We should have an opportunity of seeing this Bill first. I do not want to stand in the way of the Minister getting his Vote through, and if we had an opportunity of seeing the Bill, I would not object.

I may say that this is a Bill with only one clause. It simply contains all the items which the Select Committee on Railways and Harbours have gone into, and in regard to which they are satisfied.

Is it unauthorized expenditure only?

Yes.

Motion put and agreed to.

as chairman, brought up the fourth report of the Select Committee on Native Affairs as follows—

What are these papers’ I think I shall have to suggest that in future the Clerk should read out all the details.

The Minister is moving to refer certain papers in regard to grants of land to the Crown Lands Committee.

There is no objection to that?

I wanted to know what it was. Not a single soul on this side knew.

Motion put and agreed to.

I move—

This Bill merely gives effect to the recommendations of the Select Committee on Public Accounts in its second report. All the various votes have been scrutinized by the committee and they recommend the appropriation in the manner in which we now ask the House to agree to if.

Motion put and agreed to.

Bill read a second time; House to go into committee now.

House in Committee:

Clauses and schedule put and agreed to.

House Resumed:

Bill reported without amendment; third reading to-morrow.

I want to move an amendment to this Bill reducing certain of the duties, and I would like to know under which clause I can bring it in. When the second reading was taken I brought up a proposal to reduce the tax on cotton blankets. I was then told it would be better to bring it forward in committee and I want to know from you, Mr. Chairman, under what clause I must bring it forward, I want to propose to reduce the tariff on certain articles in the tariff.

Perhaps the Minister might suggest whether the schedule would not be the best place.

Yes, that is the only place where it can be brought up.

The hon. member will have to wait until we come to the schedule.

Clause put and agreed to.

On Clause 6.

Some exception was taken to this clause at the second reading. I suggest an amendment to my hon. friend which perhaps would modify the extensive powers given to the customs.

If that is the sense of the House I propose to move an amendment which I hope will meet the position, and that is to omit the clause and to substitute the following new clause—

1. (a) by the deletion of the word “knowingly”;
2. (b) by the addition at the end of paragraph (b) of the words “or in regard to any matter relating to the importation of any goods the importation whereof is prohibited or regulated by any law;
3. (c) by the deletion of paragraph (c); and
4. (d) by the insertion after the word “shall where it occurs the first time, of the words “unless he proves that he was ignorant of the falsity of such invoice or representation and that such ignorance was not due to negligence or lack of diligence on his part.”

I think that will be a sufficient saving clause to meet the difficulty hon. members have pointed to. We first agree to the deletion of the word “knowingly” and then at the end we have a proviso—

If we do not have that, these enterprising people will say “We did not know about it” where they should have known if they had taken proper precautions.

Clause put and negatived.

New clause put and agreed to.

On Clause 7,

I move—

What good does the Minister think will be done in regard to the settlement of the difficulties he has in regard to yeast, with respect to this clause? Apparently some power of controlling the importation of yeast is given, but I take it that control is done by our wholesale houses who have in turn passed it on to the retailers, who are responsible for the evils which exist in such a terrible degree on the Rand and other parts of the country in regard to yeast. Is it not possible to strengthen this up, and that the wholesalers sell to the retailers only a bona fide quantity?

No, we do not intend setting up machinery to deal with the matter internally. This concoction is manufactured principally from the imported article, and not the local article, and if this is prohibited there will be less of this illicit brewing. If we want to go as far as the hon. member desires, we will have to set up very elaborate machinery. There was some intention of dealing with it in the Liquor Bill. This is merely a stop-gap in the meantime. At present I do not know whether they will devize other means of getting at this particular concoction.

Amendment put and agreed to.

Clause, as amended, put and agreed to.

New Clause 8,

I move—

I regret that I did not have this amendment prepared and submitted earlier in the day to the Minister of Finance, because I should like him to have had it in his hand. The position today is this, and it creates very great hardship on merchants, that a merchant may pass goods through the customs, having paid the correct customs duty, and he has sold these goods and been paid for them. Twelve months afterwards the amount of these customs duties is questioned by the auditing staff in Pretoria, and the merchant is called upon to pay further duties on these goods. The merchant has done nothing to evade paying the customs duty. The merchant may have entered into a large contract and been paid for the goods, and he may lose on the whole transaction. I may give the Minister one or two examples. In December, a merchant imported certain cattle automatic drinking bowls, and there was no claim until December, 1926, when he was asked to pay 20 per cent. In March, 1926, some taps were landed free, and eleven months afterwards a 20 per cent. duty was claimed. In October, a 20 per cent. duty was paid on certain tileomite sheets, and in February, 1927, an additional 10 per cent. duty was claimed. Provided there has been no attempted evasion of the payment of duty, and what the merchant has done is perfectly straightforward and honest, the commissioner of customs should be entitled to waive such claims. The purport of my amendment is to meet those cases. I make the whole matter subject to the provision that the commissioner of customs has satisfied himself that there has been no attempt to evade the payment of the correct amount of duty. If there is the slightest indication of any intention to evade the payment of duty I would be entirely at one with the customs to fine such a man for not having done so. I cannot see the justice twelve months after the duty has been paid, which in the opinion of the customs official at the coast is the correct amount, should the opinion of the customs official at Pretoria differ from that of his colleague at the port, the importer is mulcted in a very heavy fine, which in many cases involves him in a loss on the particular transaction.

I believe such instances do happen and difficulty arises with regard to the interpretation of certain clauses of the tariff. There may be hard cases, and it would very considerably ease the position if it were possible for relief to be given. I doubt, very much, however, if Parliament would agree to give these rights in regard to the remission of duties either to the department or to the Minister. The only way to meet such a case would be to make a payment from revenue. But it would be establishing a rather dangerous precedent. The department tries to be as careful as possible not to put importers to the inconvenience and expense of paying additional amounts in the shape of duty. The revenue, however, must be recovered from either the importer or the official who made the mistake, and as these mistakes are made bona fide it would be rather hard to come down on the poor official. It is as much the duty of the importer to find out the correct interpretation of the tariff as it is the duty of the official. I am rather doubtful of the wisdom of accepting the amendment.

The Minister is probably correct when he says that it would not do to give these powers. These troubles arise through the constant alteration of the tariff, and they would be avoided if the tariff were simplified instead of being a nightmare, as it is at present.

Any simplified tariff would create exactly the same difficulties.

The Commissioner of Customs has directions in many cases.

Not in what amounts to remission of duty.

He has a very considerable discretion. This is not a question of mistakes having been made, but of differences of opinion arising between the customs official at the port and the customs official sitting quietly in an office in Pretoria. The latter goes through these declarations and audits them practically, and at the end of twelve months points out that his opinion does not coincide with the opinion of the official at the coast.

The merchant does not pay unless he is legally liable.

There has been no intention on the part of the merchant to avoid payment, and in many cases merchants, before importing, ask what the duty is and are told that it is a certain amount. The merchant takes every step to see that he pays the correct amount of duty. As to surcharging the poor customs officials, those of us who sit on the Select Committee on Public Accounts know that Ministers have a way of waiving these surcharges.

Oh, no.

It is a very grave hardship on a merchant who has tried his best to see that the correct customs duty is paid, and then twelve months after he is mulcted 20 per cent. of the value of the goods after he has sold them, and is therefore unable to recoup himself for the amount of the extra duty. There is no suggestion that any merchant has tried to cheat the customs, and it is a very good example of an honest man being grievously treated while the crooked man gets through scot free.

Proposed new clause put and negatived.

On the First Schedule,

I move—

The present duty is a 1s. per lb. on cotton blankets with a maximum of 2s. 6d. The revenue from the duty on cotton blankets and blanketing and cotton sheeting was £331,000 last year, and as the total imports were £561,000 the duty works out at 60 per cent. In one case, a cotton blanket bought in Belgium for 1s. 5¾d. had to bear a duty of 2s. 3d. This is probably the highest rated article in the whole of the tariff. My complaint is that the duty is heavy and oppressive, and falls on the very poorest part of the population, mostly on kafirs who do not receive too high wages, on the poorest part of the coloured population, and, in some cases, on the very poorest of the poor whites. There are two factories in the Union making these goods, one in Capetown, and the other at Paarl, and, as far as I am aware, every particle of raw material is imported. As far as I understood, this was imposed to induce the natives to buy woollen blankets. There is a conclusive answer to that to show that it has not that effect. The duty on woollen blankets is 2s. 6d., or 25 per cent., whichever is the higher duty. This is not near the same rate as the duty imposed on cotton blankets. The best cotton blanket to-day you can buy retail at from 7s. 6d. to 10s. The cheapest you could buy before the war, or the revision of the tariff, was 2s. 10½d. Now it is sold at 5s. I am quoting the retail price in each case. The cheapest coloured woollen blanket you can get is 17s. 6d., retail price, so far as I can find, whereas the most expensive, the largest of the cotton blankets, you pay 7s. 6d. to 10s. for.

What is the wholesale price?

I am not going to tell you. My hon. friend said that this was to compel the consumer to buy woollen blankets. I have been a trader now over 50 years, and I can speak with some experience, and I say this advisedly, that people pay what they can afford to pay, or what they have got money for. A man is not going to buy a cotton blanket for 10s. if he can afford to buy a woollen blanket at 17s. 6d. A man is not going to buy a readymade suit if he can afford to buy a tailor-made suit. That principle goes right through trade. Perhaps the only fault is that people sometimes buy what they can’t afford. The result of all this is that the very poorest, the people who cannot afford to buy any blankets at all, have to go without, and they use packing. I was in Somerset West on Saturday morning, and I saw a tremendous lot of kafirs working on the pipe line from Steenbras to Cape Town. I saw a fair number of these kafirs wearing packing, which showed to me very clearly that they could not afford to buy anything better. This heavy duty upon cotton blankets does not assist in any shape or form the purchase of woollen blankets. I would also ask my hon. friend to look at the wages which some of these kafirs receive. The report of the Economic and Wage Commission, which sat in 1925, mentions a number of cases of wages paid to natives. I would like to ask my hon. friend the Minister how he can imagine that the natives can buy woollen blankets on these wages. At Cradock the wage, without any payments in kind, for men is 8s. to 20s. a month and for women 5s. to 10s. a month. At Frankfort the wage, without payment in kind, is for men 20s. to 30s. a month and food. At Ermelo the wage is 15s. to 40s. and at Lichtenburg £1 to £3. So it goes on. The wages vary a good deal, but I have tried to take some fair specimens. I only mention this to show the Minister that the natives do not receive the money to buy these blankets. I think this shows that it is time that something is done for them. As my hon. friend the member for Tembuland (Mr. Payn) said, they feel this tax probably more than any other. They have also other taxes to pay. There is the general tax of £1 on every native male adult domiciled in the Union, plus 10s. on every hut in a location. If the Minister accepts this motion, he will lose perhaps £150,000 in revenue. [Time limit.]

In support of the amendment of the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger), I want to put another aspect of this case. Apart from the fact that this is extra taxation upon a section of the community that can least afford to pay, there is the fact that the pure woollen blanket, which can be produced in this country—whether in sufficient quantities yet is a question—is not suitable for the purposes for which these natives use blankets. The blanket is used by them not only for their beds, but for clothing during the day. It is put to a strain that the woollen blanket will not stand. The cotton blanket cannot be made in this country yet from South African products and will not be until there is a very big cotton spinning industry in the Union. In the meantime this duty is subjecting these people to extra taxation which, I think, is unjustifiable.

I have always opposed this duty on cotton blankets, because I feel that it falls on the weakest and the poorest section of the population. When I asked the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger) what the wholesale price was, he rather curtly refused to give it. I wanted to find out, because we would like to know what really is the burden that the native carries on his shoulders. I know that the Minister of Finance is not really a red-hot protectionist. He is a protectionist, but not red-hot. One of the reasons to-day for this native unrest in South Africa is the high cost of living. We are making it more difficult for the native. You make the native pay a high price for his blanket and Kadalie then asks for a higher wage. The House shouts at him and says—

Both sides of the House come down and say that that man has got no right to ask for a higher wage. The higher you make the cost of living the greater will be the demand for a higher wage. After all, a blanket is more to a native than almost anything else is to a white man. The blanket is not only the bed, but it is also the clothing of numbers of these natives. I do not want to embarrass the Minister or the Government on this question, but I would ask the Minister to go into it again, because we are told that the raw material would be found in this country. The raw material is being imported. If you are going to put this tax on the very poor people you are going to make it very difficult for the employers of labour. I would like to talk to my Free State friends about this. I know I am very unpopular with some of them when it comes to questions like the one we are discussing now. I say that your agitation will become greater and greater on the countryside. We have got two factories producing these blankets. One has not proved itself yet. I admit I am a free trader to a certain extent and that I am against the policy of the Government so far as protection is concerned. I want to protect the poor people and I think it can be done. I think the Minister wants to do it. That is his record in the past. He has not been a very strong protectionist like the Minister of Railways. We are not helping anybody along, but we are hitting the farmer and particularly the farmer in the province I come from.

I hope the Minister will give this matter his serious attention. I would like to call his attention to some figures which he gave to the House in response to a question which I put about a month ago. In 1924 the duty which he got on these cotton blankets amounted to £178,000. In 1925 after the higher duty had been imposed he got a little more, about £230,000. In 1926 his revenue has again dropped back to £178,000. The revenue is now practically the same under the increased duty as it was the year before he put on this duty. I think the Minister will realise that that is due to the fact that there is only a certain amount of money which the natives can devote to the purchase of cotton blankets. There is the fact that they are now expending only the same amount of money on blankets as they were before the increased duty was imposed. A large number of them, the children especially, are going without blankets at all. The children are going about in skins and sacking to-day. There is no more revenue accruing to the State through this tax. The only possible benefit that can be said to result from it is that it is encouraging industries. What are these industries? We have two factories and the whole of the raw materials apparently are imported in connection with the local production of cotton blankets. No South African cotton is used. Our cotton growing industry is receiving no benefit from this protection tariff. The Minister said that the object of this tax was to encourage the production of woollen blankets. I put it to the Minister that the natives are not in a position to buy these woollen blankets. They have not got the money to buy them. The State is getting no more from this tax, the native is now spending the same amount of money as he did before and the Minister is imposing a tremendous hardship upon a class of people that can least afford to bear that hardship. I do think that the Minister’s revenue will not be in the least affected by the proposed reduction of this duty. The only thing it will do perhaps is to discourage or stop possibly, the importation of this cotton waste. I say that the country itself and the natives of this country, are being asked to pay far too big a price for the encouragement of this bastard industry. It is a bastard industry, because it is not using our local products, but using imported products. I would like the Minister to go and see the actual effect, where the children and in many cases the women, are going about in sacking instead of blankets. I heartily support the amendment.

There can be no doubt that there has been a great deal of very irresponsible talk about this matter. The hon. member who just spoke (Mr. Gilson) talks about this tax being responsible for the natives wearing sacking and skins. I have seen natives wearing sacking and skins all my life, long before this duty was increased. Then we hear the story about the poor native child. The blanket of the child is not taxed at all. Then about the supposed increased price of the blanket on account of the increased duty. Hon. members talk about the percentage of increase. After all, what is the actual increase in the price of the blankets. I think the hon. member for Bloemfontein (North) (Mr. Barlow) asked a very fair question when he asked what was the price which the wholesaler charged and the price which the retailer charged. I think if that matter is gone into we shall find out where the money goes to a large extent. We have heard about these high prices. We have been told that a native has to pay for a woollen blanket a minimum of 17s. 6d. I am informed that a light woollen blanket is imported into this country at a cost of 3s. 9d. in 50 lots. If you add 33 1/3 per cent. to that you get about 5s.

