is absolutely necessary that for this purpose that the intermediate division should be used for the expansion of the system of district social welfare workers. Together with the district nurses and together with the district surgeons there ought to be district social welfare workers in the various towns and cities of our country. Then it is also necessary to have the institution of women’s services so that we may have a countrywide voluntary rendering of these services in co-operation between the church, child welfare societies, and women’s associations that will render these services throughout the country in connection with communal uplift work, including the care of family life, and also of border cases, and that will also pay attention to cultural activities. It will avail us nothing to give the poor food if we do not also give them facilities for building up their bodies and of receiving proper recreation. I have already said to the Minister that the time will come when the vote Public Service on the estimates will have to be increased from the £1,500,000 which is now on the estimates to £3,000,000. It should be his policy to encourage a bigger and healthier internal European population by ensuring bigger families and healthier conditions, and therefore we on this side say that the Minister must not come forward with patchwork such as one meal per day for children at school, while the other children will never get it. No, he should support the parents by means of a family allowance so that the parents shall be better able to care for their children. With the institution of the various boards and activities of the Department he should not visualise the elimination of the approved organisations that have already rendered valuable services in the different spheres. The Minister must always take up the standpoint that before the State interests itself in the upliftment of the people, that the churches have always been in our country, and he must encourage the expansion of their activities in close co-operation with the State and with the financial support of the State. It sometimes happens that the State’s undertaking, through the medium of which it accomplishes some important task or other in the interests of the people, ultimately grows and grows and then gets beyond control, and if they then apply to the Department of Social Welfare for financial support it sometimes takes years before the State can be interested. We also feel that the State should condemn the alms system. For that reason we must subsitute a policy of upbuilding and rehabilitation of a healthy national life, and above all we must pursue a policy that will prevent the same old factors again bringing about the deterioration of the people as in the past. When I speak thus, I speak as a young Afrikaner who feels that we have here a European civilisation which we must build up, and which we, in conjunction with our English-speaking Afrikaners, must maintain. Our motto should be that we are our brothers’ keepers. That must also permeate through into this House, because if one goes about in the country and one sees the misery and poverty and the degeneration of the people, and one sees how the economic struggle is becoming increasingly worse, and how people can no longer maintain themselves, then one feels that this is a matter for the whole nation. It is today the day of big business. Afrikaners who in the past could compete and maintain themselves are in many cases no longer able to do so. The big businesses have got together and they have received a grip on the country and the small man is being pushed out, and when the small man is pushed out and ultimately has no more assets to keep himself going then it is the duty of the State to help. If we want to build up a sound and healthy Afrikaner people in this country then we can no longer allow these conditions which prevail today to develop further. I know that hon. members, also on the other side, feel with me and that the Minister also feels with me, but I would like him to instruct the Department of Social Welfare to go into the matter in its broad aspects and to ensure that the less privileged section of our people shall be able to maintain themselves. [Time limit.]

I want to congratulate the Minister on the increase of what I consider a very necessary vote, an increase of something like £2,000 to provide homes for aged people. I want to tell the Minister how necessary I think this is on account of an experience I had in Cape Town only last year. I do not want to pass any reflections on Cape Town in particular in regard to this necessity of supplying homes for aged people who may be only in possession of an old age pension. That is not a very large amount for maintaining an old person. The experience I had in Cape Town is a very difficult one. It took me quite a long time to find a place for these old people whom I was asked to interest myself in. I must say that the only door I found open to them was the Conradie Home. That is not entirely a home for aged people, but rather for invalids. It is not a place for people who are not suffering from any disease and do not need medical attention, but I only want to use a common expression, a roof over their heads. These are the people who are only in possession of an old age pension of £3 10s. a month. I think the same remark applies also to Johannesburg. Although I have lived in Johannesburg for a great many years, if I were asked to find an institution whose doors were open to an old person in possession of £3 10s., my position would be a very difficult one. The Social Welfare Department in this year’s estimates, has provided an increased amount for this purpose, but the total amount is only about £5,000 for the whole Union, and there are many people who are only in possession of £3 10s. and have to depend on someone to look after them. I want the Minister and his department to provide an institute in every town in the Union where people who are only in possession of this small sum can have a home to go to and be looked after. Of course, the £3 10s. would have to be given up, but these people would gladly give it up to have a home over their heads. I congratulate the Minister on providing this extra amount, but it has not gone far enough to cater for the old people of the Union. I hope he will give this matter his attention, and come forward with an increased vote next year. I know the good work he is doing, and I am quite sure he will come back to the House. I hope he will provide a larger amount for the people on whose behalf I make this appeal.

