When I last dealt with this matter, I stated that the Minister of Welfare and Demobilisation was again making one of his usual statements, which are full of promises and prospects. The other day I looked up the newspapers, not with the deliberate intention of going into all the statements which the Minister had made, but when we go to the library and we look at the “Cape Argus” and the “Cape Times”, we find that hardly two weeks pass or the Minister of Demobilisation makes a statement, emphasising how serious the housing position is and setting out the Government’s proposals. And there it remains. Just as the Government gets no further than promises, commissions and words in connection with social security, so it is in the case of housing—the houses are simply not built. No wonder that we find dissatisfaction in regard to this position in the country generally. Only yesterday one of the local bodies, namely the Urban Housing League in Cape Town, through a person like Mr. Charles te Water, again expressed its disappointment and indignation at the attitude of the Government. Inter alia, he said this—

Then he goes on to say in regard to the position in and about Cape Town—

He might have added the lack of policy on the part of the Government. The Government gets no further than statements, and what surprises me is the fact that the English Press has degenerated to such an extent in recent times in connection with matters of this kind. I always imagined that they wanted to keep journalism on a high level. As a matter of fact, they did so when it fared well with them and their party, but now that things are going wrong, we find that they were only decent when it went well with the Government, and now that it is faring badly, they grasp at anything in order to keep the public in the state of mind in which they want the public to be. The most senseless statements on the part of the Minister are published throughout the country in the hope of keeping their followers satisfied. I just want to say this in passing. Heaven be thanked that there is now a journal for the English-speaking people in South Africa which will be able to open their eyes so that they will not only see one side of the picture, but be able to realise what facts are being suppressed. I must say that the English Press has become expert in withholding facts from their supporters. When we on this side say anything, it is either suppressed or it is distorted. But I say that only in passing. The Minister jumped about the other afternoon until the hon. member for Beaufort West (Mr. Louw) attacked him and pointed out to the House that the Minister had started off with the announcement that 2,500 houses would be built every month; later on he amended it to 2,000; and subsequently he amended it to 1,000 per month. I am surprised that there is not a single Minister present this morning, except the Minister of Native Affairs, who has nothing to do with this matter. The Minister of Welfare and Demobilisation is not here, although a specific motion in connection with his department has been moved, and no one has apologised for his absence.

I shall make notes.

I want to express the hope that the iniquitous habit of the Minister of Agriculture will not infect the decent Ministers.

Order, Order! The hon. member must not use such expressions.

The Minister of Agriculture is opening an exhibition.

I am not referring to the Minister of Agriculture at the moment. The Minister of Native Affairs need not become excited and dissatisfied. I expressed the hope that other Ministers would not follow the example of the Minister of Agriculture in absenting themselves and walking about in the lobby while a motion in connection with their department is discussed here. I want to say in all honesty and to the credit of the Minister of Native Affairs that we know he is the last person who will follow that example; that is how we know him. I am not casting any reflection on him. The Minister of Demobilisation continually changed his mind, and from 2,500 houses per month he came down to 2,000 and subsequently to 1,000. The question which occurs to one is this. When he makes statements of that kind, the people are led to believe that this Government is building houses; and there is not a single Minister who can get up and say that this Government has laid the foundation of a single house in South Africa. What is the Minister’s explanation? He says: “We did our duty in encouraging the local authorities; money was made available at a reasonable rate of interest, and we are continually encouraging them to build houses for the people.

And then they do not take steps to make building material available.

That is the main point. I am coming to it. I have before me the monthly bulletin of statistics, also in connection with the housing position. In this report the number of building plans which were approved of is given and the number of houses which were completed, in respect of September, October and November, 1944. Six hundred plans were approved of in respect of these three months. That is for places like Cape Town, East London, Kimberley, Durban, Pietermaritzburg, Johannesburg and the rest of the Witwatersrand, Pretoria and Bloemfontein. In all those places plans for 600 houses were approved of during those three months. That is an average of 200 per month for all these places. How did the Minister arrive at 2,500 per month which he later, reduced to 1,000? Let us take the number of houses completed. It is 1,169 for those various places in respect of the three months. It means an average of 300 per month. That is the actual position. Since that is the position, what can the people expect of this Government? This Government is not building. There is no State responsibility. No, the responsibility is thrown on local bodies. And what is the position of the local bodies? I had the honour of serving for a long time on one of the local bodies. I say emphatically that one needs more than Job’s patience if one wants to embark on a housing scheme in one’s own town. I do not say that one needs Job’s patience; I say one needs more than Job’s patience. In the annual report of the department of Public Health in respect of the year ending 30th June, 1943, the department explains how difficult it is for local bodies to embark on a local housing scheme. On page 13 of the report we read—

That was under the old Act; that is not the position under the new Act.

If I want an advisor in this House, I would certainly not ask the advice of that hon. member. He is the last person I would approach.

You need not use insulting language.

The report says—

1. (1) Application by local authority for an allocation of funds.
2. (2) Recommendation by Central Housing Board for approval of allocation by Administrator.
3. (3) Approval by local authority of scheme prepared.
4. (4) Submission of scheme to Central Housing Board and application for loan to carry it out.
5. (5) Recommendation by Central Housing Board to Provincial Administration for approval.
6. (6) Referred to Townships’ Board by Provincial Administration for approval of layout which has already been approved, after in many cases revision by the Central Housing Board.
7. (7) If a Native scheme, approval by Minister of Native Affairs is also required.
8. (8) Application to Chairman, Municipal and Public Utilities Building Advisory Committee for approval.
9. (9) Referred to Deputy Controller of Building materials for permit to build.
10. (10) Application to Local Divisional Inspector of Labour for sanction to utilise required man-power.

One is nearly breathless from merely mentioning all these things which the local authority is required to do. Then there may still be a hitch in connection with everyone of these points. One often has to write four or five letters, apart from the various interviews one has to have with the various people. If one considers this plan of the Government, where it is only acting in an advisory capacity and making statements, and one considers the lack of unity of policy, apart from the fact that they cannot get the building material and the personnel, if one takes all this in consideration, it is difficult to visualise our getting houses in South Africa at all. It is difficult to see how we are ever going to get houses. But when one sees what the municipalities have done, which have, at any rate, made a start with building, the results cannot be regarded as satisfactory from a national point of view. I am now referring to those who were able to build. I shall come later to the large number who cannot build. In passing I just want to draw the attention of the House to the fact that there is not a single Minister in his seat, except one who is unilingual.

He is getting assistance now.

There are one and a half now.

More than enough for you.

Now the Minister will at any rate be able to understand more or less what I say, because his interpreter is sitting next to him. I say the manner in which they tackled this matter is not satisfactory from the national point of view. Let us see how many houses have been built under the Housing Act of 1920, from the time it came into operation until June, 1943. 8,167 houses were built for the European population under the economic housing scheme; the total for non-European occupation is 10,090. But that is as far as economic housing under Housing Act No. 35 of 1920 is concerned. Let us see how many houses were built under the sub-economic housing schemes. While only 4,386 houses were built for Europeans, 30,027 houses were built for non-European occupation; seven times as many houses for non-Europeans as for Europeans. The Minister must not think for a moment that I begrudge the non-Europeans houses. It is as a result of the housing conditions of the nonEuropeans that they contract tuberculosis and all sorts of diseases which are subsequently carried to the European. The Minister must not be under the impression for a moment that I begrudge the non-Europeans those houses. Judging by these figures, it would seem that, the municipalities of Cape Town and the Witwatersrand—I do not include Port Elizabeth—are more concerned about housing for non-Europeans than they are about housing for Europeans. Let us now take the money which was used during that time under the sub-economic scheme. It is more than £2,600,000 in respect of Europeans; for non-Europeans it is £9,388,000 approximately. I just want to repeat that we do not begdudge the non-Europeans housing, but why do the municipalities consistently leave the Europeans in the lurch? When one looks at this disappointing result, one asks oneself whether the housing position of South Africa should be allowed to remain as it was in the past, whether the Government should only make the money available and then leave it in the hands of public bodies. Those who are too poor cannot build, and those who can build, build mostly for the non-Europeans. I say it cannot go on like this. The hon. Minister stated last year that as a result of the report of the Planning Council and because there were certain local bodies which were not building houses, he wanted to go further in the Act and provide that where they did not build houses, the State should have the right under the Act to intervene to build houses. I just want to say that on this side of the House I heartily welcomed that, because the policy of the Nationalist Party is that housing is a State responsibility; the State should be responsible for the housing of its people. We cannot simply leave it to the arbitrary decision and the will of the local bodies. With this Act which the Minister introduced last year, he practically gave another dummy to the people. Let us hear what the Health Committee says in regard to this matter—

With the experience I have, I think what the Health Committee says here is perfectly true, that the people who would like to build houses, know how difficult it is for them to throw the responsibility on the local taxpayer. In the case of a city or town where there is an industry and where one is certain of the population, one knows that the income is there and one can then take the risk of building. I notice the hon. Minister of Lands is here. I know that he did his duty at Philipstown where he started a scheme for the poor people and also for the coloureds. He knows what difficulties one experiences in connection with the local taxpayers. The objection is that there is the possibility that there will not always be people in the town to occupy the houses which are built. The people are afraid that there may be a depression again when those houses will have to stand vacant. That is a risk which the local authority takes, and when it is poor, it is very often impossible for it to take that risk. I say therefore, and I want to repeat it, that the Act of last year made provision for the Minister to act where the local bodies did not build. I just want to say this: he will not succeed but it is the duty of the State to build houses itself, because if we build houses, we must not only build houses for non-Europeans, as the large municipalities usually do. No, we must provide housing accommodation for the lowly paid workers, the apprentices and physically defective people, and there is one thing which we must do and that is to clear up the slums, and we must see to it that those slums, once cleared up, do not again become slums. It is not always within the power of the local authority to do that. It has become a matter of such a far-reaching and embracing nature, that it is the duty of the State to take care of those things. It must fall under the State. The State should have its inspectors and it should see to those things. The State can do it very much better than the local authorities. But there is another factor to be considered in the big cities; in building houses there, we must see to it that they are built on the basis of the policy which this Party advocates, namely on the policy of separateness. I say it is scandalous to give people the right to build houses for nonEuropeans in a European area.

I want to remind the hon. member of the motion of the hon. member for Westdene (Mr. Mentz).

I am on the point of concluding. I just want to say that that is one of the reasons why housing should be entirely under State control and why it should be a State responsibility, because we cannot allow Europeans and non-Europeans to build houses in the same residential area. The hon. member for Beaufort West (Mr. Louw) made certain suggestions which can meet the immediate position in regard to the failure to provide building material.

There again is an antipolicy.

It is very often better to have an anti-policy than to have no policy at all. It is very much better for that hon. member who has just interrupted me and who often gets up in this House to make laudatory speeches in regard to the Prime Minister, to remain silent. It is indisputably true that the country as a whole is very, very dissatisfied and shocked in regard to the lack of policy on the part of this Government, and the lack of policy on the part of the Government in connection with housing is not only criticised on this side; oh, no, it is criticised on that side too. I need’ only mention what was said by that hon. member who has just interrupted me.

Mention his name.

The member for “Mental Hospital”.

I am very sorry I cannot get it here. But I want to say this to the hon. member for Hospital (Mr. Barlow) that he is one of the people who writes in his journal that there is such a feeling of dissatisfaction in the ranks of the United Party that the result will be that the people will demand a new composition of the Cabinet.

That will come too.

And he goes on to say that the people are demanding a new leader, and he hopes that in the year 1945 ….

That is untrue; read the article again.

I am sorry that I have not got the journal here; I did not think the hon. member would interrupt me.

You ought to have a i secretary.

I did not think the hon. member would interrupt me otherwise I would certainly have had it here, but I just want to say that the hon. member is the last person who should talk about dissatisfaction in regard to the Cabinet. Our opinion is this: It is not only the Government’s duty to make provision for and to encourage local authorities to build houses and to provide money in a better way; no, we adopt the attitude that housing should be entirely under the control of the State, that it must be the responsibility of the State and only then can the people entertain a certain amount of expectation and hope that they will get houses at some time in the future.

Mr. Speaker, I should like to take exception to the lack of interest on the part of the Cabinet in this very important debate. I think it is a discourtesy to the House and to the people of South Africa. There are two questions which are exercising the minds of the people at the present time, namely housing and the question of food. Here we have a debate dealing with these two subjects, but the Cabinet is evidently disinterested. Possibly, if we had had a debate on the question of the partition of Poland or something else which does not affect South Africa in the slightest, we would have had a full attendance of Cabinet Ministers. I would like to congratulate the hon. member for Krugersdorp (Mr. Van den Berg) on introducing this motion and on the way he presented his case, and I would like to thank him for speaking in the English tongue, because there are many members in this House who do not understand Afrikaans, and therefore I greatly appreciate the fact tht the hon. member introduced his motion in English. I should like to make just a few remarks on the question of housing. There is no doubt that there is a great shortage of housing, not only in South Africa, but all over the world, and there is probably only one country which is not short of houses, and that is Sweden. It is a very pressing problem and one that needs the closest attention of everyone who has the public interest at heart. But the way in which things are being done in South Africa, as far as I can see, will result in our never catching up with this pressing shortage. We have housing boards and housing committees all over the country and they are all talking and talking and talking, and no-one seems to be doing anything but I think the time has arrived when something should be done.

Let us hang the Government.

There are various things which are holding up building construction. One, to my mind, is that the municipal building restrictions are too severe. I think in view of the present situation, due to the war these restrictions should be modified. When I say that they should be modified I naturally do not mean that fundamental conditions or regulations concerning hygiene, ventilation and stability should be altered. Of course I realise that these must stand, but there are many other regulations brought in by various municipalities which tend to increase the cost of building and to hamper the building programme; and I think it is up to the Government to bring pressure to bear on the local authorities that these building regulations should be examined in order to see whether some of them cannot be watered down, in order to meet the present shortage of housing. [Interjection.] As an hon. member has suggested, we should have uniform regulations throughout the country, to last, shall we say, for five to ten years, as the Government may decide, and let us get on with the job. There is no doubt that many of these restrictions we have in the municipalities are keeping back the building programme. Now, Sir, there is another subject to which I would like to refer in connection with housing, and that is the training of natives to build houses for natives. I do not want to be misunderstood in what I am spying. Amongst the hon. members on my right I know there are some who are very keen on trades union conditions, and I do not want them to think that I am unsympathetic to the trades unions. They have fought to attain their present position and are entitled to retain the position they have gained; but when it comes to the question of native housing, I think they are going too far in the stipulations they make as regards trades unions. The trades unions are putting up a fight to prevent natives being trained to build houses for natives, and they are demanding that these natives should go through a course of training such as the European has to go through, which lasts for years, and that he must have the same high wages that the European tradesman can demand and receive. Well, Mr. Speaker, I think that is going too far in this period of emergency. Our natives throughout the country are very badly housed, not only in the cities, but in the reserves as well, and I think one of the things which the Government should undertake is the training of the returned native soldier for this type of work. Any native who shows aptitude for building houses for natives should be trained, in one month, to build a good house for natives. There are natives building houses today, working on their own as contractors, who are able to build houses suitable not only for natives but also good enough for Europeans to live in. They are good houses, built entirely with local materials, except perhaps for fittings like brass windowfasteners and doorknobs, but the whole house is built efficiently and at low cost.

What is the cost?

The one I have in mind is a two-roomed house with verandah, which I saw being constructed and also saw when completed, and it cost under £50.

What materials were used?

You are asking what materials were used. I cannot go into details in this speech, but if any members are interested, I can tell them later, what materials were used. I can take them and show them the house, and I have lived in houses built in the same way and they were quite good enough for me. I think the trade unions are going too far in asking that natives should be trained like Europeans to build houses for natives. Returning native soldiers should be trained to build houses for natives even if the Government has to subsidise the project. It will not take these natives five years to learn the trade; one month will be quite sufficient to teach them how to build these houses. I have seen it myself. This question of trade unions objecting to natives learning to build houses for natives has come to such a pass that a woman in Durban spoke to me and took exception to my remarks when I advocated this idea at a meeting. She took exception to natives being trained to build houses for themselves. The reason she divulged, in the end, was that she had a son who was in the building trade, and evidently there was a fear that by training natives to build houses they would eventually encroach upon the European preserves. But I do not think that will be the case at all. If the natives are trained in the way I suggest they will not encroach upon the European sphere in the slightest degree. Now, I shall revert for the moment to the question of the shortage of houses in the city of Durban, and I am not speaking on the question of the conditions in Durban because I happen to be a Durban representative, but I do so because Durban, owing to its strategic position and to the war, has become a very important port in the world, and I think that when the war in the East develops, there will be still greater necessity for housing in Durban. I realise the city’s problem in connection with the lack of land. The city has no right to expropriate land, whereas the Government has such a right, and I would like to make the suggestion to the Government—I am sorry the Minister is not present to hear what I have to say—I think it is the duty of the Government, in view of the shortage of housing in Durban and the great population that the war in the East will attract—I do not think I am giving away any military secret when I say that in consequence of the war in the East, there is going, to be a tremendous influx of population into Durban—it is the duty of the Government to come to the rescue of the City Council and say: If you want to expropriate any land we will do it for you. As soon as a public body wants to buy land, up goes the price, and it has to go through all manner of courts and arbitrations, and years may elapse before a decision is arrived at. The Natal Provincial Council passed an ordinance at their last session giving municipalities the right of expropriation, but in order to appease two or three rich Indians in Durban, the operation of the ordinance passed by the Provincial Council has been completely held up. But the Government knows that the population of Durban is going to increase largely in the next two or three years. They know there is going to be this tremendous influx of population; and what is the Government doing to help? If the Government is not going to do housing itself, then I suggest they should go to the council and say: If you want to expropriate land, we will take the necessary steps so that the corporation can get on with its housing scheme.