Who gets the rest?

Secondhand, and you pay a duty of 5s. on these.

The hon. member said that the natives cannot afford to wear woollen blankets, as the minimum price of a woollen blanket is 17s. 6d. A native can buy a light woollen blanket brought into this country at an imported price of 3s. 9d. What is the position in regard to the cotton blanket? We heard that the natives won’t wear the cotton blanket. The Board of Trade informs me that a cotton blanket of 2 lb. weight is sold in this country from our own factories at a price of 3s. 6d. That same blanket if imported will cost in this country 1s. 9d. The duty on that is 2s. If I accept the hon. member’s amendment and halve that, the price of the blanket will be to the wholesaler 2s. 9d. That blanket is sold by our own factories to the wholesaler at 2s. 6d. That is the position. Our local article is cheaper than the imported article. The effect of the duty is merely to give the market to the local article. The hon. member for Griqualand (Mr. Gilson) says my figures show we have not imported more blankets and we have not got more revenue than formerly, but he forgets that since this tariff was introduced we have manufactured thousands of woollen and cotton blankets that have been sold in this country. The blankets we imported formerly are not imported now. These are the facts. I informed the House the other night that when we introduced this tariff we did not think then that we were going to get even a cotton manufacturing industry here. We did it to encourage the wearing of woollen blankets, the manufacture of our own product and for the benefit of the wool farmers. It was stated that the material employed in the manufacture of cheap cotton blankets was cotton waste. This same article is imported and it is manufactured into blankets in our own factories. I wish to read to the House the report of the Board of Trade and then hon. members can see what we have achieved here and that there are factories in this country which are worthy of protection. The Board says—

Hon. members will remember that this tariff has only been in force a few years, and yet there is this progress—

The report proceeds to say that they have sent an expert to Holland to get information about certain improvements in manufacture and the firm states that its productions compare very favourably with the imported goods and even surpass them in some cases—

Then why do you want the duty?

Because our experience is if you increase the duty you get a local market for your local product. It does not mean if you increase the duty that you are going to increase the price to the consumer. It simply gives the market to the local product. I say there has been a lot of irresponsible talk and there is no ground for saying that the native is hard pressed with increased duties as the result of this tariff. I therefore regret I am unable to accept the amendment moved by the hon. member.

I do hope the Minister will reconsider his decision and accept the amendment. About two years ago a deputation pointed out to him the hardship that would fall upon a very large section of the poor and especially upon the natives. To this the reply we had from the chairman of the Board of Trade was that it was being done for revenue purposes. I further understand the Minister’s argument when he denies that the natives in the territories have to bear a proportion of this tax of £313,000 in respect of cotton blankets. A further argument the Minister used was that we already import woollen blankets which are available for these natives. If he means they should wear these, then what difference does it make and why exclude the cheaper cotton goods? This hardship is accentuated by the fact that other direct taxation has been increased.

We are equalizing native taxation, reducing in the north and adding in the south.

I am now speaking on behalf of the natives of the Cape Province, and they certainly have to pay more, while we are at the same time closing to them avenues of labour which hitherto they have enjoyed, I hope the Minister will take this into account. I do not think he fully appreciates how much these cotton blankets mean to the natives, especially in our colder climates. I support the amendment.

I do not want to repeat the arguments used by those who have preceded me, but I would like to draw the Minister’s attention to another aspect of this question. It is certainly the case that the natives in the eastern portion of the Cape Province and in the Midlands are in a very bad way just now and very poor owing to the drought. It is certainly to be noticed that they are wearing substitutes for blankets in the way of sacking and old skins and so forth. The native in this country on the whole is a very clean person arid sanitary in his habits if you give him the chance. He washes his cotton blanket frequently and he keeps it clean. He cannot do that with a covering of skins or sacking to any extent. There is no question that we are incurring a great danger of a spread of typhus among the natives and eventually the Europeans through depriving the natives of the opportunity of washing their ordinary covering of blankets. This is a very serious matter. Typhus is a louse-borne disease, and these insects will thrive unless cleanliness is observed. The Minister seems obdurate, but it would be an irony of fate if we found an epidemic of typhus spreading among the natives and eventually the Europeans and found this increased cost of blankets was the chief contributory cause to an outbreak of typhus amongst Europeans as well as natives.

I must honestly say that I cannot understand why hon. members object so much to the tax on the importation of cotton blankets. We should consider a little the necessity of protecting our industries and our cotton planters, but it is not quite clear to me whether the factories use cotton which has been grown in our country.

No, not yet. The blankets are too cheap to permit of the use of pure cotton.

Cotton is being planted at various places in the Transvaal, and we must encourage our own industries. The factories will buy our farm produce. I am very sorry, but I differ entirely from hon. members here, and I always feel—although I do not wish to oppress the natives—that if they have to pay a little more for their cotton blankets they will also become a little more serviceable and work a little more. The cotton blankets are cheap enough. If the amendment of the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger) goes to a division, I will walk out or vote against it.

I doubt whether the Minister was quite right in the figures that he gave. He mentioned, I think, that 250 people were being employed at this Huguenot factory and then said the wages paid were £1,250 per month. It seems to me that that is a very low average of wages to pay because according to the Minister there are 250 people employed at an average wage of £5 a month each. What I would suggest is this, that considering the hardship this involves to thousands of natives up country it seems we are paying a very long price for our protection—I am a protectionist— when the only good we have of this is to provide 250 people with an average wage of between £5 and £6 per month.

And encouraging a South African industry.

We are encouraging an industry which is employing in its principal factory 250 people and we are penalizing hundreds of thousands of natives in doing so. It does seem to me a case of protection run mad if the Minister’s figures are correct.

They are just making a start.

I was astonished when I heard that all this bother was for an institution which was paying £1,250 per month in wages.

There is another factory in the country.

From the Minister’s statement there were two factories and the one producing the largest quantity employed 250 people.

No.

Well, I will let the Minister explain his statement.

Before you put the question, Mr. Chairman, I would be glad if the Minister will repeat this. The Minister can withdraw the amount in the tariff if proper wages are not being paid. It works out at £5 per month. Surely we do not want to get industry on sweated labour.

The Wage Board deals with that.

The Wage Board deals with that very little. It has not made a single determination yet.

Clothing.

The Minister can put that across the South African party—not oil me. As soon as they make a wage determination they will shout for all they are worth and go to the newspapers. Deputations are sent to the Minister—he is tired of the deputations he is receiving. The Minister must tell us; we are very much interested in this matter—what are the wages that are being paid?

I do not know. The average is £1,250 a month.

That is nearly as much as they pay their shepherds in Cradock.

And they are very glad to get it.

This is a bad business. On the one side you are sweating the poorest people in the community, and on the other hand you are taxing the poorest people. The Minister of Labour must look into this. The Wage Board must be instructed to look into this: £5 a month! How we would shout if the Opposition were in power. We are determined not to build up factories in this country on sweated wages. The Minister must see that something is done. Now you are making the native pay big prices for his blanket.

He pays less than on the imported blanket without the duty.

That is not the point. You have raised a new hare here, which I am following up. The Minister has told us the wages are low.

I am not dealing with wages.

I am. I am sent to look after that. The Minister has opened up a thing we shall have to follow up—people who have this high protection are sweating their workers. We know that out of the mouth of the Government themselves. What the Minister has said about producing these blankets is true, but how far do 50,000 blankets go amongst 6,000,000 people? The trouble is a man wants to make toothpaste, he has two kafirs, and he can turn out twelve pots a week, and the whole of the rest of South Africa has to suffer. How many blankets are turned out?

One factory will turn out 30,000 in a month.

Will?

It has just started. It will turn out 57,000 in a few months.

Where the native used to buy a few blankets he is now buying one. Both Ministers are on a bad wicket. One Minister is responsible for paying bad wages, and the other is responsible for making poor people pay.

I do not see why the Minister should get angry.

Who is angry?

He talks about irresponsible talk. If you can sell these cotton blankets so cheaply, why keep on the duty? The Minister tried to dispose of it by saying that it does not fall on the consumer at all. What are 87,000 blankets amongst 6,000,000 consumers? There are 5,000,000 natives alone, and there is also the poor-white population, and the coloured people as well. I quite agree with the hon. member for Bloemfontein (North) (Mr. Barlow) that the increasing cost of living going on, notwithstanding what my hon. friend has said as to the Board of Trade, is causing unrest.

No.

The Minister is closing his eyes, and he will not see. There is another statement he made which is not borne out by my information. He said that locally-made blankets are as good as the imported. My information is that they are not, and it is borne out by the fact that a man has been sent to Holland—to improve the making of blankets, I suppose. As to what the distributors make out of it, the cotton blankets in Belgium cost 1s. 5½d. The freight on that is 20 per cent., the duty 2s. 3d., or over 100 per cent., which makes it 4s. 1½d. They are sold wholesale at 4s. 3d., I admit it is a cut line, and sold retail at 5s., but I am not quite certain. Take woollen blankets, they are sold at 14s. 6d. wholesale and 17s. 6d. retail. Even the imported stuff is cut very fine. We have a similar allegation made when the duty was imposed, that the distributors would make a bigger profit out of it.

I gave figures which have never been refuted.

I do say the figures are inaccurate as to the profit made out of these lines. There is an enormous consumption, and in the ordinary way they are sold by the million. Every trader wants to get as much trade as he can. It is a gross piece of oppression to levy a duty like this, 100 per cent. in some cases; and what good does it do? It does not bring better prices on wool, not a sixpence.

And if I accept the hon. member’s amendment the natives will pay the same prices for their blankets.

I say it is absolutely incorrect. The sixpence profit made on that will, in the major portion, go to the benefit of the consumers. That is the way in which business is conducted—there is too much competition. That is the general complaint, and that is the complaint in the Transkei—that there are too many doing the business. They cut prices as much as possible. The price of wool is regulated by the market prices on the other side. These factories are consuming 5 per cent. of the local wool. You have a wider and a broader market outside. You have America, France and Germany competing against each other.

Somebody would get the benefit of the wool being manufactured here. There is freight to be paid on wool exported, and freight to be paid on the manufactured article which is imported.

It does not work out that way. There is such a much bigger and broader market outside. I am sorry my hon. friend has taken up that position. It is a grievous and oppressive piece of legislation.

I am sorry to have to take to this again. It is, I know, an unholy alliance between the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger) and myself. The churches are complaining very bitterly about this tax. They are supplying with blankets English-speaking and Dutch-speaking people who are below the bread line, and they cannot give them all they need, because they are so expensive. We always hear talk that it means so much for the farmer, and so much more for his wool, mealies and everything, but we are going to pay for these people running a place at Paarl with coloured labour and in Cape Town and suburbs with half white and half coloured labour. The more expensive you make living in this country the more you have to pay. If we have to pay 15s. for our blankets we still get £1 for our mealies. The time will come, and it will come fast, when your constituents will ask you: Why should we pay through the nose to keep a few sweated blanket factories going? He gets the benefit of the wool sold here. The working classes receive no benefit for that goes to the employers and to the people who start factories—they are doing particularly well, but nobody else. Why should we ask our people in the Free State to be taxed to benefit factories which employ the cheapest kind of labour? Politically these people are no good to us. You will not get any votes from them, for if the flag question comes up, they will all go to the other side. Financially and materially, these people are no good to us, and I agree with the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger) that this is most oppressive legislation. The Minister has been had, and had badly. I am prepared to support the Minister on matters of protection, but not on this type of protection. Are the poor people getting better blankets as the result of this high duty which does not benefit either the factory or the warehouse? Other people grow the cotton and Belgium makes the waste, which is turned into blankets here. I am told that the South African blankets are not so good as the imported, and wear out much quicker. We cannot blame the retailers for sending up the price, because competition is so keen to-day that the prices are cut. The Minister, however, has made up his mind on the subject, and once the Minister does that nothing can move him. All the same I cannot vote against the Government on this subject, and I am not voting against the Government. [Interruptions and laughter.] Hon. members can sneer and jibe, but half of them will not vote for the amendment either. All the same I am making a pretty strong protest, although I have no native electors and I am told I am not likely to have any white electors either.

I cannot understand the argument of the hon. member for Bloemfontein (North) (Mr. Barlow) unless it is his contention that the farming community is prejudiced by the protection policy of the Government. If that is his contention I would like to remind him that the farmers are receiving considerable benefit from protection, and no one has raised objections to the duties on wheat, tea and sugar, which are all put on for the benefit of the farmers. The people in the towns who work in the factories pay the increased duties on the commodities mentioned, and the farmers are on the balance getting the best of the arrangement.

Bring forward some resolution on the subject.

The question of the duty on blankets has already in this House been discussed ad nauseam. It has been reported that a 3-lb. cotton blanket made in Belgium, the landed cost of which is 4s. 3d., has been sold in the native territories at tremendous prices. The price at Umtata was 9s., at Herschel 10s., Queenstown 9s., Butterworth 8s. 3d., and King William’s Town 8s. This shows that the imported price is not everything in these matters, and that traders’ profits are an important factor. The hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger) said that owing to keen competition the price of blankets has been brought down. As a matter of fact, however, there are so many retailers who have to make a living from a limited turnover that they cannot afford to sell at a reasonable rate of profit. I can quite understand the attitude of the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) and the hon. member for Newlands (Mr. Stuttaford) who make their living through importing; naturally they don’t like having these goods made in the country. They prefer imported articles upon which there is a bigger profit.

Rubbish!

Are you in favour of wages of £5 a month?

No new policy has ever been inaugurated which was entirely successful at the start. The protectionist policy is in its infancy in South Africa, but if hon. members continue to complain, the Minister will be discouraged, and we shall get back to the bad old state of affairs when people walked the streets instead of working and manufacturing goods. As to ready-made clothing, which has also been mentioned in the debate, there is a clothing factory in Germiston employing 18 white men, the foremen receiving £13 10s., and the others £8 and £6 weekly. The factory also employs 171 white girls, who start at 20s. a week, rising by 2s. 6d. monthly to £2 10s a week, and bonuses are also paid. In addition there are 68 natives employed. As it is claimed that protection increases the price of farmers’ clothing, I would like to say that this factory makes among other items a good line of farmers’ working trousers. The factory price is 8s. 6d., less 2½ per cent. The material costs 5s. 6d. exactly as it would in England, and the labour 1s. 6d., leaving 1s. 6d. to cover overhead charges and profit. This Droves how absurd is the contention that protection bolsters up local industries and allows both the employers and the workmen inordinate profits. A three-garment suit is being turned out from the factory at £2 10s. The material costs 30s. and the cost of the work for manufacturing the suit is 10s., whilst the other expenses and profits also come to 10s., which must be regarded as reasonable. Manufacturers can compete because they have improved machinery and if the Government encourages them they will keep on introducing new machinery. The managing director of the company I have referred to is at present in Europe looking for new machinery to keep up to date. In conclusion I would say that the great bulk of the country is satisfied with the protective policy and would be disappointed if the Minister were to withdraw it in any particular.

