Since the adjournment the Government has won a by-election in Port Elizabeth; and as the first, speaker on the Government side, I regard it as my duty tö congratulate the Rt. Hon. the Prime Minister on the vindication of his great leadership and on the way he has led this country through a very difficult period. At the same time I consider it a vote of confidence in the Government’s policy, including the Budget now under consideration by this House. I say it is an effective answer to the criticisms which have been levelled against the Government by the Opposition. When the debate was adjourned last night the hon. member for Gezina (Dr. Swanepoel) had been referring to the position of secondary industry. Unfortunately my time is extremely limited this morning and I can merely touch on some salient points. The hon. member referred to the high price of steel. I am always glad to receive support for my contentions, even if belated, from a member of the Opposition, because it will be remembered I mentioned this important matter during the debate on the Budget last year. I think the high price of steel may be attributed to several factors, and prominent among them I would place these three, and I am referring, of course, to Iscor. I would say that this corporation is overcapitalised. Secondly, I would say that output in relation to its capital is low. Thirdly, I would say it suffers—-from a complicated and expensive sales organisation. I have not time to elaborate on these three points. I think they may be regarded as self-explanatory. For my own part I can see that if we are to make any change that will react to our benefit, the remedy appears to be a drastic one, and demands nothing less than the drastic writing down of the capital and the reorganisation of the corporation as a whole on the lines of a public utility corporation, running on a non-profit basis. I consider this question of the high price of steel to be of fundamental importance to the interests of the country as a whole, and I am convinced it will emerge with greater emphasis as we travel along the path of industrial expansion, and if not attended, will stifle all progress in that direction. Another important matter relates to currency adjustment. I referred to that in a previous debate, and the Minister, in his reply, recommended to me a consideration of the Reserve Bank statement. I hope the hon. Minister will forgive me if I say he neatly side-stepped the issue. I was not asking whether a devaluation of our currency was justifiable; that did not enter into the matter. What I really was asking was whether the country could afford to carry on under the disability it has suffered up to now in comparison with the other Dominions. I realise it is very difficult for the hon. the Minister of Finance to give an out-and-out reply on this matter, and I am prepared to accept the answer he has given; but I would like him to give us this assurance, that if this question is ever raised in an Internationl or Commonwealth conference the opportunity will be taken to make an effort to adjust the position which now exists and to place us on an equal footing with the other Dominions.

In which respect?

If the hon. member had listened to the speech I made on the Part Appropriation Bill he would have known. It is hardly fair to ask me to go into that question during the few minutes I have now at my disposal. I would like to refer briefly to our gold mining industry. It cannot be denied that this great industry on whose efforts and on whose enterprise and on whose output the whole prosperity of this country depends to such an extent, is passing through a very difficult time. This is due to rising costs and there is undoubtedly a tendency to apportion the blame for this state of affairs to the Government. I, for one, cannot quite accept that. I feel it is due to economic circumstances, and I consider it hardly fair to blame the Government in this matter. It is usual to throw the whole blame on the Government on account of their taxation policy. It is difficult to understand that, because after all a taxation policy is designed to take a portion of the profits and it is not applied in the mining industry until a mine has reached that stage that a profit is shown after the deduction of costs. It may be there are certain forms of indirect taxation that may be responsible for some of the difficulties that are being experienced by this great industry. After investigation, the Government may be able to provide some relief in that direction. Another thing I should like to mention is the matter of the native labour force. The hon. member for Hillbrow (Dr. Friedman) had rather castigated this industry by saying that it only existed by means of a subsidised cheap native labour policy. Those are hard words. He also used the expression that the mining industry as a whole does not favour the development of secondary industry. That I should like to refute. I maintain that the mining industry has played not only a great but the leading part in the fostering of secondary industry. In regard to the question of native labour, I must range myself alongside the native representatives in that I would not like to see a retrogression of living standards in that regard. I would prefer to see a rise in the standard of living of the non-European section, including natives, so that they can play their part amongst the population as a whole in respect of the consuming capacity that is so badly needed. Again, the cost structure has proved itself our main handicap, and I think it would be well if I quoted a few figures to show how the value of mining shares has fallen off. Taking 1941 as the basis, we find in respect of the shares of 29 leading mining companies including the richest as well as the cheap low-grade mines there has been a shrinkage in the market price and in nine years these mines have on that basis, dropped one-third of their value, the figures being: 1935, 2973 points, and in 1944, 2021 points. It is interesting to compare that with the monthly commodity prices. In 1941 the figure was 1398 points and for 1944 it had risen to 1779 points. That indicates that while our gold mining share values had been dropping, a parallel increase has, during the same period, been taking place in commodity values with a resultant rise in the cost of living. To do justice to this question one would require a long time, and I therefore shall conclude by asking the Government to take note of the questions I have raised.

I am glad that the hon. member who has just sat down accepts the line taken by the native representatives on the subject of natives working in the gold mining industry, but I should point out to him that in our view the criticism passed by the hon. member for Hillbrow (Dr. Friedman) that the wages of mine natives are subsidised from the reserves was justified, and if the hon. member who has just sat down wishes confirmation of that he will readily find it in the Chamber of Mines evidence before the Landsdown Commission. Ever since the Minister’s second war budget, in 1941, I have conceived it my duty to those whom I represent in this House (who are overwhelmingly the poorer section of the people of this country) to enter annual protests against the policy of meeting a large proportion of current war expenditure from loan account. The proportion used to be 50-50; I am glad to see the Minister has reduced it, but it is still substantial. The reason for that criticism has been that these expenditures on loan account have not represented ordinary loan expenditures which are balanced by the concrete assets set off against them, but have been merely war expenditures, and therefore unless proper safeguards are taken to prevent it, are attended by the danger of an inflationary increase of the cost of living. It will be my contention that these safeguards have not been taken, and that a preventable increase in the cost of living has occurred and is still occurring which hits especially the poorer section of the country. Before I develop what I have to say in that connection, I wish to disassociate myself with a particular line of criticism of this practice which has been directed at the Minister by the official Opposition. That criticism has not been so much that this form of deficit financing has inflationary consequences. Recently that has been brought in as a second string. Certainly it was not a criticism levelled by the Opposition in the earlier stages of the war. The criticism of recent years, and it was the criticism reiterated yesterday by the hon. member for George (Mr. Werth), is that the Minister’s borrowing policy is burdening posterity, and therefore burdening, presumably, the community as a whole. An increase in the internal debt does not burden the community as a whole, and it is not therefore a burden on posterity. It simply represents a redistribution of the national income against the producer in favour of the rentier; it benefits one class of a local community at the expense of another. And it lies in the hands of any government of the future to readjust that position by increased direct taxation on high incomes, or differential taxation on unearned incomes. That is something which members of the Opposition, should they ever assume power in the future, could adjust by their financial policy. What does burden the community as a whole, what is potentially capable of burdening posterity, is an increase in the external debt of the country, because the servicing of that debt does represent a subtraction from the national income of the country. In this regard the Minister’s policy has been the exact opposite of burdening posterity. So far from increasing our external debt he has, to an amazing degree, reduced it. He himself referred to it in the Budget statement as one of our outstanding financial achievements. I think it is the outstanding achievement that any Minister of Finance in South Africa has had to his credit. I am sorry that the Minister was not given due credit by the Opposition for this policy of debt repatriation. Not only does it lift a burden from posterity but it is also in itself an important anti-inflationary measure. My criticism of the Minister runs on entirely different lines, and it can be reduced to the following’ propositions. Apart from foreign borrowing, any national expenditure has to be met from the current national income, whether it is raised in the form of taxation or by internal borrowing. If at any particular time there are underemployed resources in the country, if there are idle equipment or idle natural resources and under-employed or unemployed labour, then a policy of borrowing is sound provided it is so directed as to call into play fresh material resources and to employ fresh labour so as to increase the national income. When, however, a point is reached at which there is full employment—having regard to the standards and habits of work of the community—full employment of the human and material resources of the country, then a policy of continued public borrowing can only be sound if it is met out of the genuine savings of the community. But it is in those circumstances attended by a danger, which must be safeguarded against and I contend has not been adequately safeguarded against, that loans to the Government will not be out of genuine savings but out of credit, resulting in greater credit expansion which is not accompanied by any increase in material production leading to an inflationary rise in prices. I said there should be safeguards against that happening. What are those safeguards? They are, in my submission, these: A strict and comprehensive control of prices applied in time; a control of supply; when there are shortages in the field of consumers’ goods, rationing; and in so far as imported goods increase the cost of living or increase costs of any kind, a policy of subsidisation of those costs. That is the first step. The second step is that the Minister of Finance should have at his command an estimate of the national income, an official estimate based on the best statistical advice available of the national income for the ensuing financial year, including an estimate of what will be spent on consumption and what will be saved. If there is a gap between what will be saved by the community, on the one hand, having regard to past experience, and the total loan expenditure contemplated by the Government, on the other hand, then that inflationary gap should be filled, not by further borrowing but by further direct taxation. It is on that ground, from time to time, that I have asked the Minister in the past rather to increase direct taxation, particularly on the higher income groups, than to continue a policy of borrowing. Now, in regard to these estimates of the national income I have referred to, the Minister of Finance will be in a position to estimate to what extent the policy of borrowing will have an effect on the cost of living of the community. There is nothing new in all this. As the Minister and his advisers are well aware, it is a policy which has been followed by the Chancellor of the Exchequers in Great Britain ever since 1941. Sir Kingsley Wood and Sir John Anderson have followed this policy and no-one who knows their records, can accuse them of being radicals; he would never accuse them of being dangerous innovators. Yet that is the deliberate policy they have purused with quite extraordinarily successful effect in holding down the cost of living. Now, what has been the record of the Minister of Finance in regard to the borrowing policy he has followed and is still following? In the early stages of the war the rapid expansion of expenditure on Loan Account was justified. The event has justified that. Professor Frankel calcaulated that there was an immediate increase in the first year of war in the real national income, due no doubt, in a large measure, to the increasing purchasing power, which was a result of the Government’s borrowing operations. But in 1941, danger signals began to appear, which have developed and have become realities now. There were signs that the expansion of the national income had, for the time being, reached its limit when shortages began to appear and prices began to rise speedily. The fact that this did represent the limit in the increase of the national income for the time being has also been confirmed by the researches of Professor Frankel. In these circumstances, as I pointed out at the time, the Government’s policy should have been enormously to extend price control, which was very limited in 1941. The Government should also have introduced a system of rationing where commodities were in short supply, and should have embarked on a policy of subsidisation of necessaries in short supply in order to hold down the cost of living; also to take over officially the statistical calculations of the national income which Professor Frankel had brought out. I wish to pay tribute to the services Professor Frankel and his helpers have rendered in this direction. But his work should be taken over officially by the Government and his services should be enlisted and every year, as in Great Britain, an estimate should be presented to the House of the national income and the prospective private expenditure and saving. In that respect I want to support the hon. member for Fauresmith (Dr. Dönges). I believe that his demand in that respect is fundamentally sound. With these statistics at their disposal since 1941, the Government would have been in a position to estimate the inflationary trend which has resulted from their borrowing operations, and to place on a scientific basis the imposition of the direct taxes which should be imposed. Instead of doing that, in 1941 there was a very narrow range of commodities subject to price control, which was obviously ineffective to prevent the increase in cost of living. It was only at a subsequent stage that price control and control of trading profits became more general. But even now, with the country at war, there is no food rationing. There is no rationing, except of petrol, and the policy of subsidising foodstuffs is only just beginning, with the exception of bread. I am not talking now of dairy products distributed under the social welfare scheme, which was already introduced before the war, but there has been no real attempt to stabilise the cost of living, and nothing has been done by the Government to equip itself with proper statistical information as to the national income and national saving and consumption. The result of continued borrowing, without resorting to these safeguards, has been, as one would expect, a steady increase in the cost of living bearing heavily on the lower income groups, of which the native population forms the large bulk. This is still going on and as the hon. member for Berea (Mr. Sullivan) said yesterday the depreciation in the value of the pound—not the exchange value in relation to sterling, but in terms of the local cost of living—represents a tax upon the poorest section of the country, a war tax which represents a very substantial proportion of their income. How substantial that is is not correctly reflected by the official cost of living index figure. According to the cost of living index, I believe the increase over the 1938 figure is about 31 per cent. The Minister will correct me if I am wrong. That, however, only represents the increased cost of living over the range of commodities which fall within the official index figure, arid that range is quite unreal so far as the poorest section of the community is concerned. I want to quote some evidence for that from the figures published by the Witwatersrand Bus Commission which investigated the cost of living of the urban Africans in the Reef districts and Pretoria. According to the figures published by that Commission, as a result of their researches, the cost of food to the native family on the Witwatersrand has increased, not by 31 per cent., but by 55 per cent., and the cost of clothing has increased from 80 per cent. to 100 per cent. These two items in the case of an urban native family represent 72 per cent. of their budget, and in the case of a rural native it represents an even higher proportion, as he has not to pay such high rents as the urban native. That is what this policy has meant in concrete terms to the native population. I have heard hon. members representing the business community getting up here and talking about the burden and incidence of taxation, but nothing is said about this concealed form of taxation which is placed on the mass of the people. I do not want to create the impression that I am against the war expenditure. The Minister of Finance knows quite well that we have always supported the war policy of the Government and we are not criticising necessary war expenditure, but we are against the manner in which the expenditure has been met—to a large extent at the expense of people who can least afford it. The Government’s policy of paying cost of living allowances has not counterbalanced these factors to which I have referred. They are based, in the first place, on the official index figures which are not a true indication of the position. Secondly, cost of living allowances are only paid to wage earners. There is a large section of the poorer people, and particularly the Africans, who are not wage earners in the sense that they are not entitled to the cost of living allowances, such as farm labourers, domestic servants and old natives. The mines also have got away with not paying cost of living allowances to their unskilled workers. And even in the case of those in receipt of the cost of living allowance, it is in no way a full compensation for the inflationary increase in the cost of living. I want again to contrast our policy with the English policy. Sir Kingsley Wood in 1941 gave a pledge to the House of Commons that he would not allow the cost of living index—which is more scientifically compiled there—to rise above the 1941 figure. The Chancellor of the Exchequer gave a pledge that he would not allow the index figure to rise above what it was then, viz. 25 per cent. to 30 per cent. above 1938. That pledge has been kept, and it was still being kept even when Sir John Anderson introduced the last Budget. It was only possible to do that by the introduction of strict control and a measure of subsidisation which is costing the British Exchequer something in the neighbourhood of £200,000,000 per annum. It was kept at a price, but it was kept and not at the cost of the people who could least afford to bear it. The result is that the increase in the cost of living in Great Britain has been less than the increase in money wages, Well, Sir, I want now to make certain requests for the future in the light of these observations I have made in regard to the past. We hear a certain amount of agitation against the principle of control. That principle is not attacked in the amendment of the hon. member for George (Mr. Werth), but I have listened to speeches here which seem to me to reflect on the principle of control and to indicate a general desire to get rid of control as soon as hostilities cease. I believe that would lead, in the first place, to an inflationary boom, followed by a deflationary slump. I trust that the Minister will maintain control over prices and supply as long as it is necessary—as long as goods are in short supply. I hope he will remedy the lack of statistical data in respect of the national income, consumption and savings, as a basis for a policy which will ensure that investment will not exceed the real savings of the community and lead to inflation. So long as the Minister has not got this information, and has to fight inflation, he is simly playing Blind Man’s Buff. And so long as, after the war, there is a tendency, as I believe there will be, for investment to exceed real savings, as a result of a cessation of war expenditure, so long as there is that tendency, I do think that a real attempt should be made to balance the Budget. I have not recommended a policy of totalitarian planning. I recognise the Minister’s achievements, more particularly in the field of repatriation of our overseas debt, but what I do plead for is that he will drop these methods of Gadarene finance, where he doesn’t know what th? effect of his borrowing policy is going to be, and provide himself with the full information necessary for a policy of full post-war employment.

I will not say much about the Budget as such and the remarks of the hon. member for George (Mr. Werth). I have not the time and I think that we as well as his supporters were disappointed at his attempts to make a case out of nothing. We Were disappointed because he is the potential Minister of Finance of a future government, that is if the Nationalist Party ever comes into power. He did his best and I want to congratulate him on having a good deal to say about nothing. But there is another matter which I would like to deal with and to which I want to draw the attention of the Minister concerned, and that is a certain board which was appointed recently by the Provincial Administration of the Transvaal, a board called the “Peri Urban Areas Board”. As the House will remember, we have repeatedly brought this matter to the attention of certain Ministers. Time and again I have led deputations to Pretoria, and as a result of representations made by me and other representatives of the Rand, the Minister concerned and the Cabinet felt obliged to do something, but the radical mistake made in connection with the occupiers of small plots in the big industrial centres, was that a board was appointed under the Provincial Administration. I think I am speaking on behalf of 15,000 of them on the Rand, and there are also some of them in Durban, Bloemfontein and other towns. Long ago we felt that they were virtually looked upon as the lost portion of the nation. Nobody is responsible for them, they fall neither under the Provincial Administration nor under the Central Government, and although it is considered that they live on agricultural plots, the Department of Agriculture does not bold itself responsible for them either. It was said and proved by certain commissions which were appointed that the people could not even make their living as agriculturists out of the plots. This I acknowledge, and I contend that they are unable to do so owing to the fact that the facilities are lacking for making a living there as agriculturists. But as a result of the representation which we made, a commission was appointed a few years ago under the chairmanship of Sir Edward Thornton, and I think it was Sir Edward himself who made the remark that a large portion of those areas was developing into slum areas. I do not exactly agree with him there, but it is a fact that that was his finding. We again made further representations for assistance, and we attempted to accomplish the acknowledgment of those people who provide the markets with fruit, vegetables and flowers as agriculturists in the same way as other farmers. As a result of the representations, last year a commission was again appointed, namely the Theron Commission. The commission was appointed in accordance with a decision arrived at by the Minister of Agriculture and the Minister of Social Welfare, who is now the Minister of Demobilisation. I have not the time to go into the report of the commission, but the commission submitted a report and made certain recommendations which would have been acceptable to this portion of the population. After the report had been handed in, a board was created, but unfortunately the Minister of Social Welfare or another Minister who was concerned in the matter rid himself of the responsibility and placed it on the Provincial Administration. The board which has now been appointed, the “‘Peri Urban Areas Board”, was appointed by the Provincial Administration. It was composed without any advice being sought from the occupiers of the plots, without taking them into consideration, and it is made up of people who possess no knowledge of the difficulties those people have to contend with. Yet we hoped that some good would come from the appointment of the board. On the invitation of a society which I established, the Society of Small Plotholders along the Rand, the board addressed meetings at a few places. I was at one or two of the meetings. I asked a few questions from which it was evident that that board possesses no authority or power. In reply to a question of mine, one of the board members stated that they were a “Peri Urban Areas Health Board”. I then asked what their powers were, what they could do and what they could not do, and they replied that they as a health board could condemn a person’s house owing to unsanitary conditions. The following question I put was whether, if they condemned a house, they were empowered to build another house for that person or to grant a loan under a sub-economic housing scheme for building a house where that person could live after his house had been condemned. The answer was in the negative; they cannot do it. I asked some further questions in connection with health measures which they could enforce, and I asked if, for example, they could provide better water facilities by boring boreholes or erecting windmills, and the answer was again in the negative. I asked what they could do in connection with the hospitalisation of people who are sick, and again it appeared that they could do very little. They cannot assist people who need help. We were of opinion that whilst the people are looked upon as occupiers of agricultural holdings, and while they produce large quantities of the products which reach the markets, this section of the population should also be given the necessary assistance to be able to produce on a sound footing and to make a decent livelihood. From statements made by members of the board it now appears that they possess no more authority than an ordinary vigilance committee or health committee, and such a committee can, without cost, be chosen by the inhabitants of such an environment. But this board which has been appointed costs the Provincial Administration an enormous sum. There are five board members with a secretary, and a medical man has been appointed to act in an advisory capacity at a salary of a few thousand pounds a year. We would like to know of what help this advice can be if the board is not in a position to go any further. We hoped when the board was created that they would be in a position to place certain sums of money available for a housing scheme, or to grant loans to plotholders which they have never been able to obtain, and thus enable them to produce on a proper and healthy footing. They have no money and no say in any funds, and are, therefore, not in a postion to render assistance. This morning I want to appeal to the Minister to consider the possibility of placing the board under the Central Government, and empowering it to grant the necessary help to people who are in need of it. You will realise that such a board possessing no powers really amounts to nothing at all. It possesses the same powers as a vigilance committee which can be chosen locally without any cost. If the Minister does not see his way clear to do this, I do not know what the value of the board is going to be. Then there are only two alternatives, either to do away with the board, or to vest in it powers which amount to something. A serious position exists there and the facts must be looked in the face, and this morning I want to insist that the board should fall under the Central Government with certain financial powers which will enable them to extend the necessary help to an important section of the population.

