On the adjournment I was speaking about the extraordinary concern hon. members opposite showed about the poor people, and in connection therewith I want especially to speak about the statement of the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger) to the effect that the cost of living since 1924 had dropped by 15½ per cent. in the United Kingdom, 7½ per cent. in Canada, and 61 per cent. in Australia, while according to him the drop in South Africa had only been 1 per cent. He also wished to show that the insignificant drop was due to the Government’s policy in relation to customs dues. I do not know from what source the hon. member got his information but it is important that one should know it in a case like this. It is easy to quote figures, but if the source is not mentioned they have little value. I have taken a little trouble to go into certain figures, and found out that the hon. member’s figures do not coincide with those quoted in the British Board of Trade Journal and the Economist. Moreover I find that the hon. member has apparently based his calculation on wholesale and not on retail prices, and this appears from the Bulletin of March, 1927, which he referred to in his speech. I want with every respect to state that when we have to do with the cost of living we should in the first place deal with retail figures. It is possibly worth while to also go into the question of wholesale prices shortly. When the hon. member spoke of a drop of 15½ per cent. in Great Britain during the two years, I may say that the British Board of Trade Journal and the Economist tell a different tale. In the first place we must remember that Great Britain returned to the gold standard in 1925, and when that was done Great Britain was much further away from the gold standard than South Africa, so that the return to that standard in South Africa had less effect on the prices than in Great Britain. In South Africa we were much nearer parity with the American dollar. The difference in Great Britain was greater and consequently one might expect that the prices there would drop quicker or more suddenly. It was different in South Africa. Canada and Australia, because they at that time were nearer the gold standard. Consequently one would expect that the drop in the cost of living would be slow and gradual, and this was actually the case. The hon. member said that the drop in South Africa was only 1 per cent., but here he was apparently only referring to wholesale prices, and comparing January. 1927. with the average figure for 1924. If we take as basis the index figure of 1,000 in 1910, then the figure in January, 1927, was 1,438, while the average figure for 1924 was 1,448. There was therefore a drop of 10 in 1,000 or 1 per cent. but if, however, we compare the average figure for 1924 and 1926 we find that the average figure for 1924 was 1,448 against 1,387 for 1926, a drop therefore of 61 points. If we compare January, 1927, with January, 1926, then we find that on the latter date the figure was 1,397, against 1,438 in January, 1927, which shows an increase of 41 points. The cause of the rise is given in the Bulletin of March, and it is said to be due to grain, flour and meat. These are articles which are not at all or very little affected by our import duties. If we go further and see what the Bulletin of March says about wholesale prices then it is interesting to compare the difference between South African and imported goods. In 1924 the average index figure for South African goods was 1,339, and in 1926 1,260. There was therefore a drop of 79 points on South African goods during the two years. During the same period there was a drop of 55 points on imported goods, from 1,716 in 1924, to 1,661 in 1926. If we compare January, 1926, with January, 1927, then in respect of South African goods there is an increase as a result of the exchange in grain, flour and meat, while imported goods there was a drop of about 100 points. As I have already said when we want to fix the cost of living we must not take wholesale but retail prices. If we examine this in the Bulletin of March. 1927, and the Economist of February, 1927, then we find that as regards the United Kingdom the index figure was in July, 1924, 171 on a basis of 100 in 1914; 170 in July, 1926, a drop therefore of only 1 per cent. during the two years. In January, 1927, the figure was again 172, therefore a point higher once more than in July, 1924. Those are the figures for the United Kingdom, and where is the drop of 15½ per cent. which the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) told us about? The figures for South Africa are as follows: For foodstuffs only on a basis of 1,000 in 1910, the index figure in July, 1924, was 1,339, in July, 1926. 1,337, therefore a drop of 2 points during the two years. January, 1926, compared with January, 1927, shows a drop from 1,334 to 1,327, i.e., 7 points. While in February, 1927, there was again an increase of some points which is attributed by the Bulletin to the price of eggs, which are certainly not affected by customs duty. If we take food, fuel, light and rent together, then we find that the figures for July, 1924, and July, 1926, are precisely the same (1,315), and if we go further and take food, fuel, light, rent and sundries we find that between July. 1924, and July, 1926, there was a reduction of 21 points, viz., from 1,438 to 1,417. This is therefore a clear proof as regards imported articles, in so far as they can be affected by customs duties that there actually was a reduction in the cost of living. We therefore find that the sympathy of the Opposition with the poor people is not only crocodile tears but is based on wrong figures. Such criticism is useless to this House and to the public outside. There is another criticism which was made by the hon. member for Cradock (Mr. G. C. van Heerden) in connection with the agreement between the Government and the Provincial Administration. He said that the Cape had been damaged by the present Government as a result of the financial arrangements of 1924. It is a little late to find out three years after the settlement what the position is, and I want to call the hon. member’s attention to the fact that before this Government tackled the matter the previous Government which he supported also tried to tackle the matter, and made definite proposals as to how it would deal with it. The hon. member’s objection is that in the Cape Province the cost for school-going children over 30,000 in number is only £14 per head in comparison with £16 7s. 6d. per head in the Transvaal, but the former Government wanted to apply that proportion consistently from beginning to end, so that the Cape itself would receive for the first 30,000 children only £14 per head. If the hon. member, therefore, supports the arrangements of his own Government, which he clearly does, then he would be subscribing to a policy which would mean that the Cape would receive an allowance of £71,000 less per annum than what is paid by the present Government. It is the similar treatment of the first 30,000 children which is responsible for the difference. Of course, there are other benefits connected with the Durban agreement but the hon. member specially mentioned the allowances. Then I want still to mention a small point in connection with the collection of the income tax. I want to point out the difficulty the maize farmers experience in this respect. The financial year ends on the 30th June. The maize harvest usually commences in the beginning of June. The harvest is then brought in and in some cases a part thereof sold during June, but the greatest part is only sold after June. Some months later in August or September the maize farmer receives an income tax form to fill in. He has then just finished harvesting and has delivered his maize to a purchaser or co-operative society. He has, however, to use for income tax purposes not the figures of the harvest which he has just disposed of but those of the previous year’s harvest, because the harvest which he has just reaped has only been sold after the 1st July, and therefore comes into the following year. He therefore has to go back 15 months in his figures. In the circumstances it is difficult to accurately give all the data demanded by the commissioner of income tax. All the expenditure which has been incurred during the year on his farm, such as the purchase of bags, ploughshares, the reaping and thrashing money was incurred in the year just completed, but he has to state his revenue for the year preceding. This leads to considerable confusion and I think the only solution is—I do not know if the Minister of Finance can follow this course—is to give the maize farmer the choice of saying that his financial year shall run from the 1st July to 30th June, or from the 1st January to the 30th December. It is permitted to farmers to elect in respect of movable property such as stock. Is this not possible in the case of the maize farmer?

It does not apply.

It is done in certain cases with reference to super tax. I do not say that it is an insuperable difficulty to the farmers, but they have much difficulty in going so far in arrear for their data.

All farmers have the same difficulty, especially the wine farmers.

Certainly not the fruit farmer. His harvest is about this time of the year, and the financial year ends next June and thereafter he can give the data for the past year. Nor does the grain farmer have the difficulty. He reaps his harvest in December and he fills in his own form in August of the new year. It is only the maize farmer who experiences the difficulty. The Minister of Finance has, during the past year, had a good revenue, because the revenue was that of the year before last when the maize harvest was good, and not that of the past year when it was a failure. The farmers had to pay income tax after the bad year on the good harvest of the previous year. This causes a certain amount of confusion.

The Budget has been described by one of the newspapers as a budget without a thrill, and no doubt this induced the leader of the Opposition to bring forward his amendment which practically amounts to a vote of no confidence in the Government. Evidently he thought that if a thrill was required he ought to get into the limelight, and therefore he provided the sham fight we are having to-day. The Opposition, however, know that on the ease put up by their leader there is not the slightest chance of getting a favourable decision either in this House or in the country. All the same we on these benches are particularly glad the right hon. gentleman spoke, because he told us that the South African party is the same old party with the same old programme. Amongst other things he let us understand that the Opposition desired to flood the country with foreign natives on the plea that the mines are short of labour. We have heard these tales before, and there are many different circumstances which go to bring about that shortage. No doubt the large number of boys attracted to the alluvial diamond fields have something to do with it, but this may be only temporary. We who follow the position know that the year before last, when the mines wanted permission to introduce more boys from Mozambique they stopped recruiting in the native territories, and as soon as they were refused natives from Mozambique they soon got them elsewhere. We are afraid that the mines wish to bring in more natives so as to be able to reduce the number of white employees. Amongst other items of S.A.P. policy expounded by the leader of the Opposition was retrenchment on the railways, but that can be effected only at the expense of the staff. Complaint was frequently made on the other side about the civilized labour policy but when we ask the Opposition if it is opposed to a civilized labour policy we have never been able to obtain a definite answer. The mover of the amendment had also referred to the administration of the Industrial Conciliation Act, and alleged it pressed harshly on the farming community, but the Act has not been made applicable in the farming areas, so there was no ground for the complaint. No doubt the leader of the Opposition would like to bring about some more industrial trouble, and objected to conciliatory relations between employer and employees. I listened very carefully to the right, hon. gentleman’s speech, but I could not find anything constructive in his criticism, his only definite suggestion being the reduction of the cost of the public service, which would mean unemployment. The right hon. member was assisted in his criticism of Government policy by the hon. member for Harbour (Maj. G. B. van Zyl) who poses as a railway expert and quoted mountains of figures to prove certain alleged facts. I am sorry the hon. member is not in his seat for I wish to refer to some comparisons he made between the cost of working the railways in New South Wales and Victoria and South Africa, and as during the recess I travelled something like 10,000 miles over the railways of Australia and New Zealand, I can speak about them from first-hand knowledge. Owing to the very liberal way in which the Governments treated me as a visiting Parliamentarian I would be both to criticise them had not the matter been brought up here. As it has been raised, however, I will say that South Africa has very little to learn from the management of the railways on the other side. In fact in many ways our lines are far superior to theirs. It is only a small matter, but the catering on our railways is better and cheaper than in Australia, where a night’s bedding in a train costs anything from 15s. to a guinea, as against 3s. in South Africa. The hon. member for Cape Town (Harbour) should have known that it is unfair to compare the relative costs of running trains in South Africa with other places, as our gradients are very heavy, and costs high in consequence. Victoria, on the other hand, is practically like a billiard table compared with South Africa, and the main line does not rise above 1,000 feet above sea level as against 6,000 feet in South Africa. Then density of population has not been taken into consideration by the hon. member. If the population is very dense, it is very much easier to carry than it is in a country where the population is scattered as we have it here. But despite our physical disadvantages and lack of population, after thoroughly investigating the facts I can say definitely that South Africa can beat Australia’s records in every single particular. The Victorian railways total 4,483 miles, New South Wales 5,656 miles and South Africa 12,481 miles. The working expenses per mile are: Victoria £2,120, New South Wales £2,143, and South Africa £1,460. The working expenses per train mile are: Victoria 10s. 5d., New South Wales 9s. 8d. and South Africa 7s. 9d. The proportion of working expenses to gross revenue is: Victoria 76.46 per cent., New South Wales 73.2 per cent., and South Africa 71.3 per cent. Thus in every particular instance South Africa has the better of the argument. Then when the distribution of traffic is considered it is found that the population of New South Wales is 2,300,000, of which over a million are concentrated in Sydney and suburbs. The suburban traffic is 117,610,989 passengers a year, and for the rest of New South Wales only 10,921,049 passengers are carried. Victoria has a population of 1,694,473, of which Melbourne and suburbs are responsible for 912,130. The suburban traffic is 145,910,182 as against 10,047,058 for the rest of the state. In South Africa the densest railway area is Cape Town and suburbs, where 35,000,000 passengers are carried every year. It is absurd to compare these different places with South Africa. The Sydney railway station is said to be the largest in the world and deals with a thousand trains a day, and yet the hon. member for Cape Town (Harbour) (Maj. G. B. van Zyl) comes here and compares a place like that with a place like Cape Town. Despite these disparities, conveniently left out of the argument by the hon. member, South Africa scores all along the line. Referring to the Minister’s argument that improved efficiency was shown by the fact that the cost of miles run was reduced, the right hon. member for Standerton (Gen. Smuts) stated this to be a childish argument. He said there had been a big expansion of traffic, and it stood to reason that if the railways were economically run there should be a very substantial reduction in the cost per train mile. But the hon. member for Cape Town (Harbour) left out the salient facts, and disregarded the “childish argument” that the largeness of traffic and the density of the population are guiding factors. One might say where you have got big populations in the cities, suburban travel would be very cheap. I will quote the prices of monthly tickets in Australia compared with those of South Africa. I am quoting prices for first class fares. Monthly tickets in New South Wales for a five-mile journey cost £1 7s. 4d., and the same in South Africa costs 19s. 6d. For a ten mile journey in New South Wales the fare is £1 18s. 3d., and in South Africa it is £1 13s. 6d.; for a twenty mile journey in New South Wales, £2 12s. 3d., South Africa £1 19s. 6d. So that in every case, despite all the advantages in favour of Australia, South Africa beats them. Then you come to ordinary suburban fares. In the first class fares on the Australian railways the return is always double the single. New South Wales, one mile suburban ticket costs 3d. single, return 6d.: South Africa, single 3d., return 4d.; three miles, New South Wales 5d. single, 10d. return; South Africa 6d. single, 7d. return; five miles, New South Wales 8d. single, 1s. 4d. return; South Africa 10d. single, 11d. return; eight miles, New South Wales 1s. single, 2s. return; South Africa 1s. 3d. single, 1s. 5d. return. You find the same position over longer periods and for longer distances. The figures quoted by the hon. member for Cape Town (Harbour) regarding New South Wales were quite wrong— his reference book must have been out of date. He quoted for a 50 mile journey 6s. 8d,, instead of 10s. 11d, and 17s. 11d. for 100 miles, whereas instead of that it is £1 1s. 11d. For a 50 mile journey in Victoria the fare is 9s. 9d., New South Wales 10s. 11d., South Africa 9s. 6d., and for 100 miles journey, Victoria 18s. 11d., New South Wales £1 1s. 11d., South Africa 19s. In South Africa there is also the question of week-end excursions and excursions throughout the year, when very cheap fares maintain as compared to the other States. In Victoria excursion fare for 50 miles return is 16s. 3d., and in South Africa the same journey can be done for 9s. 6d. A 100 miles excursion journey in Victoria costs £1 11s. 9d., and in South Africa 19s. The hon. member for Cape Town (Harbour) made another inaccuracy with regard to the rates on meat. He said the price for a 500 mile journey was 93s. 4d. for local consumption and 46s. 8d. for export, but instead of that the prices should have been 83s. 4d. and 41s. 8d. It seemed that the hon. member was so anxious to prove that railway rates were too high that he made them out to be even higher than they actually were. To get back to the speech of the right hon. member for Standerton, who made a great point of the desirability of reductions in coal rates. Coal is now carried very cheaply indeed. Coal for export from Witbank to Delagoa Bay, a distance of 276 miles, is 5s. 9d. a ton, or only a farthing per mile. From Newcastle to Durban, a distance of 270 miles, it is 5s. 8d. a ton, and it should be remembered that these prices are only 8d. per journey more than in pre-war times. I do not know whether the hon. member wants the railways to be handed over entirely to the coal companies, but that would be the effect if the rates are lowered still further. This is proved by a comparison with the prices for carrying maize, which are admittedly very low. Over the same distance for export you pay 5s. 9d. a ton for coal and for maize 14s. 11d. a ton in bags and 10s. a ton in bulk. I will not refer any further to the inaccuracies of the hon. members opposite. Referring generally to the Budget, if the surplus of one-and-a-quarter millions shown indicates the progress of the country, I am pleased, but I am not pleased to see that so much was raised from customs. I am also sorry for the way the surplus is being disposed of. I think, considering the condition of the country and the fact that every State department is starved for money, the surplus could have been better utilized than in paying back debts not actually due. If it was a substantial repayment it would be different, but seeing-that it is only 1/200th part of the debt, I don’t think the moral effect is very great. At any rate the moral effect is out of proportion to the value the country could have got if we had utilized the money in other directions. The idea of paying back the debt is probably orthodox, but I would like to suggest to the Minister that it is prompted by the instincts of a conservative banker and not of a business man who has got a large and expanding business, nor of a Government which considers the happiness and comfort of the people of more importance than the mere financial issue. The incidence of taxation as divulged in this budget is not exactly what many of us would like, though it is much better than it would be if the other side had been in power. We know that the Minister inherited the policy of taxing the people through the customs. I think he has made a mistake in perpetuating that policy, which has no regard to the ability of anybody to pay and which is merely the survival of the old idea of a poll tax. Whenever anyone complains of the high customs duties the Opposition immediately blames the protection policy, but as far as I can see, of the £8,000,000 raised by customs only about £1,000,000 can be fairly said to be levied as protection for local products. As soon as an article gets fully protected it disappears entirely from the customs revenue and we have the instance of the printing and various other industries where there is full protection and no money is raised from customs. When you leave out of the customs list such items as are of a purely protective character, we find that in the past year on clothing and household requisites alone something like £2,000,000 has been raised and on foodstuffs £1,000,000. On these figures it is quite possible for a poor man with a family to pay more in customs duties than a millionaire does. In making his small rebate of £125,000 the Minister has reduced cotton goods by 2½ per cent., but I would point out that cotton goods are used by the poorest people in the community and we still find that a matter of £400,000 will be taken out of the pockets of these poor people for cotton goods. Then we have on necessary clothing and household requisites another £500,000 that the poor people have to pay. Further, with regard to the duties on tea and coffee, I would put it to the Minister that, though in the past tea and coffee were regarded as luxuries that should be taxed, that day has now gone for ever. These are necessaries and essentials and the 4d. per lb. for tea in bulk and 6d. per lb. tea in packets press very heavily indeed on the poor people. If one reckons the traders’ profits on the customs duties for essential clothing and foodstuffs I think one will find that out of the pockets of the very poor section of the community an amount of £1,000,000 is taken through customs duties. I do not suppose it is possible for the Minister to do anything this year, but I hope that in the recess he will look through the customs with the idea of eliminating such items as press unduly on the poor people and have nothing whatever to do with the protective policy, especially in regard to foodstuffs and essential clothing. The Minister gave us a very satisfactory statement in regard to the effect of the protective policy on industries. He showed us that an extra number of Europeans had been employed and that the ratio of white employees to non-Europeans had been increased and the result is now bearing out what has been stated, that by putting on a protective tariff we are going to compel outside companies to come to South Africa and establish their workshops here. That has been the case with the General Motors Company, who are now employing 400 whites, which is better than a new gold mine. It was also pleasing to learn that £2,000,000 of industrial machinery had been introduced into South Africa last year for it is essential if our industries are to be satisfactory that the promoters should be in a position to buy suitable and up-to-date machinery. With the mass production that is going on all over the world it is impossible to put on any protective tariff to meet the case unless the employers are going to provide the necessary machinery and the necessary equipment. Though we often hear about inefficient workmen, inefficient employers are frequently to blame, for the simple reason that they do not provide the essential machinery, which will permit competition on equal terms, for we certainly have men who can do the work in competition with other parts of the world. The Minister of Finance has given us a promise that in the recess he will investigate the effect of the tariff and this gave the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger) an opportunity to deliver a homily on the detrimental effect of protection on the farmers in America and Australia. The hon. member knows, or should know, that it is not the effect of protection which is putting these farmers into a parlous plight at the present time, but the effect of the high value of land. Throughout the world immediately following the war, and in consequence of the high prices then obtaining for farm produce, land went up unduly and people are still nursing the baby. The fact is that in most eases the condition of the farmers is due to the absurd cost of land and the necessity of paying high interest on the land they have bought.

