SIR GILBERT PARKERI beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the Chinese employed in the Rand mines, as their contracts expire, will be allowed to recruit for the mines on the same basis and be governed by the same regulations as the natives now employed.
§ MR. CHURCHILLI am astonished that the hon. Member should not understand the position more clearly after all the discussions that have taken place. Certain mining interests in the Transvaal desired to employ Chinese indentured labour. The people of the Transvaal object so strongly to the presence of the Chinese in their country that special restrictions of an extraordinary and degrading character had to be imposed upon the imported Chinese labourers to secure among other things that they did not mingle with the population, did not 1521 engage in business, did not acquire land, did not perform skilled work of any kind, and were expelled from South Africa as soon as their term of labour had expired. These restrictions are comprised in the Chinese Labour Importation Ordinance, and they are at present the law of the Transvaal. That law, for whose details the late Government is responsible, will come early in 1910 to an end for ever when the existing indentures are terminated and the last Chinaman has gone. Meanwhile every Chinaman must be deported as soon as his indenture expire. Thereafter no Chinaman will be allowed to enter the Transvaal unless he enters freely, and to that the people of the Transvaal are, I believe, unalterably opposed.
§ MR. LYTTELTONMay I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether his attention has been drawn to the Report of the Commission on Labour Condition in the Mines of the Transvaal, signed by Messrs. Stockenstroom, Cresswell, Hamilton and Whiteside: whether Mr. Cresswell who is well known to Members of this House is the gentleman who took a leading part in the agitation against Chinese labour in the Transvaal and in this country: whether the Report is to the effect that there is no essential difference between the importation of Chinese coolies and Portugese natives, and whether it is a fact that on the average of the last two years the death-rate of such natives is more than 100 per cent, heavier than that of the Chinese.
§ MR CHURCHILLHis Majesty's Government are awaiting with much interest the arrival of the Report in question, and meanwhile it would obviously be premature to form opinions and still more to take action of any kind.
SIR GILBERT PARKERasked whether the right hon. Gentleman was aware that the Portuguese East African natives must all be repatriated as the Chinese must be repatriated.
§ MR. CHURCHILLI am fully informed by this time, I should think, of all the conditions.
§ MR. CATHCART WASON (Orkney and Shetland)asked whether the right hon. Gentleman was aware that, although by law the Portugese natives must be repatriated, as a matter of fact they never were repatriated.
§ MR. CHURCHILLI do not wish to embark upon an attempt to impart all my information to the House.
SIR GILBERT PARKERI beg to ask the Under-Secretary for the Colonies whether he can say what are the reasons assigned by the Transvaal Government for their proposed effort to recruit labour outside South. Africa for the Rand mines.
§ MR. CHURCHILLI understand that the Transvaal Government are anxious to secure as large and continuous a supply of unskilled labour under proper conditions as is possible.
SIR GILBERT PARKERIs the right hon. Gentleman aware that the natives of Madagascar have a strain of Oriental blood?
§ [No Answer was returned.]