Wonderful discoveries were made during the debate on the customs tariffs, and we are now entirely away from the subject of discussion. The hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger) has suddenly discovered that low wages are being paid, and the hon. member for Bloemfontein (North) (Mr. Barlow) has found out that the churches are so terribly opposed to it. The hon. member for Cape Town (Central) has discovered that the wages paid to natives in the Free State are very low. I do not know whether the hon. member is so much concerned about the low wages because if so I could tell him what the natives receive in addition. They have great benefits on the farms because they can allow their stock to run and can shear wool and plant mealies. The hon. member now wishes to make out that they only get those low wages, but he ought to tell the whole truth. Then the hon. member is worried because there are 5,000,000 natives in the country, and he wants to make out that they all wear cotton blankets. That is not a fact. They are already very fastidious. I wanted recently to give a blanket to a native at my place but when I wanted to give him a cotton blanket he would not accept it and I had to give him another kind. The hon. member says that the farmers will get no more for their wool if the factories are established. Our object is not merely to get more but one thing is certain, viz., that if the wool is manufactured here then the costs of our exporting the wool and the costs of importing the readymade article will be saved. That is not all, for we must also provide work for our people here. We already have our hands full because it is said all day long that we have not got enough work for our people. The whole protection policy of the Government is to provide work. If it had only stopped there, that there was a difference of opinion about the necessity for this tax, then I would not have taken part in the debate, but I do not wish matters to be wrongly represented. It is wrong to talk about the cash wages of natives without mentioning the other benefits they receive on the farms. If one must talk about the wages of workmen in the factories then it can be done on another occasion, and the House should now not be occupied with that question because it has been found out that a small wage is paid.

I wonder whether, if my hon. friend, who fought so earnestly for this tax, found that an article he required for his own domestic comfort would cost 2s. 1d. and he had to pay a duty of 2s. 6d., he would talk in the same way about taxing clothing. So far as the natives of the Cape Province are concerned the majority of them are not in the financial position that they can discriminate in the character of the blankets they buy. Through the kindness of the Minister of Justice, I have a report from the Department of Trade and Industries in which they make out a case for the duty. They say the ordinary cotton blanket the native uses weighs 2½ lbs. and the duty is 2s. 6d. The first cost on the other side of the water is 1s. 8d. and from the figures, verified by the Board of Trade and Industries, the charges to get it into this country amount to 5d., making a total of 2s. 1d., and the duty is 2s. 6d. It is said that so far as the local industry in the country is concerned, the blankets are being sold at 3s. 9d. If you had a small duty the natives would be able to buy them cheaper than at the present time. The natives are beginning to think about their conditions and this tax is seriously resented, and I have a good deal of sympathy with the natives, many of whom at the present time are in a very impoverished condition. It is extremely difficult for them to buy these miserable cotton blankets weighing 2½ lbs. to keep out the winter cold. The hon. member for Harrismith (Mr. Cilliers) seems to think we are using the products of this country in the manufacture of these blankets. They are manufactured from waste products and not from cotton which must now be worth something from 8d. to 9d. a lb., as it comes from the gin, so that would make the blanket much more expensive than the price of the cotton blanket at the present time. They are made from waste material, and I ask if my hon. friend has calculated how many people are employed in that industry, and then compared them against the thousands and thousands of natives who have to pay for a blanket 3s. 9d. wholesale, with the extra price, retail, added.

They are paying 3s. 6d. retail for a 2-lb. blanket.

I have always been in favour of moderate protection of things produced in this country. I am sorry to come in conflict with my hon. friend, but I am reading the report of the Department of Trades and Industries in which it is said the price of the 2½-lb. cotton blanket is 3s. 9d. I would like to see my hon. friend on the top of Table Mountain with a 2-lb. cotton blanket covering his frame to keep the cold out. If you can import them into the country at 2s. 1d. the price of 3s. 9d. seems excessive, and the manufacturers in this country are not going to lose anything if the hon. Minister accepts the amendment of the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger) under which the duty would be 1s. 3d., making the total price of the blanket 3s. 4d., so that there would then be an advantage in favour of the native. I do not think anybody has been in a native constituency in the country without discovering that the natives think that this duty is levied against them as natives. They do not object to paying the equivalent duties to those of the Europeans, but they do object to a specific tax on an article which they themselves alone use, and which is very much in excess of the tax put on woollen blankets and other articles used by the European population.

There is only one way in which a country pays for the goods which it imports, and that is by the goods which it produces.

How do you pay for your motor-cars?

By what we produce in this country. If you do not produce there is financial trouble, and if the hon. member reflects he will see that. There is no other way for paying for motor-cars or anything else, unless you send the products of this country to pay for them. You cannot possibly send money, because you have not got the money here, and you cannot pick gold up on the veld or on the street. If you import stuff, and you have to pay for it by what you produce, then you will find your production increases. Take mealies or fruit. You have to pay a duty on blankets and clothing, boots 30 per cent., and shirts 25 per cent., and the producers of mealies and fruit have to pay that duty plus a little besides. Do they get a sixpence for their mealies and fruit because they pay that duty? No, they don’t get one iota more. Yet it costs them more, by reason of the duty, to produce them. This country sends away 50 per cent. of its products, including minerals, they all go out of the country, whereas, in Great Britain, the percentage is only 25 per cent., and in the United States of America it is 10 per cent. Therefore, we send out over 50 per cent. of our products, all of which have been produced in the disadvantageous circumstances of high tariffs. It increases the cost of production, and you don’t get a sixpence extra. The high cost of Jiving which follows drives people off the land, because they cannot make it pay, and they have to come and live in the town. Your sound industries, like farming, should be made to pay in this country, and yet nothing, except wool, is paying at the present time, and that would pay even better if you had not these heavy duties. You never get to the end of these things because the increased cost of living goes against transport of the country, like railways, and the consequence is you cannot get the rates reduced.

I am sorry that I do not agree with the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger). Firstly, because I am a strong supporter of the protection of our own industries, and, secondly, because the people who are now employed owing to the creation of factories due to the protection policy, have not yet had sufficient time to enable us to judge about the advisability of this protection. I feel that it would be unsound so soon after we have begun with this policy to make any change. I agree with the hon. member that the price of wool has nothing to do with the factories. The price is fixed by the big markets overseas, in London, Germany, etc., but I think that we, before we make a change, should first give the factories a proper chance, and should then decide whether a change is desirable.

This debate has resolved itself into a question of free trade versus protection, and I support the Government in their protectionist policy, because I think it is the one thing needed which has put South Africa in the position it is in to-day. So far the policy has been very successful. I wonder how many members have considered the position of the Waverley factory in the suburbs where nothing is used which has to be imported.

But they are making woollen blankets.

It has always been their pride whatever they are making to get all their raw material in South Africa. I visited the other factory last year, i.e., the factory which was started at Paarl. The machinery that was there before was the property of a company that had gone into liquidation, and the whole thing was abandoned. What do we find to-day? There are, roughly, 200 being employed, of whom 150 are Europeans, mostly Dutch-speaking, men and women. We heard this afternoon about sweating in factories. I saw the people there at Paarl, and I must say they looked happy and contented, and, as far as I could tell, the inhabitants generally of Paarl were uttering blessings on the men who had established the factory and found employment for large numbers of people there.

Were they making cotton blankets?

I think it is a mixture of wool and cotton. I am not an expert in these things. You have sufficient protection as regards wages. The Wage Board will, undoubtedly, see that the conditions of the workpeople are such as to satisfy a civilized standard. You may be certain that the Department of Trade and Industries would not recommend protection in this case if they were not satisfied that the conditions of the workpeople were satisfactory. As a matter of fact, I saw houses being built on the property, not only for the foreman, but for the leading workmen in the place, so as to enable them to live close to their work. These houses were of the most modern type. As far as these two factories are concerned, I think they are both of them a credit to the Union, and if the Minister is correct—and one must accept his figures as correct—that these blankets are supplied at 2s. 6d., and can be sold retail at 3s. 6d., I do not see where the hardship comes in. We have to ask ourselves whether this factory at the Paarl has done anything during the last couple of years to show that it is intending to produce on a large scale the blankets required by our natives in the Union. The output has increased very largely, and I have no doubt that before long they will be able to turn out the quantity mentioned by the Minister. The time will come when it will not be necessary to import a cotton blanket at all. After all, the question is whether we are in favour of this protectionist policy by which it is intended to build up the industries of the Union or whether we are in favour of free trade and allowing the very cheapest goods to come into the country available for all the inhabitants. Personally, it seems to me that very many harsh words have been used about these factories which are not justified, and I hope that during the recess hon. members will take the opportunity of visiting the Waverley factory near Observatory, and also the one at Paarl.

If my hon. friend (Mr. Alexander) will allow me to say so, I think he is barking up the wrong tree. The hon. member has spoken about the factories that produce very good blankets in this country, and I am as strong a supporter of those factories as my hon. friend. I think that a large number of woollen blankets produced in this country are a great credit to this country. These factories are producing a first-class article which is able to compete with the imported article in price, and you are getting an article Union made of equally good quality. My objection, however, is that in this case you are dealing with an entirely different article, the lowest class of cotton blanket, which is only used by the natives of this country, and you are putting on that cheap and inferior article a duty of more than 100 per cent. The cost price of that article when it is manufactured in Europe is 1s. 8d. for 2½ lbs., and to that is added 2s. 1d. when landed. While you are putting on that article, which is only used by the lowest class of the population, a duty of over 100 per cent., you are not putting like an equivalent duty on the better blanket which the manufacturers of this country can produce in competition with the imported article. A duty of over 100 per cent. on an article which is used by the poorest section of the native population of this country is, to my mind, an excessive duty, especially when you take into consideration that the industry is not using the cotton produced in this country, but is using cotton waste and things of that character.

One of the most extraordinary features of this discussion has been the interposition of the hon. member for Boksburg (Mr. McMenamin). We know, of course, that he is a true blue 100 per cent. protectionist, but I venture to say that of all the constituencies in South Africa the one that can least afford to be represented by a protectionist member is the constituency of the hon. member for Boksburg. That constituency is made up almost entirely of one mine, the E.R.P.M., and that mine is one of the low-grade propositions on the Rand. Recently that mine has had to come before this House through the Minister of Mines to ask for ratification—

I would like to know whether we are discussing the Mines Vote?

We are discussing the hon. member for Boksburg at the moment. As I was saying, that mine has had to ask for ratification of an agreement by which the Government agrees to give up a certain amount of money in order, so the House was told, to keep that mine going. That is only one instance of what will happen if the hon. member’s views are carried out. That one mine employs more people, pays more wages and is of greater economic value to this country than fifty cotton blanket factories. It has spent more money and produced more wealth than one of our larger farming areas. This policy of putting up the cost of necessaries, such as blankets—and the mine natives use blankets— is a policy that, ultimately, will kill the mining industry, or, at any rate, that portion of the industry which is on the border line, as the E.R.P.M. is, between payability and non-spayability. We have already had to pay money which was due to this State in order to keep this huge concern going, yet, in an airy spirit of irresponsibility, the hon. member for Boksburg says—

in order to build up a few little factories. In other words, he misses the wood for the trees. He does not see that his policy would kill Boksburg more effectually than anything I know of. It would be absolute poison to the economic life of his constituency if his theories were adopted. Coming back to blankets, I say that this policy of putting up the cost of cheap cotton blankets is a policy which hits tens of thousands of mine natives in his own constituency. I do not think Boksburg has yet realized that, but the time will come when they will. Another objection to this proposed tax is this, that it is one of the bastard industries of South Africa. We had a discussion last year on the proposed increase of duty on ready-made clothing to assist an industry which imported £1,000,000 of cloth, which it turned into ready-made clothing, and the value of the raw material from products of this country was £3,000 a year. Whether one is a protectionist or a free trader, I think the committee should say that whatever protection we do give shall be confined to those industries which utilize our own products in this country. I mentioned the other day the case of the paper factory, in whose favour a premium was put on wrapping paper in South Africa, which still remains, and yet it imported all its pulp from Norway and Sweden. Then there was the case of rubber, a duty which compelled every user of rubber in this country to pay tribute to that factory. That is protection run mad. Here you get this particularly obnoxious form of taxation compelling the poorest of the poor to pay more for the elementary necessities of their lives. It is impossible for any Minister to defend such a tax. There is only one member of the Labour party who realized that they are neglecting their obvious duty in not pressing for a reduction of the cost of living to the poorest of the poor. The explanation is that they get no votes from the very poor. The Labour party, in this country at any rate, is an aristocratic or middle-class party. I hope the result of this discussion will be to make the Minister pause and consider before he attempts anymore duties of this sort. We divided the House on it last year, and I hope my hon. friend will do so again this afternoon, so that we may know exactly where we stand in regard to these duties on the ordinary necessities of human life in this country.

This is a matter which interests my constituency very vitally, and it is on occasions such as this that I ask myself whether the natives should not have more say in the Assembly of the country that controls revenue and expenditure. If the hon. members on the other side had large numbers of natives to represent, the natives would have a fairer show than they get to-day in this House. The argument the natives are using to-day against this particular form of taxation is this—

That is the truth and you cannot get away from it. That is where the whole of this policy goes wrong. That is why the native is getting to-day that grip on the politics of the country, feeling that the white man is not treating him fairly. If he had the opportunity of working in these factories and could thus feel that he was taking his share with the white man in building up the country he would not have this antipathy to this form of taxation. The Minister went through the Transkeian territories and met the traders there, and figures were quoted to him which showed clearly that these alleged exorbitant profits quoted time and again were untrue. It is not the case. I know from my experience. I have been interested in business in the Transkei. It is not the case that 100 per cent. profits are made. In many cases it is a merely nominal profit of 5 per cent. or 10 per cent., and the cotton blanket is used in order to attract trade. That is a fact.

If that is so, they can give the natives cotton blankets at 2s. 6d. that they can get from the factories in this country.

But these blankets do not appeal to the natives. They do not like them. They are not good. The Minister says that children can wear 12-ounce cotton blankets. Fancy children wearing a 12-ounce cotton blanket in the cold winters we have in that part of the country! On my farm the Minister will find little lads come and ask for work for one purpose, simply to buy a cotton blanket. He says that years ago the natives wore sacking. Of course they did, but they never did in my part of the country. It has been part of the desire of the parent to keep the love and respect of his children by giving them a blanket; he would give them cotton blankets as Christmas presents. To-day it is the fact that they are going about in old bags and sheepskins. He may quote reports from the Board of Trade, who know nothing about it. Hon. members should see these children in the middle of winter going to school in thin cotton shirts because they cannot afford blankets. We are paying just double what we were paying before. The whole burden is coming down on the white man. I am sure every farmer knows that, but because this policy has been started they are not strong enough—I won’t say they are not honest enough—to get up and protest. If they had natives in their own constituencies you would have such an uproar that the Minister himself would withdraw it at once and would say—

I am sure we are all obliged to the hon. member for Bezuidenhout (Mr. Blackwell) for giving us his ideas of mining policy, but it is just because we all agree that some of the mines have very hard work to keep on working that we are so anxious to establish industries. Blanket making is one we wish to establish, for the simple reason that we have millions of natives, and blankets are the principal things they buy. Everybody who has spoken has agreed that these imported blankets are made from cotton waste which costs a shilling a pound—absolute rubbish—and sold at from 2s. 6d. to 3s. a pound. I think that no friend of the natives would suggest that this should be continued. The hon. member for Tembuland (Mr. Payn) spoke about the poor natives shivering in the cold, but we can easily imagine them shivering in the cold in half a dozen of these rubbishy blankets. We want to encourage them to purchase blankets which will give them some warmth, and that are in the long run cheaper and better for them. There is no need for the natives to purchase imported blankets, as we have heard that local blankets can be bought as cheaply. The same arguments which have been used by gentlemen opposite that the natives should be encouraged to buy cheap and nasty blankets might have been used with regard to second-hand blankets, on which the Government has put a high rate. But for hygienic reasons no one wants secondhand blankets.

Have you heard of any disease in this country as a result of second-hand clothing?

No, but I can imagine such might occur. What we want to do in the interests of the natives themselves is to insist on their buying decent woollen blankets which are much better value for the money.

Amendment put and the committee divided:

I move—

This amendment refers to drums containing grape spirit. The steel drums are admitted free and it is proposed to substitute for them metal drums.