During the recess I approached the Department of Social Welfare in connection with a distress situation that prevails in a certain part of my constituency, namely Gamka, and a certain part of the Olifants River Valley, and I asked the Minister to send persons to make a survey of the conditions that prevail there so that means may be found to combat the chronic position of poverty in those areas. The Department then sent officials there to institute an investigation and I think they submitted a comprehensive report in connection with the situation. Now I would like to describe to the Minister the conditions that exist there. As I have already said, you have there a sad and chronic condition of poverty which unfortunately is not of a temporary or sporadic nature, but a position that has become permanent. The position has become permanent as a result of droughts, scarcity of water, sub-division of land, and overpopulation, and it is necessary that radical steps be taken to relieve the emergency situation there. I would therefore like to know from the Minister if he now intends to alleviate the position once and for all. It cannot continue as now. It is self-evident that in order to solve the problem you must take into account in the first place the activities of the people there. They are all farmers, farmers that occupy themselves with irrigation, but unfortunately those parts are subject to droughts and to water scarcity. Now you might say that the natural solution would be to improve the water supplies in those parts. Unfortunately, as a result of the war policy, the Government does not want to continue with irrigation schemes. The Government does not want to place further irrigation schemes into immediate prospect there to provide the need for water. The situation there will thus continue. I have also heard from the Department of Irrigation that they do not contemplate any speedy construction of big water conservation schemes. The prospect for better water provision in those parts is therefore very slender. It appears to me that the Minister should take immediate steps to meet the situation. I want to suggest what, to my mind, he should do immediately. There are three classes of persons who should be assisted there; firstly, the small land-owners who cannot proceed with their farming, because their land is too small and because of the perpetual ravages of drought. Secondly, one finds there a class of bywoner who does not himself possess land, but who under the existing circumstances is dependent on favourable periods when water is plentiful, and who can then reap a little crop as a share-sower or a bywoner of the big landowner. You can understand how tragic the conditions are under which such people exist. Then there is a third class of person, who is partly or entirely unfit physically and who does not earn enough under the disability schemes to be able to exist. Now, I feel that immediate steps should be taken in connection with these three classes of persons. As regards the small land-owners, I suggest that steps be taken under the existing law to increase the size of the holdings so that they may be able to make a living, under the fluctuating agricultural conditions, on bigger holdings. The holdings they have at present are too small, and must be expanded.

Is it private land or State land?

