HL Deb 17 May 1939 vol 112 cc1100-16

4 p.m.

LORD OLIVIER rose to ask His Majesty's Government whether they have taken or will take steps to ensure that in all Crown Colonies in which productive and/or manufacturing industry receives assistance by tariff preferences or otherwise from Imperial or local public funds proper provision is made for the maintenance of a reasonable standard of wages in such industry and of reasonable prices for supplies by cane farmers or other producers of the raw material; and to move for Papers.

The noble Lord said: My Lords, I want to call the attention of the Government to certain questions which will probably arise before very long with regard to the provision made for maintaining prices in our Colonies at a level which will enable those who supply raw materials—cane for sugar, tobacco for export, fibres and oils—to pay proper wages to their employees. I am quite well aware that the question of the payment of proper wages to employees has engaged the careful attention of the Government for a considerable time and that they have sent out, or are sending out, labour advisers to various Governors to enable them to deal with this matter. The Governors and their staffs in the Colonies being evidently incapable of framing any sane industrial policy, the Colonial Office is sending out men to deal with matters which are of common knowledge to everyone with industrial experience. However, they are doing their best.

In the spring of 1929 a Report drawn up by Mr. David Semple and myself was presented dealing with the position of the West Indian sugar industry. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Snowden as he then was, had said that at the earliest opportunity he would withdraw all preferential assistance to that industry. That declaration was regarded as a sentence of death by all the sugar producers in the Colonies. Mr. Semple and I were so gravely impressed by the situation then that we sent what I suppose was about the longest telegram of that character ever sent to a Secretary of State, giving our general recommendations. One of them was that the preference on sugar should be maintained at its then rate and should even be increased. And we said more: we said, very circumspectly and very deliberately, that if that could not be done, the West Indian sugar industry would, in the course of a few years, gradually and undeservedly perish. I say "undeservedly" because I think there are no men in any manufacturing industry who have worked harder and more intelligently than the managers of the sugar industry in British Guiana and elsewhere to maintain their factories in good order. They had not been able to do so, and there was no prospect of their being able to do so, unless they could get a better price for their sugar; and, more especially, there was no prospect of their being able to pay what we should call proper wages to their employees or to keep their employees under proper housing conditions unless those preferences were raised.

When I came home my noble friend Lord Passfield said to me: "Oh, your recommendations are all very well, but they are impossible." I rather think that my noble friend Lord Passfield was perhaps more impressed than I was, or than the West Indians were, or than perhaps almost any of us ought to be, with the inevitability of gradualness. He was succeeded by another Colonial Secretary, then Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister and now Viscount Swinton, who was a little more impetuous, and managed to cause Mr. Snowden, as I had intended that he should, to resile from his position. After that the existing preference was maintained and increased, and a special preference for a certain quota was given. But the then Government did not adopt the recommendations made by Mr. Semple and myself for a fair rationalising of the industry upon the lines which we have adopted in this country for rationalising the beet sugar industry. The Government decided to establish and extend the beet sugar industry in this country, and that was done on what I call rational lines. They established not only a Board but also a Corporation. There are two organisations now for rationalising the beet sugar industry, upon the basis that the wages of agricultural labour are regulated by law at a certain rate, that the prices paid to the farmer are regulated by the Board or the Corporation—I am not quite sure by which; at any rate they are regulated—and that dividends that may be paid to the shareholders in the factories are also regulated to 5 per cent., or whatever it may be, and above that any surplus is applied, I think—I am not very sure about this—to the increase of prices to farmers for their supplies.

Mr. Semple and I recommended ten years ago that the principle should be applied to the sugar industry in the Colonies. As your Lordships are all aware, the Government give a considerable subsidy to the beet industry in order that those prices or wages may be able to be paid, and in order that the industry may be carried on under such conditions as will commend themselves to general public opinion in England. We recommended in three places in our Report that this should be done: that whenever any subsidy of any sort was given to the sugar industry in the Colonies, it should be a condition that the factory accounts should be examined and audited, as they are in this country by the Board and the Corporation, and that proper prices—I think we said "proper"—should be given to suppliers of cane, and proper wages paid to the labourers.

