When the House adjourned yesterday I was discussing the dangers of excessive drinking, and before going any further I want to repeat what I feel about this. I am not talking about people just taking a drink — I am talking about people drinking to excess. In other words, I am referring to drunkenness, and the results of drunkenness. I pointed out yesterday that drinking beer to excess caused certain diseases, and I want to say a few words about the abuse of intoxicating liquor, and in the short time at my disposal I want to mention the kind of diseases caused by over-indulgence in liquor. We have venereal disease here. We have tuberculosis, liver diseases, etc. Medical men all agree on the detrimental effects of liquor. I don’t want to argue that point. If there is any medical man in this House who wants to deny what I am saying he can do so later on. In the year 1940 we spent £68,000 on combating venereal disease. That figure went up to £110,000 in 1943. But apart from the results, so far as we ourselves, the present generation, are concerned, let me point to the effects so far as the future generation is concerned. I have a book here, “The Alcohol Factor in Social Conditions,” and on page 16 we find this—

Hon. members will see the danger of drink to our children. And the article goes on—

Not drink, but excessive drinking. On page 18 we find this paragraph—

Now, let me go on. I just want to repeat what doctors have to say in order to point to the dangers of excessive drinking—

I can quote hundreds of cases from this book showing that excessive drinking was the cause of what I have mentioned here. We want to go further in our own country. We are combating the menace of tuberculosis here and when one attends a conference which is called to discuss steps to combat tuberculosis, to request the Government to establish hospitals to combat tuberculosis, then, when one starts mentioning the causes of tuberculosis, one at once finds that there is a prejudice on the part of the public. They don’t want to know what are the causes of tuberculosis. When one sees the coloured people along the roads in the town, underfed and wet, one can quite appreciate that their bodies are susceptible to tuberculosis. It is no use our spending thousands of pounds on combating tuberculosis if we permit those people to obtain liquor without a licence. These people are given a decent place in which to die, but nothing is done to combat the causes of the evil. It is high time that we as an Afrikaans nation—it is high time that the Government —put their heads together and brought people together to combat the increasing drink habit. If one sees the evils caused by excessive drinking in Great Britain’s Army, in the armies of all countries, then I say it is a disgrace that this evil is not dealt with. Some people will perhaps use my remarks to make mischief, to misinterpret what I have said. If the law allows me to enter a canteen, and I do not break the law by doing so, and I drink until I am drunk, and go outside then and am arrested—then I say it is a strange civilisation which allows me to get as drunk as I like while I am inside my house, but has me arrested as soon as I go outside. I want to make an appeal to the Government, and I want to appeal to all members of this House. I don’t think there is anyone here who wants to encourage drunkenness, and that being so, in the short time at my disposal I felt I should bring these few points to the notice of the House. I have deliberately not blamed anybody; I want this matter to be considered in the spirit and in the realisation that we are in earnest in our plea that the evil of drunkenness shall be eradicated.

Just before the election and also after it, the Right Hon. the Prime Minister gave us a slogan of three sentences. The first one was that this country must win the war; the second was to give the returned soldier a square deal; and the third was to plan the peace. I ask any hon. member in this House whether we have had any discussion in this House in regard to winning the war. We have never talked about the war in this House with the exception of a small amount of criticism which had to be expected on the side our friends, the Opposition, and in the country today nobody is talking about the war. There has been nothing in Parliament, and there has been a great hush-hush policy on the part of the Cabinet in regard to the war. In England and in other countries the Governments, to a certain extent, take the people into their confidence. We have not even yet heard the report as to why Tobruk fell, and the fall of Tobruk hit South Africa harder than has ever happened in its history. Why has the Prime Minister never taken this House into his confidence in regard to Tobruk. There are a large number of us who are very much interested in the fall of Tobruk. The fall of Tobruk did the South African arms no good; it did the country no good, and surely the Officer Commanding the forces of the Union should take the country into his confidence and tell the people what happened. We have also heard a good deal about fetching the boys back from Italy. How many boys up to now have been fetched back from Italy? Our Sixth Division cannot move because it has not got the transport and it has not got the transport because we are complacent and nobody is taking part in the war. We find that our universities have been turned into funk holes. Very few of our university students are going to the war, and we find Col. Werdmuller, the Director of Recruiting, saying that there is a serious lack in recruiting, that the Union is facing a military man-power crisis and he blames public complacency. I not only blame public complacency, but I blame the Government for it. I think if they had told the country more about the war, and if the Bureau of Information had been properly run, South Africa would not have lapsed into this complacency which we have today. I do not suppose that there is a member in this House, on this side who does not get a fan mail from returned soldiers, in which they grumble about the treatment meted out to them It was reported in the newspapers yesterday that Mr. Frielinghaus, a member of the Provincial Council, and the local Defence Liaison Officer, said at the Annual Meeting of the Walmer Branch of the United Party—

How does our Government expect men to join the army, when one of their own party, one who has fought this question for 20 months—I know because Mr. Frielinghaus and I brought this matter before the Government and nothing was done—comments in these terms on the Government’s policy? How are we going to plan the peace; how are we going to plan the peace by handing the whole country over to bureaucratic control? Only a few days ago Mr. Ivan Walker, the Director of Manpower, who was asked to arbitrate on the differences between the men and the employers, although a careful study of his terms of reference discloses no mention of any such question, saw fit to lay down that the profits on all building operations are to be limited to 5½ per cent., and that anything received in excess of this amount is to be paid to the Wage Stabilisation Board. There you have the complete case of the civil servant taking policy out of the hands of Parliament. Being a Socialist I do not mind, but it is to Parliament that you must come, and I do not know whether the secretaries of departments have the right to deal with this sort of thing. Let me read to the House a passage from the “Natal Mercury” — and all the newspapers say the same thing—

The remedy is in the hands of members of Parliament. This article goes on to state—

There are quite a number of us, especially amongst the older members of this House, who can see the doom of the democracies, because the Government is allowing everything to go into the hands of bureaucratic control. I pass lightly over the food control. Not many weeks ago we found that 1,000,000 bags of maize were destroyed by rain. Now I want to come to the excess profits tax. With the exception of one or two members, I do not think there is anyone in the House who agrees with the Minister of Finance in regard to the excess profits tax. There is too much taxation of the present generation altogether. We have been told that we are fighting this war for posterity. Well, why not allow posterity to pay for some part of the war? My hon. friend the Minister, who is a tough guy — no one seems to be able to shake him — is basing it all on the policy of the United States and Great Britain. But the United States-and Great Britain have established their industries. In this country we have no industry at all, and I know of two specific cases where industries were not started in this country because of the taxation policy of the Minister. A man from South America came here with £1,000,000 to start a big textile factory and when he saw the taxation of the Minister he refused to start. Another man connected with Czecho-Slovakia, who wanted to establish a hard goods factory and to use the material of Iscor, also refused to go on when he saw the excess profits tax. Now I want to ask the Minister this. He says he cannot get his excess profits tax. Why does he sell his gold in big, large bars? Does he know that gold today is being sold in the size of a match-box. I shall tell the House the reason — we sell all our gold to the bank of England at 185s. per ounce. There is a free gold market today in the world, in Alexandria, where gold is sold at £16 per ounce, and where it is purchased by South America, India and the Middle East, and by anyone who can get his hand on it, sold in small pieces as big as a matchbox. Why does not South Africa sell her gold in the free market at Alexandria; if we sold half of our gold there we could pay the whole of our E.P.D. and other taxes as well.

Hear, hear, why don’t we?

Now I want to speak about something which my hon. friend over there will not cheer. The time has arrived in South Africa to break down the colour bar.

But I say “hear, hear”.

We talk about immigration when we have the emigrants here already.

Hear, hear.

If we were to pay the natives of South Africa double the wages they are getting today we would have so much money we would not know what to do with it.

Wouldn’t we?

We would raise our standard of living, and we would really be able to run industries. But when you start talking about paying more to your natives, you clash with the Chamber of Mines. Well, I think it is about time we had a clash with the Chamber of Mines on this question. Now, I want to talk about something which I can see coming like a cloud the size of a man’s hand on the horizon, and that is the trouble between the townsman and the farmer. No responsible man wants to see a clash between the producer on the land and the consumer in the country. That is the one thing which we must avoid even if we have to carry on with the arid discussions on racialism here. As a townsman representing a very town seat, nothing but consumers who know nothing about farming, who are very worried about the whole position, I put this to the farming members. The townsman demands—

1. (1) efficient farmers;
2. (2) use of scientific methods;
3. (3) production of plentiful food at the lowest possible price;
4. (4) that the reckless robbing of the earth, which is our common heritage, the creation of barren lands, shall stop;
5. (5) the payment of subsidies which come out of the pockets of the townsmen shall be only to efficient farmers, and not to every man who owns a plough.

Let me put that in scientific terms: “The subsidisation of marginal and sub-marginal producers in agriculture is not in the best interest of South Africa. Future payments of subsidies should have due regard to whether the farmer is using the best methods.” The townsman is willing to pay for efficiency and results. He no longer believes that only the “cheque-book farmer” can use scientific methods. That myth is merely an excuse for laziness and ignorance. Mr. Lazarus, the Maize King, and Mr. Lurie, showed us how townsmen starting with nothing but using the right methods made a great success of farming. We have the greatest sympathy with the farmer who is doing his best to produce the food of this country. We are prepared to assist him in every way, but we are getting sick and tired of paying every man who is on the land, who has ruined the land, and doing nothing for the land, a subsidy.

I have only nineteen minutes, but feel I must devote two or three of them to an expression of the Labour Party’s great disappointment that so little provision is made in the Budget for social betterment. The National Health Services Commission has toiled for well nigh two years. The mountain has laboured and has brought forth a mouse. Fifty thousand pounds for health centres, out of an estimated expenditure of £180,000,000 ! Of course, in addition, there is £1,500,000 to be devoted to the very old and the very sick, but we are coyly informed at the same time that less than two-thirds of that will be expended during the present year. We propose giving £5 per month to our old, aged pensioners, that is £6 per year extra compared with what they now receive. The £12 cost-of-living allowance will be withheld. Even the Beveridge Report in England, produced by kind permission of rampant capitalism, provides £2 per week, that is £8 13s. 4d. per month, for each old age pensioner. And that in a country where this amount would have a spending power of £15 per month compared with prices in South Africa. We propose to give ours £5 per month. That is the way of it. And then the hon. member for Sunnyside (Mr. Pocock) rises in his seat and is indignant with this Party because we dare to criticise the Minister of Finance. I am going to be quite plain, and at the same time to be careful to understate my case. The Cabinet is not too much criticised, but too little. It would be very much better for this country if the hon. member’s own party offered a great deal more criticism. The time has come for them to indulge in straight talk, and if they don’t we must, and we shall. There is just one question I would like to put to the Minister with regard to old age pensions for coloured people. In his budget speech he said that as far as coloured old-age pensioners are concerned we consider that the rates at present applicable in rural areas are disproportionately low, and we propose therefore an all-round increase in the allowance by £3 per annum. That is an amount of 5s. per month. I want to know if that additional sum ranks as an allowance or as pension, and whether it is to be given to all pensioners—whether each coloured pensioner is to receive the maximum of 35s. per month together with this extra 5s., and whether to that the present cost-of-living allowance is to be added, the monthly cost-of-living allowance of 10s., making the sum received £2 10s. per month in all; and I ask the Minister if, when he replies, he will give an explicit assurance that this is the case.

That means that all rural pensioners will get £2 10s. per month ….

I am very glad to hear this, but I want assurances that all the coloured old-age pensioners will receive this as a minimum. I want to know precisely what they are certainly going to get. I want to know how much—though perhaps I should rather say how little, they can count upon receiving. And then I wish to devote a moment to this annual Budget debate, wherein everything from the parish pump to the latest ersatz philosophy is passed in review; wherein hon. members, I suppose of an average age of 50 years, and I suppose they have been elected by their constituencies not merely for their good looks but because they have a rudimentary intelligence, are expected to crowd a half-hour speech into 8 or 9 minutes, which is often done by the process of reading the greater portion of the oration. I suggest to the Minister that the discussion of an outlay of £180,000,000 in what we are often told is a poor country—I suggest that the discussion of an outlay of £180,000,000 should not take four days, but a minimum of three weeks, and that the annual session of Parliament to permit of that, should not be for three months but rather ten months each year. I have suggested this more than once in the House, and perhaps this time the Olympians —I say perhaps—will listen to what I am saying—and perhaps they will not. But it is very necessary that they should, and the time will come when the nation will see that they do. Now, I mainly want to deal with a few aspects of our women’s army, and first of all I want to pay a tribute to the thousands, the many thousands of women, who came so readily and so hopefully to the service of their country in time of need. There are few people who so little desire praise, but none who more deserve it. First of all came the South African Women’s Auxiliary Services, a body of volunteers, unpaid, who provided their own uniforms, met their own expenses completely, and were officered and established by many of the most competent women in South Africa. In 1940 there followed the Women’s Auxiliary Army Service, full-time people, recruited from the Auxiliary Services. Shortly after came the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, and now, recently, the South African Women’s Naval Services. Shall we say that approximately there are 60,000 women in all, and shall we admit that they have done magnificent service in the Union, and up North? I think we can all agree as to that. I wish to add that I consider it an honour, a personal honour, to be privileged to express Parliament’s thanks to the Women’s Army for the work they have done. And now I come to certain anomalies in their conditions of service, and I want first of all to suggest that the officer in the highest command, of course subject to the direction of the General Officer Commanding, should be a woman, and not, as at present, a man. In the other great European war, twenty-five years ago, in Great Britain the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps was commanded by a woman. I have special reason for remembering that, because in January, 1919, the lady came over to Hardelot, where I hapened to be marooned at the time, and on a celebrated occasion I was inspanned as her dancing partner for the whole evening. She was a lady who in maritime circles might have been described as carrying a great deal of sail, and I was even more terrified than when I was in the trenches; but it does establish the fact that a quarter of a century ago other countries put women in charge of their women’s forces.’ I object to any suggestion that our South African women are less capable than those of other nations, and contrariwise suggest that if a woman is placed in supreme command, subject, of course, to the control of the Field-Marshal, we shall get even better services from these forces, because more understanding and sympathy will be shown to the rank and file, and their whole position will be placed on a sounder footing than it is now. Let me give one example of what I mean. Hon. members have heard of army strengths, the number of people required for a given job, and the relative number of officers to other ranks. So far as men soldiers are concerned these things have been arranged and fixed ever since Hannibal’s time — so many other ranks, so many officers: it is largely a case of rule-of-thumb! In Pretoria apparently they consider that the position in regard to women is just as easy as it is in regard to men. That is what they consider the fact, but they are wrong. I will tell you of one station which I know, where a number of little groups of women are lodged in separate houses, some others are in their own camps, others are with the batteries, while yet others are in the motor transport barracks. Properly to supervise 150 women so situated requires a bigger number of officers than to supervise 250 in one camp. That is obvious to any woman, but it does not seem obvious to any man in authority in Pretoria. I quote that as an instance to show where the country would gain by uniting these great forces of women, and putting a woman in charge. There are definite discriminations against women too. They do not in the army get the same pay for the same work, and we want to know why not. In many cases they do the work even better than the male soldier. That is, of course, particularly the case in such matters as range-finding for heavy guns. We do not understand why they are discriminated against, unless it is just because they are women. There are other instances, too. If a male soldier finds that his business needs him — if his partner dies, or if something catastrophic happens to his firm, he can be freed from the army, and in many cases he has been freed. But if a woman finds that her mother is dying, or her husband has died, or the children are ill, or her absence may be in other urgent ways required in the home — although she is not important enough to be paid the full rate of a male soldier, who may be discharged without a penalty, the woman has to pay from £5 to £15 to secure her release. So I presume, from the Pretoria point of view, money still counts more than human life, and I am reminded of what Mr. H. W. Nevinson said about the sacredness of property: That if all the angels of heaven had come down to join in our plea, their trumpets and harps would have sounded in vain; for property was involved. I suggest it is a disgraceful thing that women who have just cause to go back to the domestic life, from which they have unselfishly emerged in our time of stress and danger, should be penalised and forced to pay what is to them a big sum of money. It is an absolute disgrace—a disgrace which has gone on for four years, and it is high time it was ended. Moreover, when a man is discharged, wherever he is discharged, the cost of his passage to his home whether by ship or by train, and of his food en route, is borne by the Government. If a girl happens to get her release when she is away from her home she pays her own fare, and buys her own meal tickets all the way home. If she happens to be stationed in Cairo when she is discharged, how can she do it? It is almost a physical impossibility, and it is certainly a financial impossibility. She has to stay in Egypt. And in any case she need not look to the same nebulous priviliges which the Government confers on returned soldiers. She will not get any privileges at all, as to civil re-employment or grants for clothing, if she is compelled by circumstances to break her service before the war is ended. There is another case where all women suffer —with regard to civilian kit allowance, this miserable £5; a woman cannot get that without signing an official form that her personal financial circumstances are such as to necessitate it. Men don’t have to sign any such document at all. Women do not like signing a form like this, which makes something in the nature of charity out of a right: and I don’t like it either. Why should women be treated differently from men and less generously? Where is all this chivalry we so often hear of? There is just one other section of our women soldiers I want to mention, and that is the large group of well-educated and very patient women who are engaged on motor transport. Most of them have been in the army four years, but the only recognition they get is that they are still expected to go to work at 7.30 in the morning, and they are not expected to slacken their efforts until 6 or later in the evening. Counting travelling time, they work 12 hours every day. They do not get a day off per week, or half a day even, except an occasional one on Sunday—when they don’t want it, as it were, so much. They want to be off on a week day so that they can go and buy frocks and ribbons— they can go to church on a Sunday, and many do. Thanks to an excellent chaplaincy department, they can attend church services in camp on a Wednesday evening. But stores are closed at night, when they are off duty, and not even the “tickey” bazaar is open on a Sunday. All women know that! And then a man does not seem to realise that a three-ton lorry full of another two or three tons of troops is a heavy thing to handle. We have far too many of our motor transport women in hospital with strained hearts. I think that might be looked into with advanage to all. And finally, they get little or no promotion. There are women in the Motor Transport Section who have not gone up one step in rank in four years. On the other hand, we have the “Hush-Hush” Unit which goes in for a five weeks’ course for recruits and each girl get the minimum rank of corporal on emerging, and many become sergeants. The whole thing is cockeyed. A girl in charge of a lorry filled with troops requires to have some rank, and I suggest that we should put this matter right and give them their rank retrospectively— make those who have recently started lance-corporals for the first year of service, corporals for the second year, and give them three stripes for the third year. After that make them staff-sergeants if they have done four years’ efficient work. I have received a lot of information on these points—I won’t call them complaints; and I have a letter here which has been put in my hands since I started speaking. It is a letter from the League of Women Voters. I should just like to quote from it—

The House will notice that the letter calls urgently for an enquiry. And then it goes on—

This has just come into my hands, and it serves as an endorsement of what I have said. There is a considerable amount of unrest throughout all branches of our Women’s Military Forces, and there is abundant cause for it, and the time has come for these causes to be removed.