Private land. It means that some of the small-holdings will have to be bought out in order to make the other small-holdings bigger, or additional land will have to be purchased from the bigger owners in order to make it available for this purpose. That is what he can do for the smaller land-owners. If he cannot acquire enough land to enlarge the holdings for the small plotholder, then he will have to make provision to place the small landowners on other land as settlers. Here I want to say that he will then get a class of person who will be very successful settlers. Unfortunately it is the policy of the Government today not to make any provision for further settlements. That makes the position of such persons still more difficult. I want to ask the Minister to urge upon the Minister of Agriculture that where such conditions prevail in my constituency, and perhaps also in other constituencies, that he should depart from the policy of not providing any more land for settlers, and that he should make sufficient provision for settlement. Then, as regards unfit or semi-fit persons, I want to say in the first place that many of those persons could also be placed on one or other of the settlement schemes as suitable settlers. Many of them will be good settlers. It is a class of farmer that one seldom finds in the country, and by putting them on other settlements you will not only assist those persons, but it will also be of value to the Department of Lands because you will have suitable persons who will be an example to other settlers. They will be able to show the people there how to farm and what can be done, because they have been concerned in agriculture from childhood, and are outstanding agriculturists and able irrigators. I want to suggest therefore that those people should be assisted in the way I have indicated. Then he will find that there are a number of persons who are totally unfit, in my opinion, and who do not get sufficient support, while there is another class that are described as semi-fit, and who under the general disability schemes cannot get the same assistance as those persons who are totally unfit, but who yet have no chance in that area of getting any work as semi-fit persons to enable them to keep their families alive. I want to suggest therefore that they be looked upon as totally unfit and that they receive the full allowance of the totally unfit, or otherwise they must be taken away and placed on settlement schemes as settlers, that is to say on schemes for semit-fit. Those are the conditions in my district along the Olifants River and the Gamka. Then I would like to raise a matter which has already been brought under discussion by the hon. member for Ceres (Mr. Van Zyl), namely in connection with platteland housing. A lot of money is being spent on urban housing. We find no fault with that. On the contrary, we want the Minister to pay more attention to housing and devote a little more money to it instead of to the war. The Minister knows that the housing position is critical. He has seen what the position in Cape Town is, and in the whole country the position is critical. Instead of only thinking of the war against enemies whom the Government has gone to seek, he should rather combat the natural enemies of poverty and want in our country. Sufficient money ought to be made available for housing in the cities, and also on the platteland. I would like to see that the scheme which we had before, for assistance in connection with housing, for the erection of houses on farms, is put into operation again.

I want to finish off what I was saying about the mal-adjustment of children, and in that connection I want to say that we have at present functioning in this country a very great body of women whom we call S.A.W.A.S. and I think it would be a very sorry thing indeed if this splendid spirit of helpfulness to the State as a whole is allowed to lapse. I feel that the Minister, as part of his reconstruction schemes after the war, should consider encouraging these women to carry on their work in the field of social welfare. It would be disastrous if these women are allowed to give up the work they are doing today without an endeavour on the part of his department to show to these women what their duty is towards the State in peace time. I hope he will call a conference, or in some way arrange that a lead shall be given to this vast number of women who, I think, if it is put to them that their services are required will submit to a certain kind of training and discipline. Their services will be invaluable to him and his department in all matters pertaining to social welfare. I wish to express my firm view that his department has not a sufficient number of scientifically trained staff. His department must face that problem. I can think of two kinds of institutions whose work must be peculiarly difficult, the institutes dealing with inebriates and with work colonies. So far as I am aware, in neither of these institutions is there a single staff member who has been scientifically trained for this work, and yet admittedly that type of work must be of a most intensely difficult nature. Now I want to turn briefly to one other point. I am interested in the problem of cripple care, and I am a member of the National Council. There is an item on the vote which provides 75 per cent. of the salary of the secretary of that body, and so far as I am aware that is the only direct contribution which the Minister’s Department makes towards the work of that Council. The Council has done its best but is always confronted with, shall I call it the non possumus attitude of the central authorities who point out that hospitalisation is by the Act of Union a matter for the provinces. The provinces are however totally unable to finance the necessary scheme which they regard as beyond their resources. The Minister’s Department is not unconcerned with this problem which is left entirely to the provinces, who are not able to initiate a full scale orthopaedic service in this country. It is one of those matters which has fallen between two stools, both proclaiming their inability to deal with it. The Government says it is the work of the provinces, and the provinces say it too much for them to undertake. The Minister’s Department is deeply concerned with the problem of unemployment and indigency through its invalidity grants, old age pensions and so on, and I say if this problem can be dealt with by the establishments of complete orthopaedic units, it must in the end be a great saving to the State. This long-sighted view is not always the one that is taken because initially it costs a great deal, but I think if we deal with the problem in a national way it will ultimately be a great saving to the State. I have no time to deal with the problem of prevention, which is also of supreme importance, and the Minister must know also that the time factor is also of great importance. Cripple cases must be discovered early, and thus some of the worst cases may be got rid of in the early stages. I feel the time has come when this problem should be regarded as a national one to be dealt with by the Government in co-operation with the provinces, especially as the war is going to create a still greater problem in connection with cripples. The problem of crippledom will loom large after the war, and I urge the Minister to take over as part of the machinery for dealing with it, the scheme initiated last year under the control of the National Readjustment Board for disabled soldiers and incorporate it with the plans for disabled civilians. Finally, sir, I want to refer to what has been already mentioned by several members in this house, and that is the lack of uniformity in the invalidity grants. The invalidity grant is only £2 10s., the blind grant £3, and the old age pension £3 10s. I want to add my voice to the many voices that have urged that this uniformity should be brought about. It is absolutely absurd to consider that a person suffering from rheumatoid arthritis and incapable of working, needs less to maintain a civilised standard of living than an old age pensioner. Furthermore, I maintain that these invalidity grants are not adequate enough for single persons and the ceiling of £9 in terms of the Children’s Act, is not high enough.