I move—

I have no objection.

Amendments put and agreed to.

Salt is mentioned under heading 374, and I should like the Minister to explain to the House under what conditions salt intended for dairy use shall come in free of customs duty. A large quantity of salt is produced in the country. Much capital is invested in its production and a considerable number of workmen are employed. The position to-day is that many of the undertakings cannot continue. I know that there must be a good reason for the proposal but it does not seem to be in the interests of our own industries. It conflicts with the policy of maintaining and pushing industries. If there is not a sound reason it ought to be dropped.

Report 80 of the Board of Trade and Industries deals fully with this matter. Salt is only allowed in free for the dairy industry because it was shown that the salt produced in the country had injurious ingredients for the making of butter and cheese. Experiments have been made for years in this connection, and it appears that if we want to make cheese for export imported salt must be used.

I would like to ask the Minister what decision he has arrived at with regard to the matter brought to his notice on my behalf by the hon. member for Port Elizabeth the other night; whether the Minister would consider the reduction of duties now imposed on regalia used by friendly societies. I understand the Minister said he would give the matter consideration. I would like to be informed what he has decided to do.

The hon. member should have moved an amendment on page 9. If he presses the point I will be prepared to consider the admission of this regalia free. We cannot put it in the schedule. If he moves the amendment at the report stage I will consider it. I cannot however extend it to masonic regalia.

Schedule as amended, put and agreed to.

Second schedule and title having been agreed to,

House Resumed:

Bill reported with amendments; to be considered on 8th June

I move—

Clause 9 of the principal Act lays it down that all monies received or accruing to minors shall form part of the income of the parents. This principle should be confined to incomes of children under 18 years of age. By Section 14 (2) (d) the abatement for the child is lost when he reaches the age of 18 years on the last day of the year of the assessment. It seems only logical if the abatement ceases that the child’s income should be a separate income and not an income upon which the parent has to pay income tax. Under the Death Duties Act if a gift is made more than two years prior to death, duty is not paid on it and we also find under the Insolvency Act of 1916 any settlement by ante-nuptial contract is also free, the legislation contending that these children should be protected by settlement duly and properly made. No one wants parents or children protected when there is a settlement made to avoid income tax.

I cannot understand your amendment. You are not taking the joint taxation of income of husband and wife. Are you applying it to children under the ante-nuptial contract, or to the wife?

I was trying to show the unfairness in the case of the husband being made to pay income tax on an amount which he himself has paid for already and I came to the point that the settlement, if bona fide made, is protected by our laws, yet the husband still has to pay the income tax arising on that settlement. That is against all our principles. We have two distinct principles, death duties and the insolvency Act protecting him. But under the Income Tax Act he has no protection whatever. There are many hard cases where without exemption there is injustice. In all the principles of our law we recognize the necessity of such a settlement, and I ask the Minister not to derive income from such a settlement.

I cannot quite follow the hon. member. As the hon. member knows, whether spouses are married by ante-nuptial contract or not, their separate estates are taken together for income tax purposes. Is the hon. member attacking that? If you allow these incomes of husband and wife to be separated you will help the wealthier class of taxpayer, who can afford to make important settlements on his spouse in this way, to thus avoid taxation. The principle of the law is to treat the two incomes as one for income tax purposes, and I cannot depart from that. Is that what the hon. member is attacking?

I ask the Minister to exempt only those settlements by ante-nuptial contract, a settlement which is bona fide, and in no way made to avoid paying income tax. In a case like that I put it to the hon. Minister the whole principle of our law protects such settlements. Even under insolvency we protect such a settlement. So why, in this one case, should the settlement be looked upon with suspicion?

The taxation authorities have always refused to concede that point. People married by ante-nuptial contract would be at a disadvantage. You would enable the wealthier people to make settlements on their wives and thus escape a good deal of taxation. I cannot allow that, because you would be attacking the whole principle upon which the income tax law, relating to husband and wife, has been based.

New clause put and negatived.

On Clause 4,

I move—

1. (a) by the insertion of the words “and trade unions” after the word “societies” in paragraph (c).

The purport of this amendment is to bring trade unions under the same category as building societies and friendly societies in so far as obtaining exemption for income tax purposes in respect of money accruing from investments. According to the executive officials of the Typographical Union, at whose request I am moving this amendment, they have always been under the impression that “friendly societies” covered trade unions; in fact, they contend that when Mr. Burton was Minister of Finance he actually stated in this House that trade unions, for the purpose of exemption under the Income Tax Act, were included in the term “friendly societies.” It was not until last year that any demand was made on the amounts accruing to the Typographical Union from investments, and consequently, the officials concluded they were exempted as a trade union. A year ago, however, they were called upon by the Receiver of Revenue to submit a statement showing the income received by them on account of interest on investments for the years 1922 to 1925. They submitted this return, and stated that they did not consider they were liable to be taxed as they were a mutual benefit society, and as such fell within the terms of Clause 10 (1) (c) of the Income Tax Act. In support of the claim that they were a mutual benefit society, they forwarded copies of the objects contained in Clause 3 of their constitution, but the assessment was levied in terms of the Act, notwithstanding the protest. The objection was disallowed and they then lodged an appeal in terms of Part III of the Act. This appeal was turned down by the Special Court, and the Union was obliged to pay the tax.

On the whole of their subscriptions?

No; on interest from investment of their surplus funds. Now, the Typographical Union, owing to the tranquility that has existed largely through the legislation passed by the South African party Government; since, in fact, the Industrial Conciliation Bill became an Act, has been free of industrial trouble, and, not having to use funds for strike pay to its members, the Union has accumulated a considerable sum of money. As is well known, strikes used to frequently occur in the Typographical Union before the institution of the National Industrial Council of the Printing and Newspaper Industry of South Africa, but since 1919, and the coming into force of the Industrial Conciliation Act of 1924, the Typographical Union has accumulated substantial reserve funds, and these monies are invested for the benefit of the members, and especially to safeguard the liberal mortality payments provided by the Union. It is contended that if they have to pay income tax on investments, it will be necessary, in order to meet their liabilities, to increase the subscriptions of the members. The Minister is familiar with the whole of this case. Memorandums have been submitted to him on the subject-matter, and I would like to know whether he is prepared to bring the unions into a category similar to that of friendly societies. Trade unions, in addition to protecting their members and increasing, where possible, the wages earned, also carry out all the functions of the ordinary friendly benefit societies.

The position here is this—that, in terms of our legislation, mutual associations, including trade unions, are exempt from taxation on their ordinary income derived from subscriptions, etc., but a difference is made in regard to investments. Friendly societies are exempted altogether, and in so far as the objects of the trade unions are the same as those of a friendly society, they would also be exempt altogether. But, of course, there are trade unions where they do not separately organize their friendly society functions and their other functions, and in those cases they are, according to law, subject to income tax. Our difficulty is going to be this. Of course, it is not only mutual associations to which this principle would refer. We are continually extending the free list. It would be a very dangerous position if we agreed to this. Friendly societies are altogether free, and if a trade union organizes so that its friendly society work is separated from its other objects, it will also be free, but if we once accept the principle proposed, it will have to be extended to numerous other societies, and it will get us into difficulties.

According to Section 10 of the main Act, exemptions from income tax in respect of accrual of interest on investments is already given to all ecclesiastical, charitable and educational institutions of a public character. It also applies to mutual life insurance companies, even in respect of the interest on their invested funds, and exemption is also given in regard to the general income and the receipts and accruals of companies, societies and other associations which do not derive profit or gain out of their transactions, with persons other than their own members. It is so seldom one gets a trade union in this country with any accumulated funds, and any real income derived from investment, that I do think where an occasion does arise like this, the Minister might well meet this request. What are these other societies he spoke of that would have a claim if he accepted the hon. member’s amendment?

Various cooperative societies, agricultural unions, etc.

I do not agree that this would constitute a precedent for them. These benefits given by trade unions are strictly in the nature of friendly society benefits.

If that is so, and if they can separate the functions they are automatically free.

Yes, but it is very difficult for them. A year may come when, owing to a strike or other call on them, they would have to divert a portion of the revenue to other than friendly society purposes. I got up also to ask the Minister what is the meaning of the new sub-section (d)? He proposes to substitute the following—

In the first place, there is going to be this practical difficulty. In the case of life insurance companies, how are you going to separate the money which accrues from life insurance investments from other sources? Year by year, these funds accumulate, and on those accumulated funds a certain revenue is arrived at. How are you going to say, without investigations going back 10 or 20 years, how much of the accumulated funds can be said to be derived from its savings, derived from the business of life insurance? I cannot understand the meaning of the last line at all. I take it, the intention is this—that the grant of annuities shall be taken to be part and parcel of life insurance business, but how these accumulated funds can be said to be derived from grants of annuities, I do not know. Normally, I take it, an insurance company for every pound of premium affected spends a portion of it in benefits to policy-holders, and the balance is accumulated. I do not know whether the Minister has himself gone into this matter, but I have the very greatest difficulty in following the whole thing, and I am wondering how it will work out in practice.

I hope the Minister will give some attention to the amendment moved by the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (North) (Mr. Strachan). The Minister does not seem yet to grasp the idea put forward by the hon. member. Trade union funds are contributed by the members; they are members savings. The tendency is now, and has been for some considerable time, to narrow down the function, once very prominent, of the strike idea, and devote as much of their funds as they possibly can to members in distress. When investments are made, and interest accrues, it enables the officials to increase the benefits to members, or reduce their contributions. There is no profit made to anyone whatever. Members themselves contribute, and the more funds there are invested the more sure members are of getting relief in the hour of distress. At a time of death or sickness, or unemployment, it is a great benefit, and if officials have more funds at their disposal the relief is all the greater. I think, in these circumstances, the Minister should agree to accept the amendment.

The point raised by the hon. member for Bezuidenhout (Mr. Blackwell) is, of course, a matter of drafting by the legal advisers, but the whole section is so designed that it will not exempt income of non-mutual companies except that derived from premiums.

The accumulated funds —how are you going to separate that?

That is a matter of calculation, and I cannot exactly explain that now. With regard to trades unions, I really am afraid we are going to create a precedent here which may be embarrassing, but if it is the sense of the committee to extend this privilege to trades unions, I am prepared to accept it.

Amendment put and agreed to.

Clause, as amended, put and agreed to.

On Clause 5,

Will the Minister tell us the exact purpose of this amendment?

We take away this penalization in this case. We find it gives a lot of trouble in administration, and we do not think it is fair and equitable.

Clause put and agreed to.

On the Schedule,

I move—

Agreed to.

Schedule, as amended, put and agreed to.

The title having been agreed to,

House Resumed:

Bill reported with amendments; to be considered on 8th June.

I move—

Agreed to.

Clause, as amended, put and agreed to.

On Clause 3,

I move—

This is merely to make it clear that any person can take out two licences for 5s. each. He need not pay £1 if he takes out more than one. We now make it 5s. for one class, 10s. for two classes, and 15s. for three classes.

Amendment put and agreed to.

Clause, as amended, put and agreed to.

Clause 4 and Title having been agreed to,

House Resumed:

Bill reported with amendments; to be considered on 8th June.

On Friday the hon. member for Yeoville (Mr. Duncan), criticised the salaries paid to women typists in the civil service. Some time ago an article appeared in one of the local newspapers in which more or less the same points were made, and probably the hon. member’s criticism is very largely based on that article, which purported to be an interview with one of the ladies concerned. Generally the impression was given by the article that women typists in the public service are very much underpaid compared with those employed by commercial firms. The matter has been gone into very exhaustively by the Public Service Commission. In the public service women typists receive a commencing salary of £10 per month, rising by annual increments of £12, to £14 per month. Subsequently they progress to £15 per month and then by annual increments of £15 per annum to £22 per month, with the prospect of promotion to a limited number of supervisory posts at £27 10s. per month. On the other hand, banks pay on an average £10 a month as a commencing salary, rising by increments of £12 a year to £15 a month. In exceptional cases the salary goes up to approximately £20 a month, but these appointments are very limited. Generally outside service is not so advantageous as public service, and public servants enjoy a good many benefits which are not extended to employees in private service. Wholesale drapers and grocers pay their women typists an average commencing salary of £5 15s. per month, with progress dependent on merit up to £13 per month, and where private secretarial duties are performed the salaries are higher, but such cases are rare. One company starts its typists at £3 10s. and limits them to £14 per month, only one drawing as much as £17 a month. I am speaking of one of the chief business concerns in Cape Town.

Not for typistes.

Yes, the same type of women clerk as is employed in the public service. This matter has been gone into exhaustively by the Public Service Commission. A daily newspaper paid a commencing salary of £7 10s. a month, rising by annual increments of £18 a year, to a maximum of £17 10s. a month. All women clerical employees outside the service are required to combine clerical duty with typewriting The average commencing salary paid by attorneys is £8 a month, with progress dependent on merit to £12 a month, the average maximum being £16 a month. Insurance companies pay a starting wage of £6 per month, rising to a maximum average of £12 10s. and in exceptional cases to £18 a month. This shows very clearly that as compared with employment outside the public service women typists employed by the Government are paid very well. Another objection raised by the hon. gentleman is that, speaking generally, these women typists have not very good prospects in the service, and he desires that second-grade typists should, after a certain period of service, be promoted automatically to the first grade.

When they get bilingual qualifications they should get increased pay.

That principle is not recognized anywhere in the service. They never pass from one grade to another automatically. The number of typistes is very limited, and it is impossible to put more typistes in the higher grade. Every civil servant must stand his chance of obtaining a vacancy when it occurs, and it would not be advisable to depart from the general principle laid down for the whole of the service. Let me say generally that hon. members have a perfect right in connection with this vote to discuss any matter they like and to criticise, but the House must understand that the Minister of the Interior has very little power to interfere with these matters. The Public Service Commission are not civil servants in the ordinary way. They do not become subject to the instructions from the Minister concerned. It is a statutory commission, and they simply work according to powers entrusted to them under the Public Service Act and according to the regulations which they themselves lay before the Minister concerned and the Cabinet. After the Cabinet has agreed to the interpretation of those regulations it is a matter, according to the statute, for the Public Service Commission. Therefore I think it is inadvisable for the Minister to interfere with the work of the Public Service Commission.

It is honoured more in the breach than in the observance.

In coming to the case mentioned by the hon. member for Hanover Street (Mr. Alexander) I shall be glad to have the papers he has at his disposal. It is an individual case, and it is impossible, without going into the whole matter, to give a definite reply. I will gladly go into the, matter and investigate the position.

I realize the Minister of the Interior is not, perhaps, wholly responsible for these scales, because they apply right through the service and the only reason I raised it here is because I do not know on what other vote to raise it. It affects women typistes right through the service. I raise it because I want the Minister to give attention to the matter and if he thinks these scales are not adequate for these women he might again bring it to the notice of the commission. I cannot follow some of his figures. He is right in saying it was mentioned in some of the newspapers, and when I saw it I made it my business to get particulars from the Public Service Association which was meeting down here, and the figures they give me were that typistes who are not shorthand writers begin at £110 per annum, rising to £140 and there they stop. Those typistes who are also shorthand writers begin at £10 a month, rising to £13 a month if not bilingual. If they become bilingual they do not rise to the higher scale automatically, but have to wait, and therefore you do not hold out any inducement to these women to become bilingual. I think the Government ought to give them a career to which they can look forward and which will enable them to maintain themselves decently when they stay on in the service. The salaries the Minister quoted, namely, £3 10s. and £4 a month, I hope the Government will not take as an example to follow. I think the salaries are on the low side, and I hope the Government will give them attention.