Does expropriation not take much longer than negotiation?

The Government has just taken over 3,000 acres for an aerodrome outside Durban, and took possession immediately. The Government should expropriate and the municipality should be able to get on with the job. That is my point. Let the Government realise what the position is, and go to the assistance of the City Council.

Some people on the council do not want a housing scheme.

Not in Durban. We have heard a lot about the Deciduous Fruit Board, and certain information has come to my knowledge which I think is rather illuminating. It has been said that the primary object of the subsidy which the Deciduous Fruit Board pays out is to recompense former exporters of grapes and other fruit for the loss of their export trade. What do we find? The subsidy is being paid by this board to people who do not try to produce good grapes; some of them never exported before. They send their fruit to the Board and they are subsidised. But what about the man who continues to produce fruit of export quality? I have in mind a grower of grapes who says: In spite of losing the export trade, I am going to keep up the quality of my grapes and let the people of South Africa have the benefit of them. Why should they not? Why should South Africa not have good grapes instead of the rubbish? But the man who says: “I am going to keep up the export quality of my grapes for the benefit of South Africa” is not allowed to have a subsidy. A man with enterprise gets no subsidy, but he has to pay a levy imposed by the Board of 2d. on every box. This subsidy is an encouragement of laziness. The subsidy is apparently not available to the man of enterprise and efficiency. It is time we got the Deciduous Fruit Board to reorganise their ideas, and I go further and say it is time new blood was put on the Board. The question of fertiliser plays a great part in the production of food. I understand that new regulations have just been published, and that they are to come into force on the 1st April, All Fools Day. I have a letter here explaining the position. I must say that I have not examined the regulation, but this is an extract of the letter I received—

It simply means this, that any private individual who wants to grow vegetables for his own use has got to send to Pretoria for a permit. The whole thing appears to me to be absolutely ridiculous. This is another matter which I suggest the Government should try to rectify. I wish to touch on another matter in relation to food. The biggest milling firm in Durban acquired land two years ago adjoining their factory in order to erect silos for the storage of grain. They have not been able to get title of this land. I submitted the correspondence to the Minister of Lands, who very kindly, took it up and gave the usual departmental reply; blaming the war for shortage of manpower. The firm has applied to the Registrar of Deeds to have the matter of title expedited, and it has been informed that it will not be able to get title for another six months.

We have only had it in the office for a very short period, and we sent special officials up to expedite matters; you know about it.

I am not blaming the hon. Minister at all. I know that the Minister did what he could, but nothing has resulted, and this firm before it gets on with building these silos, at a cost of £150,000, has still to wait another six months for title. This is another instance where I think some discrimination should be made. It is a matter that affects the food supply. Why cannot the Registrar of Deeds make an exception in this case? Why cannot the other less important transfers wait their turn? But of course the Registrar’s office will not do anything like that; they let everything drift along in the same old routine way, and in the meantime the people are all crying out for food.

It is commonly believed that a woman will always have the last word. In so far as this subject is concerned, she is very nearly going to have the first word, because I am immediately going to quote what Mrs. McCallum recently said to the Midland Dairy Farmers Association at Estcourt, as reported in the “Farmer” of the 9th February last. This lady is president of the Durban branch of the South African Housewives League, and she herself is a very competent head of a very well-organised and efficient organisation of women. This is what she said—

That is perfectly true. On canned crayfish, for example, my information is that very large profits are being made far too large profits, profits of over 100 per cent. The preservation and processing of food from fresh supplies is a very fine way indeed of supplying extra food to consumers at times of unavoidable shortage, which do arise from time to time. This procedure is good alike for the Consumer and the producer, who is often left with perishable stuff which goes bad on him.

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

Afternoon Sitting.

A wise and comprehensive system of processing surplus food is of great national importance and amounts to a national service, and therefore my first suggestion is this, that it should be nationally planned and controlled and not left to the whim or caprice of individuals or to the mercies of money makers. Secondly, if we are to feed our people there must be no further question in South Africa of the destruction of foodstuffs. Here I must call attention to the unchallenged but literally awful statements made by the hon. member for Krugersdorp (Mr. Van den Berg) in introducing this debate. I have marked my copy of the passage in red, and the words might very well be printed in that colour in the next Hansard. This is what the hon. member said—

Did the hon. member for Krugersdorp put his hand on his heart when he said that those statements were true?

That hon. member can presently get up and make his own speech. At the present moment I am making mine. I have to remind hon. members that whether it was true or untrue, no reply whatsoever to this statement was made by the hon. Minister of Agriculture. During last Session I myself twice asked the Government to give a guarantee that for the future no food should be destroyed in the Union. I also got no reply. That is a fact of history not a matter of supposition. The people won’t stand for any more destruction of what limited supplies of food we have. The idea of destroying food is not dead. In the press this morning we read of large quantities of milk which were poured out into the streets in Bombay rather than accept a lower price. Even if there is a great shortage of food and because there is a shortage of food, there is a very good case to be made out for some form of simple rationing. What has been happening in this country was very well satirised by a cartoonist in Johannesburg. He depicted a prosperous-looking and plump-seeming lady toddling to her petrol wagon. In each hand she carried a string-bag which was bulging with packets of butter—quarter pounds of butter, half pounds of butter, pounds of butter. Underneath there was a paraphrase of the well-known Couéism: “Everyday in every way I get butter and butter”. The case is that some people do every day and in every way get butter, and butter again. And where the Government fell down was in not ensuring that those less able to look after themselves got their little share. It is a simple matter. It has been put to me by a dealer as an eminently workable matter that there should be a registration of consumers at the local dealer’s store, that due reference should be had to the number of the household, and then the supplier would be given amounts proportionate to the needs of his customers. The people of this country are not so unreasonable to condemn the Government root and branch, but they are very disappointed in the Government because they feel that the Government did not do the little or did not even attempt to do the little that could have been done. I made an express journey to Pretoria to urge that establishment upon the Prime Minister. I had an interview with him. It was not a long one. In fact, it can be called a short one. I do not think it occupied a full minute, but I learned during the time I was in the Rt. Hon. the Prime Minister’s office, that it was impossible to obtain the personnel or the staff for such a department. When I look around me at the benches opposite I sometimes feel that there was a certain probability in his statement. But if that is so, he might do well to look across at this side of the House and see what possibilities there are on this side. Even more important than a ministry of food is to have the food to administer. Can we produce food for our people—of course, including the coloured people and the native people? Can we do it? Can we feed all the people in South Africa? The hon. Minister of Agriculture who ought to be the biggest optimist in that matter apparently thinks we cannot. This is what was said in reply—if reply it can be called—to the hon. member’s, speech—

It is very much nearer 50,000,000 as a further matter of historic accuracy—

No one ever said it did not—

I am not responsible for the English here used. I am quoting the Minister’s speech—

That is a different proposition, with the differences in our favour, not in favour of that “tiny little island set in a silvery sea”. The Minister himself says that whereas England had to import her food, we before the war were exporting, and still we have not got enough food for our own requirements. He talks about England, a country roughly the size of Natal, and I would like to see any country the size of Natal supporting a population of 50,000,000. Before the war it was suggested that England could only grow enough food in those fields of hers to last the people three weeks. But the war came and it clarified ideas in South Africa as it has clarified them in Britain. There they got down to farming in an earnest planned way, and what did they find? They found they could feed two-thirds of their population which, with all deference to the Minister’s figures, is nearly 35,000,000.

Could that be done in peace time?

If it can be done in war time when it is a matter of death, it can be done in peace time when it is a matter of life.

Is it economical?

Is it economical to let them live or to let them die? After all, food is a matter of life and death. What shall we say of the interjection? Economics! Is that a sacred word? Is that a word which will support others that are hungry or sick? Let us substitute for economics a word like “just” or “merciful”. The people have to be kept alive. My point is this—it may be wrong but it is my point and I am entitled to make it—we have to get a sufficient food supply, and then we have to keep it up. We have to do here as they did in Britain, we have to revise our ideas. We have to be prepared to spend on the land before we profit from the land. We have got to have plans, and we have to assist farming here too. After the fashion suggested by the hon. member for Krugersdorp (Mr. Van den Berg) the soil has got to be built up; it has to be cared for and fed before it can feed us. That will cost money; but we found the money for the war, and if we could find hundreds of millions for war and death, is it not reasonable that we should at least attempt to find ten millions for peace and for the sustenance of life. I submit that is 100 per cent. reasonable. If we want to increase the supplies from our land and to maintain that increase, we have to make farming—as I have said before in this House—we have to make food production as profitable a business as any other. We have to make the lot of the humblest farm worker as socially secure as anyone else’s. In this age of money-making and money-grabbing, which we call economics, we cannot get farmers any more than others to work without a fair return for the work they put in. The last occasion I visited Pretoria I met an acquaintance of mine whose son did well in the battlefield while serving in Italy. He was awarded the military medal. This pleased the old man, as it might have pleased me had it been my son. But this gentleman was in a very different financial position to mine, and to celebrate his son’s achievement he went up from Durban and bought for his son a farm on the Vaal River. That was a very wise thing to do, because farms mean food, and if you have not the food it may mean that you will die. They did die in Calcutta—with plenty of money in their pockets; they died because they had not the grain. What happened in Bengal might quite logically, quite conceivably and quite probably happen here. To finish my story, my friend bought the farm for his son and also ten oxen to do odd jobs in connection with clearing up, so that the farm would be ready for the boy when he came home. His manager persuaded him to have a better type of oxen than those ten, for which he had paid £14 a head. These oxen were fattened up over what I think was a period of six months. In view of the need for meat, he intended to send the cattle to the market at Bloemfontein, but he was not permitted to do that and he had to send them to Johannesburg. In Johannesburg they were graded and sold, and the ten beasts, which originally cost him £14 each returned him an average of £12 10s. each. I don’t know very much about farming, but I know how many shillings there are in a £; and I do not think it reasonable to expect a man to pay £140 for beasts and to get £120 back.

Your Minister does not believe it.

I do not mind who does or does not believe it; it is the truth I am telling. The comment made by my acquaintance was that he would not have minded so much getting about 4d. a lb.—that is what is worked out at—if he had heard of anybody who had bought a lb. of it for 8d. or 1s. or 1s. 6d. But if he wanted to have a lb. of meat from one of his own beasts he had to put down 2s. That is a true story; sometimes the stories told in this place are not true, but to my belief this is a true story. Money has to be expended. Farming has to be placed on an economic basis—I am using the Minister’s words now—and was there ever a business which paid out money until some money had first been paid into it? It is far more important to have food than to have any other object that any Minister could set before us; we must go on living. Life surely must be sustained. The position was expressed at a meeting held on the Parade at Cape Town yesterday. To save time I will read a resolution that was passed, and which I maintain states what the present duty of the Government is. The resolution was passed demanding that foodstuffs in short supply should be rationed by a system of ration cards, that a proper check of all food produced should be kept and a reserve built up, that all parts of the Union be provided with a fair share of the available food, that the Government take steps to save the soil by combating soil erosion, and that the Government plan next year’s food supplies now. I have only a word to say with regard to housing, that I am leaving to subsequent speakers. Granting that there is a shortage of building material, is it not reasonable, is it not in accordance with ordinary commonsense and decency, that first consideration should be given to the most deserving cases, I submit that is not being done From my own constituency come these two complaints, among many Other. A young officer who was getting more money than he ever had before, had the good sense to save a great deal of it, and after two or three years in Durban (North) he bought a piece of land. As the war went on he quite naturally wanted to build a house for his family. He applied for a permit to build. Through a returned soldiers’ organisation or otherwise, he was told he would have to wait six months. He did wait six months.

He could have got it right away.

I have stated precisely what happened.

There is something wrong there.

I am just saying there is something wrong.

The story cannot be correct.

It is however, quite correct. The other complaint is this, that another man who has not been to the war at all was given facilities to build a whole road-full of houses for speculative purposes, for sale. These two things indicate to the public that there is somethig amiss. They say that if any preference was shown it should have been shown to the soldier.

It is shown.

It was not done in this case. I thank however the hon. member, who gave me the assurance it shall be done in future. I take it the remark comes from someone with colossal influence who can succeed where I have failed. Anyway, I am glad it will be done. There is only one other matter that it is my duty to mention. There is a man at the Point whose son died and who has a certain amount of money which he has saved from his earnings. In memory of his son he wished to have a little hospital, a doctor’s house, and so on, built for natives. He has bought the land, a suitable number of miles out of Durban. Over a period of years he has bought a very considerable quantity of building material. He also has asked for a permit to build this hospital for native tuberculotics. He cannot obtain it.

Why do you build hospitals instead of racing stables?

If I have offended anyone I apologise. I think that the folly and stupidity of some of the Government’s local agents is in some places dragging the Government’s credit very low. Now I have only to read a telegram which has been handed to me by the hon. member for Krugersdorp (Mr. Van den Berg). I has just arrived; but it contains a matter of such importance that he thinks It should be laid before the House now. The hon. member himself will deal with it when he replies to the debate on his motion. This, Sir, is not from an irresponsible member of the “jittery” section of the public, but is from a body of professional men—

The senders of that telegram are the Society of Practising Architects.

The motion before the House has a twofold purpose, to deal with food and with housing. I desire to intervene in this debate to say something, briefly, about the housing problem. There is no doubt that the position in regard to housing is one of emergency. I should like to refer the House to the position in Johannesburg towards the end of last year when a case appeared before the courts when a soldier applied for the ejectment of a soldier’s wife, and it was ascertained that the landlord, a soldier, had allowed the soldier’s wife to remain there for five months while he desired to get occupation of this house. He could wait no longer, because he was homeless himself, and the magistrate reluctantly ejected the soldier’s wife, and by the activities of one of the organisations in that town she was found accommodation at the last moment. That case can be multiplied many times, and it behoves all those who are interested in solving this problem to try to prevent such circumstances occurring. The first thing that strikes me is the need for an accurate census. I have heard various figures referred to, and most notably that of the Van Eck Commission, where it is estimated there is a shortage of 150,000 houses. But it appears to me one guess is as good as another. There are so many estimates without their being founded on any scientific or accurate data. I do not deny the estimates may approximate the actual position, but that we do not know, and I think accurate figures are essential to evolve any long-range plans, and when I refer to a census of the houses that are needed, I include both European and non-European. To my mind the position in regard to native housing is more chaotic than that in regard to European. In the area in which I happen to reside, some twelve miles outside Johannesburg, it has come to my knowledge that the native is so much in need of housing that he occupies any insanitary and tumbledown building, and there are people who reap a handsome harvest from rack-renting to the natives. That is a blot on our present order of things if it is allowed to go on. I know there are difficulties, I know at present building materials are difficult to obtain, but this has gone on through successive Governments; there is no particular Government to blame in the matter. I know that municipalities have done a great deal towards the housing of their natives. Some of them house their natives under admirable conditions, healthy and sanitary conditions; but there are very large areas of the country, and particularly those abutting on the municipalities, where the housing conditions are deplorable. In suggesting that a proper census should be obtained, I do not suggest that it should delay our building programme going forward, but I do say that a census should be started immediately, and that it should be made compulsory, so that we may thus get a proper perspective of rural, urban, European, coloured and native requirements in regard to housing. To my mind there are many factors retarding the solution of the housing problem, and the most imperative is the reorganisation of the building industry. It has been possible during the war period, to reorganise the enigeering industry to a considerable extent to enable it to meet all the war requirements, almost beyond what anybody in this country imagined possible before the war. They have come up to scratch 100 per cent., and that industry has been geared to meet the demands of war. For the life of me I cannot see why the building industry cannot be treated in the same way and why it cannot respond in the same way to this national emergency that exists. There is ample evidence of the industry not being as efficient as it could be. I refer hon. members to the Cost-Plus Commission’s Report. In their first report, on page 7 it is stated—I will not quote it in full but just give sufficient indication to the House of its contents—that much evidence has reached it as to the present-day inefficiency which seems to exist right through the building industry in the Union. It refers to the Witwatersrand, the Cape and other parts of the Union, and it refers to the fact that most of the operatives, to the extent of 70 per cent. cannot be considered as efficient as they should be in the building industry; and the defects do not only appertain to materials and labour, to the people who are the owners of the businesses, but also to the workers themselves. We know, again from estimates, and from opinions expressed by prominent trade unionists in this country, that the labour available is quite inadequate to cope with the demand. The dilution of labour appears to be necessary, and I cannot see why eventually the principle cannot be adopted. As a matter of fact, it has been done in certain parts of the country, where non-European labour, under proper supervision, skilled and unskilled, builds houses for non-Europeans. I quote as an instance the Lady Selborne Township near Pretoria, which I understand is a good example of what the non-European has been able to do. To my mind in a short time there would be no drain of European labour, and our municipal housing schemes would be able to go ahead rapidly, if this other labour were employed. Another matter which occurs to me is that at the time when we have a national emergency in regard to housing, labour is demanding and is having shorter working hours, an ideal to which I fully subscribe. It is a principle I support most whole-heartedly, but I think that just as in war so in a time of national emergency, even if it refers to a peace-time matter, you have to employ extraordinary methods, and instead of talking about shorter hours we should have longer hours, adequately compensated. I even go so far as to say that the methods of reward for labour might well undergo a change. In this country today I am told by builders, and I believe even the Government itself in entering into contracts have the same experience, there is a tendency towards a go-slow policy. I think that is to be regretted, and I hope that a different spirit will prevail whereby the worker, if he is suffering under any grievance or any injustice, may be enabled to have these cleared away, and that he will put his whole soul into working for what, after all, is the country’s benefit as well as his own. If one examines the position or can venture to predict the future at all in any industry, it would appear that it is a fundamental requirement that the artisan should be assured of a long-term of full employment. In view of the great amount of building work that has to be done in this country, some have gone so far as to say that an artisan is almost reasonably sure of life-time employment. An estimated total, given by the trade unions, indicates that 30,000 artisans will be available immediately in the post war period; but it has not been generally appreciated that during the war period, as well as the fact that minimum construction has been carried out, other than for the war effort, little or no maintenance has been done. That is long overdue, and in normal times maintenance would be absorbing at a minimum 5,000 of these artisans per annum, reducing this figure very considerably. So when we talk of 30,000 we shall find that figure will be reduced by absorbtion of artisans in maintenance work, and further maintenance work in proportion to the progress of building. Then travelling, from the labour position, the position in regard to materials and the control of materials retards progress in regard to housing. Except for materials in short supply, for instance baths and things of that nature, I think the acute shortage has been relieved to some extent, but I think the control system still slows up materials from overseas, and the Controller should consider whether it is possible to relax the granting of permits to enable importers to bring into the country all possible materials, even at the expense of other civil requirements that are not so necessary at the present time. It is difficult to appreciate, and the general public finds it difficult to appreciate, that many of the commodities and articles that are on sale in this country during the war period are not manufactured in this country and are non-essential. There is a strange feeling that in the allocations of shipping space or the correct issue of permits, we should endeavour to get in the necessities, and I should like to emphasise that building material today are an urgent necessity in this country. The building control also grants permits at the moment, in the main where all the necessary materials are available. It should, I think, be possible to grant a permit excluding the materials that are in short supply. It appears to to be more important to house a person in a house without a bath than not to give him a house at all. There is no doubt that control is absolutely necessary, and it is going to remain essential for some time after the war ceases, if it is only to ensure that proper priority is given. But in the pre-war period a great deal of building in this country has been done by the speculative builder.