Mr. Chairman, I want to draw the Minister’s attention to the result of the recent regulations published in the Government Gazette on the 26th March in connection with the Rents Act. In 1942 by Act 23, Section 14, it is made illegal for anybody to evict a tenant unless certain conditions have taken place, three months rent in arrear, and so on. Amongst other things this was reserved to him. If he required the house for personal use and that of his children he was entitled to an order of eviction. I am in sympathy with the Minister’s object, namely that rents should be reasonably low, especially for the poor people. There should be some sort of security of tenure for the poorer people. They should not be able to put them out without reasonable cause, and consequently I feel that where the Minister tries to make provision for that here, he is probably doing what he regards as correct. But I want to point out to him that these emergency regulations have made it impossible for a person to make any provision for himself or his family. I may buy a house today for my son who is going to marry in three years time. Now, Sir, he cannot get the house according to the regulations that have been passed, not even if he personally requires it. He must show that he lived in the house immediately before the tenant. There is another trouble and it is this. If I have a house that I am letting, and I wish to sell it and I feel that I could sell it now, no one will buy it unless he can take possession.

This matter has been brought before me and I am drawing up another regulation to meet the point. I consulted with everyone concerned.

I am glad to hear that. I would naturally have no say in the regulations the Minister will draw up, but I would nevertheless like to bring this matter to the notice of the Minister in this House. I understand what the idea of the hon. Minister was; he wished to protect these people, and there I agree with him. But he must not take away the ordinary rights of the people.

There are some rights we have to take away.

Yes, I can understand that, but not where the person wants the property for himself. People are constantly moving from place to place, and poor people are often able to buy houses with the assistance of building societies. The effect of this regulation is that the rights of these people are now being taken away. The Minister is stopping the sale of property, in effect, and he is upsetting the whole of the financial world. I am very pleased to hear that the Minister is going to alter it.

We are only too happy to have your advice.

I have repeated it every year, but I want to say to the hon. Minister again that I think that some sort of certainty ought to be given to the children that are being assisted when they become orphans. The widow has to make application every year for the grant. I take it the grant is given every year. It seems to me that the widow who has three or four little children, is placed in a very difficult position. She needs this money. If the department has decided that this woman should be helped, I cannot see why it should be necessary for her to make application every year. The child may be four or five years of age, and she may require a grant for ten years. If she marries again, the whole thing naturally falls away. To me it savours of begging. You have to make application for the grant every year. I think an arrangement should be come to whereby the widow will be able to get the grant every year without the necessity of having to go hat in hand to the department. I want to tell the Minister that there are many people who have derived great advantage from this grant, small though it be. In my own constituency there are several of these people who have been assisted and who have made a great success of their lives. I know of one family where three of the sons are today in the Civil Service. It has been of so much assistance to them that it has lifted up quite a number of children. It has come to my attention through the organisations that assist the Government, that these people feel that they are sitting on a precipice; there is no certainty; they get the grant this year and next year they may not get it.