I would like to raise a question with regard to the powers of the Public Service Commission, and to ask the Minister if something can be done. I understand when a public servant is dismissed for misconduct he forfeits all pension benefits, and any sum accruing him for leave which he has not taken, and the result is that in many cases where an official should be dismissed and deserves dismissal, the Public Service Commission feel it is such a tremendous punishment not only to deprive him of his position, but to take away the benefits accruing from long years of work that they hesitate, and the extreme step is not taken when it is to the advantage of the public service and of the public that such a dismissal should take place. There was a case in my own district where this applied. Would it not be possible to allow the Public Service Commission a certain discretion in the matter, when they hold that a public servant should be dismissed it should be in their power to allocate to him a certain share of his rights, certain pension rights which have accrued. The Public Service Commission do at times hesitate to inflict the supreme penalty, simply because of the terrible consequences financially involved to the official concerned and to the man’s family. Also, I would like to know from the Minister if it would be possible without going to extreme trouble, as far as legislation is concerned, to alter the powers on the lines I have indicated.

Since the present Government has come into office the pension list has been increased by over £34,000 per annum in consequence of their deliberate retirement of men under the retiring age. It seems to me unless these retirements can be justified on public grounds that this is a very extravagant form of public service administration. These prematurely retired men have also been paid £29,593 in gratuities. We find very many men in the prime of their usefulness, being put on the pension roll, and I should like to know whether the Minister will give some information regarding the retirement of Sir Reginald Blankenburg from the High Commissioner’s office, Mr. W. Sargeant, also of the High Commissioner’s office, and another official, Mr. Thornton, also in the same office, all of whom have been retired well under age. There is also an appointment mentioned in the Public Service Commission report, that of Mr. C. E. Viljoen, who has been appointed as inspector under the Public Service Commission. Can the Minister give me information as to the grounds for this selection, on whose recommendation he was appointed, and over how many magistrates senior to him in grade or salary he was preferred.

Business suspended at 6 p.m. and resumed at 8.6 p.m.

I would like to ask a question or two. First of all, I see from the papers that a new appointment has been made during the last month or so of a gentleman at the head of the Foreign Affairs Department of the Prime Minister’s Department, a Mr, Bodenstein, from outside the service. What astonishes me about this is that Ministers seem to have no regard to economy at all. Some time since the attention of the House was called to the fact that a certain gentleman from the office of the High Commissioner in London had been retired on pension. Sir Reginald Blankenburg was retired with a pension of £686 a year. As a matter of fact, he is not of pensionable age. Why could not Sir Reginald Blankenburg have been appointed to this office? Surely, he would have information and experience on the other side which would have rather qualified him for this post. Then there is Mr. Sargeant who was also put on pension. He is now in a billet here in Cape Town. Ministers never seem to have the slightest regard, as far as I can judge, for economy in these matters. As was stated just before dinner, by the hon. member for Illovo (Mr. Marwick), something over £40,000 is being paid out to pensioners who are placed on pension before they are 60 years of age. I want to ask why Mr. Jackson was allowed to leave. He was put on a pension of £553 16s. 6d., and had five years added to his service. He was retired at 44 years of age. He was able to go and take a billet under the League of Nations at Geneva. Why couldn’t he have been appointed to a billet of this kind dealing with foreign affairs? I should have thought he would have been an extremely useful man for such a position. I would like the Minister of the Interior to give us an explanation why these men were passed by, and a man from outside the service was brought in to fill a billet of this kind.

Perhaps when the Minister is replying to the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger) he will also explain the reason why, in one more case, the permanent officers in the civil service of this country are passed over. There are few enough important posts in the service, but when an important post in the service is open it is expected that competent officers in the service would have an opportunity of filling that post. The Minister and his colleagues, whether in his own department or in the Department of the Minister of Agriculture, or the Prime Minister’s Department, take a particular delight in putting an embargo upon officers in the service and going outside and appointing to posts men not alone on account of their qualifications, but also on account of the political views that they hold, and the political expressions they have given voice to. I do not think you are going to have much esprit de corps in the public service of this country, or that you can continue to have much enthusiasm amongst your civil servants when you find that the moment a good appointment is open, the Government immediately go outside the service to select an incumbent. My hon. friend, the Minister of Finance, I see is already getting alarmed—

All this is quite out of order.

I am discussing the public service now. My hon. friend is not yet Chairman of Committees. He is already beginning to show irritability when he is only getting scratched. I was not dealing with him. I do not know any appointments outside the service that my hon. friend has made, but I want to know from the Minister of the Interior whether any protest has come from the Public Service Commission, whose duty it is to protect officers in the service, against going outside the public service and Bringing an outsider in for this appointment. Every outsider you bring into the service prevents promotion of the young and rising men in the permanent service of this country. I say it is destroying the esprit de corps of the service. My hon. friend (Mr. Jagger) has referred to the fact that you had a very responsible officer from the High Commissioner’s office in London. If he was competent to fill for years the position of secretary to the High Commissioner, and also, on occasion, to fill the post of acting High Commissioner, it might have been kept in mind when that gentleman was put on pension that it would have been advisable to call him out here and put him into the important post in the public service of this country which the Minister of the Interior considered it advisable to fill in another direction. I do not think we are transgressing outside of our rights, though the Minister of Finance may think so, in protesting against the extraordinary number of outside people who are getting into the public service of this country. In all the years that I have known the public service, I have never known so many cases as we have had in the last few years in which outsiders have been brought into the permanent service when there were already suitable persons in the service who could fill the appointments. The Minister of Agriculture has followed in the same course and now he sees the results.

All good results.

I am reminded that the Minister of the Interior, in replying, might also tell us whether the Public Service Commission was consulted in connection with the appointment of Mr. Bodenstein. I think it is about time—we protested last year—that this House should really protest against the manner in which the public servants of this country are passed over in connection with vacancies for new appointments and outsiders brought into the service. We have a large public service and I say unhesitatingly that we have in it a large number of people of considerable ability and experience, and until you are able to say there are not in the service men who are able to fill appointments of that character then I say it is no credit to the Government or the Minister and certainly not in the interests of the service that outsiders should be brought in to take up important positions.

The hon. member for Griqualand (Mr. Gilson) has asked what the position is with regard to the discipline in the service, and he made certain suggestions in how far matters could be improved. Of course, that is something not in order here, because it involves an amendment of the existing law, but seeing that the hon. gentleman merely asked what the position is I can just read the clause in the Public Service and Pensions Act of 1923 bearing on this point. It is Clause 21, subsection 5—

Of course, the penalty must be commensurate with the offence, and as far as that is concerned all the discretion that is necessary is given to the Public Service Commission to deal with all sorts of offences. In any case, if the hon. gentleman suggests that the position can be improved, that can only be done by legislation. The hon. member for Illovo (Mr. Marwick) has asked a question in connection with the appointment of Mr. Viljoen as one of the public service inspectors. It seems from the observations which the hon. gentleman has made that his real grievance in that connection is that a number of other magistrates who were higher in grade or further advanced in the service than Mr. Viljoen have been passed over. That seems to be his grievance and he asks what is the reason. Of course, Mr. Viljoen has been appointed in just the same way that all other officials are appointed in the service, that is to say, a recommendation is made by the Public Service Commission to the Minister concerned, and the Minister either confirms or rejects it, and in case of rejection it must go to the Cabinet, and if the Cabinet accepts the decision of the Minister against that of the Public Service Commission the matter must be reported to Parliament. In the case of Mr. Viljoen, he has been recommended by the Public Service Commission on their own initiative. It was not a matter of consultation at all between the Minister and the commission. The Minister confirmed the appointment In the question which was asked by the hon. member some time ago in the House, he stated that the appointment of a public service inspector over the heads of some of his superiors is something unprecedented. It is certainly not unprecedented.

I made no such statement.

It is so reported in Hansard.

I simply asked the question.

If the hon. gentleman withdraws that word I won’t give any further explanation with regard to that. Let me just point out, however, that the previous Public Service Commission appointed by the previous Government appointed, for instance, Mr. Ham in the same way above others who were higher in rank. They went even further—they appointed Mr. Smithers, who is still one of the public service inspectors. He was not even a second-grade magistrate, as Mr. Viljoen was; he was only a senior clerk. The reason for that is simply that the work of a public service inspector is of a very special nature. You cannot appoint an old man. He must travel practically the whole year round. He is very seldom at home, and you must, under the circumstances, necessarily appoint a younger man. As far as the qualifications of Mr. Viljoen are concerned, I do not think there can be any doubt as far as that is concerned.

How many people did he pass over?

I think 15 second-grade magistrates who were above him in rank. Mr. Viljoen has special qualifications. To be an inspector in the public service you must not only have the capability to do that sort of work generally, but if it is at all possible you must have had as wide an experience as possible of the public service in various departments. Take, for instance, just one point. Mr. Viljoen was, at various periods, private secretary to various Ministers, or acting as such for a limited period. He was private secretary to the Prime Minister at one time, to the Minister of Justice the Minister of Native Affairs, the Minister of Agriculture, Railways and Harbours, Public Works, Finance, Defence and Interior. That shows that Mr. Viljoen generally has had a very wide experience of administrative work. There is no doubt about it that Mr. Viljoen was generally recognized in the service as being a very capable officer, and for the reasons I have already stated I see certainly no objection and I do not think the hon. gentleman ought to see any objection to his appointment. The hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger) has drawn attention to the fact that someone outside the public service has been appointed Secretary of Foreign Affairs. Let me say that that is really something with which I, as Minister of the Interior, responsible for this particular vote, have nothing to do. The Public Service Commission stands towards the various Ministers exactly in the same relation.

Were they consulted on this matter?

That is really a question the hon. member ought to ask the Prime Minister, because he is the responsible Minister with regard to it. From my own knowledge I may say that certainly the Public Service Commission was consulted in the matter. If they were not consulted then certainly they have to report to Parliament. With regard to appointments the Minister concerned is really the responsible man. The Public Service Commission makes a recommendation to him and as far as appointments and also as far as discharges or the pensioning off of officers are concerned, the Minister of the department is really the person responsible to Parliament, and not the Minister of the Interior under this vote. As far as Mr. Jackson is concerned I may reply to that remark, because Mr. Jackson was secretary to the Public Service Commission. We were asked as a Government by the authorities in connection with the League of Nations to make a recommendation of an officer to be appointed in connection with the secretariat as Geneva, and we asked officers in our public service whether they wanted to be recommended by us, and Mr. Jackson was anxious that he should be recommended by us and we did recommend Mr. Jackson, and he was fortunate to have the position. So he was not discharged from the service, but really asked to be recommended and he was appointed.

I was rather surprised you let him go.

That was something in Mr. Jackson’s interest. I do not think Mr. Jackson has any grievance at all.

I never implied that. I was rather surprised you let him go.

Well, he asked to be recommended and we did so.

I only wish to say why I interjected the discussion was out of order under this vote. The hon. gentleman has mentioned three cases, one an appointment in the office of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister would be quite prepared to defend his choice, but under the rules of the House he is not able to do so. The hon. member has dealt with two cases of officers in my department. I would be quite prepared to justify my action if I were in order, but I cannot do so. It is unfair to the Government. Let me add in regard to the case of Mr. Jackson, which my colleague has dealt with, that there you have a case where the previous Prime Minister made representations to the League of Nations at the time that when any vacancies occurred in the higher offices of the League of Nations that South Africa as a member of the league should be considered. When that vacancy arose, and they asked us to nominate one of our officers, the Government thought it was a compliment to South Africa. I must say I think the Government acted generously in giving Mr. Jackson these retiring terms. The treasury objected at the time, but, seeing we did not want to put any obstacles in his way, we let it go. We do not know how long the appointment will last, and he cannot come back into the service. As far as the other cases of Sir Reginald Blankenburg and Mr. Sargeant are concerned, I would be quite prepared to justify those retirements, but I cannot do so now.

Vote put and agreed to.

On Vote 38, “Labour,” £279,952,

I move—

I do this on a question of public policy, namely, the expenditure of public funds on the Doornkop Estates, Natal, and placing tenant farmers on those estates without due and proper regard to the public finances or the interests of the tenant farmers concerned. I wish to challenge the Minister’s action in connection with the contract he has entered into with the Doornkop Estates, and I have no hesitation in characterizing that contract as a thoroughly bad one—a contract which will subserve the ends of Mr. Nathan Rosenberg, principal of the Doornkop Estates, rather than the best interests of the public and the tenant farmers concerned, who, by this contract, have been placed by the Minister very largely at the mercy of Mr. Rosenberg. When the Minister introduced this scheme to the House during last session he referred to it as the “biggest, boldest and best attempt” at co-operative settlement ever made in South Africa. I propose to show how hollow this claim becomes in the light of the facts which are now in our possession. Those facts show that when the Minister came to the rescue of the Doornkop Company, a meeting had actually been called by Mr. Rosenberg, the managing director, at which a resolution was to be proposed placing the company in voluntary liquidation, and that meeting was due to take place on the 29th December, 1925 Mr. Rosenberg informed the meeting of shareholders that Messrs. Maxwell had made application for compulsory liquidation of the company, and that the application had been stayed. When the Minister intervened, the company was in dire straits, and Mr. Rosenberg and his friends had considered and explored every possible means of reconstruction. The prospectus filed with the Registrar of Companies, showed increasing the capital by 85,000 new shares, and the important point to consider is that one of the most pressing needs of the company was £35,000 for the cultivation of sugar cane for the years 1926 and 1927. One of the principal reasons, in fact, the principal reason, assigned by Mr. Rosenberg for going into liquidation, was the financial position of the company together with his failure to obtain from the British Government, through the Trade Facilities Board, a loan of £50,000 for the purpose of erecting a sugar mill. Almost miraculously one might say those two things, at least £33,000 for the cultivation of sugar cane, and the loan from the British Government for building a sugar mill, were supplied by the intervention of the Minister of Labour, which took place within a fortnight of the liquidation meeting called by Mr. Rosenberg, but postponed because he intimated to the meeting that he expected help from the Government.

That is not true.

I propose to show from Mr. Rosenberg’s own cable that it is an assertion which is absolutely true. Almost miraculously the Minister of Labour came forward and gave Mr. Rosenberg an agreement which committed the Government to an expenditure of £33,000 in support of this proposition—made up in this way—one hundred tenant farmers were to be placed on the property, each was to have an advance of £150, and the Government by this agreement which we have on the Table, and there can be no argument about that, undertook to give a subsistence allowance for a man and his family of £5 a month for a period of 36 months, or altogether £33,000. Mr. Rosenberg’s financial needs were relieved, and he was in a position of being able to get a cheap supply of labour which he needed not paid for a considerable number of years as shown by the Minister’s contract, and he was enabled to get from the Trade Facilities Board of Great Britain in consequence of the wording of the document which he had from the Minister of Labour, a loan of £70,000. That document intimated that the Minister’s confidence in Mr. Rosenberg was such that he provided for his appointment as managing director of a cooperative society to be formed for a period of ten years, during the first five of which he was to get £1,600 a year, and for the last five years £2,000 a year.

He might just as well have been made the twelfth Minister.

That sum was to be provided by the sweat of the brow of the 100 tenant farmers the Minister was to place on this property. I consider that the Minister is blameworthy in committing the Government to the expenditure of this money in the absence of sufficient safeguards, but I consider he was much more blameworthy in placing the tenant farmers at the mercy of a man who was so unfitted for the position, as I shall show Mr. Rosenberg to be. We have to remember that these farmers came from that state of life in which they were not very well able to look after themselves. Very few had had any business experience or education that would make them able to protect their own interests. It devolved upon the Minister, therefore, to see that they were secured as to their future, and that they received adequate protection of their permanent interests. If we consider for one moment the business reputation which Mr. Rosenberg had, we must all feel the gravest misgivings as to the future of this scheme. I propose to refer to a judgment delivered in Johannesburg by the then Judge-President of the Transvaal Provincial Division of the Supreme Court, Mr. Jacob de Villiers, who is probably one of the most esteemed judges in the land, and who, I believe, belongs to the Nationalist party.