You had better go and tell them that; they don’t seem to know it.

The right hon. the member for Standerton (Gen. Smuts), speaking at Malmesbury the other night, is reported as having said that the tremendous taxation which had been placed on farming implements had increased the cost of production, and unless some relief were obtained, the farmers would be ruined. I am sorry that the right hon. gentleman is not in his place for I do not know whether he has been correctly reported, but, if the report is correct, then he is entirely of the rails, for the simple reason that there is no taxation on farming implements. But these are the sort of arguments that are broadcast in order to discount the protective policy of the country. I have here a very interesting report of the tariff board in Australia, published in August, 1925. The evidence brought the board to the conclusion that the prices of commodities with a protective policy are not based on import cost. The hon. member for Cape Town (Central) in season and out of season tells the farmers that it is necessary for them to have free trade, because they have to deal with the world’s competition. What he does not tell them is the effect of having no competition amongst importers. We know that the supply of agricultural implements, etc., to South Africa is now in the hands of trusts and, therefore, it is very essential that we should not only be able to supply the things here, but also be in a position to compete with other people and see that our people do not get overcharged. South African conditions cannot be compared with those ruling elsewhere, otherwise I would try and prove that, despite the fact that agricultural implements come in here free, elsewhere where heavy duties are paid the same implements are sold more cheaply. The tariff board in Australia dealt more particularly with agricultural implements and I am, therefore, going to quote some figures in regard to them. In the Argentine the Government has the same ideas as the hon. member for Gape Town (Central), namely, that agricultural implements and everything else of use to the farmer should be brought in free. It is the same in New Zealand. On the other hand, to encourage local industry, Australia put a duty of 45 per cent. on agricultural machinery. The Australian Tariff Board found that this 45 per cent. did not increase the price to the consumers, and, though the importing companies refused to show their books to the board, whilst the local manufacturers were only too pleased to show theirs, the board were able to get at the facts and place them on record. It was found that with regard to header harvesters, made by a firm in America, the identical machine is sold in the Argentine where it is admitted free of duty, for £486, while in Australia, with a duty of 45 per cent. to be paid, it is sold for £344; the simple explanation being that there is no competition in the Argentine. Then, in regard to reapers and binders, in the Argentine where machines are admitted free, the price is £103 10s., while in Australia with the 45 per cent. import duty, the same machines are sold at £102 in the open market, while the Australian-made article is sold for £92 10s. The Tariff Board in its reports asks the question: “What effect on prices has the tariff of 1920 had on agricultural implements?” There was a heavy tariff put on in 1920. The board gives figures, and shows that between the years 1920-’25 in twenty leading lines there has been a reduction of 18 per cent. to 41 per cent. in the prices of agricultural implements since the tariff was put on. The board state that they found the cost of the Australian implements was 6½ per cent. more than the imported, excluding the duty, but they also point out that the benefits derived from having the industry in the country and providing local markets for the farmers more than compensated for the 6½ per cent. difference in price. The board which was a responsible board appointed by the Commonwealth of Australia sums up like this—

I would like to quote from the Tariff Board’s report—

These facts go to prove that where there is no longer protection the importing people can do as they please. Instead of the farmers being in a better position with the free interchange of implements, with a lack of competition as in New Zealand and the Argentine, they would probably be in a much worse position, and the same thing would apply with regard to other commodities. Therefore, I hope that when the Minister is considering the revision of the tariff he will be careful not to imperil our industries for any momentary gain, because judging by the experience elsewhere, so soon as protection is removed, the overseas firms will raise their prices. The Minister has forecasted legislation which the Government is to bring in next session, and I would ask him to investigate the insurance business of this country. Insurance is necessary if one wants to avoid being ruined or having one’s peace of mind disturbed, but insurance business is peculiar in that whatever amount of competition, it does not reduce the price, because all the companies have a general tariff. There are 50 companies operating in this country in general insurance, and competition is so keen that I have heard of cases where no less than 33 and l/3rd per cent. has been paid for commission, and all this and other heavy expenses and profits have to be paid by the public. I think I can make out a case, if not for direct Government interference at any rate for the Government to take some steps to restrict the profits made. I am going to compare the position of our companies here with those in Australia and New Zealand, where the Government found it imperative to take some action. I will not deal with life insurance, because the companies are practically all mutual; and I would commend the action of the Minister in exempting them from income tax. There is just one thing I would like to say in regard to life insurance companies, and that is that the overseas companies trading in this country have a cover in this country of £18 19s. 4d. per £100 of their risks, while local companies have £29 9s. per £100. If the overseas companies maintained the same rate as the local companies, it would mean an extra five million pounds for investment in this country. We know that insurance companies in bad times are supposed to do bad business, but despite that, we find that the profits realised in South Africa just after the war were very good indeed. During the years 1917 to 1922—life insurance companies excepted—fire insurance companies received premiums of £6,077,234; paid claims of £3,566,488, and their expenses and profits amounted to £2,510,746. Marine insurance companies, premiums, £1,072,428; claims paid, £252,168; expenses and profits, £820,260, Workmen’s compensation, premiums, £1,873,199; claims paid. £993,367; and expenses and profits, £879,832. Motor-car insurance companies, premiums, £788,866; claims paid. £485,563; and expenses and profits, £303,303. Livestock insurance, premiums, £18,146; claims paid, £8,143; and expenses and profits, £10,003. In other words, for every pound paid in premiums to these insurance companies, 9s. 10d. was retained for expenses and profits. The largest business, of course, is fire, and the figures I am going to quote are from the latest reports as supplied by the companies themselves for 1925. During that year the premiums paid to fire insurance companies amounted to £605,896; claims paid, £149,829; commission, £97,033; expenses of management and profits, £359,034. For every pound paid in premiums, 5s. was devoted to claims, and 15s. to expenses and profits. In New Zealand, where the same position prevailed at one time, the Government 20 years ago started a company of its own. Naturally, there was very keen competition at the start, but now, after 20 years, the State office does the largest business in New Zealand. It started with no capital at all, and it has built up a reserve fund of £1,000,000. Not only that, but it has made continuous rebates, and the Government statistician has reported that these rebates and rebates forced from the private companies have made a difference of £4,000,000, which the policyholders have retained. Another branch of insurance, and one in which members of these benches have taken a particular interest, is workmen’s compensation, because that applies to employees who get a small salary. I think I can make out here an incontrovertible case for State intervention. One may do without fire insurance, if one is so minded, but in the case of workmen’s compensation, the Government says that if a man is hurt at his work, the employer must pay compensation. The attitude in South Africa is that we say an employer must insure his workmen, and then we leave him to the tender mercies of the insurance companies, who charge what they like. I would point out, from experience elsewhere, that we could not only increase the benefits to the workmen, but reduce the premiums to the workers. In Queensland, the Labour Government brought in a Bill which made workmen’s compensation a State monopoly. Before that it was found that for every shilling paid in premiums, 4d. was going in claims and 8d. in profits and expenses, but since the Government took the matter over, the compensation has been doubled, and the premiums remain the same, and now for every shilling paid in premiums, 10d. goes for benefits, and 2d. for expenses. Further, under Government institutions of this kind, there are no disputes and no law cases; they are only too glad to pay out. In Victoria they also have a special Government department to deal with workmen’s compensation. It is made compulsory for every employer to have his men insured in some approved company. This Victorian company has increased the benefits by 33⅓ per cent., and has reduced premiums by 10 per cent. The working expenses are 12.9 per cent., the cash assets already £119,000, despite the fact that the department is now run on mutual lines, and in the past four years rebates amounting to £52,897 have been made to policyholders. It is not necessary to go as far as Australia for an example, for we have an excellent company on the Rand, the Rand Mutual. When men meet with an accident, they are well treated by this company, and payments are more liberal than by private companies. When you come to contrast the Rand Mutual—which is an adjunct of the Chamber of Mines—with the private insurance companies, you will see the argument for State interference. The premiums received by the Rand Mutual last year were £130,686; the payments £107,725; and the expenses £11,411; and they placed £11,550 to reserve. The percentage of expenses to premium is 8¾ per cent., or about 1s. 9d. in the pound of premiums. It may be said that the Rand Mutual is not a fair comparison, because they have no competition. But a fair comparison is the State office in Victoria and all the companies of South Africa. In Victoria the premiums for the past year were £64,825. and the claims paid £42,546; in the South African offices the premiums were £158,000. and the claims £59,000. The expenses in Victoria were £8,404, and in South Africa £64,370. The profits to policyholders in Victoria were £13,875. and the profits to shareholders in South Africa were £34,239. In other words, on every pound spent on premiums in Victoria, they paid 17s. 4d. in claims and rebates to policyholders, and the expenses were 2s. 8d., whereas in South Africa the figures were 7s. 10d. and 12s. 2d. respectively. With regard to marine insurance, it is not a big item in South Africa, but it is apparently very profitable. Of £76,286 of net premiums paid, claims paid amounted to only £31,000, viz., 11s. 10d. in profits for every £1 premium. Motor-car insurance is also a matter which ought to be investigated by the Government, because quite a number of people drive motors and have no insurance. When an accident happens they have no assets, and the sufferers have to pay their own expenses, and probably have life-long injuries. The premiums on this class of insurance during the year amounted to £264,101. claims to £118,762, commission to £47,272, expenses of management £60,987, and profits, £37,080. For every £1 in premiums. 8s. 6d. went in settlement of claims, and 11s. 6d. to expenses and profits. The insurance companies often tell us that motor-car insurance is run at a loss, but if they had but double the rate of expenses of the Rand Mutual or the Victorian Society, they could reduce the premiums by 40 per cent., and if they did so, practically everybody who has a motor-car would feel he was able to pay an insurance policy on his car. The Government could then insist on every man who got a motor licence taking out an insurance policy at the same time. I hope that the Minister will note this matter of insurance, and will remember it when he brings in fresh legislation.

The hon. Minister of Finance has been in the happy position this year of dangling another surplus before the public, and when a discussion has been raised on this question the Minister justifies his methods of getting out his balance and his methods of taxation on two grounds, the first of which is that he had not increased taxation to get this surplus, and the other is—

No doubt the Minister had that Kruschen feeling when he put that balance up, but I think that feeling has disappeared after the comments of hon. members of the two wings of his party. From these two wings he has had support on various aspects of his budget, but he has also had criticisms, and these two are entirely different and contrary in certain respects. We had the hon. member for Bethlehem (Dr. D. G. Conradie) in a very long and eloquent speech dealing with many aspects and figures. The figures may be said to have come out like a mountain torrent. His great grievance with the Minister of Finance is, as I gather, that when farmers have had a good year they have to pay out in a bad year when they have not sufficient money with which to pay taxation, but that is not peculiar to farmers. Every person has good and bad years, and unless they put money by in good years they cannot pay in a bad year. Why the hon. member should make an appeal in the case of farmers only I do not know, unless it is that there are a good many in his constituency. Then we have had the hon. member for Boksburg (Mr. McMenamin) enunciating some fine financial problems indeed. He thinks the budget an excellent one, and incidentally he accused the right hon. member for Standerton (Gen. Smuts) of desiring to flood the country with foreign natives when he knows he has no justification for saying that, when he knows that if he should attack anybody at all it is the hon. member for Pietersburg (Mr. j. F. Tom Naudé) from the Government side, when he enunciated most fully and ably that greater use should be made of these natives; and the hon. member for Marico (Mr. J. J. Pienaar) also did so. There is none so blind as he who will not see. This is the sort of statement we hear for propaganda purposes, like the statements made by the Minister of Defence at Salt River, if he is correctly reported, that the right hon. member for Standerton had said that inefficiency and negligence were universal in the service, when he knows perfectly well that the fright hon. member said it was notorious that there is a certain amount in the service, and that the older members of the railway service were amongst the first to regret that fact.

He went a little further than that.

There are many passages in Omar Khayyam—the present which the Minister received—which will do him a good deal of good, if he takes them in the spirit in which they are written. But this method of propaganda inside and outside this House we resent in the utmost degree.

I hope it is not as bad as at Malmesbury—the statement with regard to the taxation on the machinery of farmers.

Do not worry about that. The Minister of Finance was the first to resent propaganda on misrepresentations of what our people and leaders have said to the farmers.

“Evil communications corrupt good manners.”

Yes, an old saying. Then the hon. member for Boksburg regrets that the Minister has used the surplus in the way in which he did—

We have heard the criticism for the last couple of years that the budgets are budgets which the South African party might have introduced. It is a bit of hyperbole, but what is at the back of it is that the hon. member resents the orthodox way of dealing with the finances, and says that the happiness of the people is more important. We had very nearly from the hon. member the doctrine of the repudiation of our debts, because he talks of that one and a quarter millions to pay debts which are not really due. Will the Minister of Finance tell the House what debts not really due have been paid off by that million and a quarter, and what he thinks of the pure high-flooded doctrine of finance laid down by the hon. member with the approving cheers of the hon. member for Brakpan (Mr. Waterston)?

I was asleep.

He was not the only one. One just criticism the hon. member for Boksburg did make, and that was the use of the taxation of the customs for the purpose of raising money in ways that do add to the cost of living. After we had the elaborate argument of the hon. member for Bethlehem (Dr. D. G. Conradie) that the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger) was quite wrong, in his statement on the effect of the customs duty on the cost of living, we had the hon. member for Boksburg stating that there had been an increase of £400,000 on the cost of cotton goods.

I reduced the taxation on that. Mention another. I would like to get some instances from the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (South) (Sir William Macintosh). I would like you to give me some instances.

I am quoting his financial expert down there. I think the Minister also has been asleep. The hon. member quoted £500,000 on clothing and household requisites, and these two items together make it roughly £1,000,000. The Minister of Finance says he has not increased taxation. It may be he has not during the last year, in the way of bringing about the actual surplus, but the Minister will agree with me that the direct taxation in this country, on the average, is from 70 to 75 per cent. of the total taxation, and of that amount at least 50 per cent. is obtained from customs. I am giving the approximate figures, of course. That means close on 40 per cent. of the income of the country comes from customs. In March, 1925, £7,000,000 and in March, 1926, £8,000,000.

But there are periods when the importations were much higher, and you will not say that the Government increased taxation.