It does not happen very often that I am completely in agreement with the hon. member for North Rand (Mr. Heyns), but whilst he has congratulated the hon. member for George (Mr. Werth) on making a good speech with reference to nothing, I wish to associate myself with his congratulations. I presume that the hon. member for North Rand also felt that there was no substance in the Budget speech. On that point we agree. Certainly the greatest responsibility vesting on the Government today is that we must provide for the distressing years which lie ahead, the years of adjustment after the war. When the task is being undertaken, it is necessary for us to have the will to see it through. It is imperative to act with discretion and understanding, but what is just as important is that in this instance the matter must be tackled speedily. Our objection on this side of the House is that according to the Budget speech and the statements of members of the Government, the Government does not possess the pluck and courage to expedite these matters. What did we really find in the Budget speech of the Minister of Finance? What prospects did he hold out? What hope did he offer to industrialists? Speakers on this side enlarged on the matter but I ask what hope the Minister held out for agriculturists in the Budget speech. These days nearly every speaker outside is discussing the reconstruction of agriculture. Everybody is discussing it, and we have repeatedly pointed out how necessary it is to build up agriculture, but last year the Minister of Finance came along and the money which was granted to agriculturists to deduct in respect of improvements —precisely the money which is being used to build up agriculture—he decreased by 70 per cent. and allowed the farmers only 30 per cent. for this purpose. It is, as the Minister has said, his last war budget, and the farmers were surely justified in expecting at this stage, when so much is being said about the reconstruction of agriculture, that the Minister of Finance would restore the 70 per cent. which he took away last year to give the agriculturists an opportunity ofmaking a start with the reconstruction. I protest as an agriculturist, and we feel that under the present financial circumstances it is necessary that that concession be granted to agriculture again. When we talk about social security, then it is necessary for us to provide for the masses, and it was necessary at that moment that the Minister of Finance and also the Government should have told the public outside very plainly what they intend doing. At this moment the greatest measure of uncertainty exists for every section of the community. All the certainty that exists is that the Government has told us that they have a demobilisation plan of which they will make a success, but allow me to say just this in that connection, namely that we must remember that ultimately the Government will only provide work for a small percentage of the returned soldiers. The majority of returned soldiers will go back to their own spheres of employment. Many of the spheres of employment of these soldiers who return are not too promising, but these people go back to them, and if the Government does not see to it that provision is made for those masses, those soldiers to whom the. Government has supplied a livelihood will also find that when a financial collapse takes place the help which was offered them is very meagre, yes, actually imaginary. In connection with expansion after the war, I believe that the Government has not yet reached the first step for the reason that they have not yet succeeded in gaining the confidence of the public outside. It seems to me that the Minister of Finance is afraid of establishing confidence. The Minister has one big fear and that is the fear of inflation. It actually appears to me that the Minister’s idea is that if he gains the confidence of the nation, oy so doing he will facilitate inflation. The farmers will again lose their heads and pay too much for land, and for that reason it appears to me that the Minister is not going to establish confidence. Everybody in this House is aware of the danger of inflation, but yet it is my belief that at this juncture, when after the war we will have to provide a means of living for thousands of people, the time has now arrived to fight this fear of inflation and replace it by confidence. I am speaking now on behalf of the agricultural representatives of this House, and I want to tell the Minister that agriculture has had to make considerable sacrifices during the last few war years. It cannot be gainsaid that as a result of control—and we favour control—but that as a result of control agriculture has had to forego millions of pounds. It goes without saying that without control, our farmers would have benefited by millions of pounds. But this being the case the prospect was held out to the farmers: You have to sacrifice now, but after the war you will reap the benefit of these sacrifices, and after the war you will also have a stabilised price. The Opposition believes that South Africa only has three sources from which new riches can flow. In the first place our mines, then our manufacturing industry, and thirdly agriculture. Unfortunately we in South Africa are prepared to depend too much on our mines, particularly our gold mines. We realise that that is a dangerous attitude, and I want to emphasise that the Reunited Nationalist Party realises, realises fully, that it is dangerous to base our economy to such a large extent on the gold mining industry of our country. And it is not only ourselves who say that we should not rely to such an extent on the gold mining industry. A man like Dr. Van der Bijl tells us—[Translation.]

But Dr. Van der Bijl is not the only man issuing a warning. An expert such as Dr. Van Eck also issues warnings. He says inter alia—[Translation.]

That is clear to all of us. We are grateful for what we can get out of the mines for the prosperity of South Africa, but we have to safeguard ourselves in other directions. Yesterday our industrial policy, from our side, was adumbrated. The Reunited Nationalist Party holds that agriculture is still the broad foundation of our economic structure, and cherishing that belief, the party is of opinion that the time has come to build up our agricultural industry effectively, and for that reason our party holds that we must not allow agriculture after this war to crash as it did after the last war. When discussing agriculture, there is a large section of the community saying “there are the ‘gentleman farmers’, the farmers are making lots of money”. We continually hear insults in connection with our rich farmers. I admit that probably ten per cent. of our farmers are well-to-do, but we are not pleading for the ten per cent. This ten per cent. is not going to face difficulties after the war. I want to appeal to the House not only to think in terms of a few rich farmers whom they come into contact with in the lobby and outside. I want to appeal to hon. members to remember the 90 per cent. of farmers who pass their lives on the platteland in poverty and seclusion, farmers who sweat from morning till evening to eke out a miserable existence. It is not fair of members continually to hold up these few rich farmers, when this side of the House is pleading for the poorer section of the farming community. It cannot be denied that by far the greater majority of farmers is actually poor. They are very poor. I think when discussing these platters, it is essential that one should study statistics to see what the actual position is which agriculture is occupying in our economic structure, and what compensation agriculture derives. No less than £470,000,000 has been invested in agriculture. Of the 2,000,000 Europeans in South Africa, 700,000 live on the land and are classified as rural. Of the 8,000,000 non-Europeans, 5,800,000 or 74 per cent. live on the soil and are classified as rural. In other words, 68.6 per cent. of our total population is classified as rural and 31.4 as urban. But what is the contribution of the 68 per cent. of the population towards our national income? I have before me the figures in respect of the year 1938-’39. At that time our national income amounted to £392,000,000. The 7,000,000 people living on the platteland contributed £50,000,000 towards this amount, or a little more than £7 per head. The 3,000,000 people living in urban areas contributed £342,000,000, or just under £114 per head per year. Taking the Europeans alone, we find that the rural Europeans contributed £61 per head per year, and the European urbanites contributed £254 per year per head. Another argument often heard is that in the course of the past 10 or 15 years agriculture has made tremendous progress. I admit that that is correct. During the last war, we had to import the food of the country to a great extent. We were not in a position to produce sufficient to supply our needs. During this war the farmer has not only supplied the food requirements of our own country, but thousands of tons of food have been exported, and tens of thousands of foreigners have been provided with the necessary food. Agriculture, therefore, has played its part, and I am prepared to agree that agricultural production has made tremendous strides in the past 15 years. But what did this increased effort mean for agriculture as such? In those fifteen years the agricultural income rose by £5,000,000, or in other words, there was an increase of 9 per cent. in fifteen years, as against an increase in the income of the townspeople by £165,000,000, or an increase of 72 per cent. in this 15-year period. There is one other figure which has aroused my interest, and that shows that agriculture has continually lost ground. In 1927-’28 agriculture contributed 17 per cent. towards the national income. In 1938-’39 it was only 13 per cent., but these figures give us an insight into what the actual position is, and I must say that these figures are alarming to my mind. The figures which I view with alarm are these: We know that as far as finances are concerned, a high water mark and a low water mark often alternate, and unfortunately it is true that when these conditions arise, agriculture always suffers most. Agricultural prices are always the first to come down and the last to go up. Therefore we find that in the years between 1924 and 1939, the low water mark was reached in 1932. Income from agriculture came down by £28,000,000 or nearly 40 per cent., whilst the urban income came down by £13,000,000 or hardly 6 per cent. It is these low water marks in agriculture as soon as a setback occurs, which fill us with anxiety on this side of the House. It is no use idealising about beautiful long-term schemes for the reconstruction of agriculture or to place agriculture on a better basis. Most of these plans which have been suggested cannot help the farmer in the immediate post-war period. Those plans will only have beneficial results at the end of our generation, and possibly in some instances only at the end of the second generation. A man like Professor Pretorius says in regard to these plans of which we hear so much—discussing the report of the Department of Agriculture—

Not that I want to minimise the value of this departmental report. It is a valuable report. But I want to point out that the plans suggested therein, are plans which are of more interest to future generations. What really caused the collapse of agricultural economy after the last war? My modest view is that there were three main causes. The first was the sudden decline in the price of agricultural produce to far under production cost. Secondly, you had the colossal decrease in the consumption of agricultural produce. As a result we had a natural decline in the solvency of the farmer as such, and that resulted in an uncontrolled withdrawal of agricultural credit. I want to put this question to the Minister: Am I right when I say that these three causes are the basic cause of the final collapse of agriculture in those unfortunate years? If I am correct, I want to ask the Government and the Minister of Finance: What can you hold out to agriculture to prove to them that you are going to prevent that the same collapse will take place when there is a setback? If you want to save agriculture, if you want to see to it that this setback, this fiasco, does not recur, it is necessary—that is the conviction of the Reunited Nationalist Party—that the farmer should have full control of his own produce, that consumption with State assistance should be placed on a reasonably high level, that agricultural credit should be maintained on a sound basis. When we propose that the farmer should have full control over his products, we have in mind particularly the marketing boards and they are in existence now. I want to reaffirm that we are in favour of control, but during these past years control has been so hopelessly inadequate that we do not want to carry any longer any responsibility for this kind of control. We feel that a fresh start should be made and that the Marketing Act of 1937 should be amended. We know how our marketing board and control boards are composed. You find representatives of agriculture there, there are representatives of the consumers, of commerce, etc. But if we continue to compose these councils as they are composed now, it is clear to me, and to anybody in this House it must be clear, that these councils ultimately are going to speak the voice of the government of the day. Whether it is this Government or the next government, I take it that every government will be inclined to commit the same error as this Government is committing. It is, however, undoubtedly true that if we continue in this direction, these boards will ultimately speak what the government of the day wants them to say.

That is the position now already.

We cannot allow that. For that reason we suggest that in future only representatives of agriculture should serve on these boards. Human nature being what it is, we cannot allow the interests of agriculture in future to be entrusted to other groups. We know the tendency today is already on the part of the Government not only to appoint boards as they are now composed, but in future to take no notice whatsoever of the question of representation on the board, or go into the question which section of the community they should serve. I do not want to say any more about this matter. My time is almost up. I want to put this question: How can consumption with State help be maintained on a fair level? How are we going to do it? In the first place we want to do that by providing the consuming masses at the cheapest possible prices with these products. That can be done by better distribution and marketing and especially by subsidising foodstuffs. In the past our foodstuffs were subsidised to the detriment of our own consumers in this country and at ruinously low prices for the farmer as such. We contend that when a financial collapse comes, and also prior to such a collapse, there will be thousands and tens of thousands of people in this country after the war who will be eking out a meagre existence. It does not help us to live in the clouds and to believe that after the war everyone will earn a decent livelihood. In reality that will not be the case. The position will again arise which obtained after the last war, namely that there will be thousands of people living below the bread line, and those circumstances also affect the farmer. For that reason we on this side believe that we must perform this double national service. We must go over to the subsidising of foodstuffs for the poor section of the community, and when we do this and we place those sections on a sure footing, by so doing we will also, to a large extent, save the farmer. But then we must ensure that the subsidising of those foodstuffs which are brought up and distributed by the Government does not take place as is happening in so many instances now, but that the Government will buy up the foodstuffs at the ruling market price and not at surplus prices. Whilst after the war we will participate in an international food scheme to feed the devastated nations of Europe, those foodstuffs must also be bought up at the ruling market price and not at surplus prices. And now just a few words more. Our experience has been in the past that as soon as a collapse occurred, it has also resulted in a curtailment of credit in this country, and here again it hits especially the small farmer. I agree that under present circumstances the conditions will be better than they were after the last war owing to the fact that agriculture has expanded since then. We realise that the Land Bank will provide us in large measure with long-term credit as far as agriculture is concerned. But the factor which caused the real difficulty last time and which I fear will crop up again, if the State does not take action, is that that short-term credit for agricultural purposes will collapse again as it did after the last war. It is not for me to say how the short-term credit system should be worked out. I leave that to experts. I just want to suggest that the Government should consider the establishment of a bond scheme for loose goods and also for the purchase of the necessary implements. We have found in the past that as soon as difficult times come, and as soon as credit is curtailed, then the first to suffer is the small farmer. Under those circumstances he can no longer produce normally and it is impossible for him to compete with his more well-to-do farmer friends. In those circumstances the well-to-do farmer lives on his own capital, but he also lives on that portion of the market which he wins in this manner from the small farmer. I want to appeal to the Government to take action in good time and to give the assurance to the farming community and the small farmer in particular that a short-term credit system is being brought into existence. If we do that, then the business banks and people who provide credit under present circumstances, will act less drastically, and that is why I am making this earnest appeal to the Minister to take action as soon as possible in this cormection.

Mr. Speaker, we have heard a great deal of criticism which I feel really pays a great compliment to the hon. Minister of Finance. Because of the great success he has achieved in steering the finances of the country through this difficult period, hon. members opposite now expect the hon. Minister to be a orophet and forecast the date on which the war will come to an end and when the majority of our forces will be home, and that he should have budgeted accordingly. Well, Sir, I am sure the hon. Minister does not want to become a prophet and I am also sure the hon. Minister has not yet been in communication with Hitler to ascertain when the Nazis intend to throw up the sponge, nor has he offered Hitler a sympathetic government. Therefore, Sir, I wish to express my gratitude to the hon. Minister, I wish to say how pleased I am that even in this transition Budget he has been able to maintain a policy of paying for this war, to a very large extent, out of revenue account, and not to burden our loan account unnecessarily. It is therefore most gratifying to see that our debt has only increased by approximately £245,000,000 since 1940, and if we take into consideration the amount that has been expended in creating new State assets, we will see that our debt has only increased by approximately £180,000,000 as a result of the war, and if we apportion that money amongst the European population we find it averages £75 per head. It would therefore be very interesting to know if the hon. member for George (Mr. Werth), who is so much concerned about this debt which he calls “dooie skuld”, considers this too high a price to pay for his freedom, the freedom for which our boys and girls have been and are still fighting for. In this Budget I have very little criticism to offer. I feel, however, Sir, that the Fixed Property Tax should have been eliminated altogether, as I am of opinion that the elimination of the tax will reduce the prices of property. Then, as far as demobilisation is concerned I feel that this should have been a charge to loan account as I consider it to be part and parcel of reconstruction. Therefore, Sir, in the few remarks I still want to make I wish to confine myself to the future. The hon. Minister has warned us that the public will require more money for the expansion of trade and industry and will therefore contribute less to our loans. He has also warned us that war-time taxation cannot remain unaltered in our peace-time economy. I therefore trust that the hon. Minister will take a very bold step for the future and not only reduce, but, if possible, remove all war-time taxation in order to make more money available for the expansion of trade and industry and so more money will become available for our loans. Then, Mr. Speaker, notwithstanding the hon. Minister’s statement that he does not fear any large-scale unemployment in the first years after the war, and that there will be sufficient work to be tackled, I would nevertheless appreciate a statement giving an assurance to the public that the manpower at present employed on the production of war material, will be absorbed. Furthermore, Sir, when the factories at present employed on wartime production are converted, as indicated in the Government’s White Paper on Postwar Reconstruction, will the products these factories are then producing for peace-time find a ready market; will we be able to compete in overseas markets, and will these products create overseas purchasing power or will we have to continue to be dependent on gold? If the latter, then. I would like to take this opportunity to say, Sir, that I hope that the Departmental Committee to enquire into the system of gold mining taxation will take a very broad view and consider the advisability of removing all direct and indirect taxation which affect production costs. I don’t refer to any taxation or levies on profits. I contend that this should continue provided it does not stifle investments. By reducing the working costs, we will not only lengthen the lives of our mines, but more money will become available for development and more consideration can be given to the wages of employees, and their benefits on retirement. I understand that the results of the investigations in connection with ultra-deep mining are not unpromising, but at the same time I would like to point out that the deeper you go the higher the costs of hauling and hoisting and maintenance. Furthermore the deeper you go the more unhealthy it becomes and I feel that the shortage of labour on the gold mines today, both European and native, is not so much caused by the diminished purchasing power of the employees’ incomes but it is largely due to the unhealthy conditions under which they work. Let us therefore improve the emoluments of the employees and retire them at an earlier stage before their health is affected. Better conditions with greater security will encourage labour. I trust that these few remarks of mine will be taken into consideration by the respective Ministers.

Notwithstanding the criticism which was offered yesterday and today in connection with the budget speech, it is a great pleasure for me to thank the Minister and the Government on behalf of my constituency for the position which is reflected in this budget. I remember that during the discussion of the previous budget I approached the Minister of Agriculture for assistance in connection with horse breeding. I am very pleased to see that the Minister of Agriculture has aided the horse breeders in this connection. I was particularly interested in that assurance, because a few years ago when we had another Minister of Agriculture. I accompanied a deputation to meet the Minister, and we returned home without having accomplished anything. That is why I wish to thank the Minister of Agriculture for having assisted the horse breeders in this respect, and I want to submit that each year the Minister of Finance should make some provision in the budget to enable the Minister of Agriculture to come to the assistance of horse breeders. I also pointed out to the Minister of Lands that certain farmers’ land in my constituency is subject to the overflowing of rivers, with the result that valuable ground is washed away. I asked him to assist these people as far as possible. I am glad that there as well assistance will be forthcoming. A few days ago I accompanied the Irrigation Commission to investigate the matter, and I am pleased to say that this commission intends to make a thorough study of the position. I look forward to seeing the farmers really assisted in this connection. If provision had not been made in the budget, then it would not have been possible. I want to say a few words about the Deciduous Fruit Board. Last year I also asked the Minister to grant the farmers more representation on that board. That was also done. Now the farmers have no cause for complaint, because the board is composed the way the farmers wanted it. Although a very big change and improvement has been brought about in this respect in comparison with the past, there is still room for improvement in the future. It appears to me that the distribution is still not functioning properly. I want to ask the Minister and his department to give their attention to this matter. Before this Deciduous Fruit Board came into being, it was very evident that individual farmers had established their own market, and it may be that if the farmers were left to their own devices a little more in that respect, they would then perhaps be able to make more use of the channels which they have developed themselves, and in that way the distribution difficulties would be solved. Perhaps after the experience of the last two years the Deciduous Fruit Board will be in a position next year to assist the public, and will further investigate the distribution of fruit. It still appears that grapes which could have been eaten, found their way into the wine press. They are pressed, while there are people who would have been glad of the fresh grapes but could not obtain them. Then I come to another question, namely that of mountain fires. It is a matter which has been thrashed out over and over again and I have already attended many congresses where the matter has been discussed fully and thoroughly. But I propose that we should now cease talking about it and instead try to do something practical to overcome these difficulties. Is it not possible for the Government to take over the mountains which constitute our water supplies, which are not yet Crown land? The Government could take them over on a fair basis from the farmers concerned, and in that manner exercise better control. Matters cannot be allowed to continue as they have been going on in the Worcester areas during the last few years. That district is 100 per cent. dependent on irrigation, and the way the mountain fires have been buring, especially during the past few weeks, something must be done to end this difficulty. I suggest that the Government should consider the matter and see whether the water sources cannot be made Government property by taking over the land on a reasonable basis from the farmers. Make it Crown land so that there will be proper control over mountain fires. Then I come to the post-war period. It is a period which is in everyone’s thougrts, and I want to appeal to both sides of the House not to make a political question out of it. I was very glad a few days ago to hear the hon. member for Swellendam (Mr. S. E. Warren) say that these things will never right themselves before the human heart undergoes a change. That is the point. Let us see whether we cannot undergo a change of heart and obtain the co-operation which is necessary for the solution of the post-war problems with which we will be confronted in our country. I was also very interested in the remarks of the hon. member for Stellenbosch (Dr. Bremer) that we should forget the past and stand together. I hope that he meant it in all seriousness, and I would like to believe that he looks forward to that co-operation which ought to exist between us; that we will forget the past and that from both sides we will come together so that we will achieve something from it. For it appears to me that an enormous amount of time is wasted here and hours are spent for which nothing concrete can be shown to the public outside. I therefore make an earnest appeal to both sides of the House to view the matter in that light and to think more about co-operation than trying to derive capital out of any difficulty which may arise.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to say something here in reply to what the hon. member for Smithfield (Mr. Fouché) said. That is that we are drifting back again to the time when people were living below the breadline, and that is what we did in 1918 after the Great War. I would like to ask the hon. member whether we were in any different position during the period 1928—1932 when they were in power. What was the position during that period? If only they will remember how the people in those days were standing, not in rows of tens, but hundreds, not only looking for bread but also for work. That was the position when these people were in the Government. If only they visited the cities in those days they will realise that they then made the biggest mistake of their time when the people were in their thousands looking for work and food. I want to touch mainly on mining matters.