I agree that it is unsettled.

They have to endure unnecessary suffering as a result of this uncertainty, and I would like the Minister to lay down that as long as the woman conducts herself properly, the grant will be given.

In view of the tiring day which the hon. Minister has had, I shall try to be as brief as possible. I want to raise a question in regard to the control of charitable organisations. I particularly want to confine myself to these charitable organisations which are catering for the welfare of merchant seamen who pass through our ports in this country. I would point out to the hon. Minister that there are organisations such as the Seamen’s Institute, the Missions to Seamen, the Navy League and so on; but as a result of the war there are many other charitable institutions which have sprung up, such as the Merchant Navy Welcome Club, the S.A.W.A.S., the R.N.V.R. Comforts Fund and many other similar organisations. I do feel that it is time that the Minister should step in and bring about a measure of control in regard to these organisations. In the first place I feel that if these organisations are centralised or co-ordinated in particular directions, thereby avoiding overlapping of services, the Minister will be putting such organisations into such a, position that if it is at all possible they will be able to make a greater contribution towards the welfare of these merchant seamen who visit our ports. In the second place there are quite a number of seamen, either deserters or men who have been discharged in these ports, who are encouraged by the attractiveness of the uncontrolled life in our towns, subsidised by charitable organisations, to remain here, not at all anxious to go to sea again. It is in that respect that I believe that the Minister should see to it by a measure of control that these organisations do not unconsciously encourage these people to adopt that frame of mind. The other point I want to deal with is in regard to the new fund which has grown up in this country, and that is the Merchant Navy Fund. I want to bring certain points to the notice of the Minister because I feel that, in the first place, that with all these organisations, collecting as they do, from various parts of the Union of South Africa, the Merchant Navy Fund which has come into existence is making it very difficult for all these smaller organisations to collect funds, so much so, that this fund, the Merchant Navy Fund, the balance sheet of which I have before me, has for the period from the 1st October 1941 to the 30th September 1942, collected in the Union of South Africa nearly £111,000. While I do not want to belittle the efforts of the sponsors of this Fund in any way — their actions have been commendable — I do want to put one or two points to the Minister in connection with this Fund, and in doing so I do not want to apologise to the House for taking in this matter what I believe to be a truly national standpoint. My first point is that the Merchant Navy Fund is making it difficult for the other organisations to collect money in South Africa. They are taking away the source of revenue from the local organisations. My second point is that if money is to be collected in South Africa, I think in the main it should be spent in South Africa. In regard to this fund, I find on an examination of the balance sheet that an amount of at least £104,000 is sent overseas out of the collections totalling nearly £109,000. This amount which is sent overseas is allocated in the following way: Firstly, £50,750 to the King George’s Fund for Sailors; £18,000 to the Shipwrecked Mariners’ Society; £13,000 to the British Sailors’ Society; £15,000 to the Royal Merchant Navy School; £2,000 to the Royal Alfred War Fund, and £2,000 to the Seamen’s Hospital Society. That briefly is the manner in which these funds are distributed. If there is one section of the community with which I am also concerned, it is those South Africans who are serving under the British Merchant Navy. Attempts have been made in the advertisements which have appeared in the local Press in regard to the collection of monies for this fund, to indicate the great work that has been undertaken by the men of the convoys, and the advertisements suggest that this fund is assisting the wives and dependants of these men, and it goes on to state that many of these men are South Africans. Well, Sir, I feel that if the wives and dependants of merchantmen in the South African Navy are to be assisted, I believe they should be assisted in this manner because we in this country do know the special conditions that prevail here, the conditions in regard to the standard of living, and in that respect I feel that a portion, if not the great bulk of the fund, should be used in this country. Secondly, it has also been brought to my mind that even in South Africa House in London, appeals are being made from time to time for South Africans, and I believe that many of these organisations, perhaps attached to South Africa House, do have some considerable difficulty in getting money to assist South Africans. So, Sir, for all these reasons, I do want to put it to the Minister that he should step in and exercise some measure of control, bearing in mind the fact that the Minister has a Social Welfare officer investigating this problem in connection with merchant seamen in Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, East London and I believe in Durban. I do ask that that officer should call together the representatives, representing the various organisations in South Africa dealing with merchant seamen who pass through our coastal cities, and thrash out a plan whereby we can see firstly that the great bulk of the money that is collected in this country is spent in this country. I hope that the Minister, while perhaps he may encourage this Merchant Navy Fund to continue, will get the sponsors of this fund to be the mother-fund, as it were, and to assist all the smaller organisations in this country which are playing such a tremendous part in this country and who are doing great work in assisting merchant seamen. [Time limit.]