On the biggest items of taxation there were very high protective duties from which the Minister raised £750,000 more than was anticipated.

The importations increased.

The large surplus this year is almost entirely due to the effect of these increased duties imposed the year before.

It is not so.

The Minister can contradict me afterwards.

Yes, I shall.

Almost the whole of the Minister’s surplus is derived actually, in the first place, by the customs duties being £874,000 above his estimates, which already included a very large sum based on these extra high duties. Whether that increased taxation is, or is not, right taxation it is practically the main source from which the Minister’s large surplus has been derived. Every now and again, when members on this side of the House raise the issue of a reduction in expenditure, the Minister says: “Show us where we can reduce it.” That is a very good debating point, but it is not a statesmanlike point. After all, the Minister knows perfectly well that nobody outside the Cabinet or the Government’s departments can put forward definite concrete proposals for reducing the expenditure.

You can make suggestions.

I will start with the suggestions the Auditor-General has made. We have to bear in mind that the public debt is the highest it has ever been in the history of this country. The revenue from taxation is also the highest it has ever been, and that revenue includes the tax paid by the poor man on cotton goods and condensed milk. The general expenditure is estimated for this year at close on £28,000,000.

Is that the highest?

Not quite, because there are one or two years in which it was exceeded. The highest figure attained, £30,000,000, was in 1921-’22, but that was under entirely abnormal circumstances, and the Government I was supporting brought that down to £24,000,000. In any case an expenditure of £30,000,000 under the extraordinary conditions then prevailing is not an expenditure which can be compared with to-day’s expenditure, when we are back to normal. In 1921’22 the expenditure was inflated to an extraordinary degree, and no Government could have reduced it. Did not the House at that time ring with the denunciations of hon. members on the Labour benches, of the right hon. member for Standerton (Gen. Smuts) for starving the public servants, and did they not then point out that the sovereign was then worth only 12s. 6d.? Although to-day’s expenditure of £28,000,000 is less than £30,000,000, when you compare the two on a proper basis the expenditure to-day is in every sense a far higher expenditure than that of 1921-’22. The £30,000,000 expenditure was on the basis of paper money, but to-day it is made in gold.

In those days the civil servant was paid with paper, but now he is paid in gold.

That was not the attitude the Minister took up when the Graham report was being discussed the other day. The expenditure of £30,000,000 five years ago was far less in real value than is to-day’s expenditure. When you remember that that was a post-war period, can you point to any country which was so quickly restored to normal conditions as South Africa was? Our loan expenditure is only just below what it was during the first two years of the war, when the question of curtailing the expenditure was secondary to the safety of the State. To-day’s loan expenditure, except for the years 1914, 1915 and 1916, is higher than it has ever been since the establishment of Union, while the debt interest is also higher, and when you make proper allowances for circumstances which I have already explained, the general expenditure to-day is higher than it has ever been in the history of this country. It is not the business of the Opposition to make suggestions as to how expenditure should be reduced, but we are quite prepared to follow the lead of the Auditor-General, who in paragraph 26 of his annual report refers to the very grave necessity for checking the growth of interest on public debt, which, of course, amounts to checking the growth of the debt itself. The public debt is a means by which the development of the country can be assisted, but that, praiseworthy as it is, must be carried out within reasonable limits. Every thinking man will agree with the right hon. member for Standerton (Gen. Smuts) that however desirable a thing may be if we have not the money to pay for it we must do without, The happiness of the people depends in the long run on the financial issue and its proper treatment, and I would remind the Minister of Finance of the promise he made in London, when he said that South Africa was not going in for any rash or unsound financial experiments.

Hear, hear.

What about the other wing of the party, which is going to do wonderful things, and to which the happiness of the people is more important than the financial issue, although this is a contradiction in terms. The Auditor-General, in paragraph 41 of his report, suggests that Government should discontinue its policy of adding years of service to pensioned officials, thereby placing an additional burden on the revenue. Another suggestion of the Auditor General is contained in Section 42 of his report, and deals with the appointment of members of Parliament on commissions and the payment to them of allowances during the Parliamentary session. Then I refer the Minister to Section 55 of the Auditor-General’s report in which he points out there is a curious practice going on by which admission fees of officials are being paid in certain professions and not in others. The Auditor-General does not think that should go on. He also refers to the heavy supplies of stylos and fountain pens which are indicative of the extravagance which must be checked. We know nothing about these things until our attention is drawn to them. In paragraph 68 he refers to the enormous expenditure in Government garages and the hiring of motor transport. He says—

I regard that as a danger signal for the future. When I look at agriculture and education. I find that these two departments show a result of £33,184 under the heading of motor transport during the year. Then we have the higher status of the High Commissioner. I would like to know from the Minister what justification there is for this high expenditure. It is only symptomatic, but it is symptomatic of a very serious position indeed. Take the Ministerial motor-cars. What sums have been paid for the very high-powered motor-cars in use by some Ministers? I do not know whether the Minister of Finance, in his reply, will give us a statement as to the cost of the various cars for the various Ministers. Some of them are of a most expensive description.

I don’t know anything about Ministers’ cars, except the Prime Minister’s.

I should like to know the cost of the Prime Minister’s car, then, and I would like to know what other cars there are besides. My attention has been drawn to an item of expenditure which includes an item of £7 for expenses for an official to select a carpet for Groote Schuur at a cost of £250. That could have been done by the High Commissioner’s office in London. That is one of the items suggested in the Auditor-General’s report. Then we come to the Wage Board, the Elgin training settlement, and the paper the “Industrial Review.” We are not in a position to find out about these things unless we get the Auditor-General’s report, Now take the “Social and Industrial Review.” Why that paper is being so expensively printed, one does not know. On pages 308 and 309 of the Auditor-General’s report, I find figures quoted of the high cost of publishing the “Industrial Review” over and above the cost of the previous publication. The costs here are only for printing, but the services of the officers who prepared the magazine are not shown. Take an item like the Elgin training settlement. When that was started, I remember the criticism being made of it by the hon. member for Caledon (Mr. Krige), who condemned the class of building, the situation and the general scheme, and I think the Minister of Defence, then Minister of Labour, treated it with contempt. On page 306 of the Auditor-General’s report we find a suggestive item concerning what took place about the Elgin settlement, and it points out—

The action which was brought against tile Government was settled by compromise entirely in favour of the people who objected. You had an expensive experiment conducted on crude lines for a body of settlers unsuited to be there, and the whole thing was a costly blunder, and it was due to the dogged obstinacy of the Minister of Labour at the time. We should like to know what the Government and to pay for disregarding the sound advice given to them simply because it came from this side. I want to deal with a matter on page 303 of the Auditor-General’s report from the point of view of suggestions for the purpose of economizing. Take the conciliation boards and the industrial councils under the Industrial Conciliation Act, 1924. The conciliation boards put up under our Industrial Conciliation Act had within it all the germs of peaceful settlements of all disputes which the country is likely to have for some time. We object to the Wages Board on the ground that it was going to be one board for the whole country, and that you were going to eliminate settlement by voluntary agreement and substitute settlement by autocratic and bureaucratic methods. The present Minister of Labour said that a grave responsibility rested on the Government to choose the right method and the right men to carry out this Act, and they chose a barrister and two members of the magisterial bench. With every respect for my own profession and the magistrates, I ask what are the qualifications of a practising barrister or a magistrate for the difficult task of discharging the task of settling wages throughout the country?

Australia selected judges.

That makes no difference. Having made this blunder, as time will show, you will find on page 303 of the Auditor General’s report what this is costing—

Next comes the Wage Board and cost accountancy—

Did this House know at the time that this board was going to be such a costly thing? That is the position, and I say, with regard to these things, hampered as we are by want of knowledge of the facts, we do know that the Government has before it a considerable field of investigation based on lines of inquiry of that kind. I go further. How did the previous Government reduce the expenditure from £30,000,000 down to £24,000,000? They reduced it by narrowly examining how expenditure could be reduced, and they did it by means of a Geddes committee.

But what about the altered railway interest? That is the sort of argument we have been listening to all the afternoon.

I will make all allowance for the alteration in the railway interest. It is a big sum, and I had forgotten it. I thank the Minister for reminding me. There was a very big reduction made by the previous Government.

£1,700,000.

It can only be done by having a body to make a survey of the whole of the services, and to see what reductions can be made, and not by leaving it to the finance committee to fight every department. Have a body, a Geddes committee, such as the Government had at that time—

Did you have a Geddes committee? Really?

Yes. The hon. member for Cape Town (Central), the hon. member for Fordsburg, and Mr. Burton, who was then Minister of Finance.

We have not seen any effects of it.

What was the outcome of it?

The outcome was a considerable reduction of expenditure, such as we are not going to get unless the same sort of thing is done here. We have had three years’ surpluses. The first one, 1924-’25, was what might be called the Burton surplus, the one based upon the estimates of Mr. Burton. Then we had in 1925-’26 the Custodian of Enemy Property surplus, and this year we have got what might be called “the surprise budget. When I think of the attacks that were made consistently, session after session, on the whole policy of the Government during those trying years of upheaval, when one thinks particularly of the attacks that were made upon the Government in connection with the treatment of enemies and enemy property, one must think, with a certain amount of wonder, of the complacency with which the Minister of Finance comes forward, and shows how his finances were balanced by means of the funds in the hands of the Custodian of Enemy Property. When one thinks of the Minister’s complacency about these things, one thinks of little Jack Horner, who put in his thumb and pulled out a plum, and said what a sharp boy am I! The plum was left there, and little Jack Horner pulled it out. I would like to deal for a little while with the Government’s industrial policy, because it is wrapped up with the extreme taxation, which we do not object to merely on the ground of protection, but on the ground that it is excessively high protection. What was the South African party Government’s policy in regard to industrial protection? We have the Workmen’s Compensation Act, the Factory Act, the Apprenticeship Act and the Industrial Conciliation Act. These four made up a framework of a splendid scheme for dealing with the settlement and avoidance of industrial disputes. Their policy was to see what an industry could bear, to see how far an industry was affected by the changes made, to see that the industry was not killed, and to give economic factors due weight. What has been the Pact policy? The Pact policy is, first of all, this very high protection, and the Wage Act a Wage Act which is based, as we held all the while, and as we still contend, on fundamentally unsound principles, which substitutes for the voluntary settlement of disputes the settlement of disputes by one board, not boards, as we intended, in different areas, but one board laying down one uniform cast-iron rule for practically the whole of the country. We again warn the Government on that policy, as likely to lead to very great difficulty and trouble. We are now in the midst of a building boom; the real time to weigh up that policy will be when the boom is over, and we find to what extent not only skilled, but semi-skilled and unskilled men are thrown out of jobs, and to what extent unemployment is increased. The alluvial diggings are absorbing to a certain extent the unemployed in this country, but I believe that the effect of the alluvial diggings, so far from being a blessing to this country, may eventually prove to be a curse. They are vanishing, and when the temporary alleviation is gone, what is going to be the result? Look at what has been done by the previous Government in dealing with the phenomenal position which arose after the war. The last Government realized that the only way to cure unemployment—it may seem very trite, but it is true—is to have employment, and finding employment does not mean getting two or three men to do one man’s job, or simply adding to the total number of men employed, but it means getting the people at reasonable proper rates to do a reasonable amount of work, and seeing that the work is genuine work and genuinely done, and the pay is genuinely earned. I would like to deal for a few minutes with the question of the white labour policy. That is a matter on which that arch-propagandist, the Minister of Railways, has done an enormous amount of propaganda during the last few years. The Minister of Railways very often forgets that he is the Minister of Railways, but he never forgets that he was the party organizer and party propagandist, and what is good for propaganda purposes in the hands of the Minister of Railways is not necessarily a good thing in itself, or good for the country. The Minister of Railways has gone round the country doing a tremendous amount of propaganda work in connection with his white labour policy.

I never spoke about white labour. I spoke about civilized labour.

It was a white labour policy. It is now a civilized labour policy. What I ask the Minister is, is it a white labour policy in the Transvaal, and is it called

in the Cape?

I have not got two policies.

No, but the Government has two policies. We want to know what is meant by “civilized labour policy,” because we have never been against a proper civilized labour policy provided that policy is justifiable and justified. We have raised a good many questions in connection with the labour policy. I remember I asked the Minister one day if it included civilized natives. He said—

If there is a civilized labour policy applicable to whites and coloured, then do the whites and coloured get equal treatment, because if they don’t you have two civilized labour policies.

Do you advocate the same treatment?

Don’t let us fence, please. The Minister will not put me off.

I clearly indicated what our policy is.

Sometimes these things only come out with a corkscrew, and it was only after a long time that we found what was in the coloured bottle, and what was iff the white bottle. As far as the coloured are concerned, they are treated as being on a different civilized standard. They get different pay— and do they come on the establishment? No. Thus the Minister has two policies, one an open one, and one extracted under pressure.

Their sins have found them out.

We pointed out that the policy of the Government seems to be a haphazard one. Then we had this report, and a very valuable report it is. We may agree with it or we may not, but when gentlemen of the eminence of these three gentlemen have compiled such a document it deserves the utmost consideration, and I hope the Minister will agree, and the House will insist, that the report shall be printed, because without that the public throughout the country are largely in the dark as to the real meaning of the Government’s policy. We said that if more was being paid for the civilized labour policy than the labour was worth, then it might be that the policy was justified on national grounds, but the public must know what cost is being paid for this policy, and the second point is that the proper authority shall bear the burden and pay the cost, and not the wrong authority. Our criticisms, of course, have been distorted by these political propagandists. We want the white man to have his proper place, the coloured man his proper place, and the native to have a fair show, so that in helping one along we do not do a grave injustice to the other.

Do you endorse the policy of my predecessor?

The same old red herring! The Minister is so subtle and so clever that one is almost tempted at the time to meet him on the same ground until you know afterwards that the whole thing is just a little dodge. The Minister might be a well-known character in one of Dickens’ books known by the name of the “Artful Dodger.” I say that with all respect.

Now we will get back to the facts.

I have been dealing with facts all the time, and I was still dealing with facts when I gave the Minister that name. We will come back to facts. We would like to know why this report was not laid on the Table some months ago. It is dated the 30th November, 1926, and the House should have had it long ago. The criticisms contained in that document are of a very important nature; and here I wish to repudiate, and I hope the Minister will repudiate, as I am sure the country will, the doctrine laid down by the hon. member for Troyeville (Mr. Kentridge) when he says that that report had been made by officers out of sympathy with the Government, and he hoped the Minister would see that reports were made by officials who were in sympathy. A more wretched thing to say of officers owing a duty to the country—they will never owe a duty to the hon. member—one cannot imagine. The country is entitled to resent, and the House is entitled to resent, the theory that when honourable members of the service are appointed in this way they cook their report to suit the taste of the Minister instead of what these gentlemen did do, and that is to present a very serious, earnest and able report. This report refers to the junior labourers and to the majority of them as being of immature physique and incapable of doing justice to their work. That is the criticism we have been making. Do these men earn their pay? They point out that they have found a shortage of engine men with the result that in many cases engine cleaners have been called upon to act as firemen, and, unless remedied, this shortage will react against the official running of trains. That is a very serious matter. Another passage reads—

When the right hon. member for Standerton (Gen. Smuts) made that statement the other day he was challenged, yet here we have it in the report. The report goes on—

The second is placing men in a position who did not have sufficient training. The committee goes on to point out that you cannot judge the problem simply on a wage basis or a work basis. The two have to be set off against each other. The committee points out that in many cases the byowner type is not suitable by training or education to go satisfactorily into the labour market. This is the very point we have been referring to over and over again. The committee also points out that there is undoubtedly work for which natives are more suited than Europeans, which is what we have said over and over again from these benches. We have had this haphazard method of judging by heads. As long as the total is larger every year this is—

irrespective of the results in work. The committee also points out that there are many European labourers in the service who are physically incapable of performing heavy labour work efficiently, although in other respects they are suitable. The committee finds that some of these have not learnt the value of work, and the real meaning of discipline. There, again, you have criticisms which justify the remark made by the right hon. member for Standerton (Gen. Smuts) the other afternoon, and other hon. members. Their criticisms are borne out by the report of men who sat for about 170 days and examined about 180 witnesses, and gave their considered report after examining the judgment of a number of local sub-committees. I have shown that the Minister of Railways and Harbours keeps two different policies under two thimbles. We have white labour under one thimble, and coloured labour under another, and they are classed together as the civilized labour policy. There is such a marked difference between them that they cannot be called one, but they are two, entirely separate. The Minister of Railways and Harbours challenged me about white labour, and about the two different policies, but what about the Minister of Labour’s letter which we tried on two or three occasions, on question, in this House, to get out—the letter the Minister Of Defence found such difficulty in laying on the Table in the absence of the Minister of Labour? What there was in his difficulty it is difficult to know. But it was shortly before the provincial council elections. It was from the Secretary of Labour to the Provincial Council Secretary, explaining the desirability of affording facilities for training, it was dated 23rd August, 1926, and it stated—

and in (“B”) the letter states—

Is that a “civilized” or a “white labour” policy? While we have had two policies from the Minister of Railways and Harbours, we have a third policy from the Minister of Labour. I ask the House and the country, where is the triple policy of civilized labour? When we are told we are against the civilized labour policy—

So you are.