Mr. G. F. H. BEKKER; [Inaudible.]

My hon. friend the member for Cradock (Mr. G. F. H. Bekker) apparently does not know anything about mining, otherwise he might have been helpful. I want to appeal to the Minsiter on the question of mining taxation. I would like to touch on the cost of taxation directly and indirectly on mining material. I plead with the Minister to do all in his power to ease that. It will not only assist in the cost of production to lower it, but it will create more employment for the people, because this means that we can do more development and employ more people, which is what we are looking for. At the same time I want to congratulate the Minister for not having levied further taxes against the mines. I think that is appreciated by the country in general. Mr. Speaker, then there is the matter of native wages which has been raised by one of the members of the Labour Party and also by the native representatives. That is that they said that the mines are paying the lowest rate of wages in the country. There I must differ entirely. I would be very pleased if the cost to the mines of native labour could be put in the hands of the House and also the cost in other directions of industry. I know what the cost per person is on the mines. The mines are not only paying the wages, but we must remember that they are carrying the hospitalisation, free food, free quarters and free lights, everything that must be taken into consideration. Then we must also take the number of people who are there for the first month, and there is the cost of their services although they are showing no production. I want to tell the House that these people are not on the low rate of wages the people make out.

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

When the House adjourned I was speaking on mining matters, and I should like to continue on those lines on which I was addressing the House, namely, that we should not think only of the taxation imposed on the mines, but we should also bear in mind what the mines have done for the country in general. I would make a particular appeal to the House that consideration should be given to the European section of workers on the mines who are carrying the main burden. We have to take account of the conditions under which they are working and the amount of remuneration they are receiving for their labours. It is true that technically there has been an increase of pay on the mines, but that is only by way of allowance. I believe that the time has arrived when that allowance should be stabilised and incorporated in the pay. Every other section of the community are enjoying considerable increases in pay, but this section for whom I am speaking has had no increase in pay, merely allowances. We can remember that if the cost of living falls the allowances will be taken away and wages will be on a prewar scale again. Then there are other matters which we should like to see given attention for their benefit, as for instance miners’ phthisis legislation. We have appealed for this frequently during this Session and during last Session, and I should like to make an earnest appeal to the Minister to do something at the earliest possible date. I can assure him, and I am speaking from the point of view of an ex-miner, that this is a burning question, and that everyone concerned is looking forward to measures that will cope with the serious state of affairs in the mines today. [Interruption.] I have promised the hon. member that if he interrupts I shall give him all he asks for—outside the House.

Fight the Labour Party—not me.

I should like to appeal to the House at the same time to consider what the mines have done on behalf of our servicemen, and what they are still prepared to do for members of our fighting forces. In this respect the Chamber of Mines have adopted a wonderful attitude; they have paid the men who volunteered to go off on active service half pay and quarter pay. I return to my appeal that in view of the activities of the mines which have been in many directions for the benefit of the country, we must try to reduce taxation. One very important reason is that we should try to continue working low grade ore that they are working today. If those working costs are not reduced I am afraid that the low grade mines on the Rand will have to close down. Should that happen the country will be burdened with thousands of unemployed, European and non-European. With this appeal I conclude my remarks, Mr. Speaker, and I thank you.

Last year we requested the Minister to keep agriculture out of politics. We even went so far as to bring our groups together in order to facilitate matters for him. Unfortunately the Minister did not accept that, and although pleas have been directed to him on various occasions that he should do so, he has rejected them. I feel that the time has arrived when the farmers too should clearly put their point of view to this Minister who does not want to co-operate with them. The farmers always adopt a sensible attitude and they are always willing to co-operate in every respect. But since the S.A. Party sold the farmers to the Chamber of Commerce, the farmers no longer have any say. I believe those people are furious with me, but I say that they have nothing to do with agriculture, that they should not meddle in our affairs. Unfortunately the Minister’s predecessor sold us, hand and foot, to the Chamber of Commerce. They are the people who are today fixing our prices, and although the Minister states that that is not so, I maintain again that that is the case. The boards are powerless today. They control only in name; they mean nothing; their advice is not accepted. When they do act and give advice, the Minister rejects it or he acts in such a way that the principles for which the Chamber of Commerce stand, are put into effect. We have seen in the past how these boards have been used to conceal the misdeeds of the Government. That is again the position. I want to say that we on this side and the agricultural unions are of opinion that the Marketing Act, the old Marketing Act, is no longer suited to the times in which we live. The farmers want their own boards, a producers’ board where the farmers can work out their own salvation. After all, the farmer knows what his own product is worth. Today the composition of the boards is worthless. One finds that all sections are represented on the boards. Various boards have ten, fifteen or twenty members. What are they doing there? They are not there to do their best in the interests of the producer, and if they do or propose anything, the Minister and the Main Marketing Board come along and the Cabinet comes to a different decision. There must be a producers’ board; and if the consumers want to establish a board of their own, let them do so; if the traders want a board let them also have one, and let these boards link up in a sound way. Today the position is unsatisfactory and the old Marketing Act is a thing of the past. As far as the price of products is concerned, the Minister simply does not accept the advice of his boards, nor the advice of the agricultural unions. We stated last year and in previous years that if a maximum price is fixed, a minimum price should also be fixed. Our farmers are urging that a minimum price be fixed for farming products. That is the first thing we want.

What maximum?

The maximum will be determined by the competition, but there should be a minimum price, because otherwise the time will come when the price of the product will decline to practically nothing. There was a time when potatoes were hardly worth anything at all. The so-called Agricultural Advisory Board then took up the matter with the Minister, but nothing happened. That board is simply a smokescreen; it is not worth anything. I believe it has only met once since the beginning of the war, and it is worthless. We are being controlled by the Chamber of Commerce and the Department, and I want to say that although the Department is very good in theory, it is hopeless in practice, as it has shown in every direction in which it has acted. The farmers want something practical and we feel that the farmers, without any interference from the Government or the Department, should appoint their own people to manage their own affairs. The so-called political appointments which are now taking place are hopeless. The Minister’s whole idea seems to be to destroy agriculture. We feel that agriculture means nothing to the Government. The whole of the organisation is hopeless, and it seems to serve no purpose to promote organisation, because everything which is proposed by the organised bodies is rejected. We say there must be a link between agriculture, industry and mining. There should be a link between them because it is essential for the welfare of the country. In that respect we must adopt a new policy and not the old policy under which agriculture has always been regarded as an old pair of trousers which have to be continually patched until it later becomes just as rotten as the difficulties in which we now find ourselves. We feel that agriculture, industry and the mines should interlink. Agriculture is the first and the most important link, because agriculture is the first step in civilisation. The English people were shepherds to begin with; the Hollanders were cattleherds. Even two thousand years before Christ they had cattle; and we must adopt the attitude that agriculture is the first link in civilisation; without agriculture no country, can accomplish anything. Everything depends on the welfare of the people who produce the food; We feel that we ought to have an agricultural board, which will be a sort of economic board to agriculture. The gold mines could have such a board and similarly the industries. If those boards can then negotiate with one another, many of our difficulties can be eliminated. But as I have said, agriculture is of paramount importance in providing food for the population and ensuring their welfare. There can be no security in any country if agriculture is not placed on such a sound footing that it can supply the needs of the people. For that reason it is necessary for us in this House to see that agriculture is placed on a sound footing. We feel that agriculture and industry ought to work in the closest harmony. In Australia at one time the welfare of the nation was dependent on the gold mines. Those gold mines failed. We do not want to belittle the gold mines in our country, but nevertheless we feel that if we rely on the gold mines only, we are going to have a very unsound position in this country. We feel that we should link up our gold mines with industry and with agriculture. Farming and industry merge into each other. In Australia we have the position that we ought to have here, namely, that the industries process the raw material which is produced by the farmers. Industry pays fairly good prices and wages, and in that way money is brought into circulation. That money is used to buy the products of the farmers. The gold mines, too, need the food and other products which are produced by the farmers, and they give a certain amount of capital power to the country. We cannot eliminate any one of these three. We do not want to exterminate the gold mines, because everything is interlinked. That is our idea of the position of agriculture. We also feel that an effective scheme should be evolved without delay to combat soil erosion. That is one of the biggest dangers in the country. It has a bearing on the economic position in which the farmer finds himself.

Order, order! I want to remind the hon. member of the motion of the hon. member for Drakensberg (Mr. Abrahamson).

Very well, Mr. Speaker, I shall not enlarge on that. I just want to say that the price which the farmer gets for his products ought to be sufficiently high to enable him to put something back into the land. An economic price to the farmer is of paramount importance because he can then build up everything on a sound footing in agriculture. If we do not do something to conserve the fertility of our soil, there will be very little left for posterity. Then I also want to say a few words in regard to irrigation. In that respect I differ from the Minister of Irrigation. He is of opinion that we should not have more settlements. There are certain parts of this country which are suitable for land settlement purposes. And we should develop those settlements for people who are today on uneconomic farms, so that they can be placed there. I remember the days of Mr. Havenga when farmers from the North West who could not make a living on their farms were placed on a settlement. That policy yielded good results. Those people were able to let their children study; they were placed under supervision and they made a success of the undertaking. We ought to draw up a proper scheme with this object in view. Then I come to the necessity of a proper credit scheme. In the first place we must make provision for proper short and long-term credit. We must introduce what is called the “chattel mortgage” in Australia. The small farmers who have no credit facilities and who cannot get money to gather their crops or to buy machinery, should be enabled in this way to obtain facilities for those purposes. Then we must also have a proper redemption scheme. There are still farmers today who have not been able to pay anything on their mortgages since 1934 and who, in some cases, have not even been able to pay all the interest that was due. Something should be done to keep those people on the land. These are not all people who are lazy. I am not pleading for lazy people. We cannot allow those people to migrate to the cities and towns. We should reduce their burdens when we feel that their burdens are bigger than they are able to bear. In other words, we should make provision for a proper redemption scheme to which the farmers can contribute and to which the State can contribute. The question is to what extent the State can meet these people. This is something to which we shall have to give our attention. There is also the question as to the extent to which the State should retain control once it has written off debt. Where the State has advanced money it will probably have to retain control to a certain extent, because if those people leave the land, they will find themselves in difficulties. Now I come to the question of wool. We have heard very little about wool during this Session. I feel that wool is one of the most important farming products in South Africa. The wool yield is approximately £12,000,000 per annum. It varies from £10,000,000 to £14,000,000. The capital invested in sheep farming is approximately £160,000,000 and you will agree that a gross income of £12,000,000 on an investment of £160,000,000 is a very meagre income for the people concerned. I just want to repeat, what our attitude was and is towards the British wool scheme. The average price which we got for wool in 1938 was 8.2d. We then approached the Minister — at that time it was Mr. Havenga—and asked him to give us a subsidy of 25 per cent. because we argued that a price of 8.2d. was uneconomic.

That was as a result of the gold standard.

It was not at the time of the gold standard. The Minister should think before he talks. I am now referring to the year just before the war. We contended that a price of 8.2d. was not economic and we asked for a subsidy of 25 per cent., and eventually the Minister gave us a rebate of £800,000 on the railways. He assisted us in that direction. The farmers and the officials of the Department of Agriculture calculated that at that time the farmer could make ends meet on 8.2d. plus 25 per cent. If, however, we converted that 8.2d. into its monetary value today, it would be 16d. We must look at the increase in production costs. During the first year of the war we had an open market. We succeeded in keeping our market open for two years. It paid us very well, because during that time we got an average price of 12d. Our wool clip yielded £12,000,000. The following year the British Government pointed a pistol at our heads and offered us a wool scheme. We were informed that it was the same scheme as the one which they had entered into with Australia. We on our side maintained that that was not the case. We said it was untrue and two years later when we looked at the contract, we found that it was untrue and that our contract was not the same as the contract with Australia. I protested against it and pointed out that we had lost £2,000,000 a year under that agreement in comparison with the first two years of the war. The first year we got £12,000,000 and under the British wool scheme we got £10,000,000 the first year. I adopted the attitude, and the greatest proportion of the wool farmers adopted the attitude, that we were not satisfied with the so-called price of 10.75d. Production costs had risen in every respect, and nevertheless our income was reduced by £2,000,000 a year under this scheme. We on this side were not satisfied with the price and we raised the matter in the House. I still remember how members on the other side said that we on this side were terribly ungrateful and that we should accept what was offered to us. We carried on with the agitation and eventually we succeeded in getting the British Government to admit that we had not been getting an average of 10.75d. They then added 15 per cent. because Australia had been given an increase of 15 per cent., and we were given a further five per cent. because our original agreement was not on the basis of the Australian agreement. This side did everything in its power, therefore, notwithstanding the opposition on the other side, to save the wool farmers and to obtain their rights for them. The wool farmers have always put their hands into their own pockets. They have not gone to the Government to do things for them. At Onderste-poort the Government had a few small buildings for wool research. The Wool Council had these buildings erected. They sent our sons overseas to study, and the Minister of Agriculture and his Department did precious little to promote the wool industry. We felt that research was of the utmost importance to the wool farmers, especially since we had to contend with the competition of synthetic material. We got our institution started, and I can say that we are 15 years ahead of the other Dominiums as far as wool research is concerned. Instead of the Minister of Agriculture assisting us, we find that two years ago the Agricultural Department compelled the wool farmers to spend more than £4,000 to build a small shed at Onderstepoort. We did not mind paying the money, because we realised how important this work was. But what right has the Minister and his Department continually to meddle in our affairs? They simply make a mess of everything that we are building up. We wanted to prove that the clean yield which we were getting for our wool under the British agreement was not a fair one, and we got no support from the Government. Instead of support the Government thwarted us in our efforts and I was called names when I raised the matter. I stated that the clean yield of our wool had in some cases been underestimated by ten per cent., and I proved that an underestimate of four per cent. meant £1,000,000 per annum on our wool clip. What did we get from the Government and from the Agricultural Department? They tried to make us appear ridiculous. That is all they did. They then appointed a commission. The first member was the Secretary for Agriculture. He is a good fellow, but he knows nothing about practical wool farming. The second member was a veterinary surgeon, and he was also appointed to the commission in an attempt to make us appear ridiculous. But they went further. They appointed two members of the British Wool Commission to serve on this commission. These are the people who underestimate our wool and they are appointed to sit on the commission. There was one man who had a knowledge of wool, but they told him that he was a Government official and he had to remain silent. They tried to present us in a ridiculous light, and they stated that I pretended to know more about the matter than they. I want to say that I know very much more than they do, and what is more, the tests which were carried out at Onderstepoort proved that I was right and that there had been an underestimate of the clear yield of our wool, varying from four per cent. to 15 per cent. We do not want politics in these matters; we want the truth. If we carry out those tests, we must give them to the people. I then asked that testing stations be established at big wool centres like Port Elizabeth so that specimens could be tested there. That was a terrible thing, and it was said that I was casting a doubt on the honesty of these people. I wanted sample tests. We had sample tests carried out at Onderstepoort, and the results of our tests were the same as those in America. We took large quantities of wool for our tests, from 10 lbs. to 12 lbs. In America half a pound was taken out of a thousand bales to carry out samples tests and there the results were absolutely identical with those of Onderstepoort. But we who insist on our rights are presented in a ridiculous light, merely to satisfy other people and to play into their hands. This interference on the part of people who have no practical experience cannot be tolerated, and I feel that a great change should come about. Then I also want to say that at Grootfontein there are old buildings which were erected 40 years ago. It is a disgrace. And those buildings teem with insects, lizards, and vermin. The wool farmers spent an amount of £15,000 which later became £17,000 on a laboratory. What is happening now? Today they are toying in that building with threads of wool. That is the type of treatment which has been meted out to the wool farmers. But that is not all. I want to point out that the organisation of the wool farmers is one of the best in the country and it is one of the best in the world. When we were in Australia the wool farmers there told us that they were astounded to hear that we had built up such an excellent organisation. By means of our organisation we have provided for the proper packing of our wool and we have made a name for ourselves in the world. The Government has given us very little assistance. We had an organisation in which there were no Party politics. But what is this Minister doing? Twenty-five thousand wool farmers have organised, but they are not masters of their own money. The Minister retains control of it. They cannot appoint their own representatives. The department makes the appointments. We wanted to establish a wool factory to get an industry on a basis of fifty-fifty. We carried on but after a year it became a farce. Why? Because the Minister would not help us to establish a national factory He thwarted all our efforts and played into the hands of the commercial people. We find that the Industrial Development Corporation gave the Imperial Cold Storages £96,000 or rather invested the amount with it in order to help that organisation to exploit the farmers even further. Here he is now playing the same false rôle. The Industrial Corporation was established not only for the purpose of starting urban industries, but to decentralise industries and to do something for the platteland. What has that corporation done for the platteland? Nothing. It has not even established a cold storage on the platteland. It is toying with the interests of the farmers as a cat toys with a mouse. The farmers held meetings throughout the country and the wool farmers agreed to get a wool factory. We asked the Minister to impose a levy on our behalf, as we had asked a previous Minister. What did the Minister do? He smiply ran away. Up to the present he has refused to give us this legislation. He runs away from our proposal and hands us over, hand and foot, to a factory in which the wool farmers can buy a few shares, but which has completely lost its national character. Twenty-five thousand wool farmers asked him to give the organisation of the wool farmers staturtory power. What is the Minister doing? Again he runs away to a handful of dissatisfied farmers who held a meeting at Graaff Reinet. Twenty-five thousand farmers mean nothing, but this protest committee of a few farmers means a great deal to him because it suits his political book. He takes notice of a small political clique. I want to tell the Minister that he did not have the courage to give the organisation of the wool farmers statutory power. I also want to say this to the Minister, that I am fully aware of the hypocrisy which is behind these things. When we approached the Minstier of Agriculture in the first instance for statutory powers, he stated that the correct course would be for the Marketing Council to frame the legislation. What became of it? Nothing. Do you know why the Minsiter does not want to do it? It is because he wants to rule the wool farmers, and so that he can appoint his political agents in the organisation of the wool farmers. I should not like to mention my own case here. But I have never been appointed to any board by the Minister. Up to the present the farmers have sent me to the boards on which I serve. The Minister of Agriculture is not my master on those boards; I do not serve him; I serve the farmers who appointed me. The twenty-five thousand wool farmers wanted to send me as their representative to the London Conference, but the Minister does not pay any attention to them.

Stick to the facts.