I would like to bring to the attention of the Minister that in a portion of the country, particularly in the North-West, there has been a protracted drought during the past few years, and the position of the middle class person and the poor people has deteriorated considerably. I can give the Minister the assurance that many of them have not the facilities, the fodder, to keep their stock alive. There are some of the smaller farmers who have gone to the wall. They are sitting in the towns today, and they have virtually nothing to live on. Another general aspect is that wages on the platteland are practically the same as before the time that living costs commenced rising tremendously. What is wonderful to me is this, and I would like to have a reply to it. I see that item K.1—allowances to poor persons, and cash allowances—has been decreased to £39,849. It is a reduction of almost 50 per cent. Where the position is as I have described it, how does the Minister see his way clear to provide poor relief with this reduction in the estimates? I myself serve on local boards, and I know what a terrible demand there is in connection with this matter. Then in the second place I want to draw the attention of the Minister to K.2, where there is a reduction of 50 per cent. That is general assistance, and for this an amount of £9,800 is now made available. The third item, namely special poor relief, is also reduced by 50 per cent., namely from £12,000 to £6,000. It sounds very strange, and I would like to have an explanation from the Minister in connection with this matter.

Of course it will again be the war.

Then there is another point which to me is even more serious. Perhaps it is because the Minister considers that he needs this money for the war. The hon. member for Gordonia (Mr. J. H. Conradie) has drawn the attention of the Minister to the good work of the A.C.V.V. here in Salt River. If ever there was a charitable institution that did good work throughout the country then it is the A.C.V.V. Now I come to L.1, charitable institutions, and there I see the Minister has a reduction of £3,212. I would have thought that the Minister, knowing what good work those bodies do, would have increased the amount by £30,000 instead of decreasing it by £3,000. The item “Special Welfare Work” is reduced by 100 per cent. Last year it was £12,000, and now there is nothing. We would like to have an explanation of this. Then I understand that the Department of Social Welfare is busy at the moment providing partially for the need of blankets to charitable institutions in the emergency that has arisen. I understand in the first place that the Child Institutions — I speak under correction, but I think that they get an allowance of £21 per year per child, and it may perhaps now be more — but those Child Institutions can obtain the blankets that are manufactured by our blanket factories at 12s. 9d. a piece; and then the Department of Social Welfare extends a subsidy of 50 per cent. in order to provide the Societies or Institutions who distribute the blankets. I have nothing against that. It is something good, and I want to express my gratitude for it. But in the second place the Department also provides blankets to charitable institutions at the cost-price of 12s. 9d., in connection with work that falls under the Department of Social Welfare. Now we have the needy hostel institutions in the Cape. These are also children’s institutions. Unfortunately they fall under the Provincial Council, and in terms of Clause 16 of the Act of 1927 those needy hostel institutions are specially excluded from assistance from the Government. It seems terribly unfair to me. These hostel institutions obtain an allowance of £18 per child from the Provincial Administration. In other words, they get £3 per year less than the Government institutions, and then the Government institutions still get the privilege of a subsidy of 50 per cent. on the blankets, and those institutions which must do with less have to pay the full price. It seems very unfair to me, and I want to make an earnest appeal to the Minister to assist those people. If he cannot do so under the Act, he can do so under the Emergency Regulations. The position is such that those hostel institutions are of very great value to the poor people in our country, and I hope the Minister will see his way clear to extend special help to them. Then I want to draw the attention of the Minister further to the present position in respect of housing, particularly in the sparsely-populated areas of the country. If we come to the cities or even the towns we find that the people can still be assisted by some means or other to acquire a house. Let me assure the Minister that in the North-West we often get the position — I would like the Minister to travel about there and see the conditions for himself — that people live in a little house consisting of a dining room, a kitchen and a bedroom. In the bedroom the father, the mother and the children must sleep. Daughters also have to sleep in the same bedroom. [Time limit.]