We want to know what it is, and probably the hon. member for Brakpan (Mr. Waterston) himself does not know what it is. We have given pledges that we are in favour of men having fair wages for their work under the Industrial Conciliation Act. What is being paid under the civilized labour policy at the Docks? 3s. 6d. a day, and I challenge the Minister to deny that.

Paid to whom?

To coloureds, and here we have the hon. member for Brakpan rushing in and challenging this when he does not know himself what his own Government’s policy is, when translated into facts. Our policy about white labour has been perfectly clearly defined, and is perfectly clear. It is—give every white mar every chance, so that he can have a fair wage.

With the emphasis on the “fair.”

And do not camouflage by pretending that you are giving the coloured man equal treatment when you are giving him different treatment. Do not pretend it is a civilized policy when you are excluding natives who are civilized. If you show the country what the policy is, and what its cost is, you will have a different reception to that policy. The Pact bargain has resulted in the—

Greater prosperity of the country.

The Minister is waking up, and has got over the difficulty about putting that letter over in the House. We look at the nature of the legislation this Government has introduced. When we look at the class of legislation that the Government has been introducing—diamond control, steel and iron control, fruit export control—one gets a fine specimen of the way in which the Government is carrying out the policy of the socialist wing of the party. I will quote a statement by the present Minister of Labour made by him in 1919 as to the aims of the Labour party—

It may be said that this was the objective in 1919. Well, I have a report of the congress of the Transvaal Labour party held in 1926, when Mr. Kentridge, who is not unknown at Troyeyille, said that when the Pact was entered into with the Nationalists a pledge was given to the Labour party regarding the establishment of State banking and control of credit, but that had not been carried out by the Government. This was said in the presence of the Minister of Defence, who was one of the creators of the Pact, and no denial was made. Mr. Kentridge went on—

Under the heading of—

a number of statements were made, but this promise regarding State banking and control of credit was not denied.

Do you make that a grievance against the Government?

The Minister has studied logic and he knows that his question is an attempt at side-tracking. I am not making a grievance of it, but despite the worthy efforts of the Minister of Finance, who is against rash financial experiments, one wonders how long the Government is going to stand up against the danger that those who made the bargain are going to insist on their pound of fresh. We say that with all this talk about State shipping, banking and credit, the ideal set out by the Minister of Labour is still the ideal which is, being pressed for by the Labour party. Some of these ideals they have already achieved, and others they intend to achieve.

You flatter us.

We fear that with the Labour wing always insisting on its pound of flesh the country may be landed in most dangerous difficulties. We feel justified in pointing out the danger to our credit by their lavish ideas of expenditure and the wasteful way in which the country is committed to expenditure of all kinds and with no effort made to reduce expenditure, and we say that the amendment of the right hon. member for Standerton has the most cordial support of the country.

The present system of party Government in the world demands that the Opposition should play practically just as important a part as the Governmental party, and it is the duty of the Opposition to keep a watchful eye, and to point out to the country when the Government makes a mistake and badly controls public affairs. It is also their duty to exercise constructive criticism in order to gain the confidence of the country, and in proportion as the Government makes mistakes so to gain the confidence of the people, that they subsequently obtain an opportunity of carrying out their policy. I fear, however, that if one is to judge by the way in which the present Opposition fulfils its role on must say that they were weak as a Government, and are weaker still as an Opposition. Hon. members may laugh, but during the four or five years I have been a member of Parliament I have never yet seen a weaker display on the part of the Opposition during the budget debate than has been the case this year. Not one hon. member opposite has yet offered any criticism which was worth listening to, and not one as vet has been able to put his finger on misdeeds of the Government. I sympathize with the Opposition because there is no doubt that this Government has done its work in such a way that the Opposition find it difficult to discover mistakes and to convince the country that it deserves public confidence and ought to be given a chance of coming into power again. The Opposition has not only disappeared, but is becoming a growing burden upon the people.

You mean a burden on the Government.

The hon. member for Standerton (Gen. Smuts) as leader of the Opposition has not allowed the budget debate to pass this year without a motion of no confidence in the Government. His motion says that the House refuses to go into committee of supply, and that the Opposition in that way wants to draw the attention of the country to four points which they object to. The points are, firstly, that there is no reduction in the public expenditure, secondly, that excessive extraordinary taxation is imposed on the people, thirdly, that detrimental restrictions are put on the agricultural population and, fourthly, that there has been no reduction in railway rates. It will be interesting to examine these points one by one and to compare the acts of the former Government with those of the present Government. Let us first of all see how far the Opposition is right in accusing the Government of not having effected a reduction in the public expenditure. What did the former Government do? In nine years the expenditure from revenue was doubled. The hon. member for Rondebosch (Mr. Close) wanted to make out that the former Government was in power during a period of inflation, but the inflation did not last nine years and it surely remains a fact that the expenditure doubled during the nine years. In 1916-’17 the increase on the previous year was 12.58 per cent.; in 1917-’18, 5.51 per cent.; in 1918-’19, 15.74 per cent.; in 1919-’20, 16.90 per cent.; and in 1920-’21, 26.2 per cent. This tremendous increase in expenditure took place under the former Government, but now the Opposition want to warn the country against the present Government because the annual expenditure is increasing. What, however, is the annual increase? In 1924 the first year of the present Government’s regime the increase was only 2.08 per cent.; in 1925. 7.63 per cent.; and in 1926, 2.9 per cent. This year the increase is less than ¼ per cent. and that in spite of the fact that this Government is systematically engaged in properly looking after the essential services which were neglected by the late Government. We know what essential services the Government is now having to provide for. Two years ago provision had to be made for a period of 16 years to pay £180,000 annually, to make the pension fund of the old Cape civil service solvent. £560,000 had to be provided last year to cover the deficit in the Administrative and Clerical Pension Fund, and we know how it needed more than £3,000,000 to bring the two railway pension funds into order. These are all essential services which must be kept going, and the present Government has to see that the neglected funds are once more put on a sound basis. In spite of this we find, however, that no noteworthy increase in expenditure took place, but only a slight increase. Then there are other necessary services, such as the grants to the Provincial Administration. The former Government moreover had no system of amortization, but the present Government has created a satisfactory system and in that way put the Government on a sound footing. We find, however, that the annual expenditure has not increased so much as under the previous Government which neglected the essential services. If that is the case then it is very clear that the accusation of the hon. member for Standerton with regard to the annual increase in expenditure comes very badly from him. His second objection was that there is successive taxation on the people. We find, however, that the former Government repeatedly placed direct taxes on the people. Yet the hon. member now comes with his accusation about heavy taxation. Since this Government cames into office the Minister of Finance has in every budget speech announced the repeal of taxes. Even in the first budget of 1924 there was an immediate reduction of the tobacco tax to an amount of £20,000, and the medicine tax to an amount of £84,000 was completely abolished. In the second year 1925 the total levy of taxation produced on roll and smoking tobacco amounted to £200,000. The amendment in the postal tariff represented a £130,000, while the companies’ tax and the turnover tax in the Cape Province which amounted to £245,000, were sacrificed. These amounts make up a total of £575,000. But through the increased subsidy to the provincial councils, the country, this everyone admits, has been saved a burden of at least £500,000, an amount which the various provinces would otherwise have to collect from the population. As a result of the second year the Minister accordingly reduced taxation by £575,000 and £500,000, or a total for the year of £1,075,000. In the third year of office, 1926, the Minister of Finance again reduced the taxes. The income tax was reduced by £205,000, the return to the penny postage meant the sacrifice of £300,000 revenue, the employers tax in the Transvaal which amounted to £180,000 was abolished and the sacrifice of the interest on the guardian funds of £15,000, making a total of £700,000. During the three years, therefore, no less than £1,900,000 was taken off in direct taxation. This year the Minister of Finance again proposes a reduction in taxation. We know that the exemption from income tax on life assurance societies amounts to £90,000, and the custom duty is being reduced by £125,000, so that taxation is again being reduced this year by more than £200,000. If we add to the amount of £1,000,000 for the three years, the reduction of railway rates of £1,000,000 in the first fourteen months, then we find that in the first three years of the Pact Government taxation has been reduced by no less than £3,000,000. Hon. members opposite may laugh, but I challenge them to contradict the figures. The hon. member for Yeoville (Mr. Duncan) will still have an opportunity of speaking, and I challenge him to throw doubt on these figures. The figures are incontestable. The criticisms of the hon. member for Standerton is now to the effect that this Government imposes excessive taxation on the people. I think the people outside have experienced what the effect is of the reduction by this Government in direct taxation, and that there is no ground for the accusation of the hon. member for Standerton. It does not very well become the hon. member who imposed so many direct taxes on the people to introduce such a motion.

What taxes did you impose?

We did not impose a single direct tax. It is true that we have a sound system of customs duty to-day which we did not have before. Hon. members opposite prophesied that as a result of the new system the cost of living in South Africa would become terribly high, but we find, on going into the figures, that it is less than before. Instead of adversely influencing the cost of living by a sound system, living has become cheaper in South Africa. The result of the amendment of the tariff was not that the South African people have been taxed more, but that certain large profits which the manufacturers in England made no longer go into their pockets, owing to the scientific tariff. Then I come to the utterly weak accusation in the amendment of the hon. member for Standerton (Gen. Smuts), viz., the detrimental restrictions imposed on the agricultural population of South Africa. The most remarkable of all is that when the hon. member for Standerton had the opportunity of addressing the House before moving his amendment, he did not mention the restrictions on the agricultural population at all. When such a serious motion is introduced, why does he then not name the remarkable restrictions? What do we find? Instead of restrictions, we find that no Government has ever done more for the farmers than the present one. There is hardly any branch of the farming industry which has not received direct help from the Government. Take the tobacco farmers. The tobacco tax was removed, with the immediate result that while the production in 1923-’24 (the last year of the S.A.P. Government) was only million lbs., it has to-day, as a result of the removal of the tax, reached 17,000,000 lbs., just double as much. This shows what a good effect the removal of the tax had. The figures cannot be controverted. Then the tobacco farmers have been assisted by the agreement with Rhodesia as to the importation of inferior tobacco from Rhodesia into the Union. As a result of that agreement, the imports in 1925 were only 2,800,000 lbs., while before the agreement in 1924 they were 5,600,000 lbs., a reduction of half. In that way, the local pro duct got a better market in South Africa. Take the ostrich farmers. We all know what this Government did to assist in that connection, and the ostrich farmers are all grateful to the Government for its action. They have as a community done much for South Africa in the past. The late Government was repeatedly asked by me and others for assistance, but we were never able to get anything from them. This Government immediately assisted effectively.

Do you mean to say that the late Government did nothing for the ostrich feather industry?

No, you did nothing. Mention what you did. The hon. member for Yeoville (Mr. Duncan) perhaps has the sum of £800,000 in mind, but we did not get that from the last Government, it was an amount for which we taxed ourselves. We did not get a penny from the late Government. Then the grain farmers. They are particularly thankful for the direct way in which they were assisted. The Minister of Agriculture spent hundreds and thousands of pounds in exterminating locusts, and the grain farmers were much benefited thereby. By certain provisions of the Minister of Finance, moreover, the farmers are getting their phosphates cheaper. Last year a duty was imposed on the import of flour, and the farmers can compete better now with imported grain. Now again the Minister is proposing a deferred tax on barley, so that the producer thereof is protected against unfair competition in the future. I now come to the wool farmers. If the locusts had not been exterminated, much damage would have been suffered. And how valuable was not the effective eradication of scab by me Minister of Agriculture. What was the result of the eradication? The ¾d. per lb. embargo which formerly existed on wool was, as a result, raised, and the wool farmers now get no less than £250,000 per annum more. Compare these services shown by the Government to the farmers with what the last Government did for them. I remember well, when I attended the agricultural congress at East London, and the hon. member for Fort Beaufort (Sir Thomas Smartt), then Minister of Agriculture, made an eloquent, almost melodramatic, speech, because the farmers of South Africa would not ask the Government to introduce drastic legislation to eradicate scab. What happened? When a strong Minister of Agriculture assumed office in the person of the present Minister, who took steps for the eradication of scab, the hon. member for Fort Beaufort was the nest to pro test. That is the way the former Minister of Agriculture acts. He was eloquent when the occasion arose, but, in fact, he never did anything to effectively assist the farmers. I come to the assistance granted to the cattle farmers. The embargo on the import of cattle under a certain weight from Rhodesia resulted that while in the last year of the S.A.P. Government the import of cattle was 41,000, it was last year only 19,000, a reduction of 60 per cent., and this year the reduction is still greater. Then we know that the present Government is taking strong steps for the eradication of east coast fever, which will greatly assist the cattle farmers. I come to the wine farmers. They have also already received special assistance. Last year the Minister imposed a customs duty on whisky. The wine farmers are thankful for it, even the hon. member for Worcester (Mr. Heatlie), I presume. He himself repeatedly urged the last Government to impose the duty. J remember quite well how the hon. member pressed his Government, but they would not do it. Now I come to the sugar farmers. They are greatly indebted to the Government which gave them protection last year by an import duty. And, in conclusion, I still wish to mention a few things whereby the farmers generally have been benefited. In this connection I am think ing, in the first place, of the tremendous extension of farm telephones to which the hon. member for Pietersburg (Mr. J. F. Tom Naudé) has already referred. There are to-day no less than 29,000 farm telephones, while at the time this Government came into power there were only 2,221. This again is direct assistance given to the farming population by this Government, and we saw how the Government have opened experimental farms all over the country, as, e.g., for wheat at Malmesbury to encourage wheat farmers, and we learn that the Government also intends to establish an experimental farm at Riversdale, and I hope it will give special instructions that attention shall be given there to wheat cultivation, because I think that in those parts much development is still possible, and as to wheat culture, the ground there is specially suitable, and the experimental farm should serve to experiment with various kinds of wheat, and to find out. Whether a kind of wheat can possibly be grown there which can stand against rust or which is particularly suited to those parts. Then we have a maize experimental station in Kroonstad, and a cotton experimental station in Natal, and I hope that the Minister of Agriculture will soon make provision for a tobacco experimental station at Oudtshoorn. Here we see that the Government generally is doing much for the farmers’ benefit. Then great assistance is directly given to the farmers by means of the specially favourable customs duty on agricultural machinery for which the Minister of Finance provides every year. Agricultural machinery is placed under the customs system in a particularly favourable position, and is practically imported without duty. Then we can also take note of what the Minister of Railways and Harbours is doing for the farmers. Every time the railway rates are reduced, the interests of the farmers are first considered. There is, e.g., the reduction on fresh fruit, and we must not forget what great assistance was always given to the farmers in times of great drought. During the great drought which has not yet broken everywhere, much assistance is given by very low rates for carriage of stock. The farmers are thus assisted to fight against the drought in parts of the country, and in this way hundreds of thousands of stock are saved which otherwise would have had to die. Then we must bear in mind what special help the Government gives to farmers in connection with the marketing of their produce. Immediately after the Government came into office, trade commissioners were appointed, not only in Europe, but in the United States, to look for markets for South African produce, and we know what good results have followed their appointment. We see that the Government keeps a watchful eye over the farmers’ interests with respect to the improvement of the foreign market. Locally the Government has done much to assist the farmers by co-operative marketing to obtain the best prices for their produce. Hon. members will remember that we recently passed legislation for writing off the debts of" co-operative societies which, through bad management or carelessness, had been incurred in the past. In that way the farmers were enabled to market their produce in the best manner. Further, the Land Settlement Act has been amended to assist those wanting to become farmers to do so. Those who want to acquire ground and have the necessary gift or a little capital are enabled to become farmers. We know of the assistance which has already been given to settlers on the ground by writing off a portion of the purchase prices demanded by the late Government, because it had bought the ground at impossibly high prices from its supporters. The Government had to take steps to place the settlers on a sound economic basis, and therefore wrote off large sums. The Government goes out of its way to assist agriculture and settlements. Then there is the Agricultural Credits Act, and I hope that that is but the commencement of legislation on those lines. I hope the Minister will appoint experts during the recess to go into the matter of seeing whether the time has arrived to so amend that Act as to enable us to use it better in the future. I want to remind the Minister of the alterations made in the United States with regard to agricultural credit. In view thereof, persons with the necessary knowledge ought to be appointed, so that we can develop the existing Act so as to be of lasting help to our farmers. This accusation that injurious restrictions are being placed by this Government on agriculture is groundless, and it surprised me that anybody, not to mention the hon. member for Standerton, should have the impertinence to make such an accusation against the Government when he knows that this Government is only too ready in every case to assist the farming population I now come to the last accusation of the hon. member for Standerton, viz., that the railway rates have not been reduced. When the hon. member made the accusation, he could not make a concrete attack on the policy of the Government, except by saying that there was slack discipline to-day in the railway service One might expect from so important a member as the hon. member who leads the Opposition that he would support such a statement by facts, but when he was challenged to do so by the Minister of Railways and Harbours, he could not mention a single case to support his charge. As he could not do so, it ill befits him to make such a rash accusation. In the same breath that he made the accusation of slack discipline among the railway staff, the hon. member praised the General Manager of Railways and Harbours to the skies as one who had rendered great services to South Africa. I do not want to take away the praise from the general manager, because he has rendered good service to the country, but it ill befits the hon. member for Standerton to praise the general manager for his services, and then in the same breath to say that there is slack discipline in the railway service, the head of which is the general manager. If such a thing exists, then the hon. member for Standerton should at least have proved it. Our experience is that there is more satisfaction and better discipline among the railway staff than ever before, because they realize that the Minister of Railways and Harbours has sympathy with them, and although he does not always give what they ask, he patiently listens to actual grievances, and is prepared to meet the staff when he can, but at the same time he expects them to render their best services to the country. When the hon. member spoke of a reduction of railway rates, he forgot that the Minister of Railways and Harbours had already made reductions to an amount of no less than £1,100,000 in a period of 14 months. I think, however, that the hon. member was thinking of the policy of civilized labour, but he did not have the courage to name it. There are one or two members opposite, inter alia the hon. member for Cape Town (Harbour) (Maj. G. B. van Zyl), who dared to attack the policy of the Minister. Some hon. members, including the hon. member for Yeoville (Mr. Duncan), and even the hon. member for Standerton, want to shelter behind the fact that they also pursued that policy, and they even want to represent themselves as the fathers of it. Why, then, does the Opposition repeatedly attack the Government on the civilized labour policy? Is it not hypocritical to attack the Government while they pose as the persons who introduced the policy? I think that many of the Opposition members seriously think that they want to find fault with the Government, but the Government says that it stands or falls by the policy of civilized labour, and that it intends to continue it, and is prepared to await the decision of the country. We are willing to use civilized labour for good in the railway service, and are not going to abandon it. We have once for all adopted that policy, and the needs of the country demand that we should continue it. If there is any criticism in connection with the general railway policy which can be offered, then it is that I cannot reconcile myself with the policy of the previous Minister of Railways and Harbours in Natal, and I am sorry to learn from the Minister of Railways that he approves of the acts of his predecessor. I do not think that the former Minister was cautious in deciding to electrify the railways in Natal. The original scheme was that the railway between Durban and Pietermaritzburg should be electrified at a cost of about £3,000,000, and that the line between Pietermaritzburg and Glencoe should be doubled at a cost of about 1½ million pounds. If the original scheme were carried out, it would cost £4,500,000 in all. Instead, however, of carrying out the scheme, the previous Minister at very short notice abandoned it, upset the original scheme, and resolved to electrify the line between Pietermaritzburg and Glencoe. Up to the present, no less than £5,500,000 has been spent, and if it subsequently appears necessary—as will certainly be the case—that the railway between Pietermaritzburg and Durban has also to be electrified, then the whole cost of electrification on the basis of the previous estimate will be between £8,000,000 and £9,000,000, while we could have had practically the same service if the railway between Durban and Pietermaritzburg had been electrified and the line between Pietermaritzburg and Glencoe doubled, when the expenditure would only have been £4,500,000. I think the previous Minister made a great mistake which we have to pay for dearly, because it means an extra expenditure of about £4,000,000. This I cannot approve of, and it is one of the reasons why we cannot easily get lower railway rates. It is a general grievance against our railway policy. Then, of course, we have the criticism of the Opposition that we repeatedly buy railway material outside Great Britain. If the Minister buys railway material, he does so in the best market, whether it is in Belgium, United States, France or England. It makes no difference to hon. members opposite whether the material will cost more if it is bought in England. Hon. members opposite are more concerned about the workmen in England than in South Africa, because while they attack the Government for buying things cheaper in a better market outside England, they also attack the Government for using civilized labour in South Africa which is a little dearer than uncivilized labour. In this way they show that they are more concerned about the workmen in England than in South Africa. We are thankful to the Minister of Railways and Harbours for following the policy, and I am glad that he is abiding by it. I think it is the duty of the State to uphold the principle of civilized labour when it employs people, because the Government ought to set an example to private undertakings. If the Government uses the cheapest labour, then it cannot expect others to act differently. Hon. members opposite want cheap labour to be used, but that is detrimental to South Africa. I am sorry that I must differ from two hon. members of my party. The hon. members for Pietersberg (Mr. J. F. Tom Naudé) and for Marico (Mr. J. J. Pienaar) urged us to depart from the attitude of stopping as much as possible the importation of natives from Portuguese territory. I much regret differing from them, but I thought that as young members in the House they would not look only at material interests when we have to do with large questions of principle. Moreover we expect a certain amount of idealism, and we expect it the more when we have to do with a policy affecting the future of our children. I hope the Government will not listen to the pressure which is being brought to bear on it to depart from the principle. I think we must be careful because we already have in South Africa a too large amount of unskilled labour. If we constantly allow the unskilled labour market to be enlarged then there would be an end to a white civilisation in South, Africa. It is certain once for all that if the whites in South Africa wish to play the role of overseers and do not want to become workers and to do unskilled labour then we shall be finished. We must have a people of workers and therefore I am, in principle, opposed to constantly giving unskilled work to natives and uncivilized persons, and excluding white men. We must also enable the civilized man to be used for unskilled labour. Because one thing is certain, viz., that the unskilled labour forces must be fed from a reservoir of skilled labour, and if we do not see to it that we have a reservoir of unskilled labour in South Africa, then we shall not be able to avoid that in future the skilled labour will also be done by the natives, and that the white man will have no chance. I am therefore glad that the Government is making provision to give unskilled work, not only to natives and coloured persons, but also to whites. In this way the whites will have an opportunity of maintaining the white civilization. This Government does not only merit the praise of its supporters, but of the whole country. It is fearlessly tackling the great problem of the development of South Africa and the maintenance of white civilization, and I feel convinced that when the people again have an opportunity of expressing an opinion especially about the policy of this Government it will say that it has confidence in the Government and wants it to continue in power in the interests of South Africa.

