with leave asked the Acting Prime Minister:

At the moment I do not regard it as necessary to provide a special opportunity. There will be an opportunity to discuss the matter on the Appropriation Bills. Whether there will also be opportunities in connection with the votes on the supplementary Estimates I am not now in a position to say as I have not got the Supplementary Estimates before me.

I move—

I don’t want to take up the time of the House by making a long speech on the motion for the third reading of this Bill. Briefly I want to put two points. First of all I want to express the hope that the Minister of Labour will make it his special care and also the care of the proposed Board to get the training at the trade schools and vocational schools on a uniform basis throughout the country, so that it may be possible, as soon as possible, to grant recognition to that training in regard to apprentices trained in such institutions. The Minister during the discussion on this Bill stated that so far he has only been able to give recognition in respect of 50 per cent. of the training in such trade schools. The view adopted by us on this side, and also by experts on the matter, such as principals of schools, amounts to this, that recognition to the extent of 50 per cent. is too little. I trust the Minister will give his attention to the question of getting the training placed on such a basis that he will be able to give a greater degree of recognition in respect of such vocational training in these schools. There is one important matter I want to refer to and that is that these schools are provided with properly qualified instructors who give their attention to the practical and theoretical training of the students. Now these men draw salaries. They have no motives except to give their pupils the proper training, and if a specific standard is laid down it will be their task to comply with that standard and to turn out good tradesmen who will be properly equipped for the occupations they want to follow. That is why there should be better recognition of this training, and I trust that the Minister will make it his special care, and that he will put this matter in order as soon as possible, because it is certainly not in order yet. The Minister made a public promise that proper provision would be made for this recognition. In regard to one institution, viz. that of Jacobsdal, he has told us that the work done there is of a particularly high quality, but even though such a high standard of work is turned out, we find that the pupils only get a 50 per cent. recognition and we think the extent of recognition should be higher. Now I come to the next point. We have had a long discussion in this House and in Committee in regard to the colour question on the appointment of the Apprenticeship Committees, and I want to tell the Minister that if he wants to look for trouble all he has to do is to allow or to help in the appointment of committees where this position may arise that the interests of the Europeans will be subject to the decision of non-Europeans on those bodies. I made this a very serious issue on the second reading and also at the committee stage, and let me tell the Minister this, that if he is looking for trouble, it is there waiting for him. I hope he will give careful attention to the arguments which we have put forward from this side of the House and that he will not allow committees to be appointed where the European would not be able to maintain his guardianship over the non-European, and where the nonEuropean will occupy a dominating position over the European. This Bill is by no means perfect. I do not pretend that it would have been perfect if all the suggestions made by this side of the House had been accepted, but it would definitely have been very much better. The Minister accepted certain suggestions—constructive suggestions—in regard to the appointment of the National Board, for instance, and his acceptance of those suggestions has not weakened his Bill, but has improved it. The fact that he did not accept other suggestions is making his Bill all the weaker, and where he will now in practice have to deal with the administration of the Bill and these weaknesses will come to light in practice, he will in days to come have to come back to this House when we shall help him to improve the law. If he does not hurry up it is quite possible that this side of the House will be in power and if we then introduce improvements to the Act, the Minister will have the opportunity as a member of the Opposition to support us in making this into a better Act, and in making this Bill into a better Bill than it is now.

I look upon this question of apprenticeship as one of the most important subjects in the vocational world. I want the Minister of Labour to realise that this is a subject which should have the constant attention of his Department. I want the tradesmen of this country not only to be able and competent, I not only want them to have a good training, but I am anxious to see that they are our people. The Minister has the right to determine what the quota of apprentices is to be which any business man or industry shall employ. He now has a National Board. Let this board concern itself with this important matter. First of all it is his duty to see to it that the right people are appointed and that it will be a strong and live body which will attend to all these matters which have to be attended to. I want to ask the Minister to proceed with the appointment of that board as soon as possible. I do not regard this Bill as the final word on apprenticeship. I regard it merely as the beginning and if this matter is tackled from the national point of view and if we regard it as an important matter, then this National Board can be of great value to the country. Then there is another point. The Minister of Labour has the right to force employers who do not want to take the trouble to train apprentices, to do so. I hope he will use that power, if there are such people, and I hope that this Bill will be built on so that it may be made as nearly perfect as possible.

I shall be very brief. I only want to refer to the establishment of this new National Board and to ask the Minister if he will keep his mind open with a view to considering a reconstitution of this Board in Another Place. The first intimation of this Board only occurred on the 2nd May when the constitution was given effect to on the Order Paper of that day, and there has been very little time to consider the matter. I understand that industry, as a body, has not had an opportunity of considering it. Whether the trade unions have had an opportunity, I don’t know, but I rather think that they have not, and when one looks at this Bill and finds that the only representatives of industry are one to represent the employers and one to represent the employees on a board of eleven, one cannot escape the feeling that the balance of the board is not the best that can be obtained, and I believe that representations are likely to be made in the near future to the Minister; and I would merely at this stage ask him to keep his mind open to reconsider this matter.

We on this side of the House want to tell the Minister that he must not ignore the suggestions which we have put forward for the improvement of his Bill simply because he looks upon us as Plattelanders who are not in touch with industries. The experience we have had in the discussion of his Bill, has taught us that in his own ranks and amongst members opposite, no brilliant lights have come forth to talk about this subject, nor have they given him any help to improve his Bill. We are doing so here as the elected representatives of the people using our common sense in trying to be helpful and regarding it as our mission to be helpful in making the laws of this country. I am saying this because it sometimes appears to us that the Minister is apt to deal rather casually with the suggestions made by this side of the House for the improvement of his Bill. I want to tell the hon. the Minister that he occupies a very responsible post as he himself will recognise. On him rests the task of looking after the training of our youth. He has the training of our youth, so far as apprenticeship is concerned, under his control. The youth of the country who want to fit themselves in that direction, who want to have training, look up to him, and I want to ask him at this stage, in view of that fact, not to have any other considerations in his mind except the well-being of the youth which is trying to find a livelihood in that direction. They look to him as their champion, and we expect him to give them his full attention. This is a young country and we want to expand in that direction. We have the brain power; we have the manpower, and the womanpower, which have been neglected, and it is for him to make use of those powers to supply us with trained people in our industries. He told us when he introduced this Bill that he was looking forward to the days after the war when our industries would be expanding. Our industries will expand if the Government takes a firm stand, but if it doesn’t do so, this promise too will be broken like so many others. If that is so I want to draw his attention to what has happened in days gone by when people were imported from overeas to take the work out of the hands of our boys and girls. I want to draw his attention to the fact that our foreign representative, Col. Reitz, is even now inviting people to come to this country. I want to ask the hon. Minister not to allow it. He has told us that during his time of office as Minister of Labour hardly any craftsmen have been introduced. That may be so, but I want to remind him that this is war time; he could not get them; but after the war they will be available in their thousands and tens of thousands and I want to ask him not to allow workmen to be imported from overseas at the expense of the sons and daughters of this country. I want to ask him to give our sons and daughters a chance, an opportunity of receiving a thorough training, and seeing that he occupies this responsible position, it is his duty in the first instance to look after our own sons and daughters. He must not pay heed to the demand for the importation of men from overseas. I want again to emphasise what the hon. member for Boshoff (Mr. Serfontein) has said with regard to the constitution of the various committees. The hon. Minister was not born in this country, and he does not know what goes on in the blood and the minds of Afrikaans-speaking Afrikaners. He does not know how it hurts us to behold the bastardisation which is going on in this country. He doesn’t know how dark the future appears to us when we behold these conditions. And we want to appeal to him to respect those tender feelings of the Afrikaner, those feelings of separateness, and we ask him not to allow his committees to be so constituted that this dark threat, which already has shown itself, will be further aggravated. On the contrary he must remove that menace and comply with the desires of every upright white man and white woman in this country. I hope that after this legislation has been in force for some years we shall be able to congratulate the Minister on the success of the administration under his charge and that he will show that the interests of this country come first with him.

I don’t propose to take up more than two minutes. I think that this clause which is causing the discussion is really something which the Minister has generously conceded to the attitude of members on both sides. It seems that the constitution of the board is such that there need be no fear that either the employers or the employees will have their interests prejudiced. You have equal representation of organised employers and employees, and other representatives who will also attend to the training and education of apprentices, and generally try and see that the economic life of the country shall not be as lopsided as it has been in the past, and that opportunities will be given to all South Africans to become artisans. But I want to draw attention to one subject. The Minister may possibly consider this with a view to some amendment in the Other Place. I refer to sub-section (iii) of sub-clause (2) of Clause 2 in connection with the National Board. Now that reads: “2 shall represent the interests of prospective apprentices from rural areas.” I think that is an excellent provision because it enables those who want to become apprentices to be represented so as to see that their interests are not overlooked. I am glad that the provision is especially made for prospective apprentices from rural areas, but there may be difficulties too in regard to prospective apprentices from urban areas, and I want the Minister to consider the matter and to see whether he could not amend this to read: “From rural and urban areas.”

One from each?

Yes; so that a boy with a rural outlook, and a boy with an urban outlook shall have the opportunity of being represented. I think that will be an improvement on the Bill and will give all sections the feeling that they are adequately represented.

As one of the members in this House representing a constituency where a trade school is situated in the principal town, I wish to associate myself with what has been said here by the hon. member for Boshof (Mr. Serfontein). The Minister refuses to give a higher grant than 50 per cent. to the lads who have been trained in those schools. The other day the Minister declared that he had the final say in the administration of this Act. If you are acquainted with that institution, if you visit it, if you observe the work that is done there, then you can only speak with praise of what is done in that institution. I hope that I shall have the privilege some day of meeting the Minister of Labour in the Trade School at Kroonstad, and to convince him of the standard of the work that is done there. The hon. the Minister of Finance paid a visit last year to the Trade School, and I am sure that the Minister of Finance can only speak in terms of praise of the work that is being done there. Then I want to ask the Minister, seeing he still has all these powers in his hands, and seeing that he is going to administer this law, to take those institutions into account—and there I associate myself strongly with the hon. member for Boshof. As the institution imparts the requisite training, and the necessary ability, I hope that the Minister will inform us that he will take this into favourable consideration, and allow the lads at those institutions a higher proportion than 50 per cent. of their school time. I wish further to associate myself with the opinion that has been voiced about the committees. The Minister gave us to understand that he is not giving any effect to this legislation, and that so long as he is there, we do not need to be apprehensive that mixed committees will be set up on which coloured people and Europeans will serve, with the result that Europeans would possibly be placed in a position of inferiority. Seeing that the Minister will not adopt the course that we have urged on him all these days I want to ask the Minister to keep to his word, and to see to it that in no event will Europeans in this country be placed in a subordinate position to coloured people. I want further to ask the Minister that, where training institutions exist in the large centres, to take into consideration the grant of a subsidy to hostels, or to make available funds for their erection. The Minister must ensure that where lads from the platteland go into the towns there are institutions under good management where the lads can be kept under proper supervision. They must not just come into the big towns and roam round and get completely spoilt. I want the Minister to take into consideration the making available of good hostels where the lads from the platteland can live when they are undergoing training, and that the charge for their lodgings is reasonable. They should be under proper control there.

I will reply to the last speaker first. On this question of the supervision of apprentices, or rather trade schools trainees, if I can coin a word, it applies to the country boy who comes up to the Reef or any of the large towns, and there is a possibility, or a probability even, of him becoming a lost dog. There are two avenues of supervision : my own department will, through its inspectors, keep a very close watch on them ; then there is the Social Welfare Department, which will also keep a very close watch on them. It only needs to be mentioned by members for us to realise its importance, even if we have not realised it before, and in view of the undoubted trend of platteland boys under this new system of ours under this Bill, to come to the towns, we shall exercise the utmost care of them. In regard to this question of coloured people and whites—well, in the Factories Act, as you know, I have stood four square on the question of having separate accommodation, so that natives and Europeans and coloured shall be kept separate from each other. I propose to carry out that system in this matter too. That applies to the remarks made by an hon. friend opposite, and to the hon. member sitting behind him.

And yet there was trouble on the Rand.

That was a manufactured trouble. There they were completely separated. In fact, the people who kicked up the dust about it did not know they were there. However I am prepared to answer that at another time and on another occasion, if hon. members choose to bring up the question. So much for the hon. member for Kroonstad (Mr. A. Steyn). In my reply I am going backwards; it is not a bad thing sometimes to go backwards. The hon. member for Kroonstad, the hon. member for Boshof (Mr. Serfontein) and the hon. member for Harrismith (Mr. E. R. Strauss) all raised this point of the percentage of period allowed to trade school trainees, and they say that 50 per cent., which is the basic allowance we make, is not sufficient. I say it is. In some cases it is too much, because, Mr. Speaker, we have got to think of his future and see that he is properly trained. Under our ordinary conditions—the conditions at all events will be altered under this Bill—and especially in view of the very close colloboration that is now taking place between the Education Department and my department—as hon. members know trade schools come under the Education Department—on account of that close collaboration and our determination to extend, increase and multiply opportunities in the countryside for this specific training, you can rely upon it that when and as soon as it is administered, that as soon as this, that or the other youngster is sufficiently qualified and we ought to allow him 100 per cent., we will let him have 100 per cent. To come back to the hon. member for Swellendam (Mr. S. E. Warren) who raised this very point, let me read out what the functions are of the new board that has been created, and the hon. member for Troyeville (Mr. Kentridge) is correct when he says it is a very great concession indeed. The functions of the board are distributed throughout the Bill. Under Clause 3 (1) the Apprenticeship Board has to advise the Minister “on all matters which he may, in terms of this Act, act on the recommendation of the board.” That is broad and comprehensive. Let us particularise. Under old Clause 15 the board has to make recommendations to the Minister—I hope hon. members will take note of this that they make recommendations on (1) the designation of trades to which the Act will apply; (2) qualifications required for apprenticeship which include (a) age and educational qualifications; (b) the period of apprenticeship; (c) rates of wages; (d), (e), (f) classes and courses; (g) practical training; (h) proficiency tests— that is the point we were discussing just now; (i) fees; (j), (k) working hours, overtime; (m), (n), (o) holidays and other conditions. All those things to which my hon. friends over there have been making reference will come within the purview of this National Board. The board has to recommend to the Minister the extension of designated trades in industries. Finally, and that is the governing factor to which attention has been specifically drawn by hon. members over there, the board in making these recommendations must aim at uniformity.

You must have a good board.

You must have a good board, and I can assure my hon. friend that it will be wisely selected. Hon. members on the other side do well to put their trust in me. They have indicated that over and over again, at any rate by inference if not by insinuation. They say: “Suppose the Minister dies or some other Minister takes his place …”

I said supposing you were sitting over here.

The hon. member must not place too great a strain on our imagination. How can I imagine that I would ever be sitting next to the hon. member over there? That is a sheer impossibility, Mr. Speaker. Now the hon. gentleman opposite says I am not in possession of the fullest responsibility towards South African interests. Nobody realises more than I do—and, Sir, the hon. member and his colleagues on that side of the House need not keep stressing the fact that I was born somewhere else; because the geographical part of the universe in which a person happens to be born does not alter his outlook on humanity or vitiate his human feelings. He says I do not know the Afrikaans-speaking people; what has the question of where a man was born to do with that?

What about an Eskimo?

Yes, the Eskimo is more in keeping with the hon. gentleman’s outlook than anything else. He inhabits the frozen North and the hon. member has frozen prospects. Let me pursue this just for a moment. I will guarantee that there is no member on that side of the House so closely associated with the Afrikaans worker as I am; not one of them. My hon. friend, the member for Krugersdorp, who is himself an Afrikaans worker, can bear that out, that when I am expressing myself in this House on Labour matters I am expressing the views of Afrikaans workers as well as of British workers and every other section of workers; and consequently I am more qualified to deal with this matter from a practical point of view than members on that side of the House. But he need have no fear; there is nobody more anxious than I am to secure the advancement of our own people, and whether I was born in England or not, these are my own people here in South Africa. They are part of me and I am determined, Sir, to secure first of all the position of our own people in this country before looking elsewhere for substitutes. I should like to assure hon. members of that. I want to say to the hon. member for Troyeville, and I want to say to the hon. member here, that I do not propose to ask in Another Place to alter the composition of the board. My hon. friend wants me to assign one member to the urban areas. That will not be necessary. The case is met by a special department being brought to the rural areas. I think hon. members need not be unduly worried about having two representatives on the rural side. In the ordinary course the urban interests get well looked after by the trade unions, who are in such close touch with them in the towns, and my hon. friend’s desire to get the board balanced a bit more between employer and employee is really met by the provision in the clause where I have the right to appoint to the board two members with a special knowledge of apprenticeship. The object of that is to give industry a wider choice of personnel. I think that answers my hon. friend’s objection when I tell him that the representation in this connection will be really in effect two employers, while there will also be two members representing the trade unions on that board. I think that gives a proper balance. Well, Sir, I want to express my gratification to hon. members for the moderate way in which they have criticised the Bill. Hon. members over there have claimed that the Bill has been to some extent improved by their amendments, and that it has not been improved by the amendments I have not embodied in it. In the latter case I do not agree; in the former case I agree. I thank you, Sir, for having allowed hon. members to express all their views to me, and I now move the third reading of the Bill.

Motion put and agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

I move—

I should like to take the opportunity once more to raise my voice, not against the principle of this Bill, but against the tendency that has been revealed in the Government’s legislation, and in the recent acts of the Government, a tendency against which the House must register a protest. It is made more and more clear to me from every tax that the Minister imposes, from every Bill that comes before Parliament, and from every administrative act done by the Government, that the Government has lost all sympathy with the farming population of the country. I don’t know whether this House realises that this morning we had a pronouncement from the Minister of Agriculture which this time shows that by an administrative act of the Government the farming community can be robbed of an income of £2,000,000. Does the Minister realise that the announcement that we have heard this morning means that the sheep farmer alone will suffer a loss of £2,000,000? The calculation that farming members on this side of the House have made comes to this, that the statement made by the Minister of Agriculture means that the sheep farmer will get 2d. to 5d. a lb. less for his mutton.

The hon. member cannot digress further on that matter.

No, Mr. Speaker, I shall not do that. I just wanted to refer to the difficult position in which the farmers are being placed. On the one hand the Government comes along with administrative acts and robs the sheep farmer of income to the extent of £2,000,000 for the year, and on the other hand the Minister of Finance comes with an estate duty that also threatens to rob the farmer with a small property of a portion of his capital. I want this morning to submit certain propositions to the Minister in connection with this Estate Duty Bill. Throughout the world it is accepted as a cardinal principle of a sound taxation policy to impose an income tax. It is accepted that the State renders necessary services to the people. Those services have to be paid for, and the proposition is that the people must be prepared to pay a portion of their incomes to the State in order to pay for those services. That is reasonable, and one cannot quarrel with that. If the Government takes too large a share then the people rise against the Government and get rid of the Government. Then we get a new Minister of Finance and a new Government. But here we have to do with a tax that is not an income tax. It is a tax on capital. In this Bill the Minister comes with an extension of the estate duties to the small farmers, and he confiscates a portion of the capital of those people though it is indispensable to enable them to develop their farms.

I thought that the party on the other side were opposed to the capitalists.

