MAJOR SEELYI beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether his attention has been drawn to the Report for the year 1903 furnished to the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association by the general manager of that association concerning the health of natives employed on the Rand Mines, showing a mortality of 79.8 per 1,000 amongst those natives, together with suggestions as to improvements of the conditions under which they work; and whether he will lay this document upon the Table.
§ MR. LYTTELTONI have not yet been supplied by Lord Milner with this Report which, I believe, has not been published, and I am not therefore in a position to lay it on the Table, but I will inquire.
§ MR. SYDNEY BUXTON (Tower Hamlets, Poplar)Does the right hon. Gentleman mean that the Report will be laid on the Table as soon as he receives it?
§ MR. LYTTELTONI will consider that.
§ SIR JOHN GORST (Cambridge University)When will the special Report on the mortality among the 1,000 natives who were experimentally imported from Central Africa be laid on the Table? And is it a fact that of those 1,000 natives no less than 380 died?
§ MR. LYTTELTONThe Report has been already laid.
MAJOR SEELYMay I ask if I am correctly informed that the particular Report to which I have referred in my Question has been supplied to the Government of the Transvaal, and must therefore be available. The Paper shows nothing to the discredit of those who had charge of the natives, and I should like to know whether the right hon. Gentleman will give some promise that if it is a State Paper it shall be laid.
§ MR. LYTTELTONIf it is a State Paper I shall certainly be prepared to lay it. But I have not yet seen it.