During this debate we have had all sorts of stories—one is almost inclined to say wild stories—from the speakers in the Opposition ranks. They have tried to make out a case for the resignation of the Government. Not only did they put that case extremely badly, but they have altogether failed to make out any case at all. Why were they not successful? They were not successful because they ventured to tread on ground with which they were unfamiliar. They ventured to discuss questions of economics, and they know as little of economics as the economist knows of them. One might almost say that they know as little of economics as the proverbial man in the moon. That statement of mine is supported by a period of our history when this country actually experienced a period of economic depression. I think the best test as to whether a person is able to criticise is to ascertain what that person’s reaction was in a similar position; and if we go back to that period of depression which this country experienced, we find that the Opposition made a hopeless failure of the government of this country. What did they do during those depression years? They tried to use the very opposite means which the ill economic body of South Africa needed at that time. At that time the farmers sought bigger markets. The industrial people sought greater purchasing power amongst the people; the shop doors of the traders were closed. Commerce and industry practically came to a standstill in this country because the public did not have the purchasing power. But what did the hon. gentlemen of the Opposition do at that time? Instead of trying to increase the purchasing power, they immediately proceeded to reduce the purchasing power still further. They made the civil servants give up nearly £2,000,000. Let us express the hope that the civil servants of South Africa will remember that, and that they will remember it for a long time to come. No, they are a hopeless crowd. We know it, and then they have the audacity to ask this House and the country to hand over the reins of government to them. Their attempt with this motion of censure was a total failure, and in order to conceal that failure, what did they try to do? They tried to abuse the privilege of this House in order to silence them, and that we did not want to maintain the institutions of a democratic parliament. “Die Burger”, in its leading article, went so far as to accuse us of Fascist methods. That is what wé get from the newspapers of those members who said only a short while ago: “Away with British-Jewish democracy”; it must be destroyed to the very roots. Those disciples of Fascism and Nazism are trying to seek shelter behind this Parliament.

You are talking nonsense (twak) now.

You can put it in your pipe and smoke it. I say that they who were disciples of Fascism and Nazism only a short while ago, are trying to shield behind the democratic institutions of this House. Those hon. members came with a veritable vale of tears and a woeful tale, with which they tried to convince this country that we were heading for a depression; that we were approaching bad times. But what did they do when the country was heading for a depression? What did they do in a critical stage of our national life? Who had to help them out of their predicament when promiment members who are today in the Opposition benches, had the government of this country in their hands? It was the leader of the present Government the present Prime Minister, who had to save the country from the morass into which they had allowed it to sink. Imagine those members proposing that the present Government should resign! Who is to take the place of the present Government? Is there any alternative? No, there is none, and members of the Opposition know it as well as the people in the country. They are not capable of forming a government, and they will not be in a position to do so within the next 25 years. The question arises: What is the actual motive of their motion? Is this motion being put forward in all sincerity? They criticise the food situation; they say there is a food shortage. But are they actually concerned about the food position of the country or is the Government being criticised only because food is being exported to our soldiers and also to our Allies? I just want to quote a few words—

Those are the words which were used by a member of the Opposition in connection with our soldiers. That is what was said in respect of our soldiers, and the member of the Opposition who uttered those words is none other than the Leader of His Majesty’s Opposition in this House—the hon. member for Piketberg (Dr. Malan). We have heard a great deal of howling and whining in regard to food but we know there is an ulterior motive behind it. Let us lift the veil from this attempt of the Opposition so that the country may know what the true state of affairs is. They are concerned about the few Nationalists who have to go without meat here in Cape Town. But they are not in the least concerned whether our fighting forces are getting enough food or whether our Allies in the struggle are getting what they need. Let me tell the Opposition that the most important contribution towards any possible successful peace will depend on the co-operation of the former Allies with one another. It is our duty to help those who helped us in these days. Let every voter in the country know that the Opposition is making a veiled attack on the Government because it is taking care of our men and our Allies. They are not keen that our Government should prosecute this war to a successful issue. This is their final attempt to lay a sacrifice on the altar of that power which is in its last throes of agony—Nazism of Germany. Is there really such a great deal of dissatisfaction and revolt in South Africa, as the Leader of the Opposition sought to suggest here? I do not think so. If we look at the fuss which was made in the Opposition press in connection with the meat question, we get the impression that the whole country is in a state of uproar. But if we look at the number of people who participated in the demonstration, it is quite clear that that propaganda of the Opposition does not interpret the feelings of the country. In relation to the great masses in this country, this dissatisfaction and the demon strations in connection with this question, are not as critical as the Opposition wanted to intimate. No, this Government is fully determined to see this war through, and the people are still solidly behind the Government and they are not going to participate in this kind of uproar which the Opposition is trying to set in motion in regard to the food question. The Opposition has indicated that there are two reasons for the shortage of food in this country. The first is that we have had to supply a big standing army, and the second is that we are exporting. Here again we have proof that this is a veiled attack in regard to the food which is being made available for our fighting men. If we compare our position with that of other countries, we can come to no other conclusion than that we are very fortunate and that things are often exaggerated. But the position in which this country finds itself in comparison with other countries, is not attributable to luck only. It has not descended to us from heaven. No, the fact that it is only in the sixth year of the war that we are beginning to realise what war means, is attributable to the fact that we have had a proper, sound and capable administration under the Government of this side of the House, and it is in no way due to assistance which has been received from the Opposition. They have told us in the course of this debate that the food position in this country is very bad, and we, in our turn, have the right to put two questions to them. The first is what they have done in order to improve the position, and the second is what they propose to do if they were to take over the government of this country. Have they anything in the form of a programe which they can submit to us?

Of course!

The hon. member for Cradock (Mr. G. F. H. Bekker) says that they naturally have a programme. In that case I am very sorry for them, because up to the present there has been a striking absence of any proper constructive programme in all speeches which we have had from that side. But what have they done in connection with the food position? We might well ask them that. Since they are now shedding crocodile tears in regard to the food position, we might have expected them to do something with a view to obviating that position. But has the Opposition not been holding one “braaivleis” party after another throughout the length and breadth of South Africa since 1939? Was it not the members of the Opposition who extravagantly wasted meat at those “braaivleis” parties? Have they not been holding so-called action days on the Witwatersrand during the past recess, when meat was wasted on a large scale? If they had been so concerned about the meat position, they would not have wasted meat in that way. I remember that on one occasion they made £1,500 Out of meat. Can they deny that they openly stated that they sold that meat at black-market prices? But that is not the whole story. They were the first to drag the meat scheme into the party political arena in an effort to catch votes. Have we ever seen an appeal on the part of the Opposition that the food supplies of this country should be preserved; have they ever made an appeal to the farmers to produce more food? Fortunately for South Africa the farmers did their duty of their own accord. They carried on with the work of production and reaped the fruits of that production. They have already reaped the fruits, but the greatest benefit which they will still derive from it is that along these lines a stable agricultural industry will be developed under the present Government. When one hears the complaints of the Opposition, one is almost inclined to think that in South Africa we have only had bad times under the present Government. One hon. member of the Opposition stood up and said that it has never happened in the history of South Africa, excepting during the Boer War, that people have had to stand in queues to get food. One would almost say that droughts only occur in Jan Smuts’ time. But those hon. members thought we would forget the past so soon. I have looked at the newspapers of the previous years, and I want to remind them of what happened when members of the Opposition had the government of this country in their hands. I want to take them back to the 22nd February, 1928—

There is no reference to a contribution by the Government. A few days later we again have headlines in regard to starving people, and we find “Die Burger” coming forward with these large headlines a day or two later—

In our country the people died of hunger, but people overseas were surprised at the quality of the products which we were putting on the overseas market. I want to go a little further, and quote from an article in regard to the inland market which appeared in “Die Burger” on the 3rd February, 1928—

How does that strike you? A few days later we again find these large headlines in “Die Burger”—

And a few days later “Die Burger” published a leading article in which they welcomed this report of I. W. Schlesinger as the only salvation for the citrus market in South Africa. I hope the hon. member for Beaufort West (Mr. Louw) will remember that when he again attacks Jewry, that he will remember that it was this Jewish business man who was called upon to save the citrus trade of South Africa. Let me quote from “Die Burger” of the 5th March, 1928. On this date “Die Burger” stated that the time had arrived—

I do not know whether the hon. member for Wolmaransstad (Gen. Kemp) was successful at that time in preventing the drought. We should like to learn how he did it. Let us hope he succeeded. The hon. member for Wolmaransstad accused the Minister of Agriculture the other day of unmannerliness towards the farmers. But what is the attitude which he adopted towards the farmers? Does he recall a speech which he made at Paarl as Minister of Agriculture when he told the farmers that they were too hopeless to farm? We have heard a great deal about the meat scheme and what the farmers have lost, but I want to ask the hon. member for Wolmaransstad and the Opposition whether they still remember how the farmers fared during the last years of the term of office of the Nationalist Party. May I again read a quotation—

These are words which were used not by a member of the then opposition. These are words which were used by the Nationalist member of the Provincial Council, the member for Albert, Mr. T. P. M. Kotze. No, those hon. members simply allowed the country to get deeper and deeper into the mire at that time, until the Leader of the present Government intervened to save South Africa from that position. In his summing up the Prime Minister put it brilliantly, briefly and to the point—

That summing up indicates the position in which this country found itself when this side of the House took over the reins of government. Do hon. members on the other side think that the public of South Africa will again put them into power? It is extremely interesting to glance at the reply which the hon. member for Wolmaransstad (Gen. Kemp), the then Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, gave on the debate. That debate was confined more particularly to agricultural matters and the position in which agriculture found itself. A few days ago the hon. member for Wolmaransstad accused our Minister of contempt towards the farmers. What was his reply? One would have expected him to make excuses; that he would have suggested plans to save the industry. After he had referred to a so-called disease in Natal, the disease of the devolutionists, he made a personal attack on the then hon. member for Brits (Dr. H. Reitz) because he had had the courage to voice certain criticisms. He then stated—

The hon. member, when he was Minister of Agriculture, did not have a good word for his own people. This is the supposed shadow Minister on the other side of the House to whom the agricultural industry must again be handed over. I am afraid the country will not accept him. Then we find that he used these words at Marico—

These words were uttered by the man who now wants to criticise the present Minister of Agriculture. So much for the hon. member. As the then Leader of the Opposition, the present Prime Minister said: “The position to which agriculture has been reduced is such that it will take a long time to build it up again.” The conditions were such at that time that numbers of farmers flocked to the cities to take up employment there at 3s. 6d. per day. Even at that time there were unemployed people in the cities, but in addition to that numbers of people flocked from the platteland. Now we have these self-appointed national leaders. They hoped that the years would dim the past. They hoped that Time would be kind to them. But unfortunately that shelter which they sought has been so thin and transparent that even at this stage, ten years later, their footprints are still to be found in our economic organisation. We still have to suffer today for their mistakes and we shall have to suffer for those mistakes for a long time to come. The best thing to do is to let them fade into oblivion. We shall not shed more tears over them. So much for their attempt to move a motion of censure on the Government. It is hardly necessary for the Government to justify itself in the eyes of the people. The country knows the Government. The country knows what the Government has done to help agriculture. Ten thousand prisoners of war were released to work on the farms; no less than 900 lorries were provided to convey the farmers’ products and they conveyed six million bags of wheat and other grain. Today the farmers are getting sound prices for their products. The Government did its utmost to make available fertilisers. The Railways provided cheap transport. The Government also provided assistance to the consumers. I am only referring to articles which were in short supply and which were made available. The costs of living have risen, and the Government granted a cost of living allowance on a sliding scale. We did not get that at the time when the Opposition was in power. What happened then? At that time salaries were reduced. We are increasing salaries. We are applying the correct method. We are creating purchasing power in order to create a market for the products. Hon. members opposite spoke of undernourishment. Was it not this Government which adopted measures to combat undernourishment, especially amongst school children? And last, but not least. I want to refer to the efforts which the Government made to bring the products of the counry to the consumers, to the very door of the consumer. I refer to the markets which have been established at various centres, and which may still be established at other places. They have no case, and they know they have no case, and now they are making a last bid to make an attack on this Government during the war period. It is a hopeless failure. With regard to our Department of Agriculture and our Government, I see no harm in scrutinising the department under a magnifying glass. Time and again the Opposition has referred to the criticism levelled against the Government by members on this side of the House We on this side of the House are allowed by our Union Leader and by our provincial leader, to criticise. Why? Because we always get constructive criticism from this side of the House. With regard to the post-war period, it is necessary to make plans, especially in the economic sphere, and it strikes us that this Parliament and this Government should devise a long-term plan at this stage and this Government is engaged in drawing up long-term plans. The value of the legislation which is being introduced will be appreciated more and more in the course of the years. The other side of the House is only trying to make use of the limited time to make political capital out of the situation. We are reorganising, especially in the agricultural sphere. The Government is devising a plan on a grand scale. We are faced with the great problem of the conservation of our soil and our water supplies. This is not the time to go into details. Perhaps there will be some other opportunity to do that. Then we also have in mind the establishment of the various branches of farming in suitable areas and to eliminate farming on haphazard lines. With regard to the meat distribution, it must be taken into account that we are living in a country of great distances and that while there may be suffering today as a result of severe droughts, great damage may be done tomorrow as a result of floods. Our agricultural industry must therefore be reorganised. In that connection we should like to see greater and better co-operation between the Railways and the markets; in other words, to avoid the state of affairs where there is a shortage of a certain article on one market while there is a glut on another market. In the event of trucks being ordered for the conveyance of any product to a market, where the station master knows there is a glut, he ought to have the right to send those trucks to another market. As far as meat is concerned, it is clear that there is a great need of a link which is missing at present, namely, cold storage facilities. That is a national matter. The cold storages have not developed properly. There has not been the necessary initiative and capital, and one feels that the time has arrived for the Government to consider the purchase of the existing cold storages and to give attention to the further development of cold storage facilities on national lines. I think no one can object to the intervention of the State, if there is an industry which is of a national character, where the initiative is lacking and there is not sufficient capital, with a view to developing such an industry on national lines. Take South West Africa, for example. I do not think it can be disputed that there you can get all the cattle you require, but the necessary cold storage facilities are lacking. We cannot expect the farmer to send cattle hundreds of miles away, which means that they have to stand in trucks for days and lose a great deal in weight and grade. It will be much better to slaughter the animals and then to convey the meat than to transport them alive. As far as that is concerned, I think there is much room for improvement and development. Here again, I do, not want to discuss this matter at great length. We may have an opportunity at a later date to discuss it further. Let me say this in conclusion: The Opposition wants to take over the reins. When we on our side level criticism against the Government it is constructive criticism. As far as the Opposition is concerned, we are convinced that it is not capable enough to take over the Government, and the voters of South Africa would not want to vote for this motion. It is the destiny of our Government and of the United Party to govern and guide this country in the post-war period too. The future of this country depends on the extent to which this Government can adapt itself to the new ideas which have taken root in the minds of the masses. The United Party and our Government is already doing that. We are taking notice of the man in the street; we are not ignoring him. We are paying attention to his trend of thought. I think we are entitled to carry on with constructive work. We have nothing to ask of the Opposition, because they have nothing to give South Africa.

I do not think I will pass any remarks about the brilliant speech of the hon. member who has just sat down. He is an authority on everything. But if that is the constructive criticism made by the other side of the House I pity the people of South Africa. I however wish to make one remark about the fact that the Minister of Agriculture is not present. I wish to speak about agricultural matters and I am very sorry he is not here. I do not wish to rise in order to scold, like some members on the other side; I want to try to plead for something constructive. We are concerned here with the food of the nation. That is one of the great problems of our country at present. I can only say, after we have listened to such an empty speech as that of a moment ago, that this side of the House wishes to help, and always has helped, in trying to do something to feed the nation. The Government that cannot feed its nation, which cannot make provision for housing and cannot provide food and education for the nation, belongs to the past. If the democratic system cannot adapt itself something else will of course have to take its place. It is the last chance of this House to show the people outside whether we can really do something to feed the nation, or whether we will in future only make the rich man richer and the poor man poorer. It is in that spirit that I wish to speak today. The Minister of Agriculture is not present when such an important discussion takes place. As regards the former Minister of Agriculture, he was a man for whom we had respect, but we unfortunately feel that he has done something tantamount to selling out the farmers. The day he allowed the Chamber of Commerce to become the arbitrator over the product of the farmer, he sold the rights of the farmers to the Chamber of Commerce. We have seen in the previous session how the Chamber of Commerce acted against the farmers. I am sorry to say that the Prime Minister has now put somebody in the place of the former Minister of Agriculture who has sold the farther to the middleman. The Minister of Agriculture was appointed not to help agriculture, not to save agriculture, but to make agriculture forever a slave in its own fatherland and to sell the farmer to the Chamber of Commerce. I think many hon. members on the other side also saw the film which was exhibited the other day. They could there see what the agricultural policy of the past was, and the film showed us how we had to tackle the problem. Are they satisfied to see that Mother Earth, which feeds us, is still further ruined until one day the country will be a desert? There is no doubt about it that if the country cannot provide the nation with food there is no future for the nation. In the past we only concentrated our thoughts on the gold industry. The same happened in Australia and almost brought that country to insolvency. They then realised in Australia that they had to proceed in another direction, and they concentrated on primary products and the development of secondary industries. That saved Australia, so that it could maintain itself. I fear that in our country nothing is done for the farmer. The question is asked where the food is which is produced by the farmers and needed by the townsmen. I will tell you that the food is there. There are enough cattle in the country to produce dairy products, there are enough sheep to produce meat, there is enough wheat in the country, and enough maize can be produced, provided prices are economical to the producer. The producer today receives too little; the price received by the farmer is not enough to assure him of an economic existence.

He is receiving a better price for wool today.