If I came along to this House and asked this House to accept a motion for the elimination of all private enterprise—what a mixed reception I would get? If I came along and asked the House to accept all Nazi principles, and Communistic principles, what a mixed reception I would get, but we have in the Gazette of the 21st January a proclamation giving the Price Controller power to walk on to all our farms, and conscript everything we have on those farms which might be utilised for food purposes. It goes further and gives power to that controller not only to conscript that food, but it gives him power to establish a Board of fifteen men whom he will nominate and elect. And it goes further and accepts the control outlined in the Meat Commission’s report. Now, the Meat Commission’s report is not new to us. True, it was only released on about the 16th January, but may I tell the House that I had the Meat Commission’s report in July last year, and I was told at that stage that it might be introduced within fourteen days. Now, we have camouflaged the whole issue by setting up a Commission which went round the country— but it did not get a unanimous verdict from the organised bodies of the country. In dealing with that scheme, may I refer to the fact that I do not feel a little bit sore at being referred to as one of the disgruntled individuals representing a few unorganised people. I want to tell this House that the hon. member who was the author of that statement travelled from here to Maritzburg and he met about a hundred men and associated with that group were Mr. Wentzel and Mr. Naudé who went down to talk about that scheme. At the outset I think they thought of reading the Riots Act rather than these regulations about which not a hundred farmers know anything, and if they knew anything, your meat scheme would have died long ago. However, I want to deal with the meat scheme on its merits, and I want to refer to its application to the country. I don’t think the House knows what might happen were we placed in the hands of these monopolies which could manipulate the scheme to please themselves, and which could exploit the consumer and the producer to the extent of almost raising trouble from the consumer’s point of view, and almost sending the farming community to bankruptcy. I say without fear of contradiction that the farmers of this country do not know what can be done by this move adopted by the Department nor do the consumers know what they may be involved in if they have to accept the scheme in its present form. Perhaps someone will tell me that I don’t know anything about it, but I do not think the Department know any more than I do, and that is extremely little. But they are quite prepared to enforce it at the first possible moment. We know the exploitation that took place and that raised the shares of these monopolies from 5s. to 35s. That manipulation made it possible for these organisations to exploit not only the Government of this country, but the Imperial Government in connection with the sale of meat to the convoys. They made the greater part of £1,000,000 on that, and what did they do still further? They sold that meat to the consumer at a lower level than cost price. They were then paying, when prices stood at 50s., anything from 17s. to 19s. per 100 lbs. more for it, and they were able by that means to oust as many of the small producers as were not able to compete with them or go into the Black Market. What was the result? They were able to buy up sufficient of these organisations that were running independently to acquire a monopoly.

Is that the I.C.S.?

You can think what you like. Under this scheme the monopolists are going to be our wholesalers, undoubtedly. They purchased the bulk of the retail shops and they have placed themselves in the favourable position of having become the financiers to the bulk of the retail butchers, because they have eliminated the only channeis of finance the small butcher had, namely, the auctioneers. I am not speaking on behalf of the auctioneers; I am completely independent as far as that is concerned. But may I go further and tell you, Sir, that those combines hold the only cold storage that is available to the farming community of the country if the scheme is put into operation. We will have to pay not on the basis of 5s., but on the enhanced price of 35s. I did not hear the interjection, but I would like to tell you at this stage, Sir, in reference to our talking of organised bodies, that at Stutterheim a meeting was addressed by these gentlemen at which 416 people were present. The regulations were read to the meeting, and they turned the scheme down by 416 votes because they knew what the circumstances were. Thousands of other farmers are ignorant of what is taking place. I am speaking, too, for many thousands if not a million consumers who want their meat at a reasonable figure today. Then if we place ourselves in the unfavourable position of having these big organisations with the platteland in their hands, if we are not to experience the traffic that we had in the past in connection with the issue of permits, measures are absolutely essential. Who are going to be the traffickers? Those big organisations are.

That is true.

I am glad the hon. member for Cradock (Mr. G. F. H. Bekker) agrees with me, and it is only by the activities of men like the hon. member and myself who realise the difficulties that have to be surmounted, that we can achieve some stability. Must we—and I speak as a producer—be at. the mercy of mushroom graders who are upstarts like toadstools after the first summer rain, must we be subject to the position that we must put our stock in the trucks and then receive instructions from the department to say : “We are sending your stock just where we please, and if they are lost in transit or by grading, we will merely debit your account.” We have introduced this measure, or we have accepted it unwisely, shall I say, for the purpose of producing some stability, but I cannot yet see how any stability can be produced by such a measure when you have land rollicking up to three times its economic productive value. It has changed hands at terrific figures, and this will cause the greatest amount of trouble to us in the after-war period. Then worst of all is the fact that we are being compelled to surrender our rights to an almost communistic state of bureaucracy under which we will be controlled from Marks Buildings or Union Buildings. Dare we submit to a state of affairs such as has been handed to us in this meat scheme, whereunder we have no markets or are thousands of miles away from the nearest markets, and whereunder we are in the position of being dictated to in regard to every step we take? We are in that unfortunate position that we have to stand a loss, whatever it may be, resulting from the activities of people who know nothing about their job and who have even been known to grade angora goats as superior lamb. That is a state of affairs that we cannot, tolerate. If the country knew what was being done I think the country would be up in arms. The hon. member rather indicated to the House that we were in the minority, and that we comprise a few disgruntled individuals. I think I have shown that the very opposite is the case. I am sorry I have not been able to deal more fully with the Budget. There are many matters I should like to have touched upon, such as native affairs and taxation, but I fear that if I continue I may be depriving some other member of an opportunity to participate in this debate.

When the Minister of Finance, year after year, introduces his budget, many people have all sorts of expectations, but those expectations result very often in the deepest disappointment, and disappointment of this kind praticularly affects two sections of the public. A child, if it is disappointed, feels very badly about it, but there is another section of the population which also feels a disappointment very badly, and that is the old people. Now, as this budget of the Minister of Finance has caused deep disappointment among certain old people in this country, people for whom we have the greatest respect, I want to move the following amendment to the amendment of the hon. member for George (Mr. Werth). My amendment refers to the pensions of Oudstryders and I specifically mention those who from 1899 to 1902 fought on the side of the Boers. I move as an amendment to the amendment moved by Mr. Werth—

1. (d) to take steps immediately to provide for a more effective pension scheme for Oudstryders of the Ànglo-Boer War who fought faithfully on the side of the Boers, which will comprise, inter alia, the payment of a pension of at least £7 10s. per month to such Oudstryders and a similar amount to the widows of deceased Oudstryders, such pension to be payable with retrospective effect as from the age of 60 and not to debar a pensioner from claiming in addition the old age pension provided by law.

This amendment puts the following points very clearly: we want to be clear on the point that the amounts paid to war veterans, paid to that heroic generation of our people—those people who one after the other are gradually going to their long rest—are not to be regarded as anticipated old age pensions, but should be regarded and treated as a debt of honour which is owing by later generations to an earlier generation of heroic men— a recognition of services rendered by those men. These payments are not to be treated as old age pensions paid at an earlier age. In the second place I say in my amendment that the pensions to these people must at the very least be £7 10s. per month, and even that amount we regard as a very poor recognition of a generation of the past by a generation of the present. I also move in this amendment of mine that this £7 10s. per month is to be retrospective for the Oudstryders, as from their sixtieth year. In this connection I want to say at once that if there is one section of the people which has been unjustly treated and which will go down to its grave suffering from that injustice, unless it is rectified now, it is the generation of the Oudstryders who fought in the Boer War from 1899 to 1902. We have had other wars since those days, and it was only after those wars that pension schemes were brought into being, and it was because the Oudstryders could not be cut out from any scheme by any Government that they were included, but they were included on a basis which did them a terrible injustice. I therefore move that this pension is to be retrospective from their sixtieth year. The people who are today in receipt of Oudstryder pensions. only get that pension from their sixtieth year, if they are not unfit before that time. When this pension scheme was adopted practically all the Oudstryders of the Boer War were over 65 years of age—in any case there were very few of them who were not 60 years of age yet, but from the very nature of things those people by that time were over 65 years of age, and consequently they lost five years so far as their pension was concerned owing to it being allotted too late. On strong moral grounds I claim that that section of the public must be paid the same amount of pension as others who took part in subsequent wars are paid. I therefore say that violated rights must be restored and that these people must have their pensions with retrospective effect from their sixtieth year. The soldier who fought in the 1914-Ί8 war draws his pension from the day he reaches the age of sixty, no matter how small that pension may be, and the soldiers who are fighting today get an Oudstryder pension when they reach the age of sixty. Why should that be so, and why should that heroic generation of our people who have forced the whole world to respect them because of their courage and because of the attitude they adopted, be treated in the unjust way they are treated now? The next proposition in my amendment is that I want pensions also for the widows of the Oudstryders. They have been done a terrible injustice. The widow of every man who was killed in the 1914-’18 war immediately received a grant. In this present war grants are also given immediately to widows of soldiers, who lose their lives at the front. In the Boer War about 4,000 burghers were killed, but when at a much later date pensions were granted to widows, only 374 widows received anything. I want to put this matter very seriously. Let me put it to the Minister of Finance in this way: Here we have an Oudstryder; he and his wife live in poverty. The State, in recognition of that man’s services, now gives him a pension of £3 per month, an Oudstryder pension. I have heard it said by hon. members that this Government, and particularly the Minister of Finance, has thought of these people, and has given them an Oudstryder pension. The Oudstryder and his wife bore the great burden of the Boer War. The woman was chased all over the veld—perhaps she was put in a concentration camp where she lost her children—but when her husband died she was left with nothing at all and she had to live on charity. If the pension is a recognition of services rendered by the Oudstryder then the women must also be recognised, the women who, together with their husbands, have stood the heat of the. day. Give those women the pensions which their husbands were getting, and give it to them even after the man has died. Then the woman will have something to live on. I am proposing this amendment today with a sob in my heart. Year after year this matter is discussed in this House. I want to remind hon. members that when I raised this question for the first time it had a very mixed reception. Gradually the sense of the injustice done to those people has grown until last year we had people on all sides of the House speaking with a sense of appreciation about the Oudstryders and the injustice done to them. The spirit in which I am making this proposal is a spirit which is grateful for any plea made on behalf of those Oudstryders, no matter which side that plea is made from. If a plea is put up on behalf of those people, I shall appreciate this from the depth of my heart, no matter from which side that plea comes. It will occupy a place in my heart. The spirit in which I am moving this amendment today is this: “Come, let us leave all other questions out; we owe it to this generation of heroes that justice be done to them, so that they will not go to their graves with a grievance in their hearts.” It makes no difference to me against whom they have those grievances, whether it is against the previous Government, against the present Government, or the Government which will come after this one. What concerns me is that these people should pass out with a grievance in their hearts because they feel they have been unjustly treated as compared with other people who took part in other wars. And making my request in that spirit I want to ask the Minister of Finance to accept my plea in that spirit. May I be allowed, from the depth of my heart, to appeal to the Minister’s uprightness of which he is so prone to talk in this House. If there is one subject which one should consider frankly and honestly it is the cause of these people. Let us see what happened in regard to this matter during the last few years. On the 20th February, 1940, I pleaded in this House for a pension to be granted to the Oudstryders of the Boer War. That was the first time I put up that plea, and I want to thank the Minister, as I have done before, for the words he used on that occasion, viz., that considered from a humanitarian point of view it had made a great impression upon him. I hope that the Minister is just as humanitarian today as he was then. Oh the 5th May, 1941, a year later, the first Bill was passed, Act No. 45 of 1941, which came into operation on the 1st July, 1941. I again want to express my thanks for what was done, no matter how little it may have been. On the 10th February, 1942, the subject was again discussed in this House, and we then emphasised that these people should not be given an ante-dated old age pension, but that the two things should be separated, and that the Oudstryders should be given a pension in recognition of their. services. That was felt on both sides of the House. In 1942 nothing was done in regard to the matter, but in 1943 we got Act No. 33 of 1943 which, in Clause 45, provided for a one-third increase. I mention these dates and I mention the course of development in regard to this matter which was raised here every year because I want to show that although we have progressed slowly we have made a certain amount of progress. To my mind we did progress so far in Act No. 33 of 1943 that it was laid down by way of legislation that the Oudstryder pension must not be an antedated old age pension, but a pension in recognition of services given in battle for their people. This principle was laid down in that Act which came into operation on the 1st April, 1943. I hope the Minister will not say that under Clause 45 of Act 43 of 1943 he has the right to apply this only temporarily. If it is a temporary application then I want to know why that has not also been done in regard to old age pensioners? The cost of living has gone up just as much for them as it has gone up for the Oudstryders. No, the acceptance of that clause was the acceptance of a principle, the recognition of giving Oudstryder pensions and not antedated old age pensions. I want to plead with the Minister, and to say this to him : There is an old saying and it is written in the Eternal Truth, righteousness exalteth a Nation, but injustice is a reproach to any people. I am pleading with the Minister not to allow that generation of Oudstryders from the Boer War to go to their graves smarting under an injustice. Let us remove that. Let us see to it that that small crowd of people who are still living does not pass away suffering from a sense of grievance. When this matter was discussed here year after year it had its repercussions outside, throughout the country, and this discussion will probably again have its repercussions. I have letters here; people have written me from all parts of the country to thank me for the way I have pleased the interests of those old men, but I also get letters from the organisation of Oudstryders, and also from a few individuals which indicate: “You should not talk in Parliament, because you annoy the Minister of Finance when you talk about it, and that is why he refuses to make this concession”. I want to put a frank question to the Minister today. Are we to assume that he, as Minister of Finance, is so narrowminded that it is because we speak in this spirit that he refuses to grant our request? If that is so then it will be a charge against the Minister of Finance, which will go with him to his grave, that he is so weak that he turns down a legitimate demand simply because somebody else suggested it. It would be a recognition of appalling weakness. I do not expect the Minister of Finance to take up that attitude. I expect him to accept the responsibility and to deal with the matter in the spirit in which I am trying to put it. As I have said, many people write to me in a sense of gratitude and ask me to carry on, and they tell me that they will stand behind me. Now, let me say that so far as that aspect is concerned I shall continue to plead on behalf of that section of my people, no matter where they are, so long as I represent them. There is hardly any other question on which I have such strong convictions as the question of the injustice that is done to the Oudstryders. I just want to give two instances to show how unjustly these Oudstryders are being treated as compared with other people who have taken part in other wars, wars with which we on this side of the House feel that South Africa had nothing to do. From the 1st April, 1919, to the 31st December, 1939, a total amount of £12,815,000 was paid out in war pensions in respect of the 1914-Ί8 war, while in respect of all other wars before that time the amount paid out was only £3,958,000. No wonder that up to this very day I get letters from people who tell me that they were wounded in the Boer War, and that, whether they applied or not, they never recieved a penny by way of pension. In regard to the present war the amount will undoubtedly be more than double £12,000,000. Pensions are paid to the people who have taken part in those wars, but the Oudstryders are unjustly treated in that respect. Let me give another comparison. Invalidity allowances are paid to an amount of £58,000 in respect of 1,209 Oudstryders who took part in the Boer War—an average of £48 per man. But in regard to those who took part in the 1914-’18 war the average is £66 per man. These are official figures. Why should it be so? The Oudstryders are disappointed because nothing is being done for them, and I want to confirm that statement by quoting a resolution passed by them—

There, of course, they are wrong—there are others as well—

Those are the very words which I have used Session after Session. What makes the matter so serious to me, and with these remarks I want to conclude, is that the Oudstryders had expected something in the Budget now before us, and they are deeply disappointed. I beg of the Minister of Finance not to disappoint these people in their expectations but to give them a little consideration. One other point I want to refer to. The old age pensioners under the provisions of this Budget get an extra £6 per year. I don’t say that that is enough, I think it is too little, but at any rate they have received some consideration; but even that consideration has not been given to the Oudstryders who are drawing pensions. Why should that be? How is the scheme working today? We know that the provisions regarding Oudstryders and old age pensioners are identical: The need must be the same before they can get a pension; but what is the effect of the separation of the two classes? The Oudstryders who get the basic increase of £6 per year under the last Act get an increase of £2, which makes it £8; then the man gets a cost of living allowance of £12, making a total of £20. But the old age pensioner on the same basis gets £6 as a basic allowance, and £12 as a cost of living allowance, and under the announcement in this Budget he gets £6, making a total of £24 per year. The man drawing an old age pension, instead of being better off, is worse off now. We have the Oudstryder who thought that he would rather draw these few pounds as a recognition of services rendered on the battlefield than go hat in hand to get an old age act of charity. The Minister of Finance replied: “Very well, you can make application and your old age pension will be converted into an Oudstryder pension,” but because he did so the Oudstryder is now penalised and gets less than the old age pensioner gets. Why is that? The cost of living, the circumstances and the regulations under which these amounts are paid out are identical. But because the one man had a sense of honour, because he said that he did not want charity, that he did not want an old age pension, an Oudstryder pension— why should an injustice be done to that man, and why should he be placed in a worse position than the other man in regard to the total amount he gets from the Minister as compared with what he would otherwise have got? This applies to payments where the basic amount is £6; it applies in those cases where the basis is £12 and also where the basis is £18. When it is £18 they all get the same. I want to conclude by making this plea to the Minister: If he does not want to put this injustice right, an injustice which has been inflicted on those people for many years, at any rate let him put right this injustice which is now being done, and give them the pension which we have asked for, so that they can say they are getting this money as a recognition of the military services rendered by them; that at any rate they are getting one third more than the old age pension. With these words I want to conclude. That generation is passing away, and when it is gone we shall for many years after it has gone continue to celebrate in the same way as we celebrated at the time of the centenary festivities, whether we accompanied the Trek or not. And so years after this generation has disappeard we shall participate in the celebrations in honour of the heroes of the War of Independence. Do not let us wait until they are dead before we recognise the services rendered by them. Give that recognition now before they are dead, so that at the very least they may get £7 10s. per month until they pass away.

I have much pleasure in seconding this amendment. I believe I am one of the youngest Oudstryders of the Second War of Independence, perhaps one of the youngest in the country, and I feel that the interests of any man who has sacrificed his life for his people, rightly or wrongly, must be looked after. We have a small lot of Oudstryders who fought in the three years of war for the freedom of their country, and these people have been neglected in the past. They did not fight for pay or salary, but they were promised something. I still have the letter addressed to me by the late General Beyers in which I was told that I was to get 5s. per day and a reward. I never got anything. I do not believe there is anybody on either side of this House who would oppose a proposal to do something for these Oudstryders in their poverty. We hear their cry for help everywhere. As a result of the war those people never had the opportunity of going to school. Many of them are quite illiterate, they could not be appointed to good jobs, and they are in dire distress today. We are getting tired, and we are ashamed, we do not like having to come here every year to plead on behalf of these men, and I am pleased to be able to say that on the other side of the House there are also numerous members who have pleaded the cause of the Oudstryders. Only yesterday I was talking to an old soldier opposite and he said this to me: “Carry on and we shall support you. We all feel that something is due to these people, and they should not be given anything in the nature of an old age pension.” These people are not putting forward their request because they are old or unfit—these people have deserved what they are asking for and they are entitled to it. It is a debt of honour, and that debt of honour has not been discharged. With these few words I ask the Minister to help us remedy a wrong and carry out a promise. He can do so at once. Let him give those people what they are entitled to. There are only a few thousand of them left. Their widows have to live on charity today. Every day men who have drawn big salaries from the State are dying, and pensions up to £1,200 are voted for the widows of these men, but the noble women of the Three Years War are pushed aside. That is all I want to say. I want the Oudstryder pensions to come under the War Pensions Act so that the granting of those pensions will not savour of charity. We do not want charity for these men, we want justice done to them, and if the Minister now wants to do something he will never regret, if he wants to be generous let him say: “I am not going to sit here year in and year out and listen to all these pleas to help those people, but I am going to put an end to this matter at once.” I hope he will change his mind even during this Session. People on the platteland, and these Oudstryders themselves, feel and expect the promises made to them to be carried out this Session. I want to appeal to the Minister on behalf of the Oudstryders; I want to ask him to help them, and I feel convinced that if he does what we ask his action will be recorded as an act of generosity.