I am referring here to the extension of the estate duty to the small farmer. Will the Minister of Native Affairs tell me that the man who owns 15 morgen in Constantia or Drakenstein and gets a decent living out of that, is a capitalist? Anyone who has 15 morgen in Constantia or in the Drakenstein, or in any other part of the Boland, and who makes a living out of that, can with the present price of land find that his estate is worth probably more than £20,000 or £30,000. And now the Minister comes and when that man dies he confiscates a portion of his capital, capital that is indispensable for the development of the man’s farm; or, if he has a factory, capital that is indispensable for the development and extension of his factory. The Minister will now tell me that we have had an estate duty and that the principle has been accepted by Parliament and the country. But there is this tremendous difference, that until the commencement of the war we only taxed superfluous capital. In the case of people who possessed superfluous capital we took a portion of it from them by means of estate duty. We taxed in this way those people who had more capital than was necessary for the development of their farms, or factories, or businesses. We confiscated the superfluous capital by means of an estate duty, and now the Minister comes along and extends the tax to the small man. I say to the Minister of Finance that he is committing a blunder; he is perpetrating an injustice. Not only is he going to retard the development and building up of farms and our herds, but he is busy weakening South Africa so that it will not be able to withstand the storms of the post-war period. In consequence of the excess profits tax we cannot build up reserves, and now the Minister comes and he confiscates a portion of the capital. He is so weakening South Africa that it will not be in a position to resist the storms that will come after the war. If the Minister of Finance now says: “No, I am going to confiscate a part of the capital of every citizen—I am determined on that,” then I would like to make a proposition to the Minister. Why does he pay that portion of the capital that he confiscates into the Revenue Fund, and not, as ought to be the case, into the Loan Account? This is not income that the Minister is drawing, but it is a levy on capital, and it ought not to go into the Revenue Fund but into the Loan Account. When the Minister thus confiscates a proportion of every citizen’s capital, if he realises that by this he is withdrawing so much capital for availability for production, then the Minister must at least give the assurance that he will employ this money to create new permanent assets. That is one thing that the Minister ought to do. Instead of just pouring money into the Revenue Fund in order to live extravagantly in this country, letting it slip through our fingers so that he will not be able to show anything for it in the future, he should place it in the Loan Funds. He expects to obtain a million pounds from this source this year. That ought to go into a special development fund that we would be able to use in the future, for example to promote land settlement, to establish key industries, etc., and then we will know that the capital that the Minister is taking from every citizen in the country will be utilised for productive purposes, and to assist in the development of the country, and in order to create new permanent assets in the country. This is the least I expected from the Minister; that if he is firmly determined to confiscate this capital, that he will use it in the future for capital expenditure, for the development of the country and for the creation of new permanent assets. I would like the country and the House to know that since the outbreak of the war the estate duty has been increased nearly threefold. That is to say, the Minister is confiscating three times as much of the capital of the people as before the war. I have the figures before me, and I believe that I can say that on the whole the figures have been increased threefold, and I put it to the Minister that if it is his firm intention to proceed with this tax he should realise that it is not right to put it in the ordinary revenue funds just to spend the money, through the current account for services, for which we shall have nothing to show in the future. As I have said he should establish a special development fund, and then we shall know that the money that is being taken from the people is at least being utilised for the creation of new productive works and facilities for the employment of the people. As we are not opposed in principle to the prevention of the accumulation of too large an amount of capital in the hands of a few people and as we are in favour of the principle of estate duty that will affect people with superfluous capital, we do not intend to vote against the Bill. But we take exception to the Minister extending this principle to the class with small assets, and to him confiscating capital which is indispensable to those people for developing their farms and factories because he is making South Africa too weak to meet the economic storms which we know will come after the war, and because he is busy doing doing dangerous work in South Africa. For those reasons we protest against the announcement of the reduction from £15,000 to £10,000.

My hon. friend began by referring to the announcement that was made this morning. You will not allow me to discuss that matter, Mr. Speaker. But you will no doubt allow me to say that my hon. friend’s allegation that the sheep farmers will as a result of that announcement lose £2,000,000 a year is entirely devoid of truth, and that it cannot be proved.

No, it is not.

I can prove it if you will give me the opportunity to do so.

Now I pass to the subject that is really before us for discussion. My hon. friends on the other side object to this Bill insofar as it means a reduction of the allowance that was granted in connnection with estate duty. The hon. member’s objection is that we have in this a levy on capital. That is perfectly true. This is a levy on capital, but capital is no longer as sacred as it once was.

Have you gone communistic?

My hon. friend knows that just as well as I do. The tendency of the times is in the direction of greater equality, of social security, and I regard estate duty as one of the means that should be employed in that direction. It is a means towards a greater measure of equalisation of possessions; and it is right that we should proceed generally in that direction.

Is not that communistic?

My hon. friend quickly gets scared over communism if he says that is communism. My hon. friend has spoken as if it is such a terrible thing that we want to reduce the limit at which estate duty begins down to £10,000—£20,000 where the married couple are living in community of property. But 22 years ago—and then of course we were not communistic—the limit was fixed at £1,000.

But that was the cause of the fall of the S.A.P. Government.

And then it was increased to £7,500. Is it really such a terrible thing that we are doing today? It has been stated here that by reason of this tax South Africa will be so weakened that we shall not be able to withstand the storms of the post-war period. What does the tax really imply? On an estate worth £15,000—£30,000 where the couple are married in community of property—the estate duty will now be £375. As usual my hon. friend has again been guilty of exaggeration. No, this is not an unreasonable proposal, and in other young countries like South Africa the limit is much lower than in South Africa. In New Zealand, for intance, the limit is £200 and in Australia it is £1,000. I think I may say that my hon. friend has thus become alarmed before he has been hurt. Then my hon. friend has asked why we do not credit the proceeds to Loan Account. I don’t know of any other country that does this. I regard the money derived from estate duty as primarily money that must be used in connection with social services, with the achievement of greater equality amongst the people; and for those reasons, as I have said in my budget speech, I regard this increased estate duty from which we shall only derive any benefit in the following year, as a nest-egg for the future in regard to our social security plans.

Motion put and agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

I move—

I propose to take the opportunity on the third reading of this Bill to make a final protest against the Bill, a Bill which places still further into the future the solution of the basic social and economic problems that affect this country. We on these benches have opposed this Bill by reasoned arguments and by factual criticisms; by arguments based on the realities of the economic situation of this country, and by facts which are common cause between us and the Government, facts, largely, which we have obtained from offical reports including reports of officals of the Native Affairs Department itself, facts also which we have gleaned from personal experience of hundreds and hundreds of individual cases as to how laws of this kind work, how they affect the individual who is subject to them. And those reasoned arguments have not been met. Yes, they have been met, or attempts have been made to meet them, either by misrepresentation of the facts of the situation—I am thinking for instance, of the speech made by the hon. member for Tembuland (Mr. Payn), a member of the Native Affairs Commission at an earlier stage, in which he seemed to deny the economic pressure on the people in reserves to come to town. They have been met also by vague generalities such as the expression: “It is not the Government’s intention to exploit the native population.” Exploitation is not just a swear word; it has a strict and grim economic meaning; it means people being forced to give their labour at remuneration below the marginal value of that labour, and any laws which bring pressure on any section of the population to sell their labour below its marginal value is strictly exploitive, in the scientific meaning of the term, in its effects. It has also been suggested that we on these benches have no knowledge of the needs of the people we represent—that legislation of this kind is to their benefit, and that they do not in fact object to it. It has been suggested even that we desire the creation of slum conditions in our big towns. I do not propose to answer these arguments at this stage. I do gravely doubt whether those who have used them really believe, after the years of work which we in this House have done, that those are the kinds of motives which inspire us on these benches. But above all, this Bill has been put through this House not with the aid of any argument, but with the aid of a powerful Government majority, backed up unanimously by the members of the official Opposition in this House. I do not for a moment believe that the proportional size of the majority in this House in favour of the various restrictive clauses of this Bill, truly and adequately represents the balance of white public opinion in this country. We are a small minority in this House, but I believe that among the European population of this country public opinion has been rapidly changing of recent years; that the minority—it is still a minority—is very much larger than would appear from the divisions in this House on these various clauses. In this House, so far from there being evidence of opinion having moved forward in relation to laws of this kind, there is a certain amount of evidence that it has gone back: I recollect when the Native Laws Amendment Bill of 1937, which this Bill amends, was before this House, members of the Dominion Party fought that Bill tooth and nail, under the every able leadership of Mr. Coulter; but in the discussions on this Bill we have not had a word of protest from the Dominion Party, in spite of the fact that this Bill is simply an extension of the principles of the 1937 Act. The Minister of Finance also protested strongly against the clauses in the 1937 Bill, as it then was, providing for the expulsion of redundant natives from urban areas. He spoke and voted against that clause. Yet in this Bill, power is asked by the Government to equip any local authority, even a rural local authority in the Cape Province, with that same power, and we have had no protest on this occasion from the Minister of Finance. My point is that although the opinion of this House upon restrictive measures of this kind may have retrogressed, it is not a true reflection of the opinion of the European public of this country. The African people, we are told, do not object to this measure—I suppose, of course, that is due to the fact that it has been their habit for several generations, in a disciplined fashion to accept the laws which Parliament has imposed upon them. It is that stoical acceptance which is the basis for the statement that the native people do not object to this Bill. My experience, not only in listening to the debates of the Native Representative Council, but also in listening to the criticisms at meetings at which I have explained the provisions of this Bill, is very different. I have found unanimous opposition to the principles of this Bill. Dining the course of the discussions on this Bill, I received a telegram from Dr. Xuma, President-General of the African National Congress, in the following terms …

The hon. member cannot refer to a telegram referring to a debate during the same Session.

I don’t think this telegram refers to the debate; it refers merely to the Bill. There is no reference to the debate. I only refer to the debate to indicate to the House the time when I received it.

The telegram refers to the Bill and the Act it amends. It does not refer to any of the discussions in this House. You will no doubt stop me, Mr. Speaker, if you think the contents of the telegram do not bear out my statement.

I rely on the hon. member to see that the rule is not transgressed.

Yes, I shall see to that.

This is what the telegram says—

Dr. Xuma is probably one of the most prominent African leaders in this country. Now this Bill illustrates better than any other measure I have heard introduced in this House the basic fact that once a policy has been embarked upon of restrictions upon personal liberty, of restrictions upon economic opportunity, such a policy has a snowball effect in the sense that every new law, and every new restriction once applied, in practice raises a whole host of fresh problems, the solution of which apparently to the official mind lies in introducing still further restrictions. As I say, and I am going to support that argument by reference to the actual provisions of this Bill, the basic fact, which at this stage I am merely concerned to submit, is that this Bill proves that the policy of restrictions cannot simply be halted half way—it always leads to further restrictions, further infringements of personal liberty and economic opportunity.

In general terms this Bill must be regarded in its context as part of the history of the native policy of South Africa. And that policy is attuned to the needs for cheap labour of the great primary industries of this country—more particularly the gold mining industry. Now I am not saying for a moment that everyone who administers that policy looks on it in that light. I am not saying that every official or every Minister who is concerned with this policy or responsible for its administration is a conscious agent of those vested interests to which I have referred. What I do say as a historical fact—and this Bill simply carries the history a stage further—that the native policy of this country is primarily based on the needs of the mining industry for cheap labour. That was so ever since the Kimberley days, ever since natives were offered guns and liquor to come and work on the diamond mines. Much more effective inducements have been brought into play today.

On the land, purchases by Africans have been limited. Special taxation has been imposed in order to exert pressure on the native people to come out and work. If it is not generally recognised by this House or by the Government that the native policy of this country is bound up with the interests of the gold mining industry in particular, that is most certainly recognised by the gold mining industry itself in most explicit terms. I propose to give evidence of that fact to the House. Before the Native Mine Wages Commission, Mr. Gemmill, the extremely able representative of the Chamber of Mines, placed his argument—which I am now going to read—before the Commission in support of his contention that cheap labour was a vital necessity to the gold mining industry. He said this—

Those words are so important that I want to pause to examine them for a moment. The representative of the gold mining industry looked upon the needs of his industry as being directly related to the Land Act restricting the right of purchase and lease by natives on the land, and the Native Laws Amendment Act of 1937, which this Bill proposes to amend and strengthen. He says that that policy is interpreted by the mines as having been reaffirmed by the present Minister of Native Affairs. That is not me speaking; it is the official representative of the gold mining industry speaking before the Mine Wages Commission. He continues—

There is a good deal of leeway to make up in that direction. Mr. Gemmill goes on—

In other words, it is the antithesis of a policy that seeks to build up what we would call a stabilised native labour force for the needs of the industry. He continues—

Of course, Mr. Gemmill does not say quite shortly that we need cheap labour. He says that we want labour employed at wages which ordinary working people cannot live on. That is the effect of what he said, just as the correlation between native policy in this country and the policy of the Chamber of Mines which Mr. Gemmill so strongly insisted upon before the Mine Wage Commission, is as I have just pointed out, not necessarily recognised by those responsible for the policy. Of course it is all explained in terms of such myths as “trusteeship” and “segregation”, which really bear no relation to the social and economic realities of the situation in this country. The point I was making was that historically from the Kimberley days onwards it has been one of the necessities of native policy in this country, to ensure that there should be an adequate supply of low-paid native labour for the mining industry. It has been influenced by the need of not going too far in disturbing the rural supply of labour and by the growth of secondary industry. With the growth of industry as opposed to either gold mining or agriculture, the tendency of the native people has been to seek escape from the cheap labour policy of the mines by going to the other industrial centres where industry was forced to base itself upon the ordinary conditions of supply and demand in respect of labour. That tendency was sought to be counter-acted by restrictions on natives entering the towns. It is no accident, Mr. Speaker, that every significant piece of urban areas legislation we have had in this country has immediately followed a period of rapid development of industry. I am talking now about industry apart from the mines. The Urban Areas Act in 1923 was introduced following the rapid expansion of industry that came during and as a result of the 1914-1918 war. It was stiffened up in the direction of preventing natives entering the towns in the amending Act of 1937, when we had another wave of industrial expansion following on the country leaving the gold standard. Now when there has been a further industrial spurt due to war conditions, we have a further stiffening up of this particular law. I know it may annoy some people to hear the situation analysed in this manner, but I do ask hon. members who are in the House at this present moment to think over this matter and to ask themselves the question as to whether there is not a direct relationship between a demand for labour by secondary industry as a result of expansion, and the attempt to limit the entry of natives into the towns, in view of the notorious and admitted demands of the gold mining industry for cheap labour, demands which were put forward in the most explicit terms, and in respect of which the whole native policy was relied upon, by Mr. Gemmill before the Native Mine Wages Commission. Now this particular Bill deals with problems which have been created by the attempt made in 1937 to stiffen up the regulations regarding the entry of natives into the towns, and those problems can be reduced, I think, to two. First, this Bill is meant to give a greater measure of control over natives who have in fact, despite the 1937 policy, established themselves in towns, and secondly, to gain control of those natives who have fled from the application of the 1937 policy and have settled in the peri-urban area just outside the towns. The economic urge to come to the towns, to seek employment in industry, is still there, but it has been made more difficult for them by the 1937 law, and they have therefore tried to remain in industry and still avoid the terms of the 1937 law by settling just outside the towns. The restrictions of 1937 created the problems, and now the problems are to be dealt with by further restrictions. That is what I meant when I spoke of the snowball effect of restrictions on personal liberty and economic opportunity. Clauses 7 and 18 deal specifically with the entry of natives into the towns and their settlement in urban areas—Clause 7 by extending the territorial scope over which a local authority can administer a restrictive pass system intended to prevent natives entering the towns; and Clause 18 by empowering local authorities other than urban ones to restrict the movement of natives to the towns. Clauses 4 bis and 5 of the Principal Act deal with the situation of natives in the towns, restrictions upon occupation, upon the rights of natives to own property and to occupy property. These provisions have had the obvious effect such restrictions must have; they have led to the overcrowding of natives in such areas as they are allowed to occupy, such as the inadequate locations or an inadequate number of premises specially licenced in towns for native occupation; or in those new areas which were established before the 1923 Urban Areas Act, where natives had gained the right to purchase houses for themselves. Obviously if for a whole class of your community, whatever you may intend, you restrict their legal right to occupy and own, they will become overcrowded and slum conditions will result in such areas as they are legally able to occupy. The case of Cape Town illustrates that very well. Theoretically, a native in Cape Town must live at Langa, but there are 23,000 natives employed in Cape Town and with their wives and families—such as have them here—their number probably amounts to 30,000 or 40,000 in the municipal area, and Langa can only hold 7,000 or 8,000 natives. In the whole of the Cape Peninsula the Native Affairs Department estimates there are 60,000 natives, and yet there is only legal accommodation for 13,000. Everybody else beyond the 13,000 must be living illegally; It is obvious, too, that when a native is faced with the necessity of having to live in a place illegally, the landlord is also acting illegally and therefore charges a higher rent to compensate for the risk he takes. Where the native has his opportunities of finding accommodation restricted, it also leads to his going out to the peri-urban area where he is huddled together with large numbers of other natives wherever they can get a footing.

And he has to pay high rent.

He has to pay high rent. Obviously if you are going to live under illegal conditions you have to pay not only for occupation but for the risk the landlord runs of prosecution and of being fined for having you there. We on these benches in making these criticisms which I have been trying to summarise, have done so—that is our habit—in a thoroughly constructive spirit. We have put forward our own suggestions as to the remedies for the situation that has come about. This situation of overcrowding and of poverty and of the migration of large numbers of people to the towns is a situation, we contend, and as we have often stated, that has been deliberately brought about over two generations—not simply by this Minister or the personnel of his Department—but it has been brought about over the last 50 or 60 years by the policy of this country. Our remedies are based on elimination of the causes of these difficulties, and a resolute attempt in the interests of the economic and social benefit of the whole community, European and native, to eradicate these basic causes. We have contended that if the migration of any persons to work in the towns is objected to, the proper policy is to encourage the growth in the towns of a stablilised labour force. Of, course if your industry is deliberately going to base itself upon the labour of peasants who live hundreds of miles away from the industrial centres there must be a continual migration to the towns to supply the needs of growing industry. There, must be a continual influx and there must also of course be a continuous efflux of native peasants returning to their homes. It has been remarkable that during these debates the only talk of any efflux at all has come from these benches. And yet that is a fundamental fact that everybody must know. Any hon. member must know that besides those native people who are coming into the towns there are native people going back to their homes again. In the case of Cape Town some members have sought to create the impression that there is a large native population here which is continually being augmented by others coming from the countryside and have omitted all references to the fact that there are great numbers returning to their homes again. If the Minister or any other hon. member says that the migration to the towns is an undesirable feature of our industrial life today we agree but we also reply that we want to see the migratory labour system gradually modified and finally abolished. We want to see living in the towns sufficient Africans to find employment there and we want to see in the countryside the growth of an independent native peasantry, people in the reserves who can make a living there. That cannot be brought about in a day; there is no shortcut out of this situation which has been brought about as the result of years of misconceived policy, a policy which has been travelling throughout in the wrong direction. What is proposed in this Bill will bring ho solution of the problem. The object of the Bill is still further to restrict the entry of natives into the towns and to make their position when they get there still more insecure. That is not the way to build up and stabilise a native urban labour force. The contrary policy has been placed before the Minister of Native Affairs by certain Cape Peninsula native organisations, by the Langa Advisory Board and Vigilance Committee and other bodies who have made definite suggestions, obviously of a long term character. These include the improvement of the reserves, the encouragement of native people whose labour is required here to settle permanently in the Cape Peninsula; the evening up of unskilled wages in other industrial centres to the Cape Town level at least. If Cape Town can pay £2 a week as a minimum wage to natives, Johannesburg can do that. Cape Town is not a richer city than Johannesburg, it is in fact a poorer city and yet it pays a minimum wage of 35s. to 40s. a week against 27s. 8d. per week in Johannesburg. The native people, the native workers, should be brought within the machinery of the ordinary labour exchanges or employment bureaux administered by the Labour Department in order that information may be disseminated as to employment opportunities both to workers and employers. It is along these lines that the solution of these problems must be sought. Admittedly it cannot be done in a day; there can only be a long term solution for a long term problem; there can only be an economic solution for an economic problem. These additional administrative powers which the Minister is now asking for are incapable of solving this problem. The abolition of slum conditions in the towns and the problem of slum clearance must be preceded by adequate housing facilities, and pending that being done, pending proper provision being made, there must be a removal of those restrictions against the native people’s finding houses for themselves, restrictions which are now operative. Well, Mr. Speaker, it is our contention on these benches that the net effect of these repressive laws which have been placed on the Statute Book during the last quarter of a century has been the whittling away of the personal liberty of the native people and their progressive economic impoverishment. We have time and again, year after year, placed before the House the evidence of these conditions that I have just referred to. It is because we know that there is no rational and no just solution of the problem with which this Bill seeks to deal within the framework of laws like the Urban Areas Act, it is because of that that we put before this House last Session our motion asking for a complete reconsideration and the complete change in the direction of the native policy of this country in order to bring it into line with the changing needs of the native people themselves and the needs of the growing industry of this country. In reply to that motion the Minister of Native Affairs simply reaffirmed the same outworn old policy and that reaffirmation as I have told this House this morning was promptly pounced upon by the Chamber of Mines and used as an argument against the increase of native mine wages and as a justification of the present migratory labour system which is poisoning the whole economic life of this country. It is only through a reconsideration and redirection of native policy that there can be any solution of these problems. So long as the policy is not reconsidered I have no doubt that the Minister of Native Affairs for the time being will continue to come to this House for still further powers to be used against the personal liberty and economic advancement of the majority of the people of this country.