I shall do so. Twenty-five thousand wool farmers are not good enough. The Wool Council twice appointed me and protested against the political movement which was afoot, but that small group or clique agitated; and do you know what the Minister did? He appointed a member of that clique to go to London. He chose the greatest Boer hater of all, the man who wanted to put our sons in gaol, namely Kingwell, to attend the conference. If he wanted to appoint a S.A.P., there were hundreds of good S.A.P.’s who have co-operated with us for years. Why do you appont that political agitator? That, too, is the reason why you appoint officials to the Wool Council and bodies of that kind, so that they cannot oppose you.

Order, order. The hon. member must address the Chair.

Pardon me, Mr. Speaker. They dare not act because the Minister of Agriculture has the power to kick them out. Twenty-five thousand wool farmers unanimously decide to send me to London, but the Minister chooses a man who is a political agitator. How can we have any faith and confidence in such a delegate? It is simply ridiculous to expect it.

You wanted to sell our wool to Germany.

That is a ridiculous remark for the Minister of Lands to make. He was a member of the Government which sold our wool to Germany, and to whom I gave this advice. It is nothing but political propaganda. If it is not Germany it is the war which is used to cover their sins. You are hopeless. Your Government has no agricultural policy; it is killing the farmers’ organisation; you are placing the farmer in a hopeless position.

The hon. member must address the Chair.

Yes, Mr. Speaker. I still wanted to say a great deal, especially in regard to the wool position, but my time has expired. But I shall get an opportunity at a later date to tell the Minister of Lands a few truths.

I listened with interest to what the hon. member for Cradock (Mr. G. F. H. Bekker) had to say here. The hon. member for Cradock sets himself up as an oracle who should always be listened to. He is the Achitophel whose counsel must be followed at all times. By way of interjection he stated here that the Minister of Lands was a member of the Government which at the time, acting on his advice, sold our wool to Germany. Quite correct. But since that time the hon. member for Cradock has given the advice that we should sell our wool to Japan.

That is not true.

And he has even gone so far as to say that the Government ought to lend the money to Japan to buy the wool.

Neither is that true.

I do not need to reply any further to the criticism we have heard from the hon. member for Cradock. I want to congratulate the Minister of Finance on his Budget, as a whole. I should like to congratulate him. We have not any larger or heavier weight of taxation imposed on us than we have had for years past, and I should therefore like to congratulate him on his Budget. Here and there there is a point on which I consider the Minister might have given some relief through an alteration in the system of taxation. There is for instance, the excess profits duty. The Minister of Finance has at his disposal information that is not available to us, but we come into contact with people who can express an opinion on these matters, and they tell us that if the income tax was increased and the excess profits duty was abolished, the Minister would receive a larger revenue, while a greater encouragement would be given those people who would be enabled to increase their income as a result of greater enterprise. I pass the facts on to the Minister as they were given to me outside, and I repeat that he has access to information that is not available to us, and he can enquire further into the matter. I should like also to make an appeal to the hon. Minister of Agriculture that he should in good time and before Parliament disperses, inform the meat producers what bonus he is going to pay them for the off-season period, October and November. It is extremely important that the Minister should do this. This will place the farmers in a position to adopt precautionary measures in good time to enable them to send forward their stock in good condition when the time of scarcity is on them. I hope that the Minister will see his way clear to make this announcement to the House, and to the country generally. Then there is another matter that I should like to bring to the notice of the Minister, and that is a matter that is referred to in an article that appeared in the “Cape Times” on the 27th February this year. It is a report from London and it reads as follows—

Undoubtedly if that report is correct the Government will have to be extremely vigilant in connection with organisations of this character, which we have had in this country in the past. I clearly recall, for example, when we had the Greyshirt movement in the country, and when no one saw any danger in it. We know now that as a result of the propaganda that similar organisations carried on in the world, the world was plunged into war, a war such as has never been known in the history of civilisation. Consequently it is the duty of the Government to pay careful attention and to see that we do not have a repetition in this country of what occurred in other countries before the war. We are not yet out of the wood, we are still involved in the war, and here we are hearing again about a cut-and-dried and completed plan to fill the world in another way with propaganda of this nature. I say in all seriousness that we must not allow—and I make an appeal to the Opposition—conditions to be created in our country that will subsequently make the task of recovery after the war very difficult. They should join with us in solving the problem. Let us take timely measures and let us be on our guard against this sort of thing The whole House is acquainted with the Von Durckheim report that has been circulated through the world. In my constituency there are thousands of Germanspeaking people, and we should not permit propaganda to be made amongst a foreign community which will land them in difficulty. Numbers of young Germans are today in internment camps as a result of propaganda and because at that time we did not put our foot down. The hon. member for Wolmaransstad (Gen. Kemp) was a member of the government under which this occured. We cannot allow that to take place again, and according to the report in the “Cape Times” the plans have all been laid, and they will allow themselves to be interned to show that they are anti-Nazi, while on the other hand they are occupied in becoming naturalised. Let us discuss this matter clearly and calmly. If there are people coming into our country who want to be naturalised in order later to give South Africa a stab in the back we must prevent this and take timely steps and decide that if anyone wants to become naturalised he may only be a citizen of the country so long as he is a good citizen, but that he can at any time be denaturalised and returned to the land of his birth. I cannot identify myself with the sort of propaganda and the methods that are employed right through the country. It is our duty to stop this, not because we are against the German people — today we are fighting againt the Nazi army. We ought to protect those Germans who are good citizens of this country against the sort of propaganda which apparently is now being continued in another manner after it has been exploded by bombs and guns.

What about Stalin’s army?

The hon. member is very touchy. I recall clearly how he sat here when we sent police to South-West Africa. When members on the opposite side asked what we intended to do there, he felt incensed about that. I remember well how Gen. Hertzog said that the Leader of the Opposition was a Nazi.

That is untrue.

I can clearly recall how the hon. member for Wolmaransstad said that we should not wait until the elephant had trod on us.

That is what you are doing now.

Do not let us allow conditions to be created that will make it difficult for us to solve those problems which call for solution.

This is a capitalist Budget, and as such we must examine it. But even as a capitalist Budget I think we can find nothing to enthuse upon. The Minister of Finance is rapidly becoming very much like his predecessor in that he introduces the same old Budget in the same old way. It seems to be our misfortune in South Africa that Ministers of Finance, having introduced their first Budget at the outset of their career, consider that that Budget must satisfy the country until they are transferred elsewhere. The Minister has suggested it is a transition Budget, but there is no single item in the Budget that would lead anyone to believe that the Minister is conscious of the problems which may possibly face the Union of South Africa immediately on the cessation of hostilities. The Minsiter tells us certain things may be done in the future, and he apparently reads into the Budget some kind of scheme, some kind of policy which will help the Union of South Africa to develop, and which will supply the employment which will be so highly necessary for the 60,000 or 70,000 returned ex-vlounteers. He thinks so, but for the life of me I cannot find anything in the Budget that suggests the Minister of Finance is even conscious of the difficulties which will probably confront us. He is confident— yes the Minister exudes confidence. Apparently all he thinks is necessary is for a Minister of Finance to show an anuual surplus and to say that South African prosperity still remains buoyant. But there is no reason to believe that if things are left to themselves things will continue to be prosperous; there is no reason to believe that unless something is done what happened after the last war is not likely to recur after this war. Mr. Speaker, that brings me to my point, and it is one which I have made before. I think, however, it bears repetition, and possibly some day one of the Ministers may have the temerity to reply to it. We have a Department of Economic Development, we have a Minister of Economic Development; and so far since his appointment the hon. the Minister has thrilled the House with two measures, the Fisheries Bill last Session and the Standards Bill this Session. That is the Minister of Economic Development’s sole contribution towards planning for the future, and it seems to me that a Budget brought before the House at this stage of the war—when possibly within the next two or three months the war in Europe will be finished—should be a Budget which contains within it some kind of co-related plan for the industrial development of the Union of South Africa. There is nothing in this Budget that shows that the Minister of Finance is in consultation with the Minister of Economic Development, and that he is initiating plans along the lines on which South African industry will develop. We do not know whether South African industry is to be protected. We do not know how many of the industries which commenced after the war are to continue. We do not know how much Government assistance is to be given to these industries. All we find is committees, sub-committees, general committees and still more committees. Investigations are made, and the results of the investigations are passed from one committee to another, juggled about from month to month,, and at the finish we get economic platitudes which cut no ice, and nothing is done. I am glad that the Government won the by-election at Port Elizabeth yesterday, though it might have done them a lot of good if they had lost it, because Port Elizabeth is one of our major industrial centres, and there is no doubt that grave industrial discontent exists among the industrialists of the country as to the intentions of the Government. They do not know what the Government’s intentions are; we do not know what the Government’s intentions are. And I am persuaded at times the Government have no intentions whatso-ever. Mr. Speaker, this brings me to this vexed question of taxation. I myself early in the war, advocated on behalf of the Labour Party that the Minister should impose a 20s. in the £ excess profits duty. I believe at that time we were perfectly correct, because it was unthinkable that excess profits should be made out of the privations and sufferings of the nation during the war period, and I have continually-advocated the continuance of the excess profits duty during the war for these self-same reasons. But we are now approaching a time when the war appears to be ending, and if we gather it correctly from the Press the major portion of our armed forces in the field will be demobilised; and having reached that stage, surely it is time the matter should be given reconsideration. It is time that the Minister reconsidered his taxation position. He did say in his Budget speech that consideration would be given to the alteration of taxation propositions and he went on to add that consideration should also be given to re-introducing the taxation system we had before the war. I understood that the war had taught us something. I understood that the war had shown us, for instance, the necessity for increasing South Africa’s national production, but here we find the Minister blandly saying consideration will be given to going back to the system we had before the war. If that is the contribution of the Minister of Finance towards the future of South Africa, it is a very bad look-out for South Africa indeed. Why should we go back to the taxation system as it existed before the war? The taxation system that existed before the war was not the Minister of Finance’s. That was Mr. Havenga’s taxation system, and that system had continued for South Africa year after year for ten or twelve years in the same old way. Now the Minister wants to go back to it. Let us take the case of the excess profits duty. During the war I felt it was a perfectly justifiable tax and that it should have been levied at 20s. in the £. But now we have reached the stage when we shall not be faced purely with South Africa’s war effort, but we shall be faced with South Africa’s peace effort, and in the working out of South Africa’s peace effort we must have a taxation system which is going to give the fullest possible impetus to the development of the country. I am satisfied that the fullest possible impetus is not being given to the development of industry in the Union of South Africa by the continued imposition in its present form of the excess profits duty. That is not to say I am making any plea that the large profits which are being made should be allowed to remain in the hands of the people who made them. Far from that. But there is more than one way of getting these profits into the hands of the Treasury. The hon. member for Vasco (Mr. Mushet) made a startling statement yesterday for a man occupying his position in trade and industry in this country. He said with all due seriousness, that some of the best brains in the country are lying idle because they have adopted the attitude: Why should we do anything because the taxation system comes along and busts the works. That was the hon. member’s words. Surely the Minister must pay attention to that. Surely the Minister should know that. I know of businessmen who have shut down their business because they say they are not going to pay their profits to Jannie Hofmeyr. I know other men who say: “I am only going to work two days a week because all the profits I make are going into the hands of the Minister of Finance.” So this particular tax is stultifying endeavour. I am not, of course, trying to justify that attitude. Some months ago I had occasion to tell a prominent businessman in Port Elizabeth that he represented a class of individual existing not only there but throughout South Africa who are prepared to sacrifice their own sons in the war effort, but not their money. They allow their sons to go up North and fight, but when it comes to making some allowance in their business that gives extra money to the Exchequer, they are not prepared to do it. But you cannot run the business of the country by trying to persuade businessmen. They are the most pig-headed people in the country.

And the most selfish.

And the most selfish. So it is no good trying to persuade them. All you can do is to make taxation so scientific that there will be no incentive for them to do that kind of thing. You can easily get the money out of them in other ways. The excess profits duty is not the only duty that can possibly be imposed. There is no doubt that many industries have been started, and because of the excess profits duty they have been denied that opportunity of building up a reserve which should be used in the early days of the peace, when possibly industries will be striking grave difficulties, because of the transition from war time production to peace time production. But they are paying excess profits duty and have no reserve. If that reserve was there, it could be utilised for the purposes of this transition, and if it was necessary the Minister could quite easily get at the accumulated surpluses and at the profits by means of his income tax. Surely the income tax is the fairest tax in the world. I believe it is the most effective tax. I feel, and I know that there is far more evasion of the excess profits duty than of the income tax. There is a certain amount of evasion of the income tax, but not too much, because the revenue officials have got it down to a very fine art. But there is almost 50 per cent. evasion of the excess profits duty. Actually you can evade excess profits duty perfectly legally, and so a certain type of individual who wishes to do so evades it very effectively, whereas the honest type of individual who pays out gladly is carrying more than his fair share of the burden. So I think in this case the Minister should have given some form of relief on the excess profits duty, and recouped himself by increasing the income tax and the super tax. In any case I feel that particularly in connection with the higher salaried groups income tax and super tax should be considerably increased. It is only by such means I feel that South Africa can look forward to the peace with some kind of feeling that we are going to make a country out of South Africa. I want to appeal to the Minister. I do not know whether the trouble is the ineffectiveness of the Minister of Economic Development; it may be that. That is something which is known possibly to the Prime Minister himself. But there can be no future for us unless the Government is prepared to lay down some kind of plan which correlates the financial policy of this country with our economic policy. Surely it is only sensible that should be done. Every other country in the world does it. Great Britain’s Budget is framed with very great and due regard to the possibility of Great Britain reviving her export trade after the war. In successive Budgets many concessions have been given in various directions, concessions which are given because of a long-term policy which is planning Britain’s re-entry into the export markets of the world. But in South Africa nothing is done—except the Minister’s expression of confidence! Let us take the point made by the hon. member for South Rand (Mr. Christie) when he drew the Minister’s attention to the fact that the Minister had juggled with approximately a sum of £4,500,000. He had got this £4,500,000 by a change-over in the proportion of revenue account to loan account of from 50:50 to 55:45. I understand the Minister interjected that he has an answer to the hon. member for South Rand. The Minister, of course, has always got an answer. He has some of the glibbest answers of any Minister in the House. But I am satisfied the answer will not be convincing. Well, there was this sum of £4,500,000. If the Minister had continued on the 50:50 basis as between revenue and loan account, he would have had £4,500,000 which he could have used to reduce some of the existing taxation or what would have been far better still he could have given us a further instalment of social security. The hon. member for Vasco boasted about the soundness of the country’s finances, and told us that the Minister had raised something like £35,000,000 at two per cent. A very creditable effort But where is the sense if he can get money at two per cent., and apparently we can raise plenty, where is the sense of altering the ratio as between revenue and loan account in this way? Surely it is better to raise the money at two per cent. and to have taken the opportunity to give the poorer class some relief in taxation, or some instalment of social security, rather than for the Minister to be priding himself he has again raised £4,500,000 by way of revenue. He could have given, for instance a reduction of income tax in the very low income groups. The Minister has himself admitted some of the inequity of this savings levy. It imposes a burden on a very low-paid group in the community, and quite a considerable burden. The Minister has made an adjustment which is bound to mean some extra taxation, and yet he had £4,500,000 with which to juggle. Why impose even a little more taxation on a married man earning £250 to £400 a year when you have £4,500,000 available to enable to give some relief to them. Why, for instance, could we not have had a reduction in the tax on cigarettes? But it seems to me the Minister is setting out on a policy which, as far as he is concerned, is designed to retain all the taxes he has imposed on us during this war. I do not think the country will accept that kind of thing. The country accepted the imposition of taxes even in respect of the lower income groups because we were at war. The country accepted those taxes gladly, and the country was prepared to make that sacrifice. But I do not think it will be prepared to make that sacrifice after the war, particularly in the low income groups. They say no, this taxation must be imposed on the people who can afford to pay. I want to say definitely war-time taxation is not appreciated on those lines. It has fallen on the lower income groups more than on the people who have a lot of money, and who have made a lot of money out of the war. The Minister knows there is millions of hot money lying about in the country. Has he made any attempt to get hold of that money, or is it beyond the brains of his Department to evolve a scheme whereby that money can be produced? Has it dawned on the Minister he could call in all the bank-notes in circulation and issue new ones on a certain date? That would fetch the money in, and very quickly too. The Minister does not seem to be concerned with the hot money, and the conditions created as a result of excess profits duty and several other taxes. Mr. Speaker, I want to suggest to the Minister, in closing, that I would like him to deal with this aspect of his Budget when he replies, and not as he sometimes does, dismiss it with an airy wave of his hand, and as the Minister of Economic Development treats recommendations from these benches. We want to know whether the Government is making any effort to correlate its financial policy with its industrial policy. We want not airy phrases about the Government being in favour of developing secondary industry, but we want to know what the Government’s intentions are in connection with secondary industry. We want to know whether secondary industries are to be subsidised, or whether they will come under a certain kind of Government control, or whether the whole system is to be left to the idea of laissez faire. We shall be satisfied when the Government does correlate its financial policy with its general industrial policy and also with its agricultural policy. But there is nothing in the budget that suggests that the Government has any real scheme to deal with the ever recurring difficulties of the agricultural community any more than they have schemes to deal with, not the possible, but the probable difficulties of seconlary industry after the war. I feel that the proper lines on which the country should be goverened entail that we should not put the financial side of the country’s business into one water-tight compartment and economic development of the country into another water-tight compartment. Those two particular aspects should be correlated. These two Ministers should be in very close consultation indeed, and I am unable to see that the Minister of Economic Development was ever consulted in the compilation of this budget. Because if he was, and he is anything of a Minister at all, it would be quite a different budget to the one we have got. We have too much of this financial dictatorship, if I may say so, in this country. The idea of a budget is not merely to show a surplus at the end of every year and to enable you to talk about the buoyancy the country. The idea of a budget is that it should be correlated with the economic development of the country, and that was never so much needed as today. It is only when that is done and when the country realises it is being done that South African industrial development will take place to the extent that is possible.

It is rather difficult for us to make our voices carry from these benches. The acoustics of the House are apparently very defective and most of the time we cannot hear what is said in the House, and when we speak we have to pay so much attention to our voices that we cannot devote enough attention to our speeches. I hope that something will be done to improve things, and if nothing is done I would suggest that we should take it in turns to sit on these benches. I think that next year we should give the Opposition a chance to sit here. Possibly it will lead to them having less to say.

In any case we shall be sitting there.

I am always glad to hear them say that they are coming here, and I should be glad to welcome them. I only hope that I shall then make way.

We hope so, too.

In reference to the budget I only want to say this. Complaints have been made that the budget is drab and colourless. It is drab and colourless, because most people expected that the Minister would come to light with new taxes. And now they are disappointed. I think we all heaved a sigh of relief when the Minister had finished and when he said that he did not intend to impose further taxes. We on this side of the House realise that, as the English say, “You cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs.” Nor can we wage war without paying for it. We are incessantly hearing the complaint that a good deal of money has been squandered on the war. It begins with human lives, and it extends to material things. We have to see the war through, and we have to pay for that. The other complaint is about that great sum of money, £200,000,000 up to the present that is now in the banks.

Four hundred million pounds.

More still.

Worse still.

And there is the complaint that that money ought to be placed in industries. Personally, I am just an ordinary man in the street, a very ordinary mortal, and I believe that it is a much safer and more prudent measure to keep the money in the banks. It is money that is being placed there to bring about post-war development. We know that we are standing on the threshold of development in numerous directions, industrial and otherwise. The old question of distribution comes up again, and it would be a mad thing for a man to produce his goods before he knows where he is going to dispose of them. Consequently, it is an intelligent thing to leave the money in the banks until we can see in what direction in connection with industrial development the money should be expended. I only wish that our farming community put away a little more of their spare cash in the banks during these days. We have heard from the Minister that during the last few years a sum of about £12,000,000 has been paid off by farmers on their debt in the Land Bank. If that was the end of the matter, it would be very encouraging, but we have to look at the other side of the picture. I would like to know how many million pounds of new debts have been incurred and I fear that those new debts are not nearly so sound and that in the long run they will prove a greater burden than the old debt which has now been paid off. Permit me to give an illustration. A man buys a farm on which there is a bond of £1,000 with the Land Bank. That farm is at the time valued at £1,500 or £1,800. Then the owner sells the farm for £4,000. The person who buys that farm can only get a bond for two-thirds of its value. Suppose that he puts £1,000 into the farm; that means that the farm is now carrying a debt of about £2,000. In that manner the position has become much worse. I fear that the day is not far distant when the Government will again have to come to the assistance of the farming community. There are people who declare that the farmers are enormously wealthy. I agree with the hon. member for Smithfield (Mr. Fouché) when he says that there is a small percentage of well-off farmers, and mostly they are not farmers who have become well-off as a result of farming, but as the result of inheritances. The great majority of the farmers are drudges, and if the townsmen think that there is so much money to be got in farming I invite them to come and farm. I would like to ask the hon. member for Wynberg (Capt. Butters) to come and farm with mealies. I shall give him an opportunity to begin with a capital of £5,000 or £10,000, and I doubt whether at the end of five years he would have half of it left. The position in reference to agriculture is bad. As I have already said the price of land is today not on an economical scale; it is altogether too high and we shall have to return to the normal level. The price goes up and up and some farmers are going to the wall. In the course of a short period a change occurs; the price of land goes up; some buy land and animals and in the long run they only go under. When we talk about the reconstruction of agriculture we should begin with our land. Farmers have now got the Marketing Act and under that there is price fixation for all their products, and I hope it will be their magna charter.