The hon. member is talking about things about which he knows nothing. He speaks about wool. This suit of clothes I am wearing is made of wool. What does the farmer receive for the wool of which this suit is made? About 7s. or 8s. The public must buy these clothes for £18. That is the wrong relationship which exists. One finds that the index figure of wool is 124 and that of the manufactured article 300. That shows how the farmer is being enslaved. He must produce and all the other sections—with the exception of the poor people—exploit the labour of the farmer. There are quite enough cattle in the country to feed the nation properly. I wish to discuss the meat trade, but before I do that I wish to say something about the boards we have and the constitution of those boards. We on this side of the House have been constantly pointing out that in our opinion the boards were not properly constituted. That is the cause of all the dissatisfaction. The boards today have become nothing else but political institutions. The Government does not consult members of the Agricultural Unions but makes political appointments to the board. We feel that the feeding of the nation is a national matter and that no party politics should be dragged into it, but that the best brains of the country should serve on the boards. I feel that the Government should clean up the boards. Any man drawing a salary from the Government should not sit on such a board. Today the board is filled up with people drawing large salaries from the Government and they are afraid to act against the Government. Although I have always been appointed by the farmers and not by the Government, and although I have never drawn a penny for my work, I say that if necessary even members of Parliament must be excluded in order that the boards may be rendered efficient and are not political agencies. We always said that mixed boards were wrong. There ought to be a board of producers, just as the Chamber of Mines appoints its officials, people who understand their work. Therefore we feel that we farmers should also have the right to appoint our own people to boards which control an industry in which £500,000,000 have been invested. If one then needs a board of consumers, that section of the population can also appoint its members and they can come to an agreement as regards the future. What we have now done on the boards is to attack each other and fight each other. That is wrong. Let u have a producers’ board and a consumers’ board, and if necessary also a board of distributors, if the middlemen feel they want to defend themselves. We can then agree by negotiation. What do we do today? We wish to cut out the middleman entirely. That causes a drastic change resulting in chaos. It all depends on what rights we should have. I do not want him as an exploiter. That is the only objection I have against the middleman. He must also live, like other sections of the population. We farmers only ask that people should be appointed to the boards who understand their work, and on the producers’ boards producers should be appointed. The farmers only ask that they should be able to make a living. Do not force the farmers to ruin their ground because costs of production are too high and prices too low. Do not force the farmers to impoverish their soil by producing too much and putting nothing back into the soil. I think everybody will agree that the platteland is deteriorating and the reason is that prices are insufficient and that the producer is not safeguarded. If you safeguard the farmer we do not mind what happens to the product. That is where we made a mistake. We started by wishing to eliminate this one and that one, and we landed in a position of chaos. The marketing system as it is today cannot be patched up again; the meat scheme cannot be put right. I ask you how a scheme can be a success when you have control over the product in certain urban areas but no control on the platteland? Furthermore, there is no doubt about it that if you want to control successfully, you must be able to hoard. Common sense tells us that. If you have no cold storage, and the State has no cold storage, to safeguard the consumer, control is worth nothing. For that reason we today have a black market and chaos. For the platteland only a maximum price was fixed but there is no control. What is the result? People sell in the uncontrolled areas. For example take a producer who receives 1s. for a lb. of meat, or £2 for a wether of 40 lbs. The purchaser then still has the offal and the skin. If in the controlled areas one cannot get more than £1 10s. for such a wether, which man will then send his animals from the interior to the big markets? He sells in the uncontrolled area and the meat is consumed there. One cannot expect success from such a scheme. Mention has been made about the Imperial Cold Storage and I wish to say here that behind the whole business I see the I.C.S. I wish to go further and to state that the industrial company formed by the State made itself so guilty that we cannot trust it any more. Where did it invest its money? It was the intention that its funds should be used to develop industries in the platteland. Where are these funds? That company invested £96,000 in the Imperial Cold Storage. For what purpose? £96,000 of the taxpayers’ money was used to make an existing monopoly still stronger. The shares of the I.C.S. before the war were 6s. or 7s. What are they today? They are now 32s. That shows what happened. The Imperial Cold Storage owns all the cold storage space and apart from the wholesale butchers’ business it also owns 75% of the small butcheries in the Cape. We blame the small butcher when something goes wrong, and he is accused of dishonesty. But that small butcher also has a family whom he must feed and he also has the right to exist. The percentage of gain which is permitted in the retail trade and in the wholesale trade is all in favour of the I.C.S., but the small man whose quota has been brought down, so that where he formerly slaughtered ten sheep he now only receives two, must also exist. How can he exist? He is pushed out and others come in. I cannot blame the man if he has underheand dealings. He also has a wife and children to feed and perhaps he has to pay his blockman £50. How can he exist on the small quota of meat allowed him as things go today? I say that we would prefer to see the whole so-called control of the Government by emergency regulation disappear, because the farmers do not want control as it is today. That kind of control brought the farmer nothing but grief, and also to the consumer and the middleman. It brought about no improvement. The whole scheme is a failure. I cannot help but say that I sympathise with the small man. One man told me: “They do not want me to trade in the black market, but what else can I do: I have my wife and children at home, and I do not know any other work; I cannot do otherwise; I must be dishonest.” The Government is making those people and the public dishonest. It is no use for the Government to pretend to be so righteous. What do they do if a man brings in meat from outside? They prosecute him. There is no distribution today, and now the Government has even gone so far as to commandeer cattle at the auctions outside the controlled areas. What will be the result? That the producers will not send cattle to market, because there is no protection for them. It will make the chaos even greater. I expect that in the coming weeks meat will be still scarcer in the Cape. They go from one extreme to the other and do not in the least know how to tackle matters. Control as we have it at present reminds me of a pair of trousers full of patches which is so rotten that it falls apart. That is what the policy of the Government in connection with the meat trade amounts to, and when I speak like this I do not speak alone but I also give expression to what is felt by many hon. members on the other side. They, however, dare not open their mouths because they sit under the whip of the Chamber of Commerce, and they dare not get up to tell the truth.

Nonsense.

If I have said something wrong there I should like hon. members on the other side to suggest a better plan. I just feel that the hon. Minister is treating the farmer like a child, but we regard the Minister as a child because he knows nothing about farming. He is very clever when he sits next to his Gestapo member, the Secretary for Agriculture. But if a little note is not handed to him he is hopeless. That is the man whom the Prime Minister foisted on us as Minister of Agriculture.

Where is he?

He is not even here. This is what we have to be satisfied with. The Gestapo member sends him a little note or else he is hopeless. I can say a lot because I have often served on these deputations. When the Minister’s Gestapo member sits next to him, that is one thing, but if he sits alone he is helpless. We came here with a deputation of farmers. 25,000 wool farmers sent us here to interview the Minister. What happened? He treated us as if we were children. He has now been made Minister of Agriculture. He tells us: “If you do not withdraw that resolution which was accepted by 25,000 farmers, I wish to have nothing to do with you; it is an ultimatum.” But at the same time he tells us—that is what it amounts to—that his boards are of no importance because the Cabinet fixes the prices.

Who is the member of the Gestapo?

You all know him; I do not wish to mention names. I only wish to tell the Minister this. When he received us in that manner about the meat question and fixed our prices, there was almost a revolution amongst the farmers who have to produce it; it is still there. Still we do not receive back our cost of production. When the 25,000 farmers, through their delegates, gave evidence before the McDonald Commission they definitely stated that they could produce meat for 11d. and no less. I am referring to decent meat now. When I asked the Minister whether he had not seen that evidence he told me that he knew nothing about it. That is your Minitser of Agriculture. That is the man who must look after the interests of the farmers. I just feel this. When we submitted, because the Minister practically promised to help us, he came here and bragged to his Cabinet Ministers; he told them how he had put a number of farmers in their places. That is what the Minister of Agriculture does; he plays the big man. Then he came with his production costs. He wishes to shift the whole matter from himself. He asked what the production cost of meat is. He does not know that. I then asked him what had happened to the Commission which was appointed twenty years ago, when Thornton was still there. About that he also knew nothing. He does not even know what production costs are. He then told us to give him the production cost because unless he has that he could not act for the farmers. He then appointed his economists to see us. We showed him that under this scheme we could not exist. Take wool, or meat, or meat alone, and there is a loss on production costs. Every farmer is entitled to at least five per cent. interest on his capital and labour, but here we will show a profit of only 3½ per cent. on the capital we invested and on our labour. Is not the town dweller satisfied to pay the farmer five per cent. on his capital and work? No, the farmer is not allowed to get an economic price. For that reason I say that the platteland has been sold out to the Chamber of Commerce by this Government, to make a poor man of the farmer and to give the people in the cities cheap food so that they can wax fat and strong, and the poor consumer must pay for it. The Imperial Cold Storage enters into this too. Take the dairy industry. What is the position of the dairy industry? The dairy industry is today in the hands of the Imperial Cold Storage. It is a monopoly. What is the price we receive? I wish the consumer to know this also. After deduction of our railage the farmer on the platteland receives 9d. per gallon. I now ask any man with common sense whether the farmer can feed his cow and deliver milk at that price? The farmer cannot deliver it at that price. He prefers to let his cows graze in the veld. That is why we have a shortage. No, it is a bad policy. It is only owing to the bad policy that there is not enough produce in the country. It is because you do not wish us to make a living on the soil, and I want to challenge you to prove that what I say here is untrue. I am a dairy farmer myself and I know that unless I have a number of stud cattle which I have to feed in order to attain those records it does not pay me to do so. We have no practical people in the Department and not even the Minister is a practical farmer. Those people are ruled by theory, by theory and nothing else. Now let us see what the position is in regard to wheat. I am also a wheat farmer on a small scale. The Minister says the farmers must receive 36s. for their best wheat. But that is not the average price; the average price is much lower. We receive a price which is just taken out of the air. But what does the miller make? He makes 6s. to 8s. per bag from wheat. Is there any other country where there are such rich pastures for the miller to make profits as in this country? In Australia the farmers’ prices are fixed; the middleman receives his profit and there is a fixed price for the consumer. If we work in that direction success must be attained. But here there is no co-ordination. In South Africa we have had no agricultural policy over a period of years. That is why the farmer is rich one day and very poor the next. I should like to ascertain from the Minister, who speaks such a lot about farmers who pay off their bonds, where the farmers get the money with which to pay off the bonds. The farmer borrows that money from moneylenders who give him the money cheaply. If the Minister tells me that the small farmer makes so much money that he is able to pay off his mortgages, then I must laugh because it is absolutely untrue. The large moneylender does not mind lending the farmer money at a comparatively low rate of interest because he knows that land is at least security. That is why some of them are able to pay off their mortgages. Those capitalists on the other side, like Mr. Friend …

Order, order!

Excuse me, I meant the hon. member for Klip River. [Laughter.] But the hon. member knows whom I refer to. I just want to ask the Minister this; he says we must produce. But does he encourage the farmers to produce? I should like the Minister to listen to this. The large farmer produces and as soon as he exceeds his quota the Minister comes and takes three-quarters of his money by way of taxes. What does the farmer do then? He argues: “I will not produce at a loss, and therefore I will produce just so much wheat; I will produce just so many cattle and sheep.” The Minister discourages people from producing as a result of his system of taxation. On one occasion we asked the Minister of Finance to give the farmer a chance to make a little money so that he can pay off his mortgages. The Minister said he could not do that because it would be class legislation. It is the fault of the Minister that not enough is produced. If there is such a thing as under-production in the country it is the Minister’s fault. He does not understand farming. He is a clever man but he knows nothing about farming. The Minister one day told me that I should exhibit a sense of responsibility and I told him that if he came to me I would teach him the A.B.C. of wool and farming. What do we find further? Now, you have a large wool factory. The farmers here agitated for a national wool factory. We spent hundreds of pounds to persuade people to say that they wanted a wool factory in this country and eventually they said they wanted one but we must make it a national wool factory. We then asked the predecessor of the present Minister of Agriculture to introduce legislation so that we could have an inland levy. Unfortunately the Minister died. What did the present Minister do? He made promises and did nothing. What happened to the factory? The wool farmers were pushed out of the factory. It is true that one can take shares but the Minister knows as well as I do that the farmers will not take up shares. In other words the farmer is pushed out and the big commercial people have got together in that wool factory; and I want to tell the Minister that that wool factory will never pay in this country. If afterwards I am proved to be wrong I will beg pardon. The so-called machinery was bought about three years ago. Where is that machinery today? The machinery is sent from overseas piecemeal. So it continued for three years and still the machinery cannot work. It is not here yet. No, I say it is just a bluff to mislead the public and to bring them under the impression that the wool factory will work.

There is a by-election.

Yes, there is a by-election, and therefore all these promises are being made. I say that wool factory will never function. If my information is correct, this Government wishes to fix the prices of products for a very long term, in conjunction with the British Government, under which the farmers will be limited with maximum prices and the large manufacturers in England will control the wool. They will sell the wool to other countries at a high price. England will obtain cheap wool from us and sell it to other countries in order to bolster up her prestige in the world. We received an increase in the price of wool up to 13.4d. What happened then? It is not part of our contract but the British Government is today still buying that wool at the old price, namely 10.75d., and the whole idea is that England should be enabled to manufacture cheap material in order to rehabilitate herself at the expense of the farmer in this country. I do not know whether the Minister knows it but that is the position. I also wish to say a few words in connection with dairy farming. We have dairy products here and there are many farmers who work hard to raise the standard of dairy production. They bought cattle at high prices in order to do something for their country, but what does the Minister allow now? Now he allows the manufacture of margarine. One can almost call him the Margarine-baby of South Africa, who is out to please commerce and to kill the farmer. He says there is no food. Mr. Speaker, there is plenty of food in the country. Pay the farmer a decent price and he will deliver milk and food and all the necessary products. But you cannot expect the farmer to deliver those products if you do not pay him an economic price. That is why I say that this is another case where the Minister of Agriculture is selling out the dairy farmer in order to satisfy a small number of speculators. The other day I asked a question in connection with the exportation of cattle. When one sees the ignorance which exists about the whole situation one stands surprised. But I do not wish to speak about that now. I will return to it later. I was in Pretoria recently and there saw a crowd of women standing in long queues in order to buy meat. Sometimes everything is sold out at 10 o’clock in the morning and they must return home with empty hands. But some women showed us a tin of food for which they had to pay 2s. 2d. and which was just sufficient for two people. My question is this: “If you can pay that price for imported articles, why can’t you pay an economic price to the farmer to enable him to fatten his cattle? Why must you import from overseas? I say we should pay the farmer 1s. per lb. for good beef and you will have all the beef you need in the country. The consumer should not pay more than 1s. 5d. per lb. if the price of 1s. per lb. is fixed for the farmer. I think the consumer will be satisfied to pay 1s. 5d. per lb. for good beef. It is hopeless today to try to send lean cattle or sheep to market. If one wishes to receive a decent price one should only send super or prime to market. The great thing is this: Pay the farmer such a price that he can afford to buy fodder for his cattle and to fatten them properly.

We have heard that for a long time.

That hon. member who just spoke is always talking but he never says anything. I want to tell you what the Government did. It closed the agricultural schools. Why did it close the agricultural schools in the platteland? Did it close the medical faculties of the universities where there are a large number of foreigners? No, he wishes to ruin the platteland. The farmer must not have a chance in future, but only the great commercial people. But I want to ask the Minister what the Government is going to do with those unskilled labourers which come from the platteland if things go on as they are today? What are they going to do for the unskilled labourer in the cities? There is only one sound policy to follow. Give the country a healthy agricultural policy. Make it possible for the farmer to farm on the platteland; make it possible for him to feed his wife and children decently and to house them. If the Government does not do that this country will become a desert. With a decent agricultural policy this country can carry double the number of people it has today. But there is no encouragement from the side of the Government. There is no security for the farmer. Where are all the beautiful schemes about which we heard? There is nothing of the kind. Many people say it is not an agricultural country. Close your dams and rivers and save your veld. Give your farmers a decent price. The springs will run again. The earth is like the body of a human being. If the blood flows out of your body you die. If you do not feed the soil it becomes a desert. I feel that the man who produces is the man who can save the nation of South Africa. Hon. members on the other side can bring forward any of their schemes; they can talk about their gold mines, but if they cannot feed the population of South Africa there will be a revolution in the country and the democratic system of those hon. members will be discarded because it is not worth surviving. I again say that the farmers of South Africa under a proper system can feed double the present population if we have a decent agricultural policy. I am now talking about black and white. But what do we find. We receive nothing but promises. There you have a Minister of Lands who in the past announced wonderful schemes. But what did he do? Show me one scheme he initiated. There is not one. It is just talk. Then we hear about the returned soldiers. Many of my relatives are in the North. I have just as much sympathy for them as hon. members on that side. [Laughter.] Yes, that hon. member may laugh because he sits at home. He is wearing out his pants here. I have many relatives in the North and I am anxious to see that they will be able to earn a decent living when they return. But we must not wait until they return; we must start now so that they can reap the benefit of these schemes on their return. We hear about wonderful schemes which the Government will initiate. It is only election propaganda. We should like to see these promises carried out. I wish to say this, that the Government failed hopelessly as regards the platteland. They have lost the confidence of the platteland. Not only did they lose the confidence of the platteland but they have forfeited the confidence of all sections of the population. They have ruined the small butcher and have ruined the auctioneer. What have they put in their place? Nothing.

They only inaugurated a scheme which can never be a success. If you control meat, which is a perishable product, and you cannot store it, you will never attain success with your scheme, and we will never be able to compete with other countries. In every civilised country provision has been made for the exportation of meat. When I spoke to the large English exporters about this matter they said: “Give us some system; give us the storage facilities which you have not go.” There is a good future for agriculture in this country if only there is proper administration. There is a great future for the country if you provide cold storage space; you will then be able to export frozen meat. But as we are now, there is nothing but chaos such as you have never before seen, and again I wish to say this, I am sorry to say it, but it seems to me as if this Government and the Minister of Agriculture are playing into the hands of the commercial folk in order to enslave agriculture. But not only will they enslave agriculture, but they will turn this country into a desert by means of this petty policy of theirs.

In listening to the previous speaker, the thought immediately occurs to one that if there is one matter on which the Opposition has been consistent and on which it has been consistent over the last five years, it is this one, the sowing of dissension amongst the general public.

Do you believe that yourself?

You are talking nonsense.

If you throw a stone into a bush and a dog barks then you know you have hit it.

It is you who are barking; we have thrown the stone, and now it is you who are barking.

Th hon. member who has just resumed his seat began by saying that all the speeches made on this side of the House were their speeches. There they were logical. Every speech which has hitherto been delivered on the other side has been in the same vein. There was no difference whatever between all the speeches, and that after they had learned the facts from the hon. the Minister of Agriculture. They readily pass over these facts—

Where are the facts?

They pass so quietly over these facts, and they carry on with their empty accusations, as I said at the outset, with just one object in front of them, and that is to create dissension, and to cause distrust in the country and this Government. The hon. member for Cradock (Mr. G. F. H. Bekker) knows better than his speech implied, but it is an instruction from Keerom Street that he should take up that attitude. That is an instruction from Keerom Street, that he should stand up here today and not only bring the Minister of Agriculture under suspicion, but represent him as virtually a cypher by practically saying that the Minister’s appointment was designed to sell the rights of the farmers to the Chamber of Commerce.

That is true.

Is that not so?

It is an allegation that is unworthy of that hon. member.

It is true, I agree with that.

I think that the hon. member does not believe himself, and that is why I say that he is now doing this on instructions from his party in order to generate dissension.

My party does not tell me what I should say.

The hon. member pleaded further for the retention of the middleman, and we all know that the middleman performs a useful service, and that we cannot manage without him. Why does he sow this dissension between the farmer and the Chamber of Commerce? Allegations of that sort do not cut any ice today. The hon. member said in conclusion that this Government had lost the confidence of the people.

You have lost the confidence of the platteland.

This is not the first time that they have said this. They have said this hundreds of times, and what have the elections hitherto proved?

What about Wakkerstroom?

The elections have shown just the contrary. The Opposition have proposed this motion with one object, and that is, as I stated, to awaken dissension amongst the public and to stir up agitation. The hon. member for Wolmaransstad (Gen. Kemp) exclaimed here the other day that the people in this country were suffering starvation, an assertion that he knows is not correct.

Good heavens!

Until today who in this country has suffered starvation? We know that there is a shortage of certain foodstuffs, but is that to say that the people are starving?

Yes.

I want to refer to the agitation that we had the other day outside the gates. The hon. member for Oudtshoorn (Mr. S. P. le Roux) then explained: “These are Communists, these are your allies.” Let me tell the hon. member this, Communistic Russia is our ally today, and we have every reason to be proud of her. But the Communists who set in train the agitation outside here are the allies of my hon. friend opposite. Those Communists are a direct product of the sort of agitation, of the sort of motion that has been introduced here.

Nonsense.

The hon. member may say it is nonsense, but he knows it is not nonsense.

You know it is nonsense.

It was not nonsense when a member of that party gave the Communists in his constituency an opportunity to vote for him.

You know that is untrue.

These are facts which I shall prove.

Prove them then.

Go to the member who stood there, and he will admit that they are true.

It is you who must prove it.

He put up a Communist against the Minister. Those Communists in our country are the allies of our friends of the Opposition on the opposite benches. They are the direct product of this sort of misrepresentation of affairs, of this sort of agitation. Those who listened to the opening remarks of the Hon. Leader of the Opposition can only come to the conclusion that this motion is a desperate effort on the part of the Opposition. I say that it is a desperate effort, particularly for three reasons. Amongst the many reasons there are three that stand out. The Opposition knows we are going to win the war; they are prepared to admit that; the Opposition knows that.

Russia is going to win the war.

That story that we are going to lose the war and that we have already lost the war is a horse that has been ridden to death by no one less than the Leader of the Opposition himself. He has tumbled, and then they came with the second story: Yes, you will win the war, but you will lose the peace. Now it is being said in turn that Russia is going to win the war. We have heard those stories from the beginning of the war until the day when a second front came, something that they would not hear of. The third reason why I say that this motion is a desperate effort and why we are having these convulsive spasms from the other side, is that the Opposition knows that this Government has post-war reconstruction plans that have been worked out to the smallest detail, and that will be carried through successfully.

Can you prove that?

Yes, I can prove that, because the Government has from the beginning, or at any rate during the last five years, shown that it can carry out its plans successfully. And not only that, but let me draw the attention of my friends of the Opposition to the fact that the Government have had to do it without the co-operation and assistance of a large section of the people. On the contrary, the Government has got nothing else from the Opposition, as I have already shown, than that the Opposition has opposed every measure that the Government has brought up, and that to the utmost of its strength. In connection with no single measure has there been co-operation and assistance offered. Today they say that they will help and that there is a state of emergency This is now the first time during the last five years that they have said that the country is in a state of emergency.

But according to you no such state of emergency exists.

We know that the Opposition has since the first year of the war, worked against the Government, but the Government has handled the position so well that the Opposition has not succeeded in its efforts to drive the Government off its course. Accordingly, I maintain that all the resistance of the Opposition will have no effect in making the Government deviate from its course, nor prevent it making a success of its post-war reconstruction plans.

Prove that.