Mr. Speaker, Thomas Babington Macaulay wrote some very stimulating verses known as the Lays of Ancient Rome, and I am certain that they must have recurred to the memories of many hon. members during the Committee and Report stages of this Bill. I wish to applaud the “Dauntless Three”, the Native Representatives in this House, for the way they have kept the bridge, or at least attempted to keep the bridge, in these brave days of 1944. Meanwhile “the Tuscan army” on the Government benches, curious if not glorious to behold, stayed put, licking their dry lips, and saying not a word. But there was one other heroic figure in the combat, that of the hon. Minister himself—

As I watched him, towering there in his place, wielding his flaming sword which turned every way—except perhaps the right way—I admired his effort very much. He brought to my mind another bonny fighter, Harold the Saxon King, who ultimately and most catastrophically was shot in the eye. It seemed to me the Minister was in grave danger of a similar fate. Possibly he still is. It was noticeable that no member of the Cabinet, with one honourable and competent exception, witnessed the valiant struggle of the Minister for Native Affairs; he lacked his attendant knights in shining armour. I don’t think it at all fair that they thus left their champion to fight alone. It was as though they said: “This is no business of ours. It is entirely a Departmental show.” Sir, I wish to say most definitely that it was the business of every Cabinet Minister to be present. The native question cannot be isolated. It cannot be picked out like a stray apple that has lodged in a basket of oranges. The native question permeates every national question, whether it is social, political, or economic; and I submit it is necessary for us all, and each Department of State, not merely to listen to such debates, but to take an active and united part in the solution of the outstanding problems dealt with by the Bill. If the trouble is that so many natives are pressing into the towns, there must be a reason for this. They are not doing it for fun. For any man born in the countryside, of European race or otherwise, it is a disturbing thing even to contemplate living in a city : and that feeling is doubly strong in the case of the native, for he knows about the Pass Laws and other restrictions, and fears the police and prisons of which he has heard. Still, the natives flock into the towns. Sir, if we want to control this influx we must get at the cause of their unrest. Why do they leave the country districts? It is because of the unsatisfactory conditions under which they live in the Reserves and elsewhere. Here I want to say that if we want to keep people in the country, whether they are Europeans or nonEuropeans, we must find an acceptable way of providing for them there, we must find some suitable work for them to do. So we come once more to a favourite theme of mine, rural industries. If we set up industrial concerns in the smaller townships, great numbers of these migrant natives would be usefully absorbed. That is a matter for the Minister of Economic Development.

[Inaudible.]

Well, I give everybody in this House credit for a decent motive, till I prove the contrary, and I like to think hon. members often mean what they say. We are apt to misunderstand each other, and sometimes misjudge each other. I don’t think much good can result from either procedure. In South Africa we are getting into a bad habit, when confronted with a difficulty, of looking round to find some special section of the community on whom we can lay the whole blame. For example, hard words have now been cast at the farmers, implying that they have deliberately exploited and degraded the native people. With this general charge I do not agree.

Thank you.

I am not sure whether the hon. gentleman is ironical or grateful, nor shall I worry over it. Whatever I say I mean, whether it is acceptable or not.

We know that you are sincere.

I find myself becoming quite an advocate of the farmers, probably because I feel it is worse than useless to accuse them alone of grinding down the natives, as though the rest of us were entirely without blame. In my experience I have not found farmers any more evilminded or cruel than any other group of the population. They pay low wages, but there is a reason for that which is very easy to understand. A young member of the Cape Provincial Council told me the other day what happened to his own crops fresh grapes for which he got a half-penny a pound. When he wanted to buy a few for a friend at Malmesbury, he had to pay fourpence per pound. If that producer received 2d. a pound, and the consumer could buy for 3d the grower and his workers also could soon be much bettter off. Improved marketing and distribution is the cure; and that, again, is not a question for the Minister of Native Affairs but for the Minister of Agriculture. On the subject of housing, the hon. Minister did say in extenuation of the very poor progress in providing homes for natives that it had been impossible for years to get building materials. Well, that was not the case in the matter of Liberty Cavalcade, for which, though required only for a few days, there was an abundance of building supplies. The whole country notices things of this kind, and that when it is a question of making money, there is no talk or sign of scarcity. That is however properly a matter for the consideration of the Minister of Public Works. There is only one thing I would mention on the subject of housing. A good deal has been said about the accommodation of ex-soldiers and their wives and children in converted army huts. I have heard about the model cottages which have been contrived at Pollsmoor camp. More, I have seen them, and I am sorry I cannot by any means regard them as model dwellings. The position, in my opinion, is impossible from the European point of view. I do not see how a woman is going to compete with the three miles to Retreat Station, when she has to do her shopping. There are many other disadvantages, and I cannot agree that Pollsmoor is suitable for European families; but bearing in mind the conditions under which the natives have had to live, and the long distances they are used to walking to and from work, I think such camps may be very useful for the natives, at least temporarily. I want to suggest to the Minister the idea of his diverting some of these buildings to native use. To achieve this he will need to enlist the co-operation of the Minister of Defence. I have tried to show that this is a matter which concerns us all; that the native question cannot be isolated, whether we like the fact or not. It comes seeping into the lives of all of us, and it must seriously be taken into account by everyone. Here is the final suggestion I wish to make. I was very disappointed that the Ministry as a whole was not present during this series of debates. One can well understand that they have much important business to perform; but still, admitting that is so, I maintain that some arrangement should be made so that their departments can be represented on the floor of the House. I would suggest that the time has come for the appointment of Parliamentary Secretaries, so that if a Minister cannot be here to make his contribution, the Parliamentary Secretary may be able to do so. Time after time points have been raised which would have had useful effect if brought to the notice of the Minister most concerned. This is not a light or academic question, to be settled according to the likes or dislikes of individual Ministers. It is a matter of the efficient conduct of the business of the whole country.

It is not necessary for me to add anything to the specific analysis of the economic forces operating behind this type of legislation which my colleague has given to the House this morning, but it is important from mv own personal point of view that I should take this last opportunity to register my protest against this measure, that is, against the sections of this measure which for us have made this new Act a thoroughly bad piece of legislation. Now throughout the whole of this debate on this measure, the Minister has repudiated any suggestion of an attempt or an intention to increase the exploiting forces which now control the lives of our native population. He has repudiated most forcibly any suggestion of using the powers that now exist in the Urban Areas Act, and which are being widened by this Bill, to force the native labour supply of this country into channels which it is reluctant to follow if there is any free choice in the matter. He has contended consistently that his whole intention is to serve the interests of the native population. We are bound to accept that claim on the part of the Minister, and in fact I don’t challenge it for one moment. My own experience of the Minister is, in fact, that his intentions are of the very best; that it is his urgent desire to serve the people, whose lives he now controls, and to serve them well. But in this life it is not enough to have good intentions. It never has been; and our business here is to tell the country beyond the Minister, that if this type of legislation is continued in this country certain things are going to happen—exactly the things which the Minister repudiates as being the object of his intention. In fact if we continue with this type of legislation we must strengthen the exploitive forces that now dominate and repress the lives of the native population. If this type of native legislation continues it can only have the effect of denying to the native population the right to sell his labour in the best market, of forcing him back—particularly at those times when his labour is in demand, and he is likely to get some advantages from its scarcity value—of forcing him back on the levels of lower remunerative employment, and of destroying his capacity for using the scarcity of his labour to improve his own condition. That is the inevitable economic effect, and no amount of repudiation and good intention on the part of the Minister will get beyond it, because the Minister does not by this trend of legislation control the economic forces that are at work in this country—he only aggravates them in this particular direction. In every speech the Minister has made in either House he has consistentlv repudiated this intention, but the only effect of this Bill will be to check still further the flow of the native population to the urban market and to force the native back on those avenues of employment in which the conditions are so unattractive to them that they will not go there unless they are forced to—to force them back to agriculture where we have not yet succeeded in establishing a decent standard of remuneration, to force them back on the mining industry and to force them back on those areas in the country where our attempt to get a living standard established has not so far been successful. But I must warn the Minister that when he and his Department refer to the wages being paid in Cape Town as so high, the immediate assumption by the native population, and I contend the right assumption, is that the Minister and his Department really do regard these wages as high, and therefore not as a standard to be approximated by other industries in the country. Now it may be perfectly true that the Minister believes sincerely that this country cannot afford to pay a living wage to its native population. But if he does, he must not expect the native population to be pleased about that or to agree about it. And we must make it perfectly clear to the country what are the economic facts and what the Minister is now attempting to put into legislative form. We think we are entitled to ask now for a statement of economic policy from the Department of Native Affairs. What is the conception of the Native Affairs Department of the future of the gold mining industry in respect of native labour, of the competition with secondary industry for native labour and of the necessity of secondary industry for a rising consumers’ market? What are its views of all these factors, and how do they fit in with the policy it is pursing in legislation of this kind? Now what the Minister’s answer will be I don’t know. I have not yet been able to derive any clear view of it from the statements he has made. He made it clear in Another Place recently that we could not make a peasant of every native in this country. I do not know where the Minister ever got the idea that anyone had ever suggested that. It seems an impossible, even fantastic suggestion, and no one I know of has ever propounded an idea of that kind. What has been said is, that it is incumbent upon us to make peasants of people who are on the land in the native areas. Quite a different proposition. Now I want to know what the Minister does visualise for the future for the people of whom he cannot make peasants, and of whom, we know, you cannot make peasants through lack of land, because that is linked up with the economic future of the country. We want to know whether secondary industry has any claim on the native population of the country, on its labour and its consuming capacity. Those are questions which I think a department which is going to legislate, as this department is legislating, must be able to reply to. My own feeling is that they will not be able to reply to those questions. That is my conclusion from this debate. My criticism of this type of legislation is that it shows a complete lack of understanding of the economic factors at work in this country. I am saying that in order to relieve the Minister’s mind of any suggestion that I accuse him of being consciously and intentionally unjust to the native population. I make that statement to disabuse his mind of any suggestion that I think he is out to oppress the native population. But this is oppressive legislation. I do not believe the Native Affairs Department understands those economic forces which are at work and that is why it produces ths type of legislation. The progressive analysis of the economic needs of South Africa has shown that we must have a rise in the standard of living of the bulk of our people in order to create that market on which the widening of the field of work for all depends. The whole future progress of South Africa depends on a rise in the standard of living of the native population to provide that demand upon which depends work for the community as a whole, white, coloured and native. But this type of legislation makes impossible that rise in the standard of living. That is why I say I am absolutely certain, insofar as the Minister is sincere he has completely failed to understand the forces that are at work in our society. To us who see the progressive improvement in the social and economic condition of the African people as the urgent necessity stressed by the Van Eyck Commission and the Social and Economic Planning Council—and who, I may say, did not really need the lead of any Commission to tell us what years spent in trying to understand the factors in our national life which we must learn to control in our own interest have taught us, this measure in relation to these factors appears to be completely unimaginative and uninformed. That is my criticism both of the Minister and of his Department and of the legislation he has put before the House at the present time. We hold that it is completely unimaginative and uninformed; that it does not attempt to deal with the problems with which we are faced, except in terms of a policy that has absolutely failed, in that it has created these problems and has piled them up to the level they have now reached. I contend that it is now the business of the Government as a whole to take into consideration seriously the whole question of its native policy in terms of the development of the economic organisation of the country, and to do it very soon, because if we are going to fulfil any of the promises we have made to the people who are fighting and working for us in this war, if we are going to fulfil any of our promises in the matter of social security, we must ensure the development of our secondary industry in this country, and this we can only do on the basis of increased consumption, which this Bill definitely helps to destroy. This Bill cuts right across the whole line of the country’s economic requirements. On the human side I do not know what to say; I think it is a most unjust measure; I have done my best to make that clear as the debate has gone on. The only section of the community whose movement is continuously interfered with and controlled, whose liberty of action and power to sell its labour in the best market is continuously interfered with and undermined, is the native population who find in the Native Affairs Department the people who invent new methods of discriminating against it in relation to other sections of the community. I say that intentionally. I say it knowing full well what I am saying. The clause of this Bill which makes it possible for the Government to give the power to rural local authorities to prevent the movement of the native population is on the Minister’s own showing largely designed to keep the native population out of places like Bethalsdorp and Edendale. I contend it is an iniquity that the native population should be interfered with in this way while other people are left to seek their own needs without this type of interference. The hon. the Minister has suggested on various occasions when we have criticised him and his department that we do not mind whether people die of typhus and starvation after living in slums. That is complete nonsense that it should be absolutely unnecessary for any of us to repudiate. It is utter nonsense. We are not prepared to stand for slums nor for the exploitation for which slums stand; but what we do say is that the social services state we claim now to have emerged into has a responsibility to all sections of the community to plan for them equally, and to guarantee them all a decent standard of living, which we cannot do on the basis of discrimination. Our business in South Africa is to abolish all slums, not only native slums, and to organise the state in such a way that we shall be able to give decency of living together with the maximum of freedom of action to every citizen in the country; and we contend that is not what we are doing in respect of our native population. Finally, and this is my last point, I want to commend to the hon. the Minister’s attention the type of legislation—I am referring now to its purely legal form—with which we are trying to control and manipulate the lives of people whom he has repeatedly told us are simple, ignorant and uneducated. I wonder how many members of this House have tried to read the principal Act which is being amended by the Bill under discussion? I tried to get one of my legal friends to take an interest in this Bill, and I gave him a copy of the Urban Areas Act as amended from time to time, and asked him to go into that. He came back to me after a few days and said “I am very sorry, I am very busy and it will take hours of study with a wet cloth round my head to find out what this Act is all about.” That is a true story. I ask all the members in this House now to try to read the Urban Areas Act and then to try to understand what it means, not merely in words but in practice. And then let them consider that this is the sort of legislation by which we try to control and direct the lives of the simple, uneducated and untutored persons about whom the Minister is always telling us. He tells us that none of the natives are trained to manage their own affairs in native areas, and that you could not have a native suburb where people might live as ordinary citizens; that the native people have not yet reached that standard, and do not understand those things. And yet they are supposed to know what the Urban Areas Act means, because if not they go to gaol.

They learn.

Yes, they learn; all depressed people learn that sort of thing. They have a certain acuteness of mind which those who live more comfortably tend to lose. They have to have that in self defence. But I wonder what proportion of the native population has in fact learned the meaning of that Act in gaol, and not outside it. I contend that that is in itself a grave reflection on our native policy in South Africa, and that it has long justified a wholesale revision of that policy generally, and I commend that proposition to the Minister—that he will now undertake a simplification—even if he is not prepared to change the laws—that he will undertake a simplification of the laws governing the native population in terms of his own claim that you have to legislate for simple and uneducated people. That at least we can ask for. I hope he will also respond to our other requests, to make this the last of this type of legislation and to have the whole character and direction of our native policy and legislation reviewed by the Government and by Parliament.

I should like to add my expressions of regret that this Bill will pass through the House and so perpetuate a sense of social injustice I very much deplore. It is absolutely necessary in South Africa, because of the continued perpetuation of social injustice against the African people for a large section of the European community to concern themselves with engaging in a campaign under the title of right and justice, a campaign which I have no doubt has had some influence on the country at large, but has had little influence on the department concerned, and the department have continued this oppressive legislation against the African people. So not only do I add my voice of protest and repeat the claim which I made during the second reading that the laws are complicated and require simplification, but I protest against the whole policy which is embodied in the Act, a policy which continues to oppress the African people and to restrict in every manner and form what little right and what little liberties they possess. And I am not so concerned to be polite by saying that the Minister is sincere or that the department is sincere. I am not concerned with praising the people who are responsible for this state of affairs, and who continue to act in a manner we consider to be almost inhuman. If a Minister is responsible for a continuation and perpetuation of a state of affairs which a considerable section of the community regard as being inhuman, then it is for the House to understand what has caused him to act as he had acted. While he personally accepted the responsibility for acting as he does, no amount of sincerity can excuse him from the fact that he is responsible and that it is his job to understand the economic factors which compel him to act in the direction in which he acts. In these circumstances we should have a show down with the Minister and ask him a few specific questions in relation to the African people in this country, and ask him questions based on statements made by other Cabinet Ministers. I want to point out a clear contradiction in the statements made by two Cabinet Ministers, statements made by the Minister of Mines and the Minister of Natives Affairs. The Minister of Native Affairs loudly proclaims that he is the father and trustee of the native people in South Africa, and as such there is a bounden obligation and duty on him to see that the economic and social welfare of the African people is promoted and not depressed, and that the economic development and progress of the African people is conditioned by three different sets of factors. First, there is the conditions under which they live in the rural areas. The second is the extent to which they can find occupation in our primary or secondary industries. When we examine it in the terms alone of alleviating the position of the rural areas, it can be said they ought to be able to make a decent living in these areas instead of being driven out to earn a living wage elsewhere. There are sufficient members from the rural areas who can examine it in that light if they wish to. I am concerned with the Africans in the urban areas, and on that matter I can speak with some authority. The Minister of Mines has proclaimed that the gold mining industry of South Africa is faced with a serious shortage of African labour, and it is the deliberate and determined policy of the mines, as expressed through the Mine Wages Commission report, and there is plenty of other available evidence to the effect that there is a conscious effort on the part of the gold mining industry to set a ceiling to the wages which are paid to the African people, and if you set a low wage ceiling to the African workers engaged in the occupation of mining, immediately that ceiling is set you militate against the possibilities of their economic progress and their intellectual development.

Business suspended at 1.0 p.m. and resumed at 2.20 p.m.

The gold mining industry having set a ceiling to wages based upon the profit from the least producing gold mine certain things follow in relation to the more profitable mines, the profits from which are absorbed by tricks on the share market in a manner which is directed to benefit the exploitating imperialist investors in South Africa. I know it is said that gold mining shares are held by the mother of five and the orphans trust and such like institutions.

Order. The hon. member is travelling too far, he must come back to the Bill.

No doubt I shall have an opportunity at a later stage to deal with that aspect of the matter but the fact remains that it is the low ceiling of wages which is set up by the Chamber of Mines in turn becomes the level of wages in other parts of the country to the unskilled and semiskilled working people and in particular to the African people. Having set that low ceiling the Chamber of Mines is in search of allies and they find a ready ally in the farming interests of this country which also seeks to perpetuate a low wage policy in South Africa. That is evident by the voting on this particular Bill because you see the representatives of the farming interests in South Africa, the Nationalist Party, very readily going over to the side of the Government in order to give this Bill a passage by a large majority. Not only do you see it evidenced there but also in the composition of the Native Affairs Commission in which we find the personnel representative of the farming interests and the Chamber of Mines who largely dictate and dominate South African policy. They are in a position to select the personnel and they are satisfied therefore to leave this question in the hands of the Native Affairs Commission which is composed of personnel springing from the rural areas. Despite the common interest that there may be between the farming industry in South Africa and the Chamber of Mines for the purpose of perpetuating a low wage policy there are certain contradictions between the farming interests and the mining interests and that contradiction takes the form of competition for the available supply of native labour. Nevertheless both circles and both interests are determined to keep a low level, to the wages paid the Africans in South Africa. In order to give effect to this economic fact it has to be translated into political action and the Chamber of Mines in order to entrench this low wage policy ….

What has that got to do with the Bill?

I am coming to that point.

I know you will but let’s have it.

I am dealing with the question of the sincerity of the Minister.

Order, order! The hon. member cannot question the sincerity of the Minister.

It was suggested by the hon. member for Cape Eastern (Mrs. Ballinger) that the Minister was perfectly sincere in his attitude to the native policy of South Africa, that he hold himself out as their father and as the trustee and guardian of the rights and interests of the African people. I am not questioning the sincerity of the Minister in charge of the Bill, but I am proceeding to show the dominating political factor which compels him to assume the attitude which the Department follows and I go on to show that the Chamber of Mines by securing control and a grip on the press of the country impose their will on the government of South Africa.

Order, I am afraid the hon. member is travelling very far from the Bill; will he come back to the Bill.

I want to establish, Mr. Speaker, that the government set up by the dictates of the Chamber of Mines will pursue a policy which is designed in the interests of the Chamber of Mines, a policy in relation to wages which is absolutely against the interests of the people of South Africa, not only against the Africans, but against the whole of the people. The policy which is pursued by this Parliament is against the policy to which it was pledged during the last election.

Order, I must ask the hon. member to come back to the question before the House. The House is not discussing the Chamber of Mines.