Non-essential buildings should not be put up.

My hon. friend who has just spoken has referred to the speculative builder from another angle, but there is no question, in my opinion, that he has been responsible for housing sections of every community in this country to a very large extent. It was his enterprise that put the houses there. I do not deny he received a reward for that enterprise, but he did the work, and I think, apart from building by municipalities whether economic or sub-economic, it is the large number of small builders throughout the country who will have to play a very important part in building houses in the future to solve this problem. Today the speculative builder can obtain a permit for one house. That is the normal procedure. My hon. friend seems to have quoted an exception. But I do suggest that in order to conserve labour, to cut costs, and to make building far more economical, that he be granted permits at the rate of four at a time, so that he can make effective use of his labour force, and experience has shown that costs are reduced very considerably in that case. Another matter that retards the matter of housing is that of the layout of townships. Mr. Speaker, it takes two years before the diagrams of a township are approved, from the date of the original application. It should take six months at the most. All these long delays in the approval of diagrams hold up schemes which are essential for the disposal of land on which houses for the future may be built. We should try to cut the red-tape that allows this cumbersome, leisurely, and prolonged procedure in connection with the lay-out of townships. There are dozens of cases outside Pretoria and outside Johannesburg of townships which would have been opened up if it did not take this long period, during which all the conditions may change and in the meantime it may not be favourable at the end of two years to dispose of the land. There is a feeling of uncertainty, but two years seems to be quite speedy for this department. I do not blame them but it is apparent there must be an acute shortage of staff, and steps should be taken to try to provide that Department with the necessary personnel so that this work can be carried out more speedily. Then there is another matter which prevents the opening up of townships and the disposal of land, and that is the rise in land values. There has undoubtedly been a steep rise in land values during the period of this war, partly due to the scarcity of land—you cannot obtain land for various reasons—but there are also contributory factors with which my hon. friend the Minister of Finance may not agree, namely the effect of the fixed property tax and of the excess profits duty tax. These taxes on land have actually put into cold storage for the duration of the war large tracts of land which would otherwise have been disposed of, and the effect of it is that land which is not subject to the tax and is capable of being disposed of without falling under the tax can be sold at a considerable profit. In other words, such land enjoys an advantage both ways. The very fact that there is no competition leads to higher prices being asked and obtained for the land without being subject to tax. Outside Pretoria, there are only two out of a number of townships which can dispose of their land free of tax and to my certain knowledge, during the war they have raised the price of that land at least 2½ times; and the effect of the property tax is shown if you take fairly high priced land outside Johannesburg. There is land which before the war was priced at £2,000 an acre but today it is being disposed of at £4,000 an acre. Land in a middle-class suburb which before the war was disposed of at £250 per acre is today being sold at £500 an acre. I would not mind having the tax if the seller paid it, but the effect has been that the purchaser of the land pays the tax plus probably as much again because the seller makes himself safe, and if he thinks he can take a little more profit on it he does so. Another aspect of the matter is this: I refer to the Excess Profits Duty. There are companies which have conducted business over a number of years but they did no trading just before the war. I do not know how many cases of this kind there are, but I know that three or four of them have extensive holdings. They cannot dispose of their land because they had no pre-war standard at all, and therefore it is being held in the hope that something will be done for the future. I think the advantages, particularly of the Fixed Property Tax, are outweighed, if not equally cancelled out by the disadvantages. Earlier I mentioned the question of the re-organisation of the building industry. It seems to me that it is not only the building industry which has to play its part in the solution of this problem but that the field for the production of houses has to be made much wider to include skilled and semiskilled operatives. When I say that, I refer to the prefabricated house. The Minister, in his statement in this debate, stated that there was some doubt about the prefabricated house in relation to its suitability to this country. I cannot see why there is that doubt. It has been used in countries which have the same climatic conditions as the Union of South Africa, and even more severe climatic conditions. In America they have experimented very largely. They have factories there where the house comes off at the end of a line like a Ford motor car, or a bomber, or anything else which is built on mass-production lines today. South Africa may not be able to aspire to these ideal conditions of manufacture, but we may go a long way towards it. Again, you have among others the Churchill house in Great Britain. It has been criticised, it is true, but it is something which is obtainable. The Churchill house, including the house and site, will cost £550. In America you have what are called the accordian and suitcase houses which cost £100 and upwards. The building industry in this country up to the present has been in an unique position because, unlike other industries, which may be subjected to competition by importation from outside, it is not, and its position has further been entrenched by the conditions imposed by the war. When it is known that there will be a shortage of arisans throughout the world you cannot expect an influx of workers. So it seems to me that the industry should put in its all in trying to solve this problem. I must say, in fairness to the building industry, that there has been a growing tendency during the war, to sidetrack private enterprise. They have done a great deal in helping the war effort and I am sure that they are prepared to play their part when they are reorganised, as I suggested before, on the lines of the engineering industry. The hon. member for Krugersdorp (Mr. Van den Berg) in his motion, and in his speech, referred to differential rents, and the Minister indicated that this had been entrenched in legislation. Mr. Speaker, it may be a good thing, but the feeling I have about differential renting is that the municipalities are adopting such a system because they feel that it reduces their losses on their housing schemes, and unless it is watched closely there will be the danger that these houses will be let to people of the higher income groups, thus getting a greater return and excluding the lower income groups or the poor people altogether. I hope that that will not happen. I know that the City Council of Cape Town are experimenting, arid their Treasurer at the conference recently held at Pretoria stated that differential rating reduces the losses of the municipality. That is the attitude taken. I cannot say that they will adopt that policy, but the door is opened, and I hope that safeguards will be taken by the local authorities to see that the spirit and the letter of the principle underlying differential renting is carried out. Then again, in the pre-war period, the Minister quoted extensive figures to show how many houses were built before 1939 and from 1939 onwards, but there is this difficulty, that successive Governments have never made available sufficient sums of money for housing to proceed at a rapid pace. Under the Housing Act of 1937 the experience was that the money made available was exhausted within two months of the commencement of the financial year, and any further applications that might come forward had to wait over until the following year. There again I hope that there will be a change of financial policy and that sufficient money will be voted to enable these schemes to be financed right throughout the financial year. There have been frequent announcements in the press of a programme of public building, either by the Government itself or by provincial or local authorities. One gathers that it is an extensive programme involving the expenditure of large sums of money. Much of it may be essential, but, Mr. Speaker, we have done without many of these buildings, perhaps with some inconvenience for a matter of some six years now, and I personally feel that it would be totally wrong if the Government embarked upon a large public building programme in the immediate post-war period. True, build essential buildings which are absolutely necessary, but it seems to me not to be the function or the duty of the Government to embark on these buildings until ordinary dwelling houses for the private citizen have been built. Later on public buildings may be built to satisfy the tradesmen who may be looking for work after the need of the people for homes has been satisfied. That is one of the ways in which one can prevent an economic depression in the building industry, and to my mind that is the policy which should be adopted. There are others who desire to participate in this debate and I do not want to take up more time. Therefore, in conclusion, I would say, to achieve a solution of the housing problem, convenience, convention, orthodox finance, official red-tape, permanency of structure and present municipal policy—present municipal by-laws will not allow you to put up any temporary type of house; they are very stringent and the type of house like the Churchill house or any other temporary type of house would not be put up within the municipal area—and such by-laws would have to be changed to meet the state of emergency which has arisen. To achieve a solution of the problem all these obstacles will have to be sacrificed on the altar of delay. We also have to encourage new industries in housing, to manufacture different types of houses. We need not necessarily be bound to use bricks and motar. We should obtain the enthusiastic cooperation of the builders and artisans. I think that is already there. It remains to be capitalised by adequate assurances of employment, and of the stability of the industry, and a bold policy should be embarked upon in experimenting with other types of houses. The problem of housing today is equal to that of demobilisation. As we have made adequate plans for demobilisation, so there should be adequate plans for housing. In fact, we should make every effort to provide houses for in my opinion unless the housing shortage can be met the position created by general demobilisation cannot be faced.

Mr. Speaker, not always in addressing this House do I find myself in the happy position of being in agreement with the hon. member for Durban (Musgrave) (Mr. Acutt). I must say, however, that I was fully in agreement with most of what he said this morning, and particularly with the comments he had to make about the absence of the Minister of Welfare and Demobilisation from this debate. The hon. Minister, after having listened to what the mover of the motion, the hon. member for Krugersdorp (Mr. Van den Berg) had to say, and to the mover of the amendment, the hon. member for Beaufort West (Mr. Louw), then stood up and dealt with the Governs ment’s policy in relation to these matters, but has not been here since. I think the Minister could well have listened, with some profit to his Department and to himself, to the thoughtful speech which has just been delivered by the hon. member for Von Brandis (Mr. Higgerty). There is much in that speech which I think the Minister could have listened to with advantage. I want to echo what the hon. member for Durban (Musgrave) said about the way in which this House is being treated by the absence of Ministers from debates. The hon. the Minister of Agriculture also, I understand from an interjection of the Minister of Native Affairs, is opening an agricultural show, which he appears to think is more important than a discussion on the serious problem of food in this House. I cannot imagine a more cogent argument for a Ministry of Food than that the Minister thinks opening an agricultural show more important than this debate. As a matter of fact, the Minister’s reply to this demand was that it was not necessary to have a Ministry of Food because there was a small sub-Cabinet dealing with the matter consitsing of himself, the Minister of Economic Development, the Minister of Welfare and the Minister of Finance. During the greater part of this debate not one member of that sub-Cabinet has been present. The Minister of Finance was here for a few moments, and we were glad to see him here, but soon after he left the chamber again. It is not as though the questions which are being discussed here were not of desperate importance and urgency to the people of this country. According to the Minister of Welfare and Demobilisation this country is faced in the field of housing with a shortage of approximately 440,000 houses, about 60 per cent. of which are required for nonEuropeans, over the next ten years. The figure I mention refers to the period of the next ten years and not to the immediate shortage. With the desperate shortage of trained, skilled labour, to the extent which the Minister admits of about 50 per cent., under immediate circumstances, the cost of building, even where houses are being built, is such that they can only be built at such cost that the mass of the people in this country cannot afford to pay the rents. Now, Sir, I am going to elaborate for a moment on the latter point. 60 per cent. of the houses which are required in the next ten years are for non-Europeans. The bulk of these, having regard to their proportion op the population in this country, will of course, be for natives. The Smit Committee reported that having regard to the general, level of unskilled wages in this country, the native worker cannot afford to pay rent on a house which costs more than about £250 to £300. Even where houses are being built or are proposed to be built, for the occupation of natives in urban areas today, they are costing double or more than that sum. I have heard a representative of the Johannesburg City Council, at a conference last month say that the tenders which are being received at the request of the Johannesburg Municipality are for £600 and over, for native houses. The City Council of Cape Town has a scheme of native housing in which the buildings alone are estimated to cost £650 each, which together with site values and other charges will mean that the native tenant is supposed to pay rent on a capital sum of over £700. Now, even when the rents are reduced below the normal sub-economic formula, that will mean that the native tenant will be asked to pay £2 a month for a four-roomed house, 37/6 for a three-roomed house, and 35/- per month for a two-roomed house. To begin with there should not be such a thing as a two-roomed house in the housing schemes. It does not afford enough room for a family if a decent standard of living is to be maintained. It does not need the reports of committees to be able to see that these rents are too high. We all know from experience, what the general standard of wages is which are earned by native workers and unskilled Workers generally in the country, coloured or native, and Europeans, if there are any, and that they cannot afford to pay those rents. They cannot afford to pay rents on that basis and yet these are the rents it is proposed to charge the native tenants after full advantage has been taken of the subsidised housing plans of the Government under, the Housing Act passed last year. To some extent the tenant can be relieved of paying rent in proportion to the cost of the house by various devices, within the framework of the present Housing Act and the subsidies which the local authorities receive from the Government. For one thing, I have never been able to see why the tenant living in a house built by a local authority should be required to pay a redemption charge and why redemption should enter into rents. The house is being built to last for 40 years. That is the type of house I am talking about. At the end of the 40 years it will still be a perfectly good house and the property of the local authority, and it remains the property of the local authority throughout. I therefore cannot see why the tenant should have to pay a redemption charge. I think the redemption charge is 2¼ per cent. of the rental. He is paying off capital and yet he is only the tenant and has no property rights. That should not be allowed. In any event, when it is proposed to construct sub-economic houses for the poor, I do not see the necessity of building a house that will last 40 years. I hope that in 40 years time this country will have reached such a state of prosperity that we will not require these sub-economic houses at all. It seems to me futile, in conditions of emergency, to put up houses that will last for 40 years and thereby hold up the fulfilment of essential needs, which is to give immediate shelter to hundreds of thousands of people who have not got it at present, and who are living in filth and under unhygienic con ditions. I do not see why a reduction of the durability and the quality of the house is not possible. Furthermore I do not see why site value should enter into the calculations of the rents. I have seen the proposals for housing schemes by local authorities in which it is proposed to charge the tenant also according to the site value of the ground. For one thing, the tenant never owns the site. That is not his property. For another thing, it belongs to the local authority and will increase in value for the benefit of the local authority. That should be abolished. Mr. Speaker, definite steps should also be taken to see that the principle of differential renting embodied in the Housing Act is in fact applied. A number of local authorities seem to be opposed to it. If present costs are to remain at anything like present levels, if the present financial arrangements are to stand, the only way I can see how the mass of the poor tenants can pay rent is through the application of the differential renting system, by which their rents shall not exceed a certain proportion of their income: I fully agree with what the hon. member for Von Brandis said just now about the necessity for the Government to watch the application of that principle and see that it is not simply applied to tenants who are better off. I have very little fear that if that principle is applied to native housing the municipalities will be able to get away with it in that way, for the simple reason that there are very few natives who are well off. These are all methods by which, within the framework of the present Housing Act and within the framework of the financial arrangements that the Government has established between itself and the local authorities, rents can be reduced; but I still do not believe that they can be reduced enough, and in any event the primary and essential problem remains unsolved, namely that there is simply not the skilled labour available to build the required number of houses, unless the skilled labour force can be supplemented. I am going to say something in a moment about how that force could be supplemented, but before I do so I again want to stress the desperate gravity of the need. The hon. member for Von Brandis mentioned the peri-urban areas of Johannesburg. We know that in Johannesburg also, so desperate was the situation of the native population there, that last year they resorted to taking the situation into their own hands and building their own houses out of any bits of scrap they could collect, adjacent to Orlando. In the Cape Peninsula where allowance has been made for a smaller population than Johannesburg, the situation is more desperate still. It is not obvious to the casual visitor to the Peninsula what the conditions of housing of the nonEuropean, and particularly of the native population, are. Most of the places where they are housed are far away from the roads. There are no hard roads there. Let hon. members of this House go to a place called Blaauwvlei stuck amongst the sandhills in the Retreat area. There is a huge population jammed together, paying 10s. a month for a miserable plot of sand on which to put a miserable pondokkie, with no sanitary arrangements whatsoever, with one pipe where they have to pay for every paraffin tin of water that they take, no lighting arrangements and none of the amenities which are necessary for a closely settled population. At Windemere the position is worse still. The area is larger and the conditions are indescribable. The “Cape Argus”, to its credit, has recently been running a campaign to expose what these conditions are, and I want to read a short report a “Cape Argus” reporter wrote on what he saw. Anybody can see these conditions for himself. I have seen them with my own eyes. But the “Argus” representative has described the conditions graphically. He says he went down there, his car stuck in the sand and he plodded on till he came to a structure which looked like a stockade—

Ten people in a room 8 ft. square! I wish the hon. Minister was here to hear that. The “Argus” writer said a little later regarding the accommodation—

And they were comparatively well-off. The population of this stockade is well over 300 and it has only one standard pump. This representative of the “Argus” also described the sanitary arrangements there—

I would have been more satisfied with the Minister’s remarks if he had expressed himself in a way to show that he was more fully conscious of the situation. I am not saying he is not conscious of it, but it is a consideration of these facts that should bring home to the authorities the desperation of the situation. There is no way out by saying that we should pull down structures of that kind. These are people who are working here, and they have to choose between this kind of conditions and no roof over their heads at all. That is the choice before these unfortunate people. The hon. member for Durban (Musgrave) (Mr. Acutt) said this morning in talking about municipal building restrictions, that the technical requirements imposed by the municipal authorities should be relaxed, but that they should at least try to maintain the standards of hygiene and public health. In the conditions that exist in the Cape Peninsula and in the larger urban areas today, it is impossible for local authorities to insist on any minimum standard of hygiene or public health. That is the kind of conditions—

You have a very poor type of town councillor in Cape Town.