I want to draw the attention of the Minister and the Government to a form of investment which has become very popular in South Africa. It is known as unit certificate investment—I am not going to mention the name of any particular company. I want to make it quite clear that I do not intend to attack or question even the integrity or the financial standing of any of them, but I want to draw the attention of the investing public of South Africa to certain points which appeal to me. The first one is that there is a service charge of approximately from 5 per cent. to 7½ per cent. on every certificate that is purchased. Some companies charge 5 per cent. and some as high as 7½ per cent. Then, some companies charge a commission on the dividends which they collect, and this varies from 1½ to 4 per cent. They charge a small commission and pay out the balance. With these regulations I cannot find fault. People are told what the conditions are, and they go into them with their eyes open, but. I want to come to the other point which they do not make so very clear. For example, they can substitute the shares of one company in the unit for the shares of another company. One of these companies which issues these unit certificates may underwrite a certain company and be left with 85 per cent. or 90 per cent. of the shares, and they can, without consulting the certificate holders. make their people participate by buying the shares of these companies which have been underwritten. Now, I think that is a very weak point. They do that without consulting the unit certificate holders at all. This is what I am referring to. I shall quote from this brochure—

Who decides what is in the interests of the certificate holders? Not they but the representative of the issuing company. To my mind that is rather a weak spot because, as I pointed out, they may substitute the shares of a company which they want to dispose of, for shares which are easily disposed of, or shares of a high value. Then there is another point and that is the liquidity of these investments. What I am referring to is the ability of this company to realise for cash any certificate which is handed in, and here we come to a most important point. We find that in one concern the company has issued certificates for sixty times more than its capital and reserve. In other words, you have a company which with a capital and a reserve and unappropriated balance of £300,000 has issued certificates to the extent of £15,000,000. Now, I want hon. members to visualise the prospect of what will happen if we have a financial crisis—people may want to realise their certificates and will want to get cash. If they go to the company, how can the company possibly find the money with such a small capital? And so, to protect themselves, these companies have a number of clauses. For instance, I have one here which says this—

And further, another company quotes—

So if they get a run on these certificates and the people want to cash in, the company can simply say: “We cannot pay out.” And all it need do is to post a notice in the office of the company or advertise to that effect in the local newspaper. Now, what protection has the country got? I am not talking of, I am not attacking or questioning, the stability of these firms, but when we get companies issuing ten, forty or sixty times the amount of their capital, how are the public going to get their money back if a time of financial crisis arises? This form of investment has brought about the creation of a number of these companies, and it has been whispered that a company is to be floated shortly with the object of issuing participation certificates in building units. I maintain, Sir, that these companies should be brought under legislation similar to what we have in regard to building societies. I understand that there are some big investors in these concerns, but the great majority are small people financially, people with small capital, and they are investing their money, in many cases their all, in these concerns, thinking that they have absolute security and thinking that if they want their money back at any time they can get it. I have pointed out that that is not so. If there is a run they cannot get it.

Why should they think they can get it?

I submit to the Minister of Finance that legislation should be introduced similar to what we have in regard to building societies.

I want to support the amendment proposed by the hon. member for Boshof (Mr. Serfontein). If there is one section of our people who are deeply disappointed with this Budget it is the Oudstryders, and they have cause to feel disappointed. The Oudstryders were under the impression that when the Minister of Finance made up his estimates he would do something really tangible for them.

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

Afternoon Sitting.

When business was suspended I was saying that the Oudstryders were disappointed with the Budget now before us. They did not have any direct promise from the Minister, but indirectly they were given to understand that something would be done for them, but after the estimates were laid on the Table and the Minister had made his Budget speech many of those Oudstryders approached me and told me that they were bitterly disappointed; they told me that the hopes they had cherished of the Minister’s statement had proved to be entirely unfounded. I fail to see why the Oudstryders who have done so much for this country, who have offered their all for the sake of the country, should continue to labour under this grievance, and I cannot understand why this grievance cannot be removed once and for all. One after another of these men is passing away, and the time is not far off when all of them will have gone, but the grievance will continue in the hearts of the next generation, which will feel that a grave injustice has been done to their fathers. The grievance of the Oudstryders as the hon. member for Boshof, and his seconder, the hon. member for Aliwal (Capt. G. H. F. Strydom) have said, is that they want to be treated separately, they do not want to be treated in the same way as the old age pensioners, or as tuberculosis sufferers—they do not want to be given relief of that kind. They feel they have done something for their country, and they have the right to say : “That is what we have done for our people, we have done a good deed for our people.” That is why they want to be treated as a separate section, and they don’t want to come hat in hand to the Government to ask for relief. These Oudstryders are gradually but surely dying off and we want to express the hope that during this Session the Minister will see his way clear to treat them as a separate section, and give them what they are entitled to. I am not an Oudstryder, but I am the son of an Oudstryder, and I can remember my father often talking about this injustice which was done to them. When they were fighting they were promised 5s. per day but under the circumstances of those times it was not possible to give effect to that promise. The Government have admitted that the Oudstryders did a good deed, and the Oudstryders now come to the Government and say : “Give us what we are entitled to.” In these days, when millions of pounds are being spent, they come to the Government, so to speak, with their hats in their hands. They are treated unjustly. I say they have a just cause, and that is the cause we are pleading here today; that is why I am pleased to support this amendment, because if it is accepted justice will be done to them and we shall be doing the right thing by the people who will benefit from this amendment. Many Oudstryders today are in dire distress. I said some time ago that there were many Oudstryders on the diggings, people who get an allowance of £5 per month from the State, but those men are finding it very difficult to make ends meet. There are Oudstryders there living under great stress and in a condition of dire poverty, and when we talk to them and they tell us of the sacrifices they have made for this country we listen to them with tears in our eyes as we realise the sacrifices these people have made for their country. Yet these men are living below the bread line today. The House will agree with me that the Oudstryders had cause to hope—their hope was centred in the Minister of Finance—they hoped that he would rectify and remedy their wrongs, but since the Minister of Finance has made his Budget speech they are at their wits’ end, and they find that they are to get practically nothing. I again want to make an appeal on their behalf to the Minister of Finance; I want to ask him to treat their cases separately and give them what they are entitled to, particularly as very few of them are left.

I wish to make some comments on the speech of the Minister of Railways on the presentation of his Budget. I wish, however, before I make my comment to assure the Minister that I am not going to treat him once more to a list of all the defects in the position of the non-European Railway workers, I also wish to assure him, as we on these benches have assured him from time to time both in the House and outside the House, that we are fully convinced of his own knowledge and appreciation of all the defects in that position and of his goodwill and his good intentions towards those workers. What I wish to do today particularly on the strength of his budget speech, to put to him the increasing importance of the time factor in the implementation of that good will and that good intention. In presenting his budget the Minister told us, with some degree of justifiable pride, I admit, of the position which has been achieved for the European workers on the Railway. He told us that: “If you are a European worker on the Railways, in the permanent employment of the Railways, you are provided with a more complete system of social security than the most ambitious schemes now talked about are designed to achieve”. He called our attention to the fact that housing is provided, clothing is provided, care in health and sickness, in addition to a more or less satisfactory wage and a pension scheme. He went on to add, however, that while this applied to the European, it is only to a very limited extent applicable to the non-European. Those of us who listened with care to the Minister’s speech hoped that that was the preface to a declaration of policy on the part of the Minister in respect of the promotion of the non-European worker to a comparable level of employment under the department with that which has achieved by the European workers. The Minister did not follow up his remarks in that way. What he did do was to go on to call the attention of the House to what I think is the crucial fact in the whole of his Budget presentation, that is that already expenditure on the Railways is beginning to outrun revenue—that he is in fact budgeting next year not for the now familiar surplus but for a deficit. Now, that struck me with a considerable sense of alarm. I see in this declaration of the Minister’s policy the inevitable opening of a new phase in our Railway development, one in which the Administration will look much more carefully at every 6d. it is called upon to spend than it has felt it necessary to do in the last few years a period in which it will be budgeting with great care in face of the danger of a contraction of revenue which would tend to make an expenditure level established in years of prosperity somewhat precarious. In other words, I feel that while the Minister has been anxious—he has said so and we accept his assurance and have evidence of its sincerity—while he has been anxious to establish a decent standard of living for his non-European workers, if that was difficult for him to achieve in the past it is going to be a good deal more difficult for him in the future. I feel that the time factor is beginning to show itself with very definite insistence; and I contend that the time factor is now the main consideration in the whole question of the position of our non-European workers in South Africa generally and not merely on the Railways. I feel that the time factor is important for two reasons. First of all there is the human side of it, the right of the non-European railway worker to achieve a decent standard of living by his daily work, which is being jeopardised by delay. That is a right which accrues to him as a human being. I think that in terms of all the principles we have enunciated during this war and before this war, and that will with increasing frequency no doubt be enunciated after the war, the non-European worker has the human right to a decent livelihood in return for the work which he gives with all the capacity which he is given the opportunity to use and to develop. That capacity has, however, as we know too well, been undermined by the unsatisfactory conditions under which he has been made to work. I would suggest to the hon. the Minister that in the course of these war years, the need for the improvement of the position of the non-European railway worker has become ever more pressing for the simple reason that the rises in wages which have been given him, even with the cost of living allowance, have not come anywhere near the rise in the cost of living for that section of the community to which he belongs. I put forward this proposition on the evidence that has been put before us by everybody who is competent to express an opinion on this matter. The retail price index which is the basis of our cost of living allowance system is admittedly not even an adequate basis for the computation of the rise in the cost of living of the European population of this country, in spite of the fact that it has been based on the increased price of commodities normally in use by the European community; but it is in no sense an indication of the rise in the cost of living for the non-European section of the population, the basic commodity of whose staple diet, maize, has not even been entered in that price index. That commodity has shot UP in the last few years to a phenomenal degree and the non-Europeans have received no corresponding increment in their wages to meet that rise. Incidentally, in that regard, I should like to suggest to the Minister of Finance that, while we are grateful for the concessions made to the natives in this Budget, it is a pity that he has not seen his way to give effect to the emphatic proposition of the Social and Economic Planning Council that a sum of £1,000,000 should be set aside for the subsidisation of the mealie price this year. Indeed I see from the report of the Council which has recently come into our hands that that recommendation was made in respect of last year’s season. It proposed the provision of a subsidy of 2s. per bag on maize to consumers and noted that, since it had agreed to make this recommendation, the price of maize to the farmer had advanced 1s. I say it is a matter for regret that the Minister of Finance has not found it possible to make that gesture to the urgent need of meeting the rising cost of living for this section of the population at this time when it is so badly needed. But to return to the railway staff, I feel, as I said, that it is more and more urgent from the human point of view that the position of the non-European worker should be put on a satisfactory basis. I do not see why this should not be possible. I have been most impressed with the capacity of the Railway Administration to undertake a social experiment and to carry it through expeditiously and effectively. Anybody who reads the history of the white labour policy on the Railways must hand it out to the Railway Administration for the efficiency and ability with which they have carried through that social experiment. I am not going to say for a moment that the social experiment is economically satisfactory —that is another matter—but I am prepared to say that if we could have had the same intention to raise the level of the nonEuropean workers, and the same application to that cause as we have had in respect of the Europeans on the railways, we would have a very different position today; and a far healthier position from the human point of view. But it would also have been a far healthier one from the national point of view. And this is my second ground of anxiety at the failure of the Administration to achieve this position. I feel that the delay in raising the standard of the non-European workers is a national economic problem of the first magnitude. Here we are, on the Minister’s own showing, moving into a period when the artificial stimulus of war-time production is going to fade out, but it is going to fade out leaving us with a standard of European expectation that has been raised during this period of production for destruction to a far higher standard even than it had attained in the days before the war even on the basis of the rapid industrial expansion we have enjoyed since we went off gold. Now with all the talk of financial adjustment as the basis of investment for industrial expansion, I can see no hpoe whatsoever of maintaining this European level of living on the present basis of production and consumption in this country. If the post-war period is to justify any of the high expectations that we have been encouraged to entertain in this country, our esential need, no matter what our financial policy, is that we should increase the productive capacity of the whole of our population. This we can only do by giving to all opportunity of employment according to ability. The only hope of our being able to lay any solid foundation to an improved European standard in this country is the basis of mass production, and mass production demands mass consumption, founded on full employments Now the whole policy pursued by the Railways, as I see it, runs counter to this— and I trust that the hon. the Minister will realise once again than in making my remarks on this subject on the Railway Budget, I am merely doing so because the Railways are the largest single enterprise in this country after the mines, so that the whole policy pursued there has a special importance and. significance. The Railways are the second largest enterprise in the country; they take second place to the mining industry, and as they are a public enterprise they should reflect public policy and should guide and give direction to the community as to the sound lines of economic ordering and economic advance. The country in any case is looking to the Government for a lead. It is expecting the Government to order and direct our economic policy and progress in the years after the war. That is the general attitude in democratic countries. But there is a special reason for our looking to the Government for a lead in the matter; it is that our Government in the years before the war interfered much more extensively in the direction of economic development than any other democratic government. It has attempted to direct economic developmen with an eye to social needs as it saw these. It has done this by its whole native policy embodied in the Pass Laws, the Land Acts and the Urban Areas Acts which have all limited the capacity of the native to find employment; it has done it by the “satisfactory labour” condition of industrial protection which governs the whole of our customs policy; and it has done it only most directly by its white labour policy on the Railways. But whether the results have justified this interference is an important issue. In that connection, I would suggest to the Minister that in addition to the urgency of his reflecting in his administration the general demand for a reasonable standard of living for the people at the bottom of the scale, in order to increase their productive capacity and their consuming capacity, he should now have a scientific enquiry made into the cost and the economic effects of the white labour policy on the Railways. I feel that it is absolutely imperative at this time that we should know what our social policies have cost us and what their effects have been if we are to plan wisely for the future. I want to make it perfectly clear that in making this proposition to the Minister I am not attacking the white labour standard in this country. Far from it. Our attitude on these benches is what it always has been, that our first obligation is to try to maintain the standard of life of white civilisation in this country. But I have always maintained and will continue to maintain until proof is given to the contrary, that a policy of white labour, as it is applied on the Railways, that is of using Europeans for so-called unskilled work, is not economical. I think also that it is not humanly satisfactory or sound either. I have always felt that, with the tradition and background of Europeans in this country and the opportunities open to them, it is a very unsound policy to attempt to find a place for them in unskilled work. At best the placing of Europeans in labouring employment should be merely a transitory thing and it. should be planned as such. Never, in my opinion, should it be an end in itself. It must always involve an under-employment of the people concerned in that it cannot employ them to their fullest capacity; and as such it is socially unsound. But on the economic side also I am convinced that it is unsound. I know that two or three years ago, the General Manager of Railways reported that the employment of Europeans in labouring work had been satisfactory in certain circumstances. What he actually said was—

But that statement is very limited in its application. It has, indeed, very definte limitations. “The employment of labourers on constructive works”—“employment under ‘correct conditions’.” What I want to suggest to the Minister is that we have never yet had any analysis of the actual cost of this labour; we have never had an economic analysis to show whether it is sound or not. It is not so very long since a General Manager gave evidence to a commission to the effect that the employment of Europeans in place of natives on the Railways was costing the country £500,000 a year and that that cost ought to be borne by the Department of Social Welfare and not by the Railway Administration. I suggest that to arrive at the truth, the later statement quoted above as to the satisfactory character of white labour “under correct conditions” should be considered in the light of the possible results of an encouragement to the native labourer to develop such as has been given to the European railway labourer, and that on that basis, an estimate should be made of the extent to which the preesnt pattern of labour organisation on the Railways can be justified on economic grounds. We badly need some exact facts and some scientific knowledge on which to base our planning for the future if we are to make the best use of our labour force from which alone we can hope for that increased production on which our real progress depends.

Very few if any previous speakers have referred to the conditions of service of railwaymen. Previous governments and Railway Ministers have failed, in my realise once again that in making my humble opinion, most lamentably to give the railwaymen a square deal. Admitted from time to time, particularly when nearing election time, they have given the staff a few crumbs. Speaking with over 33 years’ railway experience, during eighteen years of which I have actively identified myself with staff organisation work, I must confess that in the present Minister the railwaymen have a sympathetic and sincere friend. The Minister of Railways has brought about many improvements, but the legacy of gross neglect of the staff’s legitimate claims have been so great that it would be unfair to expect the Minister to remove them all by a stroke of the pen; the more so in times like those we have been going through since 1939, and bearing in mind there is a war on. In normal times it might be possible to remove a lot of these grievances, but I appreciate that in the abnormal conditions of today it is very difficult. Hence it is not my intention, Mr. Speaker, to ask the Minister to make revolutionary changes, but I merely intend to put forward helpful suggestions in the hope that he will seriously consider the best way for making staff adjustments. As I previously stated, the Minister has brought about many improvements, the most notable of which was referred to in his budget speech, namely the satisfactory settlement in regard to the recognition of trade unions in the railway service. I should like to congratulate him on his courage in tackling this thorny problem, and on the solution which he and the unions arrived at by mutual consent. This is indeed a great achievement, and as one who has for many years been intimately connected with the association life of the service, I can assure the Minister that the settlement has gone a long way towards ensuring the co-operation of all sections of the staff. Racial jealousies have practically died out in the service, and if the Opposition would only cease pursuing the racial bogy as propaganda, it would die out altogether. Afrikaans-speaking and English-speaking members of the staff cooperate at all staff meetings, and on all boards and speak each other’s language freely. Another outstanding service the Minister has rendered not only to the railwaymen but to South Africa, is the establishment of a training college at Kaalfontein. Previous Ministers turned a deaf ear to the pleadings of the various associations for the establishment of such an institution. Once this training college is in operation it will go a long way, in my humble opinion, towards making the South African Railways the most efficiently-run in the world. That is only part of the credit side of the ledger, which I wish to refer to. With the short time at my disposal I wish to deal with some of the more important matters requiring the Minister’s earnest and sympathetic consideration. First I want to refer to the methods of promotion. I want to assure the Minister that all is not well in the process of selection for promotion. As far as the records go, those compiled by the General Manager and the Railway Service Commission are well nigh perfect, but there is a lack of personal knowledge of the staff, and the General Manager and the Service Commission are dependent upon recommendations made by comparatively junior officers who unfortunately permit personal likes and dislikes to warp their judgment, resulting in the burdening of the Railway Board with appeals. What is wanted is the appointment of staff inspectors, who would act as the “eyes and ears” of the Service Commission. It would be their duty to build up personal records after careful analysis and investigation on the spot. This would obviate appointing square pegs to round holes, which was so rife during the regime of the Nationalist Government, and which has not been entirely eliminated even today. These staff inspectors should be men who are judges of character and who would be above encouraging the principle of “jobs for pals.” I am not asking the Minister to introduce something revolutionary, but merely suggest that he follows the practice that holds in the Civil Service. Another matter causing great dissatisfaction in the Railway service is the Grade 3 clerical barrier, which I regard as the greatest bugbear of the service. Under the present system it is possible for a man who is qualified in every possible railway subject, to experience a wait of six to ten years at this barrier, which is fixed at £353 per annum, and which compares most unfavourably with the first barrier in other services. The first barrier in the public service is £400. In insurance offices under Government approved wage determination it is £438. In the larger municipalities it is £400. In the Railway service increments are £18 and £24, in the insurance offices it is £18-24-30, and clerks reach the maximum of £438 in 13 years. This is a reasonable salary on which a man may get married. Under present conditions in the Railway service clerks marry when they reach a salary of about £20 a month, and generally their life is a long struggle against want and debt. I say most emphatically the position calls out for reform. In regard to hours of duty, I am glad that the Minister has caused an investigation to be held into hours of duty, and I hope that he will accept any recommendations which may be made for ameliorating the position of station masters, foremen and clerks who are working disgracefully long hours at stations. I understand that 60 hours a week of six days with few meal hours, practically every Sunday and public holiday on duty, is the lot of many of these men. In these days when we talk of a better world for the worker, such conditions would be a disgrace to a private employer, let alone a Government service. I hope that no matter what the cost may be the Minister will act speedily and grant relief where it is necessary. The Minister also referred to various workshops and offices needing repair. It was pleasing to hear that the Minister has adopted most of the principles of the Factories Act, and I take it that means that more attention will be paid to the housing of the staff in decent buildings for workshops and offices. This reform is long overdue, and I fear that a long number of years must elapse before satisfaction can be given. Many workshops, engine sheds, offices and stations are in a disgraceful condition, and I would suggest to the Minister that he should introduce a priority list of such places to ensure that the most urgent cases should be dealt with first. I know of goods offices in the Eastern Transvaal where the staff have to paste up the seams of the ceiling to stop vermin from falling on their desks. I find that in the Granet Commission Report of 1934 a strong recommendation was made that the Pretoria Workshops should be rebuilt. It is stated in Paragraph 444 of that report—

That was ten years ago, and nothing has yet been done. I hope that it will not take another ten years for them to find a site and before the matter is tackled. I understand that the site referred to ten years ago is now used for running sheds. In regard to the piece-work bonus system, having grown up with it since 1910, I feel it is wrong that only one section of the staff should have to work to the piece-work bonus system which was referred to by one of the leaders as sweated labour. I do not agree that it is sweated labour, but at the same time I feel that if private enterprise can get efficient results from their artisan staff, then the Railways should also. In my opinion too much money is spent, not so much in bonus, but in the tremendous amount of money spent on stationery. In addition, most of the time of the supervisors is take up in making out job cards instead of them doing the job for which they were appointed, namely, supervision. Instead of them being able to supervise the men 100 per cent., 75 per cent of their time is taken up doing clerical labour. When it is borne in mind that over £1,000,000 per annum is spent on this bonus, I feel that when staff conditions are considered, this aspect of the matter should also be given full consideration. I was rather surprised to read what the Minister said recently, a statement of which was published in the Salstaff Bulletin for March, 1944, and which runs as follows—