It is the Chamber of Commerce that fixes the prices.

No, it is not the Chamber of Commerce. Take, for instance, the Maize Board, of which the hon. member for Kroonstad (Mr. A. Steyn) is a member. Is he a member of the Chamber of Commerce? The chairman is a farmer. It is not the Chamber of Commerce. If we cannot evolve one plan or another to peg the value of land on an economical basis, we shall never see the end of our difficulties. Farming is a precarious business. It is affected by storms, by droughts, by snow, by vermin, by stock diseases, by locusts—all factors that are beyond the control of the people themselves and that are beyond the control of the department; and even those scientific farmers we so often hear about sometimes go under because they cannot offer successful resistance to all those difficulties. When the price of land goes up, as it is doing now, then in my opinion there is a very unhealthy movement in progress. We ought to have the prices fixed. On what lines are we going to fix the price of land? I suggest that a good method would be that no one except the State would be able to take up bonds on farms except the State through the medium of the Land Bank. By that means we would cut out all private bonds, and then we would reach a point ….

Then you are not really a Sap.

What am I then? Mr. Speaker, I should then like to see that the services of the extension officers are utilised to a greater extent, that the services of the extension officers should be made available to persons who are desirous of buying land. One finds, for instance, people from the Free State going to Bechuanaland to buy there, and they know just as little about Bechuanaland as the Bechuanaland farmer knows about the Free State. They arrive at the farm and ask the owner what he wants for the land. He may reply £8 or £5 a morgen. The man thinks it a reasonable price, and if he succeeds in cutting it down by 10s. a morgen he is highly delighted and he buys. But in reality he has paid about £2 a morgen too much. I would suggest that an extension officer should inspect every area from the point of view of investing. I would go further, and I would give the extension officer much more power to assist the farmers in connection with their farming methods. If, for instance, the farmer is inclined to pay a price above the value of the land that has been determined, and if he pays cash for it, but can only receive from the Land Bank a loan on the value as fixed by the Land Bank, then one feels that there is a certain margin of safety, and along that road I believe the farmer will be able to stabilise his business. We are going back to the time when the purchasing power of the community will be reduced, and if the purchasing power of the community is reduced the first man who will suffer by that is the producer. It is the farmer, because he produces the necessities of the country, and as soon as purchasing power has been lessened, the housewife uses meat two or three times a week instead of every day in the week; she uses less bread, and the prices fall so low that the farmer is unable to make a living. The hon. member for Wynberg talked about a price of 7s. 6d. a bag for mealies. But what was the position at that time in South Africa? The largest proportion of the farmers had to run to the Government through the Farmers Relief Board and we want to guard against that sort of thing One further point before we close, and it is in reference to the boards. We have heard a great deal of criticism about the various boards, and we know that they have made many mistakes but I should just like to say this, that if it had not been for the boards the great majority of the people in the lower income groups would virtually not have been able to buy any of the necessities of life. The boards have had their defects, but they have rendered a very useful service to the country. I would, however, like to see more co-ordination taking place between boards such as the Maize Board, the Dairy Board and the Meat Board, and by proceeding along those lines we shall arrive at a more scientific and a more uniform price. The small farmer needs assistance, and the Government will have to decide whether its policy is to retain the small farmer on the land, or whether it will allow him to die out. If we do not make him independent in one way or another, and if the Government does not help to establish him there, the townspeople will eventually have to make provision for those people.

There is a point that has gradually become clear to me. In the House and in the lobby and even at public meetings, a large number of our urban population, especially in certain circles, still gravely misunderstand the position in regard to our farming community. I shall attempt, by way of comparison, to remove that misunderstanding as far as possible. We should like to give the townsmen a proper insight into the difficulties and the problems of our farmers, so that they may regard farming in the right perspective. Allow me to say at the outset that amongst our farming community no enmity exists towards the townsfolk. On the contrary, we regard the townsfolk as our best friends, because they are the people, or rather it is in the towns the people live who buy the produce of the farmers and pay him hard cash for it. But what we should like is this, that certain circles in the towns should also have a better understanding of the attitude of the farmer and a better realisation of it. This appears very strange to me; all sections of the community are agreed on this, that the workmen in our country should be paid a good wage, that the professional men should receive a good salary, with a view to enabling them to make provision for the needs of their families in regard to food, housing, clothes and medical services and such like, so that they can maintain a healthy family life; I say that no one is opposed to these people being paid well, on the contrary, everyone in this country actually demands that the workman should receive a fair wage, and that the salaried man should be paid a proper salary; but when it comes to the farmer then there are always certain sections in our country who begrudge the farmer an adequate reward. Let us make a small comparison between the two sections. When we compare the position of the farmer with that of the others, we find that the workman or the artisan has his task mapped out for him. Every day he has to do the work apportioned to him, and he has to devote eight hours or less to it. Beyond that he is not burdened with any anxieties or responsibilities, and at the end of the week he receives his wage in full. The same applies to the salaried man; his work is also planned out for him, and it is not necessary for him to do more, and at the end of the month he gets his regular salary. The businessman in our country knows what he paids for his goods, and he also knows that he can calculate at what price those goods should be sold, with a view to his being able to make a decent living. But compare this position with the farmer’s, and when I refer to the farmer I have in mind in the first place the maize-growers, whom I represent, and I am not referring to that ten per cent. of capitalistic maize-growers but to the 90 per cent. of the maize-growers who have no other source of income but who have to extract their reward and their existence from the soil of South Africa.

What about the wine farmer?

The hon. member may talk on behalf of the wine farmer if he wishes to. The mealie farmer stands alone, and he is responsible for his own remuneration. He carries all the responsibility and he has to dig that reward out of the earth. He stands alone, and everything depends on his own efforts; he must dig his wages out of the earth, and on top of that he is always exposed to the whims of the elements and always has to contend with the forces of nature. If he is not compensated every year for his costs of production, and for a proportion of his loss, where is he to get his reward; when is he rewarded and when is he placed in a position to be able to provide for his family? There is a circle in our towns who do not perceive or understand these things, and they are further misled by people who know even less about the matter than themselves.

The Nationalists.

No, not the Nationalists but the people who are completely ignorant about the farming industry. Those people write in the newspapers, and these newspapers are circulated far and wide, notwithstanding the fact that they know nothing at all about the matter regarding which they wish to enlighten other people. I have before me a letter that was published in “Arthur Barlow’s Weekly” and I should like to read it out to the House to illustrate what I have in mind. The writer has the following to say in regard to the Maize Control Board—

Such people write in the newspapers, and they entirely mislead the public. This man has not the least idea of his subject, and yet he professes to know a great deal about it and to be able to inform the public regarding the Maize Board and the mealie farmer. Can we be surprised that there are still circles in the towns that regard the Maize Board and the mealie farmers as a lot of blood suckers who are only intent on exploiting the townsmen? This year anxiety exists in the country in connection with the mealie crop. People who know nothing about it are ascribing the bad crop to bad farming methods. I do not want to say that these methods could not be improved. It will always be possible to improve methods, but there is still a good deal of thinking about the farmer in terms of the old unenlightened, uncultured “backvelder”. It is in those terms that the townsman thinks of the South African farmer. I want to assure them that the South African farmer of today is an absolutely different person. He is a trained man, he is well informed, he is shrewd, intelligent and he makes use of every scientific advantage that is put in his way by the agricultural colleges or the research laboratories. But the shortage that we are now faced with is not to be ascribed to that. Oh no. We must look to nature for that. There are also other factors such as for instance inadequate fertiliser and inadequate labour. No, these same farmers would, under reasonable climatic conditions produce enough mealies for the country. They have done this in the past and they will do it again. People should not be worried that the farmers will not be able to produce enough mealies for the country. The farmers will produce enough and more than enough, so that we will have a surplus for other countries. But—and this is the big point—the mealie grower will only produce mealies when it pays him, and when it does not pay him no one can expect him to produce them. That the position is not so rosy for the mealie farmers I have good proof, and I invite those people who have so much to say about the mealie farmers and know nothing about the matter, to come and see for themselves and they will find that in almost every instance the mealie farmers have not a single one of their sons on the farms. The last son has gone away. Amongst the more well-to-do the sons have become doctors and advocates. The others become State officials and teachers, and the others fly to the cities in search of a more assured source of income, perhaps in the mines and the municipalities and elsewhere. But they want to escape from the uncertain life on the farm of the mealie grower. Last year maize growing was on a sound footing, but this year the mealie farmers have suffered enormous losses, and those losses ought to be taken into account this year. No one in our country will dispute that the first essential in our country, if we want to build up a sound and prosperous nation, is that we should develop an independent and prosperous farming community. That is the first requirement, and if we neglect this we can never succeed in building up a strong and prosperous people. The farming community should be the foundation, and when the foundation is sound we can begin to think of secondary industries. I should like to say to those people who are so prone to write in the newspapers and to condemn the mealie farmers, that they should first investigate properly and make themselves conversant with matters before they fabricate letters that are very misleading.

I would suggest that the hon. member for Ventersdorp (Mr. Visser) who has just quoted from that paper should not touch upon those things when we are discussing the mealie farmers and their interest. That letter is worth just as much as the paper itself.

But it misleads other people.

I want to confine myself at once to the mealie industry. I am standing up here this afternoon and I am concerned about the future of our industry, about the future of 40,000 farmers. It concerns the future of 400,000 farmers. It is alleged that there are 10 per cent. prominent, rich and strong farmers who can withstand the setbacks, but the fact still remains that there are 90 per cent. of these 40,000 farmers who are struggling to make an existence in this industry. There are not only those 40,000 farmers who today find themselves in this miserable and sorry plight, but throughout the whole country concern is felt over the mealie position. Unfortunately the Minister of Agriculture is not at present in the House, but neither he nor the Government has so far given any guidance. Nothing has been communicated to the country as to what the circumstances and the position really are. It is already the middle of March. At the end of April a price must be fixed for the farmer and a price for the consumer. The dairy farmers, the poultry farmers and the farmers in general who have labourers working for them or who need mealies for their cattle, feel concerned about the position because they are all dependent on mealies. What assurance do those people possess as to the supplies which will be available in the country; will they be able to obtain food for themselves, their farm-hands and labourers? No guidance whatsoever has been given. Let matters develop and take their course and we can see later on what is going to happen? In the first place I shall confine myself to the position of 40,000 mealie farmers. Last year, 1944, their crop proved a failure on account of too much rain. This year the crop is again a failure owing to the drought. The mealie farmers and the Mealie Board accept that 24 million bags is a normal crop, and that affords the mealie farmers an income of £11,200,000. Last year I said in this House that the loss in income to that group of farmers was £4,200,000. This year I say again that whereas we have gathered in 18½ million bags, the farmers will not reap more than 16 million bags, and then from now on things are supposed to go well. We do not wish to be ungrateful for the good rains which have fallen at this stage. But do the Minister and the country realise that the growing time is past. We read in the newspapers that the rain has come and the mealie crop has been saved. Yes, the mealie crop has been saved, but the growing stage is passed. In my humble opinion, this year we can reap 16 million bags at the most. We know that the farmers are keeping some 10 million bags on their farms. That means that six million bags will be marketed. What is going to be the carry over? We must not lose sight of the fact that of a crop of 24 million bags, there was a carry over of 3½ million bags. This year the carry over which there is, is merely the normal carry over. That is about 1½ million bags of mealies will circulate on the market. They are not physically perceptible and negotiable. This is the position which confronts the land, and I, as a mealie farmer, feel concerned about the position. It is the industry from which I make my living, and a further cút in the income of the mealie farmers is a serious blow to them. I have already mentioned the loss sustained in the previous year. This year the loss will amount to £5,125,000. This means a total loss in the income of the mealie farmers over the last two years of £9,125,000. It is understandable that when a portion of the farming community is overtaken by misfortune two years in succession, when they reap only half their harvest, and lose approximately £10,000,000 in income, that that group of farmers find themselves in a difficult position, and then they are still attacked as the hon. member for Ventersdorp read out here—that the farmers are flourishing and are making money. It is a serious matter and not a joke. What have the Minister of Agriculture and the Government done? I agree with previous speakers, and particularly with the hon. member for Smithfield (Mr. Fouché) who stated quite clearly this morning that nothing had been done, and if no plan has been made, now is the time to make plans and carry them out. After the war the difficulties facing the Government will be tremendous. Then the Government will have its hands full. But we find now that the Government is shrinking back before these problems and the Minister of Agriculture refuses to meet the farmers. I am glad that the Minister of Agriculture has just come in. This afternoon I want to extend an invitation to him over the floor of this House. On the 31st March the mealie farmers in the Free State are coming together and I invite the Minister to come to Kroonstad to meet the mealie farmers there.

I went to Robertson and you rebuked me for not being in the House.

That is no excuse. The following day the Minister was wandering about in the lobby and he still did not attend the debate, but come to Kroonstad and meet the mealie farmers; if it is possible, go to the Transvaal as well and meet the mealie farmers and let the Minister make sure that he satisfies at least one group of the farmers, so that he will then have one group of farmers who are satisfied and with whom he can negotiate. The Minister is aware of what happened last year. He sat here in this House and waited until the end of April before he came forward with the mealie prices. Well, you know the method yourself. By then a final decision has been taken and it is too late to do anything about it. The prices have been fixed. That is why I am inviting the Minister of Agriculture to meet the mealie growers of the Free State at Kroonstad, and then to go and meet those in the Transvaal, and after that he can fix the price of mealies.

You have not much faith in the Mealie Board.

Another important aspect of the matter which we should bear in mind is that there is going to be a shortage. The Minister was not here when I mentioned the figures. I said that, in my opinion, there will be a crop of 16 million bags, and that there will be a normal carryover. Today we must ration; quantities must be cut. Letters and telegrams are sent to members of Parliament by people who cannot obtain sufficient mealies. What does the Minister intend doing? Is he going to import mealies; will be make arrangements to have mealies sent here from elsewhere? If so, then I want to ask him this question. He knows that the price of mealies in the Argentine is 11s. 6d. per bag. The shipping freight is 20s. per bag, and the Minister knows that the landed cost here of a bag of mealies will be 31s. 6d. or 32s., while our producers must be content with 17s. 6d. What is going to be the policy of the Minister and the Government; is the Government going to pay the difference or is the Government going to sell those mealies at cost price to the consumers? It is very important that the Minister of Agriculture should tell us this so that we know exactly where we stand. I am not standing here with a definite figure in my mind, with regard to the import price of mealies, namely that our farmers should get 32s. 6d. per bag for their mealies this year. Last year we told the Minister that we wanted to be fair. This year we want to be fair again. We want 20s. per bag for mealies. I have quoted the difference in the income of the mealie producers based on the last three years. If we take that into consideration, then, if there is one group of farmers who are entitled to 20s. per bag for their products, it is the mealie farmers. It is the duty of the Government to see to it. The Government has plenty of money. We are continually having it impressed upon us that the Government is busy with millions, and we know that is so. Well, subsidise the consumer then. I do not say that the consumer should pay 30s. or 25s. for a bag of mealie meal. It is a national matter and it is not the duty of the mealie farmer, as a key industry, to shoulder the burden of all the other consumers’ industries. It is the Government’s duty, and in the interests of the feeding of the nation. It must see that the food is brought to the consumers at a reasonable price. But now I want to go a little further and deal with another aspect of the matter. We will wait for the Minister of Agriculture to tell us what he intends doing with the mealies which he imports and how he is going to distribute them and what he will ask for them. Once again I want to make this very clear to the Minister. If he has to import mealies, we will raise no objection. But if he distributes those mealies to the consumers at a higher figure than the mealie farmers are getting, it will create dissatisfaction amongst the mealie farmers such as has never existed before. Then we come to the production costs, and in this connection I want to point out in passing that recently a few things occurred which the mealie farmers cannot just pass by. I do not want to quote a lot of figures, but the Minister said over the floor of this House that a figure of 14s. 7d. per bag was more or less correct. The production costs are between 14s. 7d. and 14s. 10d. per bag. We mealie farmers are prepared to accept 14s. 7d. We have also worked it out and we arrived at a slightly higher figure, namely, 14s. 11d. and 15s. But the Minister must not lose sight of the output. That estimate is based on a yield of 5s. something per bag. But what is the output going to be this year? The average yield will not be 2½ bags per morgen. However, I will not dwell on this aspect of the matter any longer. One of the greatest difficulties connected with the cultivation of mealies is artificial fertiliser. And what happened in February in that connection? Without a word being mentioned and without informing the farmers, the Price Controller increased the price of artificial fertiliser enormously. It is not a question of a shilling or so, but really substantial amounts. The price of 15 per cent. superphosphate has been increased to £6 1s. 6d. per ton, which constitutes an increase of 11s. 6d. per ton. 19.1 superphosphate has been increased to £7 13s. per ton, an increase of 16s. per ton. Mixture C has gone up to £8 17s. 6d. per ton, which represents an increase of 15s. 6d.; mixture F has been increased to £11 15s. per ton, an increase of 15s. Now listen to this. We come now to rock supers. This is the most necessary item because it is offered to the farmer. He can get nothing else but rock phosphate. It has been increased from £5 1s. per ton to £6 1s. 6d., an increase of £1 Os. 6d. And then they talk about production costs! That is only one item, and this is what has happened during the last month without consulting the farmers. I want to draw the attention of the Minister to this matter and ask him if he is prepared to recommend to the Minister of Finance that the increase in the price of artificial fertiliser be paid as a subsidy to the providers, and that it should not be shouldered by thé farmers. The mealie farmers have had two bad harvests. Last year they had no wheat crop, and they were not considered in connection with this increase. They were not consulted. This is a burden which rests upon the farmer and whether it is possible for him or not, he has to bear it. I want to make an earnest appeal to the Minister of Agriculture not to make the same mistake this year as he did last year. He must not do the same thing. The mealie farmers are in a critical position and he must not make the mistakes again which he made last year. I invite him as a mealie farmer to meet the mealie farmers and to go into the matter on its merits. The mealie farmers will treat the matter on its merits and put aside all politics and quibbling. Let us in this matter agree on a basis which will end for all time the war which is being waged for the existence of the mealie farmer.