The two hon. Ministers in charge of this motion must be delighted with the real whole-hogger we have just heard. No doubt he is entirely satisfied with everything the Government has done, and everything they are going to do. They must be sorry that the members on the cross-benches have not the same kind of enthusiasm for them. In the debate on the Partial Appropriation the Minister of Finance based his defence against the criticism of extravagance mainly on two grounds, one was that the country, having developed very rapidly, therefore the expenditure had increased very rapidly, and the other was that he had to carry out the legal enactments of the previous Government, and that added greatly to his expenditure. To the casual observer there may be something in these arguments, but they require a great deal of qualification. Take the first argument, that the cause of the great increase of expenditure was necessitated by the natural development of the country. That might be all right if the figures for expenditure increased in the same ratio as the development of the country, or, rather, not in a greater ratio than the development of the country. I would like to consider for a moment or two whether there is any check to test the statement. I have considered many tests, such as population, trade, overseas trade, industrial statistics, and so on, and it seems to me one of the best tests would be the income tax assessments for different years, so as to get an idea as to how this country has progressed over a given period. The income tax assessments have this great advantage over any other tests, and that is, they do give you a true idea of the capacity to pay. In order to get an idea of the progress of the country, I have taken the last five years for which we have got income tax assessments. Those are the assessments for 1922, 1923, 1924, 1925 and 1926. I find, if you take 1922, the income tax assessment amounted to £89,000,000 against an income tax assessment in 1926 of £85,000,000. The assessments were more, therefore, in 1922 than in 1926, but that would not be a fair basis to take, because the 1922 assessments were really assessments of incomes which had not really been made. This is shown when you take the next year where the income tax assessment decreased rapidly. People, unfortunately, thought they had made money, which they really had not, and, unfortunately, they paid income tax on amounts which were higher, considerably higher, than those really earned. Taking the average of 1922 and 1923 you get an average of £78,000,000. The 1926 assessment at £85,849,000 was 9.93 per cent. higher than this figure. My estimate, therefore, is that on an average in normal times, we increase, for a period of five years, roughly 10 per cent. I agree in certain periods there is a very big rise in our development. Our financial development is very much like our geographical position, we get on a certain plane, and run along on that for a time, and then get a rise to a higher strata. Take the year 1870, a year in which our whole economic position changed for the better. Then, between 1886 and 1892, when the gold fields were discovered, was another period, while after the Boer war was another period, and after the great war, there was a further upward movement, but that was caused by inflation more than anything else. There is no doubt that the whole country, as tested in sterling, got on to a different plane, and between these stages in normal times in five years, it is fair to say we roughly increase 10 per cent. If we take that as a basis, I would like to take the five years’ increase in certain of the figures put before us this year. Take the Senate. In five years their increase has been £11,440, or 40.43 per cent.; the Assembly, £37,560, or 41.48 per cent.; interest on public debt increased £826,142, or 21.5 per cent.; pensions, £514,000 or 28.4 per cent.; provincial government, £1,160,399, or 26.85 per cent.; lands, £79,248, or 34.61 per cent.; irrigation, £63,142, or 47.15 per cent. All these figures are increases. They show, at any rate, as regards half of our expenditure if you exclude the business department, the post office, there has been a very much bigger increase out of proportion to our development than can be considered justified in any way by the development of the country during the last five years. That is the burden of our complaint. We agree that the country is developing, but expenditure is increasing in a greater ratio, particularly in these departments when compared with any possible increase in the development of the country. Therefore, the burden on the taxpayers is yearly increasing instead of yearly decreasing.

The country has never been happier than it is to-day.

If the hon. member goes into other parts of the country and meets with other classes of people he will find that the country is not at all happy. It is only with the utmost difficulty that the Minister of Finance can keep the other Ministers in order. There is always an excuse or a reason for expenditure, but if the Minister puts his foot down, and says that he will permit only a certain percentage increase he will find that the other Ministers will obtain the money from some of the other sources to effect their most urgent improvements. At present they look upon the Minister of Finance as a wealthy father who can advance any money they wish. This is leading to a position of extravagance and will have to be met by very great retrenchment, which will bear very hardly on the country. As regards the post office, I again urge that it should be put in a water-tight compartment by itself like the Railway Department is. Unfortunately there are no figures available to show whether the post office pays as a trading concern. For instance, it is not charged with the cost of buildings that it uses.

We keep an account.

If the Minister looks at that account he will find that all the essential figures are merely estimates. If the post office were kept separate in the same way as the railways are, the country would have a very much better check on the position, and we should know what the cost of the various services is. As a matter of fact, nobody can say definitely what the post office costs to run. I suggest that we follow the same method as that which I believe is adopted in Australia, where the post office is charged with everything that is done for it, and is credited for every service it performs. Our post office does not receive credit for all the work it performs for the Government. It is true that somebody sits down and imagines a figure say of £10,000 or £15,000 as representing the services the Post and Telegraph Department renders to a certain department, but there is no absolute check. The post office should be paid for all it does, and be charged for all it receives.

What about taxation?

You don’t propose to charge income tax on post office profits?

If it were a private concern it would pay taxation on its profits.

According to the Auditor-General’s report, the National Information Bureau ran up in seven months a telegram bill to the extent of £35,490, and I understand the bureau was only stopped on 31st March, last. I think the bureau belongs to the Minister of Agriculture, and the cost of obtaining information as to the price of mealies and so on cost the country in 18 or 20 months no less than £10,000.

If the service had to be paid for, the work would not be done, but the post office would still employ the same number of people.

Now we know where we are. According to the Minister even if the post office does £100,000 less work the staff will be no smaller.

That is quite true.

The Minister has no check over this expenditure. The Agricultural Department made up its mind that it wanted information in order to produce a pamphlet entitled “Markets and Crops.” That information is not worth £100,000, to which must be added the cost of editing the information and putting it in order. If we had a proper check on the various departments they would not get out of hand and run away with the taxpayers’ money. The instance I have quoted shows the very great laxity of control.

Where is the laxity of control?

I suggest that when the Minister of Finance found out the state of affairs he could have stopped it.

No.

It is very curious how suddenly it was put a stop to. Now I would like to deal with the contention that part of this increased expenditure is due to Acts passed by previous Governments.

Business suspended at 6 p.m. and resumed at 8.7 p.m.

When business was suspended I had been dealing with the defence of the Minister of Finance that the increased expenditure was caused by the development of the country, and I have shown that, although there had been some development of the country, it was not proportionate in any way to the increased expenditure, especially as regards a large number of the departments of State. I would next like to deal with the other defence, that much of his expenditure is caused by the legislation passed by the previous Government. Now, we have no criticism whatever to offer as regards the legislation passed by the previous Government. It was good, it was satisfactory, and it was going in the right direction, but the complaint we have, is not that the legislation has caused increased expenditure, but that the bad administration of those Acts is the cause of the increase under that head. The Minister will recognize that an act can either be administered sensibly and soundly and in accord with the intentions of the people who passed it, or it may be administered with gross extravagance. Before giving one or two instances to illustrate my point, I would like to point out that the Minister is responsible for any bad legislation. If there is any legislation of the previous Government which he considers against the public interest he has got a very big majority behind him, and he can repeal that legislation, and, therefore, the fact that he has not repealed it is a very good evidence that he is entirely in accord with that legislation and approves of it. Coming to instances of what I might call bad administration of the Acts of previous Government, take the case referred to by my hon. friend on my left (Mr. Close). We have very satisfactory Pensions Acts which are farmed in order to treat our public servants well, and these Acts cover such instances as necessary abolition of office, reorganization, etc., but that is no defence for the Minister in regard to the Public Service Commission. Those pensions, it is true, were granted under that Act, but the expenditure was caused simply because the Public Service Commission that we left when we quitted office, did not fall in with the views of some of the Ministers who are controlling the affairs of this country. Simply because that Public Service Commission would not toe the line to anything that the Ministers required—

And did their duty.

and as my right hon. friend reminds me, did their duty, they were pensioned. It is quite true that they were protected by our Pension Act—and quite rightly so—but there is no doubt that, if the Ministerwill read the Auditor-General’s report on page 16, that is costing the Government a very considerable annual sum of money, which is quite unnecessary.

Who had to decide whether it was necessary or not necessary?

You did. That is our whole position—you decided that it was necessary. The Minister, first of all, defends himself by saying—

Now the Minister says that the Government decided that it was necessary and they incurred the expenditure. Therefore, they are responsible. The man who decided that it was necessary was responsible for that expenditure, and, therefore, all this unnecessary expenditure caused by the pensioning of that body, which runs into thousands of pounds a year, can be placed at the door of the present Government. Now I will deal with that Act which the Minister passed last year concerning the old Transvaal Republican officials. The Minister put up a case with which this side heartily sympathised. We were told that a lot of these old Transvaal republican officials were in necessitous circumstances, that, through no fault of their own, they were in an unfortunate position, that they had been rather hardly dealt with, and he brought in a Bill to give those people enhanced pensions. Well, it is quite true that the members on this side of the House felt that they were doing a fair thing by these people who were suffering and were in necessitous circumstances, but the Minister had the whole of the facts in his office, he had all the information, and if he had told us that a great many people who were not in necessitous circumstances at all, who did not require this help in any way were included in the Act, it would have been quite possible to have imposed a limit to the amount of gratuity that was to be paid to any single individual. No, he did not do that, but he passed the Act in a gay kind of way, as if saying—

And the result is shown in the figures given by the Auditor-General, where certain of these arrear pensions run from £8,941 down to £700. This is in addition to the cases which are necessitous and which it was the intention of the House to do something to alleviate. I agree that the Minister of Finance is a careful Minister except now and again when he is taken off his guard by his other colleagues. I am only giving a certain number of what one might call general instances. The Minister could probably add to them by thousands with his knowledge, but naturally, he is not going to give the case away. Let us take the case of locust destruction. This House grants certain moneys for locust destruction—quite right and necessary—but when we come to the administration of this Act let us refer to the Auditor-General’s report, page 251, and we find one locust officer receiving £3,735, including £1,895 for a motor; and a second officer receiving £3,263 made up of £1,222 salary and £2,041 for subsistence and for a motor. To show you how high and extravagant these expenses were, one of these locust inspectors went insolvent— I suppose he got into extravagant ways of living—and the Master of the Supreme Court, an absolutely independent witness, considered his allowances were too great and he docked them for three months to the extent of £52 15s. 10d. for the estate. He said—

This is an instance of an independent man deliberately saying that this man was receiving a ridiculous remuneration for what he was doing. He said it was absurd and that a certain proportion must go back to the creditors. What we say is that the administration of these Acts is carried on in an unnecessarily extravagant way and it is not the fault of the Act; it is the fault of the people who administer it. I include particularly the Minister of Agriculture in that charge. This is after the whole of the electors in this country were impregnated with the idea that this Government was going to administer its affairs economically; it was going to be quite different from the previous Government; everything was to be done in a business-like way and every possible economy was going to be exercised. Until you came to this position, that a lot of the electors practically said—

and a good many voted Pact because they felt that here, at last, was a body of men who were going to keep a strict hand on the finances of the country. What we find is that diametrically the opposite has occurred. These people who were stupid enough to take these promises at their face value are the people who are now waking up to the facts. It is no use laughing; you can have a man once but it is very difficult to have him a second time, and laughing at him, particularly if you laugh at him for having taken your advice, is going to make it very difficult to get him to take your advice again. It would have been a sorry day for this country if the Minister of Finance had been led astray by the views of the Ministers of Posts and Telegraphs and Defence. He would have been in the position of the Minister of Railways who, in the course of three years, has run the railways on to the rocks. I must say I have a great deal of sympathy with the Minister of Railways. He has fallen into the trap of believing the doctrine of the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, that the more you pay the more you have got. That seems to be his slogan. The slogan of the Minister of Defence seems to be that the less profit you make the lower will be the price of the commodity or the service.