The editor goes on to state in regard to this passage—

Therefore I would like to suggest that while the staff are loyal and conscientious in carrying out their duties, I hope and expect that the Minister will do something substantial for them in the not too distant future. Railwaymen and their families represent over 10 per cent of the white population of this country, and they deserve as much consideration as any other section, including the farmers. They mean a lot when it comes to the ballot box. I would therefore like to suggest for the serious consideration of the Minister, and I hope that it will give him food for thought, that in connection with the statement in his Budget speech about a new department to deal with post-war railway development, he will also consider the creation of a post-war staff planning committee with staff representation, remembering that after the war various allowances being given the staff at present, will have to be discontinued. I refer to the cost-of-living allowance, special responsibility allowance, rent rebate and excessive overtime, and the bonus overtime system, which all in all must exceed £7,000,000 per annum. The staff are keen to know what is likely to happen after the war, having bitter memories of the Jagger cuts, which in nine months at one fell swoop caused the average railwayman a loss of anything from £10 to £13 a month. Mr. Speaker, I would also like to appeal to the Minister to give serious consideration to the pensioner in receipt of a small pension. I have been asked by them to appeal to the Minister to seriously consider giving them something more than a few shillings in the way of cost-of-living allowance, bearing in mind that these men are the pioneers of the South Africa Railways. I would also like to refer to austerity travelling. A suggestion was made by me a few months ago that in view of the fact that the people were prepared to queue up at stations for twelve hours or more to obtain a booking, that the Minister should seriously consider using suburban coaches once or twice a week, say to Durban, Bloemfontein, Kimberley and possibly other places from the coast. I think that when we take into consideration that one can get three times the number of passengers in a suburban coach compared with a main line saloon. If people are prepared to travel in discomfort provided they can get to their destinations, I consider that the Minister should give consideration to this matter. Admittedly, the public, human nature being what it is, are somewhat unreasonable, but the Minister must bear in mind that before the war we encouraged the people to use their own railway. Now we hear on all sides that people are saying that they are not going to use the railways after the war. It must be remembered that before the war many of them used their cars, and though they are prepared to use railway facilities at present, they will revert to the use of their cars after the war. Finally, I want to appeal to the Minister to consider the question of the 10 o’clock curfew. The object of the National Transportation Council is to save mileage and vehicles. In Pretoria it was suggested that the local authority should be permitted to have a standstill period from 8 to 10.30 p.m., in other words a 2½ hour standstill, whereby the municipality proved they would save 160,000 miles compared with 80,000 miles saved by the present 10 o’clock curfew; but for some unknown reason the Minister and his Council are not prepared to consider it. With these few words I hope that the Minister will seriously consider appointing the suggested Post-War Staff Planning Committee. While hoping that the Minister will long be spared to serve us as Minister of Railways and live to a grand old age, I feel that if he accepts my suggestions in the spirit in which they are tendered, when he passes from this world he may earn the following epitaph on his tombstone: “Here lies dear old Claude Sturrock, the man who filled the Railwaymen’s stomach.”

Eggs is eggs but where there are no eggs there is a void, and a void needs filling just as urgently as a vacuum. I touch on this subject because it concerns market control boards and food control. Early last week I had an urgent wire from the South Coast of Natal Caterers’ Association in which they said that the rural areas on the Coast were unable to obtain eggs, and that the Egg Circle in Durban would not supply them, and the reason given was that there was differentiation in the price obtainable in town and that obtainable in the country. The Acting Minister of Agriculture immediately took it up with the Food Controller and the Food Controller supplied me with a statement which I forwarded to the Caterers’ Association and in the statement it was said that the Egg Circle in Durban could not refuse to supply eggs. Now, I forwarded that last Saturday, and on Monday I got another wire, this time from residents of Umbogintwini and it was there said that the local storekeeper sold 100 dozen eggs per week, but that he was now unable to obtain any from the Egg Circle in Durban, or from any other source, and he asked me to take up the matter. I went to the Department of Agriculture and they referred me to the Food Controller, and he said he would repeat the wire to Pretoria. I allowed a few days to pass, and I called the Food Controller again this morning, and he told me that the whole matter had been handed over to the Price Controller. So I immediately went to the Price Controller, and he told me that he could not force the Egg Circle to supply eggs to anyone, he could only fix the price and he could only take action if he found that the Egg Circle was hoarding eggs. Now I want what I want when I want it, and I want an assurance, and what I want is that eggs shall be supplied to the South Coast of Natal, and I want it now, or as soon as the Minister can arrange a supply of eggs. Because after all, all this passing of the buck from one Government Department to another does not give eggs to the South Coast, and it is eggs which we want, and I say again I want what I want when I want it. All I am saying now is intimately connected with the whole of our control problem. My hon. friend, the member for Musgrave (Mr. Acutt) suggested to the Minister of Agriculture that he should set up a well-paid board of efficient men to advise him on agricultural matters, and that he should do away with the Control Boards. Here is a case in point which warrants the abolition of controls, and its substitution by a Board which can really advise the Minister and see that action is taken. Now let me pass on to another point. In the Budget speech the Minister of Finance told us what he was going to do in regard to social security, and more particularly he told us of the interim arrangement for putting old age pensioners on a better basis. But when I look into it I do not see that the Minister of Finance is going to improve the position of these people to any great extent. For instance, the old age pensioner is going to have recognised 5 per cent of the value of any immovable property up to £800, which is £20. That allowance will be made. It was formerly £10. Now, after all, the total which an old age pensioner can get is £42 plus cost of living allowance. And the same applies to the War Veteran’s pension, but with this difference, that the War Veteran’s pension has been increased by one-third. But I cannot see that the war veterans will get anything out of this arrangement because they are subject to the same limitations as the old age pensioner, and looking into this whole thing one finds that less than £1,500,000 provided in this respect will not help the old age pensioner or the war veteran or the invalid to any great extent. I think the Minister would be well advised to act on a suggestion which I made a little while ago, and that is to put these four categories of people who are unable to earn a proper livelihood up to £8 per month, and take no cognisance of the first £60 they may earn outside. I asked him to come out with a bold announcement that he would increase the normal income tax by 30 per cent immediately. I think the whole scheme would cost about £14,000,000, and since we are getting about £32,000,000 from normal and super tax together, I believe that an increase of 30 per cent on the normal income tax would willingly have been paid by the community provided that instalment of security had been given to those people who are unable to earn a living.

I have listened to this debate for the last few days and it strikes me that everyone who got up congratulated the Minister of Finance, but is was not long before they started to tear him to pieces. That is not the attitude which I am going to take up.

Are you going to tear him up to begin with?

You wait and see. I am glad the Minister has at last carried out the request made by the hon. member for Langlaagte for a long time—that is the request for an increase in the old age pension. It is not a very large one but none the less we appreciate what the Minister has done, not only in giving an increase in old age pension, but he has also given an increase to the war veterans and also to the blind persons pension —he has also increased the provision for the artificial limb makers, all of which matters are connected with the same thing. And I say when the total amount in this connection is considered, it amounts to no less than £7,850,000 this year—that is the amount which the Minister is providing for pensions —an amount which has never been equalled in the history of this chamber or of the Union. Why members should get up and criticise the Minister for the good work he has done I do not understand, and I am not going to follow in the footsteps of other members. What the Minister has done is an outstanding record, unequalled by any other Minister, and I want to congratulate him on the good things he has done. I have also mentioned the question of the artificial limb department, and I would be very pleased if members of this House could see the good work done by that department in Johannesburg. I believe it is possible for a person to get an artificial limb for almost any part of the body. In any case, our artificial limb department is a very commendable department, and it is doing most excellent work to supply the needs of our disabled and wounded soldiers. Of course, it cannot restore limbs that have been lost— but it can give the needed artificial limbs—the only thing it cannot restore is a man’s head. When I look at the estimates and see that the Minister has also provided an increase for that department I realise that his heart is in the right place. Now I want to refer to some other things. My time is limited—I am only supposed to speak for five minues. I listened to the hon. member for George (Mr. Werth) the other day and I found his remarks very interesting. But I would like to show him a book I have here, depicting the ravages and the conditions in neutral countries. The thought which struck me was this—I wonder what the people in the neutral countries would do if only they had our system of taxation which we have here instead of what they have got. In those neutral countries—particularly the occupied countries, the system of taxation is one amounting to slavery, and in many other ways that cannot be reckoned in £.s.d. Do hon. member want that sort of thing here? Do hon. members want the misery here, and the starvation which are suffered in neutral countries today? And that is the sort of thing that we would* have been faced with had we remained neutral. There is another very notable thing and it is this. There has been very little criticism of the gold mining industry. I am glad to notice that members of the Opposition have come to their senses somewhat in regard to the gold mining industry, and let me say this—and I say it with confidence—that I think, and I hope, that our gold mining industry will be contributing to the welfare of our country in the same way as it is doing today for very many years to come. We are in a very favourable condition in regard to gold mining. A Senator in America the other day said that gold mining there had developed into deplorable conditions and that their towns in the gold mining areas had developed into ghost towns. We are not in that position. Some time ago the United States of America made representations to us, and said that their gold mines had closed down in order to supply the necessary manpower for the war, and they added that if we refused to fall into line, their lease-lend operations in regard to this country would cease. Well, our Leader made the necessary representations to allow our gold mining industry to carry on, and the Success with which his efforts were crowned constitutes another tribute to him and shows again what this country owes him. Now I want to say a few words about the cost of building material. This is a subject in which I have been interested for nearly 40 years so I know what I am talking about. The way the price of building materials has gone up is amazing, and it is not only the price of imported material but also of local materials, such as locally grown timber. For many years the price of Baltic deal delivered in Johannesburg was in the neighbourhood of 9d. per foot. What is now supplied is local timber, 9 by 3. to take the place of the imported deal. The imported deal had to be cut, had to be shipped here, and then it was put on the market here at 9d. per foot. One would have thought that the local timber would be put on the market here at a very much lower price. The local article instead of costing 9d. or 10d. has gone up to something in the neighbourhood of 2s. per foot. I should like the Minister to give that his serious attention, and I should like him to see whether this excessive price for a piece of 9 bv 3 wood, cut in our own country and delivered from a place almost within a stone’s throw from Johannesburg, is justified. Now, the same thing applies to bricks to some extent. Of course, the rise in the price of bricks may possibly be explained away by the fact that the cost of native labour has increased to such an extent that brick makers have to put up their prices to recoup themselves. I could mention many other things. There is a certain amount of imported building material over which we have very little control. I am sorry the Minister of Public Works is not here to listen to my remarks, but one realises what it means if building material costs as much as it does today. Today a house which would cost £1,000 to build in the past would cost in the neighbourhood of £2,000 to £2,500. How can we engage in building schemes when the price of buildings has gone up by 150 per cent.? Now I had hoped to have heard something about the Nurses Bill. I want to ask the Minister not to forget that very important measure, and to pass legislation this Session if possible.

The Minister of Railways received a great deal of praise from his side of the House. The hon. member for Pretoria (West) (Mr. Hopf) went so far as to say that he believed that a monument would in the future be erected to the Minister for all his good deeds in connection with the Railways. I think that the Minister sent up a silent prayer for protection from his good friends. If there is one Minister who requires the sympathy of this House it is the Minister of Railways. The Minister of Railways is being forced by his own party into a yawning precipice, and no one realises it better than the Minister himself. He realises that railway revenue and expenditure have now reached a stage where he can expect deficits in the future, and where he will have to cut down his expenditure in order to balance it with the revenue. But nevertheless he is being forced by his friends to make greater and greater concessions to the Department of Defence, as a result of which the expenditure is forced up. The Minister has tried repeatedly in a nice way to give his friends to understand that the Railways cannot afford to bear those additional costs. He said in his Budget speech that we had reached the stage last year when for three months the expenditure exceeded the revenue. He said that that was a danger signal. He budgeted for a deficit of £250,000; and these are all signs that the Minister realises the position in which the Railways have been placed and that he can expect difficulties in the future. The General Manager of Railways and the Minister both pointed out that the rolling stock was in such a condition that it was difficult to cope with the traffic, and that there was every sign that the Railways had already reached the peak of its income, that the expenditure had overtaken the revenue, and that we can expect difficulties to arise in the future. We find nevertheless that the Government and its supporters, for the sake of the Government’s war policy, are doing everything in their power to place ever-increasing burdens on the Railways. The Minister of Railways quite correctly strengthened his tariff fund to a certain extent. Now we find that the most important criticism against this fund of £10,000,000 comes from his own side of the House. While we on this side have encouraged him to strengthen the fund, the criticism now comes from the other side. They want to use this fund in order to see the war through for the Department of Defence. We on our side point out that it is necessary to strengthen this fund so that it will be able to withstand the reaction which will set in after the war. We support the Minister, but his own side criticises him in this respect and tries to keep the fund as small as possible. A few months ago we had a broadcast talk by the General Manager of Railways and in that talk he did everything in his power to discourage the citizens of this country from using the Railways. He told them that he would be compelled to remove the sleeping bunks from the compartments, so that he would be able to put eight or ten persons into one compartment. The passengers will then have to sit up the whole night and will get no sleep. The Government’s own newspapers made fun of his statement, and advised him to put nails on the seats as well. Now the Minister tells us in his budget speech that the tourist traffic of the Railways has increased to such an extent that he got £800,000 more from that source. Well, the increase in the tourist traffic is only a glorified description of the increased traffic brought about by war refugees. What is the position in our country today? The General Manager of Railways and the Minister discourages our own citizens from making use of the Railways. Today our people have not got motor cars, petrol is scarce, and they are compelled to avail themselves of the Railways. They are discouraged, and on the other hand the traffic increases by leaps and bounds owing to the war. refugees in the country. I do not think that the Minister of Railways ought to take pride in that fact. He ought to feel that he is rendering a disservice to the country, that, in giving others the privilege of using our railways, he is depriving our own people of these facilities. Let us look at the position of the railways. We need not even Quote figures, we need only refer to what the General Manager and the Minister said in that connection. They repeatedly pointed out that the rolling stock of the Railways had got into such a condition that they could no longer carry the additional traffic. The number of locomotives is decreasing. There are approximately 20 or 30 in service which should long ago have been scrapped. Trucks and coaches are being used, although they are in poor condition. We have coaches which are in a dilapidated condition, of which windows are broken and where planks have to be nailed across the windows, and nevertheless these coaches are still used. Why are the railways in such a condition? In the first place a great deal of the rolling stock is so old and worn out that it is practically beyond repair. The Auditor-General draws attention to the fact that more time than is economical is being devoted today to the repair of locomotives, trucks and coaches in an effort to get them back on the railways, and the necessary funds to replace those coaches and trucks and locomotives are lacking. We find, on the other hand, that the Administration is reducing the number of its employees. It is complained that there are not enough artisans in the railway workshops. Large numbers of men are used to undertake ship repairs; large numbers are sent up North, with the result that the railways cannot provide its. own needs. What happens? The Minister sends artisans to the North, and today he is compelled to have his own trucks repaired by the mines, by private firms, because the railway workshops are not in a position to do it. Now we come to the cost of that work. The Minister himself does not know what the new trucks will cost. This work is being done on the cost-plus system, and we expect that the Railway Administration will have to pay a higher price for those trucks than the price at which the railway workshops could have done it. But, worst of all while we have this shortage of railway workers in the workshops and elsewhere, we find that the railway workshops are being used to manufacture toys which are then sold on behalf of the Governor-General’s War Fund. That is being done in Pretoria, in Bloemfontein, and apparently everywhere railway material and railway workshops are being used to manufacture toys for the war fund. In these workshops they make miniature motor cars, waggons, etc. I do think that the Minister is opposed to this, but the Government’s war policy forces him to allow toys to be manufactured in the railway workshops for the war fund. When we see the position in which the rolling stock of the Railways is, while the railway workshops are making toys, we are reminded involuntarily of Nero who fiddled while Rome burned. Today we find that the Railway Administration has to make a colossal contribution to the war effort. We cannot mention one-quarter of what is being done, but I want to mention a few things in order to show how the Railways are being exploited for the sake of the war, without paying any attention to the position in which the Railways will be after the war. In Johannesburg the Railways had to spend £7,613 in connection with the Liberty Cavalcade which was held at that centre. In East London more than £1,000 was spent. The Netherlands Cavalcade at Bloemfontein cost the Railways more than £600. In Port Elizabeth it cost £5,000 and in Cape Town a sum of £900 has already been spent, and we do not know what the final figure will be. All this is being done while it is imperative to build new trucks, to build new coaches and to get the Railways in a good working order. Thousands of railway workers are placed in ammunition factories, and there are thousands of soldiers in South Africa which the Railways recruited for the Defence Force. Last year a sum of £158,000 was paid by the Railway Administration in soldiers’ pay. That is a colossal sum. The sum of £158,000 was contributed by the Railways to the war effort. In the past the Railways gave a rebate of 33⅓ per cent on traffic to the Defence Force. That concession has now been extended to the colonies in the North. They also receive this rebate. Last year the Minister issued a warning in this House that if the Railways were run at such a rebate, the Railways would lose millions and millions of pounds. In spite of that so much pressure was brought to bear oh the Minister that he was compelled to increase the rebate to 50 per cent. We hear from the General Manager that this rebate—presumably the rebate of 33⅓ per cent.—costs the Railway Administration £3,300,000. It is said that the war has now cost us approximately £440,000,000. If we take into account the contribution of the Railways, which runs into millions, it will appear that the expenditure has been much greater than £440,000,000. But efforts are made in every possible way to conceal this indirect expenditure in connection with the war. The Minister can conceal it, but the inevitable result will be that after the war the Railway Administration will reap the bitter fruits of its “see-the-war-through” policy. The Minister promised the other day that he would not pay off employees in the railway service, but later on he qualified that by saying that they would not be paid off within the first year after the war. That qualification on the part of the Minister shows that he himself realises that the same position will arise which we had after the last war, when not only additional tariffs ţo the extent of £1,800,000 per annum were levied, but when the railway employees were paid off on a large scale, when short time was worked, when the wage scales were reduced, as the result of the “see-the-war-through” policy of 1914-18. The Minister realises that he will again find himself in the position of having to take drastic action. He gives us the assurance that he will not reduce the personnel for a year after the termination of hostilities. Let us examine the staff position on the Railways today. At the moment the personnel numbers 140,000, and the wage cheque amounts to approximately £26,000,000 per annum. Today approximately 14,000 or 15,000 Railway employees are in uniform. Those people have been replaced by others on the Railways. The Minister promised that he would not discharge those people after the war, except the pensioners. He will retain the majority of them in the service. He promised to absorb an extra 2,500 soldiers on the Railways. That means that the Minister will have a staff of 158,000 Railway workers after the war. His wage cheque will be in the neighbourhood of £30,000,000 per annum. I want to remind the hon. Minister of the fact that there was a time in South Africa, not long ago, when the total revenue of the Railways only amounted to £24,000,000. If the Minister’s prophecy is correct he is going to pay £30,000,000 in wages. The interest on the capital of the Railways is more than £4,000,000, making a total of £34,000,000, which the Minister will have to pay in the form of wages and interest, and if he does not cut down and pay off a number of employees, he will have to pay that sum of money while the Railway revenue may possibly decline to £24,000,000. I merely mention these two items in order to indicate the difficult position in which the Minister of Ralways will be placed, and it is for that reason that we urge him to curtail his contribution to the war effort so that he can place the railways on a sound footing, in order to be able to build up his reserve funds, so that after the war it will not be necessary for him to increase his tariffs or to discharge Railway workers. The Minister has come along with a large works programme which is going to cost £30,000,000. We should like to see the Railway buildings improved and the railways extended. The Railways urgently require that expansion. But where is the Minister going to get this £30,000,000. He will be making the interest burden even greater. He is increasing the compulsory expenditure more and more and he himself, as a business man, realises that this position of the Railways is going to lead to a hopeless deficit after the war. He tries to save himself by pleading with his own side, but I am afraid that the war fever on the Government benches will prove too strong for the Minister. He can only submit and do what the Cabinet says and what his supporters say. I should like to know this from the Minister. Last year he made a statement of policy in this House which will bring about a radical change on the Railways. He solemnly promised that in future he would appoint non-Europeans to graded positions in the Railways. I just want to remind the Minister of this fact. In the days of the Coalition Party Government it was never the policy to appoint non-Europeans in graded positions on the Railways. This is a policy which is now announced for the first time in South Africa. In a country like Kenya nonEuropeans are promoted to graded positions. In Kenya there are non-Europeans drivers, ticket examiners and guards, but in South Africa we have always followed the policy that the graded positions in the Railways are kept for Europeans. And there are good reasons for that policy. A few years ago we spent millions of pounds in buying reserves for the non-Europeans in this country. We said that in those reserves the non-Europeans would be given preference in making appointments in the reserves. That is the territory of the non-Europeans; but now the Government is beginning to show a tendency to give preference to non-Europeans in European territory as well. The Minister says, for example, that a ticket clerk who serves the coloured’ people and who does not come into contact with Europeans, may be a non-European. If this policy were followed, nonEuropeans could be appointed as checkers, firemen or locomotive drivers, and we should like to know from the Minister of Railways how far this policy of appointing non-Europeans in graded position will be carried out. I shall tell you why we feel concerned about this policy. After the last war Mr. Jagger adopted a policy of replacing Europeans on the Railways by non-Europeans, and even the then General Manager of Railways stated in his annual report that the position of the non-European was better than the position of the European. At that time we introduced a policy of European labour, and we carried out that policy. We were severely attacked by various bodies in regard to that policy, and even the senior officials in the Railway service adopted a hostile attitude towards the European labourers on the Railways, and at that time it was said that it was very difficult for a European labourer to get promotion in the Service. He attended evening classes and passed his Railway examinations, but owing to the hostility of certain senior officials he could not obtain the promotion to which he was entitled, and the late Mr. Charles Malan then appointed welfare officers, and it was the duty of those welfare officers to look after the interests of the European labourers. But what is the Minister doing now? The services of the European welfare officials have been dispensed with. He has now however appointed inspectors to promote the interests of the non Europeans on the Railways. Those inspectors are now engaged in organising the nonEuropeans into a trade union. The Minister of Railways killed the greatest trade union which the Afrikaners have ever had, namely, the Spoorbond, and he now comes along and appoints people, at the expense of the Administration, to go about the country to organise the natives into a trade union. One of these organisers was at Bloemfontein, and during the official hours of duty he held a meeting with the permission of the senior officials, and addressed the non-Europeans. I received this information from two or three persons who were present at that meeting. He told the non-Europeans: “You number 50,000 in the Railways today, but because you have no organisation behind you, you cannot put your claims forcibly to the Administration. You must organise; you must form a trade union; it will cost you nothing. The Administration will bear all the expenses connected therewith.” He pointed out to them the conditions which prevailed on the Railways; he incited them and told them that they could not put their claims forcibly because they were not organised. That was done by an official who was appointed by the Railways. The present policy of the Administration is to incite the non-Europeans as much as they can. In the first instance, they take away the welfare officers from the Europeans. The Europeans are left to their own fate. On the other hand, the Administration appoints inspectors in order to organise the non-Europeans into a trade union. The Minister also promises that in the future non-Europeans will be appointed to graded positions. I say that the House is entitled to a clear statement from the Minister in this connection.