The proof was given as far back as 1939, and consequently the country has every reason to expect that the Government will continue along that road. The hon. member for Cradock (Mr. G. F. H. Bekker) has tried, just like other members on the opposite side, to show that the farmers today do not receive an economic price for their products. Well, the farmers themselves say something quite different. The fact remains that agriculture today is on a sounder basis than it has ever been before, thanks to the policy of the Minister of Agriculture and his department. If we enquire into the economic position of the farmers in the country, I want to give the House the assurance that it is not in that shameful position that the hon. member for Cradock would saddle the farmers with when he said that the farmers went to the one bank to borrow money in order to pay off a mortgage at another bank. It is a shame to try to make us believe that the farmers go to one bank to borrow money to pay off a mortgage at another bank, and thereby to intimate that the farmers are so ignorant that they would do such a thing. The farmers are no longer so uneducated and unenligtened that they would do anything of the sort. The bonds that are paid off are paid off with money that they have to their credit at the end of the financial year. They pay off their bonds with that money, and for anyone to come here and maintain that this does not happen, but that the farmers are so stupid that they borrow money at one bank and then go to another bank to pay off their bond, is absolutely incorrect.

Is it stupid to borrow money at a cheaper rate so that you may pay off a bond that costs you more?

No such question arises. Those of us who have to deal with private financial institutions know that this sort of thing does not happen. The farmers pay off their bonds with the cash that they have as a surplus from their farming.

Is this the reason why the Land Bank sent out a circular to warn the people against that sort of thing?

This is the result of this sort of false accusation that was made, and it is no more than right that the Land Bank should issue a warning against it. If we go into all the agitations of this sort by the members opposite, then we can arrive at no other conclusion than that this is the last dying effort of the Opposition, because they know that the only chance they have got is to represent the position wrongly. They know that they have to bring the measures of the Government under suspicion, because those measures will be carried out with the success that they themselves anticipate, then they know that they have no right to exist and that in the future they will have no right to exist. I would like to remind hon. members opposite that misrepresentations of this sort is the direct cause of certain measures such as the meat scheme not being the 100% success that they should be. Take demobilisation. We know that the Government has evolved a demobilisation scheme to the smallest detail, and that it is now working successfully. But the hon. member for George (Mr. Werth) has come here with assertions that he is not prepared to support. When he is asked for particulars he said that the Minister could find them out for himself. He talked about officers who had said to discharged soldiers: “Look, you should go and buy at this place or that.” It is allegations of that sort that are calculated to upset the demobilisation scheme: and then they say that they want to help. The hon. member for Kuruman (Mr. Olivier) gave instances the other day of the grading of meat, and he too was not prepared to lay his evidence on the Table. If the hon. member mentions a matter of this sort, why is he not prepared to lay his evidence on the Table of the House? He would, of course, do so if he seriously meant to assist in making the scheme a success. It is just a proof that they do not want the scheme to be a success. What they want is that the country should remain in a state of confusion and dissatisfaction. The same remark applies to the hon. member for Wolmaransstad, who explained here that we were exporting food while our people were starving.

But that is the case.

What was the position when the hon. member for Wolmaransstad was Minister of Lands? We also exported at that time, but there was undernourishment of a much worse sort than the undernourishment that is being experienced in the country today. That allegation that the people are suffering from starvation is not correct. What was the position at that time? There was a great amount of undernourishment, but those people were not asked whether they were undernourished or hungry? They were asked if they could pay the price for the food, and when they could not pay it the food was given to England. That was done with mealies and butter. Now the hon. member for Wolmaransstad comes and he wants to show pity for the man who is undernourished. Why did he not do that in the nine years when he was in office?

Do you allege that the Government exported food at that time?

I have pointed out that undernourishment was worse in our land at that time, and nevertheless food was exported.

In conclusion, I want to remind hon. members of this. Hon. members on the other side may continue with that agitation, and with their predictions, but the general public have always had sound judgment, and they will again exercise sound judgment. Hon. members opposite will emerge from their predictions and agitations just as disappointed as they emerged in connection with the prediction that we would lose the war.

Mr. Speaker, there are certain comments I should like to make as to the unsatisfactory results in connection with the meat scheme, but it is difficult, Sir, to deal with these matters in the absence of the Minister who is concerned with these questions, and I think that he should be here. As far as I am concerned I hope that my criticisms will be helpful. My own view is that the people chiefly to blame are the hon. members of his own Department. I believe that before very long the conviction that is shared by the public, very largely, will force itself upon the Government and the Government will make a clearing out in the Department of Agriculture from the top downwards.

Yes, let us start with the Minister himself.

No, Sir, the Minister must be given a chance and as far as I am concerned I think he has worked very hard.

He has had no sleepless nights, though.

But I should like to see the Minister more firm with his own Department. I am about to deal with matters which I think would vastly improve the outlook of the Department towards a number of very serious matters. A fellow farmer of mine, living very near me, complained that although he was ready to plant an irrigation crop of potatoes for Durban—he is a man who supplies about half the winter demand in Durban—he was unable to get his fertiliser because, quite unjustly, his permit was withheld on the ground that the forms of application sent in by him several months before had not been received. Now, I wrote to the Minister and the Minister came to the relief of this man, but he did so in spite of the Controller of that commodity. The Controller of that commodity made the assertion that after the first application could not be found he had written to this particular farmer asking him to cemplete a certain return that he had sent him; and he asserted that he had had no reply. I held in my possession at that time his acknowledgment of the reply which he denied having received, and I wrote to the Minister saying that I hoped he would have this man brought before the Public Service Commission on a charge of serious misconduct. He had no right, I contended, to deny receipt of a document of which he himself had acknowledged the receipt. The Minister, I suppose, did not want to begin imposing such severe discipline. It was the only discipline that would meet the case, but he wrote to me by return of post saying that the permit was being issued.

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

Afternoon Sitting.

When the interval was reached an hour ago, I was just dealing with the question of the difficulty of getting fertiliser supplies under the system of control that has been in existence. That difficulty is a very real one and it has militated very greatly against a proper production of food. I listened very attentively to a broadcast which was given some six weeks or two months ago by the Secretary for Agriculture and Forestry, in which he sought to claim that everything that was possible had been done by the Department of Agriculture in the direction of food production. That was a very extravagant claim. If you go to the merchants whose business it has been in the past to supply us with fertilisers, and other requisites for farming, each one of them will tell you the same story. We have not been met reasonably, they say, by the Department of Agriculture in regard to our requirements at all. Let us take one matter in particular, the question of vegetable seeds. The merchants have condemned for more than 12 months the insistence upon the use of South African seeds. As a matter of fact, some of the most experienced vegetable growers in the Union are prominent men in my constituency and they have constantly written to me to point out that the defecive vegetable seed is alone to be blamed for the shortfall in vegetables in the Union. I put that to the Hon. Minister and an answer was given by some highbrow in the Department, scorning the, theory put forward by the practical men who have grown vegetables for years and who know what they are talking about. Now I want to come to a more important question, and that is the meat control. You will remember that from the outset there have been difficulties in regard to the meat scheme. From time to time the supporters of that scheme have told us of the various things which have militated against the success of this scheme, and prominent amongst their reasons has been the reason that there is a black market to sabotage the scheme and therefore it has never had a fair chance. In May last, in consequence of the assertions that so much meat was being brought in from outside the controlled area and that that was sustaining the black market, very drastic provisions were issued by the then Food Controller, Mr. Keegan, and any person who introduced any livestock into or removed any livestock from any controlled area, except under the authority of a permit issued by the Livestock and Meat Industry Board, could be sentenced to six months imprisonment or fined £500. It cannot be denied now that a considerable number of persons in Cape Town have been regularly introducing meat from outside. How? Under the permit of the Board in question. A certain number of favoured individuals have been granted permits to bring in meat. This very offence of black marketing is legalised, and made permissible by the issue of permits by the Board that comes under the Minister. This is most bewildering. How on earth can you expect the public loyally to suffer all the restrictions and all the difficulties that occur when they learn that a certain number of favoured individuals have been granted permits which allow them to bring in meat from outside and allow them under the permit of the Department to carry on the very system which these regulations were designed to stop? It is a most confusing position. It is not good administration; it is not administration at all. It constitues putting a premium upon favouritism, allowing a certain number of people to have permits, to introduce meat under conditions which constitue an offence, which, but for the permit improperly issued, would render the person liable to a fine of up to £500 or six months imprisonment. I hope the Minister will realise that the occurrence of these things constitue a very serious charge against his Department. He has highly paid men, and I believe it will be found that these permits were issued under the direction of highly paid men. The Proclamation says that nobody may do this except under the authority of a permit issued by the Board. It was never intended that there should be an extensive issue of such permits. It was never intended that this system should be administered by favouritism, and it should have been explained at the time that if there was going to be the slightest departure from the salutary rule that no one was to be allowed to bring in cattle from outside, it would ony be done in circumstances which render it imperative that it should be done. Quite a considerable number of permits are issued. They are in existence today; and it behoves the Minister in view of the very watchful interest which the public is taking in this matter, to tell the public how this sort of thing can happen. It is a complete negation of the understanding that was conveyed to the public at the time, that this form of black marketing was going to be brought to an end. We are still being told this today by those who slavishly support the scheme, that black marketing is responsible for the failure of this scheme; but yet, as I have indicated, there is so much exemption from this rule that no meat can be brought in from outside, that really it is at the moment putting a premium on what was described hitherto as black marketing, and which but for the permits of the Board concerned would be held to be black marketing in the Union.

The other day When the hon. member for Zoutpansberg (Mr. S. A. Cilliers) spoke, he stated amongst other things that a member who did not know what was going on in the country had no right to be in this House. The whole speech of the hon. member was from A to Z a revelation of ignorance regarding what is going on in this country. I will just mention one instance of that. He said that there were no strikes in the country under the administration of this Government. Let me quote from the report of the Minister of Labour that was laid on the Table the other day. During the period 1940 to 1942 there were 39 strikes. The number of persons concerned in them was 7,014; the number of working days lost was 25,566, and the amount of wages that was lost was £10,083. Let us take the year 1943. In that year alone there were 52 strikes; 8,395 persons were involved; 49,855 working days were lost, and a sum of £20,630 was lost by way of wages. And now this hon. member comes here and savs that under the control of the present Government there have been no strikes. What is more, he states that an hon. member who does not know what is going on in this country has no right to be in this House. That applies not only to himself but to the hon. member for Hottentots Holland (Mr. Carinus) who has just spoken. That hon. member has just stated that he definitely denies that there is undernourishment and starvation in the country. But then he twists and says that under the administration of the hon. member for Wolmaransstad (Gen. Kemp) there was more undernourishment than at present. He thus admits that there is undernourishment in the country today. Furthermore, the hon. member said that he absolutely denies the allegation that was made by the hon. member for Cradock (Mr. G. F. H. Bekker) that people are borrowing money from private money lenders to pay off their bonds from the Land Bank. I have in my hand the latest circular from the Land Bank Board, and what do they say? They state in what manner money can be given to the farmer, and then they say—

The Board of the Land Bank says that previously it was necessary to warn the farming community on this point, and now the hon. member for Hottentots Holland comes and actually accuses the Land Bank Board of telling an untruth. I do not think that it will be necessary in this House to bring an accusation against the Board of the Land Bank that it has told an untruth in the past. In supporting the motion of the Hon. Leader of the Opposition. I want to confine myself particularly to the Minister of Agriculture, and I will at once say that I am glad he is now in his seat. I hope that for the remainder of the debate he will be in his place, because I want to say this, that the Minister has been very seldom present during this debate, the sort of thing that has seldom happened in this House. When he became Minister of Agriculture in March of last year, we on this side of the House gave him the assurance that he would enjoy the support of the farmers if he placed the interest of the farmers as No. 1. It is unfortunate that members on the other side go and chat with Ministers and distract their attention when a member is engaged in addressing them.

It is impolite.

The Minister has not listened to the good advice that was given from this side of the House. Instead of him following the good advice that was given by the farmers, there has certainly been no Minister in the history of the Union Parliament who has become so unpopular in so short a time with the farming community, and with the consumers. We want to go further and we want to show how inefficient the Minister was in connection with the meat scheme, but before I do that it is necessary for me to refer to what the Prime Minister said in December of last year concerning this same Minister of Agriculture. He delivered an address at a congress of the United Party, and he said this—

In other words, he has won the meat battle. I think that every man and woman in South Africa who knows the food position smiles when they listen to that language of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister went further—

Is it not making a joke about the food of the people to say a thing like this? Is it not merely to show contempt for the hunger of the people to go and pay homage to a Minister who has occasioned the food shortage? When last year by way of a motion for the adjournment of the House we discussed the meat position, we warned the Minister of Agriculture that he had fixed the prices of meat too low, and that organised agriculture would fight him for that reason. Then the Minister of Agriculture and the hon. member for Hottentots Holland stated here that they also knew the farmer and that the farmer would assuredly not do that. But while we were still engaged in carrying on that debate the woolgrowers met at Bloemfontein and they employed the same langauge as we did here. They also took a resolution to that effect. Nevertheless the hon. member for Hottentots Holland says that it is we who are stirring up dissension. How can it be we who are sowing dissension in view of the fact that those farmers at the same juncture took this resolution while we were still engaged in the discussion? We warned the Minister and told him that the agricultural unions were going to fight him. I challenge the Minister to mention a single agricultural union or meat corporation that has by way of resolution approved the price determination. In this connection I want to quote the resolution that was taken by the North-Western Agricultural Union and which reflects the resolutions that have been taken by organised farmers throughout the length and breath of the country—

This is a resolution that was taken in June, 1944. But according to the hon. member for Hottentots Holland it is the Opposition who have caused this dissension. I say that this resolution is typical of the resolutions that have been taken by every agricultural congress and meat corporation. No resolution with any other meaning has been taken by any organised group. We did warn the Minister, but he proceeded in an irresponsible way as far as regards the meat position.

Then the Minister began to look for scapegoats. When a man makes mistakes he is frequently inclined to look for scapegoats instead of admitting that he has made the mistake and endeavouring to rectify the matter. Instead of acknowledging that he had not the foggiest idea about agriculture and of the subject that he had taken over, the Minister endeavoured to find scapegoats and the first was the Nationalist Party. He said that the Nationalist Party made propaganda. There are members of the United Party as well in the Agricultural Union, and those members also took the resolutions, a sample of which I have read out here. Have they then been so weak that they have allowed themselves to be led away by the propaganda of the Nationalist Party? Did they have so little manliness and courage as to allow themselves to be influenced by the Nationalist Party? Then the Minister went further, and the second scapegoat was the speculator. It did not take him long to go further afield and say that the farmers were the cause of the failure. He threatened that if the farmers did not send their sheep to the market he would import cattle from South-West Africa, Rhodesia and even from Madagascar. If there were sheep on the other side of the warm place before the gates of Moscow, then the Minister would also have threatened to have imported from there. He has also threatened that the Government would make use of its powers to commandeer sheep, but a few days later the Minister took fright and through the medium of the Press he published a statement that his accusations were not directed against the farmers. No, all these charges made by the Minister have come to naught. He has charged the Nationalist Party, the speculators and the farmers each in turn for being responsible for the failure; that had not come off, and then he started beating on the war drum. He said that he would tell his supporters the truth. He let it be known that the excuses he made in the past were false, and the real explanation is that the Government is busy exporting food. He stated that he would now tell the truth, namely, that the larger portion of our food was exported. In order to cloak his own inefficiency he goes further and he says that he will now pay a premium on beef that is sent to the market. In other words, he will not allow the increase to be made gradually, but he will raise the price at once. But he is not going to raise the price of mutton. The sound of his voice had hardly died away when he announced that he would raise the price of mutton by ¼d. This procedure on the part of the Minister is typical of him, and it indicates that he is not fit to fill this post.

Well then Barlow’s Weekly was right.

Now the Minister has found another excuse. He says that the drought is responsible for the meat shortage.

But what did the Minister tell us on the 31st March? If we turn to his speech we find in the Hansard report that he said that in 1939 there were 11,700,000 cattle in the country, and in 1943 the number had risen to over 13,000,000. In the case of sheep there was a reduction of 400,000, but in the case of pigs, on the other hand, there was an increase. In other words, instead of there being a shortage in the total of our livestock, there has been an increase during those years. Notwithstanding this the people have since the last price determination by the Minister begun to go hungry as far as regards meat. The Minister cannot say that the opinions we are expressing here reflect merely the sentiments of the Nationalist Party. Allow me, Sir, to tell the Minister what the feeling is amongst my own supporters in the country. In December I met a prominent farmer at Hutchinson. He asked me: Who is this Strauss; where does he come from; I did not know that there was such a man in Parliament. I had to admit with shame that he was unfortunately a young fellow from my constituency. But I had deep sympathy for the Prime Minister. When he had to appoint a Minister of Agriculture he looked through his whole Party and he could find no one else to appoint apart from the present Minister of Agriculture. I can say in all honesty that the Prime Minister had no one else available whom he could appoint. Instead of the Minister of Agriculture now admitting that he is not in a position to solve this important problem, he is beginning to flounder and publish regulations which all the time become more and more harmful. He would save the meat position, and on the 7th June he issued a regulation about the maximum prices for the platteland. That is to say, outside the controlled areas. The regulation appeared in the Government Gazette, and where the prices were 11d. per lb., with a maximum of 14d. per lb., for the best mutton, the Minister laid down the maximum prices as follows. It will be seen that they amount to an increase of from 4d. to 7d. He fixes the price at 1s. 6d. per lb. for the leg, 15d. per lb. for the whole loin and shoulder; 13d. per lb. for the whole carcase without the pluck, and 12d. per lb. with the pluck. What was the result of that? In that way he created a black market on the platteland, because the local butchers were then in a position to pay a higher price than was paid in the controlled areas. On the other hand, he placed the public in the position that they would have to pay much more for their meat, with the result that the public would not buy the best cuts. The Minister realised that he made a blunder, arid on the 8th of September he issued a further proclamation which fixed the maximum prices as follows. The 18d. was reduced to 14d., the 15d. to 12d., the 13d. to 11d. and the 11d. to 9d. By that the Minister brought down the price of certain classes of meat so low that some of the small butchers could not make ends meet and they had to close down. The Minister then realised his mistake and in despair he said:

Did he say that?

Yes, the Minister said that and he gave certain figures. The Minister stated that for the week ended 29th April the price of mutton was 8d. per lb. and thereafter 6d. and 6d.

No, I did not say that.

I do not want to do the Minister an injustice, but I have here a proof of the Hansard report, and I think he did say that.

On a point of explanation. The hon. member has misunderstood the position. What I stated was that during that week the price was 8d. and later .6d. higher than the indicated price.