Order.

If you allow me to finish the sentence, I will say what I have got to say. I say I understand he believes in the principles espoused by the Nationalist party—

On a point of order, this is rather an important question. This judge was on the bench before the Nationalist party was formed. Is the hon. member in order in stating that a man occupying a judicial position believes in the principles of any particular political party?

I think the hon. member for Cape Town (Hanover Street) (Mr. Alexander) is perfectly correct in his view that the hon. member for Illovo (Mr. Marwick) should not continue with that sort of criticism.

I bow to your ruling, sir.

Why make those remarks?

If the hon. member will allow me to explain; so far from disparaging the learned judge, I simply meant to indicate that had he returned at any time to politics, as it was rumoured he might be persuaded to, everybody would have welcomed his return, because of the high standard of probity he has always maintained in the public life of the country. That is what I wish to say.

Why say he belonged to the Nationalist party?

My time is limited, and the hon. member will have to be content to rest on his laurels as the most noisy barracker of his party. Judge de Villiers was giving judgment in a case, Levine and Co. versus Uriah Simon, in which Mr. Rosenberg appeared as an important witness, and these were the learned judge’s remarks—

“Slippery,” “faker of an account,” “unscrupulous,” “unsatisfactory,” “utterly untrustworthy” are extracts from this judgment. That is the man, who of all men of South Africa, is singled out by the Minister of Labour as the man who is to receive financial support from the Government to the extent of £33,000 and who is to have under his care and keeping 100 tenant farmers who are not very well able to look after themselves. That judgment was given in 1920, and Mr. Rosenberg, who is an admitted attorney, was engaged in a transaction with galvanized iron. In 1921 Mr. Rosenberg was managing director of the Acme Furnishing Company of Johannesburg. This company had a capital of £5,000, Rosenberg holding 80 per cent. of the shares. In November, 1921, there was a fire on the premises, the origin of which was mysterious. The building burst into flames at once and the contents were rapidly consumed. The fire assessors had a very strong suspicion at that time with regard to the origin of that fire, but the company paid out the claim. A man who was recently tried for arson and fraud in connection with a similar fire referred in a statement he made to the police to the fire in the Acme Furnishing Company’s premises, in which he said—

The surrender of an estate is often the sequel to a profitable fire. But an interesting fact is that after his insolvency this man recently stated in court that he was the owner of 2,000 shares in the Doornkop Estates, thus reversing the usual order of things, for his money seems to have gone out of the fire into the frying pan. It is an extraordinary fact that Rosenberg, of all persons in South Africa, has been singled out to receive financial assistance from the Government. The company was practically on the rocks when the Minister came to the rescue, but the Minister has not explained how it was that he should have singled out for his support a company in this desperate position. The Minister may regard with unconcern the fact that Mr. Rosenberg had a bad business reputation in 1920, but I shall show that while the Minister was negotiating a contract with him in 1926 that gentleman was giving a false description of this very contract to the other parties. A well-known and highly esteemed firm of Johannesburg solicitors wrote the following letter to their London correspondents—

That is totally different to what the Minister told us.

When was that written?

In January, 1926.

Three months before the contract was concluded.

I shall quote a cable sent by Mr. Rosenberg himself in January, 1926. The Minister said last year that the Doornkop Estates were to set aside 7,000 acres for 100 tenant farmers to be placed there under the Government scheme, the Government to advance £150 to each tenant farmer and to pay subsistence to each at £5 per month for 36 months. The company had obtained a loan of £70,000 from the British Government for the erection of a sugar mill, and when such loan was repaid two-thirds of the estate and mill would be allotted to the tenant farmers. Yet the following cable was despatched by Rosenberg to Maxwells in London on January 6th, 1926—

That was the first proposal. It was not so, but he was justified in thinking so.

The cablegram proceeds—

This all without prejudice to pending action. Everyone will be puzzled to know why a man with so bad a record should have so strong a hold upon the Government, and to get an appreciation of this it is necessary to trace briefly the history of the Doornkop Estates, the proposition to which the Government has given such remarkable support. Originally this farm was acquired by one, Somers-Vine, who was introduced to Mr. Rosenberg as one who was likely to give financial support to a land proposition. Rosenberg conceived the idea of subdividing the farm and selling it to the public in 20-acre plots at £25 per acre, with sugar cane established thereon, and as soon as the present Government came into power he was one of the numerous people on the doorstep who were clamouring for the redemption of the abundant promises which had been made to them. Undoubtedly he had a very strong claim. In his sworn evidence given in the Maxwell case he made a statement regarding his relations with the Minister of Justice, and I have given notice to the Minister of Justice that I intended to refer to this evidence, and to invite an explanation from him. Although he is absent he cannot complain that he did not know what was to happen. Speaking of the Minister of Justice, Mr. Rosenberg said—

Mr. Justice Jacob de Villiers, in his judgment, said Rosenberg was a slippery person whose uncorroborated word could not be accepted, but in this instance he is corroborated by the Minister of Justice, who, when taxed by the hon. member for Zululand (Mr. Nicholls) with having written an advertising boost for Rosenberg’s land proposition, explained that though he knew nothing of sugar farming and had never seen the land, his letter was based on his estimation of Mr. Rosenberg. The Minister wrote on July 18th, 1924—

The Minister of Labour gave us to understand that Mr. Rosenberg was not a party to that testimonial with others from Judge Krause and Major Trigger being made use of as a land-selling advertisement. I want to show, from Mr. Rosenberg’s own letter, what his object was in getting these letters from the Minister of Justice and other highly-placed people of the Transvaal. He wrote the following letter in June, 1924, to his then partner, Mr. Somers Vine—

Mr. Rosenberg goes on to say with a note of glee—

Yes, we can very well imagine the effect. A Minister of the Crown, a judge of the Supreme Court, the head of the C.I.D., and the Mayor of Johannesburg are brought in to assure the public of the safety of the investment and the reliability of the personnel. This testimonial was produced in a full-page advertisement in the “Sunday Times” and the public tumbled over each other to buy the plots. Mr. Rosenberg went on to say—

There you have the truth, sir. In the joint of interest of Mr. Vine and Mr. Rosenberg these letters were to serve a good purpose. Mr. Rosenberg confessed he was working in “a rather peculiar channel,” and I think he was right. The public were to be assured they had a safe investment, and assured as to the personnel connected with the proposition. This was a letter he never expected to be published but it was a production in the case of Maxwell v. Doornkop Estates, and there is irony in the circumstance under which it has been produced in court against him, and has become a public document. In his evidence on oath in the Maxwell case, Mr. Rosenberg described the high motives which guided him in dealing with the public. He said—

His advertisement dwelt on the guarantees which were given and it is interesting to test how far the guarantees were genuine. The advertisement stated in block type—

The Minister of Justice dwelt in his testimonial on the soundness of the investment and the guarantee. The guarantees which strengthened the Minister’s opinion were non-existent, either then or at any other time. Mr. Alexander Aiken, a registered public accountant, who made a thorough investigation of the books of the company and gave evidence in the case of Maxwell v. the Doornkop Estates, declared an oath there was nothing in the records of any securities having been deposited by the company in August, 1924, nor was there anything to warrant the statement that the company had deposited securities to the value of over £25,000, as a guaranteed security to purchasers of plots. He also made it clear that the property had cost the company only £16,242 up to August, 1924. Rosenberg himself admitted under oath in the Maxwell case that no bankers’ guarantee for £25,000 existed, and that, on the collapse of the scheme for selling plots, as a result of the criticism of the scheme in this House—largely due, may I say, to the fearlessness of the hon. member for Zululand (Mr. Nicholls) he said he abandoned the idea of getting any guarantee. So that upon the testimony of Mr. Aiken and the admission of Mr. Rosenberg, it is perfectly clear that the Minister of Justice was sponsoring to the public guarantees which had no existence in fact. Can we wonder at it Mr. Rosenberg is not looked upon by the tenant farmers as one who has their interests at heart? There is considerable dissatisfaction amongst the tenant farmers on the property, and although I have not had any communication with them, I have information which shows that so far from being satisfied with the conditions the Minister described to the House, these men are gravely dissatisfied and the conditions in that particular region are far from what they ought to be. What everybody would like to know is how it comes about that so large a sum of public money is committed to a scheme of this kind with so little protection for the public finances. The Minister did not explain to us in this House that the position in relation to the advances and subsistence allowances placed at the disposal of Mr. Rosenberg’s scheme was as we found it disclosed in the contract with His Majesty’s Commissioners of the British Treasury. This is a contract which binds Mr. Rosenberg, as Managing Director of Doornkop Estates, hand and foot, binds every asset, present and future, and prevents him paying back a single penny to the Union Government until every penny has been paid back to the British Treasury. And in the meantime the British Treasury contract stipulates that the Union Government shall continue to pay the subsistence allowance and increase the £150 advance to each tenant farmer if necessary. The position is that the proposed co-operative society cannot be formed until that loan is paid off, and if one is able to hazard any reasonable estimate of the manner in which this proposition is to be developed, then Mr. Rosenberg will not be able to repay that loan, £70,000, for a considerable period. [Time limit.]

When the Minister replies, will he give the House some description of the class of buildings he is putting these unfortunate people in? That area occupied, is one of the roughest spots in Africa, and I am told these people are housed in buildings made of corrugated iron, unlined, with no flooring and no windows. It seems unbelievable, in so trying a climate, but I suppose the Minister has inspected the houses, and that he will be able to satisfy the House that these people are suitably and desirably accommodated. My informant said that if he housed his natives in buildings such as the Minister has placed these settlers, the Medical Officer of Health for the Union would at once prosecute him. I am told the site itself is one of continuous hills with steep slopes, and ten miles away from a railway. Very few sugar farmers would have selected a site of that sort unless there were other outstanding attractions. The land, I am told, is not bad, but the prospects of it being successfully worked are practically out of the question, the difficulties of transport from fields to mill being alone a tremendous problem. Then one would like to know exactly what salaries are being paid to the officials, who are operating the scheme. The manager, the secretary, the gentlemen running the store, and the gentlemen running the contract for transport. Will the Minister also tell us what relation they bear to each other and what relation they all bear to Mr. Rosenberg, what salaries they are receiving, and where the money is coming from, and whether there is a possibility of the settlers being exploited by a number of people who are making money out of them?

I would like to ascertain from the Minister whether the undertaking the Government gave to put 5,000 acres under cane within two years is likely to be fulfilled, and what progress has been made in that direction. It seems to me, in view of the fact that the Trade Facilities Board have stipulated that their loan is to be repaid within five years, that unless the Government is carrying out its obligation in this respect, that there will be no revenue or insufficient to repay the Trade Facilities Board, in which case there may be a foreclosure, the result of which will be the loss of the whole of the money invested by the Government in this venture. I would like to ascertain from the Minister whether it is a fact that only £25 per tenant was allowed for the purpose of building dwellings for these tenants. If so, it is easy to understand that the accommodation provided is quite inadequate. In regard to this question of the progress made in the planting of cane, I am doubly interested, because I see there is an undertaking in this agreement to repay a portion of the amount spent in the erection of the mill out of the proceeds of the 1928 crop. If there is to be no cane crushed in 1928, then there will be a breach of this clause if the agreement. Then there is a further provision that in 1929, if a balance should remain unpaid on the mill, the proceeds of the sale of sugar shall be applied to paying off that balance. Of course, we do not know whether there is going to be any amount at all realized from the sale of sugar until the Minister tells us what progress has been made in the planting. It seems to me that the Minister is likely to find himself in a serious difficulty in view of the further provision that in 1930 the whole of the proceeds of the sale of sugar is to be applied in payment or in reduction of the advances made by the Government, so that, unless sufficient money is made to pay off the cost of the erection of the mill in 1928 or 1929, there will be no further moneys available for that purpose, because, under the agreement in 1930 the Government step in and appropriate the revenue to cover their advances to the tenants for different purposes. I can foresee a tremendous lot of difficulty here with a possibility of very expensive litigation, because the position will be, in the event of the Government failing to plant 5,000 acres of cane in two years, this guileless innocent gentleman, Mr. Rosenberg, probably calling the Government to account for breach of contract, and thus jeopardizing the position of the unfortunate tenants. These are questions which, I think, the public is entitled to have answered. I quite agree with what the hon. member for Illovo (Mr. Marwick) said. It seems that under this agreement Mr. Rosenberg has his hands either in the pockets of the Government or in the pockets of the tenants the whole time, and, as far as the tenants are concerned, there is apparently very little hope of their ever receiving anything for their labours. Of course, it all depends upon what progress has been made in the planting of the cane, and I understand that only some hundreds of acres have been planted instead of thousands, and that it is practically impossible to carry out that clause of the agreement by planting the whole 5,000 acres in two years. I say that the Minister is incurring a very grave risk and will be placing himself entirely at the mercy of Mr. Rosenberg, unless he carries out that part of the agreement. I hope the Minister is going to give us a full explanation, and will deal fully with the questions raised.

From the very start we warned the Minister of Labour that in attempting to embark upon this Doornkop scheme without any knowledge of land values, without any previous experience of land settlement, without any previous acquaintance with the type of people he was dealing with, it would be a case of rushing in where angels fear to tread, and our warnings have been amply justified. From all accounts this scheme has been hopelessly botched from start to finish. My information is that the settlers are running away from the place, those who can. I would like the Minister to tell us how exactly he and the Minister of Justice and the Government generally came to lend themselves to this unscrupulous company-monger, Mr. Rosenberg. How did they get into touch with a man of this sort? How comes it that the Government should embark upon a shady transaction of this sort?

Will you call him an “unscrupulous company-monger” outside this House?

We have called him that many a time. The Minister knows perfectly well that that is not a fair question.

It is not a fair thing to say.

Parliamentary privilege is established for that very reason. I call him an unscrupulous company-monger and the courts have called him an unscrupulous company-monger and called him that at a time before the Government embarked upon this scheme. It is due to the public that the Minister should give us an explanation as to how he allowed himself to be used as a tool by this unscrupulous company-monger. My information is that these unfortunate settlers are living in tin houses, those that are still there, and cannot get away. I am told that they are exploited by Rosenberg, and that cattle which should be used in farming operations are used to drag Rosenberg’s machinery and other things from the station. I think we are entitled to an explanation from the Minister. I would like to remind him that, originally, when we warned him the Minister took up a very high and mighty attitude about all this. During the debate on the estimates last year he reproached us with attacking his friend, Mr. Rosenberg, and he reproached us for attacking this proposition. He then said that he was satisfied, in spite of what we on this side said, that the settlers, the Labour Department and the country would get an absolutely straight and square deal from Mr. Rosenberg.

I am still satisfied.