I never enunciated such a maxim as that.

Last week he reiterated this for a whole day. I can assure the Minister of Railways that the country will be delighted if the doctrine of the Minister of Defence is true.

Don’t saddle me with that.

Because now that the Minister of Railways has come to a deficit, the consumer can anticipate a big reduction in rates, but I am sorry to say that we, on this side, have very great difficulty in believing that. There is much more likelihood of a big increase in rates than of a big reduction. I was rather disappointed with the Minister of Finance. He was showing that he had been slightly attacked by the microbe in his attitude on the Iron and Steel Industry Bill, because he distinctly showed an inclination towards Government control or nationalization. I have here—it came out this week from London—a contrast between the Minister of Railways’s handling of the railways—Government control, nationalized control—and a similar railway run under private control. I have the figures of the Canadian Pacific Railway, a privately controlled concern. I know labour Ministers will dislike this concern. These figures show a three million pounds increase in turnover. When we show an increase in turnover we show a decrease in profit.

The people get the benefit.

That is exactly the point, and therefore, I take it that the Minister is going to see that the Minister of Railways decreases the rates. That is exactly the point where the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs is misleading the Minister of Railways and putting him on the wrong track.

He has already decreased the rates.

What he has done is an absolute bagatelle. The Canadian Pacific Railway shows an increased turnover of £3,000,000; their working expenses have increased by £2,000,000, and their net profit has increased by £1,000,000. There is the difference between a railway run by a lot of theorists and a railway run by railwaymen who know how to run it.

Your leader says the higher staff is not to be blamed at all.

What are their rates per mile?

This is an example which I would suggest to the Minister of Railways he should follow. If the Minister had a decent surplus this year out of his increased earnings, as he ought to have had, then he would have been in the position to do something for the country, and then the consumers would get some advantage, but under the system hon. members on the other side are working under the consumer is never likely to get any advantage.

What are the passenger fares and the rates on the C.P.R.?

Get the C.P.R. year book and read it for yourself. I would like to point out that a big portion of the increased burden on the people is now being concealed. It is being concealed in the customs. In 1923-’24 we took out of the people in customs £6,660,433. In 1926-’27 we took out of the people £8,547,000. That is a 28 per cent. increase on the people taxed in that direction. It is out of all proportion to their capacity to pay. It is owing to an increase in the tariff. The Minister of Finance will not believe that. He disputes the statement that he has raised the tariff. In order to prove what I say I should like to quote his own expert on the subject. This is what the commissioner of customs says, talking about the 1925-’26 figures —on page 46 of the Auditor-General’s report—

The commissioner of customs, than whom no man in the country has a better knowledge of this subject, makes this statement, and I think that will convince even the Minister of Finance that our statement that he has put up the tariff against the people and made them pay these very much heavier customs dues, is correct. The Minister, owing to his inroads on the purse of the consumer, got a surplus of £1,250,000. I can quite appreciate that he was in a hurry to resume that £1,250,000 from the greed of his back-benchers. So he passed it off against the public debt, in which perhaps, knowing the difficulties he had, he was wise; but if he had not feared the greed, ready to grasp everything, he might have been in a position to take better advantage of the surplus he had got. He has taken £800,000 out of the consumer in the way of customs more than he required, and thought he was going to do. One would have thought he might have returned some of that £800,000 to the consumer in some form of reduction of customs duty.

You will not get it this year again.

That is why you should make the restitution as soon as you can.

Will you do that?

The Minister proposes to return £125,000 to the consumer, and I said he might have returned more than that. He would have probably done better for the country if he could have returned more. The consumer is the one who lays the golden eggs, and you might “feed the goose.”

How much are you going to give the consumer in respect of the cotton duties I have surrendered?

I will deal with that point right away. The Minister has taken off certain duties off trimmings of ready-made clothes.

Do you see that reduction in the windows in Adderley Street?

If hon. members would listen they would hear something to their advantage. I have been told it takes off 3½d. off a suit. I agree that that is something; but the Minister of Labour has put on 3/- on the cost of each suit through his Wage Board.

And it costs the Treasury hundreds of thousands. If I give away a million the public will not know about it.

The total relief is £125,000, and he does not suggest that £100,000 comes off the buttons.

This is the first I have heard of it.

If they keep on very much longer there will not be any industries left. The reduction in respect of cotton piece goods is sensible, but the Minister should have pursued that policy further, and given relief where he could have done so, instead of taking the whole million and a quarter to cancel that amount of debt. If you can reduce the cost of commodities to the public you are going to get an infinite advantage in the way of the development of your industries. The extension of industries in themselves will bring in automatically more revenue. There is on other act of justice the Minister might have dealt with when he had this surplus—I refer to the subsidy paid to the Cape Province for education. The Cape Province gets paid £14 11s. 11d. on the average, and the other provinces from £16 2s. 7d. to £16 7s. 6d. The reason why we have such a small subsidy is that the Cape has always conducted its affairs in an economical way, and they are now penalized. The position is well shown by the 1925 annual report of the Superintendent-General of Education of the Cape Province, who states in his report—

I think a very good case has been made out for the Cape subsidy to be raised to the level of that of the Transvaal, and when the treasury is in its present affluent position, something should have been done to correct that injustice. There is one other matter with which I should like the Minister to deal, and that is, if he would give us some idea of the working of the Act of last year, where he put a maximum price on sugar. If I remember rightly, when he fixed the price of sugar at 3¾d. a lb. he was advised on this side of the House that he was doing something which was not likely to work satisfactorily, but I suppose, in view of the Labour wing of the Government, he felt he had to carry on. What is the position to-day? The price of sugar has gone up to about 28s. 6d., at least that is what I am told they are going to ask, and this time last year I think it was 24s. 6d. The small trader has to packet all the sugar, and it costs him £1 9s. 6½d to handle without paying his staff or running expenses, and he gets £1 11s. 3d., or 1s. 9d. gross profit, out of which he has to pay his staff, rent, rates and taxes, stamps, licence, and all the other expenditure. I say that this 1s. 9d. does not allow for the salesmen to be paid, even your unskilled labour rate of 1s. an hour.

What do you want done?

This class of person is being very harshly and hardly treated. The Minister of Finance has fixed the maximum, the price has gone up, and nothing has been done to alleviate the position. What is the Minister of Finance going to do if the price is going up further? It is unfair. Threepence three-farthings means starvation for the small grocer.

What do you want?

I want the small grocer to have the same right of earning his own living as the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs.

In other words, you want no fixation of prices?

I want him to have a reasonable wage—at least the wage the Minister gives to unskilled labour.

You want to stop fixation of prices?

Of course I want it. Nobody but a socialistic Government would have put it on. Though I am not pessimistic, the Minister of Finance must know that there are several rocks ahead which requires pretty good steering to avoid. If anything happens to the diamond industry, it will be a very severe blow to the Minister, and our budget without diamonds would look very funny.

Because of these rocks ahead, do you want me to give away another million?

No, I say give back the money for purposes of development. The Minister of Finance has got a very big sum through motor imports, and he knows more or less what is happening to the motor industry in America, where it is falling off by from 10 to 30 per cent. per month. We may come to saturation point in this country, so there is absolutely no room for extravagance. All this extravagance is going to put the country into grave trouble, which another Government will have to put right one of these days.

There are so many complaints against the Government that it will now be a good thing to show the other side. We have heard here that the Government has increased taxation: that the expenditure has enormously increased, the one complained about the surplus of the Minister of Finance and the other reproached the Minister of Railways about his deficit. We on the countryside are very well satisfied with the new Government. It has done more for the farming population and passed more useful legislation in the interests of the farmers than any previous Government whatsoever. Let us pause just for a moment at the Land Settlement Act. How many poor people have not been helped by that and enabled to get their own piece of ground? The hon. member for Fort Beaufort (Sir Thomas Smartt) possibly thinks that this is non-sense, but it is a fact. Just see the sums of money which are annually spent on needy people. Let us also for a moment remind hon. members of the assistance given to the farmers with regard to taxation. Think of the Act on settlements for tenant farmers. It is a valuable Act, and I am glad to learn that it is so great a success that the Minister of Lands is looking for more ground. He told me that some of the people are making splendid progress while a few years ago they had nothing they are to-day able to buy their own piece of ground. I am only thinking of the north-west, and how beneficial it was to them there that the Government had the farms re-valued which at that time were granted to settlers and had been bought at much too high prices, and large sums written off, so that it is now possible to make a living on them. The country is now developing magnificently. I just want to pause at the new irrigation commission which the Government appointed at the commencement of this year. The hon. member for Cradock (Mr. G. C. van Heerden) asked the Minister the other day what places the commission had already visited and what reports had already been made. When one sees the tremendously long list of places which the commission has already visited and knows that there are about 110 schemes, old and new, which require investigation then it looks as if the commission will never get through the arrear work and never get to the new duties for which it was actually appointed. I think it would be desirable to again have a financial irrigation commission like that under the former hon. member for Somerset East (Mr. Fourie). That financial commission can then dispose of all the matters in connection with the writings off after proper investigation, so that the old matters can once and for all be got out of the way. If the new irrigation commission has to do all this then it will still be busy three years with that kind of work. Another thing about which we talk a great deal in the north-west, a question which is often put also in the districts of Bechuanaland and Vryburg, which I recently visited, is the old question whether the Government cannot reduce the boring charges. Seeing the financial situation is now so favourable it would be a good thing if the Minister of Agriculture would again go into the matter with the Minister of Finance. The long-continued great droughts become worse every year, and we know that one of the great things which still helps the people through is not so much the grazing veld but the water. In the whole of the north-west the water is terribly deep. The farmers cannot pay £3 per day for the Government bores for the first ten days, and £2 10s. per day thereafter. We must also remember that they have to send three teams of oxen to draw the machinery and accessories. Formerly the charge was £3 and we lost on it. I think the loss throughout the whole country was £70,000 to £80,000, but we get that sum back doubly by the progress which takes place as a result of it, and the circumstance that less cattle die in consequence of drought, I hope the Minister of Agriculture will bear that matter in mind this year. I now come to the hon. member for Cape Town (Harbour) (Maj. G. B. van Zyl). He stated here that I had mentioned in the country that the burden of taxation had been reduced by not less than £3,000,000. The facts which prove this have already been mentioned by others. I just want to sum them up again to refresh the memory of the hon. member a little. In the short session of 1924 this Government raised the dumping duty on super-phosphates which meant a reduction in the burden of taxation of £20,000, the repeal of the medicine tax amounted to £70,000. In 1925 the tobacco tax was repealed, as also the turnover tax which respectively amounted to £200,000 and £245,000 taxation. By raising of the grants to the Provincial Councils the latter have been enabled to give up the turnover tax. That is therefore in reality a tax by which the burden of taxation is reduced. This year a commencement has also been made with the amendment of the postal tariff which means £130,000 for this year. Another thing which is often forgotten is that the farmers are again given the option with regard to income tax. The former Minister of Finance (Mr. Burton) when he imposed it said that it would increase his revenue by £75,000. This Government has reinstated the option, and in addition the exemptions which can be deducted per child from £50 to £60 increase, i.e., £75,000. Altogether it comes to £740,000. In 1926 £205,000 was sacrificed in income tax. The introduction of the penny postage meant £300,000 less revenue; the sacrifice of the interest on the Guardian Fund meant a sum of £18,000, and the repeal of the employers tax £180,000. In the beginning of 1925 the railway rates were reduced by £500,000. Later on again by £200,000, and in the commencement of 1926 a further reduction of £500,000, in all £1,200,000. Then we must bear in mind the taxes which are avoided. The wheel tax, the auctioneers” tax, the land tax, etc. Taxes which were considered by the provincial councils but which, under the new arrangement, were not required. In the Cape Province, the Provincial Council had to levy a tax to cover a deficit of £400,000, but the increased grants made this unnecessary. Under the new arrangement the Cape Province alone in 1924 got more than £500,000 in subsidies. If we add that £400,000 to the other amounts we get a grand total of more than £3,000,000. Thus I have not been talking non-sense.

Where do you get the money from?

The hon. member for Cape Town (Central) himself calculated that the amendment of the customs duties had resulted in the burden of taxation being increased by £400,000. The only further amount is the increase in the companies tax of £250,000. All that can be called increases are the two amounts, a total of £650,000. The hon. member for Cape Town (Harbour) has again mentioned the old non-sense that under the Nationalist regime the number of schoolchildren had diminished. I have the figures here given by Dr. Viljoen, Superintendent-General of Education, since 1910. From 1910 to 1921 there was a steady increase in the number of school children from 3,000 to 5,000 per annum. In 1921 the increase was 7,647. Then the S.A.P. Government, however, commenced retrenching and deducted from the grants to the provinces, so that the increase in 1922 was only 1,873. In 1923 there was only a small increase of 142, while in 1924, as a result of the measures of the South African party, there was an actual reduction of 1,944. Now, under the present Government, in 1925 there was again an increase of 1,863, and, at the end of September, 1926 (for none months) the increase was already 2,591. How does this compare now with the former years under the S.A.P. Government? The hon. members for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger), Cape Town (Harbour) (Maj. G. B. van Zyl) and Newlands (Mr. Stuttaford) further stated that the burden of taxation on the people had been increased by £1,000,000. They take the total revenue from sources of taxation in 1923, a sum of £16,000,000, and compare it with the revenue of about £20,000,000 this year, and, therefore, say—