That may be the hon. member’s opinion, and I am not concerned to stand up now for the city councillors. In my opinion they have definitely neglected native housing; I have said that in the House before. But these conditions are bad enough to demand our gravest consideration. I have only dealt with Cape Town particularly because it is in the area I represent, and I have often seen with my own eyes the things I have referred to. But there is ample evidence that those conditions exist in other parts of the country as well. We know the difficulty about building material, and about the number of artisans available for housing work. The question is, how to fill this shortage of labour. How has it come about in relation to the basic housing needs of the country that a situation has been allowed to arise in which there is a 50 per cent. shortage of skilled labour? We on these benches have of course always contended that any survey of the situation in this country on the basis of need would indicate the dire effects of a long-term policy of restricting in practice—whatever the theory may be—four-fifths of your population from acquiring skill. That is what in effect has been the policy in the past. That has been the effect of policies in the past. That is what has landed us in the situation in which we are today. Moreover, Mr. Speaker, it is not only the question of placing de facto restrictions upon four-fifths of the population of this country in acquiring skill, it has also been a matter of pursuing policies which make even the labourers more unskilled than they are in other countries. There is always the danger in the building industry particularly, of it becoming based on casual labour. Native legislation, as I have already pointed out, times out of number, is deliberately designed to maintain casual labour; How can there be other than casual labour if the whole direction of policy is that the workers should live miles and miles from their work and have to go to and fro between their homes and their work? The effect of that policy can clearly be shown by comparing the situation with other countries. My information is that in Great Britain, for instance, there is about one labourer employed to one artisan in the building industry. In Australia and New Zealand there are actually more artisans than labourers. In this country, on the other hand, there is one artisan to three labourers. In other words, the labourer in this country is about one-third as efficient as the labourer in Great Britain, and one-fourth as efficient as the labourer in Australia and New Zealand. It is bound to be so, so long as casual labour is looked upon as a good thing in itself, as it is, in this country, as the native policy is designed to maintain it. What then is the obvious direction of policy for remedying this position? Here I suggest very strongly that there is no decent answer to the case for setting up ficilities for training African artisans to build houses for their own people. There is no decent answer to that case. If there is a shortage of 50 per cent, of artisans, even when, as I understand, the so-called diluted labour that has been used in the army is being released, emergency trained men, and if you have conditions such as you have in Windemere and outside Johannesburg, what answer can there be to the case against artificially preventing African people from acquiring training to build their own houses? I know what the answer by my friends in the Labour Party is—there is no objection to African skilled workers—provided they spend as long in learning the trade as they would becoming a lawyer or a doctor, and if they have the Standard VI qualification. That is a point on view which I cannot uphold. If the natives have to have these trade union qualifications, you may never—and certainly within the next ten years you will never—have sufficient skilled labour to relieve the situation. Many of us have seen—the hon. member for Durban (Musgrave) mentioned it this morning—buildings that have been constructed with native labour.

You should pay them equal wages.

Not with equal wages; I am coming to the wage arrangement in a moment. These buildings I am referring to are perfectly good buildings. I do not believe it is possible for these men to be employed at the present rates of skilled wages. For one thing, they probably would not be so skilled as European artisans. The point is they are skilled enough to do the job. I am suggesting that the principle that should apply to wages is that in those areas where native artisans are engaged in building, something like the same proportion of skilled to unskilled wages should prevail as in other countries. The existing gap between skilled and unskilled wages in South Africa is approximately five to one. It varies to some extent locally, but that is approximately the proportion. In Great Britain it is three to two, and in Australia five to four. I am not now asking for an immediate improvement in the casual labourer’s wages to four-fifths of the wage of artisans What I am asking for is that under an emergency training scheme, where African artisans are trained in a short period for work in building houses for their own people they should be paid more than the present wage determinations allow labourers in the building industry, but in a proportion more or less corresponding to the proportion between skilled and unskilled labourers in other countries.

Do you suggest they should stop fighting for higher wages?

Let them fight for higher wages if they can get them, but that is of course another matter altogether. Further attempts should be made to raise the efficiency of the labourer himself. That can only be done by setting as an objective, not the maintenance of casual labour in South Africa, but a policy directed towards the stabilisation of the native urban working population. I do not want to develop that this afternoon; we on these benches have developed that argument time and again, and we shall no doubt find it necessary to do so time and again in the future. I protest against the assumption that because a man is a labourer and his work is classed as unskilled, there are no degrees of skill in these categories. The experience of other countries shows there are such degrees of skill, and the raising of the labourer’s efficiency by methods we have often advocated in this House, and the application of these methods particularly to the building labourer, would provide a contribution to the solution of our problem. When I advocate that there should be a relaxation of the industrial agreement wage rates in relation to housing in native townships, I do not say that that should be at the expense of the European artisans. The idea that it would be at their expense is simply the old policy over again that if you give one man work you are taking it away from another man. The building trade unions have every right to demand from the Government a guarantee of full employment in the building industry if they consent to these suggestions. Moreover, the employer should not be permitted to make an extra rate of profit because he is employing diluted labour There should be a definite limitation of building profits. I know that the Walker Award broke down because the award was ultra vires the terms of reference. Why fresh terms of reference were not issued to legalise the position I do not know. The Minister responsible is the leader of the hon. member for Krugersdorp (Mr. Van den Berg), and perhaps he knows. I do not know why the position was not regularised. In accordance with the suggestion I am now making, if there are lower wage rates the profits would have to be cut down in proportion. The rate of profit should not be allowed to increase because the wage rates are lower. That would defeat the whole object that I am putting forward, which is to lower costs. The land-shark should be dealt with also. It should not be a question of holding up land in the way that the hon. member for Von Brandis (Mr. Higgerty) says is happening, because the tax devised by the Minister of Finance is imposed, but there is machinery for expropriation, and in my opinion there should be a definite control, and if necessary confiscation of unimproved sites values. Those are all methods, apart from the matter mentioned by the hon. member for Von Brandis, by which this building programme could be gone ahead with. These houses will have to be built—at all events if the poorer section of the community are to be housed. The poorer section of the community cannot pay rents on the basis of costs as they are today. They are unable to do so, and it is essential that costs should come down. I have suggested some of the ways by which they could be brought down. I want in conclusion to say one word about the food question. The hon. member for Krugersdorp in the speech he made in support of his motion, rather seemed to me to dwell on the long-term aspects of the problem, aspects such as the conservation and improvement Of soil, improved farming methods, and so forth. Those are all very important, but here again an immediate situation has to be faced, a situation which no doubt itself is the result of long-term policies of restriction of consumption in this country and of subsidisation of the inefficient. That may be so, but unfortunately there is that situation, and it has to be faced. There is only one way of remedying this shortage, and that is the way the shortages and high prices could have been prevented from arising, by rationing and subsidising consumption, in addition to controlling prices. Apart from the stimulation of production, that is the policy that has been adopted in Great Britain. That is the policy that has been urged on the Government for many years by, for instance, the hon. member for Pretoria (Sunnyside) (Mr. Pocock). That is the policy which the Government has persistently refused to adopt. Now we have a situation in which the cost-of-living has rocketed, and in which despite control there are shortages. The only way now is for the Government, belatedly, to retrace its steps and to be prepared to subsidise consumption more heavily, and to be prepared to establish a Ministry of Food to look after the food of the people and ensure proper distribution. I am utterly unimpressed with the argument that there is a deficiency of personnel for rationing to be introduced. If there is a shortage there must be rationing. The question is: Who does? Who is doing it now? The shopkeepers are doing it, and it is being carried out on no principle of justice. Those are the people who are rationing now, and the demand for rationing is not because people want to be rationed, but because it is being done now and unless it is controlled Officially every distributor in the country becomes a rationing dictator in his area. The demand is that this is a function that should be exercised by the State, that it should not be left—as it is at present—to private individuals. Rationing should be exercised by the State in relation to the enforcement of control. I myself have never understood why such leniency has always been shown by the courts to people who break the price control laws. It seems to me that the only way to stop black markets and that kind of thing is to send the culprits to goal. It is not as if we are a country that minds sending people to goal. Every year we throw 100,000 natives into goal merely for pass offences; they have committed no crime at all. But when it is a case of vested interests whose machinations, as the Prime Minister has said to his Party Congress, are undermining the whole policy of the Government in its attempt to protect the community, why be so tender to them? Why should they have less drastic treatment by the courts than the simple native who commits a pass offence? If one or two of these gentry were sent to goal that, in my opinion, would be quite enough; the purpose would be served. I am not the kind of person who likes seeing people sent to goal. I contend that in this country we have too many people in gaol, but they are the wrong sort of people. There are people out of goal who ought to be in gaol and there are thousands of people in gaol who ought not to be there. If a man who breaks the control regulations knows that he is going to get a fine he works it out that it will be worth his while to break the regulations; there is always the chance of his making much more than the amount of the fine. Black market prices are so arranged as to cover that risk; it is an item in the cost of black market distribution. I have for at least two years believed there was a case made out for the Government adopting a policy of rationing, and if the Government does so and takes a strong line with black marketeers they will be able to put the food position on a better basis.

The matters being discussed today in this House are surely some of the most important matters which will and can be debated during this Session; they are matters of national importance, which affect each individual outside. We are faced with serious problems. But what is the position in the House today? While these burning questions are being discussed not one of the Ministers who should be here is in his seat. Each of them is conspicuous by his absence. At the present moment there are two Ministers in the House, namely the Minister of Finance and a unilingual Minister without his interpreter. I wish to lodge my serious protest at this treatment we are receiving from the Ministers today. The Ministers are ruling the country by means of emergency regulations. They wish to impose their will on the nation by those means. Do the Ministers not realise that each of us who sits here speaks on behalf of 8,000 or more constituents? It is not only towards us that they exhibit this attitude, but through that attitude the Ministers are ignoring the nation cutside. We have spoken here to empty Ministerial benches, and it has continued like that all day. One Minister enters and relieves another who goes out. I wish to protest strongly against the course of action adopted by Ministers just recently as regard the members on this side of the House, and as regards the House in general and the nation outside. This important motion we are discussing today consists of three great points. One is that of housing and lodging facilities, the second is that of the shortage of building material and its distribution, and the third is that of food. The crux of the matter is that we wish the Government to lay before the House a well-considered housing scheme. We have reasons for that. The Minister of Welfare and Demobilisation has time and again made speeches about the great plans of the Government, the thousands and tens of thousands of houses which will be built. Those stories have been told to us for the last year and the people outside are in dire need but we see no houses being erected. As one hon. member put it, the number which would have been built has already decreased from 6,000 to 200 per month. We now want to know from the Government what its plans are and what it is going to do. I wish to devote a few moments to the position as it exists on the Witwatersrand. I do not think there is one other city in South Africa which is in such dire need as regards housing as the Witwatersrand. If you go to the Rand you will find that as a result of the terrible shortage the slums of the city are increasing in size every day. People with small incomes who must pay fairly high rents are practically forced out. In fact, one can find no houses, and there is only one place for them to go, namely to the slums. There the people are today crowded tightly together. The Ministers will have to admit that that is one of the main reasons for the diseases prevalent on the Witwatersrand. It cannot be otherwise. Where you find this terrible overcrowding of people in hovels, the health of the nation must necessarily be undermined. If you go to the Wit watersrand you will find people where families, decent people, are herded together. They may even have to pay a higher rental In order to be allowed to live in a garage. They cannot do otherwise. One finds Europeans in garages and in back yards. Not long ago a soldier came to see me and took me to the yard of an erf in an East Rand constituency. This man had gone to fight and had returned, and he took me to a yard and said: “After everything I have done, after having lost my health, I have to live in one room with a wife and five children and a small kitchen in which to cook.” That is the position as it is today, and the soldiers suffer in the same way as the civilian population. This matter has become so serious on the Rand that the City Council of Johannesburg held quite a number of meetings to plan what can be done, and the City Council of Johannesburg is now ranking housing as priority No. 1, instead of the war. That is the conclusion to which the City Council of Johannesburg came. Now it is being said that there is a shortage of materials. There is a shortage, but I make bold to say that large quantities of materials are being used injudiciously today. If you ask me I will tell you. [Quorum.] In passing I should like to say that I hope that when hon. members on the opposite side return to their constituencies they will tell their constituents that out of the multitude of United Party members there were only four present in this House when these very important matters were being discussed.

What about members on that side?

It just shows how much they are interested in the matter. There are at least three in what we call the kitchen. I have just referred to the position of schools. In Johannesburg we have the Help-mekaar Girls’ School. There we find a crowd of Afrikaans girls herded together in an old building, a building where they must of necessity lose their health. It is one of the few schools we have for our Afrikaans girls on the Witwatersrand. If we go further, to Pretoria and the platteland, we find, as the hon. member for Wonderboom (Mr. Nel) one day expressed it here, that our children even have to go to hovels in order to receive an education. And while these circumstances are prevalent a permit is issued for the erection of a gigantic hostel for non-Europeans at the University of the Witwatersrand. One hon. member this morning explained why that great exception was made. The European children have no facilities for schools, but for the non-European students of the university of the Witwatersrand there is at present being erected this gigantic hostel. That is why I say the money is being used wrongly. It is not logical to use State money in that way. What buildings are being erected today on the Rand? To whom are permits being issued? Gigantic skyscrapers are being erected in Johannesburg at present. If we investigate to whom the permits are being issued we will find it is only to people who are out to make tremendously large amounts of profits out of rents. That is not the solution of the problem; it is no solution at all, and I say that there is no doubt about it that wrongful use is being made of the money. This motion goes further. He points to circumstances which reveal a very unsatisfactory situation, and he then asks that—

1. (a) The exportation of all building material, including that for military purposes

should be stopped. That is quite sound, because we see that there is a great danger; we see that our Government is practically impotent to solve the problem. I say it is in the interests of the country, it is in the interests of the continued existence of the nation that we should now stop the exportation of all building material overseas, even for war purposes. The Rt. Hon. the Prime Minister the other day told us the war is almost finished. If that is the case we want to know what reason still exists for exporting building material while a state of emergency is prevalent in South Africa. The motion then goes further. It asks that the Government should take the necessary steps—

A little while ago I met an officer in the forces. I asked him: “Why does the Government still retain so many natives in the armed forces in South Africa?” His reply was: “Sir, the natives are now being trained; they are being disciplined, and then we take the natives and put them on to guard the camps which are now becoming empty.” If that is so. I say that we are misleading the nation outside. Then the time has arrived when we have the right to ask the Government to break down all those buildings and barracks which are not being used and to make the material available to local authorities for sub-economic housing. The motion then proceeds—

1. (c) To make a survey of the existing large supplies of building material ….

That is very important. We should like to know how much building material is locked up in military depôts and which is perhaps even still frozen. Is it necessary for military purposes? In that case we must make a survey to ascertain how much there is so that it can be at the disposal of public bodies and other organisations for housing which is so urgently required. Then it is asked that—

and then the exceptions are mentioned. The other day one of the Ministers said: “We are not like the Opposition on the other side. All the people of the British Commonwealth are our friends and we will not desert them”. It is not true that we want to be unfriendly towards them, but I wish to remind the Minister of an English proverb which says “Charity begins at home.”