I should like to draw the attention of the House to the fact that this House and South Africa is so greatly indebted to the constituency of Malmesbury that I do not think we can refuse that district anything. I want to point out to you that some of the greatest men that South Africa has produced were born in that electoral division. The late Gen. Hertzog was born near Wellington, and our Leader the Prime Minister was born in the district of Malmesbury and—to placate our Nationalist friends a little—I may add that the Leader of the Opposition was born on the boundaries of the district. So three of the greatest of our great men were born in Malmesbury. But the limit is not set there to what Malmesbury can produce. Malmesbury is today still one of the largest wheatproducing districts in the Union of South Africa, and Malmesbury, or parts of it, is the oldest wheat-producing district, in South Africa; parts of Malmesbury have been providing South Africa for more than 250 years with that vital requirement, wheat, and accordingly I was surprised in connection with the Part Appropriation Bill to hear the observations on the producers from some of the representatives here. I was surprised to hear what they said, for I expected when I arrived in this House as a novice, that one of the first motions to be introduced by the consumers would have been a motion of thanks to the wheat-growers for what they have done in recent years to provide South Africa with bread. I should like to have seen the reaction in this country if insufficient wheat for the country’s requirements had been produced last year. The farmers produced enough wheat to feed South Africa, and if it was not that you might call me to order I would even now propose a motion of thanks to the wheat farmers of South Africa.

Are you a wheat farmer?

It seems to me that the Opposition in this House are under the impression that they speak on behalf of the farmers. I would just remind them that hon. members on this side are also entitled to speak for the farmers and perhaps with more authority. The position as I see it today is this. It is again nearly sowing time, and you know yourself that the farmers of South Africa are not philanthropists. The wheat farmers want to know whether it will pay them to produce wheat. We as wheat farmers do not ask for exorbitant profits, but we want to have the assurance that what we sow we shall at least have a chance of selling at a profit, otherwise the farmer will not be able to survive, and otherwise the consumer will not be able to get enough wheat during the ensuing year. I have said that Malmesbury has produced great men, but Malmesbury produces not only great men and wheat, but also wine, and I come today as a representative of the wine farmers to discuss this special taxation. As wine farmers, we all feel that this taxation is justified because it is a war tax.

How do you know that?

I know that because I probably have discussed this matter with more wine farmers than the hon. member opposite.

The wine farmers have nothing to do with the matter. How do you know that it is a temporary tax?

That is what I want to ask the Minister.

That is a bird of a different feather.

On behalf of the wine farmers I want to thank the Opposition for the great interest they show in the wine farmers, but I also want to draw their attention to this, that the only man in South Africa who ever did anything for the wine farmers is the Prime Minister, and the wine farmers all fully realise that. We wine farmers understand perhaps better than any other section of the community the English proverb: “Empty barrels make the most noise.”

There is only one empty barrel that is making a noise at present.

We as wine farmers have sufficient confidence in the Minister to know that if there is the need, if the need is pressing us, we can go to him and he will help us. We also know that the Opposition, or a party that was on the same plane as the Opposition, governed South Africa for nine years. We also know that during those nine years the wine farmers had a bad time, and that all that we got from that Government during those nine years was increased restrictions.

What did the wine farmers ask for during these nine years that they did not get from the Government?

No, don’t drive him into a corner.

If the wine farmers asked for nothing during that period, I must say that they were very poorly represented in this House. I know that the wine farmers were confronted with many difficulties in the course of those nine years, and I know that that party afforded them no assistance. My time is short …

Your time in the Malmesbury constituency is also short.

I should just like to inform the Minister that we as the representatives of the wine industry, accept this taxation as a special war tax, and we urge on him that this tax should be lifted immediately after the war, as soon as we feel the pressure of hard times, and we make this request in the name of the wine farmers of the Western Province. I think we are entitled to do this. I think that notwithstanding the address that was delivered here by the hon. member for Swellendam (Mr. S. E. Warren) it is desirable that members of this House should become better acquainted with the actual condition of the wine industry in the Western Province. I should like to invite the Minister’s attention to the fact that the wine industry is not prospering as it did in pre-war years. The wine industry is probably the best organised farming industry in South Africa, and as a result of that we were in a position to keep our heads above water. But if we look into the figures we find that a tolerably reasonable price for distilling wine—I mention distilling wine because the prices of all wines are based on the price of distilling wine—was more or less £4. The price this year has been fixed at £5 10s. an increase of 37 per cent. I do not believe that there is any hon. member in this House who will maintain that the wine farmers’ costs of production have not increased by more than 37½ per cent., and consequently the wine farmers are no better off than they were in pre-war years. Their costs of production have increased tremendously. I mention this not with a view to indicating that the farmers are not prepared to pay this extra tax, but because I feel that some people may be under the erroneous impression that the wine industry is today in an exceptionally prosperous state as a result of the war. Í would also point out that the wine farmers of the Western Province actually comprise about 3,000 persons, a limited number, but as the result of the production of these 3,000 farmers the Treasury will this year benefit probably to the extent of £4,000,000. I know that the argument will be used that this is paid bv the consumers, and I know also that it will be argued that the increased price will not react unfavourably on consumption. I must sav that I am rather sceotical on this score. It may be that during these times when money is plentiful, the consumption for the following few years will not be affected, but we know that as soon as things become more difficult the consumption is very likely to decline. Accordingly, I make an appeal to the Minister that when he no longer needs this money the first tax that must disappear should be the tax on fortified wine.

Louder.

I wish that a few of the hon. members over there would come and sit here for a little while, then they would find how little we can hear of what they say.

You do not miss much.

That may be, but it is very tiresome to sit here at the back of the House and to be able to hear nothing of what is going on. I only want to point out that probably 50 per cent or 60 per cent of the wine farmers of South Africa produce less than 100 leaguers. That means that the gross income of the people engaged in the industry is £600 and less, and the nett profit probably between £250 and £350. I only mention this to indicate that the wine farmers of the Western Province are not all well-to-do or wealthy, but that the larger proportion are comparatively poor people, and a small drop in the price of their product would hit them hard. I feel that before I sit down I should address another appeal to the Minister, and this is also in connection with fortified wine. We hope as soon as the war is over we shall produce fortified wine on a fairly large scale, and I think that this tax must at least not be imposed on the fortified wine that we shall export after the war. I hope that the Minister will at least be able to make that promise to us. I think I have said enough to clarify the standpoint of this side of the House. We accept the tax because we know that it is for war purposes and because it has been placed on a luxury article, but at the same time we feel that in all the years since Union fortified wine has never been taxed, and there must be a very, very good reason why in the past Ministers have not done so. I shall not go into all the reasons. Naturally one is that the wine farmers already contribute a great deal to the Treasury through the excise on spirits and brandy, but a stronger reason probably is that the legislators feel that it is better for a nation to be a wine-drinking nation than a brandy-drinking nation, and this was one of the means that was adopted to encourage the people to drink wine rather than brandy; it is a generally accepted fact that there is less drunkenness in a winedrinking country than in a brandy-drinking country. There are other reasons, but I feel that I have said enough to convince the Minister that we wine farmers have sufficient patriotism to accept the tax, but we make a strong plea for it to be lifted as soon as possible.

I also want to congratulate the Minister on his Budget and I am grateful particularly for the fact that he has remembered the less privileged section of the population—the old age pensioners, and other people who have not got many of this world’s goods. What the Minister has done. is really satisfactory and it will be of great help to these old people. The slackening off of the means test will probably have the effect of hundreds of these people who have been excluded becoming entitled to their pension. We are grateful for that. I am only sorry that the Minister has departed from the policy which to all intents and purposes he laid down in his Budget last year to give Oudstryders drawing a pension an advantage over the ordinary old age pensioners. Last year the pensions of Oudstryders was increased by one-third and the Oudstryders felt that however little it might be the Government had taken into consideration the services they had rendered to the State. That satisfied them. Now, however, they are are again to be treated on the same basis as ordinary old age pensioners, and I do not think that is fair. I want to urge the Minister strongly, as that precedent has practically been created now, not to go back on it, but to give the Oudstryders that little extra benefit over the ordinary pensioners. Secondly, I want to congratulate the Minister on the fact that he has had the courage to come forward with a distinction in regard to the application of the Income Tax Act between the real working farmer and the professional farmer, the doctor, the parson, the teacher, and all those people Who live in the towns. I am glad the Minister is now drawing that distinction because I feel that in the past the law unfairly affected the farmer. It was not merely a matter of evading the tax. I have not got much to say about that, but I was concerned about the fact that the type of people who did not make their living exclusively out of farming, people who perhaps were drawing big salaries, were able to compete unfairly against the farmer. They bought farms and cattle at unheard of prices, and in that way they pushed the farmers out. It was unfair competition with bona fide farmers and it brought about inflation. Now let me say a few words about the tobacco tax. I represent a district which undoubtedly produces most of the tobacco in the Union. To this day I have not heard a word from our Co-operative Society protesting against the extra tax which is being levied, and for that reason I cannot at this moment make any objections, but I want to warn the Minister very seriously against this tax. We are already experiencing a small falling off in the use of the lower qualities of pipe tobacco, and I want to ask the Minister very earnestly to keep his eye on this position and to withdraw the tax as soon as the consumption of this type of tobacco goes down. We cannot allow over-production again, with its resultant drop in consumption, which will cause the farmers to become thoroughly dissatisfied. It is usually the small farmers who produce tobacco. There are only a few big farmers growing tobacco on a big scale. That being so we should not with our eyes wide open repeat the same mistake that was made in the past. I want to make an appeal to the Minister to take note of what I am saying and to keep a very careful watch over the position, and reduce the tax as soon as the consumption drops.

It is rather late in this debate to compliment the Minister of Finance on his excellent budget, but there is no doubt that it is most moderate in its demands, and most generous in its concessions. We enjoy our present happy position today on account of the wise leadership we have had, and we also owe it to those soldiers and sailors who volunteered to go on active service when our security was threatened with overwhelming forces. Their needs will be our first responsibility, and we members of this party pledge our resources to satisfy their needs when they return to the Union after the war. We appreciate the Minister’s vote of £50,000 as a token towards the expenditure that will be incurred when the National Health Commission’s report is published. We have felt that some pledge should come from the Government as regards its sincerity of intention when that report is published, and we take this vote of £50,000 as a guarantee in that regard. We also much appreciate the increase in old age pensions and invalidity grants, but we are a little disappointed that our war veterans did not also receive an increase in the pensions awarded to them We do hope that the Minister will give that matter due consideration and that some relief will be given to our war veterans also. Though these men have been treated very well in the past, it seems that they have been overlooked in this instance. I feel, Mr. Speaker, that there is little ground for criticism of the Minister’s new taxation proposals. The hon. member for. Swellendam (Mr. S. E. Warren)—I see he is here—mentioned in his opening remarks that the wool farmer was prospering today. I hope that he did not want to infer that there should be a tax on wool—

I did not say anything of the sort. I said: Would the Minister do a thing like that; why then tax wine? It is nonsense.

It is true that he did not suggest taxation, but he said that the wool farmer is flourishing today. I think I should remind him that one of our late members of Parliament once contested a doubtful Midlands seat, and his manifesto was: Vote for so-and-so and no tax on wool; and he was returned by a big majority. I can assure the hon. member that if the Herenigde Party goes to the country with a tax on wool, they will not be returned and also be remembered as the late Herenigde Party. I should like to have known what the hon. member for Cradock (Mr. G. F. H. Bekker) thought of this, whether perhaps seeing that we have a prospective new wool factory there might be a little tax on its processed article. I think, however, that the hon. member for Cradock has appreciated the British wool purchasing scheme, and I hope this is the reason we have not had to listen to his usual staccato cry “Empire.” We are a little disappointed that the Minister did not offer some remission in regard to the trades profit levy and the excess profits duty, for this reason, that the people who have to pay that taxation do not want to evade their contribution towards expenditure, but they feel that they are unduly sought out, that those taxes definitely retard efficiency, and moreover there are professional men who have bad debts on which they have to pay an excess profits duty of 15s. in the £; even though the bad debt can be debited to their accounts the following year again, there are recurring bad debts. On account of such anomalies, there are temptations to induce people to practice evasion of taxation. The Minister has planned on that account to restrict some of the privileges given to farmers as regards capital charges which are allowed against income, having regard to the fact that commercial and other interests are taking advantage of these concessions. I feel that the cash basis has been a great privilege to many farmers who cannot keep proper books. A farmer’s expenditure is often out of his pocket and not from a desk, as in a commercial concern. The farmers find this cash basis a great boon in regard to income tax returns, and I do not think there will be any remonstrance from them to the Minister proposing only to allow them to charge purchases against farming income, because they also will have this advantage that they can carry over this expenditure to succeeding years as long as it is defrayed from farming income, but I feel that some controversy may arise as regard the limiting of capital expenditure which has been allowed in the past to farmers as a charge against income. There are various items like soil erosion and practically any development on the farm except expenditure on the dwelling house, which have been allowed as capital expenditure against income, and the Minister now said he hoped in some way to curtail that expenditure. From what he said I imagined he wanted some expression of opinion from the House. I think that if the Minister will allow all soil erosion work to be permitted as expenditure without limit against income, because soil erosion is a national responsibility, very little opposition will be raised if he allowed say a percentage of gross income to charged against farming returns. If this percentage was as low as 15 per cent., it would meet the case. Take, for instance, if the gross income on farming was £1,000 a year, then 15 per cent would mean a capital expenditure with subsidies of about £200. Now £200 capital expenditure on a gross income of £1,000 is, I think, an economic figure. I would not like to see this percentage lower, but if the Minister could make it higher I would be happy. If the Minister intends that soil erosion work should be a charge against farming income without limit, the other figure could be a low percentage, and that would prevent over-capitalisation on farms by commercial interests. Today we have land inflation, and many matters of that nature which are unhealty as regards farming in this country, and it seems necessary to have some curtailment of what a farmer can spend in developing his ground. I thought I should express these views as a lead to other members who may wish to give expression to their opinions in this connection. I did regret the remarks from the hon. member for Hospital as regards the inefficiency of farmers in this country. I think that today the deplorable position regarding the trouble that has arisen between town and country is due to the inefficiency of distribution, and not to the inefficiency of farming, and consequently it is a matter that does not rest in the hands of the farmers. That is all I want to say on that point. I also very much regret the remarks the hon. member made as regards the mining industry. The mining industry, Mr. Speaker, has carried the farming industry and the whole country on its back. Where would we be today if it had not been for our gold mines? Much of our war expenditure and the expenditure in running this country generally is actually part of the cost of running our gold mines. That is what it amounts to. I think we have to realise that our gold is a waning industry, but this is not the time to deprecate our gold industry. It is the time rather to support our mining industry. Who knows, but one day we may even have to subsidise our gold mines. We subsidise the farming industry, we subsidise the rural community, and we subsidise the urban community with sub-economic housing schemes, etc. In fact there are very few things that are not subsidised in this country, and I feel that the remarks from the hon. member for Hospital (Mr. Barlow) were rather unfortunate. We are committed to a system of control; we are committed to a principle where we must get our production costs as low as possible, and we must narrow the gap between the cost to the consumer, and the price the producer receives. I maintain that the responsibility for high costs of primary products, in the past, has been more that of the distributor than that of the producer, and my evidence is this: Take our school feeding scheme. The sum of 3d. a meal for the school scheme must surely implicate that food is very cheap in this country. I know myself that there is an association here in District 6, which is giving children a plate of soup and a slice of bread for 1d. and giving people a meal for the cost of 6d.; I have examined their books and I know that covers the entire cost. So there is no doubt that the cost of production is not unduly high in this country. We know that this is a poor agricultural country and that over 60 per cent our population are on the land, and earn not more than 12 per cent of our national income. We also know that of our taxable income of over £180,000,000 per annum, the taxable farming income is less than 3 per cent of that amount. We know it is a poor agricultural country. The producers in most agricultural countries are poor. Yet I feel that the farmers themselves make a big contribution to the welfare and prosperity of the country and that they lead hard lives. I know that we generally accept that fresh air is one of the finest things we have in South Africa, and when you look at the farmers you realise that they have developed into fine, stalwart specimens of manhood more as the result of fresh air than anything else. As regards control, we have now a meat control scheme before the country. Speaking for the meat-producing area, I should like to inform the Government that the farmers have no objection to control of meat distribution, if it is guaranteed as permanent. If the Government will give a guarantee of permanence in regard to meat control they will have the farmers behind them. If they do not give such a guarantee I do not know what is going to happen. The efficient control of meat is something the farmers have asked for, for years, and when we come to a movement of this nature, which is something really quite new, and when we are dealing with an article which is very difficult to handle, I feel, especially as we have many divergent opinions, that the utmost discretion must be exercised on the part of the Government in the control of that product and with a view to securing from producers and consumers unanimity in approving the scheme that is to be adopted. We also had some remarks from the hon. member for Pinetown (Mr. Marwick) in regard to the control of meat, and he expressed some misgivings as regards the controlling interests in the meat industry of this country. I think that if these interests favour meat control, we have nothing to fear from them. Vested interests have promoted the production of first-class stock, and permanence of demand as well as stabilisation of our markets, and we have them wholeheartedly with us today in the control scheme, in which they do not see any particular advantage for themselves, except to be distributors.