I do not wish to go into the deeper aspects of this debate, but I should like to direct a word or two to the Minister concerned in connection with the position of the farming industry in the North-West. When I speak about the farming industry then I have in mind that as a child I often heard the farmer referred to as the backbone of the country. If there are still farmers who are the backbone of the country, it is the farmers in the North-West. It is those farmers who have to contend with the drought virtually every year, and who notwithstanding this have made of the North-West one of the largest meat-producing centres of the country. When I say this I want the Minister of Finance to give consideration to the position, because we require money for expansion in the North-West, no department of the Government having kept pace with the expansion and development in the North-West. When I sometimes talk to Ministers about the North-West, then they seem to think that it is a part that should be forgotten or that has been forgotten. Well, I agree that it was a forgotten part in the past, but I maintain here that the farmers whom we have today in the North-West are the farmers who are really the backbone of the country, as I heard that farmers were the backbone, when I was a child. There the farmers have to contend against droughts, lack of water; there are no railway services, no bus services, no telephone services and practically no post office services. If you draw a line between Prieska and Upington from Putsonderwater to Pof-adder, you will have a section of 177 miles where there is practically none of these, services. If you draw a line from Upington to Brandvlei, which is more or less the same distance, or a little longer, you will find again that there is none of these services. I should very much like to draw the Minister’s attention to this, that whether he does it this financial year or the following year, he should make provision for the extension of services in the North-West. I have stated that the extension of services has not kept pace with the development of those areas. I do not agree with the view that because the North-West is in that sense a new area, that development should wait. It is absolutely necessary that the wants of these people should be seen to, and that provision should be made for the services that I have mentioned. I realise that this is a period of war, and I cannot expect the Government to build a railway there today or tomorrow. But I do expect that it will meet these people with the starting of bus services in those parts, because these will be of great service to the farmer and will also help the Minister of Agriculture to bring meat to markets such as that at "Cape Town, where we now have sometimes to go without. I have stated that the farmers in those parts are the old type of farmer who is the backbone of the country. In the first place can you visualise what it means when these people have to contend with a shortage of water? I have several letters here to show how the scarcity of water affects these people; I have letters which show that people there have bought farms and that they have spent ever so much in trying to find water on those farms, in fact more than they paid for the farm itself, and still they have not got an adequate water supply. I am aware that the Minister of Lands has plans for boring for water in the North-West in the near future, but I should like to say here that I expect the Government to tackle this matter speedily, because the droughts are responsible for the water level falling lower and lower each year. When a man in those parts wants to market his cattle in such a period of drought as this, he is 177 miles distant from the railway, and I put it to you if there is no bus service and no railway service which he can uitilise, in what condition are those cattle going to arrive at the railway station, and in what condition are they going to arrive at the market? That is why I have made an appeal to the Minister of Agriculture in connection with grading. That man has no prospect of being able to market his stock in prime condition. If he had the benefit of a bus service or of a railway service so that he could put his stock on the bus or on the railway near his home, he would also have the privilege of being able to put his stock on the market in prime condition. Then I should like to go still further. In the North-West a position has been created by the droughts that have been almost unparalleled over a long period of years. Although rains have fallen in large areas there are areas that have had no rain at all. The position is, however, this that the farmers who have not yet had rain are unable to send their stock to those areas where rain has fallen because their sheep do not thrive in those areas in winter. They are obliged to sell their stock, and under the existing system of taxation those farmers have to suffer heavily by that. Without doubt 90 per cent. of the farmers are on a cash basis, and if they want to sell that stock then the whole of the income from that stock is taxable. Do you know what this will mean to such a farmer? A man perhaps began farming with stock to the value of £500 or £600 ten years ago. He built up his flocks, and now after the lapse of ten years the value is perhaps £6,000. Supposing he sells his stock? Then he becomes liable to the present taxation, and that man is simply ruined. What option has that man? He has to sell the stock and then pay in the money to the Receiver of Revenue, or he must take his chance and say: Well, let them die, because it cannot be as bad as having my throat cut. Now I want to ask the Minister of Finance whether he cannot see his way clear to make an exception in such cases. I should like to ask whether those farmers who originally elected to be placed on the cash basis, cannot now possibly be transferred to the stock basis. I know that this cannot be done without those people paying the taxes which they would have paid in the years that have passed. Suppose that a person is obliged to sell the stock that he has built up over a period of ten years, is it not possible to help him in this way that the income should be spread over those years, and that he would then pay taxation on the income that he would have had in those various years. The Receiver of Revenue will then suffer not a penny damage in respect of what he would have received, and then it will be possible for the farmer to sell his stock and perhaps some of it would reach the meat market.

Do you mean that that farmer would have to pay excess profits duty?

Certainly I think so. Suppose the farmer originally started with £500 or £600. He has built up his flocks and herds to a value of £6,000 or £7.000. When he sells them I take it that £1,500 will be allowed him, and on the rest he will have to pay excess profits duty.

No, the allowance is much more than that.

Well, put it at £2,000. Then it means that he will have to pay on £4,000 or £5,000, and if the man has to pay excess profits duty on that amount he is ruined.

The farmers have not a correct understanding of the position. I shall explain it.

I shall be glad, because it is a very important point for these people, and we shall be glad to have information about it. Then I should like to speak again about the meat scheme. I am glad that the Minister of Agriculture is present, because I want again to bring to his notice that the object with which the meat scheme was orginally instituted was, in the first place, to guarantee the farmer a definite price for his cattle after the war when the reaction comes, so that it will be a remunerative price in respect of the article that he is producing. This was the primary object. The second was that the consumer would be able to get meat at a price he could afford to pay. I am convinced that up to the present neither of these objects have been realised. I want to make an appeal to the Minister to go into the details of the meat scheme again. I am certain that if he goes into the matter he will discover that the fault is always in connection with the application of the grading system, the application of the grades under present as under future circumstances. I cannot refrain from repeating that in the past we were accustomed in time of scarcity automatically to get as much and in fact more for medium quality meat as we received for the best in time of plenty. That is the principal point. And when I say this I would like to add that I am just as keen, and perhaps even keener than the Minister of Agriculture to see that the meat scheme is 100 per cent. a success, because it will be a guarantee to the farmers after the war and in the near as well as the distant future. In regard to the difference in prices that I dealt with the other day, I do not want to repeat what I said then but I should like to ask the Minister whether it is not • possible to give an early notification of the premium that I believe he intends to pay for mutton and beef this year in the autumn. The Minister may think that this is not the time to do it, but if there is timely intimation the people can make preparations to forward the cattle in prime condition by the time it has to be marketed. Then there is something else that I should like to draw the attention of the Minister to. I feel that we should congratulate him on the manner in which he has guided us in connection with finance through these dangerous years. But I feel, and I always have felt, that the wealthy man is paying altogether too little compared with the poor man and the man of moderate means. The point is that where a person had an income of £20,000 before the war, today that basis still applies, but if a man began a new business or started farming during the war, though under any circumstances he would have taken this line, and he now makes £20,000, then he has virtually nothing over while the other man is taxed on the old basis. The application of the taxation is not absolutely right. I hope that the Minister will see his way clear to take more from those who can give and as little as possible from those who have less to give.

I make no apology for introducing before the House this afternoon a subject of burning importance in Natal and a subject that is becoming increasingly so in the rest of South Africa. I refer to the Indian question. The position in Natal today is that the populace is highly incensed at the position of the Indian problem. It is a fact that, as two commissions have ascertained, that penetration into the residential areas in Natal, and the buying up of farms in the country is proceeding apace, and people are beginning to say that if this is going on unhindered, what is to happen to the returned soldier when he comes back and wants to get on to a farm or should he want a licence? The fact of the matter is that today in Natal over 6,000 licences have been issued to Asiatics, and of that 6,000 considerably over 1,000 are general dealers licences. On the subject of the position that will confront our returned soldiers, it seems that they will simply be told when they apply for licences in respect of businesses they are able to manage (although they may have received injury or debilitation) that there is no necessity for licences to be issued, that they have been issued and there is no necessity for any more. I was told the other day by a very good authority that between Volksrust and Durban on the main road there is not a single licence which is not held by an Asiatic. That means that throughout the length of Natal along the main road, there is not a single licence which is held by any other than an Asiatic. But in the country districts the buying up of farms is going on apace. I have just heard of a case north of Umzinto where for a farm an Indian has offered more than £1,000 more than anyone else in the district or in the country was prepared to pay for it. That is the sort of thing that is going on in Natal, and that is the sort of thing that is incensing the people of Natal, and that is creating so much unrest. The position elsewhere, I take it, is very much the same, especially in the Transvaal where there are over 6,000 licences issued. But I am not attacking the Asiatic this afternoon; I am just putting before the House the reason for the great unrest and incensed feelings of the people of Natal. The position as we know it is this: That in the 1936 census there were in Natal 183,661 Asiatics. It is computed that in 1940 the number was 195,000. But that does not represent all the magnitude of the problem. I want to quote from the speech made by Sir Shafa’at Ahmad Khan who was recently the representative of Indian in this country, when he spoke at the opening of the Regional Conference of the South African Institute of Race Relations at Pietermaritzburg on the 31st July, 1943. In the course of his speech he said—

That bears out the contention I have advanced before, namely, that the Indian problem in Natal does not consist of penetration, which in the words of the same authority, is only a symptom of the disease and not the disease itself. The problem in Natal is the increasing number of Indians who are born there or who are admitted under the 1927 Agreement. Would it surprise hon. members to know that the Minister of the Interior stated in the House last year, in reply to a question by the hon. member for Wonderboom (Mr. Nel) that—

During this Session I asked the Minister of the Interior—

1. (1) How many Indians entered the Union for the first time to take up permanent residence during 1943 and 1944, respectively;
2. (2) how many of them were males and females, respectively; and
3. (3) whether such Indians were permitted to enter the Union under the agreement at the Round Table Conference of 1927.

Mr. Chairman, I hope I shall be pardoned if I refer to some of the problems which face the Indian community. The Indian population in Natal is a youthful population as, according to the census of 1936, 47 per cent. of the Indians in 1936 were under the age of 15 wears and only 13 per cent. were above 45 years. On the other hand, the European population has only 27 per cent. of its numbers under 15 years of age, and 26 per cent. are over 45 years. Again the Indian birth rate has shown a consistent increase, and the figures are 37 per 1,000 birth rate as against 20 per 1,000 of Europeans. In 1936 there were 183,661 Indians in Natal, and in four years, by 1940, the number had increased to 195,000. The Cape Town Agreement of The Minister’s reply was—

1. (1) 66 during 1943 and 98 during 1944;
2. (2) 29 males and 37 females during 1943 and 42 males and 56 females during 1944;
3. (3) Yes.

Not only is the birth rate increasing and the population increasing correspondingly, but we are allowing a larger number of Indians to enter this country under the Agreement of 1927. It may be a matter for speculation how these Indians domiciled in Natal, in South Africa, manage to marry and raise families to the extent reflected by these figures, seeing that shipping facilities between South Africa and India have been very restricted since 1939. Mr. Speaker, I come now to what has been laid down as the wants of the Indians. I put it in the language of Sir Shafa’at Ahmad Khan, when he said in regard to the Indians in Natal—

Those views were put forward at this conference by the representative of the Indian Government in South Africa. May I ask on what basis they ask for all these privileges? We have heard it advanced that so many Indians are fighting. There are, we are told, 3,000,000 of them, about 2 per cent. of the population of India. It transpired just recently when a question of licences cropped up, it was stated that a particular licence would not be issued until the men returned from the front. The reply of the Indian in question was: “Why wait for them, there are only six of them.” Six—and that from a community of 17,000 Indians in one division in Natal. So much for the Indians basing their request upon services rendered during this war. They make no mention of the services of Indians under Bose, who are fighting against us in Burma. Now there is another aspect of the question. They say they are paying for this war. How much do they pay? I have it on good authority that in four magisterial divisions in my constituency the number of Indians who pay income tax can be counted on the fingers of both hands, and the total amount they pay is £180 per annum. That is in a district absolutely sown with Indian stores and with an Asiatic population probably amounting to 60,000 or 70,000; I am not sure of that latter figure, but judging by the 17,000 in the Umzinto division alone, I take it that is a conservative figure. So on that ground, too, there is no basis for this claim they put forward for equal social, economic and political equality with the whites in South Africa. But what we have to do today is to recognise what the problem is, to appreciate the problem itself. What is it? Is is not penetration. It is not the buying of farms. Those are only symptoms. The only problem is that there is a large Indian population confined within the boundaries of Natal, and it is a largely expanding population augmented by entries from India. Now we come to a solution of that question. What is the solution? The solution today is just the same solution as it was in 1926 and 1927, the eradication of the Indian population. That is the only solution of the problem, and that solution will only apply to those who are not traders. It may apply to those who are not traders, but all inducements in the world will not induce the traders to do anything else but stay in Natal, and they live in the hope that they will spread all over South Africa. Having appreciated the crux of the problem we come to the solution. The solution advanced in 1926 and 1927 by the Minister of the Interior, the present Leader of the Opposition, and adopted by the Government, was the elimination of the Indian population in Natal and South Africa, the solution “repatriation to India”. The Government arranged that if families emigrated they were to be paid a bonus of £20 a head. They were to be given a free passage. The Indian Government undertook, and the Indian Congress undertook to co-operate with the Union of South Africa in persuading the Indians to leave this country and to go back to India. The Indian Government, on the other hand, undertook to do their best to assimilate the returning Indians into the permanent population of India. In the words of Sir Shafa’at Ahmad Khan—

A large number of them returned because the South African Indian repatriated in that way did not lose his South African domicile until three years afterwards. That was the big mistake. They should have lost their South African domicile immediately they accepted the conditions and departed from the shores of South Africa. They should not have been allowed to return here.

They would not have gone under those conditions.

They would have gone all right; 17,000 went, but a large number returned, some openly, others surreptitiously and over the borders of Portuguese territory. I come to the solution. The only solution I can find today is an extension of the idea of 1926 and 1927, and that is repatriation of Indians. So long as we have a largely increasing number of births, so long will the Indian population increase, and my suggestion is this, that without disturbing the family unit a high inducement should be given for the repatriation to India of Indian females—I say, without disturbing family life. What I want to see is whole families go back to India, and go back with sufficient inducement to remain away. I have worked it out superficially only and my figures are not to be relied upon. I am not in a position to give accurate figures, but for the purpose of argument they are near enough. What I suggest is this, that the Government should extend the provisions of that 1926-1927 agreement, and instead of paying a bonus of £20 per head, in the case of females between the ages of five and forty that bonus should be made £500 or £600. [Interruptions.] I know it is a stupendous figure. I understand why some members whistle, but the fact of the matter is that only an inducement of that sort will influence these people to leave the shores of South Africa. As I say, I do not want to interfere with the family unit. I would suggest, in addition, that the Indian males also be given an inducement, something like £200, to get out. Then if there was an Indian family consisting of a man, his wife, three girls and two boys, they would have sufficient capital between them to set up in business, or to purchase land in India or any other place. I know that the final figure may be stupendous, but it would be cheap to get rid of the Indian for £150,000,000. It would have been cheaper ten years ago and it would have been cheaper still twenty years ago. The fact of the matter is we have to face up to this problem, and a solution has to be found, and as far as I can see there is this solution only, and that is offering an inducement to these people to leave South Africa. I am not going to be dogmatic on this point, but I should like to refer to a statement made in Pietermaritzburg by Mr. Kajee, chairman of the committee of the Natal Indian Congress. He is their spokesman. Speaking before the Select Committee on the Occupation Control Draft Ordinance a few months ago, he said in reply to a question as to the membership of the Natal Indian Congress—

That is out of 200,000 of them. He went on to say in reply to another question—

He was asked how many members there were on the committee, and he replied—

The next question was—

There are 8,900 members of the Natal Indian Congress, and it must be borne in mind that three years ago there were two bodies, and they merged in order to present their demands to the Government. But altogether they number 8,900 out of a population I would compute at 220,000 in Natal at the present time. They say they speak for the Indian people in Natal. I contend they do not, and if the inducements under the scheme of repatriation were increased, and it were put to the rank and file of the Indian community, I believe they would accept it in large numbers. There is evidence that when the former repatriation scheme was in vogue, members of these associations did everything they possibly could to dissuade other Indians from returning to India. They picketed the Point and tried to persuade them to come off the ship. That sort of thing has to be stopped if this idea is adopted by the Government. Anybody who tries to persuade these people to remain here when they want to go should be subject to a very heavy penalty, because after all it may amount to intimidation and nothing else. Mr. Speaker, I say in conclusion, that the crux of the Indian problem is the large population of Indians and other Asiatics in Natal, and in view of its rate of increase the solution of the difficulty may lie along the lines of increasing that bonus to emigrants to the large amount of say £500 for females between the ages of five and forty, and with a bonus to men and boys of something like £200. Proceeding on these lines we shall not divide the family, because they can travel as a unit with substantial capital. I may say in passing, that my idea is there would be a big demand on the part of Indians in India to marry these girls with a bonus of £500 or £600, which would also induce the emigration from Natal. You may laugh at me, but the solution lies along those lines, and the Minister of the Interior, now the Leader of the Opposition, could in those days find no other basis for reducing the Indian population in 1926 and 1927. It is only the extension of the idea put forward by the hon. member for Durban (Central) last year, and which I have now elaborated. That is the line along which the Government should proceed. I do not ask them to do anything now, but I ask them to think along those lines, with a view to doing something to easing the position in Natal and probably in the Transvaal and elsewhere. May I say that I do not think this scheme will appeal to the Indian trader either in Natal or elsewhere, and some other solution has to be found for that. I am not prepared, at the moment, to say what the remedy is, but I should like to discuss it with those interested in the problem and see whether some solution of that problem also is not discoverable. I hope I have impressed hon. members who have heard me with the fact that I feel deeply on this question, and I have tried to put before the House my ideas on the problem and on the solution as well.

I shall not remain on my feet long, but I want in the first place to add my share to the congratulations extended to the Minister of Finance, and I also would like to congratulate the Prime Minister on his good fortune in having such a Minister of Finance in his Cabinet. [Laughter.] I shall return later to the friends who are laughing. That I mean, however, is that I hope the Minister of Finance will allow me to make a few observations. If those observations are correct it is all right, and if they are not correct then the Minister of Finance can tell me and I shall be satisfied. Perhaps he will say that I am going to bring up the old story that he has been hearing for years in regard to the position of our old-age pensioners, and the war veteran pensioners. There are, however, many difficulties in connection with these pensions. To us in this House they may appear to be trivial matters, but they mean much to these people. On the platteland some of these people have perhaps a small dwelling. An official comes along and valuates the property and he say frankly to the people that they should do away with that property if they want to get the maximum pension, because so long as they have it they may only receive £2 or £3. It has even gone so far that some of these people on account of the adjoining farm having been sold at a high price, have been placed in a position that their own property has been valuated so much the higher, and consequently they do not receive the full pension. Some of these people have had to refund their pensions and have even been summoned on this account. That is not the right approach to this matter. I do not think that this is the manner in which to treat our war veterans. This is not the sort of treatment that should be accorded them, that they are virtually the prey of officials. When the sergeant of police has made a statement the pensioner is simply notified that he will receive so much less than the maximum. Hon. members who represent the platteland will agree with me that we have numbers of these cases. Sometimes we have ten or twenty such cases before us to deal with. I want to bring this to the notice of the Minister, and I hope and trust that he will be able to grant some relief. Then there is another matter that I do not like to mention, but I must do so, because I recall a speech made by the Minister of Finance in which he stated that in certain provinces certain privileges were given. I understand that an amount of about £150,000 has been granted to the Cape Province in respect of coloured education. I am not jealous of the Cape Province. Give to the provinces what is due to them. But if the Cape Province receives £150,000 for coloured education then I believe that we also should see that justice is done in the Transvaal in respect of native education. I should like to have mentioned this point also to the hon. members representing the natives. Unfortunately they are not here. It does not help matters for these hon. members to come and make a fuss here and when there is work to be done, for them not to be present. I do not think that justice is being done to the Transvaal in respect of native training. We ought to provide for the education of the native and to bring him up to a certain standard, otherwise he will land in a hopeless position. I only ask hon. members to drive from Pretoria to the Premier Mine through the place that is called Eersterus. It is situated right up against Pretoria; there they will see what is happening with all the native youngsters. They do not need to go to the farms. There it is round about Pretoria. We must see to the education of these children and it does not help for these people to come and plead that the natives should be given all sorts of rights and for them to be placed in every respect on an equal footing with the European. What is their proposal: to provide these people with better education so that they can be trained better? I should also like to say a few words with reference to what the hon. member for George has stated and also what other hon. members have stated. I would like to remind them that all of us are representatives who have been sent here, and that if they wished to level criticism at the budget of the Minister of Finance, they should try—perhaps they have tried and not succeeded—to use more desirable words. They remind me very much of the old joke that we used to hear on the platteland in the past of the old fellow who could not speak Afrikaans well. He wanted nevertheless to chat with the farmers, and speaking about his horse running on three legs he described that as a “jallop”. The hon. members should not use expressions in connection with the budget to which one cannot listen with any pleasure. One member speaking about the budget referred to it as a ghost. It is only the person who has a nightmare that see a ghost. I am not talking about ghosts. Those hon. members apparently are talking about ghosts because they were so frightened that they could not sleep without having a nightmare.