I bow to your ruling Mr. Speaker, but I hope you will permit me to say that personally I cannot disentangle the Chamber of Mines from the government but with due respect to your ruling I will leave the point because there will be a more favourable opportunity to deal with that aspect. What I hope you will permit me to say is that the Native Affairs Department, as a Department of State, is the conscious locomotive of the gold mining industry in determining what in fact becomes a wage ceiling.

The hon. member is again getting away from the question before the House.

I am sorry, Sir, that I cannot analyse the position from that angle. Perhaps you will permit me to show how this Bill runs contrary to the proclaimed policy of the government and to show the clash of interests between the primary industry of South Africa which determines this state of affairs and the interests of the secondary industries which are growing up. Here I want to come to the point at which I started…. The Minister of Mines clearly enunciates the policy which I have dealt with—he is not in an invidious positon. The gold mines of this country come into conflict with the secondary industries and they have to pursue a totally different policy. The Prime Minister in his statement on social security said that social security could only be achieved in South Africa by an expansion of our secondary industries, and so raising the income level of the whole of the population. The secondary industries consciously pursue such a policy. For instance, if I take the textile industry, that industry in the Wage Agreement ….

I am afraid the hon. member is not dealing with the question before the House. The question before the House is whether the Native Laws Amendment Bill should be read a Third Time.

May I submit the point I want to make. The point is this, that if it were possible to follow a policy which provides for a decent wage standard for the African people, the wage standard in secondary industries is better than that in the gold mines—and if they can get that better standard in secondary industries, then it is better for them to go there, because they will get better wages there; they will not have to live under conditions of poverty; they will not have to live under conditions of iniquity which create crime—and if such a policy were followed it would not be necessary for the Minister to ask for the amendments which are asked for in this Bill. That is all I want to say.

I had no intention whatsoever of intervening in this debate, but in view of what the previous speaker (Mr. Wanless) has said, and what the hon. member for Cape Eastern (Mrs. Ballinger) has said, I feel compelled to give my reasons why I shall vote for this measure. I do not think anybody can ever accuse me of ever having been illiberal in my thoughts and actions towards the non-Europeans. I fought the Native Bills to the utmost, and was one of the small minority which voted against them. I have always thought that the time must come when natives and coloured people must attain full democratic rights, but I have also realised that until public opinion is ripe for such a change it would be foolish for us to keep on demanding that these conditions be brought about at once. And when I listened to the hon. member who has just sat down about the need for secondary industries, and the need for economic wages for our natives, I agree with him, but he places the cart before the horse when he says that the Government should not take steps to present, the great influx of the natives into the towns before more industries are established. I find in my own constituency, and particularly in the adjoining constituency of Vasco in such areas as Windermere, where there has been a tremendous influx of natives, that these natives are replacing coloured people in employment, and they are creating willingly or unwillingly, slum conditions. I have had representations from my constituents that conditions are so bad that they cannot venture out safely at night and this cannot be tolerated.

What about the Cape Flats?

I am talking about Cape Flats. There is more shebeening there than there is anywhere else, owing to native people being unable to find employment with the result that they go in for shebeening. I think the Government is wise to take these steps to restrict the influx of natives. I think the solution of the native problem lies along the lines suggested by these hon. members—that is finding work for the natives at economic wages but we have not reached that stage, and it is unfortunate that natives come to Cape Town thinking that they will at once find work and work at decent wages. They are disappointed. In a part of my constituency, Pinelands, you find hundreds of natives walking about looking for work. They are almost starving. They go from door to door asking for employment.

Do you think this Bill will stop it?

Certainly it will to a greater extent than if we allow things to go on unchecked.

If it is not going to stop it why are you grousing?

Because we want to get rid of the slums.

We don’t want more natives in the slums. We are told that this is the worst city so far as slums are concerned. I do not agree that that is so, but we cannot allow hundreds of natives to their own disadvantage to come here when there is no housing and no work for them.

You cannot prove that.

I shall prove it at any time if the hon. member will come to my home— he will see hundreds of natives coming round asking for work every day.

Everyone has to look for work before he can get it.

The Minister has had a lot of mud slung at him, but I say he has been carrying out the policy of the Government in the right way, and although I am opposed to any sort of restrictive measures to the natives, I feel that under present circumstances I have no option but to support this Bill.

I appreciate very much the speech which the hon. member has just made and I regret very much the antagonistic note towards the Native Affairs Department and the Minister which hon. members there have adopted.

You cannot quote one instance.

It is totally unfair to criticise the Native Affairs Department and say that they are unimaginative and unsympathetic and do not consider the interests of the natives.

We say that they don’t understand them.

I want to approach this matter entirely from the point of view of the unfortunate natives who come into this town and of their relatives and friends behind them in the country. I wonder if hon. members over there think that I resent large amounts of money going to these territories. Naturally I don’t. The more money that goes back there, the better, but I am looking at it from the point of view of hundreds of natives who come here and are brought to a state of degradation. I wish hon. members over there understood the natives’ languages and knew them as well as I do. Yesterday I met a native who had been here two years. I asked him what had happened to him. He said: “Our children come here and they go to those places over there and they get a tot of wine for a penny.” Young women are flocking here—things I have never seen before. This morning in front of the House of Parliament I saw three native women with babies on their backs, an unheard of thing down here. Hon. members do not realise what the dangers are in these people being attracted to the towns. Let me give hon. members an instance of what happened in my constituency some time ago. There was a committee sitting with regard to seaside resorts dealing with traders having the right to occupy half an acre of ground. The executive of the Bunga dealt with the matter and one member of the executive objected to these seaside resorts on the ground that the young girls and boys who were able to earn a couple of shillings as caddies saved up the money to go away to the towns. Hon. members know if they have been to Windermere what the conditions are under which these people are living now. What is the result—disease and every other tragedy. I was at Paarl a fortnight ago and I met a native there whom I had known many years ago. I said: “What are you doing here? Your father was a rich man.” He said: “My father still is a rich man; I live here, there is my rondavel; my wife who I married here lives here and my other wife has recently come down with her children from the Territories.” Well, I went to his shack and found four large barrels of beer there. Yet hon. members over there want us to let these things continue. I would rather see every industry closed down than see the natives further depraved and further degraded. I agree with hon. members that it is essential to improve the conditions because they are tragic today. But hon. members should remember that there is a war on. They should remember that this influx has only take place to this extent during the past three or four years, and that it is impossible for the municipalities to put up buildings commensurate with the demands which exist. And I say that the Native Affairs Department and the Minister are doing their duty, not only to Cape Town, but to the natives, to the natives of the backveld, the decent type of native who is not forced to come here by economic circumstances altogether; he is not forced to come here because he is starving, but he comes here because he is attracted by the high wages of which he is told. I say again that hon. members over there represent in this House what Gen. Hertzog was pleased to call the “intelligentsia”. The hon. member opposite charged me with calling the natives barbarians, but what I did say was this: Hon. members here get into touch with a few educated natives, a few civilised natives who think of politics; they listen to them, but they do not represent in What I referred to “that great mass of practically barbarians,” that mass of uncivilized natives who live in the backveld and who are to a great extent satisfied with the conditions not only on the mines but in the country generally. If the members representing the natives could only speak their language as I do and got into intimate touch with them—meet and converse with them every day in the streets as I do—they would realise the tragedy that is facing the native people whom I wish to protect and assist. These people are being misled, and it is more than a tragedy that the Native Affairs Department and the Minister of Native Affairs who are out to do their best for the natives—and I say this from long experience in this House—I say without the slightest hesitation that the Native Affairs Department and the Minister know the conditions which prevail, they know what they are doing, and I say that this Bill is 100 per cent. in the interests of the natives in this country, and that in a year or two the natives themselves will realise that this is the position.

I do not want to say that I agree 100 per cent. with the Minister. There are other things which I would have liked to see provided for in this Bill; there are certain points where it might have been possible to bring about improvement, but I do want to say that in my opinion the Minister has enhanced his prestige through this legislation. I am convinced that what he laid down here, comes from the bottom of his heart and was motivated by his concern for the welfare of the natives. There is not the slightest ulterior motive on the part of the Minister. Everything which is laid down in this legislation is definitely in the interests of the natives themselves. I say therefore that the Minister has actually enhanced his reputation through this legislation. He laid down definite principles for the future on which we can continue to build. I hope the Minister will continue to build on these sound principles in the future, not only in our interests, but more specifically in the interests of the natives themselves. The native representatives in this House have been very persistent in their representations. We ask ourselves what the real motive of the native representatives is. They have no personal experience; they do not live amongst the natives; they do not know the language of the natives. What is the reason for this wonderful interest which they display in the natives? We can appreciate their desire as representatives of the natives to look after their interests. That is as it should be. They detained the House for days and days, and all they did was to come forward with a repetition of facts and platitudes. They have advanced no fresh arguments to support their policy. They must forgive me if I gain the impression that they would be satisfied with one thing only, and that is that the Europeans should clear out of this country. They will only be satisfied if the whole country is thrown open to the natives to move freely wherever they want to go, so that they can flock to our cities and make the position untenable for the Europeans. I think they would be satisfied if we cleared out and allowed the natives to live here. That would satisfy them. We must face facts. The European population of this country only numbers two million and there are more than seven million natives. Amongst the two million Europeans—I did not verify these figures and I am speaking subject to correction— there are only approximately 250,000 employers. There are approximately 1,500,000 European labourers. The 250,000 European employers must surely see to it that employment is provided for the Europeans. These hon. members want the country to be flooded with 7 million natives to deprive the European workers and the coloured workers of their positions. We have tried to explain that the natives have come here under war circumstances and taken up the positions of the Europeans and coloureds who are in the fighting forces; and that once the natives are here and occupy these positions, it will cost a second war to send them back again. It is definitely a threat to our cities. Hon. members on that side continually urge that the natives should have free access to our cities. We explained that that would not be in the best interests of the natives themselves. The native is happy in his reserve, happier than he is in the city. He is able to live more cheaply in the reserve. I have met natives in Zwaziland and other parts. I know the native boy sits and talks at the hut all day while the native woman does all the work. They are very happy. But as soon as they come here and they have to compete with Europeans and coloured people they become unhappy. They try to become black white men and that leads to unhappiness. Keep the native in his reserve; make him happy there. I do not mind money being spent to assist and to make the natives happy in the reserves. Let them improve their positions in their own reserves and be enabled to make a better living there. Give them their own industries; help them in every respect; but do not allow the natives to flock to European areas. The incidence of crime, murder and theft is increasing and we would have to build twice as many gaols if those hon. members had their way. I have experience of natives. I want to ask the Minister to give special attention to over-grazing in the reserves. That is the cause the impoverishment of the native reserves, that is why they are unable to make a living in the reserves. The system which is at present applied in the reserves should be revised and improved, so that it will not be necessary for the natives to come to the cities and towns. As I said at the outset, I think the Minister has enhanced his prestige through this legislation, and I hope he will not lend his ear to the unpractical suggestions of people who give me the impression that they know very little of the native reserves and that they do not understand the mentality of the native.

I should like to say to the native representatives I give them credit, and I think they are sincere, but I hope they will give the same amount of credit to us that we are also sincere in our views on the native policy of this country. I speak from the farmer’s point of view, and I take very serious exception when it is spread about that every farmer in this country has only one aim and object, and that is to down the native and get everything out of the native in their own interests. I emphatically deny that. I say that as farmers we play the game by the native, but these people are not civilised; they do not understand what give and take means, and they have no sense of gratitude whatsoever unless they are trained to appreciate that. I do feel as one living amongst the natives that is the main principle which has to be brought to the native mind, namely, that whatever the white man does he is not doing it to down the native but that he would like to work with the native and for the assistance of the native to achieve something not only on behalf of himself but for the native as well.

That is what we have always said.

I appreciate hat, but I will say this, that these hon. members have these things published in the papers, their speeches and so forth, and it is broadcast what they are doing. They are not rendering a service either to the native or to the white man, and they will reap the fruits of the statements they have made in the House in the near future.

What statements?

Because I say this, that the natives have been brought under the impression that whatever is being done on their behalf is to down them and not to assist them.

What statements are you referring to?

It is always spread about that the white man is just trying to exploit the native, and I do think these hon. members are not rendering a service either to the native or to the white man. I have a mission station in my area, and what do they do? They try to teach the native not just to adopt the customs and habits of the white people, but they try to improve the native’s habits; and if only the native representatives will proceed from that standpoint, they will assist the native to improve their local modes of living and they will be rendering the native a great service. In my area there are still thousands of morgen of land available for the natives, but what do you find? The parents of these younger natives are faced with serious difficulties, because their children will not stick to the land. They are attracted away from the farms by the bioscopes and the pleasures of town life. They do not go into the towns to work, but for the pleasures they may enjoy there. That is what they are after, and in this respect you will find that provision is made in this Bill, and I give all credit to the Minister and his Department for that; an endeavour is made to uphold that very status that the natives have, and so long as we can uphold that and native traditions can be observed we will be doing a service to them. Everything that appears in this Bill is opposed by the native representatives as if it was brought in to down the natives and to enable the white people to reap the benefit from this particular section of the people through this Bill. I say that if only we can impress on the native that the best he can do for himself is not to come to the town and to be always thinking of high wages, something would be accomplished and he would get everything he is after in this world. I say that we must encourage these natives to go back to the land. I want to tell you about a mission station where they teach the natives not just book learning but teach them useful things about the land and teach the girls how to run a house. But what do you find in that connection, you find that natives who come from Johannesburg tell them that they are merely being trained to become servants of the white people. That is all wrong because when the girls come out of that institution they wish to establish a home to which their men folk can come back from he city and find an absolutely decent home. We must teach the natives how to live in this country. I had the privilege Of addressing a number of natives the other day and from what they said to me I am sure that we should teach them to improve themselves on the lines of their own customs.

Mr. Speaker, we have listened to every single argument that we have heard now, over and over again in this House. Some fresh wording was employed, the ideas were presented in a new dressing here and there but we have had these arguments day after day, on the second reading, at the report stage and the committee stage, and really, Sir, I don’t intend to take up the time of the House at any length in replying to all these arguments which we have had ad lib and ad nauseam. The hon. member of Cape Western (Mr. Molteno) gave us a dissertation on the whole history of native affairs, native laws and everything else. Very little of it has any direct bearing on the present Bill although it was very interesting and I listened to it with great interest. No point has been raised on this Bill which has not been dealt with before by everybody who has spoken on the same subject and there was little in anything that has been said for me to reply to. The hon. member for Durban North (Rev. Miles-Cadman) was very fair and made a true retort to the statement made from that side of the House that I was deliberately putting forward a repressive Bill in order to play into the hands of vested interests. The whole gravamen of the charge is to create the atmosphere and the belief that we are doing nothing else but trying to drive the unfortunate natives out of the towns with only one object and that is to force them to accept a lower wage elsewhere in order that they can be exploited. I say on behalf of the Government that that is absolutely untrue and unfortunately those people who make such statements know it is untrue but they do it with a view to scoring a debating point, regardless of the effect which it must have on the native mind.

Order, I hope the hon. Minister is not accusing other members of deliberately making a statement which is untrue.

No certainly not, Sir, if I said that I will immediately withdraw it. If I gave that impression …

Yes, you did.

If I gave that impression I withdraw unreservedly and apologise. The point I was going to make was this that whether or not that statement was made intentionally nobody listening to speeches that have been made can help but gather the impression that the white man and the government is out to exploit the native for the benefit of vested interests. It was said quite openly by the hon. member for Umbilo (Mr. Wanless). He made no bones about it, he made it quite clear that I as Minister and the Government were deliberately tryng to push these people out of the towns in order to create cheap labour for the mines and the farms, in other words, we were deliberately exploiting, by putting restrictions on the natives to try and force him to take a wage which is not a living wage. You pulled him up, Sir, from time to time and it is just as well that you did because after all the speech he wanted to make here was one he made last week and has been published in the Argus. I read it, it was interesting but nothing to do with the present Bill. I say here with emphasis that never has a more untrue statement been made than that the Government is deliberately playing into the hands of vested interests, or that we are in the hands of vested interests. I thought that bogy had been dealt with years and years ago. The bogy that the Chamber of Mines is running this country is as absurd as it is childish. I say it is an insult to people like myself to suggest we are not free agents. Coming back to the point raised by the hon. member for Durban North, he said that the natives come in here, that is to say, into the towns, being fully aware of the restrictions that are going to be imposed upon them and the rather appalling condition under which they have to live. That is quite true but what is interesting to me is this that so called South Africans spend their time holding up this country before the whole world as the worst nation in the world for exploiting and ill-treating the native. It is strange that if the natives know all these appalling restrictions and conditions they are going to find in the Union they should continue to come in illegally and we should spend our time trying to stop them from illegal entry into this country from surrounding countries. That is an extraordinary thing. How is it that under these alleged appalling conditions natives are coming here illegally by the thousands every month from beyond our borders?

Thousands are imported by the Chamber of Mines.

I ask the hon. member is any one of these people forced to come here, is one single solitary one forced to come here?

I cannot argue the point.

I know you cannot argue the point, because there is no reply to it. They were coming here before the mine wage was raised last month. We have them coming in by the thousands every month at Messina from over the border and other areas, illegally and with no attempt to attract them to come, and if this is such an appalling country why are they so anxious to come in? We have got to go on working until the native is treated fairly and honestly. That is what I am working for but you cannot get away from present conditions in a few days and you must not get too far ahead of public opinion. I have inherited all sorts of bad conditions for which I am not responsible and the war has created circumstances which nobody could have foreseen and one had to wait year after year for a chance to try and meet the position. In the meanwhile I have to try and do somthing to prevent the present conditions deteriorating still further. The hon. member for Cape Eastern (Mrs. Ballinger) indicated that I am putting through legislation so that the natives can be further exploited. That was the basis of her whole argument and one gathers the impression from what she said that she thought that no one understands economics but the three native representatives. At least, Mr. Speaker, we who are realists have to appreciate realistic economics and not merely theoretical economics which gets you nowhere and which often is merely talk. We have had all the sob stuff stops pulled out and every cliché repeated again and again. Every cliché, even platitude has been brought forward, showing that the hon. members are completely out of touch with reality. We have been told here that we are continually discriminating between white and black but are we not to a certain extent discriminating between native and native, between the highly civilised and the not so highly civilised native, who is still in an unsophisticated state?

You would not agree to that, we wanted to put it in the Bill.

That is the sort of statement so often made, namely, that there should be no discriminating between white and the native; and the highly civilised native and the unsophisticated native. You may as well try and compare the native with a B.A. degree and one living in the Caprivi strip. You cannot legislate for both of those under the same conditions. Then the hon. member for Umbilo told us about the mines. I wonder if he would come forward on the Rand and fight a Labour constituency and suggest that the colour bar should be entirely removed from the mines. I would like him to go and tell those mine workers that, tell the mineworkers that the native who has the necessary qualifications should become a shift boss or a manager. Let him carry out his suggestions there. Let him tell the Labour Party on the Rand that that is his policy. This hon. member too pulled out every stop and every cliché. He said that he did not question my sincerity but then he went on to say that I am merely a tool of the Chamber of Mines. Well, if that is not questioning my sincerity, I don’t know what is. He said I am here to force the natives to take low wages and I say that is entirely untrue. He had a great deal to say about the secondary industries and suggested that secondary industries would be able to pay a higher wage than the mines and that the native should be employed in secondary industries so as to increase his wages. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see better wages all round and nothing would give the Government greater pleasure because that would be increasing the purchasing power of the unskilled worker and help the country all round. But secondary industries surely are and must be based on the primary industries of the country. You cannot make boots here to sell in say Nottingham in any quantity, unless you can only sell in your local markets, at present production costs, i.e. you can’t hope to compete in prices abroad. Therefore sound primary industries to create sufficient purchasing power to buy the products of the secondary industries, are a first essential. In other words the whole of our secondary industrial market rests on the primary industries and if the latter were to close down the foundations of the secondary industries would be pulled out from under them and they would come tumbling down. And therefore they seem to think that you can create secondary industries at any wage rate regardless of what primary industries can pay. I want to congratulate the hon. member for Cape Flats (Mr. R. J. du Toit) on what he has said, for if ever there was a man who fought for the interests of the non-Europeans as a whole, it was the hon. member for Cape Flats. I think I am right in saying that he actually walked out of the party on a question of principle in the matter of the treatment of the natives and the coloured people in the Cape Peninsula. And when he gets up as a realist and tells us what the position is one must have respect for his opinions. The position is as he has stated it. One of the clauses of this Bill has been introduced so that Labour Bureaux in reception depots can be created and the native who comes here and knows no one can go to these depots, he can be told where to go for work without being exploited and chased about. He will have a place where he can sleep, instead of having to go out to the Flats and live under disgraceful conditions or sleep under a tree.