They do not at all take into account the increase of the population and the flourishing position and welfare of the country, but they mention the increased revenue, simply from new taxes, which are put upon the people. I have, however, just shown that taxation has been reduced by £3,000,000. Take e.g., the income tax. Has the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) noticed that income taxe in 1923 amounted to £5,200,000, while the revenue from the same source in 1926 was £6,425,000, an increase, therefore, of about £1,200,000? Have we really increased the income tax? No, that has not happened, because we have reduced the income tax. Yet there is an increase of revenue from this source of £1,200,000 in comparison with 1923. Take e.g., the customs duties and the excise. On page 48 of the Auditor-General’s report it is stated that the revenue from those sources in 1923 was £7,500,000 as against £9,944,000 in 1926, an increase in customs duties alone of more than £1,400,000. Have, however, the customs duties been so much raised? It is clear to any child that while we have this year imported more to an amount of £5,000,000 we can expect more revenue from customs duties as we collect on the average 13 per cent. of the value of imported articles in customs duties. Imports of the value of £60,000,000 give a revenue in customs duty of £8,000,000. Take thirdly, the export of diamonds. In 1923 the diamond market was almost dead and no more than £2,000,000 worth was exported. Last year was particularly satisfactory in this respect, and a value to more than £8,000,000 was exported. This makes a difference of £750,000 in revenue. I have only mentioned three items where increases of more than £3,000,000 are noticeable without any increased taxes being imposed. If there is an increase of revenue from year to year it does not prove that there is an increase of taxation. If hon. members say that then I just want to ask them what they think of the following case. In 1920 the revenue from customs duty and excise was £7,936,000, while in 1921 it was £10,315,000. In that one year there was, therefore, the tremendous increase of £2,400,000, and I want to ask hon. members opposite whether the S.A.P. Government then imposed increased customs duties on the country. Let them answer the question. Take also, e.g., the opposite case. Does a mere redaction in receipts mean a reduction in taxation? Our inland revenue from all sources was £17,800,000 in 1922, and in 1923 it was £15,700,000. Did the S.A.P. Government reduce taxation that year by £2,100,000? I thought as a matter of fact that the late Government had still further increased the taxation in those years. The hon. member for Fort Beaufort (Sir Thomas Smartt) is now asleep and does not want to hear about; it. The whole argument of the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) falls to the ground and amounts to nothing, because if it is put under the searchlight then it is absolutely valueless. I notice the other day that hon. members laughed heartily when the hon. member for Pietersburg (Mr. J. F. Tom Naudé) said that we had reduced the unreproductive debt by £13,000,000. The hon. member for Yeoville (Mr. Duncan) was also much amused about it and then the Minister of Finance by way of interruption pointed out that our revenue from mining leases and bewaarplaatsen had amounted in the three years to a sum of over £7,000,000 and that it, of course, all went in reduction of our unreproductive debt. If interest-bearing works are constructed with money which has not been borrowed then it means a reduction of our unreproductive debt. What has become of the balance of £2,800,000 of the enemy property fund? Did it not redeem liability? In 1923 there was a surplus of £800,000, in 1926 £500,000 and in 1927 £1,200,000, thus in all an amount of £2,500,000. These surpluses and the previous surplus of £2,800,000 after deduction of money spent on land settlement in South-West were used for the reduction of debt. The contribution for debt redemption was, therefore, £1,375,000 and if they are all added together we shall notice that the total is more than £13,000,000. Now I come to railway matters. Here also the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) is the great expert, but his calculations surprised me. He has a very clear head on business matters and ought to know that the only practical test on which you can rely as to whether railway development is sound or not is the calculation per train mile as mentioned by the Minister. The Minister pointed out that there was this year a reduction of 1d. per train mile in the expenditure, but the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) brushes this aside and says that was not the actual position. He says that you must take the revenue and see how much it has increased in comparison with 1923, and that you must then take the expenditure for 1923 and see how much it has been increased and that you can then get the right result. He finds; that the receipts since 1923 have increased by 17¼ per cent. and the expenditure by 25 per cent. and, therefore, he says that the railway administration costs a great deal to-day because the expenditure has increased more than the revenue and they do not run proportionally with each other. I want to point out that he overlooks two important points and consequently his whole argument is rendered worthless. In the first place fewer paying lines have been built in past years. The main line from Cape Town to Johannesburg and from Durban are the lines which earn the most. Some of the later lines are really running at a loss, but we can say that all the branch lines are of a less paying grade and that the more we open, the greater the percentage of expenditure will be in comparison with the revenue. If the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) has a large central business in Cape Town which shows a profit of 15 per cent. and he thereafter establishes a number of branch businesses throughout the country which show a profit of 10 per cent. then he still has a good profit, but he damages the profit on his Cape Town business while the expenditure increases to a greater proportion than the revenue. The second thing he should have done to make a comparison was that he should not have forgotten to put the rates which have been reduced since 1923 to the revenue. If he adds the reduced rates he will find that the percentage comes out quite differently. In the third place he forgot to keep count of the expenditure for the maintenance of the railway system and that he starved the railway workshops so that on taking over we found that we had not the rolling stock to run the railways. The Minister has had double work done and to-day overtime work has to be done to catch up. If I occupy a house and never have the walls papered or distempered and my successor has reparations made, then I cannot say that he occupies the house more expensively than I do. Because I allowed it to go into disrepair and that is precisely what the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) did. If we include the reduction in railway rates and the extra provision which is being made we find another condition of things. The expenditure in 1923 was £23,000,000, but if the expenditure in 1927 is taken minus the special provision then the amount is only £27,200,000, so that the expenditure has increased by £4,200,000 or 18 per cent. If we look at the revenue we find that in 1924 it was £24,400,000 while in 1927 it is £28,000,000. If one adds to the last figure, however, what the Minister has taken off by way of cheaper rates to an amount of £1,200,000 then we get an amount of £29,200,000, an increase of £4,800,000 or 20 per cent. The hon. member for Cape Town (Central) can now see that his calculation of an increase in revenue of 17¾ per cent. against an increase in expenditure of 25 per cent. must actually be altered into an increase in expenditure of 18 per cent. over against an increase in revenue of 20 per cent. Let us go back further. If this comparison of the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) with regard to revenue and expenditure holds good then we find that the revenue in 1916 was £14,289,974, and in 1917 £15,400,000. The revenue has thus increased by £1,100,000, viz., 8 per cent. for one year. The expenditure in 1916 was £12,932,000, and in 1917 £15,400,000, an increase of £2,500,000 or 20 per cent. According to his method of reckoning there must, therefore, have been a terribly bad Government during that time which increased the revenue in one year by only 8 per cent. but the expenditure by 20 per cent. That is precisely they way he argued. Take yet another year. In 1920 the revenue was £21,660,000, and in 1921 £27,300,000, an increase of £5,640,000 or 26 per cent. and this notwithstanding the increase rates. In 1920 the expenditure was £22,262,000, and in 1921 it was £28,348,000, an increase of £6,100,000 or 28 per cent. There was, therefore, notwithstanding the alarming increase in revenue by increased duties a quicker increase in expenditure. No, the only actual increase in the railway expenditure about which one can dispute was caused by the civilized labour policy of the Government, which cost somewhat over £300,000 per annum. We are prepared as a party to justify that policy on any platform in the country and the people will stand behind us as one man. I challenge any S.A.P. man to say on the countryside that he disapproves of from £300,000 to £400,000 being spent for that purpose.

Who disapproves of it?

No, it is not done directly but covert attacks are constantly being made. The hon. member for Standerton (Gen. Smuts) did not have the courage to disapprove of it, but he enlarges upon the increase in expenditure and a little later he says that the Minister of Railways uses the workmen as sheep-like voters. He referred to it as a “mobile force” which was used all over the country for voting purposes. All this is a covert attack on civilized labour. Does not the hon. member for Standerton know that it is not possible, shortly before an election, to send people to a place to vote there? Does he not know that the Registration Act must be administered in a definite way? But when one stands behind a door one usually looks for the other man behind the door. Did we ever make a fuss about sheep-like voters when the natives were employed at various places and influence was exercised by their vote? Does not the hon. member for Standerton know that Cradock was lost at that time owing to the group of natives who happened to be working there and who received the vote? Does not the hon. member know that the recent Provincial Council election was lost by us at Stellenbosch owing to 120 natives being put on to the register at the interim registration and on that account we lost by 72 votes? And while I am talking about sheep-like voters I just want to point out that I lost Gordonia in 1921 through a number of sheep-like voters who were then stationed on the Orange River dam. All the votes of these people were against me, and I lost the seat by 18 votes. You will not believe me, but after I was defeated the dam was abandoned and to-day it is on the same state. The baboons and monkeys are still playing about it. No, the Opposition must not talk about sheep-like voters. When the hon. member for Standerton made his general accusation against the head of the Government he said that the sins of Ministers had found them out. I think the country has long since found out his sin and that is why he is now in Opposition. Before the last general election he said that we should never succeed. It was not true. He then said that we would be defeated within three months. He was again wrong. Thereafter he said that we would last six months, but his prophecy was again incorrect., Then we had the by-elections of Graaff-Reinet,; Klerksdorp, Beaufort West, Somerset East, Bethlehem and subsequently the Provincial elections, and none of the prophecies proved correct. At the recent election the Opposition was again defeated in the Transvaal.

What about the Cape Province?

What about Worcester, what about Hopetown, what about Stellenbosch where things were touch and go. That is surely not a sign of general retrogression. I just want to say something in connection with the reproach that the railway workers are to-day exhibiting laxness, and a want of discipline in the service is noticeable. This is also a covert attack on the civilized labour policy, but again the hon. member for Standerton dare not speak out, but now that white South Africans are employed in the service he speaks of inefficiency and laxness. I probably travel about more than anyone else here— it is my job—and I come into touch with all sorts of people and always do my best to ascertain what the opinion is about the railway service, and one hears from almost everybody that the railway staff, so far as willingness and courtesy are concerned, are infinitely better during the past three years, and that they are undoubtedly more useful. I will not say that it is actually the good qualities of the Minister and of the Nationalist Government, but something happened to me recently which never yet happened to me in my life. A conductor helped me to carry my luggage for a fairly long distance. I thought that I should give him a tip for his services, but when I offered it to him he said—

The man probably belong to the S.A.P.

I did not ask him what he was. He possibly was an S.A.P. adherent, but then he was one of the few decent ones there are. I have one complaint; not against the staff. I know that the position of the Minister is difficult with a large service to control, and that discipline must be maintained. The hon. member for Uitenhage (Mr. Bates) expressed the view about the staff that they should have nothing to do with the railway board or the general manager, but that complaints should go direct to the Minister Of course, this is wrong and impossible, but indisputably we should like to see that some way or other were found so that men on the lowest rung of the ladder, when they have grievances, can lay them before some person in authority for investigation, and that the grievances could be brought before the Minister. I do not know whether the Minister’s attention has been called to the case of poor people in Uitenhage who applied for work on the railways. The answer always was that there was no vacancy. They applied to the head, but they found that they must go to the hon. member for Uitenhage to get a job. They did so, and without much delay they got a job. It has already become a general saying in Uitenhage that if a man wants work on the railway you must not go to the Railway Administration, but to the member for Uitenhage. A stop must be put to that kind of thing. It is difficult to get proof of this, but it takes place and some better system must be found of dealing with the grievances of man in the lower rank of the service.

On the introduction of the budget last year the Minister of Finance received so many congratulations that I am sure, as a modest man, he must have felt very embarrassed. The encomiums this year, however, will not bring him any blushes, except from his followers when he announced a surplus of a million and a quarter. It is a very comfortable thing to have a good surplus, but the question is whence is it derived? If it were produced from a reduction of expenditure, that would be all right, but it is not so in this case. It is practically taken out of the pockets of the taxpayers of this country. It also denotes faulty budgeting, because the Minister of Finance was warned by the commercial community last year that he was under budgeting in respect of customs.

This is the first time I have heard of it.

Yes, and they were light, because he has got £874,000 more from customs than his estimates show. There is no doubt that a portfolio of commerce is urgently required in this country. The fact of the matter is that there is not a business man in the Government. How is it composed? Five lawyers, two farmers, two machinists, an engineer and a reverend gentleman, compose the Cabinet. I think if the Customs Department, which is under the Treasury, used a little more common sense, it would be better for this country. I will give one instance—what is known as the Garlick case. It was a case where goods were sent from England, and it was found when one of the cases was opened that the contents had been stolen. That was not denied, but the consignee had to pay duty on the goods, although it was never proved whether they had been landed or not.

That was in terms of the legislation you passed, and I have altered the law.

Well, I would like to say if that is law, it is not justice.

I have to carry out the law; I have altered it now.

It is a flagrant case, anyway. I would like to know where you would find a business man to take up such a position.

It was the view taken of your legislation of 1913.

But we shall be told that there is the Board of Trade and Industries, and I agree that the members of the Board of Trade are very able, industrious and pains-taking young men, but they are all theorists; there is not a man of business experience among the lot of them. Revenue and customs come under the department of the Minister of Finance, and as a Minister of Finance is always out for revenue, it seems incongruous that it should come under such a department. When I suggest a portfolio of commerce, I do not suggest another Minister. Goodness knows we have quite enough of them as it is. In Australia they are content with nine; here we must have eleven. The revenue for the past year shows a surplus of £1,700,000 instead of an estimated deficit of £188,000. There is no doubt the treasurer has enjoyed a very prosperous year, but the unexpected revenue from customs, the increase in income tax, the spending power of the alluvial diamond fields, and the increase in death duties all contribute to it, but can these sources be maintained? I fear not. I wonder if it has ever occurred to the Minister that taking this money out of the taxpayers is taking away that money from the enterprise and expansion of the country. The total debt of this country at Union was £109,000,000, and at the end of the last financial year it had increased to £222,000,000, of which three-quarters is productive, and one-quarter unproductive. On this, interest is payable of between £9,000,000 and £10,000,000. The interest at Union was 3.37 per cent., and it had increased to 4.15 per cent., so we are paying over £1,500,000 more interest to-day than at the rate obtaining in 1910. It is true conditions are changed. The amount of debt per head of European population in 1910 was £85; to-day it has increased to £132, and while the taxation at that time per head of European population was £15, it is now exactly double. The European population in 1910 was 1,250,000, it is now 1,660,000, so that whilst the population has increased by one-third the debt has doubled. The expenditure has risen from £19,000,000 to £38,573,000. These figures are so startling and striking that they cannot be repeated too often, if only the public would take note. How can this country with a white population of a medium-sized European city bear such burdens? It is true that the Minister received £3,000,000 from the Custodian of Enemy property, and it was used for the extinction of revenue deficits and reduction of debt, but can the Minister look to such a windfall again?

That windfall did not help the revenue in any way.

I did not say so.

But that has been the burden of the song all along. You are quite fair.

The amount of pensions paid has increased from £450,000 at Union to £2,182,000 last year, of which war pensions, including Boer War pensions, amount to £913,000. A considerable number of public servants have been retired before reaching the age of retirement and a good example of this has been mentioned by the hon. member for Newlands (Mr. Stuttaford), as set out in the Auditor-General’s report. I was surprised to hear the Minister some weeks ago defend this —the retirement of three members of the Public Service Commission at a cost of £3,000 per annum—I did not think it of him—

seems to be his motto. There were two cases in Natal where men were retired in full bodily health at 55, and two men were brought from adjoining provinces to fill their places, although they were considerably over 55. The contribution of £650,000 to the sinking fund which the Minister passed through last year is a step in the right direction, but I even wish him to go further, and as in the case of New Zealand make it one half per cent. per annum of the whole debt. The danger of the sinking fund is that a necessitous Minister may raid it, as has often been the case in every country that possesses sinking funds. I want to refer now to the question of provincial expenditure, which has increased at an alarming rate. Last year for all the provinces it was £9,500,000—the Cape £3,600,000, the Transvaal £3,617,000, the Orange Free State £1,087,000 and Natal £1,114,000; while the local provincial taxation during the last ten years has increased from £1,134,000 to £4,361,000. The taxation in the Cape from 1915 to 1926 has increased from £333,000 to £1,400,000, in Natal from £105,000 to £496,000, in the Transvaal from £564,000 to £1,966,000 and in the Orange Free State from £130,000 to £410,000. The main estimates for the present year provide £5,481,865 for all the provinces besides the amount raised by the provinces themselves making over £10,000,000 altogether. There is the Union Government and the provincial governments levying taxation, besides which there are the municipalities, townships, divisional councils and licensing officers extracting money from the peoples’ pockets.

What do you suggest, what is the remedy?

I will tell you just now. The Transvaal last year passed a Poll Tax Ordinance which means that a married man living outside the Transvaal having £100 invested in Pretoria or Johannesburg stock, instead of getting £5 interest, gets only £2 19s. owing to the deductions which are made.

The poll tax portion is probably ultra vires.

I hope it is. All investments will be removed from that province if it is not and they are finding that out to-day. An unmarried man, instead of getting £5 interest on his stock, gets only £2 14s. 3d. I submit the time has arrived for the reconsideration of the whole provincial system of taxation. It is wrong that there should be two taxing machines taxing the same thing, as the provincial income tax on the Union income tax. There is considerable agitation, especially in the Transvaal for the abolition of the provincial system, but Natal would not be willing to part with the provincial council because it is the last shred of local authority left to them, and in this huge country centralization has been carried much too far. The pity, as far as provincial councils are concerned, is that party politics were ever introduced into them, and for that the Labour party is almost entirely responsible. I would submit that the Government consider the abandonment of provincial taxation altogether, that the Minister of Finance should call the Administrators and the Executives of the various provinces together—take them into his confidence and ration them. It cannot surely be beyond the wit of man to devise means for doing this and doing it fairly, instead of having the present position of dual taxation, which is becoming a curse It is true that under the Act of Union certain taxation was reserved to the provinces, but it is not an insuperable difficulty and can be got over. There should be only one medium of taxation for State purposes, and that should be the Union Government.

They would have the right to spend, but not to tax?

They put up their requirements, and it would be for you to consider such requirements

What is the necessity for keeping them at all, then?

This taxing method is becoming an intolerable vexation to the people, and should be abandoned. You should not have three or four taxing machines in the country, in addition to the State. Where only one authority exists to tax, and to vote expenditure, there can be concentrated watchfulness on its doings, but where there is divided control this watchfulness is divided, and control is lost. The Minister of Railways was in a chastened mood when he presented his Budget. There was not such a dominant note in it, and the poor white policy masquerading under civilized labour was not so much in evidence as on previous occasions. I wonder if the Minister is beginning to doubt the wisdom of that policy. The addition of 13,000 or more poor whites to the railways sounds splendid on a political platform, but the employment of poor whites in this capacity generally leads to a dead end, although, of course, there may be exceptions. The Ward Railway Commission examined several hundred poor whites, and the deliberate and unanimous conclusion of the commission was that the only hope for the children was to take them away from their parents, and to place them amid more favourable surroundings, but this was recognised as a counsel of perfection—but in this country with its big native population it is indeed, deplorable and a menace that 10 per cent. of our people should be poor whites. The other day the Minister gave an extraordinary reply regarding the purchase of locomotives. It seemed that the technical officers and tender board made certain recommendations which were turned down by the Railway Board, and the Minister observed that it was not the duty of the Railway Board to accept the advice of the technical staff. That may be so but let us look at the composition of the Railway Board. It consists of an engine driver who was formerly secretary to the Stationary Engine Drivers’ Society, a country law agent, a storekeeper, formerly “whip” of the National is party, with a solicitor as chairman. This, forsooth, is the body which disregards the advice of highly technical officers. Are the decisions to issue no further branch railway returns, the refusal to issue the committee’s report on white labour, and the determination to discontinue the publication of returns dealing with white labour on the railways in consonance with the business principles on which the railways are supposed to be run? The country has a right to know whether branch railways pay or not. The Minister of Agriculture might, perhaps, be induced to divert the money spent on issuing crop reports to the publication of these branch railway returns. One day the Captain of the House of Commons went into the House to say prayers. Looking around the House he said—

when he looks to his front and to his right he might well say—

There were hon. members who took part in the Budget debate from whose speeches and attitude one had to assume we were living in Paradise, and were governed by angels, but they know it is a Paradise which was prepared by the S.A.P. Government.