I am astonished to hear that. The tenants are not satisfied, and the public are not satisfied about this. I would remind the Minister that he went out of his way last year to defend Mr. Rosenberg. He said that this fine, high-minded philanthropist has refunded the money. He also said—

The fact of the matter is that he did so under compulsion. In the Maxwell case Mr. Rosenberg, in his own evidence given under oath, stated that the plot-holders had no legal claim upon him. What happened? He was forced by his co-directors to disgorge this money under threat of litigation. That is the man whom the Minister not only has defended, but all the time has befriended. He has gone out of his way to bolster up an insolvent scheme. Rosenberg was on the verge of liquidating the whole concern when his friends in the Government very kindly ran to his assistance. The more we delve into the matter the more inexplicable it becomes. The Minister of Labour was very active in defending Rosenberg from any responsibility for those testimonials which were published. He said that Rosenberg was lying in hospital. Rosenberg was “lying” in hospital when he said so. Mr. Rosenberg, in this Maxwell case, stated in regard to these same advertisements which we were told by the Minister had been published without Rosenberg’s knowledge, while he was lying ill in hospital—

They were acting as decoy ducks to these unfortunate plot-holders. It is a most extraordinary and unprecedented state of affairs. Where a Cabinet Minister is used as a guinea pig, as a decoy duck to sell worthless plots to the public. He said it was made clear to them that their letters were to be used for production to the purchasers in order to show the bona fides of the company. With regard to the publication of the advertisements, he admitted that the agent of the “Sunday Times” came to the hospital and showed him the proof of this advertisement. How, in the face of that, can the Minister tell us that “this unfortunate man” did not know it was being done, and did not know his letters were being published? This was Rosenberg’s evidence under oath in the Maxwell case, yet the Minister told us the direct contrary last year. It shows how careless the Minister was in stating his case to us last year. When he was taxed in court by counsel about these letters, he said they were given to him for publication. Counsel said—

He said—

So it was made clear that this unscrupulous company-monger was producing letters from highly-placed officials and actually a Minister of the Crown, in order to induce the public to buy these plots. On top of all that, after the swindle had been exposed and the plot-holders had made Rosenberg disgorge, the Government actually comes to this man’s assistance with this extraordinary Doornkop scheme. Surely the Minister owes us a series of explanations with regard to it. Last year the Minister’s justification was as follows, according to Hansard: He described Rosenberg’s scheme at Doornkop as “the biggest, boldest and best attempt at co-operative settlement that has ever been tried in South Africa.” I hope the Minister will go and have a look at this scheme. The settlers are practically prisoners there, because they cannot get away. He told us at the time it was a going concern. It never was, and it not now. The only thing that is going about it is the settlers. Practically every statement the Minister made last year about this thing has been proved to be unfounded or incorrect. [Time limit.]

I have been waiting patiently for the House to come to this vote in order to ascertain first-hand from the Minister the methods he adopted to settle the recent strike at the City Deep.

Is this a red herring across the trail?

No; but the contrast between the methods used by the present Government and those relied upon by the last Government is so marked that it would be interesting to learn some details of the position then existing at the City Deep. I am encouraged in asking this question by a paragraph appearing in the” Cape Argus” under a heading to a couple of columns, written, I believe, by a gentleman called “The Wanderer.” The paragraph is headed “Boydell, the Peacemaker,” and reads—

This is so vastly different to—

Apparently the hon. gentleman across the way thinks the Minister needs a little whitewashing. Last year the Minister with tears of righteous indignation said—

There were tears in his voice. I think we have shown what the bona fides of Mr. Rosenberg amount to, but I am beginning to question what the bona fides of the Minister amounted to last year, not that I am accusing him of deliberate misstatement, but I would ask him to explain the serious discrepancies in his statement last year. The hon. member for Illovo (Mr. Marwick) asked him whether there was any connection between Rosenberg and the Maxwells—

Yet since the Minister made that statement we have had this protracted lawsuit costing nearly £20,000, and which, to the Minister’s obvious sorrow, made public all these documents. So there again the Minister showed he knew very little of the state of affairs when he addressed us last year. Then we asked him on what terms these tenant farmers were to be placed on the ground. He said—

Whereas the fact is that the land and everything on it is mortgaged to the Imperial Government up to the hilt. So there is no possibility humanly speaking of the Government getting a brass farthing out of the concern. So far from having got security or any security at all we have no security. We have no assets What about the tenants? I hope the Minister will tell us exactly what is the contract with these tenants. I have shown these unfortunate men are stewing in tin huts in one of the warmest spots in South Africa. They are living on a mere pittance of 3s. 6d. a day, as it works out, on which they have to support their wives and families. Their own impression is that they have no future before them. If that is the result of the hon. Minister’s activities after all the warnings he has had, I can only say it is a deplorable thing. It is not the worst phase that the Government is losing all this money. I have already remarked that the Minister of Labour is proving an expensive luxury; in addition, we are not going to get one individual going forward in life.

Have you visited Doornkop? Have you been there since the settlement?

No, I have not. From all accounts it is a good place to remain away from. It is a wattle-bark plantation.

Would it not be better to go there before you criticise?

I have plenty of information.

Have a look at the place, and then come back.

The Minister said a lot about Doornkop without having had a look at it. We have all the available information, and we have ground floor information about his friend Rosenberg. Mr. Rosenberg can liquidate that concern at any moment, and he is holding it as a revolver at the Minister’s breast all the time. The scheme was hopeless from the very start. On top of that the Minister has helped to appoint Mr. Rosenberg managing director of this co-operative society, this appointment to be renewed for ten years. Why should Mr. Rosenberg he appointed, who, in the Maxwell case, admitted he knew nothing about sugar planting, and cared less about land settlement; why should he be appointed at a salary approaching that of a Cabinet Minister? The very essence of co-operation is that these people should appoint their own manager. It is not clear who is to pay this £2,000 a year.

The tenant farmers.

That is the bright spot, because if that is so, he will never handle any of it. At least they should have a say in who is to be appointed their own representative.

And at what salary?

The more we look into it the less we like it. In the Maxwell case Rosenberg said—

and this is to be run as a sugar proposition. He was asked—

He replied—

What is his business?

A shady company promoter who has been hauled over the coals by the courts, which have made scathing reflection on his honesty of character. This is the man whom the Government has helped along with that scheme of his. [Time limit.]

I beg to draw the Minister’s attention to a little item which is actually founded on fact. Uneasiness is caused in the country by the delay in the appointment of conciliation boards when they are applied for. When this Bill was before the House a deputation from the trade unions was sent to give evidence before the select committee and they pointed out they were going to endeavour to fall in with the idea of the Government, and try to settle disputes better than they had been. They were able to give the select committee some very good suggestions. The Act seems to be very good so far, but the administration at the moment is not quite up to date. The canvas and rope workers’ union applied for a conciliation board on the 21st July, 1926. A reply was received from the Minister’s department on the 9th August that the department was consulting the employers’ association. On the 24th August the Trade Union Congress secretary, at the request of the union, registered a protest with the department at the delay. On the 2nd September a letter was received from the department stating that the delay was caused by the employers insisting that an arbitrator should be chosen before the board was appointed. Eventually a board was established, but after many delays the agreement was arrived at only on the 23rd May, 1927—nearly 12 months after the board was applied for. Either the Act requires amendment, or the Administration requires smartening up a little bit. If industrial peace is to be kept, then we must have machinery which will operate more quickly and will deal with the subject on the spot, and not be long drawn out, so that little grievances can swell the matter into a big dispute until finally the disagreement gets out of hand. The commercial employees in Cape Town recently requested the appointment of a conciliation board, but the matter has not yet been settled, because the employers objected to a certain individual who had been chosen by the employees’ association to represent them. There is here a big principle involved, and trades unionists ask whether they are to be dictated to by employers as to who shall represent them oh conciliation boards. A judge has given a ruling which shows that the Act requires altering, so that the trades unions or the employers may select whom they choose to put forward their case. The old trades unions with 100 years’ organization behind them, and with well-trained officials are not affected in this way, but the commercial employees have never been organized, and have not well-trained men who can negotiate their grievances. These industries should be at liberty to choose their own representative.

The hon. member may not advocate legislation.

I am pointing out a weakness and am suggesting that the Act should be amended. I remember during the time of the rising prices in the Transvaal during the war time, and when various bodies which were not organized were endeavouring to obtain increased wages, the slaughtermen in Johannesburg came to the executive of my association to borrow my services to conduct their negotiations. My executive gladly agreed to my acting for the slaughtermen. No objection was made by the employers in this case.

Can the Minister tell us what the terms are of the subsidy agreement in connection with Doornkop Estates. The agreement with the Trade Facilities Board says one thing, and the agreement between Mr. Rosenberg and the Government says another; the former agreement states that the terms have been modified so as to provide that the payment of £5 per month shall be continued until the loan from the Trades Facilities Board has been repaid by the company in full. So the subsidy may continue for an indefinite period. The latter agreement states that the Government will, subject to subsequent conditions, subsidize the tenant farmers at the rate of £5 a month each, not exceeding a period of 36 months from the date of the commencement of operations. It is rather difficult to reconcile these two agreements. According to Mr. Aiken’s report, as to the value of this property in August, 1924, it cost the company £16,242, and they had spent on development about £1,200. Here again Mr. Rosenberg seems to have got his hands deep into the Treasury coffers. The agreement stated that the following payments should be provided for: Advances to tenant farmers to meet the cost of living £7 a month for one year; refund to Government for advances for subsistence; payment of £9,000 to the Doornkop company being interest at 6 per cent. per annum on £50,000, taken as the then value of 7,000 acres and improvements so the Government or the tenants is paying the Doornkop company £3,000 per annum as interest on a capital value of £50,000 which having regard to Mr. Aiken’s valuation seems excessive. How was Mr. Rosenberg able to get these extraordinary terms? Throughout the contract there is only one man in it from a money-making point of view, and that is Rosenberg. Government has enhanced the value of the property by clearing the land, planting it with cane and providing the fertilizers all for the eventual benefit of Mr. Rosenberg. I predict that the Government will be confronted with very grave difficulties in connection with the clause which purports to make over to the tenant farmers a certain area of land to be registered as a cooperative concern. If the Minister will look at the agreement to see if it will bear the interpretation he placed on it last year when we brought this matter up and take legal advice he may find the position of the tenants in regard to their eventually becoming owners of portion of the estate anything but secure.

The Minister will no doubt tell us this is the boldest and biggest attempt yet made at land settlement and co-operation. To begin the Government has let itself into a sugar settlement scheme by buying land which is growing wattle. Everybody knows that if a crop of wattles has come off the land it will be useless for any other crop. This land is situated ten miles from a railway and the Minister has never satisfied himself as to the suitability of the land. He courts disaster and failure from the beginning. In land settlement of that nature the first essential is to have a managing director who has some knowledge of his job and it has been proved that this Mr. Rosenberg had no knowledge whatever. Why was this man appointed? There must have been some strong reason. He had no strong qualification for the job and no previous experience and yet he was appointed at £16,000 a year. Is there some political jobbery behind this. Was he responsible for the return of members of Parliament and is this the reward meted out to him? He seems to be in the position to dictate.

He owned the property.

Why was he appointed to the position when he had no previous experience?

He was working the property at the time.

It was a wattle plantation to begin with and if one crop of wattles is taken off it is fit for nothing else but wattle. The land would not be worth feeding for sugar, it would be too costly. I would like to know the name of the contractor who is riding transport over ten miles from this Doornkop property and the price he is paid. I also want to know how many of these settlers have been seriously ill through living in houses unfit for Europeans to live in with mud floors and bad drains.

When the debate was on last year the Minister of Labour was enthusiastic and sanguine in his remarks about this transaction. From the information before the House it was a mystery before, but it has become a remarkable mystery indeed as to how this gentleman got all these favourable considerations and favourable testimonials to carry through a scheme about which the Minister has been so sanguine and about which other people had such different views altogether. According to the report in Hansard last year the Minister told us that as soon as the £70,000 was paid off a co-operative society was to be formed one-third of which would be held by the company and the remaining two-thirds by the tenant farmers, who would also have a two-third ownership of the mill. The Minister repeated they had the security of the agreement and he was asked what value was the agreement as a security. The question is what is the security for the carrying out of the agreement itself. The Minister said—

As I gather the situation it is this, that on the strength of two letters which formed the agreement exchanged between the Department of Labour and Mr. Rosenberg in February and March, 1926, the British Treasury agreed to loan £70,000 and that money was a first charge on all the assets of the company and there is a clause that it is not only to be a first charge on the land and movable securities but on every other asset belonging to the company. I take it the loan was secured by a bond of £70,000 on the Doornkop estate. What then, is the value of the security of the Minister and the Government for the heavy expenditure incurred in anticipation of this bond being paid off. In the first place we do not know the entire value of the land and it is not until this bond has been paid off that the clause regarding the co-operative society will become operative. I would like to ask the Minister whether he took legal advice before he entered into this arrangement, and whether he took legal advice as to the real position of the Government in the matter. The clause reads—[clause read]. That 5,000 acres is the part which will be cultivated out of 7,000 which is to be assigned to the scheme, which is a portion of 8,000, the total area. The first part of that clause reads that the company undertakes to allot 5,000 acres. It goes on to say that the assets of the society will consist of the area of 7,000 acres of the land in its developed state, including the mill and its adjuncts, etc. It also states that the company in respect of its assets shall be entitled to one-third share of the registered capital of the society and that the other two-thirds shall be allotted to the tenant farmers. I would like to ask the Minister whether he has taken advice as to the value of that clause. During the 1928 season the company undertakes to allot. Is the company going to be able to do that in 1928. The bond will have to be paid off by that time. Is there any prospect of the bond being paid off? The second point is that the Minister seems to treat this question of allotment as being equivalent to a transfer and registration. Will the Minister tell me how he gets that out of those words? The company is going to allot to the Government. Is there going to be a transfer? Then it goes on to say that the assets of the society will consist of the area of 7,000 acres. How the 5,000 becomes 7,000 in another interesting point. When the Minister has taken advice as to what the value of that clause is from the point of view of the right of the Government to enforce specific performance of the transfer of that land to the co-operative society, the next question I would like to ask is, is it in the power of this co-operative society to hold that land at all? When a question was put to the Minister by Mr. G. C. van Heerden his reply was that the co-operative Acts do not contain any provision whereunder a co-operative society can be formed for the purpose of carrying on farming operations. He stated that the objects for which such a company could be formed were clearly specified in the Act of 1922. I have looked at Section 4 of that Act. That section prima facie means that where you have got a society formed that society can put up a store for a co-operative creamery or whatever it may be but the Minister of Agriculture, I take it, acting on professional legal advice, has said that they cannot hold land for the purpose of developing for agricultural purposes. I would like the Minister to pay special attention to these things. It may not be too late for him to take the necessary precautions to see, first of all, whether he is going to get that land at all whether if the £70,000 is paid in 1928 he will be able to enforce performance of that contract on the basis that allotment as used there means allotment for purposes of transfer which the company will undertake to carry out, and further if he is able to get that allotment, will he also take legal advice so that he may be sure of his ground and see whether he can protect the interests of the country. He will be able to see how far he was justified in saying last year that they had the land. [Time limit.]