What are you going to do with the tree?

Oh, don’t worry about the tree; like the hon. member its bark is worse than its bite. With regard to the hon. member for Tembuland’s remarks I remember when accompanied by the native representative we all went out to visit the peri-urban area on the Cape Flats. As I said, the native representatives were there too. I well remember how the natives there all flocked around the hon. member for Tembuland who spoke to them in their own language. I didn’t notice any of them crowding round the native representatives. The natives understood him and trusted him and knew he was their friend, their genuine friend, and that he was not saying things with his tongue in his cheek. We are out to give the natives a square deal. I stand back for no one in this country in my desire to do the right thing by the natives. I have no natives working for me—I have whites and coloureds. I have never nad anything out of the natives. I neither have to ask them for votes nor have I a business or a practice depending on them as clients and I have nothing to get out of them. I am here disinterestedly to do all I can for them, realising at the same time that I cannot go too far ahead of public opinion. I say that taking the steps which we are taking here we are doing the right thing by the natives. We want to allow the native to go ahead. We want to help him to improve his reserves in every way. But if he is allowed to come here as he is doing, he will create such antagonism in all sections of the community that we will have a sorry state of affairs. I don’t stand back for any one in my desire to help he native, and as long as I have the honour of being in charge of this Department I shall continue to do what I have been doing, and I am not going to allow myself to be browbeaten and bullied by hon. members over there.

Indeed—we have such a large majority.

No, it is not what happens here. It is what goes out to the natives in the country. When those hon. members send out their Hansard volumes to show the native people : This is what we have said on your behalf, his is how we are attacking that ogre, the Minister. I shall do all I can for the natives—I hope more than any predecessor in this high office—and let the future judge whether I have done my job badly or well; whether in the long view the policy I have tried to follow out has been in the real and genuine interests of the natives.

Motion put and a division was called.

As fewer than ten members (viz. Mrs. Ballinger and Messrs. Hemming and Molteno) voted against the motion, Mr. Speaker declared it agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

When the debate on this Bill was adjourned, I was in the course of dealing with a case in which a volunteer who had been in civilian employment before joining his regiment, had first been called upon by his employers to resign, because he had, after his enlistment, married before attaining the rate of pay regarded by his employers as adequate, and had subsequently been discharged from their service when they received no reply to their demand for his resignation.

Had he already joined up?

Yes, he was on the battle front in the Middle East when he received the demand. He had been through Abyssinia. Certain hon. members of this House have, during the adjournment, indicated that I was obviously referring to a case that must have occurred in one of the banks, as the rule requiring an official who draws less than a certain rate of pay to obtain permission from his employers before getting married, only applies to banking institutions.

In the police too.

Yes, the hon. member’s statement is probably correct. It will possibly facilitate my further comments on this matter if I admit that the volunteer in question was a bank official, though I do not intend to mention the name of the Bank. When the case was first brought to my notice in 1942, I had an interview with a prominent official of the bank who dealt with such cases. From that interview it transpired that the volunteer had been allotted the bank’s contribution towards his civil pay, but this was discontinued as soon as it came to their notice that he had married without their permission, and his resignation per registered letter was demanded by the Manager of the branch in which he was employed. I demurred to the action taken indicating that when he was being called upon for his resignation no monies belonging to the bank were under his care and he himself was engaged daily in fighting for his country in some of the hardest battles of the Libyan campaign. At the end of a lengthy interview I was given no definite promise, but I entertained the hope that no further step would be taken by the bank to insist on his resignation and I informed his wife accordingly. In April, 1943, however, her husband having become a prisoner of war after the fall of Tobruk she wrote to me in considerable distress, saying that his services had now been terminated by the bank. I again sought an interview, and on this occasion made my representations to two prominent officials of the bank. They reiterated what had been said before, and added that after he volunteer had ceased to receive any contribution towards his civil pay he became indebted to the bank to the extent of some £37, which his wife had promised to reduce by instalments. These had now ceased. They informed me that when they received no reply to their demand for his resignation, the bank decided to terminate his services and he was no longer employed by them. As I have explained, I was under the impression the amount that was due to him by way of allowance after he was married, was less than when he was single.

Did they reduce the amount because of his marriage?

Yes, he got less after his marriage. In some banks the volunteer gets less as a married man than as a single man.

Are you sure of that?

I am sure that after his failure to resign they stopped his contribution.

Are you sure that a married man gets less than a single man in the way of allowance?

I am sure that at the outset of the war it was so in at least one bank because I made special enquiry. I think the intention was to discourage the married man from going to the front and to encourage the single man.

I always thought they were discouraging them as far as they could.

His wife contributed at one time to reduce this debt and paid her husband’s insurance premium, but her instalments ceased. I propose to show in respect of a cheque for £5 that was sent to the bank when his account was not in credit he was certainly blameless, and so was his wife.

When you interviewed those officials did they state he was discharged because he was married?

Yes, because he got married without the bank’s permission— also because he had ignored the bank’s demand for his resignation and he had drawn the £5 cheque against an account that was not in funds. That is the sum total of the case brought against him. On the other hand, I think that in the circumstances the case is satisfactorily explained by his wife in a letter to me. This cheque for £5 against his account had been presented at a time when the account was not in funds and had been referred to drawer, and when his services were terminated he owed the bank some £30 when they finally wrote him off as being no longer employed. I discussed the matter from every angle, and offered to secure repayment of whatever amount was due if they would only reinstate him or continue to regard him as a bank employee, but this was not acceptable to the two officials mentioned, who maintained that the volunteer was already discharged because of the actions to which they had referred. When the matter of the £5 cheque was mentioned by me to his wife she wrote in the following terms on the 2nd May, 1943—

The bank correspondence goes to show that they wrote in May, 1941, informing him that he must not draw any more cheques, out his wife had cashed her April cheque before the 29th April, and ceased to cash any more afterwards. I submit, Mr. Speaker, that needless suffering has been inflicted upon the volunteer’s wife and his child, who have found it very difficult to make ends meet without any income other than the wife’s allotment of a private’s pay. The worst effect of her husband’s dismissal from the bank is in respect of her own position. If unhappily her husband were to die in Germany, where he now is a prisoner of war, she would be held by the bank to be disqualified from drawing any benefit from whatever widow’s fund may exist for the assistance of widows of bank officials. I submit, Sir, that the treatment of this volunteer has been altogether too harsh, and should certainly be modified in view of the fact that he is now a prisoner of war suffering all the hardships inseparable from his being in that position. I have urged these considerations upon the bank without avail. The Bill before the House makes no suitable provision for dealing with a case of this kind. It provides for cases in which a volunteer was in employment before he enlisted, and must be re-employed on his return, and failure to reinstate him is punishable. But the termination of his employment in a case such as the one quoted, and the inflication of consequent suffering upon his dependants is no offence under the Act—is indeed not punishable at all, except by the disapproval of public opinion, and I maintain that it should be punishable by a fine from the date of the volunteer’s dismissal, with a suitable continuing penalty until he resumes his employment, or for three years if a volunteer dies whilst a prisoner of war. I think the Minister would desire to stand by a soldier suffering such treatment, most of all a prisoner of war. I think it is unpardonable that a prisoner of war should have his family subjected to this suffering. It is, I think, more than most people would condone. This woman has had great difficulty; when her child was about to be born, she had to travel to several parts of the Union before she could find a maternity home that was prepared to treat a soldier’s wife with the greatest possible consideration and for virtually no remuneration whatsoever hope that when this Bill is in its final form it may be possible to make some provision for a case of the kind mentioned. I hope that the society of bank officials will take up this case. I am aware that that society has at its disposal an extremely able man, and I am also aware that in other countries similar cases have been dealt with. In one case in Scotland a well-qualified man was £20 below the standard fixed for a married man when he got married. He was consequently dismissed, but when the matter was reported to the Minister of Labour the bank sought to make it appear there was some disqualification on the official’s part and that his marriage without permission was not the cause of his dismissal. He sued the bank in the High Court of Scotland, and obtained a very satisfactory judgment, showing that in that country at any rate the bank had to stand or fall by its decision. I am not speaking now of the bank in South Africa but of another bank altogether. That bank shifted its ground because it realised that the defence of having dismissed him because he had got married was not a very strong one, and in that case judgment was given against the bank for a very substantial amount, because its defence had implied incompetence on the part of the bank official in question.

There are one or two observations I should like to make, and I shall confine myself to Clause 11. In that clause it is stated that an employer shall reinstate a former employee—and then line 30—

That implies that the position should be held open for six months after discharge. But are we being fair if we put the period down at six months, because the average soldier for demobilisation has at least 30 days ex-North leave due to him, and in addition possibly to some other leave which would have accrued to him in the ordinary course of events. That means that it is possible that a soldier may have two months leave due to him before his discharge becomes effective, and on top of that there is the six months during which he is allowed to go back to his former employment. So it means that we keep the employer in a quandary for a matter of eight months before that man need come back to his previous employment. I was wondering whether we are being fair to the industry that that man has possibly to be absorbed in, and whether we are being fair to the employer who might have had an intimation from a particular employee that he did not want to return. He might want to go off or join in some other industry, and the employer might moreover have engaged another ex-soldier and might have employed that ex-soldier for two or three months, only to find that the previous employee then intended to return. The consequence might be that he would have to discharge this ex-serviceman he had temporarily engaged, so as to re-employ his previous worker. I bring this to the notice of the Minister that this period of six months seems rather long. Now we come to sub-clause 2 of Section 11, line 45 where it says: “or for a period of one year whichever is the shorter period and shall be remunerated accordingly.” The whole point of the clause is this, will an apprentice who returns from his military service be allowed a sufficient time to qualify himself. If an apprentice has been employed for one year and was away for four years and returns he is only allowed one year off his apprenticeship. Sir, I am wholeheartedly in agreement with that from a training and efficiency point of view because if you are to make an efficient journeyman, an efficient man at his trade, you cannot cut down his training at the utmost for more than one year. In fact you are probably doing that man harm by cutting it down for one year. However, we must take that chance so I am fully in agreement with the Minister over that. But why should we discriminate against that apprentice from a pay point of view? We know very well what the government policy is from a pay point of view. What is happening to the pay of our civil servants who have gone on service? It is specially laid down that all those shall receive their regular increments in pay. They may be receiving £30 a year increase in pay and that is given to them during their absence. From a promotion point of view also, their promotion is safeguared for them. But what happens to the apprentice? The apprentice who has been apprenticed for one year and been away for four years when he returns to this country he is classified as a second year apprentice and the employer must guarantee him his second year apprentice pay. The man may have been only one year as an apprentice and be 18 years of age. He goes away for four years and returns when he is 22 or 23 years of age and what pay is he going to get?

75 per cent.

He will not, that would be a very different story. He is classified as a second year apprentice and he will get approximately 26s. a week, that is what he is coming back to. I am wholeheartedly in agreement that that man should continue for another three years so as to complete his apprenticeship and be turned out a fully trained man but you cannot expect him to come back and work for 26s. a week and when he is 23 years of age. Why discriminate against him? The civil servant is being looked after as regards his pay increments and his promotion and why not the apprentice? I think the Minister will have to work in conjunstion with the Minister of Demobilisation and a subsidy will have to be paid. Why should that man be penalised. That is why the Minister must work in conjunction with the Minister of Demobilisation and a subsidy will have to help the man in that class who went away a boy and came back a man. When he went away he was probably getting 16s. a week which was quite alright for him at that time but he has now possibly been in the battle line, facing bullets, for four years, and he has come back a man, he may even, as my hon. friend suggests, have got married and do you expect him to work for 26s. a week? In a later clause, Clause 13, it provides that a man who was in the second last year of his apprenticeship when he joined the Army gets off one year. When he returns the employer has to guarantee 75 per cent. of a journeyman’s pay. I put these observations to the Minister and I hope he will give them his earnest attention.

I would like to deal with that point at once. I can assure the hon. member that the Government plans are designed to have the closest cooperation between Demobilisation and the Labour Department and the Demobilisation Ministry or Administration is providing for just the subsidisation to which my hon. friend refers. That will be met in full. Why we are dealing with the fourth year apprentice in this Bill is because he is worth that money to an employer and that is why that other matter is left to the control of Demobilisation, they will provide the subsidy. With regard to the suggested unfairness to the employers on this question of six months, I must remind my hon. friend that the Select Committee in its wisdom or lack of it was responsible for that. There is however this point. We have to recognise once and for all, shall we say the old stagers, these men who have been at the front a long time, have, as it were, divorced themselves from their old life and have got to readjust themselves. It is hardly likely that any man in those circumstances is prepared to undertake to do a job he was doing before in a very short period. The employer has to realise his responsibilities towards the man. Now I will proceed to start from the beginning. The hon. member for Boshof (Mr. Serfontein) has made various points. I refer to three in particular. (a) “That it is the duty of the State to provide employment for all sections of the people; (b) that there should be separation of persons of different colour and (c) that the Bill should apply to Union nationals only.” He also says that the Bill should not apply to farmers, but before I proceed to deal with that point I want to deal with his statement that we should keep the balance as between those who were for and against the war.

Those who have come back and those who are here.

That means those who were for the war and those who were against the war. The hon. member divides them into three classes, those at the front, those who did not go and those who were against the war.

Those who made war and those who made money.

The workers did not make money so my hon. friend strictures do not quite apply, but I want to say at once that we owe our first duty to those who went to the front, they are going to have the first claim to our consideration. I make no distinction there at all and so far as I am able to accomplish it that will be done. Our first duty is to those who went to the front and very closely associated with them are those who were engaged in war production and in the war effort in other directions. That brings me to the point made by the hon. member for Woodstock. He wants to know how we propose to decide what were and what were not war workers. He was quite right in his anticipation of the line of country we take on this point, namely that we should take those industries that were controlled during the war period and any individual who might be engaged in any particular capacity—I am speaking now more particularly of the engineering people who were transferred from one business to another, transferred to another industry because of some particular ability, an industry which might not be declared a war industry. That is the general line on which we propose to go. Now I get back to the hon. member for Boshof. He wanted to know why I kept the Select Committee in ignorance of the other Government plans. It was with no intention that I kept them ignorant and the hon. member will do me the credit of admitting that I told them that there were other plans. I could not say what those plans were because I did not know, they were all in the position of being formulated.

You did not tell us what the other plans were.

I did not know; I could not give you the whole picture and I do not understand why the hon. member accuses me of deliberately withholding information.

You did not give it.

I was ignorant of it but I suppose any little item of criticism does, Mr. Speaker, and I will let that pass. Then it is suggested that I rushed this Bill through the Select Committee. As to that I say the House itself decided the period.

The House is in the hands of the Government.

I do want to say this to the hon. member that he is the alst man in the world to say that and his colleagues on that side of the House who accompanied him on that Committee are the last men in the world who should find fault with the shortness of time given because if anyone on that Committee meticulously studied that Bill from A to Z it was those three hon. members. I am telling my hon. friend that he was most meticulous, so were the other representatives of the Nationalist party in their examination of the Bill—

We improved your Bill.

That is very questionable. Then the next point of the hon. member is that it is the duty of the State to provide employment to all sections of the community. I entirely agree, and so did the Select Committee. That is throwing the responsibility on the Government for finding and providing work for all citizens.

Has the Government accepted its share?

Yes, because the State is at present engaged in devising schemes with this very object in view and the Minister of Demobilisation, in the brilliant outline he gave the other day, made that clear. He is doing it; the Minister of Lands is doing it; and the Minister of Railways is doing it, and the Minister of Public Works.

Only as far as soldiers are concerned.

Then with regard to the separation of persons of different colours—I notice you are always bringing this up—the Department will still pursue the policy it has been pursuing ever since we passed the Factories Act, of keeping the various sections of the population separate from each other.

Why didn’t you put it in the Bill.

Why not protect the people by statute?

We are doing it by administration. And then the hon. member proposes that the Bill shall apply to Union Nationals only. I cannot agree to that. There are large numbers of people in South Africa, Hollanders, Greeks and so on who have been called up for duty and they have every right to come back.

All these foreigners were in employment here before. Will you exclude the others?

What you mean is that you don’t want me to let, in others.

Take New Zealanders or Australians.

They may be a desirable addition to this country, and I for my part shall do my best to improve the stamina of this country.

Is that the Government’s policy?

No. This Bill does not have a clause exempting the farming industry and I do not believe there are 20 members in this House who would want us to do so.

There are more than 20 members who would like only to include the farming industry.

Would my hon. friend like to face the world having put his imprimatur on an act excluding one industry from the operations of this Act.

Of course.

What about the statement you made to the Select Committee?

I am coming to that. I am not going to put it into the Bill because I would regard it as a blot on our legislative escutcheon.

That is not what you told the Select Committee.

What I told the Select Committee is this, that owing to the custom of legislation in this country we have built up a system where the farming industry has always been excluded and in consequence my Department has not got the machinery for dealing with the countryside.

That is not, what you told the Select Committee.

I know their trouble. Their trouble is that they fear that they may have foisted on them native soldiers who have been living on a much higher standard than they are prepared to give them as farmers, and they would be most uncomfortable in their relations with them, and as a matter of fact the natives themselves won’t want to go to the farmers under those conditions. That is what I said I would say and I have. Now the hon. member for Cape Town (Castle)) (Mr. Alexander) raised a point making a suggestion that we should explore many avenues, not of individual employment but of mass employment; a very laudable suggestion, and he particularly mentioned Ralph Leaver’s scheme for the cultivation of wild tobacco. I have a high regard for Leaver and I am enamoured of that scheme and I think all his suggestions have been very sensible, and if they had been acted upon in the past they would have done a tremendous amount of good. I shall discuss this with the Minister of Commerce, and an investigation will be made and if possible we shall bring it into being. It will have enormous benefits. It will employ returned soldiers, and it will set up an industry which will be of great value to the farming community. Then my hon. friend for Swellendam (Mr. S. E. Warren) appealed for co-operation. I echo and re-echo his appeal. The House must not get the impression that the administration of this Bill is going to be of such a character as to set up the backs of the employing classes. We are not going to appeal for their co-operation only, but we are going to give them our co-operation also. The hon. member for Swellendam also said that returned native soldiers could be used for the State and for the municipalities. I can assure my hon. friend that my Department regards the State and the municipalities as employers and that we shall enforce the law on both parties.

And the Railways.

Yes, the Railways are making their own provisions, but we are co-operating with them. Now I come to the hon. member for Woodstock (Mr. Russell). He found fault with me for not going into details. Well I asked hon. members when I introduced the Bill whether I should go into details, and they said it was not necessary.

Oh, no.

But it would also have deprived my hon. friend of the opportunity to make that lucid explanation—much better than I could have done it. He put the position clearly before the House in his own way, and I would ask the House to take my statement on the matter as read in the speech of the hon. member. With regard to Clause 11, the hon. member complained of only a year being allowed to returned soldiers however long they may have been at the Front. He said commerce was willing to give them the whole period, no matter how long they had been there. I am only making one year applicable but there is nothing to prevent commerce from giving them the whole period. But I’ll go further. If the hon. member wants to propose an amendment to make it the whole period, I shall accept it.

Just change one word; make it “longer” instead of “shorter”.

My hon. friend says that commerce is prepared to give them the whole period of their military service as counting for promotion.

What about apprenticeship?

My hon. friend is not referring to apprenticeship. He is referring to the promotion of a man.

Is the Government doing it?

Yes, the Government is doing it and some employers regard it as their responsibility. But does my hon. friend see how difficult it would be for the returned soldier, if we make the employers do this? A man comes back; he has lost his touch; he has been away a long time. He is given the promotion he would have got if he had remained, but as soon as the 12 months are up he is sacked.

If the Government is undertaking the responsibility for its own servants it should undertake it for other people.

If the House wants it.

The Government should pay for it.

In any case I have expressed myself in regard to it. Now the hon. member for South Coast (Mr. Neate) is worried about powers being given to inspectors to enter private houses. There are some employers, we have discovered it in our Labour administration, who lift then books from their premises to take them to their homes.

It is a good thing to do if you should have a fire.