Are you the agent for the I.C.S.?

I am sorry, but the hon. member for Cradock mentions the I.C.S., but the I.C.S. are wholeheartedly behind the control scheme for meat. They also favour a meat control scheme under the Marketing Act after the war, and when that is said then any declaration against the I.C.S. must fall away.

I have never had lots of money and I don’t think I shall ever be a capitalist, unless one of my good friends leaves me a lot. In the circumstances I am not a financial expert and I therefore do not propose going very deeply into the taxation proposals put forward by the Minister of Finance, but I don’t think a man requires to be a financial expert to see that the Minister in order to get his extra £5,000,000 has regulated his taxation system in a very just, capable and sensible way. I want to confine my remarks this afternoon principally to the tax on wine. When I say that I want to congratulate the Minister on his taxation proposals I half and half include the tax on wine, but before I proceed to criticise him somewhat on that tax I briefly want to touch on a few other points to which I should like the Government to give its immediate attention. We have been assured that the Government wants to do many things, but if a thing is good there is no harm in our bringing it again and again to the Government’s notice. The first point I want to refer to is the question of the country’s health. We want free medical treatment for everybody as soon as possible. I want to emphasise what has already been said by the hon. member for Rondebosch (Dr. Moll), by the hon. member for Cape Town (Gardens) (Dr. Bosman), and by the hon. member for Stellenbosch (Dr. Bremer), that everything possible should be done to free our country and our people as far as possible from infectious diseases, tuberculosis and diseases of that kind. While I was listening to the suggestion of the hon. member for Stellenbosch that we should try and supply 250 additional doctors every year, I felt that the hon. member thought perhaps that the more doctors we had in the country the fewer diseases we would have, but the thought then arose in my mind that that perhaps might not be the case. I thought of a story which I want to tell the House, which shows that it may perhaps have the very opposite effect. There was a certain town which was well known for its healthy climate, so much so that lots of visitors used to spend some time there. The town developed, and one of the visitors one day went to look at the cemetery. It was a big cemetery and the visitor turned to old John, the superintendent, and said to him: “Why have you so many dead people here?” and John replied: “Yes, but you should remember that we have lots of doctors in this town.” If that is to be the result of having more doctors, then I am afraid the suggestion made by the hon. member for Stellenbosch is not a very good one. Now let me say a few words on the question of soil erosion, which to my mind is one of the greatest dangers in this country. The question of veld fires is connected with soil erosion. I should like legislation to be introduced as soon as possible to control mountain and veld fires. If we go right through the country, if we travel through our beautiful Western Province, we will see our magnificent mountains burnt out—we have been seeing that sort of thing here in Cape Town and round about Cape Town during the last few days. It takes the Government years to plant these grand forests, and in one night, in one day, a million pounds worth of damage is done. Something has to be done, because if we do not take steps we will have more soil erosion, and soil erosion will cause more and more poverty. It is no use our saying that after this war we are going to have a better country here if we do not put a stop to things of this kind. Now I also want to refer to the question of pensions, and I want to draw the Minister’s attention to one aspect in particular—the question of non-Europeans. I want to ask the Minister to increase the scale of pensions for the non-Europeans. We should not lose sight of the fact that in the Western Province particularly, in districts like Paarl, we have many decent and respectable coloured people. Many of these old coloured men who are entitled to old age pensions in my district have rendered loyal service to the country. Many of them have worked in the wagon factories of Paarl. That class of business has collapsed, but these coloured men have rendered faithful service and they have contributed largely towards helping large numbers of Europeans to become well-to-do, and that is a fact that I think should be borne in mind. Take the old coloured women. Many of them may have nursed members of this House and helped to bring them up. They are decent people and I feel that they are just as much entitled to an increase in their pensions as any other section of the population. I want to criticise the Minister for having increased the pensions of the non-Europeans by only 5s. per month. I feel he should have increased those pensions to about £2 per month. Many of our poor whites can when they get their old age pensions, live with their relations, but that does not apply to the coloured people. Their families cannot keep them, they have to hire a room themselves, and they cannot possibly live on less than £2 10s. per month. Now there is another small point with reference to assistance to farmers. We all know that the farmers have to contend with labour troubles. Industries which are going up everywhere result in a scarcity of labour for the farmers. The farmers realise this, and many of them, particularly in my district, have increased the pay of their labourers quite considerably, and they are also anxious to improve housing conditions, but they are not all able to do so, and I should like the Government to introduce a system which would enable those farmers to get an advance of anything from £500 to £1,000 to make it possible for them to put up decent houses for their workers— the Government might give them an advance, repayable over a long term of 20 years or so, in the same way as other loans which the Government give the farmers are repaid. That would be most useful because the small farmers cannot afford to build houses for their coloured workers, and the result is that those coloured people leave the farms. If that could be done, provision would have to be made for the inspection of those houses in the same way as it is done in the towns. We have the Divisional Council in the Cape Province which could attend to that. Some of the farmers themselves have said to me: “If one of our workers allows his house to get into a very bad state and we find fault with him and call him to task, he simply leaves us and goes to a neighbour who does not find find fault with him and does not take him to task,” but if we could have an official to see to it that those coloured men keep their houses clean, in the same way as in the towns, that would save the position.

The farmer thoroughly realises that not only is he obliged gradually to increase the wages, but he also realises that he has to provide better housing conditions, and I want to appeal to the Government to try and come to the assistance of these people. Now I want to come to the main question which I want to discuss, and that is the excise on fortified wine. I am sorry this tax has been imposed, and I know, too, that the wine farmers are sorry. Is there anyone who is not sorry when he has to pay taxes. All of us would like to see the income tax abolished, but when such a tax is imposed we must be fair. I am convinced that this particular tax is a war tax, and I want to express the hope that it will be taken off as soon as the war is over. We cannot blame the Minister for having imposed this tax. Our wine market has expanded as a result of the war, but that also means that we have markets today which after the war may perhaps be closed to us, and while it is perfectly correct that we should make our contribution now I think the Minister should promise us that this tax will be taken off after the war. I attended the protest meeting at Paarl and I was very pleased with the moderate way the question was dealt with, and I was also pleased with the way the Chairman of the K.W.V., Mr. Kohler, led the meeting. I was pleasantly surprised when I heard the speeches made there. It was stated clearly that the wine farmers were not in a bad position at the moment, and as long as we have the assurance that this tax is only a war tax we should not complain. We should take up the attitude that after the war this tax will be taken off. That is my suggestion, and that is my opinion. We should bear in mind that the wine industry is the oldest farming industry in the country, it is an industry dating back more than 300 years. No other section of the farming industry has had to cope with more legislation and with the opposition that this branch has had to cope with; there is no other industry which has so often had a spoke put into its wheels as the wine industry has. Laws have been passed from time to time and at the moment we come under the 1928 Act which was amended in 1934. All sorts of conditions and restrictions have been imposed on the wine industry. It is said that the wine industry is a luxury industry, the same as the tobacco industry But I want to ask the tobacco growers to remember that the wine farmer has to contend with all kinds of conditions and restrictions. In some parts of the country no wine is sold from Friday 2 o’clock until Monday morning 10 o’clock—what would the tobacco industry think if a provision of that kind were applied to the smoking of cigarettes? These restrictions are prescribed to prevent drunkenness. It is the most ridiculous thing in the world, because no man is going to be made sober by restrictions. The only thing restrictions will do is to give the shebeens their opportunity. When Licensing Boards are appointed wine farmers are not allowed to serve on those boards. And the only step that has been taken against the abstainers is that their agents, or the officials of their organisations, are not allowed to serve on the boards. We know that questions affecting the interests of the wine farmer often come up before the Licensing Boards, and we can quite realise the extent to which his interests are then considered. Let us remember the value of the liquor produced by the farmer. The wine and brandy produced are worth about £2,000,000 to the farmer. If we look at the present budget we find that excise to an amount of about £3,400,000 is paid on our wine and brandy. Now, another £600,000 is to be added to that, which means that more than £4,000,000 excise is to be imposed on a commodity which is worth £2,000,000 to the farmer. But that is not the whole of the burden imposed on the wine farmers. More than £200,000 goes into the coffers of the Treasury from licences, and that is not all either. We have the supervision costs of 4s. per hour which are paid to the Excise Department. The Excise Department wants to be represented when the wine is being fortified. Many wine buyers fortify the wine themselves in their own wineries and there they have to pay 4s. per hour for supervision. It amounts to a very large sum of money, but even that is not all I mention all these details to show how the wine industry is taxed. In terms of Act No. 23 of 1940 there is a levy of 10s. per leaguer on good wine. Half of that is paid by the K.W.V. I want to ask the Minister of Finance to stop putting further burdens on the industry, now that he has levied this excise. I want to ask him to relieve the wine farmers of these burdens. It represents about £20,000, and this is what I want to ask the Minister: Promise us that this tax is a war tax and that it will be taken off as soon as the war is over.

It will be left to the Nationalist Party to take it off one day.

I don’t want to drag politics into this question; I am discusing this matter from the point of view of the farmer. Although I am not a farmer I am the farmer’s friend. Let the Minister either give us this assurance, or give effect to the recommendations contained in the Wine Commission’s report of 1937. It is possible that many hon. members know nothing about this Commission. That Commission at the time went very fully into the whole question, and it put in a long report containing a lot of recommendations. The Commission in its report said that the wine indsutry had been subjected to many restrictions and that legislation should be introduced to relieve the situation so far as the industry is concerned. We have not. had such a law yet. We want to ask the Minister to introduce a Bill to give the wine farmers a few more rights. The Commission went further and said that there were too many restrictions, and it specifically recommended that the restriction that wine farmers should not be allowed to sit on licensing courts should be removed. The Commission also said that it. was a strange thing that natives should not be allowed to have wine. It. is really ridiculous that a native is not allowed to be found with wine in his hand. He works alongside the coloured men on the wine farms but he is not allowed to go to a canteen to get a tot of good wine. Why not.? Another important recommendation made by the Commission is that every possible effort should be made to produce a good class of healthy light wine, and this wine should so to speak be taken to the public. The Commission suggested that cafés should be given the right to sell healthy light wine. Now let me tell the Minister this: If he is not prepared to promise that the tax will be taken off after the war, he must give effect to the recommendations contained in the report of this Commission, and I say that he should give the wine farmers an opportunity to let good light wine be sold in cafés so that our young men can drink a good class of wine. He should not get the idea that it. is a sin to drink wine. I want to associate myself with the remarks of the hon. member for Malmesbury (Mr. J. C. Bosman). If the tax is to remain, and assuming it will remain as it is until after the war, then I want to ask the Minister to take the tax off fortified wine which is exported. That is the only hope the wine farmers have of finding an overseas market, and on that market they have to compete. If we have to pay the excise and all the other taxes I have mentioned it becomes practically impossible for us to compete in normal times. We think the wine farmers should be protected. We should remember that the wine industry so far has always had to contend with a surplus, and it. is a bad principle to tax an industry if it has to handle a surplus. If the K.W.V. had not been there the wine industry would have been ruined long ago. The K.W.V. is doing all it possibly can to prevent a surplus in the industry. It has spent large sums of money to produce Eaude-Cologne, Grape Juice, etc. It subsidises raisins, but in spite of that there is still a large surplus. The Wine Commission recommended that the K.W.V. should restrict the growing of vines. The K.W.V. has done so. It has restricted every one under a system that was worked out. I mention this to show that the K.W.V. has listened to the Wine Commission, and now I want to ask the Government on its part also to give effect to the report of the Wine Commission which will be of great, assistance to the wine farmers.

This debate has been going on for nearly four days and all kinds of matters have been brought to the notice of the Government by representatives of the voters of this country. For the last few hours this afternoon we have been having a discussion in which matters were dealt with, among others, by the hon. member for Rustenburg (Mr. J. M. Conradie), the hon. member for Malmesbury (Mr. J. C. Bosman), the hon. member for Paarl (Mr. Faure), who spoke about soil erosion, the wine industry, pensions and such matters, and the other days the hon. member for Wonderboom (Mr. Nel) spoke about labour matters—numerous questions of great importance have been touched upon, but where are the Ministers to whom these representations were made? There are only two Ministers here and I want to say to their credit that they are always at their posts when matters affecting their Departments are being discussed here. They are the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Railways, but where are the other members of the Cabinet? Where is the Minister of Agriculture?

Here he is.

Yes, he has only just come in. During the past two hours matters in connection with his Portfolio have been discussed here, but he was not here. He has never spoken on agricultural matters in the past; he should learn something about them and he should listen to what the farmers want. The hon. member for Wonderboom discussed the question of labour and also the question of strikes, and where was the Minister of Labour? And these are the people who tell us that they are fighting for the democratic system and for the Parliamentary system. They show contempt for that very system; can we wonder in the circumstances that people begin to ask questions about this system? Another Minister is just coming in now. It almost seems that if we had spoken sooner about the contemptuous attitude on the part of Ministers towards Parliament more of them would have been present here. The Minister of Lands is also here now. But that is not what I got up to talk about. I want to say a few words about Railway matters. I am glad the Minister of Railways is here, as he usually is when we discuss matters affecting his Department. I believe the Railways are and always have been the best barometer to show what the position of the country’s finances is, what the position of its expenditure is, and what its revenue is —what the position is at the moment and what it is going to be in future. The Minister of Railways, when this war started, used to take up a high handed attitude in this House. Whenever we on this side of the House tried to criticise him he not only tried to make the position look ridiculous but he also tried to make the individual who levelled the criticism look ridiculous.

That’s impossible.

Let me quote one instance. The hon. member for Bloemfontein (District) (Mr. Haywood) got up here last year and showed that the position was beginning to get dangerous for the Railways. One would have thought that the Minister would have got up and analysed the position. But do hon. members know what his answer was? This is what he said—

He made a reflection against the hon. member for Bloemfontein (District) but I want hon. members to listen to what the Minister further said a year ago—

I thought that everything was going well with him; he imagined the war would go on for ever and that his huge surpluses would go on for ever. Just a year afterwards he took up a different attitude and we find that in his budget speech this year he made these remarks—

The Minister is getting pessimistic, and he is getting more and more pessimistic—

But the Minister did not leave it at that. He went on to give a final word of warning—

His pessimism starts there. He sees the danger sign, but I do not know whether the Minister already sees all the danger signs. Now let us analyse the position on the Railways as it is at the moment. The revenue from passenger traffic this year contributed 26 per cent of the Railway’s earnings. If the Minister looks at that he will see that there has been a record number of passenger journeys, namely, 180,000,000. If he looks at last year’s figures he will see that there were only 147,000,000. Let me give the Minister the figures for the year 1933. In that year it was as low as 70,000,000. That shows a different story—a story of what may happen in a time of depression. Now, what is this big revenue from passenger traffic to be attributed to? The Minister knows as well as I do that it is due to war traffic, to the soldiers who are carried over our Railways. Just let me show what the passenger revenue was for the previous two years, also in 1933. In 1942 it was over £10,000,000; in 1943 it went up to £12,000,000; but in 1933 it went down to as low as £4,000,000. That shows that the Minister was entitled to see danger signals and to say that the danger signals were already in evidence. Now, let me mention a few more figures. When he took over in 1939 the total revenue of the Railways was over £38,000,000. This year, according to the Main Estimates, it is a little under £53,000,000, but let me · also give the Minister another figure, so that he may see that he has cause to feel uneasy. In 1938 when all was going well with the Railways and with the Railway revenue, the revenue was £29,000,000. In 1933 it dropped to £25,000,000. From 1928 to 1933 it dropped from £29,000,000 to £25,000,000. If we calculate the position now on the same scale of reduction, it means that in the depression which will come we may expect the Minister’s revenue to drop from £53,000,000 to about £46,000,000. I have referred to the revenue from passengers’ traffic, and I have shown that the Minister knows that this is an important source of revenue on the Railways. I have also shown that the transport of soldiers has largely contributed to that. Let me explain a little further. In 1943 there were 1,749 special trains for soldiers, while in the year before there were 1,466 such special trains. The Minister knows that it was the Sixth Division which had to be transported, as he has already said, and the Minister used the Railways on an extensive scale for that purpose, but when the war is over and a depression sets in, he will no longer have Sixth Divisions to transport. The Minister knows as well as I do that this huge passenger traffic is not normal. For instance, people who live in Rondebosch cannot use their motor cars today because they cannot get petrol or tyres, and as a result of that suburban traffic has increased tremendously, but that condition of affairs will pass. Where will the Minister get his passengers then? There is another big item from which the Minister draws big revenue today, and which is responsible for fifty-three per cent, of the Railways total income this year, and that is the goods traffic. But there, too, the Minister will agree that that is the result of the war, that it is due to the large quantity of war material which he has to carry. The Minister himself says so, and is the Minister now availing himself of the opportunity to put something to his Reserve Fund? No, he is so liberal that up to the present he has given the Department of Defence rebates amounting to more than £6,000,000. The rebates every year now amount to more than £3,000,000. And the Minister is so liberal and so Imperalistic, or whatever it may be, that he is even giving rebates now to the Congo and French Central Africa. And yet he says in the same breath that he thinks the time has arrived, in view of the danger signals, to review the rebates. It is too late. The Minister himself says that it. is too late because in his Budget speech he told us that the chance of making big surpluses has now passed, that big surpluses belong to the past. He has allowed his chance to slip by. I am opposed to the war but I can quite understand that when a country is at war the Railway service has to be placed in the country’s service, but why should not the Department of Defence pay adequately for the transport of military materials and soldiers. Some people today are making thousands and thousands of pounds in profit. Why does not the Minister set about taxing them t.o enable the Department of Defence to pay the Railways? I would like the Minister to tell us this afternoon how he is going to increase his revenue on passenger traffic when the war is over. He may tell us perhaps that, he hopes to get tourist traffic after the war. I agree that we should do our best to do something in that direction, and I think he wants to take up that matter seriously because I understand he even wants to build hotels. Now, I am sorry to say that the catering service of the Railways by no means gives the same service as it did in the past, and the Minister will have to watch that side of the business. It. is no use building hotels for tourists if the tourists find that the catering department does not supply good service. It is no excuse to say that certain things are unobtainable. Although I realise that some of the old chefs are away, the least one can do is to prepare the things that are obtainable as they should be prepared. I want the Minister to tell us how he intends maintaining his passenger traffic after the war. I am afraid he will not be able to do so. Now the Minister will tell us that he is building up a renewals fund of £30,000,000, but that does not mean the profits will be bigger. It only means that interest will have to be paid on that amount. The expenses will increase, and if he wants to proceed with his new work he will need more labour. That also means extra expense.