Perhaps it would be advisable if I dealt with a number of the points already made. I will take the point of the last speaker first, and that is the legal position. He has asked me to take legal advice on this matter. The criticism of the hon. member for Rondebosch (Mr. Close) has been quite fair and unbiassed, and I appreciate it. In the first place, the agreement before we made it, was submitted to the law advisers for their opinion. It was approved by them, otherwise it would not have been given effect to in the form in which it appeared. If there are legal difficulties inherent in the agreement as it stands to-day, and we have to find a way out to give practical effect to the intention of the agreement, which might not be possible if the hon. member’s argument is sound, then I have already got from Mr. Rosenberg a letter to say any doubts on this question he will leave entirely to me, as he believes I will deal with them fairly and honestly. The matter has already been referred to the Registrar of Co-operative Societies, and it is quite possible that instead of forming a co-operative society it would be necessary to form a limited liability company, but that would only be for the purpose of getting over this legal difficulty. In view of the fact that co-operative societies cannot own land it might be necessary that a limited liability company should be formed in order to give effect to the agreement as it stands. But these legal points have already been referred to the law advisers and to the Registrar of Companies, and if there is any doubt as to the best methods of giving practical application to the intentions of the agreement— because it is the intention that counts—then I have already got the written assurance of these people that any adjustment they will leave entirely in my hands, as they believe they will get a fair and square deal. I would just like to deal with the personal aspect. The whole attack this evening, or the main attack, has been made really on the bona fides of Mr. Rosenberg. The whole purpose of the discussion has been to try and discredit Mr. Rosenberg, in the first place, to try and show that the scheme is unsound and unsatisfactory, that the settlers are there under compulsion, that the scheme will never be a success, that the Government is going to lose all its money, and generally, that the whole thing is in a most unsound and unsatisfactory state. I do not mind for myself, I do not mind for Mr. Rosenberg, and I do not think he will mind, but what I do object to is for statements to be made in this House which are certainly not based on sound information as to the progress of the scheme up to date, and which are calculated to spread alarm and disaffection amongst those poor people who have settled there, and on whose behalf we are running this scheme and hope to run it successfully. The strongest protest should be made against those members of this House who make statements which are not true, and which are calculated to spread alarm and discontent and disaffection amongst those people on the settlement, who are working hard. We are behind them to make that scheme a success, and it will be a success in spite of the hostility of politicians on that side of the House. The hon. member for Klip River (Mr. Anderson) says there are only a few hundred acres up to date under cane. He says the whole scheme depends upon whether we can put the 5,000 acres in. There are over 2,000 acres under cane to-day, and this has been put in since I last addressed the House on this subject last June. These settlers have worked well, and I would invite any hon. members to go to the place and to see for themselves the progress which has been made. That is the acid test. Go and see for yourselves; go and see the cane that is growing. I have people in the sugar industry, not friends of this side, but of the other side, whose names they would know at once if I were to mention them. They have been over the Doornkop Estate, and they were pleasantly surprised to see how the cane was growing and how the work was going on.

Give us their names.

One is Mr. George Hulett.

He is a lawyer.

Might I also mention the name of one of the best known sugar planters in Natal—a man who is respected by all who know him—Mr. Patrick, who has a sugar farm close by, and goes over to the settlement now and again to see the progress which is being made there. I could mention many others. The hon. member for Umvoti (Mr. Deane) asked what Mr. Rosenberg knew about it, and why he went on this land, which is suitable only for wattle. Mr. Rosenberg bought that land and proved it was suitable for sugar cane growing, and land suitable for that is worth more than the price he paid, 35s. an acre. The hon. member for Illovo (Mr. Marwick) made a long speech, quite a lot of which was quite wide of the mark. I have nothing to do with Mr. Rosenberg’s actions before I had dealings with him in connection with this Doornkop proposition. The hon. member based his case against Mr. Rosenberg’s bona fides on the statement of Judge de Villiers, which he quoted and re-quoted. Here we have a number of statements made about an individual—one statement made by a judge, which is a very damaging statement, I admit, but we have also the personal testimonies of another judge who signed his name to Mr. Rosenberg’s scheme. He gives it his testimonial and recommendation; that is Mr. Justice Krause. Then we have the recommendation of the Minister of Justice, who has known Mr. Rosenberg for something like 20 years. We also have the personal recommendation of Mr. Rosenberg’s suitability and bona fides by someone who has known him for a considerable time—I refer to Major Trigger, Chief of the C.I.D., and if he is not likely to know about people, I do not know who is. I have nothing to do with that. I can only speak as I find. My dealings with Mr. Rosenberg have been, so far, straightforward and such that no single person could take exception to them. As far as myself and the department is concerned we have had a fair and square and straight deal from Mr. Rosenberg, and he has had the same from us, and I hope that will continue to the end. It has been asked why Mr. Rosenberg wrote to London and said the agreement is one thing while the agreement on the table is quite different. That is quite legitimate criticism, and there is an explanation of it. Mr. Rosenberg first of all put up a different proposal to the one now in force. He proposed that the Government should rent the farm and pay 6 per cent. interest on the money, while we should pay 10 per cent. depreciation on the mill, which was quite the usual thing, and at the end of six years we should have the option of purchasing the mill and the assets for, I think, £6 5s. an acre. That scheme seemed to the Department of Labour to be a favourable one and was approved. Mr. Rosenberg evidently thought that the agreement was as good as settled, but when the matter was put to the Cabinet it did not agree to the proposal, which would commit the Government to take over’ such a large proposition at the end of six years. The mill alone would cost £100,000. The Government declined to commit itself and did not accept this scheme.

What did he pay for it?

He paid 35s. an acre, but when he bought it it had not been proved to be sugar land. Since he has proved it is sugar land undeveloped ground adjoining has been sold for £4 15s. an acre. As soon as a mill is adjacent to any of these areas land which is proved to be suitable for sugar growing is worth £10 an acre in its undeveloped state.

Why did you go to Doornkop when you have half of Zululand belonging to the Government and capable of growing sugar?

As to the original proposition I knew nothing of Doornkop’s previous history. I only took Mr. Rosenberg’s scheme on its face value, and only after it had been recommended by the Natal Land Board and other competent authorities. The Natal Land Board reported favourably saying that the climate was good and the ground was suitable. There was only one adverse report, and that was from an official of the Cedara Agricultural College, who cast doubt on the suitability of the ground for cane growing. That was the report which was originally sent to the High Commissioner, and when the British Facilities Fund saw that one of the Union officials reported that in his opinion it was doubtful whether the ground was suitable for cane growing, the Trade Facilities Fund, which was on the point of advancing £50,000, said: “We shall have nothing to do with it.” Mr. Rosenberg, on the strength of getting that money, had entered into an agreement with Maxwell to put up the mill, and Maxwell tried to keep him to the contract and eventually pressed him for a breach of contract and sued him in court. The whole trouble rose over that. The reason we departed from the first proposal was the one I have mentioned. We then simply said if you can adapt this Doornkop scheme to the ordinary tenant farmer scheme, and we can place one hundred tenant farmers on the Doornkop. Estate on the same terms and conditions that we place tenant farmers all over the country, then the Cabinet would agree to it. We had to modify the ordinary tenant farmer’s agreement to a certain extent. The late hon. Minister for Lands a few weeks ago in the House, when I said the mill was not going to be put up till next year, said—

He did not even know that it takes two years for sugar cane to come up before it can be milled. We therefore had to modify the ordinary tenant farmer agreement in order to continue the maintenance subsidy until such time as they got a return from the crop. The British Government said: “If we advanced £70,000 to this company to put up a mill we want the first claim on the revenue produced from the first crop,” and the Union Government thought that was reasonable. The agreement was submitted to and had the approval of the Cabinet. The British Government had evidently got faith in the business like nature of the scheme. Mr. Carter, who was one of the Treasury officials of the British Government, was over here only a few weeks ago and discussed these things with me, and he said the British Government would not have advanced the money unless thoroughly satisfied the scheme was sound. The British Treasury are not foolish enough to throw money away. In our agreement we had a first claim on all the assets of the company, in the event of the mill not going up, or in the event of anything going wrong. The British Government stepped in and advanced £70,000. but they would only do it provided they had a first mortgage on the assets. In order that we should get the money we agreed to let them have the first mortgage on the assets, but all the stock which we put there belongs to us, all the implements that we put there belong to us, and we are developing the land.

Your only security is your own stock and your own implements.

And when the £70,000 is paid off— [Laughter.] Let me say by the end of this year we are under an obligation to have 5,000 acres under cane. I have already told the House that we have over 2,000 acres under cane at present. We shall have the 5,000 acres, as far as we can see, under cane by the end of this year. That means that next year there will be 2,500 acres ready for cutting. You cut it alternately each year.

I thought it only matured in two years.

It is not being planted now. I think they stopped planting in March or April. The rains were late last year, but Mr. Patrick tells me that he has planted cane most of the year round and he has had good results, but that is not the custom.

In February you had only 600 acres planted, according to your own words.

No, not in February. There is over 2,000 to-day. Mr. Patrick and other sugar growers tell me that they have planted cane at different times all the year round. The fact remains that 2.500 acres of cane mean 5,000 tons of sugar. Assuming that you get 20 tons of cane to the acre, which is a very modest figure—

You will never get it there.

The sugar lands adjacent to Doornkop are producing 30, 35 and up to 38 tons.

That is low lying land.

No, it is about the same altitude. Five thousand tons of sugar at £20 a ton, which is a low estimate, because during the last four years the average price realized according to the sugar congress, which sat in Durban a few months ago, was £22 11s.—but if you take it at £20 a ton on 5,000 tons you have £100,000, taking the first crop. By all accounts, by the second crop, at any rate, the whole of the British Trade Facilities Fund will be repaid, and the balance on the mill, and the scheme will be well away.

It sounds like a company prospectus.

There is no question about what I am saying. The hon. member, the other day, kept on shouting that the mill will never go up. I suppose if he sees the mill working and the sugar being packed in sacks, he will still say that the mill will never go up. Hon. members on that side do not want the scheme to be a success. They have said that the scheme is a bad one and they want to try and prove that it is a bad one. I will show the hon. member photos of the machinery, etc.

It sounds like a prospectus.

The hon. member must be thinking of the Sundays River scheme, which he fathered. And there are many other things. The hon. member must be thinking about the Unfolozi mill which they started. Here they are quibbling because we are trying to settle a hundred men taken from the forestry settlement, who were down and out, and make them part owners in an estate which will be very valuable, and here we have all these trifling arguments when they themselves wasted hundreds of thousands on all sorts of cock-and-bull schemes. The hon. member for Weenen (Maj. Richards) referred to the unsatisfactory nature of the housing. I quite admit that when I was there last July the housing conditions were unsatisfactory. For this reason, each tenant is given the building materials with which to make a house—it is wood and iron, that’s true.—and they use these materials to put up as it were temporary quarters until they are in a position to have time to put up proper buildings.

You have spent £25,000 for housing.

No. I do not know how much the actual building materials cost. We have had to do the same at other places. We did the same at Doornkop where we gave them the materials with which to build. As they get more time, they will put up decent houses there. I suppose if we had put up houses worth £300 to £500 for these settlers, there would have been a bigger howl than ever from hon. members over there. I am not saying they are as satisfactory as they should be, or as they will be. Give them time, and they will make decent houses for themselves, and we will help them to do so.

What about sickness amongst these people?

From the monthly report there has not been a great deal of sickness. Six families have had to leave owing to sickness. You must understand that when you bring, say, 100 families from different parts of the country down to Natal, it is only natural that some of them will feel the effects of the climatic change. With regard to the other point made by the hon. member as to the cost of the transport from the station, that I have not got. I will go into and see what it is. If it is anything to do with the mill it will go into the cost of the mill, but if it has to do with the settlement proper, it will be borne by the department and the tenants will be debited with the amount. With regard to the other people, we have not got any highly paid officials there. Mr. Rosenberg himself who is supervizing and doing all he can, does not get a penny until the co-operative society is formed. He does that part of it in terms of his contract.

Will not his salary commence in two years’ time?

Only after the co-operative society is formed. When his salary commences he has to pay out of it all his expenses of travelling about in connection with the work.

Why was he appointed at all?

Because it was his show and organization. He had bought the land, and proved it suitable for sugar. He had made roads there, and developed the land to a certain extent. For the first month, as stated, he had spent £1,000 on development.

He got paid for all that.

No. He purchased it at a certain price, and after a, month he spent a thousand pounds. He spent several thousands on it after that. The cane put in was not counted in the valuation when the hon. member’s figures were taken out. I saw an auditor’s statement, in which the value of the ground, improvements and cane, etc., brought it up to £42,000—money he had actually spent on it before we took it over.

You are giving him 6 per cent. on £50,000.

You said that he was not getting a penny.

I see what you mean. I said—

He is looking after his own property in the meanwhile.

I can answer only one at a time. The more I try to reply to the hon. member the more he piles it on. Will he keep quiet for a little bit? He asks why we appointed him at all. Here was a man who put his money into the estate and was developing it, and was succeeding up to a point. He was settling people on the land, and then there was a stampede, caused by similar unfair criticisms, such as we have had in Parliament, and when the settlers saw this attack in Parliament they became nervous and said they wanted their money back. As a matter of fact, everyone got every penny back. There he was, landed with this estate, with money sunk in it, cane growing and roads being made the whole thing partly developed.

On the point of liquidation.

As far as I was concerned, it was a going concern at the time; and what more natural, if we said we will place 100 settlers there_ on our ordinary tenant farmers scheme, than that he should say—very well, give me a chance to manage it. He was only managing the thing which he had started on his own. We thought it was only fair and right, provided he gave satisfactory and proper service, that he should become manager of the settlement.

Do you deny that it was on the point of liquidation?

I knew nothing at all about it. I had never seen Mr. Rosenberg before—I met him for the first time in December, 1925. He put his original proposal to me; I put it to the department and law advisers. We only dealt with and agreed to it on its merits. When I heard that the Minister of Justice and all these other people were supporting Mr. Rosenberg, I was not going to start any inquiry as to what Mr. Justice de Villiers said. I will get a much fairer and more honest deal from Mr. Rosenberg than from a good many members on that side of the House.

You have not finished dealing with him yet.

On a point of order, is the Minister entitled to make remarks of that kind?

Even if a statement has been made about Mr. Rosenberg by one judge, other statements have been made regarding him by a gentleman who is now a judge, by the Minister of Justice and Major Trigger, who gave personal recommendations to this very same man.

Mr. Justice de Villiers said that Rosenberg was a slippery customer, whose uncorroborated word cannot be accepted.

We have slippery customers in the House, too.

Is the Minister attributing that to us?

I am not saying where they are.

Is the Minister attributing to us that we are unscrupulous?

May I point out that even judges sometimes err when they pass judgment on human nature. In one instance a judge of the Supreme Court cast some very damaging remarks about a witness, but a day or two afterwards that man’s word was proved to be right, and the judge apologized. Because a thing is said by a judge, it does not necessarily follow that it is absolutely correct. After all, judges are human. [Interruptions.] I am not going to be shouted down by those vociferous gentlemen over there. It is, perhaps, a good thing for the House that the whole of the House is not so noisy as that particular corner. They can go out and learn manners. There is nothing wrong in saying that the Minister will get a squarer deal from Mr. Rosenberg than from that side of the House.

I submit it is a compliment to many members on that side of the House to say what I did.

I understood from the Minister that he said he believed Mr. Rosenberg was not such a bad man as was stated by Mr. Justice de Villiers, but in any case the Minister should not reflect on the integrity of any member in the House.

Withdraw.

On a point of order, sir, is the Minister entitled to trifle with your ruling? You have ruled that he should not use those words. He should surely, therefore, withdraw.

I am only warning the Minister to moderate his language. In the opinion of the Minister Mr. Rosenberg is not so bad a man as the hon. member for Illovo (Mr. Marwick) represents him to be.

No harm has been done, so may I be allowed to stress this point. Here we have a hundred men, most of them without anything at all, selected and placed on Doornkop, and they are provided with a subsidy which, not very lavishly, maintains them and their families until such time as the sugar which they grow has produced a revenue, and with that revenue the mill is purchased and those men become two-thirds owners of the whole estate. The company in consideration of making arrangements for putting up the mill, and for the development of the estate itself, are credited with one-third ownership. Imagine a hundred settlers with a two-thirds ownership in the whole estate and the British Government paid out and the Union Government paid out. That is what it means. They become two-third owners in an estate worth £150,000.

It sounds like a fairy tale.

Yes, it is too good for the hon. member’s imagination, but the fact remains that at the end of three of four years, when the proceeds of the cane have paid for the mill, you will have there a hundred men with two-thirds ownership in the estate.