Moreover, although it was not within our terms of reference, we presented a whole supplementary Report in which we pointed out—very much as has been pointed out recently by inquirers in the West Indies, and as will be pointed out in the Report which we are expecting from the noble Lord, Lord Moyne, and his colleagues—that throughout the West Indies the wages of sugar employees were scandalously low, that the employees were scandalously ill-housed and that diseases of various kinds were excessively rampant among them. These facts will, I feel sure, be brought strongly under the noses of the British public in a few months' time by the Report of the noble Lord, Lord Moyne, and I wish it had been ready before. Mr. Semple and I went out of our way to put this in the second part of our Report because we were so much impressed by these conditions. In that second part of our Report we made no fewer than forty references to the poverty of the wage-earners, the bad housing, and so on, and we recognised that all these things, at the then price of sugar, and much more so if the present preference was not maintained, were incurable and would remain so.

The preference has been maintained and slightly increased, and since that time a great amount of expenditure and a great amount of effort have been devoted by the sugar manufacturers in the West Indies to improving their processes, but prices have not been maintained; prices are lower now than they were at that time. When you look at the reports of the principal group of factories, you will see that year by year for the last ten years they have received lower and lower prices for their sugar, while at the same time you will see that their factory work has improved and improved continuously, and on the whole they have begun to pay dividends. They began to pay dividends to a moderate amount—5 per cent.—in Trinidad and elsewhere; and I am sorry to say that in Trinidad that moderate resumption of payment of dividend was only secured by reducing the price of cane to cane farmers from 14s. to 11s. a ton, which is really not enough to pay for it. Since then prices to cane farmers have risen slightly, but the wages of labourers have not risen. The wages of labourers, as the noble Lord knows very well, are deplorably low in all the West Indian Colonies, and it has been the desire of the Colonial Office for a long time to try to devise means for raising them.

In the present year I have been looking through the reports and the books of the best-managed factories in the West Indies, those of Henckell du Buisson and Co. The dividend of their largest factory to its first-preference shareholders, which for two years had been 5 per cent., went down to 2½ per cent., and at the same time, owing to the recent inquiries into the housing conditions in Trinidad, they have been required to put all their labourers' houses in order to an extent which they calculated to cost £100,000; and on that showing they could not pay any dividends at all. They would be in just the same position as they were in ten years ago. Until the West Indian, Mauritius and Guiana sugar producers are paid a respectable price, such as that for which sugar can be produced, the houses and wages cannot be improved. The present position will have to be maintained. I was very much impressed by the evidence given before Lord Moyne's Commission by the representative of the one central factory in Antigua, which was quite in accordance with the temper disclosed by the managers of industries elsewhere. He said that, while they were perfectly willing to accept a Government Board's regulation of wages, it was quite impossible under present conditions to improve wages in Antigua. They might go before any tribunal, and they would all say—as would be said in other Colonies—that unless the preference was increased it was impossible to make improvements.

Very excellent evidence was also given by the manager of what will be the most important factory in Jamaica, that of Tate and Lyle. He said that their present position was this: that if their quota of export were not limited they could keep the industry going and pay fair wages; that if the preference were raised they could keep the industry going and pay increased wages; but that unless both things were done they could not maintain the wages which had been promised to the labourers, and would have to cut them down. I am quite sure that Lord Moyne and his associates will take care to verify the figures given, but I am myself convinced that it is a fair statement. As noble Lords are well aware, if Lord Moyne were to recommend that the quota should be increased, Mr. MacDonald is in a position to say that it is impossible, that we are tied by international convention, and that we cannot provide for any mitigation of that convention. They have already refused a Motion in the other House for extending the preference to a wider quota.

Now, however, they are going to have another opportunity of helping the West Indies a little more to get such a price for their sugar as will enable them to raise their cane prices and to increase the wages of their labourers. If the Government will apply the additional farthing per lb. to the preference, it will go quite a long way to making conditions possible in the West Indies, and I am convinced—I have been in the West Indies twice in the last few months and have not changed my opinion—that unless some sort of relief of that sort is given, the condition of the labouring population and of the cane growers in the West Indies must remain as it is at present, and will not improve. I do not say that the West Inches are likely to collapse, because they are accustomed to these conditions. Ever since 1846 they have been paying tribute to this country by sending us sugar at considerably below cost price. Whatever complaint may be made in this country of the extra farthing per lb. it has not brought the price of sugar up to what it costs to produce. I am still of opinion that the English public are paying at least a farthing too little for sugar.