Last year the Minister also talked on this subject, on 23rd May, and from the report (page 8127) in Hansard he made the following statement. He gave the average price for mutton as follows. Cape Town, dressed weight per lb.—

Well, which of these two figures is correct? The figure that the Minister gave the other day or that that he gave on the 23rd May last year? If the Minister gives us wrong figures, of what account are they to this House? I have before me the report of the Department of Agriculture for the year 1944 (June edition). There we find that the average price that the Minister gave is 13d. for the first grade and 11.4d. for second grade in the case of Johannesburg; in the case of Cape Town it is 12.7d. The figures all differ radically from those that the Minister gave us. When the Minister put the scheme into operation he admitted that the farmers would get less, and he added to that that the farmers should understand that they could not have it both ways, that they could not expect to have the benefits of price stabilisation, and in addition expect that the highest market prices should be laid down. The Minister saw beforehand that the farmer would get a lower price, but we go a stage further. I want to refer to the answer that the Minister gave in Another Place. In answer to a question he stated that during the week ended 13th January, 11,000 slaughter sheep arrived in a controlled area of Cape Town. The public obtained 93.6 per cent. of that consignment, and the military 5.3 per cent. He stated further that none of this meat had gone to the ships. The people who handle this meat in the wholesale trade and in the meat trade said: Heavens, we do not believe that story! At that time there was a shortage of meat in the Cape, such as was never previously experienced, and every man that handled that meat stated that during that week more meat had gone to the ships than on any previous occasion. Even this morning I went to the trouble to go to a butcher to ask him how much meat he obtained during that week, because the Minister had replied that nearly 94 per cent. went to the public. He said that he got less than 40 per cent. of his quota. What value can we then attach to the Minister’s figures when the general public know that these things are not as he says? I ask the Minister now whether he will deny that the Director of Shipping has greater authority over food than the Food Controller. The Director of Shipping has the biggest say in regard to food, and the Food Controller has only the right to decide as to what shall be done with the remainder. The Minister stated here the other day that the pigs that were slaughtered at Gouda were evenly divided between the butchers. Well, they are laughing about that. They say there is no question of that. The position is that the “National Meat” got all that meat, and they also got their quota at Maitland and Kuils River. Notwithstanding this the hon. member for Hottentots Holland comes along here and says that it is we who are causing dissension in the country. He asserts that there is no stravation. I want to ask him whether the influence of the Nationalist Party is so great and so strong that it is able to bring the people in Durban to the point of storming the potato market and seizing the potatoes; is it so strong that it brings the people of Johannesburg and Pretoria to the pitch of making demonstrations; is it so strong that on Saturday no fewer than 25,000 signatures were obtained in connection with the food position? No, the Minister cannot evade his responsibility for having—to put it coarsely.—made a mess of the food position. And then the Prime Minister says that we must pay tribute to the young Minister for what he has done for the food of the people, for his staunchness and for the victory that he has Secured in connection with the meat problem. Then the Minister of Agriculture comes here and tells us that he has appointed a committee to make an investigation in connection with the grading of meat. What did he expect from that committee? The hon. member for Griqualand East (Mr. Fawcett) served on that committee, and he has already got up in this House in order to defend the meat scheme. Did he expect an impartial report from him? The people knew about the committee. Then the Minister went further and he acted in a puerile manner by seizing stock that was being auctioned. Does the Minister not know the psychology of the farmer and of the producer, does he expect that these producers will again send sheep here? He is not content with causing starvation and a shortage in the controlled area of Cape Town. He also wants to cause a shortage at places such as Worcester, Malmesbury and all the other towns. Let us look at this position. The question that every man and woman in the country is putting is this: Why is it that the Government makes a mess of every food problem that it tackles. Mention one of those problems that the Government has tackled and that it has solved to the satisfaction of the general public? It is not asked what the Nationalist Party is going to do to solve this problem. Last year the Minister did not have the courage to oppose the Nationalist Party scheme. Let us now see what the Nationalist Party says in connection with the fond problem. It is clearly set out in the H.N.P.’s economic plan for South Africa, and I want to present it to the House once more—

1. (i) The elimination of price fluctuations and of speculation in connection with agricultural produce through a policy of marketing control based on a system of grading and price determination for both the producer and the consumer.
2. (j) The active promotion of good and profitable marketing of farm produce under the control of boards which will solely represent each separate section of agriculture by the reorganisation and efficient state control of municipal markets: by increasing the internal consumption of these by means of systematic publicity, and if necessary by state subsidies in order to bring it within the reach of the poorer section of the community; and by expanding our export trade on a sound economic basis by means of improved trade relations with all countries, system publicity and the provision of adequate cold storage facilities.

This is what the hon. member for Cradock also advocated. So long as there is a majority of paid officials on the control boards, so long will those control boards be worthless.

I regard it as my duty to mention in this House the farmers’ conference which was held in Ventersdorp, because the hon. member for Klerksdorp (Mr. Wilkens) has already referred to it. I was approached by the farmers’ associations to arrange such a conference with the Minister of Agriculture and to invite the farmers’ associations and organisations of the surrounding districts to take part in that conference. I was quite prepared to do it. The conference was arranged, but it was agreed beforehand by all the various organisations that no ulterior political motives were to be dragged into that conference, because the farmers had already had the bitter experience that a good case, the best case which they could have had, was doomed to failure as soon as party political motives were dragged into it. It was a definite condition that no politics were to be dragged into that conference; politics had to be kept out of it. Now the hon. member for Klerksdorp comes along and, at the first opportunity he gets, he brings this matter on to the floor of the House and drags it into the political arena, and moreover at a time when we had not yet received the complete report of the Department of Agriculture in connection with the conference, and before we have had an opportunity of discussing it with the Minister of Agriculture. I regard it as nothing less than a breach of faith. It was stipulated as a condition of the conference, and here the matter has been dragged into the political arena. But that proves once again that the Opposition employs only one test, and that is how much political advantage they can derive from it. That is the test which they apply in every case and when they work for a certain cause, the energy they put into it depends upon the amount of political advantage which they stand to gain. I do not quite know what my position is, but I think I would be justified in the circumstances to consult my party in Ventersdorp and to take instructions from them in regard to my further participation in the conference and my course of action. We hoped to get a full report from the Department of Agriculture this week. I heard from the Department that we could get the full report this week, and then there will be an opportunity to discuss it with the Minister of Agriculture, but the whole case has now been spoilt, and the hon. member for Klerksdorp has done the case of the farmers more harm than he will ever be able to repair. The confidence of the farmers of the Western Transvaal will be shocked to such an extent as a result of this that we will never get them again to participate in matters of this kind, with the result that the case of the farmers will suffer. Then I should like to exonerate the farming community from an accusation which was levelled against them by the hon. member for Cape Eastern (Mrs. Ballinger), namely, that all the various sections of the people of our country are in favour of the establishment of a Ministry of Food, and that it is only the farming community which is opposed to it. The farmers’ organisations have never declared themselves either for or against it. As far as that is concerned the farming community is taking no sides. If the Government deems it advisable to form such a Ministry, they will have no objection, and if the Government is of opinion that it is not necessary, the farmers will also be satisfied. But the idea has been expressed that if a Ministry of Food is established, the farmers may have to take a lower price for their agricultural products. I do not think the farmers are afraid of that. The accusation against the farmers is without foundation. They are not taking sides and they have neither expressed themselves in favour of it nor against it. They have sufficient confidence in this Government which is well balanced and which will from time to time, according to the circumstances, fix the prices of agricultural products. In conclusion I just want to point out that the Opposition has referred to dissatisfaction in regard to the food position in our country, and one of their front-benchers went so far as to say that if they got into power, every person in this country would have sufficient meat.

Quite easily.

I want to put it this way, that if they had been in power, we would not have had a crumb of food, because they wanted to conclude a separate peace with Germany, and in that case they would have had to give up all the food in this country to Germany, just as Rumania and Bulgaria have had to do; and there would really have been starvation in our country, just as there is in Greece.

The British are responsible for the starvation in Greece.

I do not want to say for a single moment that everything in our country is perfect. Far from it. There is a great deal of room for improvement. But when we compare the position in our country with the conditions in other countries of the world, South Africa still remains a country of plenty and a country of milk and honey.

Mr. Speaker, when this motion by the Hon. the Leader of the Opposition first appeared on the Order Paper it created a certain amount of controversy as to whether it was a vote of censure or a vote of no confidence.

It is the same thing.

Yes, but there is a difference, and it would appear to me, Mr. Speaker, that the difference is this, that the Opposition desired to confine this discussion to domestic affairs, and that is why they worded their motion in its present form. But in their demand for a vote of no confidence in the Government they have shown clearly on three or four occasions a desire to have it both ways, and they must realise they cannot have that. In considering their demand for a vote of no confidence, it is only right and proper that the whole question of their record, and more particularly the position they took up on world affairs during the war, should come up for review. They probably had hoped that that could be avoided. When I read this motion, Mr. Speaker, the first thing that occurred to me was this, that a motion of this sort might quite conceivably have been moved from these benches, or even by some of the supporters of the Government party as well. I have therefore to examine the credentials and the bona fides of the party that has moved that motion. I have had to look back and to consider whether the party responsible for this motion is the same party that a few years ago told us and told the country that it was the only party that could form a government that would be acceptable to Hitler. I feel that when a statement like that has been made, a statement that in other words carries the implication that they are prepared to become a satellite government under a Hitlerite German Empire—if such should come about—then it is indeed a fact that we must view with suspicion anything relating to a vote of no confidence which applies merely to domestic matters. I do not think there has been any change of heart on the part of the Opposition. I believe that their attitude is the same today as it has been in the past, but there has been a change in regard to the international position and the war position. These sentiments which I have referred to were expressed in the dark days. Today when things are brighter, when the end almost appears in sight, they desire that we should forget these things. Well, Mr. Speaker, we cannot forget them, and I am quite sure the country will not forget them. Having said that, I then examine the position again, the position of the Nationalist Party; when they express their disappointment and disapproval of the Government, are they, as a party, prepared to go in for a form of control of foodstuffs in order to secure a longterm policy that would give a fair price to the producer and to the consumer; or are they in favour, as I believe they are and as many of their supporters certainly are, of a free market in so far as meat is concerned? There again we see the cleverness with which this motion has been worded. Then there is a reference to the rejection of the fundamental recommendations of the National Health Commission’s report. I realise Mr. Speaker, that I cannot at this stage deal with the contents of that report, as it will be brought up under a motion introduced by another member. But at least I can say this, they have not told us whether they accept the National Health Commission’s report, and I think we ought to know that. We ought to know whether they are prepared to accept the National Health Commission’s report. Then we follow on to the question of the post-war situation. There again I am quite sure that the country is not prepared to trust post-war problems to the Opposition party. I think we can indeed say: God forbid that such a thing should happen. We have to secure for some time to come that fairness is going to be meted out to those primarily concerned in all our post-war problems and in our demobilisation schemes. That work must be done by a government that though it may not be as competent as we should like it to be, has at least genuine sympathy for all the people concerned in our post-war problems. To that extent, if it comes to a choice—although there again I am not altogether satisfied that it will be a choice between the two—I think they are living in a fool’s paradise to that extent; because political positions will change very rapidly in this country, so rapidly that one will hardly be able to recognise the parties as they are constituted today. To such an extent will the position be changed that we may not be able to recognise the Nationalist Party, for it will have faded away, and some other central party will have taken its place. So I am not the least bit concerned at the moment, at any rate, about the alternative government that the country may have before it. Having said these things, I come to the question of what is known as the food muddle, or the meat muddle, and I would like to put it to the Minister, in so far as the meat shortage is concerned, he must apply himself to that problem in a very different manner to what he has done in the past. He has issued regulation after regulation and orders that have countermanded each other, he has changed very quickly from this position to that position, in an effort, as it were, to find the right solution to his problems. I want to point out that we have two difficulties to contend with: The one is the lack of desire on the part of the producer to sell unless he can obtain the figure that he wants; and on the other hand there is the fact that when the producer does receive the figure that he wants, the bulk of that product drifts into the black market. That is possibly because the Minister has controlled areas and non-controlled areas. In the controlled areas quantities of meat are sold at black market prices, and for that reason the ligitimate channels through which the Minister hopes to operate his scheme is not being used. I should like also to point out to the Minister that the black market position today,—whilst we know it exists all over the world, it is to be found in every country—is very different in South Africa to what it is in other countries. I have stated, this before, and I say again that the black market in South Africa is better organised and better controlled than the Minister’s own department and his officials, That is shown by the fact that the people who are concerned in it are very seldom convicted. The department makes efforts. The Minister told us that he has speeded up the rate of prosecutions to 50 in Johannesburg, and that he was hoping to speed up prosecutions in Cape Town. But what is a matter of 50 prosecutions in the black market in Johannesburg any more than it would be in Cape Town? That does not solve the problem. I want to tell the Minister there is only one way to solve the problem, and that is to take a leaf out of the book of the Demobilisation Department and form local committees in various parts of South Africa. I would term them vigilance committees. The local people are aware of the existence and operations of the black market. The members of the public know where they can go and buy a piece of meat in the black market at enhanced prices, when they can afford to pay them. The law lays it down that they are just as big criminals as the men who sell the meat, and in a sense they are, because it makes it impossible for the poorer person to buy. But the Minister, in his effort to make the measure severe, and to punish the buyer as well as the seller, issues this regulation making it a crime for any person to buy in the black market, and there by he strengthened the black market rather than weakened it, because once you say that the buyer is liable to prosecution you place the buyer and the seller both in the same position that neither is going to give the other away. So the whole system that has developed on the black market is one that is quite understandable when we appreciate the position we are in today. I am going to suggest to the Minister—though I see that he is not in his seat there are five other Ministers present—I have no doubt that the suggestion I have made to the Minister will be conveyed to him—that is that he should straight away ask for the co-operation of the people of South Africa. At the present moment we have housewife leagues and other combinations of people, but all the work they have done hitherto is to address meetings on the market squares, and that I am sure is not going to assist very much in solving a problem such as this. But if the Minister will get these people to form themselves into committees, if he can persuade them to take up the matter seriously, I am quite certain that he could secure if not the absolute extinction of the black market, its suppression to a very considerable extent. With regard to the National Health Commission’s report, I do not propose to refer to anything in that report, but I want to warn the Government of this, that if they do not indicate quickly what they are going to do, and if they do not quickly show some real activity, if they do not get on with this job, they are in danger of making themselves look very ridiculous in the sense that a certain department of state, a certain Minister, is establishing a national health insurance system throughout various sections of workers in this country. You will be surprised to hear, Sir, and I suppose many hon. members will be surprised, that for a period of nearly a couple of years now, a number of medical benefit societies have been set up under or with the assistance of the Department of Labour. The Minister of Labour has through the industrial councils, assisted to set up new medical benefit societies. There is, for instance, the scheme involving the leather workers, which today has extended tremendously. Then there are the Transvaal clothing employees; they have recently entered into a new agreement whereby these benefits are being extended, and whereby there is no question they will receive all the benefits that a national health scheme could provide. There are, I believe, not less than a dozen of these schemes embracing many thousands of workers. Through the Pharmaceutical Society I have had something to do with them; they have registered and the members of the Phamaceutical Society are today supplying their requirements. So we have this position, and I think the Minister of Finance will be interested to know it, we have now in this country between state employees, railway employees, mines employees, municipal employees—and recently through the good work of the Minister of Labour—many trade unions which have formed their own medical societies; that has been with the assistance of the Labour Department. So the only people now excluded are the poorest people who are not members of trade unions, who are engaged on municipal services or on the mines, the poorest of the casual workers, the labourers. The people who have not been included are the poorest of our population, and it appears they are the only ones that are going to be left out of the scheme such as that visualised by the National Health Commission. There is, too, the class of people earning more than £700 or £800 a year, though even in their case they have methods by which they can insure themselves against sickness.

I do not want to interrupt the hon. member, but he is sailing dangerously near the motion of the hon. member for Yeoville (Dr. Gluckman).

I have been endeavouring to keep off the National Health Commission’s report; I appreciate the position, but unfortunately the motion before the House embraces the rejection of that report. To that extent I have to deal with it. But I have not referred to the contents of that report, not a single word, because I know that would not be the right thing to do. I am putting that forward also to the Minister of Agriculture, and to the Minister of Finance in the hope they will give very serious consideration to these various matters. I am not for one moment going to say that the Minister’s department is incompetent. I am, however, going to say this, that a good deal of talk has been going on in regard to some of the personnel in that department, both in regard to graders (I am thinking of the important positions) and in regard to the controller’s department both in connection with the methods they have adopted, and to quote a word I have so often—it is not incompetence but a much more ugly word. I therefore want to put it to the Minister also that he has to see to it that the attitude of his department towards control over the products they are supposed to control, will be characterised with a sincere desire to carry out the regulations. As far as I can see, and as far as information goes that has been submitted to us, nothing is being done in regard to the matter I have referred to. There is no doubt whatever that a shortage does exist in the country as far as the retail market is concerned, but the Minister’s own figures clearly show the shortage is not in the country itself. He has given us the figures. He stated that in 1937 the number of cattle was 6,196,000, and in November 1943 the number of European cattle was 7,425,000, an increase of 19 per cent. It is true that the Minister coupled that with the fact that more people are now able to buy meat. I concede that point, but with a more careful system of rationing and the setting up Of a Ministry of Food—which the Minister has told us he is not convinced is necessary—every person would receive his or her share of the products available in the country. I do not know how much more trouble we must have in the country before the Minister is convinced of the need for a Ministry of Food. But it is apparent to us that it is essential, and with it a proper rationing system. The great masses of the people in this country are prepared to go short of food for reasons we need not go into now. If it is necessary that butter should be exported and even if cement has to be exported, or if meat has to be exported, they are prepared to accept that position, but they do say that when the food of the people is distributed it should be distributed fairly and evenly, so that each section of the community will get a fair share of the products that are there.