Are you scared of a ghost then?

I am not scared of a ghost, because I do not get nightmares. Despite the shortage of meat it appears to me that those hon. members eat so much meat that they get nightmares and then see ghosts during, the day. These hon. members so often call upon the old Nationalist Party. I do not want to make any reflections here, but the old Nationalist Party also had its faults. We often hear from members opposite about people who had to stand in queues during the day to get meat. In the days of the old Nationalist Party the people also stood in queues, but where? On the roads with pick and shovel. Who were the cause of that? It was those members of the old Nationalist Party. There sits the hon. member for Wolmaransstad (Gen. Kemp). He knows about it and all those members know about it, but we should not forget these things. Members on this side have delivered many speeches over the future. We are experiencing now the last days of the war, and we know that after the war there will be difficulties, and this is not the time for us to make reproaches but to do our share to ease those difficulties as far as possible, for the country. The Minister of Finance has rendered a great service to South Africa, enabling the country to have adequate funds to keep the German bombs away from us, and in this respect hon. members opposite have also shared in the benefit. They talk about the money that is being devoted to the war. That money has saved us from German bombs. There is not one of the hon. members opposite who can stand up and say that they and all the people in their neighbourhood have not made money out of the war.

You too.

Yes, I have also made money. I am grateful when I can pay income tax, because I have made the money to be able to pay it. It is an honour for a person to be in a position to be able to pay his contributions to the church and to the State. Specially is it an honour for a man to be able to contribute his share to keep Nazi bombs away from South Africa.

I do not want to make a fuss about the Budget. After listening to the speeches made on all sides of the House, I am particularly grateful that in these times when the terrible war clouds are still over the world, we find that South Africa is in the sound financial position which is indicated in the Budget, and that the Minister of Finance is able to come before the House with a Budget of this kind. If we want to be honest and upright Afrikaners, we should get up like men and congratulate the Minister of Finance and the Government that we have come through as we have done. I should like to say a few words in regard to farming, and in the first place I want to put this question: Is the farming community of South Africa still the backbone of the country? There are certain hitches and the people in the country want us to eliminate those hitches. Those hitches are causing difficulties, and we should help the people as far as we can. I received a letter from the farmers’ association in my constituency in regard to the mealie question. I am sorry the new member of the Mealie Board is not here. I asked her to remain in her seat because I wanted to put certain questions to her. Unfortunately she is not here. There are quite a few matters which cause difficulties as far as we are concerned. In the past we always conveyed our mealies for a distance of approximately seven or nine miles, and we delivered them in bags. We did not have any trouble. Last year, however, the Minister promulgated so many regulations in connection with the acceptance of mealies that the person who used to receive our mealies wrote and informed us that he could no longer take delivery of the mealies. He did not want to be a buyer any longer. Notwithstanding the shortage of petrol we were then obliged to convey the mealies for a distance of 31 miles. The people were very dissatisfied. There is a grain elevator at Vereeniging and we had to deliver the mealies there. A farmer writes to say that he delivered eight hundred bags to the elevator. Three hundred of these bags were rejected. It was stated that they were in too bad a condition, and more than £18 was deducted. After all, the mealies are emptied into the grain elevator. If we have not got a local buyer, there must surely be a place where we can deliver the mealies. If the people at Losberg are obliged to deliver their mealies at Vereeniging, the position of the mealie farmer becomes impossible, and the Minister should consider whether a grain elevator cannot be built at Losberg. Our production costs are rising. Take the position in connection with artificial manure. In all those circumstances I think the people have every right to ask that the price of mealies be fixed at £1 per bag. I hope therefore that the Minister will take the following request of the farmers’ association into serious consideration—

We ask the Minister to take that into serious consideration. As was stated by an hon. member on that side, the crop per morgen this year is very low. I am concerned more particularly about the smaller farmers who produce up to one thousand bags of mealies, because they are the people who are experiencing the greatest hardship. If we do not fix reasonable prices, more and more of these farmers will be driven to the cities, and that is something we ought to obviate. I therefore want to ask the Minister and the Mealie Board, therefore, to see that the price will not be less than 20s. per bag. Then I want to point out something else. The farmers’ association goes on to say—

Here we have a further hitch, and I hope the Minister will give his attention to it. There is another letter from the farrmers’ association—the Minister can again tell me that the Secretary for Agriculture has nothing to do with tomatoes — in which it is stated—

That is an unsound position. If I want to buy sufficient grapes in Cape Town for my own consumption, it cists me 2s. I think I can reasonably expect to be able to buy sufficient grapes for myself for 6d. But at the Johannesburg market it is being distributed to the natives, and we are called upon to make good the loss which is suffered on those grapes. The people on the Johannesburg market who buy grapes, and who do not want to stand amongst the natives to get it free of charge, have to pay 6d. per lb. I think grapes should be provided at a reasonable price. That would prevent thousands of trays from rotting on the Johannesburg market. When the juice begins to run out, the grapes are given away. Then I always wanted to ask the Minister this. I do not want to discuss the meat question again. It has given me a headache already. I noticed at auctions sales that farmers were putting their old trek oxen on the market. The farmers get something like £13 5s. a head for a medium ox. When they buy young oxen, it costs them £14 a head. The price of old oxen does not cover the price of young oxen. If I put a medium ox weighing 500 lbs. or 600 lbs. on the market, I rely on getting sufficient for that ox to be able to buy a decent trek ox. At present I have to pay in. The public of Cape Town and of other places would be satisfied to have the meat of those medium oxen. These oxen would be put on the market if the price were proportionate to the price of young oxen. It is said that there are many cattle on the market at present. That is due to the drought. The people are disposing of their poorer oxen, but they are not getting enough for them. As matters stand at present, the farmer is not getting a price for those oxen which represents their true value. We therefore ask that the price be increased slightly in order to satisfy the people. I am very sorry the representatives of the natives are not here, because, they raised the question of the treatment of the natives and the wages of the natives which, they stated, should be increased. I have natives who have been working for me for forty years. I do not pay them a very high wage. I pay them £2 per month, but they get milk; they get a few acres of mealie land and they get vegetables. They live there free of charge, and I have heard no complaints from them. I have heard them complain during the past few years, and that is solely due to the propaganda which is being made amongst the natives as a result of the incitement which takes place. Natives who have been there for 40 years are now becoming dissatisfied. We talk about segregation, but if we want to apply segregation, the first thing we should do is to segregate the native representatives.

I want to confine myself principally to the mealie industry. It is really sad—I am inclined to say pathetic— that during the past few years we have continually had to talk on the floor of this House about the fixation of the price of mealies. We who represent the mealie farmers have to adopt this procedure every year in an attempt to have a reasonable and economic price fixed for mealies. On the other hand we have the native representatives especially who want to reduce the price to be paid to the mealie farmer as much as possible. We have had sufficient proof in this House that those few native representatives avail themselves of every opportunity to try to incite the people. The hon. member who has just sat down, agrees with us that they are the people who incite the natives. And now we find that the Minister of Agriculture has appointed one of those members to the Mealie Board. I say this with all due respect to that member personally, but if ever an undesirable step has been taken, it was to appoint one of these members to the Mealie Board. We have heard that even the hon. member for Potchefstroom (Mr. Van der Merwe), a member of the Native Affairs Commission, referred to those members as the incitors of the native population; and now the Minister actually appoints one of them to the Mealie Board. I can give him the assurance that the mealie farmers will be very dissatisfied about it. Those members are continually attacking the mealie farmers in this House, but we have never heard them speak about the natives who are idle in the reserves. I do not want to condemn the natives, but we should also recognise their weak points. Young natives, boys and girls, are idle in the reserves and we are being asked to send them food, although there are ample opportunities of employment for them on the farms. The male natives are not the people who cultivate their mealie lands. That is mostly left to the women. And why are these members so concerned about the men or the young natives who have to go and work? Are there not thousands of our European boys and girls who are scattered throughout the whole country in various circles of employment? These young male and female natives are idle in the reserves, however. They refuse to take up employment. What would become of our mealie farming if it were left to our womenfolk? Those native representatives should rather do their duty by trying to give the natives better training instead of criticising the mealie farmers. One so often hears about rich mealie farmers, and when I get up in this House I am looked upon as a rich mealie farmer. I may produce a good deal of mealies, but, believe me, even the big mealie farmer makes precious little out of mealies. I want to challenge those members to point out forty farmers out of the forty thousand mealie farmers who have accumulated £20,000 out of mealie farming, in their life. Take the traders. We find that they easily make that amount in three or four years, whereas the mealie farmer seldom makes it in a lifetime. I say it is unpleasant and even degrading to have to come to the Minister of Agriculture every year on bended knees, in connection with the fixation of mealie prices. I admit that the Mealie Control Board has done very good work in the past, but as far as the fixation of mealie prices is concerned, the Mealie Control Board has precious little to say. We had that incident of last year. The Minister cannot deny that it was recommended by the Mealie Board that the farmers should receive £1 per bag, but as a result of the price fixation by the Minister, the farmer got 16s. 5d. for mealies delivered into the grain elevator, and 17s. 6d. for mealies delivered in the bag. We argue about this matter every year, and the time has arrived when the mealie farmers should get a cut and dried scheme with regard to the fixation of mealie prices. In the Western Transvaal we tried to work out a scheme which we submitted to the Transvaal Agricultural Union. It was accepted by the Union but rejected by the Minister. It was based on the price which the previous Minister had fixed. On the 31st October, 1944, the mealie farmers at Venters-dorp again worked out a price scheme which was based on the price which the present Minister himself fixed. It was calculated on the basis of twenty million bags, for which a price of 17s. 6d. in the bag and 16s. 5d. in the grain elevator was fixed. It was submitted to him, but he did not accept that either. The hon. member for Kroonstad (Mr. A. Steyn) has mentioned the other scheme. Let us assume that we had a crop of twenty million bags last year. The farmer got more or less 16s. 5d. per bag. He therefore received an amount of approximately £8,000,000 for the quantity which reached the market. I expect a yield of approximately seventeen million bags, which is a little more than the hon. member for Kroonstad expects. Seven million bags ought to reach the market. That requires the same exertion and the same expenses. As a matter of fact, it involves more expenses because the price of everything is still rising every year. That amount must now be divided by seven million, giving one an approximate price of £1 3s. 0d. But we now come forward with this reasonable proposal and we say that the farmers expect a price of £1 per bag. We received a reply from the Minister to a resolution which was passed at Ventersdorp where we asked him for a cut and dried scheme. I do not want to read his reply to the House; it will take too long. He stated that he had given instructions to the Marketing Board to try to work out such a scheme. I should like to know what progress has been made in devising such a scheme. If the hon. Minister tells us that the Board has not yet been able to submit a cut and dried scheme to him, I want to ask him to fix the price as best he can, and to do so as early as possible. The wheat farmers are guaranteed a price practically before they start to plough. I do not want to suggest that that price is sufficiently high. I too say that that price is hopelessly too low; it should be £2, but they are guaranteed a price beforehand, and I think we mealie farmers are also entitled to an assurance from the Minister that we will get a guaranteed price. On the next crop depends how much ploughing there will be next season, so it is important to know at this stage what the price is going to be. I do not think there need be any fear of overproduction. During the past few years our soil has been exhausted owing to the fact that we have not been able to get sufficient artificial manure. We also have to contend with labour difficulties, so I do not think there is any danger of overproduction. I remember very well that two years ago when the previous Minister was still alive alive he said to me in his office one day: “You farmers can produce thirty million bags of mealies for me and I shall find a market for it.” So I do not think there is any danger of a surplus, and if there were a surplus, it would be preferable to a shortage. We have had the experience of shortages in the past, and we have also had the experience of surpluses. Now I want to ask the Minister which is more undesirable of the two, an overproduction or a surplus? I take it he will reply without any hesitation that he would rather have a surplus. Now I want to put this pertinent question to the Minister: Is he afraid of overproduction? Is he afraid that there will be an overproduction if he did what we suggest? Now I come to the position which exists today. We are going to have a shortage. In reply to a question, the Minister stated that they had considered the advisability of importing mealies. I just want to put the same question to the Minister which the hon. member for Kroonstad put to him. Imported mealies will cost 31s. Let us assume that the price for our mealies is fixed at £1. There will then be a difference of 11s. The imported article costs 31s. and our mealies will cost 20s. Has the Minister ever thought how he is going to arrange the distribution if he imports mealies?. Then I also want to touch briefly on the question of the conveyance of mealies. Last year we got lorries from the Defence Department for the conveyance of mealies. I take it that the Minister of Agriculture is primarily responsible for the fact that lorries, that these lorries were made available for this purpose. We are grateful for that. But I just want to draw the Minister’s attention to the fact that the distribution of those lorries was hopelessly arranged. We asked what the difficulty was and the reply was that they did not have sufficient overseers. Take two places like Klerksdorp and the adjoining town Hartebeestfontein. Just imagine, these lorries were all sent to Klerksdorp. They decided to convey mealies in the Klerksdorp area from June only until the end of August. Then they proposed to transport mealies in the Hartebeestfontein area from the end of August to the end of October. I want to ask the Minister to make timeous provision this year for overseers. Then I also want to refer briefly to the kaffir corn question. There are many farmers who produce kaffir corn in areas where birds do a great deal of damage to the crop, where they produce bird-proof wheat. I should like to know whether the Minister and the board have decided what bird-proof wheat is worth. The price of the best grade of wheat has been fixed at £1 2s. 6d. The Minister must please tell us what the difference is in the value of bird-proof wheat and kaffir corn. Then we would like the maximum quantity of bird-proof wheat which may be mixed in the manufacture of malt to be determined.

I should like the maximum to be fixed so that the farmer cannot be told later that his wheat cannot be used. Then I just want to say a few words in connection with potatoes. The whole Western Transvaal passed a resolution in connection with the fixation of potato prices. We all realise that it is a perishable product and that it is difficult to fix a price. They recommended that no maximum price or minimum price be fixed. The Minister replied in these terms—

He now states that he is fixing a maximum price in order to protect the farmer. Is he afraid of overproduction? I want to know whether the manner in which he is carrying on now is not going to promote underproduction while there is such a critical food shortage in the country? I have not got much time to say anything in regard to artificial manure. I just want to urge that it is extremely necessary for the Government to take steps to obtain more artificial manure in this country. I can give the Minister my assurance that for every additional bag of manure he gives me I shall produce three additional bags of mealies. It is therefore very much more economical to import one bag of artificial manure than to import three bags of mealies. Then I just want to bring a small point to the notice of the Minister of Finance in connection with the collection of income tax. I want to direct his attention to the fact that there is a considerable amount of complaint in connection with the manner in which the assessment is made. For example, there are too many unnecessary enquiries causing inconvenience and expense to the farmer, especially in connection with the labour item. You will agree with me that the labour problem is critical today. I am now paying my native, employees twice as much as I did before the war. One fills in the taxation form and indicates that one paid £1,600, for example, in the form of wages. The form comes back and one finds that the amount of £1,600 has been reduced to £1,000. The farmers are very dissatisfied and I should like the Minister to give his attention to this matter.

I wish to devote a little time today to a subject which is of vital importance to all of us. This subject is food. Mankind has in the last few years become nutrition conscious, and it is very good thing that it has become nutrition conscious. Food is, as it has always been, the basis or foundation of life. We know unfortunately that a large number of our own people are living well below the nutrition line. The war conditions and price fixation, fixed for a large number of farm products, have dislocated the whole field of food production. The increase in the price of mealies—and let me say to the hon. member who has just sat down (Mr. Wilkens) that I am not criticising that increase; I am merely stating a fact—the increase in the price of mealies and the increase in the price of other foodstuffs, required for producing beef, has led to the result that beef cattle had to be sold before the cattle had been fattened to their full weight. A large number of our people who are making more money now than they have ever made before, have started to buy large quantities of beef, lamb, pork, butter and other foodstuffs—larger quantities than they have ever been able to afford before. The farmer has therefore been called upon to produce more food. In spite of all the obstacles and difficulties such as the shortage of labour, the shortage of fertiliser, the difficulty in obtaining plant and machinery, the farmer has been doing and is doing his best to meet this greater demand. The recent severe droughts have adversely affected the farmers’ production. At a time like the present, at a time such as we have recently gone through, there is only one bumper crop that we can be quite sure about, and that is the black market, and one can certainly not credit the farmer with that. As long as we have inflationary money and as long as we have a shortage of the essential foods, we certainly will have that black market unless we have a complete change in the heart of mankind, when we shall all realise our responsibility towards other people. I was reading about black markets recently in a certain article and I was struck by one little sentence in which it is stated—

When food becomes unobtainable resentment naturally follows. One thing, unobtainable now however, that would solve this black market problem would be suddenly to produce an abundance so that we could all get either what we desire or at the very least what we were able to afford to pay for. That solution, however, is not practical now. This easier state of affairs will take a long time to bring about. Therefore I would once again urge rationing as the only means of ensuring that every family gets its fair share of food. In buying food we unfortunately pay for the taste of the palate, rather than for the needs of the body. For those who are able to afford it, this may be all very well, and it may be justifiable, but for the poorer classes, the advantages of a balanced diet cannot be too strictly insisted upon. South Africa today produces 60 million lbs. to 70 million lbs. of butter. According to our census figures our population is somewhere around ten or twelve million. The unofficial estimated figures of the D.G.S. shows our population to be just over 12 million people. We have therefore five to six lbs. of butter available per person per annum. This equals ¼ oz. per person per day. Dieticians vary in their ideas as to how much butterfat—lard would do just as well—is required in a properly balanced diet. We have figures given to us that vary from one ounces to two ounces per person per day. If we take the lower figure, then our production of butter in order to supply the necessary fat demands, must be multiplied by four. If we take the higher figure, it must be multiplied by eight. I prefer, however, to take a somewhat lower figure for a good deal of our necessary fats should be supplied in the form of fresh milk, dripping and vegetables, etc. There are quite a number of vegetables which carry very nutritious fats and these should be consumed. Now we come to this very difficult question, this question of margarine. We definitely must continue our dairy industry. We must make sure that we are capable of supplying the full fresh milk requirements of the nation. Those farmers farming on out-of-the-way farms, however, find it difficult to get a ready market for their fresh milk. But those out-of-the-way farms serve as the nurseries for the dairy stock that supplies our fresh milk and our beef market. Hence in spite of butter being the least advantageous form of selling their milk these farmers are forced to sell their milk in the form of butter, or in the form of cheese or condensed milk. Our lower income groups cannot afford to buy the necessary amount of butter, therefore we must find some means of giving them the necessary butterfat. We must find a cheaper substitute or we must subsidise them so that they are capable of buying the necessary butterfat. We are told that margarine can fill this need. In passing may I just mention one thing, and that is that margarine and butter are the perfect carriers of vitamins A and D, these vitamins which we find so abundantly in our fish liver oils. The British Ministry of Food values these vitamins very highly. The bulk of our vitamins from the fish liver oil is today being bought by the British Ministry of Food for incorporating it into their margarine. Those who very strongly advocate the setting up of margarine factories in South Africa assure us that it will not in any way detrimentally affect our dairy industry. The dairy industry is naturally somewhat scared. The dairy industry feels that if we allow the manufacture of margarine in the country, it would very seriously or may very seriously affect the dairy industry. I feel that we can meet both sides quite easily, and that there is a solution which will meet both the advocate of the manufacture of margarine and the dairy industry, and as I have said before, according to those who advocate that we should start a number of margarine factories, there will be very little if any, butter surplus. I suggest here that if the Government would introduce legislation not merely regulations allowing the production of margarine on condition that margarine manufacturers take over all surplus butter stocks at the cost of production plus a reasonable profit to the dairy industry, we would then solve the problem. We would be satisfied if those manufacturers would guarantee that whatever surplus butter we have, would be taken over by them at the cost of production plus a reasonable profit. Margarine manufacturers will then have to purchase the surplus butter, if any, in proportion to their margarine output. We can then offer to the public pure butter, and those who feel that they want to have pure butter, will be able to buy pure butter. We could probably also offer a butter mixed with margarine, if there is any surplus at all, and if they still want to have a slightly cheaper article, they can have an article which is made purely from the hydrogenated oils and the necessary materials that are required in the making of margarine. The addition of butter or milk to margarine improves the margarine. There are two chief improvements that are brought about. Improvement number one is that the margarine becomes more spreadable. It gets nearer a butter consistency. Improvement number two, which incidentally can also be brought about by the addition of certain chemicals is that the margarine gets a butter flavour. The most economic way of consuming milk, as I have said before, is to consume it as fresh milk. I therefore suggest that milk produced round about the large towns should be consumed as fresh milk and that margarine factories be set up in rural areas where large quantities of milk can be produced those areas which are not necessarily near the town, those areas where ground is cheaper and those areas which are normally debarred from the fresh milk market. In such areas fresh or skimmed milk and not water could be used in the processing of margarine. The oil cake and meals which are by-products in the manufacture of margarine, can then be sold to the farmer because these are most valuable foods for dairy animals. In this way the farmer will supply the margarine manufacturer with milk, butter and nuts etc. and the manufacturer will supply the farmer with oil cake—a really happy relationship. Mr. Speaker, I was surprised the other day to find out what ignorance there is amongst parliamentarians in regard to skimmed milk. Skimmed milk as a food has considerable value. We know there are a number of factors in arriving at food values, but let me mention this—A meal consisting of 10 oz. of bread, 1 pint of skimmed milk and ½ oz butter costs 4d. and has 1,025 calories in it; for a lunch consisting of 8 oz. soup, 2 oz. beef, 2 oz. potatoes, 1 oz. turnips, 4 oz. bread, 1 oz. butter, 1 oz. milk and ½ oz. sugar we pay about 1s. 6d., and this only gives us 940 calories; 1 pint skimmed milk gives us 170 calories.

