A.—s

164

Sixth Day 25 April 1907.

immigration into the old country. Still, we are very much interested in the subject, though not immediately or actively interested at the present moment, but 1 have no doubt, as Mr. Deakin says, it is only momentary, and when my friend General Botha has firmly established or re-established prosperity in the source of the mass of our wealth in the north of our country, we will then actively go into the question of emigration, because there is plenty of room to fill up in both directions —both from the labour point of view, when that wealth has accumulated again from the North, and also from the land settlement point of view. At the present moment as a fact, we are only on the very verge of close settlement, but later, I have not the least doubt that close settlement will take place in South Africa, as it is taking place so largely in Canada and I believe even now in Australia. We believe in our country; we believe that the wealth which is under the land ought to have a chance to come up and be made applicable to the increasing of the agricultural prospects of our country so that the country may hold a very large population. With regard to labour coming into the country we cannot congratulate ourselves like Sir Joseph Ward that we have no coloured iabour. I was very much interested in what Mr. Deakin said with regard to the perfect certainty that the coloured labour, in what appeared to be, from his description, circumstances as trying as anything we have in South Africa, was absolutely beaten out by the white. I must say that in our experiments in the country 1 come from we have not found that. We have found that practically a certain class of labour has always to be done by the coloured man. If we could believe that we, like Northern Queensland, are going to replace the black by the white labour, then we should have an enormous field for immigration into our country, but from Mr. Deakin's own figures, giving the wages at 1/. or 30s. a day, it looks to me, unless it is a very very prosperous industry, that if you have to pay so much, it is not very attractive to white labour, and it is quite possible the industry will not last, if it is on a large scale, at 1/. or 30s. a day. We should get white men to do labour in our country where the black does it at present, but it has actually been tried and failed. If we get a navvy out there, we pay the navvy under the circumstances in which the labour takes place—not under ground, but on the surface in mining work—los. a day in the summer time; but he does exactly half the amount of work that the black man at three pounds a month does. Mr. DEAKIN : My figures, as I said, were for contract labour, not day wages. Dr. JAMESON : We could easily adopt day labour or contract labour. It does not matter which system we adopt, we find that the white men cannot compete with the black under certain conditions. However, we hope in the future to have plenty of room for many more white labourers in the country, and especially we hope to have still more room for the agriculturists on close settlements when we get our irrigation and other problems settled. With regard to the practical point, the only thing brought forward by Mr. Deakin was that the Imperial Government at the present moment has rather prevented than helped emigration. 1 quite agree with Mr. Deakin in what he has said about the report of the Emigration Council or Board. I suppose really what we all have to do in that direction is to follow the example of Canada, and practically manage the emigration for ourselves, both on this side and on the other side. We are all pretty good at advertising, but I think Canada is pre-eminently good in advertising their country on this side. If there is an Emigration Board, I think that it should be on

Emigration. (Dr. Jameson.)