The Minister should remember that I am not opposed to renewals; I want him to understand that thoroughly. Nor am I opposed to more people being employed for these new works of the Railways, but the point I want to make is that I am concerned about the position after the war. These improvements the Minister wants to bring about will not bring in any increase in revenue. I want to know whether the Minister can tell us how he is going to keep his expenditure in check. Take this item of wages. Wages and labour take up more than 42 per cent, of his expenditure, and the Minister has told us that wages amount to about £26,000,000, while in 1933 that particular item only accounted for £11,000,000. If the Minister proceeds with his new building plans he will have to have more men and he certainly will not be able to do with fewer. I fail to see how the Minister can economise on that item. How can he possibly do so? Surely the Government has promised all these people a new world. Another big item of expense is the interest on capital. The interest bearing capital of the Railways today is round about £200,000,000, and that amount is not getting any less in this country. In fact it is always increasing. We are not paying off anything. And if this £30,000,000 is spent, the expenditure will go up again, and will the Minister tell us then how he is going to economise? And what is the position generally on the Railways? Let hon. members read what the General Manager has to say. He tells us that there are rows and rows of trucks waiting for repairs, and that locomotives which should have been scrapped six years ago are in use today. That is the position. The Minister may perhaps tell us that he has a huge Rates Reserve Fund. When we on this side of the House drew the Minister’s attention to the fact that now that things were going well he should make the Rates Reserve Fund as strong as possible he did not listen to us. Well, he never listens to any criticism. When he does say anything in this House it is only to defend himself. The hon. member for Bloemfontein (District) (Mr. Haywood) told the Minister that he should build up a Rates Reserve Fund of £20,000,000. The Minister’s reply to the Railway Budget debate last year was—

In those days it was panic, and then he went on to say this—

And now he is seeing the danger signal—the red light as he called it—and what does he say now? He says that he has read an article in one of the Rhodesian papers, and that if he compares the Rates Fund built up by the Rhodesian Government with the South African Rates Fund we should build up a Fund of at least £20,000,000 to be on the same basis as Rhodesia. And then the Minister goes on to say in his Budget speech this year—

Last year the Minister told us it was a panicky suggestion, now he is prepared to consider it. So the Minister is coming to his senses, but what more does he say? And this is very important—

Has not the Minister been refusing to listen to us? Has not he adopted the attitude that whenever any criticism comes from this side of the House he has to answer it by a personal attack? If he had not done so the passengers and other people using the trains would at least have known that a powerful Rates Reserve Fund has been built up for the future. Let me put a question to the Minister. According to the Auditor-General’s Report this Rates Reserve Fund cannot even be used for the Railway staff. What provision has the Minister made for the Railway staff? Whenever he speaks about social security for the men employed in the Railway Service—I almost said whenever he talks about that he makes a lot of fuss—I want to ask what funds his department has to draw upon when the depression sets in and when shorter working hours may have to be introduced? Out of what funds is he going to pay his staff then? He himself says that the salary scales must be maintained. The £10,000,000 in the Rates Reserve Fund is not enough. He admits that the fund should have been increased to £20,000,000, but it is too late now, and the Auditor-General says that even if he had wanted to do it he could not have done it under the provisions of the Act. Which fund does he want to use then to establish social security for the Railway men, and to maintain the salaries at the level where they are today, or where they should be after the war? The Minister talks such a lot about social security, and he tells the House that the people in the Railway service are safe because the man in the Railway service knows that he has work every day, that he will get his salary, and that he gets free medical services, that he gets his house on even terms, and that at the end of his period of service will get a nice pension. Will the Minister tell me what pension the average Railway worker gets after twenty years’ service? Can the Minister tell me what the pension of the average Railway worker is after twenty years’ service? Say the man has four or five children. How much is he going to get? Is he going to get that new heaven on earth which the other side are fighting for? Is that man going to get proper social security? There are 28,242 white Railway workers in South Africa today, getting less than 10s. per day. That is, after the war allowance, which I am sure the Minister will deduct when the war is over, is taken off. These people get less than 10s. per day. Is that the new world in which that man has to live with his wife and four or five children? And what is the pension which justifies the Minister talking about social security? I just want to deal with my last point now, and that is that the Minister, after having been engaged for two years with the ups and downs of the staff organisations, thought it necesary in his budget speech to devote long columns to a statement that the regrouping of the staff associations was working exceedingly well. Then he pats himself on the backs—he is very clever at that—and he praises himself as a good Minister of Railways, but to prove how excellent this regrouping of the staff organisation is, he tells us that 60 per cent of the white workers belong to the regrouped staff organisations—43,000 of them belong to it. Altogether there are 81,000 white workers in the Railway service. Why do not the others belong to these successfully regrouped staff organisations? But the Minister who feels so happy about this regrouping immediately afterwards comes along with something else —I wish the Minister would listen to us, and would not allow his attention to be detracted. I don’t want to talk to deaf ears here. I am at any rate talking about things which to my mind are very important, and I shall be very glad if the Minister will answer me. If the Minister cannot understand Afrikaans properly it is high time he went to a dual medium school, because one gets up here year after year and raises all sorts of questions, but the Minister does not answer. He either treats members with contempt or he does not know what members are talking about. Those grand new staff organisations which 60 per cent of the members of the staff have joined—are they really so successful, because this is what the Minister told us—

The Minister has told us these things, and it is rather significant that in his budget speech he should devote so much time to the regrouping of staff organisations, and it is significant that he is so proud of the fact that 60 per cent of the staff belong to those organisations, while immediately afterwards he tells us that quite possibly the closed shop will have to be applied to compel people to join. Does not that go to prove that his whole scheme has failed? Does it not mean that he wants to compel people to join up? On behalf of the Nationalist Party I want to ask the Minister before taking that mad step first of all to consult the staff and get them to vote in secret session. Is the Minister prepared to do that? If he does, I am not worried about the result. But if he applies it suddenly, without a secret vote, then I want to tell the Minister, on behalf of the Nationalist Party, that we shall restore Spoorbond which the Minister has destroyed, and we warn him to be careful because we don’t apply the closed shop in Spoorbond. The Minister says that everything is going well in the Railway Service. Let me say this to the Minister: He is living in a fool’s paradise. He does not come into touch with the Railway people. Spoorbond had 27,000 members and the Minister tells us that the so-called regrouped organisations altogether today have 43,000 members. The Minister realises that he has made a mistake and he now wants to apply the closed shop in order to bring in the hundreds of people who do not belong to those organisations. If they don’t join up there will be no work for them on the Railways. I want to warn the Minister that if he has ever seen a strike in South Africa, it will be nothing compared with the strike he will see if he applies the closed shop principle, and it will be his fault and nobody else’s.

Before saying a few words on the subject before the House I really want to utter a word of protest. I have been sent to this House to represent my constituency, and I find it extremely difficult to follow what goes on in this House from my seat. We can hear hardly anything and one at least wants to know what’s going on. If we don’t know what’s going on, I cannot see how we can do our duty to our constituents; I also want to congratulate the Minister of Finance. It is really not necessary to do so because he has been congratulated enough already, but I just want to add my congratulations. At the same time I also want to congratulate the Prime Minister on having appointed a new Minister of Agriculture. I hope and trust he will use his very best efforts in spite of all the criticism he will have to contend with, and that he will be successful in his work. I hope he will have the necessary strength to carry out his job. When the Budget debate started somebody whispered in my ear that the hon. member for George (Mr. Werth) would produce the most devastating criticism against the Minister of Finance. The hon. member for George got up and made his speech, but I think this House, including his own Party, is still waiting for his criticism. I want to emphasise, however, that the hon. member for George started a thing in this House which may have serious consequences one of these days, and if it does he must not come and cry here. He said that all the people who had joined the army were a hundred per cent physically unfit.

Now you’re dreaming.

I want to warn the hon. member for George not to say that sort of thing about our soldiers in this House. Let him go up North to our camps and tell them so there. Let him do so and we will see where he will land. I think it’s very feeble for anyone to come and criticise the soldiers in that way. The soldiers protect the hon. member, it is the soldiers who make it possible for him to live in this democratic country, to say what he wants to say, and make money. That is the benefit he derives from the protection he gets from the soldiers.

But your people are the ones drawing double salaries, not we.

Let the hon. member wait a little; he should not imagine that he knows everything. Those soldiers who are being criticised here have done great things. The hon. member for George benefits from what they have done and the next generation will benefit from it. Unfortunately my time is very limited, and the hon. member for George is not here, so I shall turn to the Minister of Finance now and ask him a few questions. I cannot criticise his budget because I do not believe anybody in this House could have produced a better budget. I am quite convinced that a better budget could not have been produced in the circumstances. We have prosperity in the country and the people are satisfied.

What about Zoutpansberg?

What about the general election? The soldiers did not vote in the Zoutpansberg by-election.

It appears to me that there are a few things in the budget which do not balance properly, and perhaps the Minister may be able to solve all my difficulties in a few words. If I look at the budget I find that certain amounts are set down for settlements but it does not seem to work out very well. Take the Vaal-Hartz scheme, for instance; I notice that that settlement gets £78,000 and Pongola gets about £45,000; then we come to Rust-der-Winter and that settlement only gets £1,000. Why is Rust-derWinter treated in such a stepfatherly way? I should like to know what the circumstances are, and how it is explained. Surely the Minister knows what the position is there? For instance, only £750 is provided there for repairs to houses, which is totally inadequate. Can the Minister just tell me what the position is there? Then there are a few other things I notice. Only a small amount is set aside for the eradication of diseases in plants and trees—a little over £3,000. This is a matter of the greatest importance to this country For research in regard to poisonous plants even less is put down—a little over £300, and I unfortunately come from a part of the country where we have many shrubs and plants and research work is highly essential to secure our future. These are just a few matters I want to bring to the Minister’s notice. Now, hon. members opposite this afternoon started again with the Oudstryders, and I want to ask this House whether a Minister of Finance has ever done more for the Oudstryders than our present Minister? Have not previous Governments had Ministers of Finance and was it not necessary in those days to give relief to the Oudstryders? Today our friends of the Opposition come here and propose amendments to agitate the minds of the Oudstryders. I want to repeat what I said in the last debate—I think it is nothing but propaganda.

Are you satisfied with the way the Oudstryders are treated?

If we want to look for faults there are, of course, any number of things which we can bring to the Minister’s notice. A good deal has been said here this afternoon about, the new tax on wine. I represent a tobacco growing district, but I don’t complain to the Minister about the tax on tobacco. The Minister of Finance knows which things he has to tax, and I do not think the wine districts should complain about the tax on wine. There is one section whose interests we should not forget, and that is the natives. I want to put up a plea for the natives this afternoon. I want the native to get. his rightful share. What I want to emphasise is this, we want the native to be useful and ready to serve us. As soon as we give the native the facilities he should have, as soon as we give him housing for instance and free medical services, we have to see to it that he is willing and able to render service. I think my time is nearly up, but on behalf of my constituency I want to make an appeal to the Government—and I want to ask it to stop tinkering with our watches. We want to ask the Minister to re-introduce the ordinary time. Instead of our using a little more light in the evenings we are now using it in the mornings, but. what is worst of all is the fact that this new time system is having a detrimental effect on many of our children. My constituency is almost 100 per cent centralised. We have motor car transport in most cases but there are still children who are twenty miles away from the school, which means they have to get up early every morning to go to school; they’ve got. to get up very early. I therefore want to ask the Minister to again introduce the ordinary time. There is just one other point I want to touch on. In spite of all the hon. member for George (Mr. Werth) has said, and in spite of all the criticism we have heard, I want to assure the Minister on this point— we know that when this counrty went to war, when Parliament decided to take part in the war, it was realised that a lot of money would be needed to see the war through, and we are grateful that we had a man like the Prime Minister to come forward and tackle this huge task. Now that we are nearing the end of the war we want to tell the Prime Minister that not only shall we listen to his call, but we shall respond to it.

Notwithstanding the criticism levelled by some hon. members, I nevertheless feel that the hon. Minister has given us an excellent budget. Let me say, Sir, that the critics do not yet appreciate that we are fighting for our freedom and I feel that the dropping of a few bombs on this country might have a good effect. I sometimes wonder, Sir, where these self-same critics would have been under a Nazi regime. But, Mr. Speaker, it is not my intention to enter into political quarrels in this House. I shall confine myself to a few items in the budget. In the first place, I wish to refer with gratitude to the wise policy of the Minister, a policy of forethought and sagacity, to keep as low as possible the public debt to be passed on to posterity. My time is limited, and I cannot therefore enlarge on the matter. But as I see the position, it is a policy that will demand less from the national income in the post-war period towards the repayment of debt and will therefore make more money available for the development of industries. It is most gratifying to see that the public debt has not increased in proportion to the war expenditure and this, Sir, has been achieved without putting an excessive burden on the community. Secondly, it is also very gratifying to see that no further burdens have been placed on the mining industry, an industry that is still the stimulating factor in the development of other industries. And in passing I would like to say that I feel the time has arrived to remove from the existing mines the burden of providing compensation funds for silicotics produced by mines no longer in existence. Such a liability, I feel, should be borne by the State who should in the first instance, have seen that provision was made by those mines, before they went out of existence. I suggest that the hon. Minister should give very careful consideration to Clauses 13 to 34 contained in the Majority Report of the Miners’ Phthisis Commission. I also hope that early steps will be taken to introduce a contributory pension scheme on the mines to provide a pension for the mine worker before he has contracted silicosis. And again I would like the Minister to consider Clause 75 of the Commission’s Report. Then I also wish to express my appreciation for the relief granted by way of increased pensions for the aged. But I regret, however, that through departmental and administrative difficulties it cannot be given effect to before the 1st September. It is all the more regretted when we know that these are the men and women who at one time contributed towards the building up of the nation. That they perhaps did not have a start in life and in their struggle to provide better prospects for their followers, they were unable to secure for themselves that comfort so much desired in the last days of their lives. I therefore sincerely hope that this is only an instalment and that further relief will be given in the near future. In making this appeal, I am fully aware of the difficult times which lie ahead, but I have confidence in my fellow men and I also have confidence in the future of South Africa.

I listened with great interest to the speech of the hon. member for Houghton (Mr. Bell). I wish to associate myself with all that he said in regard to the taxation on private companies and public companies and the anomalies to which he referred. I feel that the Minister is losing the goodwill of a large section of the supporters of the Government by not removing the anomalies to which the hon. member referred, and which are so well-known to the Minister. Time will not permit me to go into details. The Minister and most hon. members of this House know full well what I am referring to. During the course of this debate, the hon. member for Ceres (Dr. Stals) asked where the Minister would obtain additional revenue in the future. I have no doubt that the hon. Minister will be able to demonstrate in due course that he will have no difficulty in that respect, but I would submit that if every farmer in the country and if every industrialist and commercial man paid his fair share of taxation and did not do anything to avoid paying his fair share of taxation, it would not be necessary for the hon. Minister to tax the poor man’s cigarettes in order to balance his Budget. I was very pleased indeed to hear that the hon. Minister has decided to deal with the operations of amateur farmers, and I hope that when his final arrangements have been completed they will be made retrospective. It is well known to those of us who are associated with or who know these gentlemen who have been so active in their farming ventures that they have evaded their lawful tax payments, and there are certain gentlemen in this city who have boasted that while they should pay income tax on incomes in excess of £10,000 a year, they have actually paid income tax on incomes of £1,000 or less. That is a scandalous state of affairs, and it is very pleasing to know that at any rate some of their activities will be dealt with in the future, and I hope it will be possible for the Minister to make any measures which he arrives at retrospective. Their activities have undoubtedly contributed to the increased cost of meat and other necessities of life, and I am sure that all honest public spirited men in this country deprecate very strongly indeed their actions. The Minister also referred to the large increase in the note issue and the Governor of the Reserve Bank has commented on the fact that several millions of pounds of notes cannot be accounted for. It is an unquestionable fact that the bulk of those notes are in safe custody today and will be kept there until such time as the owners consider it prudent to use them. I would suggest that a drastic step be taken to make it impossible for those gentlemen to use the money which they have secured by such nefarious practice. I ask the Minister to recall the note issue as at a certain date, and make it necessary for anyone who holds notes issued before that date, if they wish to exchange them for new notes, to present them at the Reserve Bank in order to exchange the old notes for new ones. The honest man will have no difficulty in explaining where he secured his note holdings; the dishonest man will hesitate to claim new notes for fear of the consequences. Commerce and industry is carrying far too heavy a burden of the taxation in this country, and that burden would perhaps be eased if co-operative societies trading as industrial concerns were taxed on the same basis as ordinary industrial concerns and private enterprises. I cannot believe that when the Co-operative Act was instituted, it was intended that co-operative societies composed of farmers, should be allowed to purchase private business establishments and milling companies, operate those milling companies, trade with the public generally and pay no taxes. My understanding of a co-operative society is that it will trade exclusively with its own members, and the fact that these co-operative societies are able to sell their produce to the public in general and trade at a profit and pay no taxes, must cost the revenue of this country a considerable sum of money every year; and, leaving out the question of fair competition between co-operative societies and public concerns, I would submit with all due deference that co-operative societies which trade with the general public should pay taxes on all fours with them. Why should co-operative farmers avoid taxation because they own mills, whereas the private individual who is not a farmer has to pay whatever taxes are imposed, from excess profits down to normal tax. Between control boards and co-operative societies, it is quite obvious that the time is not far off when no revenue at all will come to the treasury from anything produced on the land. I am sure that if investigations were made into the loss of revenue due to the operations of control boards and co-operative societies, the country and this House would be astonished at the result. I wish to pay tribute to the efficiency and zeal displayed by the members of the Public Service in the Income Tax Department, who have carried out under war conditions a very difficult task with great zeal and efficiency. As far as I have been able to judge, their work has been done in a most satisfactory manner, both to the Government and the taxpayer. I would suggest that a very largely increased number of inspectors is necessary in order to see that there are less tax evasions in the future, and that when tax evasions are discovered prosecutions should follow. I do earnestly plead with the Minister to make provision for a cost of living allowance for pensioners, many of whom or the majority of whom are living at present under conditions almost below the bread line. They are trying to maintain themselves in decent circumstances, and in a large number of cases they are finding it extremely difficult to make ends meet, and I would plead for a cost of living allowance for those pensioners, retired civil servants, and the widows of civil servants who have been left very bady off in the majority of cases. Then I wish to refer to our prisoners-of-war in Italy. As you know, Sir, officers who had the misfortune to be taken prisoner and taken to Italy, have been debited on all their drawings at the rate of 72 lira to the £. It is an established fact that 72 lira is only sufficient to buy a toothbrush, and the men who have been in Italy have been very seriously prejudiced by the fact that they were taken to Italy rather than to Germany. The rate of exchange fixed was 72 lira to the £ up to the time of the capitulation of Italy. Thereafter the rate suddenly jumped to 480 lira to the £, which rate of exchange was, I submit, the correct one. I submit that 480 lira is the right figure, and that the rate of 72 lira to the £ is a fictitious one, and it is all wrong that our soldiers should be penalised to the extent that has been the case. In other words an officer with the rank of major, if he had been a prisoner-of-war in Germany, would have been £11 per month better off owing to the rate of exchange than he was in Italy. I do hope that the Minister will do something to alleviate the position of the civil pensioners and their dependants and that the pay of our soldiers who were prisoners-of-war in Italy will be adjusted on a fair and reasonable basis.

In the few minutes at my disposal, I should like to bring a few matters to the notice of the Minister of Railways with reference to a number of questions which I put to him a few days ago in connection with the toys which were being made at Salt River for the Cavalcade. I want to draw the Minister’s attention to the fact that it seems to me that he did not get the correct information. If he so desires, I shall put him into touch with officials who not only make use of Railway material for the manufacture of toys, but three officials in the service who do that work on a full-time basis. Another matter which I should like to bring to the notice of the Minister is in connection with the irregularities which take place in connection with the collection of money by means of subscription lists amongst the Railway workers in the workshops. More than once an attempt was made to collect money at the workshops in connection with the Reddingsdaadbond, and on those occasions the collector was shown the door. Things are becoming so bad that a foreman now sends for the employees to come to his office where they are then asked to contribute to the war fund. In this case, too, I am prepared to give the Minister the name of the foreman who did this. The other matter which I should like to bring to the notice of the Minister is the question of Europeans and non-Europeans travelling together in the trains. The Minister will agree with me that three classes travel by train—Europeans, coloureds and natives. I frequently travel by train in Cape Town, and I am convinced that all three sections feel most unhappy because they are compelled to travel together, and I want to ask the Minister whether it is not possible to place separate coaches at the disposal of the coloureds and natives. Give them the same facilities, but do not compel these three sections to travel together. Of course, that also happens on the buses, and I know that that does not fall under the Minister, but I want to ask the Government to approach the Provincial Council in this connection with a view to putting a stop to this practice. Another important matter which I should like to bring to the notice of the Minister is the question of a railway line which we would like to have. We would like to have a connection between the Jammerdrift line and the Bloemfontein-Durban line. It is a distance of approximately 50 miles. This would go through one of the most fertile parts of the Free State, and I want to invite the Minister to fly over this area by aeroplane at some future date so that he can convince himself. This would give a second main line through the Union, linking East London with Durban, and if that were done, it would reduce the traffic on the other main line considerably. Naturally, Ladybrand will be enriched as the result of the construction of such a line. If the line is built through the township of Ladybrand, it will improve the whole future of the Lady brand township. Such a line would put the town on the main line. The line which now comes to a dead end at Marquard, should be extended to the main line at Clocolan. In conclusion I just want to bring this matter to the notice of the Minister, i.e., in connection with old age pensions. A great deal has been said in this connection, and I have not the time to cover the same ground again, but we must not lose sight of the fact that the person who today asks for an old age pension, is usually the person who suffers first, who has to bear the brunt of the war. It is these people who always have to fight in the front line and they have to suffer the greatest burdens. As soon as the war is over they are forgotten. Forty years elapsed before our Oudstryders received pensions, and that pension is so meagre that they are unable to make ends meet. We should like the Minister to increase it to at least £7 10s. per month. When we compare this with the allowances received by natives who become 100 per cent disabed in the war, we find that the native receives a better pension than the European. A native gets £9 for every wife and £5 for every child. Then I want to ask that in the event of the husband dying, the pension should be given to the widow of the Oudstryder up to the time of her death, and that it should not be discontinued when the widow becomes eligible for an old age pension. I hope that the Minister will see to it that these Oudstryders—there are not many of them left—in their last days receive the compensation to which they are entitled.