I was very pleased indeed this morning when I heard the result of the Port Elizabeth election. I cannot help but think that the people of Port Elizabeth were very wise indeed in their choice, and in their appreciation of what the “wise old bird”, as our Prime Minister was described in the House of Lords, has been doing for the country. I realise that it may be said that the election was largely based on sentiment. Well, there is sentiment in all elections, and I am quite sure the people of Port Elizabeth were farseeing enough to know that the present Government is the only Government South Africa can have if we are going to enjoy any prosperity after the war. I listened to what was said the other day, Mr. Speaker, by the hon. member for Stellenbosch (Dr. Bremer) about racial feeling dropping away and the white races coming together. I was very pleased indeed, and it struck me as a very good augury for the future. But when you go further into it and see what is happening here today and on the Rand, where you find elections being carried on for municipal councils on political lines, I think it is a fact to be very greatly deplored. This applies particularly to a case on the East Rand, where there is a municipality with a council comprised of nine members and six of the seats have been captured by the Nationalist Party, while three are held by the United Party. The Nationalist Party have the majority, and what do they do? When they got into office they insisted upon Afrikaans being the official language of that particular municipality. That is something we have to think about, and I hone that the people of South Africa are going to think about it. One frequently says: If the Nationalists get into power they will not do much harm. They will do much harm if they get into power, because they will rip the white races asunder and the end will be disaster for South Africa. I hope their leaders will stop and think of this and prevail on their people in the Transvaal to be careful in what they are doing, and not to offend the susceptibilities of the other great party.

Your minutes in Cape Town are in English.

There has been some talk of late about Bishops College. We have heard that Bishops College had done this, that and the other, and insinuations were made that it is an ultra-English institution inimical to the Afrikaans population. That is not so at all. Bishops College has gone I suppose further than any educational institution in South Africa to try to bring about a proper feeling between the two races. It is a Church of England school; it is carried on as an English institution in every way, and it is a branch of the great Rugby College in England. Yet in spite of that they have one day set apart when the boarders talk nothing but Afrikaans in the dining room and everywhere else. I think it is twice a week that the lessons are actually read in Afrikaans in the Church of England service. This is done in Bishops College, an English place. The other night when there was a debate three-fourths of the speeches were in Afrikaans from the English-speaking boys. That shows how they have, advanced there. Mr. Speaker, the next point I want to speak about is with regard to the Public Health Commission.

Will you please tell us something about the Cape Town City Council?

I know nothing about the Cape Town Council. I hold no brief for it. I have been a member of the Hospital Board for many years, and I am very sorry indeed about the findings of that commission with regard to hospitals. Apparently the idea is to put the hospitals all together under the doctors. I have noticed through a long career on Hospital Boards that doctors are not as a rule good administrators of hospitals. In England, where they are much to the forefront in regard to hospital management, you find that in very many places hospitals are managed by laymen. The medical mind is such that it concentrates on the medical side of things, and is apt to regard a patient merely as a case. Patients are human beings, and the idea of Hospital Boards comprised of laymen when they control and run a hospital is that the human element is far more important, and it is given a more important place in the workings of the hospital than would be the case if it was entirely administered by doctors. The presence of laymen on bodies controlling the management of hospitals is very much to the advantage of the patients. Some years ago I had an experience which bears on this point. I had to go to hospital myself; I had some diathermy treatment for a shoulder I had put out. It was a well-managed hospital if you judged it from the outside. I asked the superintendent of the hospital, who was a medical man, if I might go through his hospital and have a look at it. He sent his chief clerk round with one. I was appalled at the condition of things at the rear of that hospital. It was a military hospital and the adjutant took me round. In the front of the hospital everything was beautiful but very little forethought had been shown in the expansion. Of course, one must make allowance for war conditions and for the fact that everything had been expanded rapidly. But I found sheds in the ground at the back of the hospital, one was a quarter of a mile from the hospital, and there were 40 soldiers in each shed; but there was only one latrine, one shower and a tiny room about the size of a ship’s cabin to serve as sister’s duty room, pantry and everything else. So primitive was this institution that I noticed, for instance, that the milk supply for the 40 patients in that ward was in a tin, and for lack of ice or anything of that sort the tin was put under a window, the window being jammed on top of the tin so that the air could circulate round the tin and keep it cool. There was bread on shelves; everything was as horrible as it possibly could be. I could not help thinking then what would happen if any of these men got dysentry or enteritis, what would happen to the men in a camp like that where there were hundreds of cases. Outside that shed there was a wooden sort of causeway laid above the surface of the ground. It was made of planks, but the planks were so far apart that when a trolley was pushed along it from the shed to the operating theatre it jolted over these boards and must have caused terrible pain to the unfortunate patient on his way to the operating theatre. I went to the superintendent and told him what I had seen, and I told him I was going to report his hospital, because I thought it was in a horrible condition. I mentioned to him a number of things that were necessary, things that struck me, just as a layman who had been connected with hospital organisations at different times. I had learned these things just as any other member of a Hospital Board might have learned them, and I am only instancing this as a case in point to indicate that it is necessary to have laymen on these boards. After I had spoken to him, the superintendent showed me a file and it contained exactly the points that I had just told him. He had reported these various things, but they had gone to the official heads, and there the matter ended. But if there had been a lay board controlling the hospital rhe members would have worried and worried the people higher up until things were done, because the heads of Government departments are always annoyed and concerned when there is a constant worrying by other people. But it is necessary when human life is concerned: On another occasion I went to see a hospital which had just been built. It, too, was being administered by a medical superintendent and a matron, very efficient people, no doubt, in their particular work. They showed me over this building, but one knows that in these places the trouble usually starts at the back of the hospital. They showed me a new septic system. It all looked very nice and they said it worked very well. I asked them whether they had ever thought of the bacteria; they said no, and asked me what I meant. I pointed out that bacteria was killed by disinfectants and asked them what arrangements they had made to separate the drainage. The drainage was not disinfected. I happen to know that in some hospitals that I had been concerned with there had been trouble over this point. Well, this place smelt to high heaven, and the whole place was filthy. Those are points which laymen learn and these are things that it is almost criminal to allow. Yet I understand the policy that is now being considered is to have these institutions administered by doctors entirely. One notices, too, in the Health Commission’s report that the suggestion is there that there should be a Minister of Health, under him a doctor, then a board of doctors, then a board of laymen, and so on, and a number of health centres, then the ordinary community, some 400 health communities. In every case they are governed by doctors, and under these arrangements I am told that the idea is that the laymen are simply to be rubber stamps. It would be almost criminal to embark on a scheme of that kind and allow a medical bureaucracy to govern the country. I have not the time to speak much longer, but I should like to bring these points forward, and I hope that they will be listened to. On some future occasion I hope to be able to go still further into this matter. It is a very important matter, and an extensive one, and one would like to bestow on it the full benefit of one’s thought. I hope, however, that one may be able to help, even in a small way, in such a big matter.

I can confirm what the last speaker has stated, that a number of hospitals are efficiently run by laymen. I quite agree with his remarks in this respect. I know that laymen have done a wonderful piece of work in running hospitals in this country. My own hospital is an example of that. It is one of the best run hospitals in the Transvaal and it is run entirely by laymen. I am glad to be able to substantiate what the hon. member said. I think it would be a great pity if the control of hospitals was taken away from the Hospital Boards and left entirely to medical men. Medical men are not usually efficient business men, and hospitals should be run on business lines as well as on humanitarian lines. Mr. Speaker, the point I wish to bring up is that the Minister of Public Health has more or less accepted the report of the Public Health Commission with a proviso that hospital treatment will remain in the hands of the provinces. I see in our estimates of expenditure that the sum of £100,000 is to be voted for national health services this year. That is not a very big sum, because I would like to ask the Minister of Finance to provide £150,000 for a scheme in which I am interested, and in which the whole of the North-Eastern Transvaal is interested. It is a scheme to eradicate malaria from the whole of the North-Eastern Transvaal. Hon. members may not be aware of the work that has been done up to the present in that respect. In the North-Eastern Transvaal we have a malaria area which is comprised roughly of twelve magisterial districts. Zoutspansberg, Waterberg, Potgietersrust, Letaba, Groblersdal, Pilgrim’s Rest, Piet Retief, Pietersburg, Barberton, Middelburg, Nelspruit, Lydenburg —those are mainly the districts covered. The experiment was started in July last. The Senior Medical Officer of the Transvaal, in collaboration with the Farmers Union in the Transvaal, started on the scheme with the aid of the Minister of Public Health, who very graciously voted the sum of £32,000 to clear malaria from one-quarter of the area of the North-Eastern Transvaal, that is to say to clear an area of about 15,000 square miles. The whole of the malaria area covers an area of 60,000 square miles and has a European population of 74,000, and a native population of 1,300,000. It is one of the most fertile areas in the country and one of the best ranching areas in the Union. We know that malaria has always been endemic there. For instance, in the Olifants River basin, a small area that we cleared of malaria this year, 1,000 natives died last year of malaria. We are settling 600 returned soldiers and their families there, and it would have been suicidal to have done so before stamping out malaria. These returned soldiers can now safely be placed there as far as malaria is concerned, because this experiment is no longer an experiment but a success. We have figures to show that we have eradicated the malaria-carrying mosquito from that area of about 15,000 square miles. That has been done by the method of spraying all standing water and spraying all huts. Water that stands for more than a week becomes the breeding place of the malariacarrying mosquito, the anopheles gambia. All standing water has been sprayed along the banks of the Olifants River and its tributaries. Before we started the experiment we found that if at this season of the year we put a white sheet in a hut or a house and sprayed the place with pyagra, two or three hundred malaria-carrying mosquitos would be collected in this one hut. Since this campaign was started to clear this area, and the work only started in July last, the controls show that in these huts where we used to get mosquitos to the number of 300 in one hut, we now find none, or at the most from one to five mosquitos, whereas in the non-controlled area you find 200 or 300 mosquitos in one hut. That shows that the work has proved a success. That area has been cleared at at a cost of £32,000 to the Government, and we estimate that the clearing of the whole North-Eastern Transvaal would cost £150,000, and surely the remaining three-fourths of that malaria area is equally entitled to be cleared as the quarter we have just cleared. The Minister of Public Health is unfortunately not here, but I should like to appeal to him and the Minister of Finance to grant us this money, and I am convinced as a medical man, we can guarantee that that area will be cleared in two or three years. I know the area and I have been a district surgeon there for 23 years. It can be cleared, and this will be a great thing for the Transvaal and the Union. It will be a tremendous benefit to the population of the North-Eastern Transvaal, that is 74,000 Europeans and 1,300,000 natives. As a result of research work done three or four years ago, it was found that 70 per cent. of the children in the Letaba district had an enlarged spleen, and 70 per cent. in the area had bilharzia, while 36 per cent. were suffering from intestinal parasites such as tape worm and other parasites. That is all in the same area. These intestinal parasites which I have referred to are the cause of measles in cattle. We know that we are losing a tremendous lot of cattle through measles. The carcases are condemned on account of measles. The cause of the infection of these cattle is the tape worm. Any native or European carrying the tape worm is a host transmitting it to the stock. If a human being is cleared of tape worm we could at once bring about the eradication of measles from beef. The anti-malaria scheme has been carried out in a different way in Natal, where you have a thickly populated European area. The farmers got together and they decided on a campaign; they supervised the whole thing and killed off the malaria mosquitos and contributed to the costs. In the Transvaal that procedure is an impossibility. In any case it is the duty of the Government and not of the citizens to eradicate malaria. I believe there has been a tendency on the part of the Public Health Department to tell the North-Eastern Transvaal to follow the example of Zululand and Natal. That cannot be done in a native area like the North-Eastern Transvaal. I therefore appeal to the Minister of Finance to get into touch with the Ministry of Public Health and to vote us this £150,000. If he does that I think we can guarantee to clear the whole North-Eastern Transvaal of malaria within two years, or three at the most.

Mr. Speaker, when one looks objectively at the present budget in our transitional period one has to some extent to sympathise with the Minister of Finance inasmuch that he has got to deal with two classes of people in South Africa, The first class look upon the Minister of Finance as the “nigger in the woodpile” who in the ordinary way is pictured as piling up taxation, which is having an adverse effect as far as progress in industry is concerned, and on those grounds they are always advocating the reduction of taxation. The second category of critics he has to deal with are those people who want Rome to be built in a day, and who want the Minister to place on the estimates globular sums before the necessary machinery has been set in motion in order to ensure that the money is spent wisely. While we are passing through this transition stage it is necessary that the Minister of Finance should, as he has done in this budget, pause for a period to see how the land lies. That is how I view this budget. We have to remember after five years of war South Africa has done well. I do not want to cover the whole gamut of the arguments we have listened to during the last two days. We all recognise that the Government has committed itself to the rehabilitation of our country in the postwar period, and when we look upon this budget as a transitional budget I, at any rate, say to myself if this is a transitional period from war to peace as far as expenditure is concerned, is the Government diverting its increased expenditure along the avenues to which it has pledged itself? For that reason I turn to the estimates of expenditure. When I examine the estimates of expenditure I am struck with these facts. Notwithstanding that this year we are budgeting for an increase of revenue of £2,200,000 under certain headings there is to be a decrease of expenditure of over £6,000,000 and the Minister has balanced that by increasing our expenditure by over £8,000,000. I look at that increase of expenditure of over £8,000,000 because I want to see whether the Government is facing up to what they told the country they would do. When I look at the increase I am satisfied that the Government in this transition period is in the initial stages taking a step in the right direction. I shall quote some of the increases and they are all contributions to our social rehabilitation in this country. First of all, without going into all the increases, let us take the question of pensions; there we have an increase of £430,000. In regard to Union education there is an increase of £194,950. In respect of native education the actual nett increase will be £255,000. We then come down to the question of the Director of Demobilisation. We know the question of demobilisation of the returned soldier is priority No. 1. We have been told that repeatedly. Last year there was £250,000 voted under this heading and the Government is now facing up to its responsibilities in this direction, and it has now increased that vote by no less than £3,316,000 to place the returned soldiers on a fair basis when they come back. Native Affairs was increased by £902,000 and Agriculture by £202,400. So I am satisfied in this transitory period the Minister of Finance is facing up to his responsibility as far as the Government is concerned. During the last two days we have had much criticism about taxation. We have had criticism about the E.P.D. tax, and the only answer I can give is that though industries are expanded, the fact remains that that tax contributed £15,000,000 to the Treasury. Furthermore, as far as ordinary business is concerned, it has not operated harshly on the population. Today there is 275 million lying idle in the Commercial Banks. I admit that as far as the E.P.D. is concerned, the people who went into business just prior to 1939 did not have an optimum opportunity to establish a ceiling in the way older concerns were able to do. I accept the assurance of the Minister that by the time we have the next Budget he will see whether something can be done. But notwithstanding this buoyancy, we must not lose sight of the fact that people in England are taxed 20s. in the pound as far as E.P.D. is concerned, and in Australia and New Zealand taxation is so high that there is no question of E.P.D. at all. When we consider ordinary taxation and we draw a comparison between this country and Australia and New Zealand, we find as far as normal taxation is concerned in regard to the man with one child, between £500 and £1,500, that in our country he only pays a quarter of the taxation imposed in these two countries. But let us look at the scale of taxation. When you take the £500 man with one child, all he is called upon to pay is £11 19s. 2d. and in Australia he pays £95. Let us next consider how the scale is steeped up in this country. A man with an income of £50,000 in South Africa has to pay £35,601 in taxation. It is inevitable therefore that if we are going to have social services in this country, we will have to step up our efficiency and take off our coats and pay for these services, because the men who will have to pay for it will be the men between the incomes of £500 and £10,000 and we will inevitably have to dip our hand into the pockets of the medium wage earner, and I cannot see even if you further tax the high income groups that the necessary amount of money will be available. But the money has to be found. That is how I see it. Now I want to leave taxation and the monetary side alone. There is one important matter arising out of the Budget and that is the interim relationship between Central Government and the Provincial Administration of this country. I hope hon. members will bear with me for a moment when I discuss this important matter. I want to quote from the Minister’s own words when he delivered his Budget Speech. This is what he said—

Mr. Speaker, if I were to use an American expression and say “you are telling me,” it is just about correct. I can assure you that as far as the relationship between the Central Government and the provinces is concerned, if it is difficult, between the Government and the provinces as far as the man in the street is concerned, it is positively chaotic. Here we have a system where the individual is not taxed only only directly and indirectly by the Provincial Administration but directly and indirectly by the Union Government, and local authorities as well. And then we come to administrative services; he is not only controlled by the Central Government but also by the Provincial Administration. Having said that I want to be emphatic on the point that I am 100 per cent. in favour of the retention of the Provincial Councils. I appreciate that in the discussions which have recently taken place, the Government has honoured the constitution as adumbrated by the National Convention. But as a businessman I am convinced that if we are going to run this country on a business basis, then within not many years after the war it will be necessary to reconvene a National Convention so that we can for all time align the relationship between the provinces and the Union Government on a sound basis. Now you have today in this country two capitals. You have the Administrative Capital in Pretoria and the Legislative Capital in Cape Town, and you have half the services of the provinces in Pretoria and the other half in the provinces. I must, say that that does not lead to business efficiency, and we have to achieve a sound demarcation between the Central Government and the provinces, and the sooner we determine what that demarcation is, the more efficient will our national services become. When I say I am 100 per cent. for the retention of the Provincial Councils, I want to make this point, that I am for government of the people by the people, and the nearer your administrative service is to the services to be rendered, the more efficient that Administration will become. I would not be adverse to having one central taxing authority, but I do think the Central Government should make more use of the provincial administrations than they do. Today, for instance, hospitalisation is piecemeal. If a man breaks his leg he goes into a provincial hospital. If he suffers from an infectious disease, he falls under a local authority. If he suffers from T.B. he goes into a Government institution; but if he is insane he is nobody’s baby unless you can get a doctor to certify him. If he is a leper he goes to another Government institution and yet these institutions all fall within the ambit of each province. While I am prepared to assist in the scheme brought about on the present arrangement, I am afraid that there is going to be a certain amount of friction, and if there is, I hope it is not going to be used as a lever to weaken the authority of the provincial councils. I am referring particularly to the Natal Provincial Council. I have, served on that Council for six years and I know it to be efficient, and the Prime Minister and also the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Social Welfare have all referred in eugolistic terms to measures put through by that particular council, but I do say all the ramifications of hospitalisation should come under the Provincial Councils.

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 adjourned; to be resumed on 12th March.