My hon. friend may know something about it. Possibly he has represented some of these coves. Now my hon. friend for South Coast (Mr. Neate) will see the necessity for our being able to follow up the books even if they have to go into a man’s private bedroom. The hon. member for Parktown (Mr. Stratford) was good enough to distinguish between dictators and dictatorships, and there was an undercurrent in the remarks he made that I liked to hear. Like other hon. members, I detest dictation, and the whole question will have to come up of the powers given to Ministers, though there is no question about it you have to administer the Acts and somebody must be responsible for the administration.

That is what Hitler says.

I am not Hitler. It may perhaps be possible to impose a considerable check on the way the legislation is administered. An hon. member said there was no co-ordination between inspectors and the board. Oh yes there is. We keep careful watch on inspectors in carrying out their duties. The hon. member for Pinetown (Mr. Marwick) brought up this case of a volunteer who had been discharged by a bank. My hon. friend if pillorying anybody should have told us the name of the bank, because this a question for the exercise of public opinion.

As you have asked for the name, I think I am entitled to say that it is the Standard Bank of South Africa.

It is well for the world to know that. I cannot deal with it under this Bill, but he himself advanced the remedy, which I support. The Society of Bank Officials ought to take up this case and pursue it to its logical conclusion. They ought to show up any person or any institution which deliberately discharges its servant when he is at the front. That ought to be shown up, and I am glad that in some small way I may have contributed to that showing up by the remarks I have made. I think I have now dealt with all the points that have been raised.

Motion put and agreed to.

Bill read a second time; House to go into Committee on the Bill on 10th May.

I move—

This new Bill which I am reintroducting today is in principle the same Bill which I introduced at the beginning of the session and which was sent to a Select Committee. It has been substantially amended, but the original idea of the Bill which was to establish a corporation to undertake the organisation of the inshore fishing industry, remains in the Bill. There has, sir, been a certain amount of publicity on this subject, and very determined attempts have been made to kill the Bill and to prevent it becoming law; and I think it is important that the House should understand clearly the object which we have in view. It has been widely blazoned abroad by certain people that this Bill is a deliberate attack upon the position of established industry and commerce. I deny that, of course. In my opinion that is an entire misconstruction of the whole motive of this Bill, and I can only say that had I wished to make a direct attack upon established commerce and industry, commerce and industry would have been in far less doubt than they are today as to whether there was an attack or not. So far from being an attack on commerce and industry this Bill is an attack on quite another problem. It is an attempt to deal with the inshore fishing industry. That industry, as I have already explained to the House, is in a very languishing condition, and has been for years; and sir, during the evidence taken by the Select Committee and during the discussions which have taken place generally outside this House, there has, I think, been general agreement that the position of the inshore fishermen and the position of the fishing industry itself is one which is unsatisfactory, is one in regard to which some action is long overdue. And I think, sir, there is general agreement that the Government is justified in taking a hand in some form or other to see whether the position cannot be improved. Various suggestions have been put forward. It has been suggested that if the inshore fisherman is in such a parlous state, he should be subsidised out of general revenue in one form or other. It has been suggested that the Government, out of general revenue, should provide facilities of all kinds and leave it to private enterprise to avail themselves of those facilities, and thus improve the economic condition of the inshore fisherman. And it has been proposed in this Bill that instead of doing that we should form an organisation which would try to build the industry into an economic unit of the fishing industry as a whole. As far as subsidies are concerned, that would have been equivalent to putting the inshore fisherman on the dole, and saying: “We realise you cannot earn a decent living; there is nothing we can do to put you in the position of earning a proper living, but we are prepared to put you on a sub-economic basis indefinitely.” But that idea does not appeal to me, nor do I think does it appeal to the House. The second idea of providing facilitities has this difficulty, that the inshore fishermen as a whole are not yet far enough advanced to organise themselves and to avail themselves in a business-like manner of those facilities if they were provided. After considering all these points the Select Committee decided that the idea envisaged in this Bill was the proper one to pursue. It is true that under the issue of the “A” shares which the Government will take up, the rate of interest, the dividend payable, will be a very small one for some years, and to that extent you may say that the inshore fishing industry is going to be subsidised; but at any rate the subsidy is going to be given in that form in an attempt to build up something constructive with the idea that while giving that assistance, in time to come the industry will be able to stand on its own feet. Therefore I believe that a subsidy in that form is thoroughly justified. I think there is general agreement with that aspect of the Bill. But having equipped your fishermen to catch the fish, and having done all that you can do to assist him in his calling, the question of what has to be done with those fish inevitably arises, and the question of marketing comes into the picture. The difficulty arises at the inevitable point of contact where the in-shore caught fish have to be made available in some form or other to the consumer. The marketing and distribution of fish in the Union is concentrated and very strongly held in a very few hands, and it is from those people that the biggest objection has come to this Bill on the grounds that any development in that direction would interfere and impinge upon the interests which they have established, and their view managed efficiently for many years. The question therefore arises, should the Government abandon this attempt to improve the position of the fisherman, simply on the grounds that the existing fishing industry objected to it because they felt it might interfere with their activities. The committee felt that that attempt should not be abandoned on this ground, and I think they felt it especially since this Bill is not intended as an attack on private enterprise. On the contrary, it is an attempt on the part of the Government to stimulate and encourage a very important section of private enterprise in the fishing industry. The fishermen are surely entitled to be regarded as private undertakers. One of the difficulties in dealing with them is that they are such individualists and are so wedded to private enterprise and have done so little to co-operate in the past, and they will certainly remain individualists. This corporation does not propose to catch fish. The corporation intends to help individuals to catch fish, and in other words the whole idea of this corporation in dealing with the in-shore fisherman, is to promote and encourage that section of individual private enterprise which has languished in the past and which has been languishing and neglected for many years. And I must say one has not noticed that the people who are now so suddenly pleading the cause of private enterprise have evinced very much concern, or worried very much about that section of private enterprise that has been in such parlous straits for many years in the past. The committee felt that the right thing to do, and not only the right but the possible thing to do, was to reconcile the different interests where they met and to provide the means whereby on the one hand the inshore fisheries could be developed to take their part as a unit in the whole fishing industry as a full partner; and that at the same time the other sections could be satisfied that their legitimate interests would be safeguarded. It was on these lines that the committee examined the Bill, and as a result of that the Bill has been amended on the following lines; in order, in the first place to bring the fishermen themselves more into the picture, and in the second place, to give the corporation the necessary powers to develop in-shore fishing, and thirdly to reassure and safeguard established interests, and to enable them to take part in the general development, which everyone wishes to see in the fishing industry as a whole. The principal amendments which can be considered in detail in Committee are these. As far as fishermen are concerned the Bill now provides that a block of shares is set aside especially for fishermen themselves. They may buy these shares in small units up to 100 shares each, the idea being as time goes on to encourage these fishermen to make progress and to take a practical interest in the corporation which is working for them. In the second place in every area which is declared a controlled area, that is to say every area where the corporation will function, there will be a Fishermen’s Advisory Committee. That Committee will have a Government nominee as chairman and three members who will be elected by the fishermen themselves to represent them. That Advisory Committee in that area will be called on to advise the Minister and the corporation on various questions in the Bill affecting the fishing interests, and we hope by that means to get the fishermen to cultivate a collective sense of responsibility and to advise the corporation of measures needed for their welfare. The third point in regard to fishermen is in connection with Clause (c). There was a clause in the old Bill which enabled any particular area to cease registering fishermen if the Minister was satisfied that as many people as possible were earning a living in that area. I forget the exact wording of the clause, but that has been changed. The position now is that provided there are facilities and harbour accommodation available, there will be no limitation at all, the only limitation is in the event of the Advisory Committee and the Minister being satisfied that the harbour is full and can hold no more boats, that the existing facilities are being made full use of and that any further boats coming in would overcrowd the harbour and possibly endanger the safety of the boats already there. The corollary to that of course would be that an extension of these facilities would immediately have to be made to make room for the extra people who want to come in. The next amendment is in Clause 21 providing for the establishment of a Fisheries Development Advisory Council. That Council will consist of representatives of all sections of the Fishing Industry and as provided in the Bill will have to be consulted by the Minister on various points affecting the fishing industry as a whole as to which the action of the Corporation might affect such industry. I think this Advisory Council has great possibilities, I think that properly used, it may in time become the authoritative body for a rationalised fishing industry. It depends very much I think on how the existing fishing industry approaches the Council and I think it will be a test for the industry to show how it does approach the Council. If they go on to that Council with the sole object of sitting there and preventing the Corporation from doing anything at all then the Council will be a failure, but if, as I hope, they will meet round that table with the idea of reconciling the various aspects of the fishing industry and exploring methods by which the industry as a whole can benefit and if they will sit there with the idea of assisting the Corporation in its efforts to improve the lot of the inshore fishermen, then I think this body may develop into a very useful and authoritative body and I hope it will. The third series of amendments are those which circumscribe the original powers of the Corporation wherever the Corporation would seek to enter into any field of existing interest in the pursuit of developing the inshore fishing industry. Because, as I have said, the question of marketing must come up eventually—not of marketing purely for the sake of marketing but marketing for the development of the inshore fishing industry. The Corporation must have authority to deal with that inshore fishing but it was never intended that they should have power to invade existing channels of trade simply for the sake of doing so and therefore, Sir, we have agreed to circumscribe those powers so that all interests will have an opportunity of knowing what is being done and of seeing that their interests are considered. In the first place in Clause 4, which describes the powers of the Corporation, the Governor-General’s consent will be necessary before the Corporation can undertake or take part in any existing marketing or existing activities. That means, Sir, that the Minister administering the Act will be required to stand up in Parliament and justify the advice which he has given to the Governor-General. In the second place the Advisory Council and the Advisory Committee have to be consulted on various points in the Bill which I need not specify in deetail, so that what is intended to be done is known. Thirdly, Sir, in the Bill we have provided a very wide provision for Parliamentary control, a provision which is wider than any previous measure that has ever been put through this House I believe. We now provide that the Auditor will have to give not only the ordinary form of Balance Sheet but the fullest possible information both in the Balance Sheet, Profit and Loss Account and the Schedules, together with a full Report pointing out any irregularities, or any points in which in his opinion the Corporation has exceeded the powers given it under the Act, and all these papers, together with the Chairman’s Report will be laid on the Table of the House and the House can then either discuss them or refer them to any particular select body they may wish. I think Sir that by that means Parliament will be able to watch the development of this Corporation very closely indeed and be able to deal with any tendency it may notice whether that tendency is thought to be right or wrong. I also propose to move further amendments at the Committee stage. One of these deals with the question of sales through one channel. Clause 28 of the Bill provides that the Governor-General, after consulting with the Advisory Council, may in respect of any controlled area compel all the registered people catching fish in that area to sell their fish to the Corporation. That clause was originally designed to deal with the small fishing areas at the coast where in the course of organising these fishermen it may very well be necessary to compel them in the early stages at any rate to sell their fish to the Corporation, that is to say if the Corporation is going to see that they get a stable price and help them to dispose of their fish. It may very well happen that in respect of any one or more of such areas, the Corporation may have to insist that these fishermen sell through one channel. That was the original intention of the Bill, but it was not intended by that clause that existing fishing companies would be compelled to sell their fish to the Corporation and at a price fixed by the Corporation. That was never intended. I intend to make it clear that those provisions will not apply to trawler fishing. There is also the point that existing companies not only have trawlers but they have a certain number of motor fishing boats, on which they employ fishermen at a wage. It has been represented to me that they should be excluded too. The same thing applies to the canning companies. I have explored that possibility but I am afraid it is not possible to draw up an amendment which will exclude these people without leaving a loop-hole for a general evasion of any such provisions. The next sub-section in that clause provides for exemption in any particular area of any particular body of people or any particular person from the operations of this section. That was put in in order to be able to exempt people to whom the Bill is not intended to apply. I am afraid that in respect of that aspect of it, it is impossible to provide for it specifically in the Bill, but I can give the assurance that that is the intention to exempt people in an area which is controlled and where inshore fishermen are going to be brought into one channel for selling. There is one more amendment which I shall also move. As hon. members would have seen in the Bill there are two classes of shares A and B. The A shares may be used for purposes A and D in the objects of the Bill and the B shares are to be used for purposes B and C. The objects defined in A are those referring to the advancement of schemes for the catching of fish and assisting inshore fishermen and the D paragraph deals with the provision of housing and other amenities for the benefit of the fishermen and they may be used under A shares. B and C deal with the activities of the fishing industry generally. Well, Sir, this is going to be a long business, the work under A shares will take some time and it is not likely that we shall get to the stage very soon of having to go much further than that. Moreover, Sir, I think it is quite reasonable for Parliament to say “when you propose to exercise powers which are in the Bill and for which you require B shares” it is not unreasonable that Parliament should say “bring your scheme to Parliament and ask for the money.” And I shall therefore propose in Committee that the “A” shares remain as they are but when it comes to the Corporation wanting an issue pf “B” shares for any of those purposes, it will be done by resolution of the House of Parliament. I think that is a reasonable proposal.

Will that satisfy the Chambers of Commerce?

I don’t know. I don’t think anything will satisfy them. I think there is a very important principle involved here. Parliamentary control is a matter which concerns every member, and there is a good deal of uncertainty and unrest in the country at the way Parliament in the past has created organisations and in effect it has had no control over them at all, and I think here we are taking a perfectly logical step in providing full Parliamentary control over what is admittedly to a large extent an experiment.

Parliamentary control in advance.

And in retrospect too. If we leave the provisions to Parliamentary control as they stand in the Bill, they will act as a check—they are retrospective, and they concern what was done last year.

What has the issue of ‘B” shares to do with Parliamentary control?

If the Corporation wishes to embark on a fresh scheme, the Minister will have to ask Parliament to issue shares in order to enable the Corporation to undertake this scheme, so that Parliament will have an opportunity of seeing what the scheme is.

Why was this provision not put into the Bill originally?

I think the House should accept this in its own interests. After all Parliament should be the ultimate safeguard of the civil liberties of the people and Parliament if it wishes to establish a State monopoly, or a State enterprise at any time, can do so if it wishes to do so, but so long as Parliament wishes to foster and encourage private enterprise, private enterprise should feel that Parliament is a place which would protect it from unwarranted incursion into its affairs. And there is a reverse side to that. Private enterprise would also have to satisfy Parliament that it was carrying out its activities in a manner consonant with the general interests, and I think therefore, from both sides, these provisions are very valuable and useful. Those are the main amendments. One of the criticisms which is broadcast is that the proposal in this Bill must lead to a large increase in the price of fish. I would like to point out that as far as the consumer is concerned, there is to be a director on the Board to represent the consumers’ interests; there is also to be a director on the Council who will have the same duties, and the Minister will have the power to fix the maximum price of fish so that the consumer is safeguarded in all these respects. But I do not agree that there need be an increase in the price of fish at all. In the first place trawl caught fish represents a large proportion of the fish consumed in this country— they are not affected, and in the second place, as far as inshore fish are concerned, people overlook the fact that private fishermen will have better equipment in the way of boats, better storage for the fish they catch, better marketing arrangements for the fish when caught, and furthermore that the Government is providing the finance to get them on their feet at a low rate of interest. If you take all these facts into consideration there is no reason to suppose that the activities of the fishermen may become more expensive than they are today, in fact they should be less expensive. We all know what happens today. Many of the fish caught today are shoal fish, and you have to get them quickly when they are there. The boat goes out and it spends half its time looking for the fish. When it starts catching the fish it has to get back quickly in order to catch the market, and you have the spectacle of boats coming back half full in order to get the extra price. The last comer comes in with a boatload full and the whole lot brings the man in less than the other man’s half load. If we can see to it that everyone can rely on getting the same price, whether he comes in first or last, the result will be in the fishermen catching more. I am satisfied that provided the Corporation does its job properly, the additional facilities and the extra fish, which the fishermen will be in a position to catch, will more than offset the cost of providing these facilities. I have devoted a good deal of time and thought to this Bill and I am perfectly convinced that it can assist to put inshore fishing on a much sounder footing than in the past. It will be a long term approach. It will be some years before we shall see the fruits of our labours. I am sure it will enable inshore fishing to be integrated with the whole industry, to the general interest of the whole country. Lastly, I think that the results should be an expansion of the fishing industry on rational lines along which private enterprise will have the fullest opportunity with Government approval and assistance in various forms to exploit the possibilities of the fish in our seas, not only for their own profit but for the benefit and profit of the whole country, and in that spirit I commend these proposals to the House and hope they will be acceptable.

I should like to confine my remarks in connection with this matter which is now before the House to the Bill which is before us. I noticed from the remarks of the Minister that he is going to move certain amendments at a later stage. I do not want to anticipate the effect of the amendments, but I should like to say at this stage that, while he emphasised the promotion of the welfare of inshore fishing as being of primary importance, many people as well as I gave a wider interpretation to this Bill, namely, that although it is essential with reference to our inshore fishing, we are here dealing with the development of a national industry; and I, at any rate, cannot therefore support any amendment which in any way detracts from the right of the State to develop the fishing industry or to allow it to develop to its full scope. I just want to confine my remarks to the Bill as it is before the House today. It would not have been necessary once again to take up the time of the House in discussing this matter, if it had not been for the opposition which came from certain vested interests and industries. The subject of this Bill was accepted in principal by the whole House at the discussion of the first Bill. The House therefore had no objection to the acceptance of those aspects which were proposed by the Minister at that time, and which are now practically repeated except for the amendments of the Select Committee. The House therefore gave its full approval by implication to the Bill as it appeared originally. Secondly, a particularly careful investigation was made by the Select Committee into all the aspects of the industry. The committee did its best to consider as many aspects of this matter as possible. From all sides—some sides throwing light on the matter and other sides which did not throw light on the matter—amendments were discussed in connection with the merits of the case. All sides had an opportunity of expressing an opinion in regard to the advantages or disadvantages of the Bill. Data was submitted to the committee, and as a result of that data the committee framed a new Bill for the House. A particularly pleasant feature of the deliberations and investigations was this, that in considering the amendments not the slightest emphasis was laid on party aspects. Every particular aspect was viewed from a natioaal point of view, and to me it was a most pleasant feature, in serving on this committee, that only the greater, wider national interests were placed in the forefront, and as a result of that, as a result of the acceptance of the principle of this Bill, it would not have been necessary for this House to devote much time to the discussion of this Bill, if it had not been for the opposition which has come from vested industries. I should like to endorse that this opposition also has its other side, and an opportunity will now be presented to those interests which are offering opposition to show to what extent they are prepared to contribute to the establishment of an industry of national scope for national service. They will now be given an opportunity to show to what extent they are prepared to go in safeguarding this industry. It was explained during the previous debate in this House that this intervention on the part of Parliament in an industry in our country was nothing new. Many other nations, in some form or other, have already undertaken to render State assistance to fisheries. Many countries, by way of subsidy or by way of State organisations, or even by the way of State control, have intervened in the national interest, to place fisheries under State supervision, so that the nation can get the best out of the industry. It was interesting to me to receive data from our Director of Fisheries, in connection with reports emanating from various countries. I do not want to detain the House by repeating all the data. I just want to put it to the House that State support, in some form or other, is actually being given today in Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Iceland, the Irish Free State, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Newfoundland, Norway, Portugal, Soviet Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. It is nothing new for the State in this country to intervene in order to develop an industry of national scope by means of State assistance under State supervision. The question is, of course, whether the manner in which the Government is going to intervene in the industry, is based on precedent. It is not really necessary to look for precedents, but I just want to refer to the extent and the manner in which the British Government supported the herring industry in England. In the Herring Fisheries Act which was passed in 1935, to promote herring fisheries, a board was created which has far-reaching powers. I just want to give a brief summary of those powers—