The hon. member for South Rand (Mr. Christie) passed a number of remarks in connection with the party we represent here. He will allow me to say that most of them were the germs of an unfertile brain. I do not wish to reply to that. I wish only to refer to one direct accusation. He said that this side of the House gave the impression that we were all against control and cannot bear to have agricultural products controlled. Allow me to say for the last time that we stand fair and square in favour of control of agricultural products, but what we are not in favour of is the famine scheme of the present Minister of Agriculture. We have heard quite a number of speeches from the other side of the House and even from the cross benches, but we have heard nothing yet as to what they suggest should be done to improve the food position in the country. There is an acute shortage of certain foodstuffs, essential foodstuffs. A tremendous amount of inconvenience is caused to consumers, but we have not heard a word from the other side of the House as to what should be done to remedy the shortage. The Minister of Agriculture rose to give a long narration about how the Government tried to feed the population of South Africa on all kinds of wonderful things. He tried to show what they attempted to do to provide food in the country. He explained that a Cabinet Committee of four was appointed to investigate matters in connection with food and to seek a solution, and he referred to the gigantic attempts of the big four. I only want to say that if the attempts of the big four in connection with food landed us in the position in which we are, we can only hope that Our Father will protect us against any further attempts by the big four. I certainly do not think that a motion has ever been moved in this House which was so much expected as this motion of the Hon. Leader of the Opposition. The food position of the country is so hopelessly muddled that the shortages have practically become proverbial. But the unforunate part is that not only is not enough food distributed but that the present Minister of Agriculture is not able to put anything in prospect as to what he will do to improve the position. If we read the Press reports we see that the Minister states that he sleeps well and has no nightmares about conditions in the country. The nation is in a bad position; there is a hopeless shortage of necessary food. There is a tremendous shortage of dairy products; there is a tremendous shortage of meat, but the Minister of Agriculture enjoys his sleep. It does not give him a nightmare. I haven’t been trained medically but I would imagine that such a condition would be described in English as “total paralysis of the brain.” I cannot express it in any other way when I see a responsible man in times like the present enjoying his sleep while such a condition reigns in the country; I cannot express it in any other way but to say that his brain is standing still. And that is the more true because the Government has not a single plan to alleviate the position as it now exists. I wish to mention only a few matters, and I take in the first place the position in connection with the dairy products of the country. We have today a position where there is a shortage of butter and cheese. We know that butter is produced mostly in the thickly populatetd parts of the country, in those parts where the nature of agriculture and of the soil lend themselves to all sorts of agricultural activities; in other words, the best areas of the country. The milk production costs have risen to such an extent that farmers cannot afford to produce milk any longer. We also know that farmers in the thickly populatetd areas need an enormous amount of concentrates in order to be able to produce milk throughout the year. While that is so, it was pointed out to the Minister that if he wants to provide people with the necessary butter and cheese he should fix the price higher, not in order to enable the farmers to make a large profit, because we know to what extent production costs have increased, but if he wants to provide the consumers with butter and cheese, it was pointed out to the Minister that he should raise the price a little. But there is also another reason why there is a shortage of dairy products in the country. It is a shame, but it is the case that the Government is in fact busy negativing the attempts of the farmers to provide the population with the necessary food. We know that in the past there was a surplus of dairy products in the country. The Dairy Board in those years followed the policy that the extension of the production of dairy products must be combated, with the result that in those days they did not want to extend more licences for the formation of creameries. The trouble in those days was that there was a surplus and therefore they curtailed the extension of the number of factories and the further production of dairy products. But today the position is quite different. Today we do not suffer from a surplus. There is in fact a shortage of dairy products in the country. Every day we hear about a better world, about a better South Africa, where there will be a better and fuller life after the war. If we wish to let that day dawn for the nation we must provide more food for the nation, but while that is the position, the Government is allowing an attempt by the farmers to extend their production to be hindered. What is the true position in the country? There are thousands of housewives who beg and pray for a larger supply of butter and cheese in the country, and while they cannot get that there are large numbers of farmers on the other side, who again, figuratively speaking, pray and beg for a chance to obtain a licence to provide butter and cheese. We wish to have an explanation from the Minister of Agriculture as to why the licences for creameries have been curtailed in this manner while there is a shortage of butter and cheese in the country. It really seems to me that while the Government speaks of the better world after the war, where there will be a better life for everybody, it in fact does not believe in it. They are so uncertain about it that they follow a policy which acts as a hindrance to the public. This is a practical case, where if action is taken, relief can at once be given, and I should like to have an explanation from the Government—the Minister of Agriculture unfortunately cannot participate in the debate any more—as to why the expansion of dairy products must be curtailed in this manner in these times when the public is clamouring for more butter and cheese. I hear the remark here that the Minister of Agriculture is not listening to the debate. It makes no difference to me because at least there is an official present. In connection with the meat position there are a few matters I wish to bring to the attention of the Government. The first is that the housewife at the present moment has to do without the necessary meat. The second is that a tremendous financial blow has been dealt the farmer as a result of this scheme. The third is that no Minister of Agriculture has for years past been so swamped in the seas of his own sins as the present Minister of Agriculture. Whatever might be said about the exportation of meat and agricultural prices, and in spite of what the Minister may say, it is a well-known truth that the farming population suffered tremendous loss as the result of this meat scheme. But what I want to say is this, that the farmer will suffer that loss with a glad heart if only he has the assurance that, what he loses will not crystallise itself in the pocket of the exploiter and of the middleman but that the consumer will receive it. In those circumstances he will willingly make the sacrifice. But it is because the farmers feel that this does not happen that they say this scheme is a failure and that a change has to be made. I want to give a practical example to show how the farmer and the consumer in the country are being exploited. Near me there is a farmer who in December had fattened 70 slaughter oxen. As a practical man who knows what he is doing he selected 50 of the best and divided them in two groups. The one group he sent to the local market. For five of them he received £25 each; for five £22 10s.; for 10 £20 10s. and for five £19 7s. 6d. The average, after the deduction of commission was £20 15s. The remaining 25 he sent to be slaughtered under the scheme. The average price was £17 11s., namely £3 4s. less than he received on the local market on an average, and £2 6s. 6d. less than for the lowest group sold on the local market. How is this possible? The Minister cannot say that those oxen all went to the black market. It is nonsense to say that. The lot sold on the local auction were sent direct to Johannesburg where they were resold on the market and sold over the counter on the Rand in the usual manner. How can such a difference in price possibly exist? At this moment I do not wish to bring any accusation but we demand an explanation in connection with this matter from the Minister of Agriculture. We want to know from the Minister how it is possible that the farmer lost more than £3 per ox when he supported the scheme. But we go further. This Minister expects us as farmers to support the scheme. Now I want to ask him in connection with this special case what such a farmer should do. The 25 oxen he sent away under the scheme were graded. 14 of them were second grade and 11 first grade. We can therefore accept that the rest of the consignment, if he had sent them away, would mostly have been third grade. That would mean that he received about £12 each for them. If he had sold them on the market as trek oxen he would easily have received £16 each for them. Does the Minister think that any farmer in those circumstances will send cattle to the market? If he keeps them until the summer when they are fat they will be prime. He will put 3,000 lbs. more weight on those oxen which will mean that he will receive 20s. per 100 lbs. more, and that he will then receive £190 more for the oxen than at present. How can you expect that the farmer in those circumstances must supply the market with meat? No, this scheme of the Minister will always create a meat famine in times of scarcity. Under this scheme there will never be a steady supply reaching the market. There is a very easy solution to this difficulty. The Minister said that the Leader of the Opposition has his unpractical head in the sky. Allow me to tell him that our country has an unpractical Minister of Agriculture who walks with his unpractical head in the sky and who seeks a complicated manner in which to get rid of these difficulties, while the solution is very simple and stares him in the face. Let me tell him this. In the first place we need the necessary cold storage space in the country. Even in times of war it is very easy to provide that space. However, be that as it may. This scheme of the Minister will always remain a famine scheme in times of scarcity until one day he can gather enough brain to realise that the gap, between his various price groups is much too big to be applied in any time of shortage like the present. In January, 1944, the price of first-grade beef was 69s. 6d. per 100 lb., for second grade 65s. This is a difference of 5.8 per cent. For third-grade it was 59s. On the 12th January the difference between 1 and 2 was something like 6.5 per cent. and between 2 and 3, 6.9 per cent. The difference between 1 and 3 was 13 per cent. Then fat cattle became more plentiful. Take 8th February. The difference between the price groups immediately increased. It increased from 6 per cent. to 8 per cent. between the first and the second, and to 14.7 per cent. between 2 and 3, while the difference between 1 and 3 was something like 20 per cent. On 2nd March that difference still existed. What happened then? Then the Minister of Agriculture announced his prices, namely 62s. for first-grade; 52s. 6d. for second-grade and 46s. for third-grade. That is a difference of 39 per cent. between the first and the second groups. I wish to give you the assurance that today there are thousands of cattle in the country which are fit to be slaughtered, and which could very well be slaughtered. But with this enormous difference one cannot expect any farmer to send cattle to market. Will one find people who will say that in spite of the loss the farmer must suffer if he sends cattle to market instead of holding them in order to fatten them, he should still send them to market so that the consumer may be supplied with meat? But how can we expect the farmer to send his cattle to market? In the past he was not sure of the prime price when he had fattened his cattle. Now he can hold them over until summer and get them into prime condition, and he knows what the price for prime meat will be. It is fixed. Now the Minister comes and does not follow the example of practical trade in the past. He does not regulate the difference in price according to the example of practical trade in the past. In times of scarcity they brought the prices of the different groups nearer to each other, and in times of plentiful meat they shifted them further from each other. The Minister, as an unpractical man, makes those differences in price constant, and as long as this Government permits the food position to be controlled by an unpractical Minister of Agriculture, so long will there be a shortage of food in the country. This Minister is continually busy seeking escape from his own political sins. He looks for scapegoats. When it is not the farmers who are boycotting the meat scheme, it is the speculators or someone else. But the nation outside no longer believe this Minister’s excuses. That is true not only of the Nationalists, but even the Minister’s own people do not believe him any more. In this connection I wish to quote a passage from a leading article of the Bloemfontein “Friend,” the S.A.P, paper of the Free State. In a leading article the paper published the following—

It is quite clear that whatever may be said, this Government made a miserable failure of its task of providing the people with the necessary food. I dealt mainly with the question of dairy products and meat. Those difficulties are the easiest things to solve. The Prime Minister can solve the difficulty within 36 hours if he would only give us a practical Minister of Agriculture.

Mr. Speaker, as one listens to this debate, whether it is a vote of censure or of no confidence, and one thinks of the other motions moved by the Opposition during this time of war since 1939, one realises that every responsible person in this country must know that our Opposition’s policy has been a pro-Hitler one.

Surely that is not the best you can do?

Surely even you can do better.

Control, rationing arid scarcity politics have been the Allied Nations policy and not only the policy of the Union of South Africa. It is this policy which has brought about victory.

Shortage of food?

In this country it has been very difficult to carry out on account of the mixed response we have in regard to our war policy. When we have an Opposition which is pro-Hitler and attacks the Government in all its endeavours it is not so easy. We also have a mixed population. We have an enormous difference as regards our wage earning people in this country and we have an Opposition, Mr. Speaker, who are really not responsible for what they say.

And is the Government responsible for its actions?

The member for Cradock (Mr. G. F. H. Bekker) said that our Minister did not consult the farmers’ organisations and yet we know, as regards this meat scheme, which has come in for most of the criticism, that the South African Agricultural Union approached the Minister and offered their wholehearted support, and they sent six of their members round the country addressing farmers’ associations.

And when was that?

I am sorry that the hon. member does not know about that, but they were envoys of the South African Agricultural Union.

Political agents.

We have also had the member for Cradock saying that he is an authority on dairy products.

And so I am.

He mentioned the low prices of cheese-milk, 9d. He did not tell us that before the war it was 5d.

But what is the production cost?

I suppose everyone must be controlled but not the farmer. The farmer must not be controlled. He must now be allowed to have a nest-egg, and that is the policy of the Opposition. Now, if they were co-operating with us there would be benefits not only to the farmer but to the country, and even if we laboured under certain disabilities, that would be a contribution towards winning this war. We on this side are concerned with winning the war because if the war were lost the farmers would have had nothing. We have heard a lot said about the black market. The member for South Rand (Mr. Christie) also mentioned it. Well, I suppose there is a black market in every country in the world, although perhaps not in Russia.

So you are a Russian now.

The black market means that people with money are taking advantage of scarcity. That is really what it means. Members of the Opposition, and the member for Smithfield (Mr. Fouché) said they are not against control. I am very glad he made that statement because the farmers all said that they want stability. He has mentioned the price level for meat and the difference in price people have received for cattle on the controlled markets as opposed to the open markets. I also can quote figures where people selling on the controlled markets got up to £3 more for cattle on the controlled market than on the open market. I am surprised that the member for Cradock saying that unless there is 100 per cent. control the meat scheme would be a failure. It would be the end of our country stock fairs. Now, our control at present it a war measure, an emergency measure. The Minister has promised us stability as regards meat prices and that he will place the control of meat, under the Marketing Act, in the producer’s hands; and that promise, the farmers know the Minister will carry out. Naturally members opposite will try to kill support of a meat control scheme. They definitely endeavoured to kill support from the commercial community and the urban people as regards the present meat scheme. That they will continue to do and the farmers will be the sufferers.

What is the scheme under the Marketing Act?

That is a scheme where the farmers and the producers will have a majority on the control board. The member for Calvinia (Mr. Luttig) spoke about starvation in this country. I ask you to look at members opposite and see whether they are starving. Can they conscientiously say that anyone is starving in this country for want of a little meat? It is such an irresponsible statement to make, and it was stated by His Majesty’s Opposition here in this House. I feel that they do not really realise the responsibility which the country has placed upon them. We cannot have an efficient Government unless we have a good Opposition. But our Opposition are purely destructive in their outlook. They know that the old laws of supply and demand under which the meat trade was governed, was purely speculative and when we had the best markets these were periods of shortage, but we had people who distributed and controlled our meat, and they made up for their losses by depressing the market during periods of plenty. The Minister commenced this scheme on a high level, at least 60 per cent. above the pre-war level. After all, we farmers in time of war must produce our products in conformity with the returns for which other people work. The Minister has promised that if farmers can produce figures to prove that their costs of production are such that they are not getting a fair return, the Minister will give them sympathetic consideration. No such figures have been produced as regards wool, to mention only one product. The hon. member for Cradock spoke about wool, but the merino sheep farmers in this country have never enjoyed the prosperity which they enjoy today.

Reply :

What do you know about it?

The hon. member for Cradock may interject, but he said the farmers were not reducing their bonds. Let me say to the hon. member that the farmers have reduced their bonds and paid their indebtedness as they have never done before in the history of this country. It is a great pity to find a responsible member like the hon. member for Cradock, making a statement of that nature on the floor of the House. Within the first four years of the war £12,000,000 was paid off their bonds by the farmers to the Land Bank. But the members of the Opposition, of course, want to profit by sowing the seed of distrust …

Dissension.

Call it dissension if you like—but at any rate suspicion. Where they have inherited those qualities I do not know, but there is no denying the fact that they have had a measure of success, and I was very disappointed to find that even a member like the hon. member for Durban (Berea) (Mr. Sullivan) the other day expressed suspicion as regards the Government’s intentions in connection with the report of the Health Commission and also in connection with social security.

Who have not expressed a suspicion.

The hon. member has no grounds for that. He is an individual who was born in the most British of the Dominions of the British Commonwealth of Nations and I was surprised at the hon. member for Durban (Berea) making a statement that he suspected the Government. He has no grounds for that suspicion. Our much-appreciated member for Cape Eastern (Mrs. Ballinger) also expressed suspicion as regards the Government’s intentions and I must remind her that she rode into the House on the reputation of one of Great Britain’s great queens and she should not cultivate suspicion. There is no doubt that our Government is sincere in its intentions, and the idea of providing social security and health facilities did not emanate from the members of this House, nor did the building schemes. It is a world policy as far as the allied nations are concerned. The members of the Opposition have apparently forgotten that there is a war on in which our very lives are at stake, that liberty and those principles for which our forefathers fought are at stake. They have forgotten the hospitality for which we in South Africa are famous. If you read the papers during this period of war ….

What papers do you read?

I hope I read more papers than the hon. member for Swellendam (Mr. S. E. Warren). In fact, I even read the “Kruithoring”. We have it distributed to us gratis. Sometimes one appreciates something for nothing.

And you want the farmers’ produce for nothing.

Anyone reading our papers, would have no doubt that, and especially as far as the Opposition is concerned, there has not been 100 per cent. support for our war effort. The Leader of the Opposition misunderstands criticism of the Government’s policy. Our Government welcomes criticism as long as it is constructive. We have no Gestapo complex like our Opposition. We do not want downtrodden people in this country, and this country is very proud of its accomplishments during this war period. With a fair majority of people of both sexes, young and old, poor and rich, it has taken one of the most brilliant leaders in the world to bring us to the position in which we find ourselves today and if the Opposition imagines that they are going to make political capital out of the few hurdles which are left to this Government to take, they are making a great mistake.

There is one aspect of post-war reconstruction that does not seem to have engaged the attention of the Government or of the Opposition who regard themselves as the alternative Government. I speak of the readjustments of the relationship between the Europeans and the natives in the industrial, economical and national life of this country, without which, in my view, post-war reconstruction must fail. A vote of censure or a vote of no confidence has a significance to a member of the House who represents the Europeans and to the Europeans outside of this House. It is constitutionally a method of drawing specific attention to the complaints of dissatisfaction amongst the people and of seeking through the ballot box to shift the Government’s responsibilities on to the shoulders of their own party in the hope and belief that the shibboleths of their party will be the panacea they complain of. It is well to remember in dealing with post-war reconstruction that a vote of no confidence has no such significance to the native people. Nothing that we do can change the Government. I would like to draw attention to the fact that we as a group, representing the native people of this country, supported the Government on September the 4th, 1939, not because we then or have since agreed to the economic or industrial policy of this country; on the contrary, we have made it abundantly clear from time to time that we profoundly disagree with it, but we are prepared to come in with the Government as a gesture of sacrifice on behalf of the people we represent in the interests of a war policy against an ideology which, if successful, will have destroyed every vestige of freedom for all South Africa.

What personal sacrifices do you make?

Personally on behalf of the people I represent in this House.

In what way?

By abandoning the full pressure in relation to things we were demanding for the people we represent. I do not want to be lead off at a tangent on that point. I repeat that it is quite clear that the situation of the native people is that the vote of censure before the House has no significance at all. Whilst we have supported the Government on the war policy and will continue to do so, I would be wanting in sincerity if I pretended to be unaware of the dissatisfaction and uneasiness which exist among them, and if I were to be blind to the unfortunate deterioration in the relationship between white and black in this country. In order to show the effects of these things upon the economic and industrial position in this country and upon the future relationship between white and black, may I speak for a moment briefly of the impact of the 100 per cent white legislature on a country where 4/5ths of the population is black. We have, for example, a colour-bar restriction in relation to mines and works deliberately intended to prevent certain classes of work being performed by natives irrespective of their ability to perform it. We have the Native Service Contract Act which virtually makes the native living on the farm the serf of the owner and the native is beholden to the farmer for permission to leave the farm if he wants to seek other work. We have a series of measures dealing with skilled employment which, whilst not explicitly debarring natives from engaging in those employments, implicitly prevents him from so doing by apprenticeship regulations and by the fact that even if the man qualifies he will not be able to work on the same scaffold or platform as his European counterpart. We have an Urban Areas Act which virtually prohibits the occupation or ownership by natives of land in European areas and compels him to live in a location situated far from his work, creating dislocation of service and great unnecessary expense to the people concerned. We have a system of passlaws which by design or otherwise controls the employment of native workers and prevents them from entering a free and open market, and as far as my recollection serves me, the native people have not yet obtained the right of collective bargaining in respect of their services. We have our land policy which prohibits native ownership of land except in restricted areas under which he is, in effect, merely a tenapt at will in respect of very limited and inadequate areas. Finally we have a constitutional position that was fixed in 1936 which took away the franchise from African persons, and we have its concomitant or counterpart, the Native Lands and Trust Act, the provisions of which, eight years after its passing, have not yet been implemented by the purchase of the promised land. Mr. Speaker, I wonder if such a galaxy of restrictive class legislation can be paralled in any other democratic country. In the light of that background is it surprising that there is a serious and growing dissatisfaction amongst the people I represent? It is true, and I gratefully acknowledge the fact that the present Government has done more than any of its predecessors to improve the condition of the native people, more particularly in relation to education, disability and old age pensions. But the very fact that these small things, which should be regarded as a matter of right were granted in such an apologetic manner by the Government and that they are so severely criticised by the Opposition, convinces me that sops and subsidies are no subsitutes for citizenship. We are faced with the realisation that no change of Government can be of any real service to them, for the legislation to which I have referred is sponsored to a greater or lesser degree by every party in this House. The native is between the devil and deep blue sea. Far be it for me to say which is the devil and which is the deep blue sea. Speaking for myself, if I have to choose, I must say in all sincerity that I can find no benefit for the native people in the Nationalist policy, nor can I view with equanimity post-war reconstruction in the hands of that party. I can only say I hope that the abandonment of black manifestos and racial issues in the present motion and the substituion of economics is a sign of regeneration. As a representative of the working people our hopes should be centred upon the Labour Party, and in my view the Labour Party should in this country be regarded as an alternative Government to any existing Government. It is therefore a matter of considerable surprise that we find that party represented in this House by such a small number. If I may say so, with all due respect, I feel that that situation is due to two factors. The first is that the Labour Party in this country has not been true to the principles upon which it was founded in Great Britain. It has in other words ceased to be the representative of all labour and become merely the protector of certain classes of workers. I think that is true, and I hope that the time is not very far off that the Labour Party will realise that situation, because we look to them as our allies in our endeavour to bring about post-war reconstsruction, and we feel that the effect of that abandonment of the principle has also reacted upon the public who are not necessarily interested in our point of view. They feel that they cannot have an alliance with a party which has not been true to its principles, for there can be no doubt that they were primarily responsible for the racial colour-bar legislation and for the protective legislation for effectively keeping the African worker out of the ranks of skilled operatives. We do sincerely hope that they will return to the principles upon which they were founded.

What about the Dominion Party?

We are told that the prosperity of South Africa depends upon industrial development. In that regard it seems to be an accepted fact that we have reached the limits of productivity and in so doing we have lost the possibility of absorbing our own European population, and that in order to provide an adequate foundation for a larger settled labour force, must increase the productive capacity of our Non-Europeans and thereby create a demand upon which future industrial development depends. That is shortly our creed, and we are not prompted solely by narrow native interests in pressing for the integration and of the Non-European in our industrial pattern, but rather by the wider South African outlook, for the development we desire cannot be achieved in terms of segregation. For if we attempt to do so then logically we must give the native the right to provide for himself in building, transport and generally, and in that event the European worker is doomed. We feel that in advocating the policy which we have advocated for a number of years, we are doing a service to the Europeans. I am not going to touch on the question of health services, because an opportunity will be given to us to deal with it later. But may I make a suggestion to this House in connection with provincial administration. I make this suggestion for what it is worth that health questions should be dealt with not by a provincial council separately but by a council of the provincial councils. It has been said that cheap food is an essential basis of a well-founded community, and it is here in a country such as ours, that pressure groups, armed with political power have been able to force the Government to deal almost callously with the food of the poor and particularly with those who have no real citizenship. It is said that at no time has there been a greater consumption of protective foods, that at no time has more money been available to buy protective foodstuffs. That may be true for some parts of the Union, but it is certainly not true of those areas I represent where, in fact, the increase in money has never been able to overtake the increased costs of those protective foods. A few years ago I came into possession of a booklet which I think must have been intended for the information of the milling interest, and I was astounded as the colossal profits that booklet disclosed, and yet prices have soared since then. I am directly concerned with the costs of maize and beans. I say that during the war period, the price has risen by 100 per cent. and it may be surprising to people in this House, although not to people in the country to know that beans before the war which were quoted at £2, are now being retailed at £6 per bag. It is a colossal figure. It is 200 per cent. higher than it has ever been to my knowledge, and that situation cannot be allowed to continue. I should like to know what steps have been taken by the Government to make a survey of the actual cost of production, as it is today. It is all very well to say that there is a war on and that the cost of production has risen. Have we ever had a survey to ascertain what the cost of production really is. As far as I am aware there has never been one and I think this Government might very well follow the example of the British government in that respect, and that is to to make a survey of the increased costs of production and present them in a form of a White Paper to this House, so that the increase in prices to the producer can be examined and compared with the actual production costs. It seems to me that that is the correct way of dealing with the matter. We have repeatedly asked for a subsidy on the consumption of maize, and last year we again asked for it. What happened? The same price was fixed, but the producer was given a subsidy of 1s. 6d. per bag. In other words, although the producer got an extra 1s. 6d. the consumer actually got no relief at all. I would urge upon the Government that steps be taken to protect the food interests of the poor, and to do this you must either face up to the pressure groups concerned or encourage importation, and above all you must cease to base your production prices on the basis of inefficient production on unsuitable land which artifical prices and subsidies encourage. It is said of us on these benches that we outrun the constable in our economic and industrial policy, and that we are trying to force our views on a public not ready for it. I urge that this House has not understood the advance of public opinion in this regard. The views recently expressed by soldiers in the North in an appreciation of the services of the native military corps are a reflection of this spirit which is rapidly gaining ground, whilst I say deliberately that our views are shared to a very high degree by industrial and commercial South Africa. Is it too much to hope that as an immediate step in post-war reconstruction, bodies be set up to examine and if possible, remove the causes of antagonism between white and black, and to reconsider the industrial buildup of South Africa in view of the integration of the tremendous forces available in the Non-European citizen working in harmony and co-operation with the European worker to the benefit of both in a happy, prosperous and secure South Africa.