I want to refer to a matter which, on the face of it, may appear to have only a local and restricted interest, but which in actual fact goes very much deeper. I refer to the circumstances under which non-European delinquents are detained at the Overport detention cells. Any one coming into contact with these cells might well assume that those children were not delinquents but long-term prisoners, and I believe that the consequences of the circumstances under which these children are detained may be far-reaching for the whole of South Africa, I want to suggest why I say that. These children, whatever their offence, whether it be petty thieving or whatever it is, are detained there, I think one can safely assume, as a result of the unfortunate conditions under which they were compelled to live. These children are not convicted prisoners. They are awaiting trial, some of them may be found innocent, yet is is a remarkable thing that there are many instances in which these children have been awaiting trial for as long as six months. It is true that in order to comply with the requirements of the Criminal Procedure Act, they are brought up every 14 days and the case is then remanded. But I am assured that some of them are detained for as long as six months, and they are housed and fed under such conditions that there can be only one consequence, namely that every one of these children, when they eventually leave these detention cells, will be an enemy of society because of their experience in these cells.

If the hon. member sits down I shall explain the whole position to him. The whole thing has been settled.

I know that the hon. Minister is aware of a good deal in regard to these detention barracks. But I think that the committee ought to know, even if the matter of premises is now settled, the conditions under which these children have been detained, because the Minister obviously is not aware of all the circumstances. A committee which calls itself the Action Committee, a volutary committee of public-spirited men and women in Durban, took it upon themselves to find the means for feeding the fifty or so children who were detained, at cost to themselves of about 12s. 6d. per day. This Action Committee has taken note of the answer which the Minister recently gave in reply to a question, and they assume from the answer which he gave that the Minister is not aware of the circumstances under which these children are detained. The Minister stated in reply to a question, that the accommodation which was originally built to accommodate 18, 6 and 6 children respectively, was accommodating 22, 9 and 9 children respectively. The Action Committee says that that is not a true reflection of the position, and that actually in February when a visit was made by the committee to the cells there were 7 girls and 47 boys, and the 47 boys were crammed into two cells which according to the Minister were able to accommodate 24 altogether. That is what the Committee found—47 boys crammed into two cells which, according to the Minister, were built to accommodate 24. I am not going into fuller details as to the accommodation. These children are not provided with any clothing at all.

Look at the time.

What of the time? Apparently this does not concern the Minister, all he is concerned about is the time.

Of course it does concern me; I have explained the circumstances.

Yes, I know what the Minister is concerned with. He does not want to deal with these matters. He’d rather I didn’t.

Now you’re talking nonsense.