It is not charity.

Yes, but England is not my mother country. We are then quite justified in asking that the Government should consider repatriating to their respective countries of origin all those people who entered the Union since 1st October, 1939, with the exception of those mentioned in the motion. I still wanted to speak about the food position and to continue with this matter just to show what the great reason is why today we have not available the labour which we must have in order to make a success of the housing scheme, but when I speak about artisans I miss the hon. Minister of Labour who is never in his place any more. I want to speak about food but the Minister of Agriculture and Forestry is conspicuous by his absence. It does not help us to address empty benches. As a measure of protest against this course of action on the part of the Government I should very much, at this stage, like to propose the adjournment of the debate.

The Minister of Welfare is also absent.

Yes, I notice that the Minister of Welfare is not here. It is no good continuing in this way, and as a mark of protest and of disapproval of the actions of the Government as against the House and the people outside I wish at this stage to propose—

I second.

Agreed to.

Debate adjourned; to be resumed on 2nd March.

This is the first time, I think, that we have really had cause to congratulate the Minister on his industrial policy. We as primary producers heartily support him in his effort to do something to promote industry. The primary producer and the secondary industry should always work together. In a country like Australia we find very close co-operation between industry and agriculture. In our country we have paid more attention to gold mining and we have been inclined to forget that there is something which is as essential in this country, and that is industry. In Australia at one time, they also had gold. At that time they neglected their industries; they neglected their industries to such an extent that when the gold mines were worked out, those people were in a hopeless position, and it was only when they went over to primary products and secondry industries that Australia once again took her rightful place on the map. I for one do not want to condemn the mines because they have certainly done good work in the country but I do believe that we should no longer look at the mining industry, but also at our secondary industries. We have always felt that the mining interests have been opposed to primary producers and to a certain extent to other industries. Their idea has always been to export their gold and to allow industrial products from other parts of the world to come into this country. We on our side say that industry in this country is the only thing which can save the country at this stage. We feel that when the men on active service come back from the North, industry will be the factor which will count and which will provide work for those people, and therefore this side of the House and the farmers in general welcome this measure. There are, however, a few points we want to stress. As far as the wool industry is concerned, we have been faced with a number of difficulties in the past with regard to standardisation. We hope that under this new scheme we will have a certain amount of protection. There is only one body about which I feel rather nervous and that is the Chamber of Mines. The Chamber of Mines has never done anything else but fight private industry, and I feel nervous in having men from the Chamebr of Commerce on that board. And I will tell you why. It is because they have always favoured the indentor in this country, and the indentor in this country is definitely opposed to industrial development in South Africa. He has always been intent on making big profits. Let me give a few examples to show what has been done by the indentors in this country. Some time ago we were importing certain goods from the Argentine, and I feel that that was pressed for by the Chamber of Commerce or the indentors to such an extent that they were doing the wool industry particularly and industry on the whole a great deal of harm. In South Africa we are producing first class blankets. We are producing an article which is equal to the best in the world. Take the military blankets. When the war broke out there were a lot of sharks who tried to enrich themselves at the expense of industry in this country. The first order for military blankets was nothing but a disgrace. Wool of any description was bought from natives and others to manufacture military blankets. I think the actual cost of that blanket was about 3/2d. and it was sold to the Union Government at a huge profit. Fortunately, under the wartime industry which has been set up, that has been rectified to a great extent. In conjunction with your wool council, we are today manufacturing one of the best blankets in the world, made of karakul wool and Merino wool. That blanket is as good as any in the world, and I have been told by military experts that there is nothing better. But we are told that there is still this handicap that there is no proper system of trade marks. At the outset when this blanket was exported, there was nothing to identify the blanket which we made in this country. I hope under this system we will have proper advertisement for our blankets and proper protection for our industry. I want to come back to the Argentine blanket. The Argentine blanket was made of inferior wool, and some of these blankets were sold for as much as £6. The South African blanket costing £1 2s. 6d. is superior to these blankets which were being sold here for £6 and that is where I blame commerce. These blankets were bought in the Argentine. They could not have cost more than £1 but by the time they have gone through the different organisations, these blankets cost about £4 landed in our ports. How it is I do not know. The South African blanket was never even displayed in the windows, because it did not pay the commercial people to sell it. Their profit on the Argentine blanket was much greater. I hope the cost of the imported stuff will be properly gone into, and that these people will not be allowed to accumulate all this money at the expense of the South African industrialist. I feel that there is a lot of scope for the wool industry, for instance, in this country. We are now producing many millions of blankets, and since we have a market not only in the Union itself, but outside the Union, I feel that there is one thing which ought to be put in order. My grievance is this. The wool factory has only come into being now, and I am afraid that wool factory will not be operating for a very long time to come. I will tell you why. I believe the commercial people outside are hampering the wool factory as far as possible, in this way that some three years ago orders were placed in Great Britain for machinery. That machinery has come to this country only in dribs and drabs, and at the present time no machinery has arrived in this country with which we can produce that article. I also want to criticise the Industrial. Corporation and the Minister of Agriculture for the slipshod way in which he has tried to do business. For instance, the Industrial Corporation came to an agreement with the wool farmers that they could nationalise this industry and that the wool farmers by means of a levy could become partners in the wool factory. What happened? The big interests have naturally forced the Government to do something else. The wool farmers are no longer recognised. It is true that they are being told that they can take out shares, but where are they to get the money? The Minister of Agriculture was asked to introduce a Bill under which you could levy an internal levy, but nothing has been done. The big commercial interests have effectively stopped this whole venture. We feel that the industrialists and the Industrial Corporation have broken faith with the farmer, or otherwise the Minister of Agriculture has broken faith with the farmers. The late Minister of Agriculture, the Minister’s predecessor, promised to introduce this much needed legislation under which we could get that levy of 2s. per bale on wool, but that did not materialise. Our present Minister also promised that he would do it. Twenty-five thousand farmers in this country were consulted in the matter. They agreed to become part and parcel of this industry, but what has happened now? They have been done down by arguments between the Industrial Corporation and the Minister of Agriculture. If you go to the Industrial Corporation they will tell you that you must first introduce legislation to get the 2s. levy, and that they are quite prepared to carry out their part of the bargain. But when you go to the Minister he advances all sorts of excuses for not introducing legislation. Between them they have done the farmer out of a share in his own factory. Seeing that this country produces a lot of wool and that our production is something like 700,000 or 800,000 bales and we do not manufacture even one tenth of the wool in this country, I say that there is something wrong. If we cannot get the machinery in this country for our wool factory why can a factory like the cotton factory which has just been started at Germiston with a capital of £3,500,000 get machinery to start their factory? We have been told that that factory is going to be started very soon and we would like to know where they got the machinery. I feel that there is something wrong, that there are people oversea and in this country who are trying to work against the industries of this country. The Government has not told us yet whether protective tariffs will be introduced. In Australia you get very high protective tariffs, in fact, it is almost impossible in Australia to import goods from overseas. There they have their own factories. They manufacture about 500,000 bales of wool with a population of 7,000,000 people, in this country with a population of 10,000,000 people, we can easily manufacture all our wool in this country, and in that way we can fight the synthetic stuff to a great extent. I hope this wool factory will only be the beginning and that industries in this country will play their rightful part in the development of this country. I hope the principle of the wool factory will be extended in other directions. I feel that it is absolutely essential for anyone who produces the raw material to support the industry. If industries go under, the men who have fought for it will not have work. I will like to know from the Government in what way they propose to provide work for those thousands of people in industry. I feel that we must do something. I want to ask the Minister also whether he will investigate this trade mark system and whether he will give adequate protection to the blankets we produce in this country, and whether, if those blankets are sent to the Middle East, he will see that proper recognition is given to the South African industry by means of proper advertisement. There is another point I wish to raise. I notice that the Australian Government has voted a big sum of money for the development of the wool industry by means of propaganda and research. I see they are giving 2/- per bale for research and I would like to know what this government proposes to do in the direction of research. We cannot say that this Government is doing anything in the way of research. Research and manufacture go together. We cannot say that they do not go together, because it is absolutely essential that they should go together with a view to discovering new uses for wool and we would like to know what the Government is doing in the form of research. I hope the Minister of Finance along with the Minister of Economic Development will also do something, that they will vote at least 2/- per bale for the furtherance of this great industry on which so many of us are dependent. There are about 160,000 farmers in this country, mostly making their living out of wool, and if the wool industry had to go under through negligence or through insufficient research in this country, many thousands will be thrown on the streets, as unskilled labourers.

What are you going to do with all the money they have in the bank?

We have not got so much money lying in the bank.

The Wool Council.

If anyone has a lot of money lying in the bank, it may be the Minister of Lands, but not the Wool Council. I hope the Minister who has also been against this Wool Council and against research will now once and for all throw in his lot with the other Ministers to see that the Wool Industry in this country is protected, because if the wool industry goes under, we will go under, and we feel that we shall support your industrial schemes in every possible way. The primary producer and secondary industry must work together, and for that reason we want to welcome this measure.

I am all in favour of this Bill, and I feel that it will be an asset to the country and of great benefit to the manufacturer. But I do feel that it goes much too far in the power it gives to the Minister and through him to his Inspectors in so much that it gives the power to an Inspector to enter a factory or workshop and demand to know the ingredients contained in the recipe of a commodity and the process of manufacturing the article. Safeguards are necessary to prevent formulas from leaking out. It is a well known fact that some formulas are so well guarded that they are not even put on paper. They are given to two men, so that if one dies the other will have it. I think the Minister should consider what protection should be given so that these formulas are not given away-Ministers come and Ministers go and inspectors come and inspectors go. An inspector may get to know a very fine formula; he perhaps through some difference of opinion goes out and leaves the service, some unprincipled manufacturer makes him a very tempting offer for the formula, it might be very difficult for him to refuse and it should not be put in his power. There is another point and that is that I would like to seemore provision made in the Bill to prevent the imitation of trade names. We have one glaring example in Johannesburg where a man copied the name of an overseas firm, all except for one letter. That should be more strictly controlled. I have not the slightest doubt that we will be protected as far as trade marks are concerned, but there should be stricter control in cases such as I have mentioned. Then too we should do everything in our power to maintain the quality of the goods manufactured in South Africa. We have become famed for certain lines such as jams and canned fruits. Today our quality is nothing like what it used to be, and I think we should be compelled to keep up the standard. Today we are losing the reputation which we did have at one time in certain lines. In my country of birth, we have that great article of diet, whisky, which is not allowed to leave the distillery until it is 3 years old [Interruption.] We make it there arid you drink it here.

Are you still a Scotchman?

If you give me a drop I will show you. I say that the brandy of South Africa should not be allowed to come on the market until it is at least three years old I saw an article in one of the daily papers the other day about the poor quality of our wines sent to the Belgian Congo. Such things should not happen to a country exporting wines. Unless we take care that our brandies and wines are matured we will lose our good name and perhaps our market, when other countries start competing after the war. I would just like to mention a little incident that happened the other day to show you the kind of business that is being done by some people today. A lady whom I know well bought two chickens and took them home, being very pleased at having got them. She paid the controlled price for them, but when she got home she found a big potato inside, and she had had to pay for the potato at controlled chicken prices. That shows what service we are getting, and very often one finds when one looks inside a bag of potatoes on the market, big fine potatoes until about three quarters of the way down, and rubbish at the bottom. I hope such things will be stopped. There is not the slightest doubt that South Africa will benefit by this Bill. There is no doubt that the Minister did a very fine thing in bringing forward this Bill, but I would just like to ask the Minister to consider what I said about giving the inspectors powers to inspect processing and packing.

I want to congratulate the Minister on this valuable and progressive measure. It is very appropriate indeed that it has been introduced at this stage, as our country is undoubtedly at the very beginning of a great industrial era; and for guidance in that development and to provide the machinery for the scientific management which is required, a Bill of this nature is indispensable. In 1930 at the Imperial Conference the whole question of standardisation was gone into with a view to achieving effifiency and economy in the interests both of producers and consumers. At that conference a survey was made of the different parts of the Commonwealth; and in those parts in which no steps had been taken towards the co-ordination of research and standardisation the recommendation was made that steps should be taken and that the respective governments should finance the development. It is pleasing to know that this Bill is in line with the recommendations of that conference. The Minister has given us a brief outline of the history leading up to this Bill. I think it is appropriate here that a compliment should be paid to the South African Standards Institution established in 1934, for the disinterested, scientific work done by that body of men without remuneration, in their spare time largely and dependent almost entirely on donations. I am very glad to see that the institution is to be retained in an advisory capacity and is to find a place on the council. The Bureau will mean the setting up of a Bureau of Standards. That will mean staff, considerable staff, numerous Committees, buildings, testing laboratories, technical, commercial and physical laboratories. I suppose that to set up a Bureau in that way efficiently will cost not much less than a quarter of a million pounds and I want to appeal to the Minister, in view of the advantages conferred by this Bill, on South Africa, that he will not spoil the ship for a pennyworth of tar. The advantages are very considerable. In the first place the public will be protected from a good deal of exploitation, if not from actual fraud. High pressure advertising can be deceptive, but in this Bill we shall have some form of corrective and the protection of the public. Then again the Bill will protect our domestic manufactured goods. There is an impression—it is to be regretted that there is this impression—that our South African made goods are often inferior to the imported article. I feel that our factories are capable of turning out a good job; and by compelling producers to adhere to standard specifications in their production, the poor quality article will be kept off the market. In that way too this will affect our policy of protection, whether that is done by means of special duties or by subsidisation or by some form of import licence. That, I think, indicates very clearly the great importance of this measure. In the building industry it will have very considerable importance if it is carried to its full development. Standardisation is essential there to do away with the multiplicity of shapes and sizes and the confusion in designs for electrical and other equipment. Municipalities will gain from it, in connection with the need for uniform fittings for their waterworks and drainage plants, and in connection with trams, buses, and road machinery. The farmers too will gain, because not only will their products be protected by standardisation but their materials and equipment will also be of a specified standard. In regard to the mining industry and the railways, the excellent services received from the Standards Institution will be continued and extended. There is one other matter which I think is probably more important than any of these I have already mentioned. During the war we have developed our research work very considerably. This Bill will mean that the war researches will be continued in peace time; and that there will be no slowing down. As standardisation and research are the sine qua non of efficiency in war, so in the rationalisation of the peace development are they equally essential. I want to make a suggestion, if I may. I do not like the constitution of the council. I hope that the Minister, at a later stage in the progress of the Bill, will be able to modify it. Personally I would like to see no council at all. I should prefer that the Minister and his Department, with the Director of the Bureau and his experts should keep the matter almost entirely in their own hands. Nevertheless if there has to be a council, let us make it more democratic than is proposed. I would suggest that we should have one representative of industry and one of commerce; and as we cannot leave out the Workers, one from the trade unions; one from the Board of Trade and Industries; one representing agricultural interests; and two from the Standards Institution. That would be a council representative of producers, consumers and distributors; and in addition it would have, the necessary scientific basis. I appreciate this Bill. Nationally it is going to promote rationalisation on the right lines for every farm and factory and business in the country. Internationally—and I regard it as part of the international development after the war—it will keep South Africa in touch with the big industrial nations in regard to technical, commercial and administrative development. I am sure that this Bill will commend itself to the House.

I have no hesitation in supporting this Bill and I would like at the outset to follow on the lines of the hon. member for Durban (Point) (Dr. V. L. Shearer) and would like to say this, that after the last war our country was flooded with a tremendous amount of cheap rubbish, mainly from Japan.

It is now.

I do not think it will occur again after this war, as far as Japan is concerned, that Japan will send imported goods to this country, because I do not think there will be much left of Japan after America has done with her. But in those years one was deceived largely in buying tools. I am a mechanic and bought tools on the market but these tools were very deceptive. In hundreds of cases people bought these tools and did not get value for their money. I hope that the Minister will prevent that kind of thing happening in the future. One might mention that not only Japan exports this rubbish, but that much of it comes into the country from South American countries. The hon. member for Kensington (Mr. Gray) mentioned the case of the chicken. I have had no experience that way, but some of the rubbish recently imported from South American countries included stockings. One lady I know bought a pair of stockings and says that the wind almost blew them off her legs the first time she wore them. There should be a certain amount of supervision and control over things of that sort which are being brought into the country. I should like to add a word in connection with the standards, and that is in regard to quality. You have many things on standard but it must be up to the requisite quality. I hope the Minis ter will give that side of it a certain amount of attention. Having mentioned these two things I do not think it necessary to say anything more on those matters, but what I want to say to the Minister is this, that in connection with setting up this board that in my opinion, not only should the board be set up, but possibly the board should be controlled by a set of standards which this House would be invoked to pass and they would be expected to carry out and adhere to them. We have heard a lot about our controllers during past years and it is possible that we shall have the same difficulty about the men put on that board. As a mechanic I feel it is necessary that the Minister should get qualified men to control everything in the way it should be controlled, and I would appeal to the Minister seriously to consider this matter and select his controllers in such a way, if possible, as to get men who are suitable. I think that a sample of the standards and of the various things produced should be brought before this House and that the House should adopt these standards for the benefit of the board which will have to execute them.