I also want to make an appeal to the Minister. I am sorry to encroach on his patience, but I know that he is a patient man. I am sure that he will agree that this is an important point. A little while ago the whole country was agitated about the shortage of nurses, and they were doing all they could to augment the number of trained nurses. A conference was held at Pretoria and certain suggestions were put forward, and one was that instead of nurses being trained entirely in the hospitals, colleges should be put up and that at these colleges there should be intensive periods of training to concentrate on the intellectual side of their studies, so that the latest ideas in nursing might be imparted to these young ladies,· and they would then be seconded to hospital duties during their period of training, so that in this way more nurses could be trained at the same time than is the case at the present time. They felt too that at present where a girl is trained at a hospital she has to do her work during the day and very often attend lectures at night. She is tired out very often; the lectures are dull and some of the lecturers are not explicit and the result is that the unfortunate girl does not get all the information she ought to get, and she very often fails in the examination. It was felt that by having these colleges the girls could be taken away from the hospitals for that period, and they would concentrate in the colleges on the intellectual side entirely. They would then be less tired and would derive more benefit from their classes. The lecturers would have larger classses, and at the same time these lecturers in the various colleges, from time to time, could come together and study the very latest ideas in nursing. So that our nurses in South Africa would be equal to, if not superior, to any others in any other part of the world—and today they are very good indeed. I happen to know that, nurses from Canada have told me that the work here is harder than it is in Canada, and I have also been told that our nurses are quite equal to the very best from anywhere else. I hope we shall be able to continue having that position. But the reason why I want to make this appeal to the Minister is that here in Cape Town, where we hope to have one of these colleges, there happens to be a building occupied by the Provincial Administration, which was once occupied by the S.A. College and was afterwards occupied by the University of South Africa. These buildings are to be vacated shortly—in a couple of weeks as a matter of fact. Now, if we knew that we could get some recognition for this college, on the same footing as some other higher educational institution, the college could go ahead. We were told in Pretoria that if the colleges were to increase the number of student nurses from one student nurse to six beds up to one student nurse to two beds, the difference would be borne by the State. If the Minister will assure me of that I think in a couple of weeks time we can inaugurate the scheme in Cape Town. I also can inform the Minister that in Cape Town we have tried out this scheme by what we call the block system. We have separated the studying girls from the working girls in periods of six weeks, making five periods of six weeks during their three years’ training, and although this scheme has only been going for a year we have found it most successful. Our girls have passed a hundred per cent in their examinations, and frequently with honours, so that I hope the Minister will give me the assurance that he will put these colleges on the same footing as universities, or technical colleges, and give us the opportunity to start this system. I hope the Minister will give us the assurance that he will take up the scheme, because if we can get it going we shall be able not only to have lectures given to the student nurses but when they have graduated we shall be able to give them post-graduate courses, and many of these other nurses who have taken the examination in the past will be able to work up to the highest standard. Sisters will have the opportunity of attending these lectures when they have got a bit rusty, and they can be taught the latest ideas. Then there is another point I want to bring to the notice of the Minister, and that is the position of the widows’ pension under the old Cape Civil Service scheme. Hon. members know that the old Cape Civil Service Pension Fund stopped, or rather the system was stopped, in 1910. After that the people who were participants, or about to become participants in the pension fund, went on contributing, and many of them are still contributing. Well, actuaries are always very conservative, and they have based their calculation on an extremely conservative basis, so that although this fund has been closed for 36 years, it stands today at almost £1,000,000 as far as capital is concerned, and the actual amount paid to the widows is less than the interest that is received on the fund, let alone the amount still being contributed by the pensioners pensioners who are either still in the service or on pension. This is a very big amount and one does not know what will happen when all these ladies are dead and vou have this huge fund in being. Most of these people have been receiving pitiable pensions. I wonder if we cannot give them something more generous. Actually, the actuaries calculated the lives of the members on the Fund on the basis of 60 years ago. There is an explanation in the Pickwick Papers that old Mr. Pickwick at forty was an old man, but today the longevity of a man has increased —whether it is due to so many people getting pensions, or to people going in for sport—I do not know, but people do live longer than they did in the past, and the consequence is that they have gone on paying to the pension fund much longer than they would have done, and now you have this big fund growing bigger and bigger while these ladies are in a bad way. Why not give them more than they are getting? You have nearly £1,000,000 to distribute and only a handful of these ladies are left. Surely the pension could be increased considerably. I appeal to the Minister to go into this matter and see if something could not be done to pay these old ladies more generous pensions. We know what happened with the old Governor-General’s fund after the last war—they so pieced things out that when the last pensioner was about to go off there was no money left and they paid out from the capital to the pensioners in such a way that the fund would be exhausted with the last participant of the fund. Now, could not something like that be done with these ladies? I hope the Minister will take this into consideration, and I trust that my remarks may lead to something being done in regard to the two matters I have raised.

I want to put in a word for capitalism and private business. I know my hon. friends of the Labour Party are always up against capitalism. Private business has to save this country, and what is private business dependent upon? It is dependent on profits, and profits create work, and labour is dependent on work, so labour is dependent on profits, and on capital. Capitalism provides work and profits lead to extension of business. Karl Marx in the old days said that capitalism was a bad thing—he said the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

The poor get babies.

Yes, and babies, too. Karl Marx never realised a 50 per cent tax on profits.

What did Christ say?

Christ said the poor will always be with us. Karl Marx never realised this 50 per cent tax on profit. If labour ever succeeded in getting the complete regimentation and control of business they would be the biggest sufferers; they would be the sufferers, just as they are in the dictator countries. Under complete regimentation labour suffers. In countries where there is complete nationalisation, the only incentive is fear, because fear will drive people to work because otherwise they may be sent to Siberia or the Nazi working camps. Capital is the thing which we must protect, and I was very glad to hear from the Minister that he was going to protect private enterprise although it would be under State control. The capitalistic system has never ….

What is the capitalistic system?

The system under which we are living today.

Don’t you read the newspapers every day?

Yes, I even read “The Forward.” Now, the only quarrel I have with the budget is this small amount of £50,000 for health. That I consider very inadequate. I do not know whether we haven’t got the manpower to use more money, if more money is voted, but £50,000 will not be sufficient for the needs of the country. I think it is a very poor contribution. There are certain diseases such as diphtheria and typhoid fever which are preventable diseases, and are causing an enormous amount of expense to the country every year. They are preventable pust as smallpox is. These diseases should be attacked without delay. Small-pox has been practically eradicated by means of vaccination. We can eradicate diphtheria and typhoid if we go in for mass inoculation. There is an effort being made in the Transvaal at present to make children, especially under the age of six, submit to inoculation against diphtheria. The result is that, you can protect that child for life. I think the State should really step in and in the same way as we have made vaccination against smallpox compulsory it should make vaccination against diphtheria and typhoid compulsory. If the vaccines were given free, it would, to my mind, go a long way towards clearing out these two diseases. They could be eradicated from South Africa completely, without much trouble, and the expense involved would be nothing compared to the expense in treating these diseases, and the loss sustained annually by the country—the loss in life, as well as in money—would be reduced very considerably. That is the point I wish to stress at present. Other diseases we shall be able to tackle later. We are waiting for the report of the National Health Services Commission, but these two items I want to stress at the present moment, and we should concentrate on them now. I have spoken to the Secretary for Public Health about the shortage of doctors. His hands are tied. The men in the army cannot be discharged at present and the supply of manpower to deal with these questions is low. I have asked the Secretary for Public Health about district surgeons for various places but there is not sufficient manpower. He said to me: “If you can find me the men I shall appoint them.” Well, there are no men available—they are all in the army today— but we hope the position will soon improve. These men cannot be discharged before the end of the war. Anyhow, we hope the war will soon end and that we shall then be able to deal with these matters more adequately.

I just want to mention a few matters in the short time at my disposal. As the son of an Oudstryder, I hope that this will be the last occasion on which it will be necessary to refer in this House to those people who in the prime of their lives, while they were still proud, sacrificed everything for their country, and to whom the people of South Africa owe a debt of honour. As a Union of South Africa, we owe this money to these people, because we entered into Union in 1910. We as citizens of the Union were prepared to give pensions to those people who participated in the struggle of 1914; we are prepared to give pensions to those people who are now taking part in the present struggle, but we feel that it hurts us if, after 43 years, we still have to plead that those people should be given what they are entitled to. What hurts us more than anything else is that in the World War, and indeed in all wars, it is not the rich man who joins up to fight. It has again been proved, if we go by statistics, that the people who fight for freedom are largely the less privileged people. When we visit the cities and we look at the people who sweep the streets, and we talk to them, we hear that they are the people who are fighting for the freedom of the country. We hope that since he has submitted his estimates to the House, the Minister of Finance will be prepared to do his duty towards these people, and that once and for all he will comply with the demands of the Oudstryders, so that it will not again be necessary for us to discuss this matter in the House, because we are ashamed of having to plead continually for our fellow Afrikaners, as though they are not able to work for themselves or are so feeble-minded that we have to plead for State assistance for them. That is not the case. We are making a plea on their behalf because we owe them a debt of honour, and we as young Afrikaners would like to see that we pay all our debts of honour, to whoever they may be due; because there will be wars from century to century, and we must take care of the people who fought for our freedom. I want to touch briefly on another matter, namely, the report of the Meat Commission. I am an active farmer, and I feel that that report cannot conduce to the advantage of the farmer. We now have an opportunity of making a few pounds out of cattle. We practically sell our capital in order to pay our debt, and on that capital we have to pay taxation and also supertaxation. We feel that we would like to have an open market for our cattle. It is very easy for hon. members to say in connection with the Meat Commission that we must co-operate, but we must not forget that there are small scale farmers who have to trek 20, 30 or 40 miles with their cattle in order to reach the railway line. Rather than put his cattle on to a truck, the farmer will sell to a speculator. In the case of a small farmer who owns a few oxen, he does not know whether his cattle will be first grade, second grade or third grade. When the speculator buys the cattle, he buys on the basis of the cattle being third grade, because he has to run the risk in connection with the grading of the meat. I should like the Minister to take this matter into serious consideration and to go into it. He must be careful not to place the farmers in a difficult position. He must protect them. Then I want to refer to another matter, and that is the position of the man who enjoys an average income. We have the rich people, the middle classes, who experience the greatest difficulty, and the poor people. When the rich man becomes ill, he is able to make provision for medical attention and hospital attention because he has the money. The man with an average income may also apply for such attention, but he is told that he cannot get free medical or hospital attention. He owns too much or his income may be too high, and the result is that he is called upon to pay. I want to bring the position of this type of person to the notice of the Minister. We find them amongst business men, officials and farmers, and I should like to know whether we cannot follow a different procedure in connection with these people. These people derive no benefit from the money which they pay to doctors or to hospitals, and we want to ask the Minister to exempt from income tax the monies paid by the middle classes in respect of medical and hospital services. That is all we ask, and we do not think that we are asking too much of the Minister in that connection. Then we come to another matter, namely old age pensions, and pensions for those who are physically weak, or who are sickly or blind. These people apply for old age pensions. They are only just able to live; they cannot save. On a certain day they receive notice that they were overpaid and they are then called upon to repay £7, £10 or £15. The man who receives this pension is in such needy circumstances that it is necessary for him to apply for an old age pension; the magistrate and his officials cause investigation to be made and they find that he is in such needy circumstances that it is necessary to grant him an old age pension. He then receives an old age pension for four, five or six months, and then he is told that he was overpaid, that he has to make a refund. We therefore have this position, that a man who could not live on his income and who had to approach the State for assistance, is called upon by the State to refund that money. I cannot understand it. If I approach anyone because I have no food, and then he gives me a meal, how can he expect me to repay him by giving him my own food in the future? I hope that the Minister will give his attention to this matter, and if it is found that a mistake was made, he must not recover the money from these people. If he discovers that a mistake was made in regard to the pension, let him discontinue it for a while, but do not call upon these people to make a refund. Then there is another matter. A person who may have a large family applies for an old age pension. We can assume that he was not in a position to let his children study. Some of them were perhaps enabled to study by means of assistance from charitable associations or from other sources. Some of them may be attorneys. Others are clerks, etc., on the Railways. But my experience is that a man who obtains a loan in order to study, is still repaying that loan when his own children are at school. He has to keep on paying. We also know the saying that one parent can support twelve children, but that twelve children cannot support one parent. Where a father or mother is in needy circumstances and it can be proved that they have always been in needy circumstances, we should not look to the children. They have to work in order to live and in order to educate their own children, and we feel that it is not fair towards the old people to tell them that their children can support them. There are few children who do that. It is the duty of the parent to see that his child becomes selfsupporting. As soon as the child becomes self-supporting, he fights for his own existence and in order to educate his own children. I feel that there is a gap in connection with this matter, and we should like to ask the Minister once again to investigate this matter seriously. If there is a feeling in the country that there are people who have received pensions to which they are not entitled—there will not be many of them— discontinue the payment of pensions in those cases, but do not call upon these people to make a refund. Write it off instead. When these people apply for old age pensions, we know that they are in needy circumstances.

We are now discussing a war Budget, and I, too, should like to add my mead of praise to the Minister of Finance for what he has accomplished. He had to take drastic steps in order to find the necessary money. A motion was introduced by the Opposition asking for an investigation into Defence expenditure. I am inclined to ask the Minister of Finance whether it would not be possible to take that suggestion into consideration so that we can determine how much of the money which was spent on Defence was of practcal value, and what is going to remain as a asset to this country after the war. It would be interesting to have that information. In the second place I want to ask the Minister to consider this, because such a commission may be able to determine why there were complaints in regard to the poor quality of certain boots which were supplied to the army in Egypt. We might then be able to discover that secret. I also want to ask the Minister to take these few matters into consideration. We welcome the Minister’s proposal to deal with the arm-chair farmers, because they are the people who are exploiting the war position. I want to ask the Minister to deal more drastically with the companies and professional elements who embarked upon farming because they saw an opportunity of evading taxes and thereby evading their contribution to the war effort. Many of these people are loyal, or at any rate they say they are loyal, but they bought farms in order to evade their contribution to the war effort, and I want to ask the Minister whether he cannot introduce his proposals with retrospective effect, so that they will also cover the transactions of the past few years. What has been the outcome of the farming operations of these arm-chair farmers who wanted to make profits out of this war? The first result has been that the price of land has been forced up, an event which the Minister tried to prevent. I want to give him credit for trying to prevent inflation, but unfortunately he did not succeed in doing so. He made a distinction between purchases entered into on a certain date and purchases entered into after that date. His intention was honest. But the result of all this is that the farmers will suffer after the war. The price of land has been forced up to an absolutely uneconomic level. Cattle have been bought on such a scale that the market has been forced up to such an extent that the labouring classes cannot obtain meat to feed their families. Ask any farmer on the platteland whether he is satisfied with the uneconomic state of affairs which has been created. What will be the outcome of this after the war? There will again be bankruptcy, as there was after the previous war, when the prices of land and cattle were also forced up. Now the State is attempting to save the situation. And what do we get? Nothing but abuse. It is easy enough to sit here with a Government Gazette and to point to the powers of the Controller of Food and to incite members of the public who do not know any better. The State made an effort to control the position and appointed a commission to go into the matter. That commission made certain recommendations, and as a producing farmer I am quite satisfied with those recommendations, and I am prepared to co-operate in giving effect to them. It is said that the Controller has the power to commandeer my catte. If I, intent on making profits to which I am not entitled, hang on to food to the detriment of other people, it is no more than right that the Food Controller should have the right to commandeer. In my district there are well-to-do farmers who have kept back hundreds of slaughter oxen in the past few years. Can we allow that? It is nice to receive a cheque when the price of meat is 105s. and 108s. per 100 lbs., but we shall yet reap the bitter fruits of that. It is the intention, once and for all, to get stability in the meat trade. We have not forgotten how, just a few years before the war, the market fluctuated as a result of the action of speculators in Johannesburg and Cape Town. The Government now proposes to regulate the market, and there are members on this side of the House and on the other side who are defending the speculators’ case, so that those speculators will be able to fill their pockets. As soon as the meat trade is stabilised, land values will also become stable, and that would be in the interests of the country. I would then know when I pay prices beyond a certain level, and when I pay more for land than is justified by its grazing capacity, that I am on an uneconomic basis and that my small holding is uneconomic. I admit that we have not got our own cold storage facilities, but as soon as food is properly controlled and stock is properly controlled, the Food Controller will also have the right to commandeer cold storages. If my cattle can be commandeered, the cold storages can also be commandeered. These war years are a test for us. We are now getting control and we will be able to say to the cold storage companies, “Do you want to sell? If not, we are going to build our own cold storages.” That is an important matter. A great deal has been said about the poor farmers and the small farmers. I, too, sympathise with them, but I think the time has now arrived when I no longer have the right to say, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” The time has arrived for the farming associations throughout the length and breadth of the country to intervene and to assist the small farmer. They must not allow the small farmer to be left in the hands of the speculators. On whose behalf are we pleading today? The State does not propose to take away from the platteland the right of holding cattle auction sales. Our right to buy from one another and to augment our stock in the platteland still holds. But who controlled these sales in the past? The speculators of Johannesburg. As a farmer I will now be in a position to know what I am going to get when I send slaughter cattle to the Johannesburg market or to other controlled markets. At the outset there will be difficulties, but we must persevere. We must have proper grading. For that purpose we need capable men. In South Africa we have not got proper grading as, for example, in the Argentine, but gradually we will get to that stage where we shall be paid according to the quality of our cattle, and I do not think that any farmer can object to that. We have seen the agitation which has been set in motion in the press and at public meetings. Who is behind that? It is the middleman who is trying to influence the people to keep that agitation going. I wish the Minister of Finance would go to the root of the trouble and take proper steps against the arm-chair farmers, the professional element and the traders who have now developed such a wonderful predilection for farming, and who have forced up the prices of land and cattle to an uneconomic level, and I hope that he will introduce this measure with retrospective effect, so that these people will pay their share of the expenditure involved in seeing the war through. There is another matter which I should like to touch on, and that is the tax on wine and tobacco. As a person who represents a tobacco producing district, I cannot see what right the hon. member for Swellendam (Mr. S. E. Warren), for example, had in making us believe that 3,000 wine farmers are paying £4,000,000 in taxation. That is surely misleading. It is not the producer of tobacco who has to pay the tax. It is not the wine farmer who makes the wine who has to pay the tax. It is the man who consumes it, consumes the wine and who smokes the tobacco who has to pay the tax. I feel however, that the Minister should consider the question, and I am sure he will do so, of discontinuing this tax after the war when the consumption will be less and we no longer require money for the war. With regard to the wine industry, I want to say that I live on the Portuguese border and that when I go from Komatipoort across the border, I find that in spite of the fact that both Europeans and natives are allowed to drink wine, one never sees a drunk European or native there.

At 6.40 p.m. the business under consideration was interrupted by Mr. Speaker in accordance with the Sessional Order adopted on the 25th January, 1944, and Standing Order No. 102 (2), and the debate was adjourned; to be resumed on 13th March.