Did not the S.A.P. Government make the snake?

The S.A.P. Government which prepared the Paradise is now in utter darkness, and the hon. members for Pietersburg (Mr. J. F. Tom Naudé), for Marico (Sir. J. J. Pienaar) and for Oudtshoorn (Mr. le Roux) eloquent and learned persons who can speak so nicely about affairs, wanted to make out that there had never yet been a Government who had done so much for the country as the present Government. I said by way of interruption to the hon. member for Oudtshoorn that he was still very young. If he remembered what condition South Africa, and especially the Transvaal, were in he would never have made this statement. The despised Botha and Smuts Government laid the foundations on which our country is to-day built. When after the second war of independence in in the Transvaal the country was in ruins, Generals Botha and Smuts concluded a loan in London to once more help on the people that had been crushed. One of their acts was to establish a Land Bank, and it was a new institution to assist the farmers. Has this Government laid such concrete foundations to assist the farmers? No, there it has failed. All the institutions which were established by Generals Botha and Smuts were in the interests of the farmers, and we may inter alia notice the establishment of the land boards. The Land Bank even extended as far as England, but now hon. members want to put the present Opposition into utter darkness, and represent to the people that it does not sympathise with the farmers. This is being done by young members who know nothing of the days of trial. If one analyses the speech of the Minister of Finance you will not be able to boast so much with reference to what has been done for the farmers. From that we can see the export of agricultural produce is decreasing every year.

What articles?

The Minister ought to know what kind of articles our farmers produce. There are e.g., maize, wool, teff ….

Has the quantity of wool decreased?

Then leave it alone. The late Government took action in the interests of the wool farmers when there was no market, and negotiated with the British Government to buy the wool so that the farmers could get a price. No, the hon. member cannot get me off my point. It is a fact. Now I say that that Government has done absolutely nothing for the farmer. What they have done is a drop in the bucket. Much has been done for the cross benches and the Labour party, but not for the farmers. Just look at all the socialistic legislation in the interests of the workers. All the public officials are looked after. What is done for the farmers? What has the Minister of Agriculture done? There we complained about the caterpillars and about the plague. Someone is sent from the department; he comes to Waterval, frames a report, and the farmers are told that they must catch the caterpillars by the neck and burn them. That is what is being done for the farmers. I admit that there is a decrease in scab.

What did you say at the time?

I still say the same. If we put the profit and loss against each other we shall see whether it was worth the trouble. Pietersburg is still full of scab. There is still some in Bethal and also in Witbank. There is less, but were the expenses and the losses worth the trouble? Was the work not done extravagantly? I, as a farmer, ask the Minister of Agriculture what he did? Much maize is produced in Bethal. When we want to send it to Johannesburg we must pay 1s. a bag railage. The rate for carriage to the coast for export is also 1s. It is not for the farmer but for the speculator. He puts the profit into his pocket. Then the elevators. They were one of the best things that we could have, and it was our Government which started them, but they are wrongly managed.

What about the Durban one?

I shall be glad if the Minister will state what the present position is there, but in the Bethal elevator there are still to-day more than 2,000 tons of maize. They do not belong to the farmers but to the speculators. They have filled the elevators and the new harvest is approaching and the farmers cannot put their maize in. The speculators have their maize in the elevators.

From whom do they buy the: maize?

Yes, from the farmers.

Do you not wish the purchasers to be allowed to put the maize in the elevators?

The Minister does not know the position there. The farmers cannot get their mealies in there. The purchasers must not keep their maize in them so long.

I cannot compel them.

Then pass a law. I had great luck last year in getting 200 bags of mealies in the elevator, but only for ten days. The Minister of Railways and Harbours has not painted the position so rose-coloured this year. I quite understand it. The poor farmers are being treated in a stepmotherly way. We have to pay the full customs duties on fertilizer which we require for grain, etc. Thousands and thousands of tons of fertilizer are imported to Bethal, last years I think the value was between 500,000 lbs. and 1,000,000 lbs., but with regard to maize they get absolutely no chance in the elevator. The railways are retrogressing in every department. I only want to mention one instance. Take the excursion tickets. They are issued at half price, but then the management fills the vehicles to such an extent that it is intolerable, and the poor unfortunate people have just to bear it because the ticket is at half rates. This is all in order to carry out the desires of the Labour party. I want the workers to be well treated, but it can be over done, and the public has to pay for it. Then we have the small engines. They have to draw long trains and arrive hours late. No one seems to mind at all as long as they run. That is wrong economy. Why cannot heavier engines be used for the longer trains?

Where do they come from?

Yes, I know that this Government bought them, but I say “use a thing according to its capacity.” Do not make it draw heavy trains. The light engines were not built for heavy trains.

Do you know that the light sleepers cannot carry the heavy engines?

Fewer coaches should be attached. The only train that runs well is the express. But the catering staff on it is too small. That is wrong economy. One man has to attend to a whole long train. I hope the Minister will give his attention to these* points. The speeches which have been made here are simply electioneering speeches and not suited to us here in the House who know better. If we were to believe all these yarns we would think that South Africa was a Paradise, but go and look a little at the misery in Graaff-Reinet and other places. The Minister of Agriculture has still another year’s time, and if he does not employ every day to rectify something then he will not return on the next occasion.

There is one tiling that I think the South African party should go down on their knees and thank the Lord for, and that is having a South African party press.

Oh let, the press alone for once!

I think they ought to offer up a prayer for that every night for according to the South African party press, the Opposition are putting up a great fight on this budget, whereas practically during the whole of to-day there have been four, five and six members of the Opposition in the House, and when we come to read the newspapers in connection with the speeches made by hon. members on that side of the House, what do we find? We find according to the morning Testament of the S.A.P., the “Cape Times,” from the Government benches we have—

But from the Opposition benches the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger)—

the hon. member for Cape Town (Harbour) (Maj. G. B. van Zyl)—

the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (South) (Sir William Macintosh)—

while the leader of the Opposition—

According to this morning’s testament he delivered a speech which acted as a tonic to the House and all sides of the House acknowledged the splendid vigour of his speech and the fine fighting quality of his forceful arguments. In the morning I suppose we shall have a similar account of the speech made by the hon. member for Newlands (Mr. Stuttaford), the hon. member for Rondebosch (Mr. Close) and the hon. member for Maritzburg (South) (Mr. O’Brien). Well, I do not know what the press will say about them to-morrow

What will they say about you?

I have listened to these speeches and I have made notes, and in order to make sure I was correct I consulted the morning testament and the evening testament of the S.A.P. Some hon. members on that side were in favour of protection. The hon. member for Cape Town (Central) with bell, book and candle consigned protection to the nether regions. Some other members gave faint-hearted praise to protection. As far as one can gather from the speeches made, the South African party have no policy whatever. The right hon. member for Standerton stated that the railway expenditure was too heavy. He said—

How are the hon. gentlemen on that side going to run the railways on business lines? will they tell us exactly what they mean? Do they wish to close down the unpayable branch lines, because that would be running the railways on business lines and that is what a private enterprize would do. Private enterprize would not run the railways in this country for the purpose of developing South Africa; they would run them where they were going to get a financial return. The hon. member for Cape Town (Central), when he was Minister of Railways certainly built railways which he knew could not hope to pay for years to come. I would like to ask them another question. Would they reduce the number of men employed on the railways? Judging by their actions in the past, they certainly would; they would reduce wages, they would employ more low-grade labour and eliminate higher-grade labour, judging by what the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger) did. He cannot deny that on the branch lines he replaced white men by natives. The country is entitled to know exactly what the South African party policy is on this question, if returned to power, when they speak of the railways costing too much. But they never know until the elections, and then, like the chicken, they get it in the neck. This precious South Africa Act which they quote with regard to its “business principles”—it can never be tampered with, even in the interests of progress. No constructive criticism was put forward by the South African party. The right hon. member for Standerton (Gen. Smuts) went on to say that his side of the House was in favour of—

that is, to take action as the late Government did, to depress the economic standard of the community to the lowest possible level, so that they are able to buy in the lowest possible market; and the idea of the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) when Minister of Railways and Harbours, was to employ men on relief works at 3s. 6d. a day, or on piece work where they were able, by doing as much as two or three natives, to earn from 4s. to 5s. a day. When we realize that the average wage of the natives on the mines of the Witwatersrand is from 3s. 3d. to 3s. 6d. a day, including quarters and food, we can get some idea of the—

Pure assumption.

There is no assumption about it, The right hon. member for Standerton also said that this Government is going over the edge. The right hon. member has been preparing to set town against country, black against white, European races against one another, and to stir up as much ill-will and enmity as he can in order to return to power. He thinks so little of South Africa that he is prepared to see it—

in order that he can get back into power. He would be only too pleased to see the Government go “over the edge” for it would then prove—for the first time in his life—that he was a true prophet. Statements were made that when the Pact Government came into power there would be a state financial chaos in a few years.

You are getting it.

Facts prove otherwise. The right, hon. member also stated that it was notorious that there was a great slackness and inefficiency on the railways and that they were being run for political purposes. If that is so, it is a reflection on the general manager, whose duty it is to see that the railways are properly run, that there is efficiency and that the men carry out their duty. It is no use for the leader of the Opposition to say he does not include the general manager and the higher officials in his strictures. If there is this inefficiency, and if the general manager has not reported it, or having reported it threatened to resign if matters were not remedied, then he is not fit to occupy his position. The right hon. member, speaking on behalf of his party, has made general accusations without giving one specific instance or one atom of proof. Instead he made a series of reckless and unfounded charges against the railway, and had I delivered the same speech the newspapers would have called it a dreary drip of platitudes. I challenge any member of the House and any supporter of the South African party to show one constructive thought or one atom of statesmanship in that speech. In connection with the railway rates on coal, the right hon. member told us that the action of the Government was crippling the coal industry in this country. What are the facts. The daily output of coal was greater than for some years, and the price at the pit mouth is higher to-day than ever before, and it is in a more flourishing condition to-day than in the last years of the South African party Government. I would like to ask, as I asked the hon. member for Standerton (Gen. Smuts) would they carry the coal at less than cost.

No, of course not.

Has any member of the Opposition produced in this House the figures of the cost of carrying the coal per ton?

Nobody can.

When the hon. members come and plead for the reduction in coal rate, and accuse the Government of crippling the industry, they should produce proof. If you are going to carry coal at cost, or less than cost, what is going to be the position of the railways? The hon. member is asking for the railways to be run for the fostering of the coal industry, and if you do that you cannot possibly run them on strictly business lines. When we had Sir Abe Bailey here, as a member of this House, he put up a stronger indictment of the South African party Government than the hon. member for Standerton put up against this Government, in connection with the rates on coal. When he moved his motion in the House he spoke for an hour or more in connection with the necessity of reducing the rates on coal, but the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger) was never able to satisfy him because, like Oliver Twist he was always coming back and asking for more. After attacking the Minister of Railways for his deficit the right hon. the member for Standerton then turns round and attacks the Minister of Finance for having a surplus.

And not reducing taxation.

The right hon. member for Standerton said there was no particular merit in having a surplus, and he said it would have been better if the Minister had come forward with a small deficit. Having come forward with a small deficit the right hon. member for Standerton and the other financial geniuses on that side would have stood up and condemned the Minister up hill and down dale because he did not produce a surplus. He stated that finance was simply an instrument for the national welfare. What about the railways? The hon. member admitted that no money expended for railway development had been good. Well, it had been expended on behalf of the welfare of the people. The right hon. gentleman went on to state that we are a poor country. As a citizen of South Africa I cannot understand why he is always decrying South Africa and the South African people. When he criticised the railwaymen he condemned the South African workers. The right hon. gentleman also said that the South African party had increased taxation because of bad times. Who was responsible for the bad times? The South African party took the initiative with their speedy deflation policy, with their reduction of wages, with the throwing of thousands of white men out of employment in this country, an action that was followed by private employers. Their policy was to discharge men, to reduce wages, to lengthen the hours of working and increase taxation because of the bad times they had themselves created.

They had to pay their way, surely.

They were always promising to reduce taxation and benefit the people, but something always prevented them from doing so. The right hon. gentleman said that he has been a very unlucky leader. I am sure the country will be very foolish to put a Jonah back into office. He also spoke about the public debt piling up in this country. He has been followed by other members of that party in speaking on the public debt piling up, as if the public debt had accumulated solely under the Pact Government. In 1921-’22 the S.A.P. Government increased the public debt by over £13,000,000 while the S.A.P. were in office, or at least that party of which the right hon. gentleman is one of the shining lights, from 1911 to 1923 they added £93,995,559 to the public debt. Hon. members opposite speak about the enormous amount of the public debt and the alarming increase of the public debt and I say that the greater portion of that debt was added by the S.A.P. They increased the debt per head of the European population from £89 12s. 11d. to £126 17s. 6d. during the period of their rule.

You promised to reduce it, that is the trouble.

They have increased the debt per head of European population by £37 4s. 7d., and in one year alone they increased the debt per head of European population by £6 15s. 2d.

When was that?

In 1921-’22, and in the last five years of South African party rule the public debt increased to £39,249,028. The Pact Government have increased the public debt in three years by £22,275,563, and yet hon. members talk as if we had increased the public debt at a greater rate per annum. Let us take the record of this great and glorious party when in power. In mines and allied industries from 1920 to 1923 they were responsible for reducing the number of Europeans employed by 9,161. On the Witwatersrand alone from 1919 to 1923 there was a reduction of 5,326 white men. From 1911 to 1923, 7,042 fewer Europeans became employed, although the industry had expanded at an enormous rate. On top of that, from 1920 to 1923, there was a reduction in the salaries and wages of the employees of £6,018,300. That is Europeans only. Then hon. members on that side ask who is responsible for bad times. In the last four years of South African party Government in the Witwatersrand alone there was a reduction in European earnings of £4,477,097.

That is because of the different currency.

It was not a reduction in the real purchasing power of the money, but a reduction in the actual amount of the money handed out as wages.

Exactly, that is what I say.

When it comes to a question of the working class and the reduction of wages and salaries and throwing thousands of men on the streets, they say it was owing to the depreciation of the currency. Take manufacturing industries. In many of the allied industries under the few years of sappism there was a decrease of Europeans of 11,128, and of salaries and wages of £8,196,913. In connection with Government employees, shop assistants, and the whole of the working classes we have the same state of affairs. During that period, because the Government backed up the Chamber of Mines in substituting cheaper men for higher paid men, you had an increase in the value of gold produced of over three millions compared with previous years. Although the mines were making profits, we had the support of the South African party that, as far as employees were concerned, the white man was discharged and the wage bill was cut down. In manufacturing industry we had from 1921 to 1922 1,967 men discharged and a reduction of their salaries and wages of over two millions. The value of production under the S.A. party Government in manufacturing industry decreased by £23,821,618. The result was stagnation everywhere, and the country was in a bad way. The farmers’ home market had been knocked to pieces. The value of materials used dropped by £20,825,468. One of the S.A. party proposals is to reduce the cost of living, according to the amendment moved, but at the same time to keep up the prices of farmers’ products. The value of South African materials used in manufacturing industries in 1921 to 1923 decreased by £9,769,530—under the policy of the S.A. party. There was that much money less for raw products. Yet we have hon. members on that side of the House telling farmers that they are their friends. The S.A. party is hopelessly wedded to the mining magnates of South Africa, and under the thumb of the old Unionist party. The people who dominated the old Unionist party to-day control the S.A. party, and it is most amusing to behold members of the old South African party, swallowed, chewed up and digested by the Unionist party, talk of the Nationalist wing and the Labour wing. There is no longer such a thing as the South African party and it might just as well call itself the Unionist party. In South Africa in the years 1922 and 1923 there was a decrease in the number of acres under cultivation of 829,315, and the acreage under wheat and barley in 1922 showed a considerable decrease as compared with 1918. This was the result of the policy of depressing wages and reducing the purchasing power of the people thus preventing them buying farmers’ produce to the extent they had previously done. We were told the other day by the president of the Master Builders’ Association, who I believe, is a member of the South African party, that the amount of building work carried out during the past year showed a substantial increase over that of the previous year, yet it is inferred in the amendment that the building trade is in a state of chaos. The president of the Master Builders’ Association also said that there is every indication that the condition of affairs is likely to continue indefinitely, that large building programmes are projected throughout the Union, that there had been no labour troubles which he attributed solely to the National Council established under the Conciliation Act, and as far as the agreement is concerned, he was very sorry that the Opposition had interposed, as it was quite evident that many members did not understand what they were talking about when they attacked it.