I do not propose to put the farmer’s case before this House. I desire to put the consumer’s side before the House in connection with this motion. I would like to say that I sat here the whole day listening to the speeches from the opposite side, and it appeared to me that not one of the members opposite who spoke has read the motion. In fact, if they had read the motion, I do not think there can be a single member on the Government side, unless he is politically so blind that he cannot see anything but what his party desires, who will not agree that what is stated in this motion is quite correct. In fact, it became very amusing afterwards. Every member on the Government side, or even on the Labour side, who stood up tried to salve his conscience, and not a single one stuck to the motion, in fact it seems to me that they have not read this motion at all. They saw all sorts of difficulties in the motion, and to my mind this motion is quite plain.

They saw Hitler round every corner.

You have been listening to him for a long time.

The motion reads—

I do not suppose there is a single member in this House, unless he is politically blind, who does not agree that that is the case, and what is more there is no one outside the House who does not realise that there is something radically wrong, and where they are in possession of the necessary knowledge and information, they are satisfied that the Government has made a mess of the whole food question—there is not the slightest doubt about it. And they know it as well as I do. But this motion goes on to say—

What do you mean by “means”, money or men?

Money and men and everything that is necessary to enable everyone to live decently after the war. We all anticipate that after the war there is going to be a bad time. We all recognise the fact that there is a lot of money in circulation today. It is no good hiding it, nor have we tried to hide it. We know that is the case. We know that the money is there.

Tell us where it is.

We do not keep it; ask the Government supporters where they keep it. We have not got a black market. We are too poor. We cannot buy meat like some of the members on the Government side. They go out of the city to buy meat, and come back and are run in.

You do not look like a case of malnutrition yourself.

The old English saying that politics make strange bedfellows has been very patent here today, especially while I was listening to the hon. member for South Rand (Mr. Christie). I take it that he stated here what were the views of his followers, the supporters of the Labour Party ….

You had better support Labour.

Not on your life! The hon. member had to find some sort of way out of this mess. He is supposed to represent the poor people. His party are supposed to represent that class, and yet they are sitting in this House with the Government which the hon. member for Fordsburg (Mr. Burnside) has described in this House as the most capitalistic government the Union has ever seen. The Labour representatives are sitting with it, and have to swallow what that Government tells them, and they have to vote with it. So they must find some excuse to justify them in voting against this motion. Now the hon. member for South Rand has come along and has tried to find in this motion things that are not there. Of course if the Government were to get a vote against them disapproving of their laxity and their incompetence they would have to resign. There is not the slightest doubt about that. One would not expect any self-respecting man to remain in a government if Parliament passed a resolution like that. In fact, the Minister over there told his people that they must vote against this motion and that it was a motion of no confidence. He described it as a motion of no confidence against the Government.

Where did you hear that?

The Minister stated it was a motion of no confidence. He knew that he had to warn the “yes men” on the other side of the House: “You must not vote for this motion, you must vote against the motion whether you feel it is correct or not correct.” Well, the Labour Party knows as well as I do that control was supposed to have been established for the purpose of giving the producer a reasonable price for his product, and at the same time making provision for the consumer to obtain the food at a reasonable price. In other words, provision had to be made by means of this control to enable the poor man to get meat and to get food, and that was the reason for it. The hon. the Minister of Finance has stated that it is necessary to keep down the price to the farmer, otherwise the price of produce would soar so high, and the price of farms would go up so much, that when the repercussions came, when the bad times came, the farmers would be all overcapitalised. For that reason they say they had to keep down the prices the farmers should receive. I just wanted to tell the House, however, that all the control has made absolutely no difference to the sale of farms or to the soaring prices of farms. In fact, never in the past, even in the last war, never in my life have I seen the prices that are being paid for farms today, especially in the South-Western Districts. In fact, you cannot buy a farm under irrigation in the South-Western Districts under £500 a morgen. The land is sold at that figure today.

And higher.

In fact, the land is being sold at £1,000 a morgen. The other day in the Paarl district a man wanted to sell a farm of 15 morgen and the price he asked was £15,000. He wanted £1,000 a morgen. To tell us, as the Minister did, that the fixing of these prices for produce would prevent the price of land soaring has been proved not to be the case. As far as this control is concerned, I have this objection against it. I have always been in favour of control, even though I have realised that without control the price of farm produce would go much higher; it did in the last war. I have stated before in this House that I am prepared to agree to control provided you establish it after the war, when otherwise the prices would be too low. Mr. Speaker, what has really taken place, what has really happened? It has been such a mess that the poor man has had no benefit. It has been an utter failure. The Government has shown itself incompetent, and as quite unable to carry out control properly. Control is carried out in Britain; it is carried out in Australia; it is carried out in Canada. Why did the Government not try to find out how it was worked in those countries? Apart from that there is no doubt at all about the failure of control. I can take you over every one of these control boards—Wheat Control Board, Deciduous Fruit Board, Dried Fruit Board, Dairy Control Board, and the others. The Dairy Control Board is a Board that existed before the war, and it is a Board that did quite useful service. It made many mistakes, but it was always prepared to listen to criticism, and we always found it willing to remedy its faults. But today it has become a ramp; it has become just as bad as all the other boards. It is not worrying a bit about what the public say. The Minister is prepared to make all sorts of regulations, but I submit that as far as the Minister is concerned he should know what the position is. I have a little information, and I feel it is my duty to give it to the House. This Dairy Control Board that, as I say, functioned before the war very well, has now reached this stage. As far as condensed milk is concerned the farmer must get 10½d. a gallon. The farmers of one district came to see me yesterday and one of them gave me a record showing that he was getting 10½d. I want to know from the Control Board why they should fix the price at 10½d. when, if you deliver your milk in Cape Town, you get 1s. 9d. There is this difference between 10½d. and Is. 9d. As far as cheese is concerned you have the same position. But to develop a case in regard to condensed milk I want to tell you this, Mr. Speaker, that when Nestles started I was not very enarmoured of the business. I would rather have seen the farmers forming a co-operative society and running their own factory. However, they started, and the price they can now pay to the farmer for his milk is 10½d. They have to sell that tinned milk at 8½d. or 9½d. a tin. It depends on the distance from the factory. Nestles has been worried for years now, and they have put it to the Government: Let us pay the farmers another 4d. a gallon, that is 1s. 2½d. a gallon, otherwise there will be a serious position in four years’ time. They said this: Our production of milk in 1939 was 10,000,000 gallons, but owing to the fact that we can only pay 10½d. we are now only receiving 5,600,000 gallons, in other words, a drop of 50 per cent. With that in mind, they made this suggestion: Just as a temporary war measure let us pay them 1s. 2½d. so that we can get increased production. The Dairy Control Board said no. They went to America and imported 80,000 cases of condensed milk. Nestles had only put up the price 1d. per tin. But they imported 80,000 cases of milk and it cost them 1s. 3d. Now the Government has to subsidise it to the extent of 3d. and the consumer has to pay 1s. for his condensed milk, whereas he could have got it for 9½d. I am not quite sure, but I have been told that they had to throw a lot of condensed milk that they imported into the sea near Robben Island. They wanted to pay 1s. 2½d. to our farmers, and they paid American farmers 4s. a gallon.

It is stupidity run riot.

The position is that if this Government wishes to have our con fidence, when they control a commodity like milk they must do it decently. They cannot force the consumer to have to pay 1s. or 1s. 3d. a tin for milk that is imported when it can be manufactured in our own country for 9d.; that is the price the consumer could have it at. The whole thing appears to be disgraceful. It seems to be a ramp. I am not satisfied with that position at all. Then the officials went to the cheese factory; and they said: This is your quota for export. I am a member of the Co-operative Cheese Factory, and what I am telling you is correct. Their quota was so large that on the export of their cheese they lost £444 odd. We did not get the cheese. I had sufficient cheese, but what I mean is that the people in the cities could not get the cheese. We had to keep our refrigerating stores full to overflowing. We could not sell the cheese, and we had to keep it there. The cheese factory I am referring to makes 2 per cent. of the cheese produced in the Union. I will show you what it means. Last year because of the shortage of milk in the cities instead of making cheese they sent a couple of gallons of milk every day to Cape Town, and they got 1s. 9d. for it. As I say, this concern lost £444. Assuming that their production, which was 2 per cent. of the full production of the Union—before they sold their milk—was maintained to some extent, the milk farmers would not have had to lose to the extent they did. We have now fixed their production at 1 per cent. The other day I met a man from the Belgian Congo, and in discussing this question of cheese, he said “We are not short of it, we are getting it every day, we get it from the Cape.” Why do you send it to the Congo? It is supposed to be connected with the idea of having the Congo trade after the war. You will never get the trade of the Belgian Congo. It is ridiculous to tell me that you have to export meat, cheese and milk because you think you will get their trade after the war. The Board that I am telling you about existed long before the war, and it was a board that functioned properly. Take the matter of butter. The other day I was going to Robertson, and the people in the household told me that the grocer had stated that he did not know whether he would be able to supply butter any longer. I phoned my own grocer in the town, and asked him whether I could get a lb. He said “Of course you can get a lb. of butter.” I said: “Will you give me more of it?” He replied: “Of course I can give you more; how much more do you want?” I said: “Can you give me 5 lbs.”? He said certainly, and he gave me 5 lbs. The position is such that this Government is incapable of distributing properly the products of any of these control boards, and when they get to that stage that people have lost confidence in these boards, it is the stage that I feel is what I think the Government wants to see. They want the people to lose confidence in these boards so that the country will be able to revert to the old way of the midleman ….

What has the middleman to do with it?

You know as well as I do that the job of the middleman is to buy as cheaply as he can, and to sell as expensively as he can.

Where does he get the stuff from?

He gets it from the farmer.

I understood you to say there was no butter.

He told you that they exported butter.

I was just trying to explain that while in Cape Town you cannot get butter, immediately you go outside you can get heaps of it, and that is explained by the rotten distribution. You cannot get away from it; that is the cause. Naturally, in the country, the people are too poor to have black markets. Let us take another board. I do not want to flog a dead horse. We all know that meat control is a mess ….

The hon. member for Hospital (Mr. Barlow) says it is a huge success.

Today one of the Labour members called it a mess. In November I was on the Rand for a fortnight staying with relatives.

You seem to do a lot of travelling about.

Yes, I have to travel about sometimes and I went there to see what you were doing. This family could get no meat; for fourteen days they had no meat. I went to Pretoria, and there I found to my consternation that they were holding meetings. One night I attended a meeting, and the ladies who were there were very perturbed about not being able to get meat. I believe that later on they went to the abattoirs and took the meat. That is just what the Government is doing. So they argued that if the Government is doing that why should they not do it. I met several people with whom I discussed the position. I mentioned to one of them that I had been at the meeting the previous night, and that the women said they could not get any meat.

In fact, one lady held up a bully beef tin, and she told the gathering that it had a worm in it, though she was not sure if it was a worm; it was more like a snake. That is the position on the Rand; and yet in Pretoria people were getting meat. I went to the market and saw the people there queueing up for potatoes; I saw them queueing up outside the butcher shops, and in all these queues of people who wanted meat I never saw a Jew or a. Jewess, not even in the potato queue. I can quite understand their being absent from the meat queue because they cannot eat the meat. There is a lot of talk about it, but someone told me the other day that at the abattoirs he found the meat divided into two lots, one the lean meat the other the fat meat. He asked them whether they were grading the meat. He said no, and pointing to the fat meat said: “That is for the Jews; it is their meat; that is what they call kosher.”

If you believe that sort of story you will swallow anything.

There you have the same sort of thing again, and it is quite plain indeed that the muddling is due to the incompetence of the Government in the handling of these schemes. I should like to turn to the Dried Fruit Control Board. The first thing that the Dried Fruit Control Board did when they were constituted was this. There were a certain number of distributors; I think there were 30 who were called packers; but there were always speculators buying dried fruit. The first thing the Board did was to cut out all the shops and the speculators, and they only retained the 30 packers. It was only these people who were allowed to handle the stuff. But hon. members must understand that in places out in the Karoo where a man may not have a very large crop, he makes a few raisins and a few sultanas, and he makes a few currants, and then he goes to the shops and sells them. Probably there is no market for it, and he gives it away. Now the Board has cut out all that. The shopkeeper has to go to one of these 30 packers and buy the stuff from them. In fact, one of the packers said to me: “I wish we had control boards during the last twenty years, I am making money and I am making it fast.”

He is overcharging.

It is not that, but it is because of the elimination of all competition.

I suppose this is one of your lawyer farmer friends.

No, he is not a lawyer farmer, his name is Mr. Jacobs. His name is Isaac Jacobs. I asked him how he was doing under this control scheme, and he said: “I wish to heaven we had this scheme 20 years ago. I am making money hand over fist. In fact I have had a lot of offers to buy my business”. The board cuts out all competition. Very often in the past the produce had to be sold at the lowest price, but now there is no case in which the distributor does not get 25 per cent. profit.

What about the Labour Party?

I would not get anyone to vote for your party. Take the Wheat Control Board ….

Tell us about the K.W.V.

The Wheat Board fixes the prices, but the Government has the last say. The hon. member was terribly perturbed at the price the farmers were getting—£1 16s. per bag. He does not reckon the price the farmer has to pay for his fertiliser. The late Minister of Agriculture realised what the position was, and he undertook that when the campaign was over in Northern Africa he would try to charter a steamer to bring fertiliser down here for us. But he died, and I take it the Minister who succeeded him thought himself too big and too clever, and felt that the farmers could always import the stuff. Then the cost was put down as a subsidy to the wheat farmers. There is no doubt, Mr. Speaker, that everyone of these control boards has made a mess of their work, and why have they made a mess? Because the Minister has not been able to supervise them. He was not competent, he was negligent. When a board was appointed he left it all to them. I do not want to talk further about the boards. I could take the whole afternoon talking about the Deciduous Fruit Board. But this board has been discussed, and I think everyone accepts the fact that they have made a mess of it. It is no good members on the other side of the House resorting to all these very clever arguments. The man in the street says: I want meat; I want fruit. The Minister tried to tell us what these boards were going to do and what they were not going to do.

Tell them what they ought to do.

I am not going to tell them what they should do, but put me there and I will do it.

Tell the country what you will do.

The Minister of Agriculture, with all his promises of what he was going to do reminds me of the little verse—

It is no good hon. members opposite trying to argue. I must admit that I feel very sorry for them in the position they are in. I feel very sorry for the Minister of Agriculture. I feel very sorry for the Minister because he has to come along and protect these boards. As far as the Deciduous Fruit Board is concerned I know what his feelings are. You could gather that from the way he spoke about the Board. He said that we should not talk about the Board, because the old board had gone and there was now a new board. Well, the new board has aleady made a mess of it, but at the present moment there is no need for it to make excuses. The hon. Minister is a barrister and he tried to make all sorts of debating points to say this, that and the other. As far as the country is concerned, he did not have one iota of information to pass on to the public. The people outside are still waiting for information; they want to know when they are going to have these commodities and to have them at a reasonable price, and when they are going to be really controlled. What is the Government doing in connection with the mattter? If these hon. gentlemen, and especially the Labour members, who are professedly there to protect the poor, are satisfied to see that these foolish prices are paid, let me ask the Minister, as far as meat is concerned, can he explain to the House why the price the farmer is getting is less than what he got before the introduction of control. Why is it that the consumer is paying just as much for his meat, although the price to the farmer has gone down to less than what it was before control? Who is getting the benefit? Is it the Imperial Cold Storage? Somebody said it was the National Meat Supplies. In fact, there is a rumour going round that the wholesale butchers are gradually squeezing out the small men, and that the small men are going to close down. That is the position. This knowledge has come into my possession, and it has, of course, come to the Minister. It was his duty to go into the matter and ascertain the position. But he simply sits there and tells us what he intends to do. That is the position. Take it as far as the Wheat Control Board is concerned. They have squeezed out every little miller in the country. Before the war most of these mills never paid, because the price of meal was so low; that was when they had competition. Today they pay huge dividends. A co-operative company is buying out these mills, and the owners of the mills sell them not on the profits they made before the war but on the profits they are making today. The mills have cut off all competition. It is just the same in regard to meat …

What is the price of milling shares?

I do not want to give away the milling business, but if you discuss it with me outside I will tell you. I know one mill that did not make a profit for years ….

Who held the shares?

It does not matter who held the shares; it certainly was not on our side of the House. It is the Government supporters who are benefiting by these things. Do you imagine, Sir, that this Government will do anything for the poor people, or ameliorate the troubles the poor people are suffering from? They may get a pension here and a pension there, but they are in the hands of the capitalists, they are in the hands of these people who do not really want control. The capitalists dictate to them. The capitalists support the Government, and if the Government does not do what they want them to do they will lose their support. Take the position of the Minister of Finance. When he first came here he was prepared to support the Minister of Mines, but he has had to come to heel. He is actually supporting some of these mines. He has given £1,800,000 to the mines. I am not talking about the policy as far as Europeans are concerned. As far as the Europeans are concerned he gave them nothing. But that has nothing to do with the motion. I can tell you this. The K.W.V. have had to pay a loss of £8,000 ….

Where did you get the £8,000?

We worked for it. I am not surprised at these people laughing. I can understand that they laugh because they have never worked in their lives. They just buy produce and put on 50 per cent. or 100 per cent., and sell it to the poor man and they call that work. I would like to put a couple of them on a farm and get them to dig a vineyard. They would look funny after that. Now, Mr. Speaker, it is quite plain to me that as far as control is concerned they have made a mess of the whole business. Just the other day they were criticised about the meat scheme and about other things, and now they have started commandeering. Do you know what they did? A butcher, a poor man, came to me from Worcester and he said that he had bought three hundred head of sheep on a sale. The Government man came along and commandeered half. He said he had no objection if they paid him what he had paid, but the official said no, he is taking the sheep to Cape Town where they will be regraded, and he says that he lost £100 and he cannot afford it. If they want to commandeer why do they not go to the farmers? But no they come and take the poor butcher’s sheep at a loss. That is what they did. In connection with every step they have taken they have made a mess. They cannot argue either way. One goes to a sale and buys 200 sheep at £3 each, but they come and take 100, bring them to the abattoirs and give you £2 so that you lose £100. If they had commandeered it before it was sold the farmer would have to take what they offered, but this butcher paid more for the sheep than the fixed price and he is still selling it cheaper than you can buy it under the scheme. That is the position. A butcher at Robertson comes to Bellville to buy his sheep and cattle there, and he pays the railage back all the way to Robertson and yet he is able to sell it at a cheaper price than the controlled price.

You can say it, but you cannot prove it.

You must be a speculator to know all these things.

I am not a speculator. I have never speculated, except once, in shares, and that was the last time. But the position is this, I do not think there is anyone in or outside the House who does not agree me that the Government have made a mess of it. All you can now say is: “There is a war on.” What on earth this motion has to do with a war I do not know. The position is simply this, that the people in the country have said that the war must continue, and it does not matter what Government comes into power.

At last you agree with that.

You are on the wrong side of the House.

I want to tell these gentlemen that none of them can tell me what the official Nationalist Party policy is. They cannot say that we are pro-English or pro-German. We are not pro or anti anything. We are just pro-South African.

Does that include Eric Louw? [Time limit].