Is the Minister afraid that I should disclose these circumstances? I want to say again that some of these children have been in these cells for six months without a change of clothing. There has been absolutely no supervision and there has been no woman in attendance to look after the girls. They have a male attendant for these girls—some of them of tender age. Nothing has been done in regard to education for these children, notwithstanding the period they may have spent in these cells. Their food beggars description. I ask the Minister whether in these circumstances these children—almost every one there—because of the environment in which they live—I ask the Minister whether they can be expected to be other than enemies of society. I hope the Minister will tell us what provision has been made for new premises so that these children’s wellbeing is cared for. It should not be forgotten that they are awaiting trial, they are not convicted prisoners, they should be housed under civilised conditions, and if they are not convicted, and then released, they should be able to go out and forget the time they have spent in these detection barracks, so that they may become useful citizens.

The hon. member for Parktown (Mrs. Retiz) has again brought up this question of deviate children. Well, I have explained to her that there is a committee sitting to investigate the whole position and our Department is represented on that committee. The hon. member wants Child Guidance Clinics. We have them. I suggest that we should investigate for the purpose of spotting out and counteracting deviation in children — I suggest that we should have a teacher in each school, especially for that purpose. That is a matter which we shall have to discuss with the Education Department. I do not know about visiting teachers to families because we have social workers who might reasonably be expected to deal with that aspect of the question. The hon. member for Gordonia (Mr. J. H. Conradie) I know is always keenly interested in this question — I hope I match his interest — the hon. member has put forward many points but it seems to me his mind is unduly alarmed at the possible prospect of the church not getting its rightful recognition in this social work. I think I have epitomised it in that phrase.

Not only the church, but other societies too.

Yes, other societies too. The church is responsible for the institution and I want to say here now, however late it may be—I think it is right that I should do so — I want to express my gratitude to the church, especially to the Dutch Reformed Church, for its inception of this work, but it has expanded and gone ahead. My hon. friend expects that next year we may have to double the amount on the estimates. Well, I expect that too. I expect the work to expand more and more but that does not cut out the church and I have instructed my Department that the fullest co-operation must be maintained between the Department, the church and other organisations. That will be carried out. Then, on the subject of housing in the country. The hon. member for Gordonia and the hon. member for Victoria West (Mr. D. T. du P. Viljoen) and other members too, have stressed this point, and my department is investigating it under my direction — it is going into the question whether we should not revive the old bywoner scheme. I think it is desirable and I would not be surprised if my hon. friends were to come back next year and congratulate me on having reinstated it.

That is if you are there.

Well, I think there is very little doubt about that. Then, in reply to the hon. member for Langlaagte, I want to tell him that we have such institutes. The Central Housing Board finds money for aged and unfit persons in towns and villages. I thank my friend for drawing my attention to the fact but we are doing all we can. I want to say to my hon. friend for Swellendam (Mr. S. E. Warren) that we are engaged in drafting emergency regulation amendments, and I hope the thing will be done tomorrow morning. Then in regard to the hon. member who is interested in Merchant Seamen, we have a man investigating the position. In regard to the detention dépôt in Durban we have practically settled the matter with the Municipality of Durban. We are going to hire that Estate which was referred to a little while ago and they are going to do the repairs.

What about Oudtshoorn?

I have had a man who has reported on the position in Oudtshoorn.

I hope it won’t stay at that.

Oh, no, that’s only the beginning of action.

I have fairly good experience of the Department of Social Welfare, and I think I ought to bring another matter to the attention of the Hon. Minister. Naturally the financial side weighs a lot with the Department, but if something can be done for the welfare of a large portion of the population who, as a result of the circumstances under which they live, are not in a position to provide for their children properly, then the money must be made available.

At 6.10 p.m. the Chairman stated that, in accordance with the Sessional Orders adopted on the 28th January and 11th March, 1943, and Standing Order No. 26 (1), he would report progress and ask leave to sit again.

House Resumed:

The CHAIRMAN reported progress and asked leave to sit again; House to resume in Committee on 3rd April.