If it is the intention of the Bill to place the standard of the goods manufactured in this country on a high plane, it is a good object. If the institution of such a council as this will succeed in achieving that, it is a good thing. If in the third place the intention is to lay down a standard in South Africa, which will enable us reasonably to compete with any similar articles, it is a good object. Regarded from that standpoint, the Bill is good—absolutely good. And I think the House has in general expressed its opinion in that sense on this Bill. But the success of this Bill, if it becomes law, is going to depend on the composition of the council. That opinion has already been virtually expressed by practically all the speakers who have hitherto taken part in the debate. Much more depends on it than merely the success of this measure, and this is where the Minister must not take umbrage when I say that this power that is granted under the Bill may be abused if it falls into the wrong hands. The impression is too often created in South Africa, and too often is it stated that everything that is manufactured here is just simply an inferior article. It is not in the interests of South Africa to propagate this inferiority complex. That makes positively towards the detriment of the country. Of course it pays certain interested parties in the country to set on foot a sort of turn-up-your-nose propaganda against articles manufactured in South Africa. It is not to the advantage of South Africa, but it suits the man who makes a profit from the importation of goods. That is why it is so necessary that the council which the Minister is constituting should have no interest in the importation of goods, because if the chairman is a man who is interested in imports to this country—which I am afraid is going to be the case—and two members are appointed in the way laid down in Clause 5, then the council will be so constituted that parties directly interested in the importation of certain articles to South Africa may have the majority. This means that they will have three votes to two, and then you may just as well write Ichabod over the name of South African industrial development in the future. Then it is finished. What will happen then is this. Many articles produced in our country at present and of a reasonably high standard, will not be approved as good enough to receive the standard mark, the object being to give them a bad name. In that way they will not have the opportunity to compete with the imported article, because the imported article will be regarded as the article which is the standard one. The locally manufactured articles will simply never get that standard mark which would be a recommendation to the public, with the result that we shall again witness that snobbish attitude which suggested that South African articles were of no consequence at all. You will recall how the public turned up its nose 24 years ago at South African manufactured shoes. You will recall how it was said: “Colonial shoes, I do not want to see them.” I want to add this, that as soon as we made a start we were asked why we wanted to make shoes here, because shoes could he imported more cheaply and these were only going to saddle the consumer. Then again we were told that they would make the imported article cheaper, and for our part we thereupon pointed out that they had not made the imported article cheaper before we ourselves had begun to manufacture. They retorted to that that they made the article cheaper because they did not want to saddle South Africa with the inferior article. What happened in reality? All hon. members in this House will agree with me that the shoes that are being manufactured today in South Africa are stronger and better, and last longer than any imported shoes. I remember the establishment of Iscor. We were then told that although we had constructed that undertaking at great cost the iron that was made there would be so bad that if you threw it up into the air it would on falling break in pieces like a watermelon. Here was a case of propaganda against the South African article and such stories were spread far and wide throughout the country. We are going to suffer from that if we are not careful as to how we constitute this council. It has already been said, and absolutely correctly, that the men sitting on it must be men who have no interest at all as far as concerns competition. They must not be men who can be placed in the key positions of such a council to benefit this or that, and to disprove of the South African manufactured article on the ground that it does not conform to the right standard, in order to give a chance to the article imported from overseas. Once that happens it is all up. We come to another point in this connection. This is why I am so cautious about who should serve on this council. Members know that young Afrikaners will return from the North, from Italy and other places, who have learned to make things that they would never have dreamed of making before. They are doing this on a small scale, not with machinery but by their own handiwork. There are many of these people who manage to make a fairly good living, because they have a limited objective, work on a small scale, and are not backed by big capital. They will have very little chance of getting the standard mark if we have not a sympathetic council. We have also had the example of what has happened in countries such as England, Germany, France and most countries of the world where hundreds and thousands of people have small industries where they manufacture certain things which they sell to customers, and in that way they make a decent living. If we have not got a sympathetic council these people will have very little chance to have their articles approved for the standard mark. Consequently I maintain that the Minister must be cautious and place sympathetic and patriotic people on the council. If this is not done many a small thing that can be manufactured in South Africa will suffer in consequence. It has been brought to my notice that young lads in England may have a small machine with which they make bolts which they take to the shopkeeper. There is a shortage of these articles, and the shopkeeper buys them all from them. There are young people who make a decent living in that way. But if they want to market such articles when the war is over, we shall have the position that they are manufacturing the goods on a very small scale, and if they are not treated sympathetically they and the things they make will be looked down upon. We must have a council which will not do that sort of thing but which will only have one object (I agree with the Minister that we must aim at a good standard) and that is to encourage these people until they aim at a good standard in the country. The council should not pull the strings too tight by being disapproving from time to time, because the article is not of a high enough standard to secure the mark of approval. If we have a sympathetic council this thing can only work out towards the salvation of the population, but if we have an unsympathetic council the small, businessman will be squeezed to death, and in the second place the public will be robbed of many things that may be manufactured here more economically, and which today are not being manufactured. I have also in mind an instance of light rods that cannot be imported. A man got his tools together and made one. The buyer said that it was just the thing he wanted, and this man is making them now If we had an unsympathetic council they would not have awarded this man a mark for his articles, because he was working on such a small scale. We know that the idea is that industries must be reserved for the great concerns. I am afraid of them, and I feel very touchy on that point, though I have very little of that complex which has been developed in this country. I hope that no hon. member will make himself guilty of suggesting that everything that is made in South Africa is of an inferior standard. At the start many things will not be of a high standard. Other countries took years to develop to the stage that they have reached today, and the council must also proceed from the standpoint that in South Africa industries have not existed for centuries, and that we cannot expect that in a day they will reach the standard of industries in America, France, England and Russia. They have to be reasonable and grant our industries an opportunity to develop. The consumers must also be patient and exercise patience and give a reasonable opportunity for our industries to develop, because we cannot expect that they will with one stride reach the higher standard. It is a question of discretion. Discretion will have to be used, and this is not the only council that can exercise discretion, least of all when one section of the board receives financial Support in the selling of imported articles. Then we could expect nothing right from such a Council. Accordingly I want to express the hope that the Minister will listen to the advice which has been given to him from all sides, and that he will thoroughly sift it in order that amendments may be accepted in the Committee stage which will result in the appointment of a council so constituted as to give a guarantee to the industries that they will not be squeezed to death, on the pretext that they have not been furnishing goods according to standard, and all this perhaps in the interests of parties who are introducing goods into South Africa.

I would like to join with other members here in expressing my appreciation of the Minister’s action in introducing this Bill. I think it will be universally accepted in the country that a Bill of this nature is very desirable and that it can confer upon the country very great benefit. I cannot go so far as some hon. members here have gone in this matter. I cannot see how a Bill of this nature is going to stop junk coming into this country or junk being manufactured. I do not see how a Bill of this Nature can result in a plethora of standardisation in this country. I can understand that a certain article, manufactured to a certain specification, or in accordance with a certain process, might well be marked with a standard mark and that the purchaser of that article, seeing that mark, will know that he has the protection of the standard laid down and secured by a Bill of this nature. But I would be very sorry to see standardisation go to the length of a colossal number of articles being standardised, because I feel that by going that far, it will be retarding progress and not helping progress. After all is said and done, the test is whether the article can be sold or not. Nobody is going to manufacture an article for which there is no sale, but you will always find somebody ready to manufacture an article for which there is a sale, even a cheap article if there is some market for it. In this Bill there are two or three matters, however, which cause me a little perturbation. I think they can easily be given consideration at a later stage, in the Committee stage, for example. This Bill seeks to go rather too far in one step. First of all, I do not think any country in the world has a Bill which goes as far as this. In point of actual legislation, other countries of the world which are far more advanced in the industrial field than this country, have no such Acts. I believe there is an Act in New Zealand, but I do not think there is an Act in any other country of the world which makes provision for compulsory standards such as is provided for in Clause 15 of this Bill. I have apprehensions over that Clause, and I feel that in its present form it is too wide altogether in its application. We must bear in mind that if powers are given to a body, those powers will be used in their literal sense, and not in any restricted sense. That is a Clause which I believe requires a careful review before the Bill finally passes through the House. Then the Clause governing inspectors is another matter requiring most careful consideration. First of all, the only quali fication of an inspector appears to be his ability to speak both languages. I do not suppose a measure has gone through this House which is, in its implications, so highly technical, and it seems to me essential that if inspectors are to be employed under a Bill of this nature, they should be men who are selected essentially for their technical qualifications and abilities. Those men will require to be men who are very highly qualified. If they are not they will fail in their duties. That is as far as the qualifications of an inspector go. As far as powers go, I feel that Bill goes far too far. When an inspector is given the right to enter premises with the tremendous powers laid down here, we, should be careful. I can understand an inspector being given the power to take possession of a standardised article for the purpose of having it tested. I can understand his being given the right to enter and view a process if that process is standardised. But outside of that I do not see that inspectors require such terrific powers as are to be given them in the Bill, Those are matters I feel the House can review at the Committee stage. The hon. member who has just sat down (Mr. van den Berg) seems to be very concerned about those engaged in commerce having any say in this Bill. Let me point out that the commercial man is the distributor himself in the final analysis of the goods that are sold, and that he carries a responsibility in distributing those goods. It is most definitely to his interests that a Bill of this nature should be passed. He will welcome this Bill; he must welcome it. He is not interested in the distribution of substandard quality goods or goods which bring disrepute to his name, because the person who purchases those goods usually holds the seller responsible, and the seller is the commercial man. I have not those apprehensions. This Bill, allowing for certain alterations, will have, I believe, a highly beneficial effect. As far as the Council goes I rather favour the Council being kept to a small number. The present Council is, I think, well constituted, except for one factor. I do not see how the Minister is going to appoint two members who will have a knowledge of industry, of commerce and of agriculture. It seems to me it would be better there to appoint three members, one to represent each particular interest, as each interest in itself is of vital importance in a Bill of this nature, and each has a very big stake in the economic body of the country.

I can appoint four members.

Yes, the Minister can appoint, two more. The Minister also has the right to appoint two persons from a panel nominated by the Institute. That, I think is a very excellent condition, because if one surveys the Committee of the Standards Institute one will see it is comprised of a large number of interests in this country I think there are no less than from 30 to 40 interests represented on the Committee of the Institute. That, I believe, is one of the best safeguards we can have and one of the best safeguards the Bill contains. I do not share the views of hon. members who want to make this a State department. I think the whole question is one which is so difficult and which if not applied carefully can lead to stagnation, that it is essential to have as wide representation as possible in this matter, and by retaining the Institute which has done invaluable and excellent work Over a number of years, the Bill is seeking to safeguard that aspect. I am very pleased to support the Bill in those circumstances.

I, as a practical industrialist, would like to give my support to this Bill. There are, however, one or two points in it with which I am not in agreement, I should like to refer to the matter of the Council. This Council should be a State body if any council should, free of all external influences and free of any influence by any section or body. I think the hon. member for Ceres (Dr. Stals) made a good point when he urged that in the course of his remarks the other afternoon. If I read this Bill aright, it has four main purposes, and its purposes appear to have been rather misunderstood by members on the opposite side of the House, particularly by the hon. member for Swellendam (Mr. S. E. Warren). He appeared to gain the impression that it was going to be an import control measure, and a price regulating measure. It has no such purpose. Its purpose is to form a body which will, in the first place, promote standardisation, and provide facilities for the testing and calibration of instruments and apparatus for use in industry. It will have a laboratory to carry out these purposes. Then it will constitute an authority for the standardisation and the limiting of designs. Designs in industry can become very numerous and complicated, and if only in that respect the Bill will serve a very useful purpose. In that respect I have no quarrel with it. The third main purpose would be to apply certain standard specifications in regard to quality, etc. That appears to be rather an important and necessary measure, and I have no quarrel with that. Then I come to the fourth aspect, the creation of the necessary administrative body for the institution and the carrying out of the conditions of this Bill. As I read the Bill it seems to me the intention is to appoint inspectors who will have the right of entry into all shops to ensure that the provisions of this Bill are being carried out. I should like to ask the Minister whether that applies in any other country, whether such a provision applies in any other country in the world. As far as my knowledge goes in the older industrialised nations a system of standardisation is a guide, and products are brought along to the institution such as the American Standards Bureau, and they are tested by that bureau. If the product comes up to the standard that has been set by the bureau, it is given a mark and is entitled to use that mark. If such an article is afterwards found by the inspectors or by the legal officers not to come up to that standard, the manufacturer of such article would be liable to prosecution as well as the loss of the right to use that standard mark. I should like to know from the Minister whether the proposals in this Bill go any further than that, and whether it is in fact the intention to set up a bureaucratic body of inspectors who will have the right of entry into every industry in the country?

It seems to me that in a country where industries are in their infancy, the compulsory character of this Bill is going to be of very doubtful advantage to us. As a matter of fact, I do not think we have attained such perfection in the standardisation of quality products in this country as to be able to say that any particular standard and no other shall be sold. What we want to aim at rather is improvement in the products our own industries are responsible for. Personally, though I am a South African who takes pride in South African manufactures where they are good, I think an incredible quantity of the South African products put on the market today are unspeakably bad. If you attempt to make use of some of the products that are put on the market from South African industries today much disappointment will be the result.

Government sugar, for instance.

No that is a good product for the purpose which it supplies. I am not going to be critical about individual products. I will say, however, that there is a very great deal of disappointment, especially among the farming community with the quality of products that are provided for them by South African industry, and I hope, therefore, that we are not going to take up a totalitarian attitude in regard to the powers which cur Bureau of Standards is to enjoy under this Bill. Personally I have no such confidence in the Bureau, as the Minister would appear to have from the character of this Bill. I hope that when we go into the Committee stage the Minister will show himself willing to depart from the compulsory character of the Bill as at present framed in regard to the standardisation of products.

The hon. member for Pinetown (Mr. Marwick) says he has no confidence in the proposed council. I must confess I am not unduly alarmed about that, because I have never heard the hon. member for Pinetown express confidence about anything in this House. But so far as compulsory registration is concerned, I think he is taking an unduly pessimistic view. As I explained when introducing this Bill, one of the main reasons why compulsory standardisation may be necessary is in regard to export trade. I do not know whether the hon. member for Pinetown has been watching our export trade during the past few years, but if he has he will know there has been exported from this country a large quantity of stuff and manufactured goods from time to time, and much of it should never have been allowed to leave the country. Somebody in this House this afternoon referred to the question of wine. That, I think, was sent to the Belgian Congo. That was a case in point. We had amended the emergency regulations a year ago to deal with that particular aspect, and now no wine may be exported until it has been tested and found to be of the minimum standard by a Government inspector. That was the case where a safeguard could be provided under the emergency regulations in war time, but that is not a course that we shall be able to follow when the war is over, unless we have some machinery for dealing with it. I am glad to feel that the House, as a whole, welcomes the general purpose of this measure and the objects which we have in view. Various points have been raised, and most of them can, I think at best be discussed in the Committee stage. I do not regard this as a contentious measure. My object is to secure a satisfactory and efficient set-up for what we have in view, and I am prepared to consider amendments which are designed to improve the machinery we are proposing to set up, provided those amendments are put on the Order Paper and we are given an opportunity to discuss and consider them before they come up to the House. I was glad the hon. member for Boksburg (Mr. Williams) and the hon. member for Houghton (Mr. Bell) each uttered a word of caution as to what exactly the scope of this Bill is, and what expectations there may be of it. I think from some of the speeches that have been made in this House during the debate, that some members have rather wide views as to what is intended to be done under the Bill. The hon. member for Cradock (Mr. G. F. H. Bekker), for instance, who I am very glad to associate myself with in his expressions of opinion that agriculture must be closely linked with industry; in the evaluation of the quality of goods produced by the agriculturists and of goods produced from raw material by the farmer, went very far afield from his remarks. But the point which he raised again seemed to me to be unduly pessimistic. He is somewhat obsessed with the fundamental iniquity of the commercial community, and both he and the hon. member for Krugersdorp (Mr. Van den Berg) are most emphatic in saying that no member of the commercial community must be entrusted with any responsibility in regard to the carrying out of the purposes of this Act. Another point was raised on the question of inspectors. The idea of the inspectors under the Act is simply to inspect processes which are themselves essential for standardisation. Otherwise they will only inspect products which are using standardisation marks. If a firm is using a standardisation mark and is thereby guaranteeing to the public a certain standard of quality, whatever it may be, it cannot object to periodic inspections to make sure that its processes and its products are up to the standard of quality required by the use of that mark. The main criticism during this debate has centred round the composition of the council. The hon. member for Ceres (Dr. Stals), speaking for his party; is all out for complete State control. He would have the bureau and the controlling officers of the bureau to be of a departmental nature, and the whole organisation to be staffed by Government officials. His view is that this whole question of standardisation is one purely for Government administration and Government control. He rejects the voluntary basis altogether, and he would have compulsory powers vested in the council and have them carry on a State department. Well, I cannot go all the way with that. If the hon. member for Ceres was stating the official view of his party in this respect, his better feelings came to his rescue in his speech and he did say that if we could not have a completely Governmental organisation, at least we should have something in the nature of a semi-State organisation set up. He was supported by the hon. member for Beaufort West (Mr. Louw), who quoted, in support of the argument that we should have a complete State institution, his experiences in France when he was trying to sell French locomotives to the South African Railways. His complaint was that he was unable to do so, because the South African Railway Administration’s specifications were so rigid that the French people were unable to comply with them, and in his opinion the French specifications were so near to the South African specifications that they might have been accepted, but the South African Railway engineers were inexorable and the negotiations fell through. I would suggest that that argument so far from supporting the argument of the hon. member for Ceres is against him, because it was not a voluntary body, or a body of businessmen, who prevented that business being done, but a body of Government officials.