It is very clear that the hon. member for Swellendam (Mr. S. E. Warren) has overstepped the mark. For a moment he ventured to deviate from the policy of the Opposition in connection with this debate to say a word about the war policy, and is was then that he overstepped the mark. He stated that it is clear that the people would compel any Government that was in power to continue with the war. It has been very clear in the course of this debate that it has been the tactics of the Opposition to propose this motion with an eye on the urban population. The motion is intended to exploit the hardships and dissatisfaction of the people in the large towns, and for that reason the Opposition is anxious today to make the subject of the war taboo in this House. That is something that must not be touched on. I am very sorry about the attack that the hon. member for Swellendam has made on the control boards. He alleges that the Minister of Agriculture and this Government have deliberately embarked on a policy of making the control Boards unpopular, and that this is a sly plan on their part to revert to the system that prevailed before the control boards. I think that the contribution that he has made today would have been a weighty contribution if it was indeed the case that this is their plan. He has recited all the sins of the control boards, and he has stigmatised the whole series of control boards one after the other as totally unfitted for the work that is entrusted to them. I should like to refer to the untenable position in which the hon. member for Cradock (Mr. G. F. H. Bekker) finds himself in connection with the meat scheme. He comes here and tells us how entirely impracticable and unworkable the machinery of the meat scheme is. Has he discovered this now? He has also told us that he came here as member of the deputation that represented 25,000 sheep farmers, but he did not tell us what this deputation wanted to submit to the Minister of Agriculture. That deputation was not sent to find fault with the machinery of the meat scheme that the Minister had given to the country. It had purely and simply to deal with prices.

That is what I said.

It is not necessary for me to reply to what the hon. member for Cradock has said. That has been done already by the hon. member for Calvinia (Mr. Luttig). He quoted a considerable number of resolutions that have been taken by agricultural unions from which it appears that their only objection is the level of the price determination and not against the meat scheme as such.

That has been the difficulty ever since the first day.

If that is the position, then those hon. members have changed their front in the course of the afternoon. That was not the point made by the hon. member for Cradock. I feel that we shall be in a measure entitled to congratulate the Opposition on this effort to launch a debate, namely because their principal motion of the Session attempted to exclude all race questions and the war questions, and all the subjects that might possibly impinge on the race questions. I say that one can congratulate them on that. But on the other side, I have a measure of sympathy for them. I think it is also an explanation of the poor showing that they have made in this debate. We miss the fire, the flame and the venom of their formidable neutrality days. We do not get that in this debate. It is clear why this is so. This motion is intended for the urban population. I shall go as far as to try to encourage the Opposition in that respect, provided I am convinced that this is their honest standpoint and that it is also going to be their standpoint outside this House, and that their attitude is not merely for the benefit of the House but it is a new turn in their official policy. In this motion we have heard nothing about service for the Empire, about impoverishment to benefit foreign interests, and that sort of thing.

What has that to do with meat?

But my question is whether this is not for the duration of this motion. I am afraid that it is only designed to take in a section of the community. I put myself in the position of the hon. member for Wolmaransstad (Gen. Kemp). It must indeed be a great sacrifice for him to accept this standpoint, because how easily could he not have made use of the argument of the Boer War; how easily could he not have drawn a comparison between the concentration camps of 1900 and the standing in queues on behalf of Empire service. This is the sort of thing that we hear outside this House. For the moment, however, it has been put aside. In this debate no one on the benches opposite has called one of us on this side a “Hanskakie”. This is a new phenomenon. We get the same phenomenon in connection with the war policy. No one is allowed to say a word about that. The war policy does not figure in the motion, nor has it been mentioned in the course of the debate, and if one follows this debate he would say that no one in the Opposition has ever brought in the food shortage in connection with the war policy. It is true they got as far as mentioning the exports and they gave the figures. But there they stuck fast. They did not get to the point of mentioning this feature of the war effort, and this has certainly not always been the case. I shall read something from “Die Transvaler” of Saturday, 4th November, 1944. It does not say where the meeting took place, but it apparently was held in some church hall, and the Leader of the Opposition was the speaker. Inter alia, he said this—

That was not mentioned in the course of this debate.

Yes, it has been.

If it was mentioned, it was only casually. It is now the true reason that is being given. He goes further—

We have not heard a word of that in this debate.

One can laugh at you, because you must have been asleep.

It may have been mentioned incidentally but it has not been placed in the foreground as a point in this debate. Then we come to the Leader of the Nationalist Party on the Rand. “Die Transvaler” gave the following headlines to his speech—

Yes, one can almost say that this debate is an example of a double game. “Die Transvaler” continues—

His leader had stated that it was first the farmers—

Why then all this fuss in the House? Tell the urban population frankly that these difficulties exist as a result of the war, and then see whether the Opposition will gain any benefit from it. In this motion the position in South Africa is described as chaotic. No one who has had any experience of conditions during the last 25 years will doubt that the needs of the necessitous are now better attended to than in the days of surpluses, when the hon. member on the opposite benches were in power. Under the present Government the needs of the poor are looked after better than in the time of the old Nationalist Party. When the Opposition talks about chaotic conditions, then I feel that if they want to see chaotic conditions they ought to go to Berlin. My leader, the Prime Minister, has always sounded a warning that in this world small nations cannot exists isolated. It seems to me that the great powers are today also learning that lesson. Even the great powers cannot exist in isolation in this world.

Talk about the meat scheme.

I am talking about the causes that your leader gave as the reason why there is a shortage of meat. It is clear today that the cock with its head chopped off will only require a few steps to go from Manila to Europe. The world has shrunk. It is impossilbe for us to support this motion, especially as it is now clear that the mover of the motion does not himself believe in its contests.

I want to say something about the food position.

Hear, hear!

I have noticed that most of the speeches from the Opposition side have had very little constructive about them This matter of food for the people is, after all, a domestic matter, but we have had little or no assistance from the Opposition. In fact, they have been a great hindrance to us all through and one can criticise this hindrance as being destructive and not helpful. Mistakes have been made but if you put all our mistakes on the debit side of the ledger and put everything we have done correctly and rightly on the other side of the ledger, then unbiassed opinion will say that it is a magnificent performance.

Tell us something about the mistakes. We might profit by it.

It is no good drawing a red herring across the trail.

There are no herrings. One cannot get fish.

Since the days when you gloated over Dunkirk and what you said about our soldiers and women in khaki you are now trying to draw red herrings across the trail, but the people will not believe you. They have found you out. Most countries have had external enemies, but in this country we have an external enemy as well as an internal one, and on that account I say that our effort was an outstanding one.

Are you talking about food?

Yes. The Leader of the Opposition, when he made his speech, said: “Ons het die volk en die land ernstig gewaarsku.” Talking about the food position, why this serious warning? The stock farmer today is getting 100 per cent. more for his sheep than he used to get before the war. Why this serious warning? He also said that the farmers had been robbed. How can that be when they are getting 100 per cent. more? He said that the Government had put on the premium because the price was too low. The farmer is getting 100 per cent. more now, but he says that the prices are too low. That is one of the important reasons why we are short of meat today, because the farmer has been misled. He has been told that the price is too low and that he must stand out for a higher price. He thought that the Minister would fall down on the job, but the Minister did not, and in the meantime the drought came along and his stock became poor in condition and now he has missed the boat. One of the main reasons today for the shortage of meat is that the Opposition misled the farmer. We heard it in this debate. They spoke about the serious shortage of meat. Go to the Province of the Free State. Bloemfontein may be short of meat now and again, but in the whole of the Free State farmers can still eat meat three times a day and they still have as much milk and cream and butter as they want. There is no shortage.

That stuff we grow ourselves. The Government does not give it to us.

We all admit that there is a shortage in the big towns but go into the Cape Province, the Karroo, the Northern Cape. There is no shortage of food on the platteland.

If it were not for your stupid scheme there would not be a shortage of meat either.

There is no shortage of food in the countryside. I went to some provision stores on Saturday morning to see for myself what the position is. There I found fresh fish. It was in fair supply. There was a good supply of salted fish. There was fish in tins, three or four different kinds. There was meat in tins. There was a mixture of meat and vegetables in tins. There were vegetables in tins and plenty of fruit. Prices were on the high side but the farmer is getting the benefit. Ham and bacon can be bought, most things can still be bought and the ingenious housewife knows it. We do not know what sacrifice is in this country. When we compare our inconveniences with what other people are suffering then we are still the best country in the world.

Why should we suffer when it is unnecessary?

Even “Arthur Barlow’s Weekly” says it is the best country to live in because it is Christmas every day. I must say that generally speaking there is not much to grumble about. In the platteland the farmer can eat meat three times a day. He has no shortage of meat or food generally. He is making money and getting double prices for most things he produces. I say he is getting 100 per cent. more for meat than he got before the war. I will prove it.

Do you differ from your Minister? He says there is a shortage?

There is a shortage in a few of the big towns, I repeat but not in the countryside. I have account sales here of sheep that were sold after the control measures came into force. The member for Boshof (Mr. Serfontein) is sitting there and also the Leader of the Opposition. When we said last year that 7⅞d. meant 10d. they laughed and said we did not know what we were talking about. They said we could not add.

Did you not say that the farmer would lose?

I said that the price he got on the uncontrolled market was too high and so it was. I have had that experience. A butcher or a speculator buys your stock and says he is going to lose 5s. a head and he eventually does. He cannot recover the money he has paid out and so the black market develops, or alternatively the butchers have had to close down. In the uncontrolled market we were getting too much and the whole position was Unsound. The controlled market price today is 100 per cent. more than it was before the war. We said 7⅞d. meant 10d. last year but let me tell the hon. member for Boshof that it is more than 10d., it is 11d. It is 100 per cent. above pre-war prices and what other commodity has risen to this extent?

You are guessing.

The hon. member for Cradock says I am guessing. Here are account sales for 1,200 to 1,500 sheep. He can inspect these and tell me if I am wrong.

What did Louw Steytler say at your conference at Port Elizabeth?

I have nothing to do with that. These account sales give prices, for prime lambs, 9⅜d.; first grade lambs, 8⅞d.; prime sheep also 8⅞d.; first grade sheep, 7⅞d. This last figure is the figure we worked on last year, 7⅞d. They said that it is impossible and that it cannot mean 10d. It means more than that. Here is a small consignment of 400 sheep and lambs where the skins and offal came to £105 12s. 9d. There of course was an abattoir charge of 1d. a pound. You must take that into account also, and when you work it out you will find that you are getting nett for prime lambs, 11½d., first grade lambs, 11d., prime sheep 11d., first grade sheep, 10d. and second grade sheep, 8d. But since then there has been a rise of ½d. a lb. so that ½d. should be added to these prices, and that means 12d. for prime lamb and so on. That is 100 per cent. over prewar, because pre-war we used to sell prime for export at 6d., while now we get 12d.

But what subsidy did you get on extra prime mutton?

I cannot give you the figure now, but we got a tip-top price of 6d. a lb. Today it is 1s. a lb. Then the Leader of the Opposition comes here and says that they earnestly warned the farmers and he said: “Die boere is beroof en die premie is opgesit omdat die prys te laag is”. That is misleading the public and the farmers and that is one of the main reasons why the farmer did not sell his meat and why there is a shortage of meat; this agitation. And of course the Opposition forgets that there is such a thing as lease-lend and lend-lease. They know that convoys came round our coasts which we supplied and we exported meat in vast quantities to our troops elsewhere. This effort of ours which they are belittling today and are trying to make capital out of, helped to win the battle of El Alamein which was the turning point of the war, but they do not like these things. We are proud to say that we have helped our friends and allies in this way. Hon. members opposite have been throwing spanners in the works for a long time. I contend that the Government has shown foresight and it has shown judgment right through this war in everything it has done. In the handling of meat supplies it has shown similar foresight and judgment. Millions of tins of milk and meat were canned and we are using these today. We have brought in meat from the adjoining territories. Everything that is possible has been done. I contend that had it not been for the agitation of the Opposition and had it not been for their having misled the farmers, we would have had a better market for meat today.

Keep on; the Minister thinks you are making a wonderful speech.

There is one point I should like to put to the Minister. I presume that today most of the stock in the country is second grade, and I would suggest to him that he make a temporary advance, or a seasonal advance ….

Now you have it, the price is too low.

I am not asking him to raise the price of meat; I am satisfied it is a very good price. But 90 per cent. of the stock today I should think is second grade, and it would relieve the position if a seasonal advance were made on second grade stock to help some of that stock on to the market, so that we might, in this way, augment our meat supplies. The Minister has previously taken a similar step. That is just the point I would like to make. I know it will mean an advance temporarily in the price of meat, but it is the point I want to make that there should be a seasonal advance on second grade stock.

One is astounded when one listens carefully to the smokescreen which is being thrown up by the other side in order to protect the Government and its Ministers against the people for the misdeeds which they have committed. This is the first time I hear that the Hon. Leader of the Opposition has to assume the responsibility for the feeding of the nation. The Minister of Agriculture stood up in this House and tried in a very clever way to rid himself of the responsibility. He tried to get away from certain statements which he made at various places—for example at Pietermaritzburg and in the Free State at the Agricultural Union Congress where he accused the National Party and said that the Leader of the Opposition sought to drag the meat scheme into politics. I was present at that congress. The hon. Minister cannot get away from it. He cannot evade his responsibility in this manner. He cannot deny that he adopted a contemptuous attitude towards this House in the course of this debate, and not only that, but he is in the habit of treating the farmers in that way. I want to mention where he did that. Hon. members have spoken here of prices. Last year we discussed the price of mealies with the Minister. We sent a deputation to him and thereafter we returned to the Free State. The mealie growers of the Free State wrote to the Minister and asked him to meet them sb that they could present their case to him. The Minister sought excuses and eventually he succeeded in his game; he notified the farmers that he would not meet them, that the matter had been finally disposed of.

The Chamber of Commerce had spoken to him first.

But the Minister issued those threats to the farmers at the Agricultural Union Congress, but the farmers were not intimidated by those threats, and the congress then decided to send a deputation to the Rt. Hon. the Prime Minister. What happened? The Rt. Hon. the Prime Minister refused to meet that deputation from the Free State Agricultural Union Congress and he referred them back to the Minister of Agriculture. And what happened eventually?

Nothing came of it. It is that type of thing which does not encourage the producer to produce. What has the Minister done during the past 12 months to encourage the producers to produce? It has been shown clearly today that the dairy farmers approached the Minister. What did they get? They got nothing. The Australian Government was prepared to spend £7,500,000 in 1944 on the dairy industry in order to encourage the farmers to produce enough. What did the farmers get from this Government? They got nothing. But there is another group of farmers who the Minister treated just as scandalously, i.e. the kaffir corn farmers. The price of kaffircorn rose; it was about 30s. and 40s. During the month of April and May the market price dropped to 12s. The kaffir corn farmers came to the Minister and asked for assistance. We suggested a price of 20s. per bag. The Minister did not, however, see his way clear to help the kaffir corn farmer. He had to hand over his kaffir corn for 12s. and 13s. In August the Minister fixed a minimum price of 16s. But what happened then? At this moment a publication is circulating in the country. The kaffir corn price has risen to 25s., and now the Minister is pegging the price at 20s. per bag. The price to the farmer is not allowed to go up to 25s. per bag. No wonder that there are shortages in this country. The Government is doing nothing to encourage the producers to produce those goods. When one takes into consideration these things, one is forced to the conclusion that the Government has no one to blame but itself for the position which exists in the country today. I have quoted these few incidents from the point of view of the producers. But I want to take into review the distribution aspect of the matter for a moment. What is happening today in regard to the distribution? These powers have been given to controllers; it would almost seem that the Minister is subject to the decisions of those controllers. The policy adopted by those controllers is a dangerous one. It is not a case of fixing minimum and maximum prices. No, the departments of the controllers are now becoming commercial undertakings. They are now interfering with the trade. The co-operative societies are no longer allowed to be distributors.

He has sold us.

Only certain people are to handle the distribution. It is those people who are causing a bottle-neck in the distribution. There are a few big men and all the supplies have to go through their hands, and it is those people who are causing the present bottle-neck. The Government cannot become a business undertaking. It cannot become a distribution centre. The Government should create the necessary facilities; it should adopt the necessary measures and then leave the distribution in the hands of the traders. But today we find that the distributor is afraid to touch certain commodities because there are so many emergency measures and regulations that he never knows when he is contravening those regulations and when he is not contraveing them. Consequently these people are forced to leave these things alone, but the Government, through its controllers, has agents in the country who go about like police falcons to get people into trouble. These people are prosecuted. No wonder that the consumer cannot get food. The Government must not take it for granted that all the distributors in this country are scoundrels, that they are all dishonest. There are thousands and thousands of honest people in the distributive trade today but they are being forced out of it. They are now compelled to close their doors. The controllers are creating other divisions. They bring in their own staff, their own inspectors, and they want to control the business of the private individual. I maintain that those people know nothing of this business. They do not know the distributive trade; they could never make a success of it; it must be a failure as it is today. For this reason I feel that the Government owes it to the people to rectify these things immediately and to see to it that the flow of products is facilitated so that it can reach the public. The Government should do as the Minister of Agriculture did, that is, to get up with a hand full of papers and to tell us what he has done. That will not give the people food.

Those are paper stories.

They are paper stories. We want the Minister to listen to the organised farmers. If he listens to their advice he will be able to solve the meat difficulty immediately. Give the farmers a decent price. But what is happening? Here and there he commandeered a number of head of cattle, but when he came to certain groups in the north with tactics of that nature, certain questions were put to him, and when he went to bed that evening, he had a restless night. The next morning he got up and raised the price of beef by 7s. 6d. for the first ten days, 5s. for the second ten days and 2s. 6d. for the third ten days. The hon. Minister has failed, however, to tell the House why he suddenly came to that decision, what influence persuaded him to take that decision. The meat immediately came to the market and the position improved straightaway. But now the Minister is again applying seasonal prices. When the people are without meat, when the need is so great, when the people are prepared to pay for it, why insist on applying seasonal prices? Give the producer what he is entitled to; give him a reasonable price and I am convinced that all the meat which is required will come to the market.

I consider in view of certain speeches that have been made here today, that the hon. the Leader of the Opposition would have had more chance of commending his motion, or the first part of his motion, to the House had he substituted in place of “the Government” the words “control boards and public service.” We are faced with the fact that it is impossible to purchase in our stores and in our shops in any quantity those requirements which are necessary for our daily sustenance. I should like, for instance, to mention the fact that whilst I was at home I could get 5 lbs. of butter during the month, but here in spite of the endeavours on the part of my wife and myself in Cape Town I have not been able to get even half-a-pound.

That is because you have a bad Government.

That is the sort of position we are confronted with in our daily life. We do not know that there is an absolute shortage of these commodities, but we do know that our efforts to obtain them retail meet with great difficulty. Mr. Speaker, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition charges the Government with laxity and incompetence. If the large number of controls instituted on all items of essential foodstuffs and commodities in this country are taken into account, and if they are any criterion then the Government has certainly not been lax in its efforts. We have borads controlling mealies, wheat, meat, poultry, eggs, milk, butter, cheese, fruit and a host of other commodities, whether primary products or processed products. I believe that the policy of the Government is based upon a sincere desire to provide sufficient food for everybody in the country, but the carrying out of that policy seems to be handicapped by a number of factors. Chief amongst these, I am convinced, is the desire on the part of certain elements of our population and of our public services to embarrass the Government and to frustrate its efforts. This has been noticeable both inside and outside the public service. One feature to which I wish to draw attention is the inefficiency in a large section of our services, and the growing disregard of elementary courtesy to which the public is entitled in its dealings with the public services. I have heard it said that it is impossible to send an acknowledgment to members of the public of letters written to departments and sub-departments owing to the shortage of typistes. Surely if there is an efficient registry in every department and branch of the service, there would be no necessity for typistes to be occupied in acknowledging correspondence received from the public. A junior clerk, or even a temporary clerk attached to the registry could easily be entrusted with the task of sending a short acknowledgment to members of the public of the receipt of correspondence. My main purpose in speaking today is to draw the attention of the Government and the House to what I consider is the most important factor governing the cost of production of most essential foodstuffs and commodities. I have viewed this problem from every angle, and it seems to me that every increase in the price of our commodities has depended essentially and fundamentally on the price of two products, namely, wheat and mealies. I shall take mealies first. The price of mealies affects the cost of production of meat. It affects the cost of production of eggs, poultry, butter, cheese and a host of other commodities.

What about bananas?

It seems to me that the price of these fundamental products governs the cost of production of every other commodity we produce in South Africa, whether it be a primary product or a processed product. One can easily detect the ramifications of this system. If the price of mealies is advanced the farmer says that the cost of producing his meat has increased. If the price of wheat is advanced, the producer of poultry says that the cost of production of eggs and poultry has increased. The price of milk, butter and cheese is dependent on the price of wheat and mealies. It seems to me that a vicious circle is created so that an increase in the cost of production of mealies means another increase of the cost of production of mealies by virtue of the fact that the native worker who assists the farmer in this respect is dependent upon mealies to a great extent for his sustenance.

The Government allows the mealies to lie and rot Outside.