We have more than enough examples of big countries which intervened to develop the industry into one of national scope, and the powers which were granted in this connection perhaps go just as far in some respects as those which we now propose to take. Our Bill is not an innovation. On the contrary, I want to emphasise that the time is over-ripe for us to intervene. This matter has enjoyed the attention of the country for at least ten years. The Board of Trade and Industries brought out an important report as far back as ten years ago, which enjoyed the attention of the nation and of the Government of that time. As a result of those recommendations the Government devoted something like £500,000 during the past ten years to the improvement of fishing harbours. The State has already contributed its share, threfore, to facilitate and to promote the development of thy industry, but in spite of the assistance which the State has given, no one can contend that the industry assumed the national significance which it should have assumed in the life of our people. No one can contend, I think, that the industry developed satisfactory during the past ten years, not even to mention the period since Union. We have the position, as described by the Minister, that large numbers of fishermen live under poor conditions, especially the inshore fishermen. There are great possibilities of development, but in spite of those possibilities, the position even today is that the fishermen are living under poor conditions. In the first place there is the question of unsatisfactory production, but in the second place, of unsatisfactory distribution. I should like to add a few words in connection with distribution, because the hon. member on my right stated a moment ago that his most serious objection was that since the new Board will have to deal with one of the most perishable products which can be marketed, the Board might, on account of lack of experience in that respect, make a failure of the undertaking. He expressed that fear. I feel that there are great possibilities as far as distribution is concerned. In the past the problem of conservation, of preservation, either by means of refrigeration, or by means of smoking, or by drying or processing, has been neglected; it left a great deal to be desired. In that respect the Corporation can do a great deal. The Corporation will bear the stamp of a State Corporation, and capital will be made available if it can be shown that it can be profitably spent; and the Corporation should be enabled, in connection with a perishable product of this nature, to proceed along the best lines. That was one of the aspects of the investigation undertaken by the Select Committee, and the assurance was given to us by the Director of Fisheries that in America there was hardly any type of fish which could not be properly preserved with well-known chemicals or other processes. The hon. member’s fear in this connection, will, in fact, be eliminated to a great extent by the establishment of a Corporation. But I want to refer to the unsatisfactory position in regard to distribution generally. In times of plenty, the prices are low. It is true that under war conditions that has not happened of late; but in his evidence the representative of the Department expressed the opinion that when the war is over and the trawlers are again used in the industry, there is every possibility that the same problem will again present itself. Steps must therefore be taken in anticipation to preserve the fish when there is over-production on any particular day until the following day, and then to distribute it throughout the whole country. In this connection transport difficulties should also receive attention. These are difficulties which, in fact, arise to a large extent through lack of proper refrigeration facilities, but with the progress in science and in view of what has been achieved in other countries, it is possible to provide the necessary transport facilities and to overcome these difficulties, and to facilitate the distribution in this way. Then we come to another point, and that is that in the past we have not made proper use of byproducts. If facilities are provided for preservation and processing, we would facilitate the development of by-products. We would also be able to produce new products. That is also one of the matters which received the attention of the Select Committee. We are concerned therefore not only with the conservation and preservation of fish, but also with the expansion of the industry in many directions. That is one of the reasons why the State should concern itself with this industry. A second factor which should be taken into consideration is that in the past fish and fish products have been imported from other countries to the value of £300,000 per annum in round figures. It is the opinion of the Department, as appeared in the course of evidence, that the imported products can largely be replaced by production in our own country. Since the corporation can assist in the distribution, it is an important factor in support of this great ideal. We must admit that a large section of our people do not get enough protein foodstuffs; and that could easily be implemented by fish which contains a high protein quality. Since it is the object, as the Mnister explained, to make fish available at a reasonable price throughout the country, we can in this way implement a gap in our national feeding. In reply to the points which have been raised by private undertakings, I want to say at this stage that frequently it is often not appreciated that the world is today undergoing a revolution and that that revolution has convinced the nations that the State should intervene more and more where private initiative has failed in the past. Without being prejudiced, I think we can say with justification that private initiative has not contributed sufficiently to the development of the fishing industry, and since provision is now being made in the Bill to give private initiative and private capital an opportunity of co-operating, I agree with the Minister that private initiative is now being put to the test. We are going to see to what extent they are prepared to render State service and national service as opposed to an industry for the sake of profit only. No one expects that capital will be found for charity, but on the other hand we cannot tolerate private capital being used only for profit-making. This Bill gives private undertakings an opportunity of showing their willingness to contribute to the successful execution of this great ideal. The objection which came from many sides was that unduly great powers were being given to the Corporation. As hon. members will have noticed, these powers are contained in Clause 4 of the Bill. No one will deny that the powers which are granted to the Corporation in Clause 4 are extensive and far-reaching, but as the Minister correctly said it was never the intention, either his own or that of his Department, as confirmed by the evidence, nor of the Select Committe, that these powers should all be exercised by the Corporation. These powers were provided to ensure that the undertaking would be a success, if an unwillingness to co-operate is shown by certain people. In fact, it may also be said to reassure those who are concerned about these powers, that considerable limitations are being placed on those powers. In the first place there are at least three sub-clauses in connection with which the permission of the Governor-General has to be obtained before they can be applied; in other words, the Corporation cannot act until the Government as a whole has given its approval to the exercise of those powers. I think that is a particularly important restriction of the powers. In the second place room is left for private initiative and private undertakings if they show their willingness to co-operate in order to achieve the object which we envisage. It can therefore be said that these powers are only being granted so that they will be available if the necessary co-operation is not obtained in order to realise the objects of this Bill. The opportunity is given to private initiative to co-operate, and if that co-operation is forthcoming, many of these powers will not be exercised. On the other hand there is also the right of veto which the State can exercise through the “A” shares. We need not fear therefore that these far-reaching powers will be exercised to the detriment of private undertakings. On the contrary, the question arises whether too many restrictions are not being placed on the powers of the Corporation, and whether the Corporation should not have greater powers in view of possible opposition. As I have said, this Bill is such that an opportunity is given to private initiative to show that they are prepared to render the services which are expected of them. I have now tried to indicate that there is a necessity for State interference and that private capital will be given an opportunity. There are, however, a few important aspects of this Bill which I want to bring to the notice of the House. The first has already been emphasised by the Minister, namely, that this will be the first Bill under which such extensive powers are given to Parliament in regard to a semi-State undertaking. Some of us were a little shocked at the beginning of this Session when questions were put in connection with the investments which had been made by another State Corporation, to hear from the Minister that he did not possess the necessary data to give to this House. Capital was provided to that Corporation by the State. The Minister was the link between the Corporation and the taxpayer who is represented in this Parliament, and he told us that he did not possess the necessary details which would enable him to give the desired information to this House. This Bill contains special provisions which are the outcome of the active co-operation of all sides, of all parties of this House, to give the necessary control to Parliament in connection with a Corporation in which State capital is being invested. I think it is a far-reaching experiment which will be described as nationalisation, but which is not really nationalisation, because the capital, the interests and the management are mixed up; but it gives the people’s representatives the right to exercise supervision over the expenditure and distribution of State money, a right which should certainly be vested in this Parliament. I think that is one of the outstanding features of the Bill, that this Corporation will be subject to the supervision of Parliament, and that Parliament will be able to express its opinion from time to time by way of criticism on the Vote of the Minister or in pursuance of reports, with regard to the actual execution of the instructions given to the Corporation. Furthermore, it is perhaps a satisfactory feature that this House will have an opportunity in connection with this Corporation, which it has not got in connection with other Corporations, of expressing sound constructive criticism; and it must be to the advantage of this experiment—if I may call it that—that not only will this Parliament be able to supervise the work but the Minister will have the opportunity of examining the annual reports and annual statements of the Corporation, as well as the resolutions and minutes of the meetings of the Corporation—something for which, as far as I know, provision has not been made previously. The Minister will therefore know after every Board meeting what took place. In that way he can remain in contact with the Corporation. Furthermore, details must be furnished to Parliament by the Minister. Details must be furnished in regard to the expenditure of the capital and the capital assets of the Corporation itself. I tried to the best of my ability, to lend support to this matters through my presence on the Select Committee. I believe that here—I do not want to say we have achieved a victory— but we have reached a stage which in my opinion, if not perfect, does represent a very big step forward in enabling the nation to keep its eye on the activities of such a Corporation, and I hope Parliament will never make use of the opportunity unduly to interfere with the actions of such a Corporation.

Hear, hear.

It may, of course, make it impossible for the Corporation to continue its activities if every member expressed criticism on every possible occasion, and not always constructive criticism. I do not want to assume the right to warn Parliament—I also address the warning to myself that Parliament should not abuse this opportunity and in that way obstruct the performance of the instructions of the Corporation. A further safeguard in regard to the capital of the Corporation is this, that the Minister may appoint the auditor. All other organisations, except those which are under the supervision of the Auditor-General, appoint their own auditors. But provision is made in this Bill that the Minister himself shall appoint the auditor. The powers of the auditor are described in Clause 18 (b). He has full access to all documents. He can call for information and even take evidence under oath. He has to report to the Minister within six months of the close of the current year. That is a precautionary measure which was taken to prevent the Corporation from wrongly spending its capital and funds. I feel that as far as that can be prevented, it is prevented by the measures which are being taken in this Bill. The restriction of dividends has already been mentioned, and I need not enlarge on that. But another feature of the Bill has already been referred to in one of the objections of the critics, namely that a portion of the profits may be devoted to social purposes, namely, the promotion of the welfare of those concerned in the industry. Those of us who have had the privilege of seeing overseas what was done by private undertakings out of the income of this industry towards the improvement of the position of the workers, welcome this step. We have also seen what is done overseas by the State, where, on State authority, the onus is placed on the undertakings to apply a portion of the income for the benefit of the workers. I say that since we have seen these things, it is encouraging to find that it is laid down in this Bill that out of the revenue of the industry a portion may be devoted to the social welfare of the people concerned. One of the grievances raised by the Chamber of Industries was that it was not right to devote a portion of the income of an industry to the provision of social benefits for those concerned in the industry. I think that is an extremely unfortunae argument. It is an indication to me that the vision, the horizon or view of those people is restricted entirely to the distribution of profits amongst shareholders and managers, instead of amongst all people concerned in the industry. I welcome it, and this House ought to welcome it, that out of the income of this industry a certain sum can be devoted to the promotion of the social welfare of the various groups concerned in the undertaking. I should have liked to inform the House of the various objections which have been raised by the Federated Chamber of Industries. I made a note of six out of the summary of 26 which were made by them, and I just want to deal with this important argument, because I have not got the time to deal with the rest. It is stated here that the whole form of this Bill threatens the spirit underlying private initiative and undertaking on which the entire national economy is based and which is responsible for the attainment of the present level of civilisation. If that had been the case, and if we who do try to read and did read this Bill, were to read into it what the Federated Chamber of Industries read into it, we would have had no right of existence. But I want to say at the same time that we are trying to be honest as far as the objects and the effect of this Bill are concerned and we do not find those things in it. An opportunity is offered to private vested interests to contribute a greater share to national welfare. Large numbers of other points were touched upon, but my time has almost expired, and I want to express the hope that since this Bill makes provision for co-operation between the State and private capital, this opportunity will be used fully to the greatest advantage of everyone concerned in this industry. The State undertook in the provisions of this Bill not only to invest State capital in the corporation; the private shareholder will be given a right to have a share in the investment, and in addition to that the employees in the industry will also have an inherent share in the corporation and in the industry. I think a number of elements which form a feature of very few other Bills where the State is concerned, have been incorporated into the provisions of this Bill. I hope the fishermen who represent the industry, will see in this an attempt on the part of Parliament, an attempt on the part of the highest authority in the country, to give them a share in the development of the nation, and that they will make use of that opportunity. The possibilities of this Bill in contributing to the uplift of the individual, can hardly be realised, if the fullest use is made of the benefits. I regard this as a great experiment, and I have high hopes of the possibilities. I believe that if the nation realises that the State and private capital together can render service to the country in this manner, they will see in this Bill a sign of the changing times, of a revolution in the industrial sphere, and that we will in the future make greater use of this towards the promotion of the new spirit which we hope will come into existence in the future. In expressing this hope, I want to express the further hope that the proposed amendments of the Minister will not detract from our expectations of the Bill. I have great pleasure in supporting the Bill as it is before us, and I am convinced that I do so on behalf of every member of this side of the House.

I welcome the Minister’s statement in connection with this important Bill, and I particularly welcome his remarks in connection with the objections which were raised against the Bill by the Federated Chamber of Industries. I think the Minister’s few remarks in connection with this matter ought to disarm the agitation which arose from that source against the Bill; because I definitely feel that if the position were correctly understood by the objectors to this Bill, that opposition would fall away. I think the opposition is based primarily on the fact that the Bill is not correctly understood. Mr. Speaker, to speak of placing the fishermen on the dole and of subsidising them, is almost unthinkable. I cannot understand how one can think of developing a big undertaking and industry such as the fishing industry and making the success of it which we expect it to be under this Bill, if one thinks it can be done on the dole system. It stands to reason that in any big undertaking the question arises where the means for that undertaking should be found; and the bigger the undertaking, the greater the need for means to establish such an undertaking. Under this Bill we are launching one of the greatest undertakings which we have ever started in our country. One can do anything if one has the necessary means at one’s disposal. But we know that one cannot do anything at all unless one has the necessary means at one’s disposal, and lack of means has always been the cause of failure to do many things in our country, as well as in other countries of the world, which have cried out for development. Very often failure to do these things has resulted in great prejudice to the individuals; often to the detriment of sections of the population or to the detriment of communities; but very often these things have had to be neglected to the detriment of the state as a whole; and I am afraid that if the State does not intervene to provide the necessary means, as should be done under this Bill, the same result will ensue, namely, that the State will suffer damage and the means will not be made available. I mention that in order to show that in this Bill we are dealing with a very important matter, one which I regard as being in the interests of the whole nation; and the question arises whether this matter should be neglected because of lack of private initiative, because of lack of funds; or is it the duty of the State, as the Minister is doing in this Bill, to provide the means for the development of this important industry? I only hope that this matter will not suffer shipwreck; that we will pass this excellent Bill in the House, and once it has been put through the House, content ourselves with the knowledge that it is on the Statute Book without making the necessary progress which we expect in the interests of the country generally. This Bill offers enormous possibilities. In my imagination I see in this Bill a complete revolutionary change in the history of this industry, and I visualise a change in the sphere of development, a sphere which up to the present has been entirely undeveloped throughout the centuries. It is a generally acknowledged fact, and everyone knows that we have an unexplored gold mine in our fishing industry in this country, a gold mine which offers enormous possibilities, but a gold mine which is practically a dead letter in the life of the nation and which remains a dead letter. Although gold mines, generally speaking, are controlled by magnates, by companies, we have a gold mine here which cannot be developed or exploited by magnates or companies, if we make correct use of the machinery which is placed at our disposal by this Bill. We have a gold mine here which can be developed as a source of revenue and riches for the poorest of the poor amongst the people. I think it is our first duty to see that this mine is not exploited in the interests of monopolies to the prejudice of those poor people who actually mine the gold by catching the fish in the sea, and that it should not be exploited to the prejudice of the people who, in my opinion, should have first claim to that fish at a reasonable price, so that every family, when fish is available, will be able to buy it. We will always have vultures; we will always have people who will try to exploit the fisherman, who will try to exploit the consumer. It is our duty to see to it that it does not happen under this Bill. I often fear that we do not sufficiently appreciate the riches we have in our fishing industry in this country, and because we possess those riches, and because those riches are undeveloped, it is our duty to provide the necessary facilities to develop those riches. One of the first requirements in developing the fishing industry in the best interests of the people so that every section of the population will derive benefit from it, is to see that we have safe harbours. That is one of the first essentials. A great deal has been done as far as harbours are concerned, but I am afraid a great deal will still have to be done to render our fishing harbours safe, if we want to make the necessary progress. That will cost a great deal, but it does not matter what the cost will be if by so doing we make an investment which will give thousands and tens of thousands of people a decent living. A further necessity is safe boats for the fishermen. As things were in the past, we can hardly realise how unsafe the boats frequently were in which the fishermen had to risk their lives in order to catch the fish for our consumption. We must therefore provide safe boats. It should not be necessary for them to fish only near the coast. As soon as the fish leave the coastal waters, they are unable to go after them. We know that weather conditions play a very important role in the supply of fish. Today you may have a large shoal near the coast and by tomorrow it has moved further into the sea and three or four days later the shoal is beyond the reach of the fishermen. We must provide the means whereby the fishermen can get safe boats so that they will be able to go after the fish. Even the present motor-boats are too dangerous in stormy weather. The fishermen should be assisted in the purchase of those boats. The Government should provide the necessary facilities to give them loans, if necessary, in order to buy the boats. They themselves are, of course, too poor to do it. They cannot raise the necessary loans. It is therefore the duty of the Corporation or of the Government to provide them with the necessary facilities for the purchase of boats. Then, the licence fees which they pay for the boats should be a nominal amount. The fees ought not to be based on the size of the boat or on its horsepower. Let us remember that we are not dealing here with pleasure vehicles; we are not dealing here with vehicles which damage the roads; we are not dealing here with vehicles which are used for pleasure purposes. We are dealing here with the means of livelihood of a poor section of the population who make their living by engaging in fishing and making available a necessary product, a valuable item of food, to the country as a whole. As far as fuel is concerned, since we are today making fuel available to agriculturists on a cheap basis, I should like to see that the fishermen get their fuel under the same conditions, so that they can get it more cheaply. Then I come to the regulation and the distribution of fish. We find when there is a plentiful supply of fish that big catches are made, and as the hon. Minister correctly stated, by the time the last boat comes in the price has already fallen. Today the fish is practically given away for nothing, and tomorrow the same people who had to stand by while the fish was practically given away, have to pay high prices for it. Why cannot the fish be bought in times of plenty, undergo the necessary processing and then be kept in cold storage to be made available at a later date when fish is practically unobtainable? It is very difficult to convey fresh fish to the interior, to places like Johannesburg, for example. One cannot send fresh fish to those places unless it is properly prepared and kept in cold storage—unless it is properly processed. Today that is not done with the result that the inland market is almost unexploited. Let me say that I have seen “geelbek” (Cape salmon) sold at 25s. per fish, and four days later at 1s. 6d. An impossible situation is created. At 25s. the average consumer cannot afford to buy fish, and at 1s. 6d. the fishermen cannot make a living unless it happens to be a particularly big catch. The fishermen are very hard working people, people who risk their lives for a very meagre living. These people are not subsidised, nor do they continually approach the Government for subsidies or other assistance. They try to cut their coat according to their cloth, and when they happen to have too little, they see to it that they do without it. Is it not our duty to see to it that people who make ends meet on so little get the best out of the industry where they risk their lives, when there is an opportunity of getting a plentiful supply of fish? We have ideal breeding places along our coasts. To mention only one—I have yet to learn how big the Agulhas bank is. Some people say it is 50 miles wide and 400 miles long. In any event we have one of the most ideal breeding places on the Agulhas, probably in the whole world. The question is whether we have properly developed those breeding places of the fish. Have we attempted in any wav to encourage the breeding? Have we ever done anything to derive the maximum benefit from those ideal breeding places which we have along our coasts? Apart from that we have other rich breeding places on our coasts, and instead of developing them, instead of placing fish at the disposal of our own population in this country, we allow the fish to breed here to the advantage of other countries in the world. The fish do not remain here, of course. We all know that they continually move on. If the fish breed in our coastal waters and are not caught here, they move on and other countries get the benefit. We would not allow our cattle, for example, to trek. We would try to keep them here. But we allow fish which breed on our coasts to move on to other seas. Today we do not get the benefit of the fish which breed here; other countries get the benefit, and we are prepared to import the same fish from other countries. I say that under this Bill, under this Corporation, we can provide the necessary means to prevent that in the future and to make full use of the fish which breed in our coastal waters. The eruption which we had recently, gives us an idea of the rich supply of fish along our coasts. Millions of fish were floating on the surface. That gives us an idea of the wealth of our fishing industry along the coasts; and that wealth has been hopelessly neglected in the past; it has not been exploited for the benefit of the country. We know that fish is particularly wholesome. Very often while I sit here, listening to the speeches which are made in this House, I wonder whether it is not necessary for many of us to eat more fish. If fish does give us brain power or intellectual capacity, I think it might be a good idea to eat a little more fish. The country would derive benefit from it. It is rather strange that one of our fishing towns along the coast, namely Hermanus, provided a greater number of volunteers for the front, pro rata, than any other town or city in the Union. Sooner or later these people will return from the front. Many of them are trained fishermen; they grew up in the fishing industry; it has become part of their make-up and character. They will want to come back as fishermen and return to their old industry. It is therefore our duty to see that the necessary facilities are provided to these people when they return to enable them to make a better living than they were able to make before this Bill was passed and before they left; that they will be able to lead a better life than they were able to do in the past. Why should we import fish? We ought to be a fish exporting country and not an importing country. If the war has taught us one thing, it has taught us that with the continual development in every sphere, every country should try to become economically independent as far as possible. The fishing industry should assist us in becoming independent. We ought to be an exporting country, but we are not making the right use of our rich supplies of fish. In my opinion the fishing industry has five sections, and I am thinking of those five sections especially in discussing this measure. In the first place there are the fishermen themselves, the people who have to risk their lives, who have to get up early in the morning and brave the dangers of the sea, and who frequently have to catch fish in wet weather under trying conditions, and then come home and clean the fish and prepare it after landing it. Those are the people who, in my opinion, should be accorded all the consideration which this Bill provides. In the second place we have the consumer, the man who cries out for a piece of fish and who has the right to expect that he will get it, even in the interior, at a fair and reasonable price so that he and his family, even in the heart of the interior, will be able to get a piece of fresh fish. Thirdly, I have in mind the distributors who were responsible for the distribution of fish in the past. They rendered a necessary service. That section which delivers the fish to the consumers is a very deserving section. That is the third section which, I think, would suffer if this Bill in any way conflicts with the vested interests of the three sections. They have the right to expect fair and just treatment under this Bill. But in the fourth place we have the exploiters and parasites who try to exploit the fishermen who have to risk their lives, or the consumers who can barely afford to buy the fish. For the parasites I have no time, and I strongly want to urge the Minister therefore to leave no loopholes in this Bill which will permit of the continued existence of the parasites. Perhaps one should also mention the fifth section, namely the monopolies. An attempt will undoubtedly be made under this Bill to create monopolies whereby the sections which ought really to benefit, can be exploited. For that reason it is my intention to ask the Minister to accept an amendment during the Committee stage which provides that where any monopoly comes into being, it will be eliminated. No matter what law one makes, there will always be loopholes through which the clever parasites will get in and try to score an advantage at the expense of the producers and consumers. For that reason I shall ask in the Committee stage that an amendment be inserted to the effect that where monopolies come into being those monopolies can be taken over by the Corporation by arbitration. If the Corporation is of opinion that a monopoly has come into existence which has a detrimental effect on the industry, the Corporation and the Minister should have the power to take over such a monopoly by means of arbitration and to fix the price at which such a monopoly can be taken over. I am speaking subject to correction—I did not see it—but I have been told in all seriousness that when a large catch is made along the coast, there are certain interests who, as soon as they discover that there has been a big catch and that the market will be flooded, throw away and destroy the fish instead of landing it and placing it on the market. It is far-reaching if anything of that kind is allowed to happen. A large section of the population pines for fish, and certain interests are destroying the fish. That should not be allowed to happen. I should like it to be laid down that anything of that kind will not be allowed to take place and that the Corporation, when such unlawful acts do take place, will be in a position to buy the surplus fish, to process it and to see that it is placed on the market in times of scarcity. I heartily support the Bill. I welcome it, and I hope that by means of this Bill we shall in the course of time be able to bring into being something really worth while in the best interests of the country and of the nation as a whole.