One department only.

The hon. member for Ceres may, in his innocence, differentiate very much between the make-up of one Government department and another, but I think there is really not much difference whether the body represented one department or a combination of departments. The hon. member for Beaufort West went on to advocate international standardisation. I entirely agree with him; as an ideal, as an objective, it is a good thing, nationally and internationally, to develop a greater degree of standardisation. But there again surely we cannot overlook the fact that where countries have so far promoted standardisation and undertaken measures for developing in that direction, they have all done it on a voluntary basis, and therefore surely if we are in favour of inter-nation standardisation we should take cognisance of the fact that other countries which have gone very much further in this connection, where we are comparative beginners, have found it most satisfactory and sufficient to have a system based largely on co-operation of the producer, the consumer and the manufacturer. The hon. member for Gezina (Dr. Swanepoel) also backed up the hon. member for Ceres. He again, to my mind, gave an argument which weakened the case of the hon. member for Ceres. He quoted cases of standardisation, and his argument was that standardisation might retard the raising of quality and be rather a dead hand on progress. That is perfectly true. But he quoted in support of his argument that taxi-cabs in London were fitted with two-wheel brakes long after every other vehicle had four-wheel brakes and that they had to use studs when everyone else had abandoned them. He omitted to state that this regulation was not introduced by the Standards Institute but by the Metropolitan Police, and it took them twenty years to realise that they were out of date. I think if that subject had been under the control of a body of businessmen those regulations would have been altered many years before. I do not think the hon. member for Ceres and those who supported him have made out a case for complete State control. I think what we have to do is to provide a system whereby the great body of voluntary assistance can be used and where the great body of the people actually affected by standardisation will have a say in the building up of the system under which they will have to work. I entirely agree that in doing that it is the duty of the Government to see that no undue advantage is obtained by any particular interest. I am pressed, on the other hand, by the other point of view which says that there is a grave danger that if we made it a purely State organisation it would be bound to become bureaucratic, and therefore it seems to me what we have to do is to find a means whereby a voluntary organisation, voluntary workers, will be able to play their part, and where at the same time the Government can exercise a controlling interest on behalf of the community as a whole, and can see that no abuse occurs in administering the system. That brings me to the suggestion of the hon. member for Ceres that there should be something like a semi-state organisation. I venture to suggest that actually in this Bill we have a semi-state set-up. Let us just consider this council which it is proposed to appoint. In the first instance, there are to be five members; the State will appoint three of them directly. The State will appoint the chairman and two members. It is quite possible that the chairman may be a Government official I cannot say definitely at the moment. Nevertheless three of the five members are State appointees. The State can further appoint an extra two, giving five State appointees on that council. The other two are appointed by the Minister from a panel of five which will be submitted by the Standards Institution. The hon. member for Houghton referred to that institution and to the very wide ramifications it represents. I do not know whether the hon. member for Ceres and other members know what a very strong committee that Standards Institution has. It comprises not only representatives of most of the large technical institutions of the country, but it also has on it members of the Department of Agriculture and of the Departments of Com merce, Irrigation, Labour, Mines, Posts and Telegraphs, Public Works and Railways and Harbours. So that there are actually nine principal Government departments concerned and they are actually represented on that committee. So that we have therefore these two members appointed from the committee on which the Government is represented very strongly indeed. Surely a council of five, three of whom are actually appointed direct by the State, and the other two appointed from a panel of five nominees submitted by a committee on which the Government is directly represented in such strength, is very nearly a State body. I suggest that where you have, as we have here, a council, five of whose seven members are appointed by the State, and where you have the State exercising a very strong influence on the institution which is going to nominate the other two members and where moreover at every important juncture in this Bill the Minister has the overriding power of decision and has to confirm what is being done, I suggest that in these circumstances we have an organisation so like a semi-state institution that even the hon. member for Ceres will have difficulty in showing that it is not. I hope he will give further consideration to what I am saying so that we may try to get something like agreement on this aspect of the measure, because as I say, I am only anxious to have a workable measure, and I am sure that also is his aim. There is one further point in support of my argument that has not been mentioned yet, and it is this: During this session there will be put on the Statute Book another bill establishing a Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. That Council of Scientific and Industrial Research will be a Government body for taking charge and co-ordinating and promoting and directing research of all kinds throughout the Union. I propose in the committee stage to move an amendment which will make it clear that as far as the objects of this Bill are concerned, the Council of Industrial Research will be closely connected with it, and that when it comes to providing facilities for all kinds of research work and testing work, that will all be done through the Committee of Scientific and Industrial Research, which will have the last word in deciding how it will be done. That will definitely be a Government body with Government control and I hope the hon. member for Ceres (Dr. Stals) will take that into consideration. As a further point in the argument which I am putting forwards is the fact that this additional body will be a semi-State undertaking and that it will have the same opportunity of linking up the huge body of users, consumers and manufacturers who are vitally interested in the matter. They have the same opportunity of doing this as the Council, as it exists today, and they will continue to do this in the future.

Motion put and agreed to.

Bill read a second time; House to go into Committee on the Bill on 22nd February.

Mr. Speaker, I regret that the hon. the Minister of Agriculture is not present, and I also regret that my hon. friend, the consumers’ representative on the Board, the hon. member for Wood-stock (Mr. Russell) is not here. I would have liked them to hear my remarks this afternoon. I am compelled to reopen this question of the Deciduous Fruit Board, or as some people call it the D.F.B., in order to try to bring to the notice of the Government some of the reasons why the public of South Africa are far from satisfied with the present operations of that Board. I claim the right as one who has been in the export fruit trade for something like 20 years and one who had the privilege to study under one of the most able exponents of marketing in the world, Harold Powell, of the Californian Citrus Fruit Exchange; and I wish to point out that notwithstanding the fact that I have repeatedly in this House, commencing with my maiden speech some twelve years ago, and continuing year and year after that, to advocate a better system of fruit marketing in South Africa, very little has been done in that direction. It seems to me to be an extraordinary thing that after all these years, and particularly when the war broke out, and our export markets were closed to us, no active steps were taken to organise the fruit market in the Union on sound and proper lines. The Deciduous Fruit Board members I do not blame individually for the unsatisfactory state of affairs. After all, they are practically all producers. They are very fine gentlemen and I know many of them personally, and they are gentlemen with very good intentions, but unfortunately gentlemen with no experience of marketing. One of the most extraordinary things about the D.F.B. is the statement made by the hon. member for Woodstock in addressing the House on a previous occasion, that since the Board came into operation, it has had no marketing expert and still has none. What an extraordinary admission to make. How can the Government expect good results from a Board which has nobody competent to market fruit and to carry out such a vast operation when they have no expert to guide them. I would like to know, when the Government decided on subsidies to the Fruit Board, and through them to the producers, why they did not insist on such an expert being appointed from the Government’s own service. Surely something could have been done. The result is that today the public and the country are far from satisfied. The Board, to my mind, has done its best, but used very little imagination. They did not feel that imagination was needed, because, as the hon. member for Woodstock has told us, they consider that fresh fruit has very little food value. It is really only good “because of its laxative properties”. In that case I would suggest to the hon. member for Woodstock that he goes to his constituents and tells them that they should take a little water, add fruitose, and then add a little Cascara Sagrada, and then imagine they are consuming peaches. The results will be the same. I do not think the hon. member for Woodstock has done the fruit trade any good at all by this statement because I remember how for years past the fruit trade was dependent on advertising of a high standard, advertising which here and overseas, cost large sums of money and which exhorted the public frequently to “Eat more Fruit; Eat fruit for health”. Now we are told that fruit has not much value because it is only good as a mild laxative. I do not think that is the way to set about popularising those articles for consumption. I should like to make a few suggestions if I may, and I hope they will be considered to be constructive. First of all, I say that there should be a full enquiry into the operations of the Board, and I believe that if an enquiry were held it would show up a state of affairs which we should not allow to be tolerated in South Africa. When I was in the export trade a common complaint of the fruitgrower was that the cost of export and the agent’s commission and handling charges totalled no less than 30 per cent. of the value of his crop. I have before me figures which were given to us by the hon. member for Woodstock, and on going through these figures we find that the total sales value of the fruit handled by the Board was £607,000, and the cost on that amount came to no less than £224,000, in other words something like 35 per cent.; 35 per cent. of the total price of the fruit has gone into the handling of that product. We also find that no less than £31,000 was spent on general administrative charges alone, and I think it is high time that some investigation should be made. I have no objection to the general manager of the Deciduous Fruit Exchange travelling up to Johannesburg by plane and returning by plane, but when it is done on the taxpayers’ money, I feel that I am justified in asking why he does not use the railway service. And when I see the quantity of circulars sent to the fruit growers, giving all sorts of instructions to them from time to time during the season, I wonder whether the Paper Controller has anything to say in the matter. What happens to that paper which the grower receives? I am reliably informed that a good deal of it finds its way to an unmentionable place. The position in South Africa at the outbreak of war was that our deciduous fruit-growers who had always exported their fruit were faced with the problem of marketing it locally and at the same time getting prices that would enable the grower to continue operations. The total quantity of that fruit, I understand, amounts to 75,000 tons. Arrangements were immediately made with the canneries and jam factories, by the putting up of drying-sheds, and with the co-operation of the wineries to take considerable quantities of the fruit. Actually these concerns took over 32,000 tons. That left the Board with a quantity to be marketed locally, of about 43,000 tons of fruit. Now, I said just now that the Board apparently has no imagination. They certainly had no experience of marketing, because in the first place, if any imagination at all was used, it was a simple matter at the end of one season immediately to make preparations for the next; but that apparently was not done. The method adopted one season was simply followed the next season. Numbers of growers in South Africa were accustomed to produce a high quality product and to get a good price on the overseas market for it. I maintain that the same high quality product would have found a ready market in the Union if marketed here; but it was not marketed. The position is this, that instead of the D.F.B. finding out from each individual grower what quantity of first-grade, high-class fruit he estimates that he will produce the following season, and to fix a price for that fruit to the public of South Africa—and I think that the public would willingly have paid anything up to 3s and 4s a tray if they could have got it—and advertising throughout the Union and asking people to place private orders for the coming season, then the people would have placed more orders for the first-grade fruit than the D.F.B. was capable of supplying. They did nothing in this direction however. That is the first point. The second point is that throughout America, when fruit is marketed, they have a system of co-ordinating the activities of markets. In other words, the co-ordination principle of marketing there is properly applied. The Californian Citrus Exchange—and the D.F.B. could have done the same—has an agent or a representative in every town and village, whose duty it is to guide the Board and to inform them what the requirements of that particular town or village are throughout a season, and the quantity of fruit which it can absorb, at the prices laid down by the Board. In some cases it would not have been necessary for the Board to fix the prices but they could have allowed the ordinary law of supply and demand to operate. I maintain that, particularly during the war period, when the people of South Africa have had more money to spend than at any previous time, the law of supply and demand should have been allowed to operate for the benefit of the grower. It would have encouraged him to produce higher quality fruit, because if it had been left to open sales competition on the markets, provided the fruit was properly distributed, he would have received a much better price than he has done and consumers would have received good fruit. I feel that these things have to be altered. I can give another idea of the absurdity of some of the regulations of the Board. The peach is regarded as a very delicate fruit, and when we exported this fruit we packed it in single-layer trays, because a peach cannot stand rough handling or pressure. I have here in this bag three “first-grade” peaches which I purchased as a gift for the Minister of Agriculture. I showed them to him yesterday. They are not quite so fresh now as they were then. They are first-grade peaches three days old. I show them to hon. members. All are badly bruised and not fit for a pig to eat. The peaches are in a disgusting condition. They were sold at 10d. a lb. or 6 for 1s. On enquiry from the retailer why he sold peaches of this description he said that he had no option but to do so and asked me to accompany him to the back of his store. I went there and found that these “first-grade” peaches had come from a most reputable grower in the district of Elgin, packed in boxes weighing 40 lbs. The cost to the retailer, according to the invoice, was 15s. I am not a mathematician but I should imagine that the weight on the peaches lower down in the box must have been considerable. The proof of it lies in the appearance of these peaches. Surely that sort of thing should not be allowed. Surely something should be done about it. To give another instance, when I was in the fruit export trade, whenever we had rejects at Cape Town, i.e. perfect fruit but a little too ripe to stand the journey to England, that stuff was thrown back on us and we were told to dispose of it. It was quite a simple matter to sell a large number of boxes of peaches or grapes in one afternoon by ringing up a bank or an insurance company or a school and saying that I had first-class stuff on hand and was prepared to sell it at a price which not only appealed to the buyer but, at the same time, would give the grower a profit. The people came in swarms. They got good fruit cheaply and went home with trays under their arms. Do you see it today? It is an extraordinary thing nowadays to see a man going down Adderley Street carrying a tray of fruit. I maintain that the D.F.B. could sell it also at a profit. But what did I find the other night? A coloured school teacher came to my house and asked me whether I would like a few pears. I asked why and he said that he had a consignment of several hundreds of trays of pears sent to him, first-class Bon Chrétien pears He had had a telephone message from the Deciduous Fruit Exchange to say that the pears were there too ripe to be placed on the market and that he could have them for sale at 1s. 6d. a tray to coloured people in his area, and he agreed. He told me that the previous year he had handled hundreds of boxes of peaches in a similar way. He sent me a tray. They were the finest pears I have had this year, ripe and without a blemish. Why was not the general public given an opportunity of getting these pears? Why were they simply sent to people who in the ordinary way have to buy them at uneconomic prices? I maintain that these same pears could have been sold, not at uneconomic prices, but at economic prices. Other people, hundreds of them, would have been delighted to take a tray like that home. I maintain that the Board, in this and in other matters, is not serving either the producer or the public by acting in this manner, and I do submit that before the Government gives further subsidies to the D.F.B. it should insist first of all that there should be a marketing expert on the Board, and secondly that there should be a thorough scrutiny of the expenditure of the Board. Another point is this. Many growers feel that the D.F.B. is too much at the mercy of the canneries and their fruit is being given to canneries at prices which to them is incomprehensible. They have had instructions this year to step up the grade of Keiffer pears. Pears which were formerly second grade and accepted by the canneries as such at two inches in diameter, now must be 2¼ inches in diameter, but does the grower get the benefit of the extra size? I am informed that he does not. Furthermore I am told that sound healthy pears with a diameter of two inches and under, although perfect in every other way, cannot be allowed to be marketed and the growers have to feed their cattle with them or bury them on the farm. One of the most fundamental things I learnt in regard to co-operation and marketing which also applies to the sale of a product by a control board, was that unless the body controlling the product is able to render the public a service, which is as efficient and as good, but more economical than any existing service of a similar nature, then it has no right to exist, and I think that until the Board puts its house in order (and measures up to this standard) the public have a legitimate reason for grousing. I say again, without fear of contradiction, that never in the history of South Africa have our people had to eat worse fruit than now, nor had to pay more for it. All this can be overcome provided the matter is thoroughly investigated and a system of expert marketing is introduced. There is just one other matter I wish to raise in connection with the Minister of Labour. I hope one of his colleagues, like the Minister of Finance who is here will pass it on to him. I refer to that large class of people known as the “white collar brigade”, clerks and others who wish to take on various forms of employment. One frequently sees advertise ments in the press of posts of all kinds, ranging for a manager for the Citrus Exchange down to ordinary clerical or typing jobs, and almost invariably, 8 times out of 10, you see at the bottom: “State salary required”. I submit that is wrong. I submit that if a man needs someone in his store or factory or anywhere else, he should be compelled to set a fair value on the services he requires from a new aspirant for that position. I have known a case where a man has, in order to get work, offered his services at a price far lower than they were worth in order to get the billet, and I do not think that is fair. I suggest that if every Government Department can fix the salary scale for public servants in its employ, and if the Minister of Labour, by means of wage determination, can insist that the labour employed in factories and elsewhere shall be at a certain rate of wages, then I submit that it is not impossible for the Government to insist that whatever position is to be occupied, it should be definitely stated in the advertisements what the wages are for that particular post. Such a step would be widely welcomed.