You know more about that than I do. It seems to me that we cannot over-emphasise the fact that the cost of production of mealies and wheat influences the cost of production of every other commodity in South Africa. I can see the problem clearly. I can see the cause and effect, but I am incompetent at the moment to say how the position should be remedied. But the Government has plenty of brains at its disposal, and I think it should give some consideration to this aspect of the question. It may be said that one wav of doing it is to import sufficient mealies and wheat to satisfy all demands in South Africa, and that the local grower of these few commodities should be given what is determined to be a fair return. Then I think that perhaps there is some reason for instituting a subsidy. That is one way out of it, I suggest. But I would come back to this, that mealie and wheat prices influence the cost of production of every other commodity which we need in South Africa. The motion of the Hon. Leader of the Opposition goes on to criticise the Government for rejecting the National Health Commission’s report before the publication of its report. I believe that the Minister and the Government generally has repudiated the suggestion that they have condemned the National Health Commission’s report and put it into a pigeon hole even before it was printed. We have heard it stated that the Government will issue a White Paper—I believe I am correct—pointing out what it intends to do in connection with this report; so that charge, in any case, falls to the ground. The motion also charges the Government with unpreparedness regarding the anticipated post-war situation. For more than four years past we have had it stated in this House and outside the House, that the Government has been considering plans or maturing plans for dealing with the post-war situation. The Hon. Leader of the Opposition knows this as well as I do, and as well as every other hon. member in the House; and how he can say that the Government is going to be unprepared to meet this anticipated post-war situation is beyond my comprehension. The Government has stated that is is preparing and maturing plans to meet this situation.

They have been preparing for five years.

They have prepared plans for the rehabilitation of our people, and what more elaborate plans they could make to bring into operation at the moment they are needed cannot, I believe, be propounded by the mover of this motion. With regard to the lack of an effective programme of social security, the Hon. the Leader of the Opposition also charges the Government with laxity. That all depends on the point of view. The Government has acted on the recommendations of the Select Committee of this House. It intends to extend its consideration of these recommendations, and it has granted a measure of social security, and an advance on old age pensions and other pensions to those people who are unable to earn an income; and it has stated inside this House and outside it that it intends to proceed with its plans for social security. On that ground I say again that the Hon. the Leader of the Opposition has failed to make his case. In respect of the charge that the Government has failed to “create the necessary means” for the carrying out of an effective programme of social security, I am in doubt as to what the Hon. Leader of the Opposition has in mind when he uses the word “means”. Does he refer to cash, to money? Or does he mean plans for the bringing about of social security? If the motion refers to money the Minister of Finance is there, and he can consider the provision of the necessary funds, but if the reference is to plans and programmes then I think the Government has amply demonstrated that it is not lacking in foresight and vision in regard to plans for future social security. I make these few remarks, Mr. Speaker, in the hope that the House will appreciate them, but I will repeat that it seems to me that the fundamental cause of the inflation of prices and the cost of production in this country is the high prices fixed for mealies and for wheat.

It is with a great deal of trepidation that I take part in this debate, but having listened for four days to the argument put up by the Opposition might I say this, that I do not profess to be a politician and if being a politician means measuring up to the destructive criticism we have had from the other side of the House, I do not wish to qualify. Dealing with the motion which is before the House, by the Hon. Leader of the Opposition, I would say that it is the usual political rehash of destruction, instead of construction, which we get year by year and the sooner we realise that the whole of South Africa and the world is going through an evolutionary period, and that we have to close our ranks in a co-operative effort to tide South Africa over the difficult period which lies ahead, the sooner we will make progress in this country, and I think that if the Leader of the Opposition (who in the ordinary way is looking to become the leader of this country) wishes to succeed, the country is demanding something more of him than a motion such as he has tabled. The country expects more from the politicians of this House. We are in a privileged position. The country outside looks to us to do something, but if we are to have this political rehash day in and day out we are not playing fair with South Africa. This motion is a motion of censure on the Government, and indirectly it is a motion of censure on the Prime Minister who is at the head of the Government. Have we any right in South Africa to doubt the sincerity of the Prime Minister of this country who has, during this period of five years of war, carried this country through a very difficult period? He has not only been instrumental with the assistance of his Government and the supporters behind him in preserving in a small way, as a small country, our democratic ideal, but he has made it possible for such a silly motion as this to be on the Order Paper. All I can say is this, that the Opposition to my mind are living in a cloud, and the sooner they are out of that cloud the better for everyone concerned. Let us deal with the motion. I want to quote a few words from a speech made by our Prime Minister when he received the Freedom of the City of Birmingham less than twelve months ago. I take it that when you work in a team the captain of the team adumbrates the policy of that team. Whether the Opposition likes it or not these are the words of our Prime Minister—

The motion before us is a motion of censure, a motion of condemnation in certain respects. We are told that this particular Government has been lacking in its duty in connection with the distribution of food. I would tell the Opposition this. They have little realisation of economic facts and the increase in spending power in this country. They do not know what the effect is on the question of consumption. As regards farmers—and I am a farmer myself—I consider the farmers have done very well, but the arguments we have had from the Opposition, to my mind, are doing more to put a wedge between the consumer and the producer than anything else which can be done, We have had a contnual tirade for the last four days on the Minister of Agriculture. I can assure you that he is in a difficult position and from my point of view he has done exceptionally well under indeed difficult conditions.

What does Mr. Barlow say, and what does the “Natal Mercury” say about it?

I am not concerned with newspapers. Let us deal with the food position. Are we in this country in any worse position as regards food than any other country in the world? We in South Africa are living in an El Dorado as regards food.

You are living in a fool’s paradise.

The Nationalist Party are doing that. We are living in an El Dorado. Rationing in America, in Great Britain, in Australia, and in New Zealand, is more stringent than here. I will admit that the Government is not perfect, but who is? They are handling a very difficult situation. The Minister of Welfare and Demobilisation told the House that we are a democratic party and there is no objection to criticising the Government, and I am quite prepared to criticise if necessary. The most serious complaint which I have against the Government is that they have gone too slowly and have not realised the effect which increased spending power has had on consumption. I accept the assurance which we have been given over the floor of this House by the Minister of Agriculture, to the effect that his Department is at present delving into the question of a system of rationing. That is to my mind vitally necessary and I sincerely hope that a policy is adumbrated whereby we can get a modicum of food for everyone in this country. I am of opinion that it is necessary to see that whether a man gets £3,000 a year or £30 they should be treated on a fair basis as far as their requirements are concerned. Another complaint I have against the Government is this. I think the Government should give more information to the public as to what is happening to some of the commodities which are in short supply. The people do not mind paying for food and they do not mind where the food goes provided they know that what is left will be distributed fairly. That is a defect which the Government should remedy. Then we are told that the Government condemned the National Health Services Commission’s Report. I am not aware that this Government has condemned the Commission’s report out of hand. After all, when the Prime Minister points out that the matter is going to be difficult for the reason that the financial arrangements between the central government and the provinces have to be adjusted and that there is a constitutional difficulty in connection with hospitalisation, it is quite evident that the Prime Minister was perfectly correct in saying that this matter of the Health Services will not be an easy one. We have to realise that none of these things will be easy. When you take into consideration that as far as this country is concerned, and the sincerity of the Government is concerned in connection with the post-war period, icluding the Health Services Commission, and we realise that a reorganisation has to take place in connection with social security, which will cost a minimum of £40,000,000, that the expansion of education will cost another £24,000,000, that nutrition will cost £12,000,000 (including school meals), that national health services will cost £20,000,000 and the re-organisation of agriculture £5,000,000, and £7,000,000 for defence and other expenditure £8,000,000, and that you have a programme of £116,000,000 out of a national income of £480,000,000, it is quite evident that the Government will have to go carefully. We are told by our Nationalist friend that the Government is making no provision whatever for the postwar period. All I can say is that whereas our friends on the opposite side insist in the ordinary way on a business policy being adumbrated on the control boards, they are just demanding that the Government rush into everything blindly. There is no doubt about it that all governments in the ordinary way are poor business institutions, and for that reason mistakes are made and all matters affecting the public purse have of necessity to proceed slowly. The motion censures the Government in connection with post-war development. As far as the post-war period is concerned I am afraid my friends on the opposite side forget what legislation took place in this House last Session. When you look at that legislation you find such important measures as the Soldiers’ Re-employment Bill, the Apprenticeship Bill and the Bill reconstituting the Board of Trade, which meant that the Board of Trade is going right through South Africa and right through all the industries in order to give expert advice to the Minister of Economic Development about protective tariffs, etc. in order that industry in future will face up to its responsibilities in relation to the consumer. The Government also set up the Cost Enquiry Commission which is still sitting, a commission which in the ordinary way would give the Government expert advice in connection with the costs between producer and consumer. We have had encouragement in the report of the Industrial Development Corporation, which is making good progress and is doing good work. Furthermore, I think that the Government through the Department of Labour has done very well, it has not only added to the economic uplift of the workers, but it has done that with the loyal support of the Labour Party. I have listened very carefully to the debates and I can assure my hon. friends over there that the Labour Party are walking rings round them, and if they are not careful the Labour Party will be the official Opposition in a few years’ time. They are the only party, to my mind, who have put up anything constructive. I must congratulate the hon. member for Krugersdorp (Mr. Van den Berg) on the speech he made the other day. Furthermore, the Government have done everything they could to increase employment. I now come to the last portion of this particular motion which to my mind is really the star turn. All I can say is “Well, well”. That is the question of social security. That question has been dealt with by the Social and Economic Planning Council, and also by the Social Security Committee. It was discussed on the floor of this House last year, and the Prime Minister, acting for his Government, gave the assurance to this House and to the country that the Government had accepted the principle of social security and was prepared this Session to bring in legislation to implement his promise. Allusion to that was also made in the Speech from the Throne. Furthermore, last year a Select Committee of this House was set up to go into the question of social security. Furthermore the Government gave the undertaking to the country that as regards social security they would follow on with the work of the Select Committee in the recess which they have done, and we had the assurance from the Prime Minister and his Government that in this particular Session certain legislation would be introduced. I do think, Mr. Speaker, that as regards the whole of the motion of the Leader of the Opposition, as I said before, they are simply living in the clouds and I sincerely hope that we in South Africa, both the Opposition and we, will close our ranks and contribute something constructive. I am not in the House to make political capital. What I would like the Opposition to do is to be at least a little constructive and to help the Government. After all, the advantageous position we are in today is due to the fact that we had a leader in this country and had a loyal population and that our future lies in construction not destruction.

I should just like to mention a few points in connection with this motion, but before doing so I want to pass a few remarks in regard to the speech of the hon. member who has just sat down. In the first place he said that “this Government was a poor institution”. There I agree with him. Then he went on to say that the Labour Party would in the near future be the official Opposition. In this sense I agree with him there too, namely, that the Nationalist Party will be in power and that the Labour Party will constitute the Opposition, while the other party will practically disappear. The hon. member went on to say that we in our country were living in an El Dorado. I should like to ask whether he has read in the newspapers recently that as from next week there will be rationing of food in South Africa. Will that create an El Dorado? In Germany and in England there is a system of rationing. Are those countries El Dorado’s? Then he said that this motion of the Leader of the Opposition was a “silly motion”. I should like to suggest to him that the Government should take this “silly motion” to the country and subject it to a referendum, to enable the people to vote in favour of it or against it. I have no doubt as to the result. It will then become apparent that what is stated in this motion is felt as a great national need. While I am on the subject of a referendum, I want to point out that in America such motions are from time to time submitted to the country. Let it be done in our counry in the case of this motion, then we shall see what the result is. I suppose hon. members have seen the great film “Frankenstein” in which the dual character “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” appears. I want to suggest that members on the Government side should assume a double personality for a moment, that they should practice a little impersonation. I am thinking of the Minister of Demobilisation, for example. Let hon. members assume a dual rôle and play the rôle of a housewife, a housewife with, say, six children—I do not want to make it twelve—and let them stand in queues just for one week for a piece of meat or to get a little milk and butter and cheese. I am convinced that after they have played this rôle for a week, they will come back and all vote for the motion of the Leader of the Opposition. In this way they can test what the feeling in the country is. I want to go further. Let the Minister of Agriculture meet the producers and farmers’ associations and see whether he can get a motion of confidence from them. He attended the congress of the Transvaal Agricultural Union. What happened there? He tried to threaten the farmers. He tried to threaten them with the importation of cattle from Madagascar, and he said they must realise that the patience of the Government was becoming exhausted, in other words, that there would be commandeering. We have this commandeering even today. Let him go back to the agricultural unions and other farmers’ organisations. He will find that this motion of the Leader of the Opposition will be accepted unanimously, and the Minister will get a motion of no confidence. I want to touch on another point. The hon. member for Somerset East (Mr. Vosloo) said in this House a few days ago: “Put the Opposition in power.” He was then asked what we proposed to do if we got into power to save the situation. Today that question has been asked again, and I should like to reply to it and mention a few points which have already been mentioned during the course of this debate. The first thing we will do when we get into power will be to introduce a longterm price system. We will do away with this type of board of control on which there are only eight farmers out of 17 or 18 members. We will appoint a long-term board which will consist of producers. They will not be so silly, of course, as to fix prices which will make them appear ridiculous. In the second place we will increase the production. In the past beautiful schemes have been carried out. Why have we not had anything of that nature in the past five years? There is the Vaalhartz scheme; there is the Kakamas scheme. They are constantly attacked. The Nationalist Party will increase the production by undertaking such schemes. The Nationalist Party will combat soil erosion. A delegate came from America to point out to us the critical position which exists in our country. We will tackle those things. Previous Governments have spent approximately £750,000 on improving our stock of cattle by selecting bulls in the improvement areas and by granting subsidies. That has now been abolished. Even inspectors are no longer going through the country to select bulls. The quality of our cattle is on the down grade. The Nationalist Party will revive this system. In the third place, the Nationalist Party will take steps against cartels and combines, as they are called in English, and it will put the Imperial Cold Storage and other monoplies in their place. These things will be rectified so that there will be free competition and the monopolies destroyed. In the fourth place—and this is of great importance—the Nationalist Party will provide cold storage facilities. We will not only improve the position, but we will also commandeer cold storage facilities and use them in the interests of the people. Meat and other perishable products will then be conserved to meet the need during the lean years. That is a very important point. In addition to that there is the provisoion of cold storage facilities on trains, of which there is a great lack. We simply cannot import cattle from South-West Africa because there are no cold storage facilities on the trains; there are no cold storage trucks. When cattle are brought down in the ordinary way, they lose 80 lb. to 90 lb. in weight. The cattle should be slaughtered there and brought down in cold storage trucks. The meat should be off-loaded here in the same condition as it was when it was loaded. The same applies to the remote districts of our own country. Cold storage trucks should be provided on the trains to take the meat direct to the big cold storages in the cities or to the abattoirs for distribution. And one of the most important things we will do when we get into power will be to obviate the mistake of appointing a young advocate as Minister of Agriculture, a man who was the mouthpiece of the Chamber of Mines, and who is practically in the claws of the big capitalists today, a man who has no respect for the interests of the country and one who wanders about in the lobby while we discuss these important matters. I have mentioned only a few of the things which we would do. To sum up, the Nationalist Party, as far as the food problem is concerned, is going to lay down a system whereby the principle of South Africa first will be applied in all respects. We will not export cement to other places and food to Burma while there is a shortage of food in our own country. We shall provide proper housing for the people. Today one searches to the point of exhaustion to get a room in Cape Town at an exhorbitant rental. As regards queueing up; I myself have stood in a queue and in the end I got two kidneys. That was all I could get. That is the position in which our country finds itself. If you are still in doubt as to the true state of affairs in this country, submit this motion to an open vote in the country. Or let the Minister convene a meeting of women, not necessarily in Woodstock—he can GO to Bethal or Kimberley or any other place—let him meet the women in any constituency and he will find that he gets a motion of no confidence. Then he will realise that it is not a “silly motion”, the women of South Africa will show him that it is an important motion, one of the most important motions that can be put forward.

I can quite understand that the Opposition would like the attention of the country diverted from some of the proposals they have put before this House during the last four or five years. Its quite understandable that with such a record as the party opposite has, they would like the country to concentrate on some of the immediate difficulties of the present situation rather than to remember some of the proposals that have been put forward in the past from the benches opposite. I do not think the hon. members opposite would like the country to remember some of the things that have been advocated by them. I do not think they would like the country to remember some of the things that have been done by the opponents of the present Government. But I can assure them that this side of the House is not likely to let the country be led away by some of its passing troubles of to-day. We would like to remind the country of many of the difficulties we have suffered as a result of their action. The country is not likely to forget that when the war broke out we got no help from the Opposition. We found the country absolutely unprepared; the defences of the country were in a terrible state, and we had to start to build up right from the very bottom. It is quite understandable that a party with no constructive policy should try to make capital out of the difficulties we are experiencing at the present time.

Have you ever read our policy?

I have read a lot about that party’s policy, and it seems to me that a policy that trims its sails to suit every fleeting wind is not much of a policy.

You know nothing about it, how can you judge?

Their treatment of the difficulties arising out of the food situation gives one the impression that the party opposite has a terrible lot of sympathy for the consumer in the cities, and yet the burden of their song has always been that the farmers must get very much higher prices for their produce. Does the agitation for very much higher prices for their produce indicate to the poor people in the towns that this sympathy is anything more than lip service? Mr. Speaker, we have heard a lot from the Opposition about the meat scheme. We were told last session that they were strong supporters of the principle of the meat scheme. We were assured it would be treated on a non-party basis, and that we could expect to get a lot of help and a lot of encouragement in bringing about the stabilisation of meat prices, and all that the party opposite had against the meat scheme was the fact that in their opinion the prices were not high enough. They said they agreed with the policy and supported it, but the prices were not high enough. To-day they are trying to make party capital out of any little difficulty experienced by any control board in South Africa. The party opposite did everything they could to create an atmosphere of distrust, to make people feel they were being robbed, to make people feel they were being robbed of untold millions, and they did everything possible to create a feeling of distrust and to make the farmers believe they were going to be exploited, and if they sent their stock to the market something terrible would happen. That did a lot of harm and influenced some farmers who might have marketed some of their stock before the bad winter and the severe drought. Many farmers held their stock back for a little time to see what was going to happen, and as a result of that got caught in an early winter and they have since had to carry the stock through a bad drought.

Do you mean to say that the United Party farmers listened to us?

I did not say that all the farmers in the country were quite so foolish as to listen to all the propaganda from the the opposite benches.

They might do worse.

But undoubtedly many were influenced, with the result that they did not market their stock at that time. One of the members opposite said he had hundreds of sheep ready for railing and he would not rail them, because he felt he could not possibly come out on the price, and at those very low prices he was bound, to be ruined. When we pointed out that they had a wrong impression of the prices and that the farmers would receive much more than what hon. members opposite stated was the price, they would not listen to us. They would not believe that the farmers would get a considerable amount more for their hides and offals, and that that would bring the price up to very nearly what they were getting before the scheme came into operation. Still, we find that the party opposite, at their recent congress, supported the principle of this scheme. They want to have it both ways. They want to have the credit for this scheme when it is made a success, as it undoubtedly will be, and they also want the credit for pointing to the difficulties we are experiencing by the way. They want to claim to be the father of the child and also to gain a little credit from all the teething troubles of the child by referring to them as something they said was bound to happen. Many people have asked why it is we have such a serious shortage of meat in this country. There are a great many reasons, but one of the principal reasons is that we have had a tremendous consumption of meat in South Africa during these four years. In that period of four years we have consumed practically a five-year supply. That has largely been as a result of the war—increased prosperity, increased spending power and an increased number of customers coming to our shores, convoys, and this meat that has been consumed has been a direct contribution towards the winning of the war. We have started in South Africa the canning of meat. In Durban, at any rate, a canning factory has been established where large quantities of food have been canned for our troops. That factory consumed a lot of meat and vegetables, and we found that it absorbed a large proportion of our food. The people of South Africa do not mind this extra consumption. They feel it is quite a legitimate thing. South Africa entered the war. South Africa supported the war policy, and we must be prepared to make a contribution. What the people particularly want is that the contribution should be a fair one all round. Mr. Speaker, as it is getting late I move—

As it is almost time for the adjournment of the House, I suggest that the hon. member should proceed.

One point I would particularly like to emphasise is whether we had a meat scheme or not we would have had a tremendous shortage of meat in South Africa this year. Climatic conditions have undoubtedly been such that we were bound to have a serious shortage of meat. This scheme, in spite of its many defects, and in spite of the troubles that have been experienced in its initial stages …

At 6.40 p.m. the business under consideration was interrupted by Mr. Speaker in accordance with the Sessional Order adopted on the 25th January, 1945, and Standing Order No. 26 (1), and the debate was adjourned; to be resumed on 7th February.