I only wish to make a few remarks in connection with what is a highly important Bill, and a seemingly contentious Bill. Most of us have received letters and requests to oppose this Bill from various parts of the country, and many members of this House besides myself have received such requests. But I should like to draw the attention of the Minister to very important messages which I have received from two important bodies in my constituency. I refer to the Border Chamber of Industries and East London Chamber of Commerce, and their messages are as follows. This is a message from the Border Chamber of Industries—

That is what I am doing now. From the East London Chamber of Commerce I received this message—

You can have my copy of a telegram, too.

Last week I received a further communication which, to my mind, is a very important one, and which I ask the Minister to give his serious consideration to—

Those telegrams expressed the views of two very important organisations in my constituency. The Minister stated that it is not the intention of the Government to enter into competition with private enterprise, and I believe him when he makes that statement. He also stated that industry should not be alarmed, as there would be no basic change in the industrial policy of the Union. Now I have been told that the Fishing Industry Development Bill under the guise of the Corporation, can give power to the Government to engage in the selling of fish canning and in other industries. Industry and commerce are alarmed at the trend of things as illustrated in this Bill. Industry looks upon the introduction of this Bill as the creation of a precedent for the piecemeal encroachment of the State into the sphere of private enterprise. And finally, Mr. Speaker, I have been asked to state on the floor of the House that these two organisations oppose the Bill on the following three grounds: One, that it embodied principles which are contrary to the foundation on which our agricultural, industrial and commercial life are based; secondly, it attacks what is fundamentally a social security problem in a piecemeal and impracticable manner; and lastly, it is calculated materially to increase the price of fish to the public unless the price is subsidised by the Government.

I have listened with great interest to the telegrams which the hon. member for East London (North) (Mr. Christopher) has just read to this hon. House. I think I am safe in saying that most of us, at any rate on our side of the House, have received similar messages, and I think I am safe in saying that those messages would not have been despatched and the post office would not have received the revenue from the despatch of them, if they had heard the terms of the amended Bill which the Minister has this afternoon placed before this House. I want, as one who bitterly opposed the introduction of the Bill when it was first before the House, to congratulate the Minister very sincerely indeed on the amended Bill he has now put before the House, and to say that I support it wholeheartedly. The decision to defer the issue of the “B” shares is a challenge to commerce and industry and to private enterprise to show what they can do. The Minister with the introduction of this Bill and the establishment of the Corporation, will undoubtedly place facilities in the hands of the inshore fishermen, such as they have not been able to have in the past, and I believe that that action and the establishment of this Corporation will increase the catch of inshore fish. I believe that commerce and industries will co-operate with the Corporation in disposing of that fish. The machinery that has been established by them over a long period of years at very considerable cost is machinery which cannot be produced in a short space of time, and it would be criminal if a Government Department or Corporation, or any other establishment lost the opportunity of co-operating with such an established concern, and marketing the product they catch. As one who in a small way is interested in commerce and industry, I say that if commerce and industry and private enterprise fail to co-operate and do not co-operate 100 per cent. in the work of the advisory council which has been established by this Bill, we who represent commerce and industry will agitate for the introduction of the “B” shares, which we consider will not be needed if commerce and industry co-operate with this Corporation and function with it satisfactorily. The provisions which have been made in this Bill for Parliamentary control are, in my opinion, one of the most important provisions which have been made in this House. Provision has been made in this Bill for Parliamentary control and they constitute in my opinion one of the most important provisions which have been made in this House. If such provisions had been embodied in other Bills and applied to other concerns in this country dealing with produce and if those concerns were similarly controlled by Parliament I think a considerable amount of waste and loss of money which has taken place in the last few years would have been obviated. I believe that this Corporation will be able to establish once and for all whether the rich fishing grounds which are said to be available round our coast really exist. We have been told for many years that the waters surrounding the coast of the Union are very rich indeed, I have heard it stated that our seas abound with fish and contain more fish than the waters in any other part of the world. These statements which in some instances are undoubtedly exaggerated have yet to be proved and I hope that the Minister and his Corporation will see that a full investigation is made into these fishing grounds, and we shall be able, as soon as the war is over, to take such steps as will establish once and for all where the fish are, where they trek and in what volume they are there to be caught. If the Corporation can do that and at the same time improve facilities in existing harbours, build new ones and build boats for fishermen, I believe the supply of fish in South Africa will be very considerably increased and the price will not advance. It is not fair to talk about monopolies in the fishing industry. We who have investigated the industry know that the price of fish compares with the price of fish in any part of the world and I have yet to find any proof of the oft-repeated statement that fish are dumped in the sea in order to keep the prices up. That I think is one of the stories that has been circulated by interested parties. I don’t believe it but if anyone can prove it to me to be correct, I will apologise for taking up the time of the House. I would like in conclusion to give this new and amended Bill my blessing and to aasure the hon. Minister on behalf of all of us who were in opposition to the original Bill that we shall do our utmost to see it through and give the Corporation our wholehearted support.

Mr. Speaker, it is refreshing to hear the change of attitude and the changed views of those who opposed this Bill so vehemently when it was introduced originally, and I think it is a great compliment to the Select Committee that handled the Bill that we have brought about these improvements which these gentlemen have advocated. There is one point that no speaker up to now has mentioned—perhaps I am wrong, I think it was mentioned by the hon. member for Caledon (Mr. H. C. de Wet)—that point is that this Bill must be considered as part and parcel of our post-war efforts at employment. There are today hundreds of fishermen in our Navy and many thousands have joined the Army. These men will come back in due time and they have to be reinstated in their calling. Not alone is there room in this industry for those men who will be returning but there is room for thousands of others in this primary industry of fishing and in the secondary industries that will be developed from it. Very little mention has been made of the development of this industry during the last few years, during the war period, such as the development of fish oil, fish meal and fish fertiliser and dozens of other industries, secondary industries, which can be developed from this primary industry. Under the changed conditions now by which the Minister proposes to exclude the trawlers from the provisions of the distribution part of the Bill, I think there is just one weakness. The Bill provides a very important point and that is that the industry as such should contribute towards the social and economic uplift of its workers and that is a very sound principle. Now it so happens that 90 per cent. of the fishermen produce 15 per cent. of the output whereas the other 10 per cent. are producing 85 per cent. of the output. Now are we going to exclude these people who are producing 80 per cent. of the fish from contributing something towards the social welfare and uplift of the fishing industry as a whole. I hope that when the Bill comes into Committee, that the Minister will consider an amendment by which a levy can be imposed on the whole output. The levy that I have in mind will be so small, a matter of a twentieth of a penny on a pound of fish, that it will effect neither the producer nor the consumer. That will enable us to make the whole of the industry contribute something to the social and economic uplift of the fishermen. There are fishermen, inshore fishermen, who are boat owners and who would naturally come under the control of the Corporation and they would have to contribute their share, whereas the big industry as such would escape it in toto. I believe that the big interests in fish industry at last realise that this is a great national industry and I have reason to believe, indeed, I hope, that they will co-operate to the fullest extent; if they are prepared to co-operate and if an arrangement can be made to effect that purpose, I should welcome it very much. I feel that the Corporation should insist that all engaged in the industry should contribute to the uplift of the fishermen. That is a principle, of course, which might be applied to every industry. I feel sure that all this talk about the increase in the price of fish, more particularly now that trawling people are excluded, will never happen. They would not have set up all the agitation that they have done if they had not been satisfied with the profits they are making. I think we can discard the suggestion that this co-ordination of the fishing industry and this control will bring about an increase in the price of fish. What it will bring about it contentment and happiness and better conditions amongst the great majority of those who are engaged in the industry today. I do welcome this changed attitude towards the Bill and I think it is a very happy sign. If the Bill is accepted with the amendments that are proposed and the amendment which I hope to move myself, I am sure we are going to have a workable measure which will benefit not alone the industry as a whole, but those engaged in the industry and the consumers in this country.

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the House will allow me a moment or two to put before them the angle of approach that we of the Labour Party have towards this subject, and indeed in which we envisaged a simple Bill. We approached this matter in the light of widely known facts, the first being that of the great scarcity of fish, and the second the high price of the fish that there is in supply. We have been told by the hon. member for Wynberg (Capt. Butters) that our prices here in the Union compare with the prices anywhere in the world. So they do, but not to the advantage of the prices of South Africa. We have had grumbles and complaints from our wives, and the wives of other men, about the scarcity of fish and the high price of fish. We undertook an examination into the whole position, and in the course of it we went down to the fishing villages. There, Sir, we discovered another defect in the present fishing industry. We discovered for ourselves the very impoverished condition in which the inshore fishermen were living. We discovered the neglected and antiquated character of their boats, the primitive nature of the equipment and gear which they used, and we realised the tremendous distances which the greater part of these fishing communities are from any marketing centre; and in the light of these facts envisaged what really should be done to remedy this position. At the very first the Government should give them some help with regard to decent dwelling houses and the simple social and medical amenities. That, possibly in groups of eight suitable men, we should subsidise fishermen to enable them to get a better boat and up-to-date tackle. We then thought it would be necessary to put on the road, for example, between Paternoster and Cape Town, fast refrigerator trucks to bring in the increased catch. We saw the need in the city for cold storage, for refrigerator chambers, as it were, to preserve the fish until such time as it reached the market, the actual consumers, with a simple coupon system of paying out to the fishermen for their proportion of the catch. That would be a simple thing. To give the fishermen better equipment, to give them the means to get their fish into Cape Town or some other city, to provide cold storage to preserve the fish, and some simple system of pricing and distributing the fish. So we came to this Parliament with a plain and clear plan in mind, which we hoped to commend to hon. members. Considerably to our surprise, quite early in this session we were given a very complicated and very comprehensive Bill. We didn’t oppose that, but on behalf of my party I expressed the hope that big monied interests would not be allowed to get control of the Corporation to be set up, or exercise undue influence concerning it. Now our fears seem to us to be about to be realised; at least, organised private enterorise has succeeded in scaring the Government, or shall I say it has persuaded the Government, into watering down this Bill. That, we think, is a great pity. We shall support this Bill because it is better than nothing, but we do so with reluctance because it is not as good now as it was, and is not the same Bill. That is shown, I submit, by the complete turnabout of the hon. member for Wynberg (Capt. Butters), who told us he was 100 per cent. against it in its previous form, and was now wholeheartedly in favour. That is my reply to the Minister’s contention that very little change is introduced by these amendments. Before I get on to the documents which I am afraid I shall have to handle in my speech. I want to pay a very sincere tribute indeed to Dr. von Bonde, the Director of Fisheries, and Mr. Spooner, whose office I think is that of Technical Adviser to the Department of Commerce and Industries. I want to say how greatly they have assisted me, and I think all the members of a Select Committee which took, over the period of a couple of months, very great and constant pains to produce the best Bill that was possible—on a give-and-take basis representing differing points of view—the Bill which has since been toned down drastically by the Minister. The evidence which was given by our own Director of Fisheries, both as to the presence in sufficient abundance of fish, and concerning the other oceanic wealth which we can reap, was to me an education in itself; and if I gained nothing else, that would repay me for the weeks, indeed the months, that were spent on this matter. Now we have had doubts cast on some of the evidence that he gave, as to whether fish are in our seas in enormous quantities, or in sufficient quantities to make a very great national industry of deep-sea and inshore fishing. We have been challenged as a House that this must be tested. I have said so, too. It cannot be tested while the Director has not a fisheries survey ship that is competent to do the job, to make the marine exploration that is so very necessary. I hope that under the powers which still are conferred on the Minister, or the Corporation eventually, in this Bill, we shall widen our vision a great deal, whether the fish are there in these great quantities, as we hope, or not; that we shall put it to the test; that we shall go much further into the biological research that is necessary, and that we shall fit up a ship that is modern in design and capable of meeting all experimental purposes. It will be expensive, but it will be very much more than worth the money, and once and for all will get our fisheries on a basis that will abide, because it is firmly and scientifically founded. I have paid a compliment to the evidence given us on the Select Committee by our own Department of Fisheries. I cannot extend that compliment to all the evidence that was placed before the Committee. I had the feeling in the Committee that from some of the wealthier witnesses we got only semi-contemptuous consideration—some of these witnesses did not seem to hold a very high opinion of the judgment or the knowledge of the average member of Parliament. I take a higher view of it, and I have no doubt that the average member of this House will be very well able to assess the document which has been sent to us entitled: “The Fishing Industry Development Bill—Open Statement by the South African Federated Chamber of Industries to all Members of Parliament”. I shall have to quote four or five of these paragraphs for the sake of my argument, which is, in effect, that the private enterprise which has dictated this and many other such documents in the course of this enquiry is itself confused in mind, and accordingly is not at all a good guide for this legislative department. Now let me reaed Paragraph 1, first—

It is true that there was a preponderance of evidence in favour of maintaining the status quo, keeping the powers where they now rest, but that preponderance is sufficiently explained by the fact—I think I’m quite fair in saying this—that the people who came before us to defend property rights, outweighed those men who appeared to plead for their rights to a bare living, by at least four to one. I ask the House to remember this, that although the preponderance in quantity of evidence was in favour of the status quo, the Committee unanimously ignored these iterations and reiterations; and that Select Committee was composed of one Socialist only and eleven “other ranks”. So however much evidence there was submitted, however overwhelming was its quantity, it was apparently not sufficient in quality. Then Paragraph 2 says this—

If there was no other reason than the standard of civilisation which has been reached by the employees of some great fishing companies today, that in itself is sufficient for the passing of such a Bill as this. Whoever is the present management, whether it is a monopoly or not, is surely to be held to some extent responsible for the present conditions of service and social life of the fishermen employed. And the conditions are bad; and I am reminded in passing—since reference is made to existing levels of civilisation—I am reminded of a story told by that great President of America, Abraham Lincoln, about a man who had murdered his father and his mother, and they asked for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan. I suggest that the argument is very much the same in this case. Then I come to Paragraph 3, which reads—

Well, it is of no help whatever to me. If hon. members will refer to Pages 360 to 371 of the Report of the Select Committee, when I had the opportunity and the pleasure of examining the witnesses, they will see what replies were given there. I think members who do that amount of research work will agree that what the Federated Chamber of Industries wanted was this, that the Government should continue spending, and should in future spend in much greater supply than formerly, monies for the improvement of harbour facilities, and indeed, on harbours themselves—the Government should also spend larger sums for fisheries research—the community at large should in fact find all the money; but the Federated Chambers of Industry or the Associated Chambers of Commerce or both of them, should have control. I got that very answer from one of the witnesses in the course of that examination. There were also apparent inconsistencies, as when on the one hand we were told that the fish were not there, or were not there in sufficient quantities to justify development on a large scale, and at the same time were exhorted to spend much more State money in furnishing facilities for the industry. We come now to Paragraph 6 of the Open Statement, which is as follows—

What a terrible thing! The State proposes to establish a monopoly! In the course of the examination which I have mentioned of one particular witness, the matter of personal monopoly was raised. The questions put by me to Mr. G. Williamson were as follows—

If it was all under one control and that control was competent?—It would depend upon the competency of the control. I happen to be one of those who have enjoyed a monopoly for many years.

You have enjoyed it?—I said that deliberately. I did enjoy it. I virtually had a monopoly in the manufacture of cans in England for many years. In South Africa I virtually enjoyed a monopoly in the manufacture of cans as well. I did enjoy that monopoly because nobody could compete with me. I enjoyed it because I was so efficient, because my goods were so good and my price was so low that the firms who tried to compete with me could not sell at my price and they went out of business.

My point is that I am not particularly impressed when people complain: “Oh, the Government is setting up a monopoly”; while they themselves have to admit that they have participated in the same thing. That does not seem to me to be what I once called in this House “cricket of the normal type”. Proceeding to Paragraph 8—

Now, it seems, we have advanced from a doubt concerning the quantity of fish available, to the certainty that they are not there. Phantasy is just a fairy tale; and yet in the same breath they ask that South Africa shall increase its national fisheries research. Frankly, I cannot follow such reasoning as this, and I doubt very much if any hon. member can make sense of it. There is only one other point that I should like to mention on this matter before I go more specifically into this question of monopolies. I refer to Paragraph 12—

I take that to be an attempt to frighten the farmer, and I do not think in any case it would succeed. The point I would make here is that the produce of the sea, as indeed the produce of the land, is quite a different thing from all sorts of luxury products. It is a matter of food, and it is not unreasonable that where the food of poor and in many cases starving people is concerned, special arrangements should be made. This Bill never purposed taking over the property of a company willy-nilly. Had it ever done so it would have paid to the full for whatever assets were so obtained. Nor, even if the farming industry were nationalised, would there be any question of taking a farm or a plough or a homestead or anything that was his, from the farmer. The change would merely guarantee to him what at present he is very far from enjoying, a steady sale for all the produce his farm was capable of producing. The foregoing is the basis of my objection to the fact that the Government has weakened this Bill, the request of a very limited number of interested people. My contention is that the objects of the Bill are quite laudable; but the critics are confused in mind and therefore their statements are confused. I want to refer this matter to the House for judgment, and it is necessary to go back to the matter of monopoly. On Page 225 of the Report—the section is in the special memorandum put before the Select Committee by the Associated Chambers of Commerce—this statement occurs—

I hope, Sir, that that is quite plain to the House. It is a simple and unqualified statement. But later in the Report (Appendix B) we have a statement by Mr. G. D. Irvin, of Germiston, in which these words occur with reference to some trawlers brought out by Sir George Doughty—

I submit, that frankly and openly contradicts the previous statement. Then on Pages 12 and 13 of the Appendix—still from the memorandum of Mr. Irvin— he quotes Senator Boydell, who was the head of the Cost of Living Commission in the last war, and closely examined this state of affairs in the fishing industry. According to the statement by Mr. Irvin, Senator Boydell said—

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. 26 (1), and the debate was adjourned, to be resumed on 10th May.