Mr. Speaker, I trust that I may, at the very outset of this short address, make my own position perfectly clear. I have on occasions been referred to as a destructive element. I feel that it is important that I should rectify that impression. I do honestly feel that in the times in which we live the more important aspect of our daily life is to tell the truth as we see it, even although in the telling of that truth it is unacceptable in certain quarters. It is a condition of mind I must uphold at all times and in all places. I also feel, sir, that criticism of the Government, provided it is constructive is perhaps the only kick a new member gets out of this Parliamentary life. It is, in reality, an escape from a life of mental restriction. Why, sir, the hon. the Minister of Finance has set us a good example. He has on occasions expressed himself with great conviction, with telling effect. I shall emulate his example in that regard. I wish to refer to Demobilisation. It is a matter which is very near to my heart something which I would like to see succeed. I would like to take this opportunity of wishing the Minister of Welfare and Demobilisation all success and also those with whom he is associated, because the greater that success the greater will be the benefits accruing to our men and women on discharge. So I do feel, sir, that we should give the Minister every assistance. But nevertheless I do still maintain that thought should be applied constructively, if it means greater success for the plan. I want to say, sir, that as a member of this Party. I am as keen as anybody to see this structure on which we are trying to build emerge into something strong and vital. It is only constructive suggestions that will give us a true line of thought. I would like to pay a compliment to the voluntary worker. He has done and will continue to do a very fine job of work. He has given up his time and rendered a great service to this country and since the success of the demobilisation plan is largely dependent upon him, a great responsibility rests upon him. There is one principle laid down in the demobilisation plan with which I cannot agree. I feel that the principle in itself is limited in scope. It is that no man or woman for that matter will be worse off after the war than before he or she joined the forces. Sir, we are going to get back from the army many young men and women with an enlarged vision and imagination. They will return changed in mind and in their conception of life. They have rubbed shoulders with men and women of other nations, they have gained in experience and they have faced danger. I said, sir, that I feel this principle is limited. I mean just this. All this wealth of experience and this new and larger conception of life must increase a man’s usefulness to the country. Will these factors be taken into consideration in gauging a man’s true worth in the post-war build-up? I would like to say that the demobilisation plan, as it stands today, however fine it may appear to be, appears to lack certain fundamentals. It is a good plan and a lot of excellent work has been done and will continue to be done, but I cannot help feeling that it is lacking in longterm planning. This is a country of many problems and I want hon. members on the opposite side of the House to feel that there is no political capital to be made out of what I am saying this afternoon. I want them to feel that this matter of demobilisation is something far beyond politics. It does not come within the scope of political wrangling. I am bound to say, sir, that we in this country will have to mortgage ourselves for 50 years. I believe that we must put ourselves in pawn for that period of time because there is no other country in the world facing so many problems, so many diversified problems, requiring practical thought and constant attention. There will be no dividends during that period and that is why I feel and will always continue to feel that if we are to get out on the right side in this country, the truth must prevail and be made to work for the social and economic salvation of the country. Our greatest asset is our man-power. It is the only real and tangible asset we possess. I mentioned just now that we shall have coming out of the army a great body of men and women, vigorous and imaginative. I maintain, sir, that because of this one of the most important factors in demobilisation will be individual study and handling. I know how difficult that will be in practice but if the demobilisation plan is to be the success we want it to be then the manner in which the men are handled will make all the difference in the world. I feel that the demobilisation plan offers this country the most important, the most vital opportunity it has ever had. I cannot, this afternoon, go into all the details concerning the practical application of the plan itself but if we can only bring ourselves to believe that every man and woman merits close and individual and for that matter, sympathetic attention in the light of both pre-war and army experience, then the first elements of practical success in the fulfilment of the demobilisation plan will be established. After all we have made a tremendous investment in this war. The point is, are we going to ignore that investment, or are we going to apply that investment in peace? We have expended time, labour and effort in training men coming out of the army. We have given them a new conception of life, new methods of living, new imagination I should like to know what is going to happen to all our non-Europeans trained in hygiene. I should like to know what is going to happen to our probationers, to our dieticians, to our women who have served in the military police. Are we merely going to disband them, or are we going to make use of them in the post-war period? That is what I mean when I refer to the State having made an investment in the war. We have laid out tremendous sums of money in the training of these people and it will be bad business if we merely disband them. We all appreciate too, that we shall have large numbers of young men on our hands. When they are ready to return to civil life these lads will be 24-25 years of age. They too will come back with new vigour and imagination, untrained, it is true, for business or commerce, but with a feeling of responsibility and a new perspective. I maintain that if we are going to strike at the roots of many of the problems, that have been shelved for so long, we should make good use of these youngsters, and regard them for instance as good prospects for soil conservation. Numbers of them might even be considered for the Civil Service, thereby creating the nucleus of a new civil administration These factors I can merely call attention to this afternoon and emphasise the principle that we should make the utmost use of our man-power and not simply abuse it. We have to realise that the study of man is a science and not a haphazard undertaking by anybody. We have to make a start sometime. I am convinced that the only way we shall ever arrive at the value of our man-power is through the creation of a national register. If this were done we should come to know precisely the capacity and ability of every man and woman in this country. It is the only way in which we can make intelligent use of our manpower and if we are to strike at the roots of our many social and economic problems, we must know what every individual is capable of doing. I do maintain that much of our man-power is going to waste, it is going to seed. In a country like ours that has more problems to the square inch than any other country in the world in relation to its size and population, that is of supreme importance. There is too, the question of the variable conditions in the country. The only way to eliminate our problems is first of all to localise them and I think we must make the initial approach on the basis of the zonal system, such as is practised in America. We cannot apply one policy that will serve the needs of the whole country. Conditions for instance in the Transvaal are different say, from conditions in the Western Province. Zoning will permit of a closer and more intimate review of our most urgent problems. I am not suggesting the wholesale disruption of industry but I do maintain that demobilisation is a stepping stone and through it we should plan with vigour, imagination and determination. I feel there is another important aspect allied to demobilisation and that is the temporary employee, the man who is going to be displaced by the returned soldier. I do not regard him as part of the whole, part of the social and economic whole, and one cannot ignore him in our schemes for building up after the war. Sir, we have no right, no moral right whatsoever, to talk so glibly and to write so freely about social security and all these other noble aims and objects unless we are prepared to place a true and honest conception on the value of our man-power. It is the only thing of real value we possess. Even the vast wealth produced by our gold mines cannot match up to the unlimited wealth of our manpower if we apply it properly and use it with the utmost discrimination and foresight. It is the key to the whole social and economic situation. I can foresee trouble ahead if we allow a battle to develop—and there are signs that it is beginning to develop—this battle between the “haves” and the “have nots”. I hope we shall not allow this battle to become a reality because if it does this war will have been fought in vain, and the peace will be lost to us. We must revise our outlook; we must continue to express the truth as we see it, or else we shall get nowhere at all. I feel very strongly that the ordinary fellow who has borne the burden and the heat of war and who is always called upon to bear the burdens of the peace is the man we should look to in the future. He is the man around whom the whole of our economic and social structure will revolve. He is South Africa’s man of destiny. Our interest must be focussed in him. We must create a new basis on which to work, a basis of honesty and sincerity. With this new inspiration and a new-born spirit so shall we direct our man-power along new and healthier channels in which wisdom, making for greater social and economic strength, wil flourish.

May I, in the first place, congratulate the hon. member who has just sat down, on his convincing speech. I agree with him, and I think we all agree with him, that it is looking after the individual that will make for the success of our country. No amount of talking about new worlds, social security or anything of that sort is going to avail unless we can provide work for our men, and there I include women, using the word man in the broad sense. That is the essential thing that we have to do. Industry is not just an adjustment of machinery that automatically does the work. Industry is a combination of men: it is men working together. It is only by our working together, one and all, and providing the necessary avenues of employment that these men and women who have given up so much for us will be able to face the future with the necessary courage and vision. I want to say a few words now about the lady with the scales, the symbol of justice, a blind woman holding the scales in her hands. Those scales claim to represent a man’s freedom and man’s rights being weighed. Two years ago in this House I pleaded for State legal services, to bring about justice for all, irrespective of whether they are wealthy or poor. Equality for all is supposed to be the rule of the law; it is the very spirit and essence of justice. But can we claim that we have it here? Dare we claim that we have it in South Africa? Theoretically every man has the right to go to court, theoretically every man is equal in the eyes of the law. But is he so actually? There is nothing to prevent any normal citizen from taking his case to the courts …

If he can afford it.

I fear many people are debarred from doing that, largely due to a shortage of money. What are the real facts of the case? As I have said before in this House, in every field of the administration of justice there are differentiations. We find that the poor are always at a disadvantage as against the rich. We find that the uneducated man is at a disadvantage as against the educated, and we find that the individual is at a disadvantage as against the corporation. We differentiate in all sorts of ways against the individual. I have had a case brought to my notice quite recently of a railway employee who went on pension last year. He acquired a small holding at Hattingh Spruit in Natal. He had leased it to a policeman. Last year when he went on pension he wanted to get his own little holding so that he could augment his small pension by farming on this small holding. But he found that this policeman was covered by a regulation which prevented him getting back on to his own holding. Those regulations are not always applied to the Government. When the Government has to put people off the land—temporary lessees—it is allowed to do so. The Government is exempt there; the individual is not exempt. Even in income tax—I am glad to see the Minister of Finance here.—we differentiate between the individual and the corporation. The corporation can afford to charge its legal expenses against running expenses. Can any individual do that? An individual may have spent a tremendous lot in proving his innocence, but it is not taken into consideration for income tax purposes. Take the field of civil law. In very rare cases dare an individual fight a corporation? His funds are usually limited; those of the corporation are usually not. If the case is at all doubtful an individual has to face the risk not only of having to fight his case in the ordinary court, but also possibly of fighting the case in the Appellate Division. He may get a bill running into hundreds and hundreds of pounds. How many individuals can face such heavy costs? I have another case that came to my notice recently, and where I went to ask the Department of Agriculture whether it was possible for them to help an individual because he felt that he had quite a good case against the corporation. I was told by the Department of Agriculture—and I quite understand it was the correct attitude—although they are prepared to help farmers they are not prepared to help farmers where they know that the intention of getting particular information is to use it for purposes of litigation. You can quite understand that attitude. All the same, it does strongly bring forward my point that the individual suffers in every case, and usually the individual can least afford to suffer. All individuals are not poor men, but it is the poor individual who suffers because he cannot afford to face heavy legal costs. In the case of the corporation, on the other hand, these costs very often represent a slice of the profits. Even if the individual wins his case it may be a very hollow victory. He may establish his case, it may cost him hundreds of pounds in legal charges which are not admitted by the court as taxable court charges. He may be a winner in law but a loser in reality. There is another and more serious aspect. A rich corporation may have a rank bad case, and yet take one legal exception after another, thus making the lawsuit last out for year upon year, merely by putting all sorts of obstructions in the way. It may thus eventually freeze out the individual who has a just case merely because he cannot continue to face the mounting costs. It may be said in reply to this that there are in forma pauperis proceedings. Those proceedings only help the very poor. May I pay a tribute here to our advocates and attorneys who, in this way help the very poor. They are not adequately paid, if paid at all for their services in this connection. In forma pauperis proceedings, however, are only allowed when an income is less than £25 a month.

A lot less.

I said less than £25 a month.

Ten pounds.

That gives all the more point to my argument. My hon. friend says it is only £10 a month. Well, show me a man with an income of £25 a month or £10 a month that can afford to incur heavy legal charges. He needs his small income for other purposes. Now a word or two about criminal cases. Here theoretically, of course, we are all equal, absolutely equal. We appear before the magistrate or the judge, as the case may be. But is there ever any equality between the man who can afford to brief an attorney or advocate, and the man who cannot, between the man who has experts to see to it that every detail of procedure is followed, and the poor devil in the dock who often does not know what is being said to him and what the procedure means. I cannot quote individual cases, but anyone who has seen anything of the courts will realise that in trials things sometimes do go wrong. At times the accused does not even realise what is being said to him. At times he is so scared that he does not even tell the the magistrate that he does not understand the proceedings, possibly owing to his knowledge of Afrikaans or English being so poor. That is the sort of thing that happens. Occasionally even inadmissible evidence is taken against him. Many of these poor people, when they appear in court, think that everything is already over, and that the court is merely the instrument provided to mete out the punishment that they ought to get. It is cruel, very cruel indeed, that a man charged may be innocent but that he may have to spend all he possesses to defend himself, and that thus he may eventually be broken financially in proving his innocence. In such a case the state makes no restitution whatsoever. Our responsibility there is, in my opinion, great. If a man is put into gaol unjustly he becomes an embittered liability on the State. A man put into gaol wrongly or saddled with the expense of a criminal defence or with heavy costs in a civil action, or robbed of his rights because he cannot afford to fight his case, is dragged down with his dependants into that vicious circle of poverty which is at the root of most of our social and most of our health problems. It should be the policy of our Government to avoid unnecessary litigation. This will save the time of magistrates, of clerks, of attorneys, of advocates and of numerous officials. The poor should be able to call on the services of legal representatives in court to advise and assist them in all matters affecting their rights and their obligations, as well as to advise on the advisability of litigation. This step would often prevent injustices. At present a certain amount of free legal service is available to the poor in some of the larger areas. I would like to see it available to poor men and women everywhere. These men and women need their money for food and clothes, and they cannot afford to spend their hard-won earnings on legal defence. In addition I feel that those administering a State legal service of this character will acquire a tremendous lot of knowledge as to the sort of legislation that leads to hardships in connection with the poor, and they will be able to advise the Government as to the amending of such legislation. I commend the introduction of legal services to the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Social Welfare. Now I go on to say a few words about control, arid first I want to read out a letter that I have just received from the Dundee Chamber of Commerce. The secretary writes—

Why is that not so throughout the country? Why should the lack of 1939 figures prevent one from obtaining goods now ready for shipment? If an order is accepted it is evident the goods are there and to spare. To me it seems to be the old story of big business being safeguarded to the detriment of the small businessman. I do want to say a word here about controllers having charge of import permits. Commodity controllers are quite rightly chosen from the firms which have had plenty of experience in handling these goods. But is it fair to ask those men to decide which firms will be allowed to be importers? Obviously those men are interested in their own business. Take this for example. I am told that one shoe company which wanted to establish a factory at Newcastle was told that there would be too many boot factories after the war. Why should Newcastle be deprived of having their own boot factory because there are going to be too many boot factories in the country? Surely another factory will create employment. I still want to see that the public will suffer through there being too many boot factories. Even if there are too many boot factories, which I doubt, I doubt if the public will suffer. If we are going to adopt this system, it will mean that if we now have an inefficient concern producing goods, we are going to tell the efficient concern that he cannot start because there is already one person producing sufficient goods. It does not matter about the efficiency; that does not matter at all. I definitely feel that we should not by means of regulation close down businesses which might give us the goods that we require at a reasonable price. I referred earlier in my speech to the temporary lessees, the people who have been put off the land which they leased temporarily. I realise the difficulties which the Minister of Lands has to face, I realise that the hon. Minister of Lands is out to do all he possibly can for the soldier; I realise all that. I also realise that it is not his responsibility to find out what we are to do with those people who are now being put off the land, but Mr. Speaker, I want to put this to the whole Government: Help us with those people. I endorse what was said by the hon. member for Vereeniging (Lt.-Col. Rood). I feel that we must have some exception made, somehow or other, as regards the families of those men who are still serving up North. Something has got to be done for them. I am not capable—I do not pretend to be capable—of giving a solution to these things, but I wish to draw the attention not only of the Minister of Lands but of the whole Government to this problem. I come to another letter, this time one which I received from the Controller of Food—

The control here asks the trade to do something which apparently the control is not able to do on its own. I do feel that we should adopt a system of rationing which will be based on a fair quantity per head of the population. Take one case here. In one town, where in 1942 there were large camps and large numbers of soldiers staying there, those particular traders bought large quantities of tea. Those camps may have gone by now. The families are no longer there, but those traders are still getting that big ration. In other places where the population may have increased, where those very families may have come back again, they are getting a very much lesser quantity. I do feel that this question should be gone into. In reading in an article in an American magazine I read the following—

In our country we are asked to fill in a large number of forms, a large number of questionnaires. The business and commercial concerns find that they have to waste hours in trying to fill in questionaires and in trying to get permits for necessary goods. Here I want to plead for the small town again. My whole plea today has been on behalf of the small man and the small town. But after all, it is the small people who build up the nation. The country is made up of a large number of small units, and it is these small towns and these small people whom we have to look after. If a business concern happens to be situated in Johannesburg, or Pretoria, the business people can go along and see the controllers, and very often when these permits are refused the first time, they are able to get them by seeing the controllers personally. But in a little country place miles away, the businessman cannot go and see the controllers. There are many small concerns which before the war used to import articles and sell those articles in their little towns at a reasonable profit. Owing to the present system which we have adopted, they are now told that the quantity they imported before the war was too small, so they cannot now get permission to import on their own. These small people are told that under certain conditions they can combine with other small importers and possibly thus get permission to import or are advised to hand over their quotas to a big importer. In other words, the small town man would then have to pay an extra price to the big man for no necessary service rendered, and it would mean that all the people in the small towns would have to pay bigger prices for those commodities than they would have paid if these goods could have been imported direct. I do not believe that we should discourage the principle of paying for services rendered, but I do not believe that we should by regulation force people theoretically to accept services which they do not need and which are of no use. That is the way to push up the cost of living. I want to point out one small thing to the hon. member for Krugersdorp (Mr. Van den Berg). In reply to the hon. member for Drakensberg (Mr. Abrahamson) he stated the other day that the dairy farmers must be doing remarkably well because otherwise they would grab all the subsidies they could get with both hands. May I just give the hon. member these few figures.

At 6.40 p.m. the business under considerar tion was interrupted by Mr. Speaker in accordance with the Sessional Order adopted on the 25th January, 1945, and Standing Order No. 26 (1), and the debate was adjourned; to be resumed on 19th February.