I hope, and I think it is quite possible, that when Lord Moyne's Commission have reported the West Indies may get a little additional preference, but I would couple with it insistence that there should be Government audit and control for the protection of the cane farmers and the labourers. Wherever subsidies are given there should be, I submit, Government audit and control, exactly as there is in our national beet industry. If you want to maintain the sugar production of our Empire, as you say you want to maintain your home industry, you must see that they have living prices and are able to obtain a reasonable interest on capital. As I have said, the interest obtained is in my opinion not more than reasonable, but the farmers and the labourers, as in this country, must be protected from exploitation. If our Government say that they cannot afford to do so, because they have enormous burdens to bear—I would point out that in England we also have unemployment and distressed areas—then the nation must realise that it cannot afford the luxury of a West Indian Empire. If you live under a capitalist system, it will produce conditions which affect people hysterically; they will either be exaggerated in their statements, or turbulent and violent. In the West Indies people who are out of employment and who are starving become hysterical. They walk about and sing "God Save the King" and "Land of Hope and Glory," and are then shut up by the police.

That cannot go on, and there are two main points which I wish to make. Unless the preference or the price of sugar is maintained at such a rate as will enable properly found and properly staffed factories to be maintained, the sugar industry cannot be maintained in any of the British Colonies. If provision is not made and proper prices are not paid to the agricultural suppliers, whether of sugar, tobacco, cocoa, or whatever it may be, then the condition of the small farmers and the workers will remain as it is at present, and they will not be able to pay for anything except their subsistence. They will be able in the West Indies to get a subsistence wage, but they will not be able to pay anything for better medical service, or education, or what we call civilisation—which, I am sorry so say, in the West Indies means cinematisation, because the chief evidence of it is the erection of magnificent cinemas. We know very well that education costs money, which must be got out of taxation revenue, and it cannot be got unless the export trade is maintained.

I began by saying that I had great admiration for what has been done by sugar manufacturers, and, I may say, cocoa producers throughout the Empire. Since 1929 an immense amount of money has been spent in the West Indies in improving factories. There are two gentlemen of my acquaintance one of whom, a Jamaican planter, shortly after the preference was granted, put in a new mill costing him between £20,000 and £30,000, and the other, having very fine cane land, did me the compliment of asking me whether I thought it would be prudent of him to build a new mill costing £40,000. I said, Yes, I thought it might be prudent. He put up mills costing £70,000, thereby enormously increasing the productivity of his works and enormously improving his factories. And, as we know, there has recently been a great investment by our principal sugar manufacturing companies in Trinidad and Jamaica. That is also to the good. You must have the best and most powerful machinery, which is very expensive, and if they get a modest 2½ to 5 per cent. on their investment, which is the utmost that most of them do—there are some very rare exceptions—that is quite a reasonable allowance if we want the industry to be maintained.

If you do not want to maintain the industry, do not do it. It will not collapse immediately, because the people are, like the eels, used to "skinning." There are certain districts in Jamaica which are continually subject to drought, known as the distressed districts. They have their distressed areas there, just as we have here. A Jamaican once told me that these St. Elizabeth people were "used" to starvation and distress. They are to a certain extent, but people in this country have recently been discovering that the West Indian people are becoming tired of this starvation, distress and disease, and they are making a clamour about it. I think you will have a greater clamour unless you insist that your sugar manufacturers get a price at which they can live—and the present price does not pay. And unless provision is also made to ensure that a proper price is paid to the sugar farmers, or the growers of tobacco or coconuts or whatever it may be, and unless the proper wages are paid to the employees, the position of the agricultural industry there and of the labourers will remain as it is at present.

I am moving for Papers, and I have told the noble Marquess privately that all I want to have is any correspondence that has recently passed with the Governments of West Indian Colonies or Mauritius. I want to know what is the present state of unemployment in those Colonies, and whether it has been affected, as there were hopes it would be, by the recent crop season. During the crop season I expected, as a good many people did, that many of the unemployed would receive employment. Has that been the case, and has unemployment been relieved?

4.26 p.m.

THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (THE MARQUESS OF DUFFERIN AND AVA)

My Lords, I think those of your Lordships who have read the Motion which stands in my noble friend's name will agree that his speech rather departed from the narrower interpretation which I formed of it when I read it.

LORD OLIVIER

I shall be very glad if the noble Marquess will put the very narrowest interpretation that he can lay upon it.

THE MARQUESS OF DUFFERIN AND AVA

That is what I propose to do, and, grateful as I am and my Department always will be, for any Liberal or Labour support for increased Imperial preference. I do not feel it incumbent upon me this afternoon to deal with that aspect of the matter. As my noble friend is well aware, that is quite a different matter, which involves international considerations, with which I am not competent to deal.

LORD OLIVIER

I do not in the least desire to press the noble Marquess, but I quite disagree with the policy pursued by His Majesty's Government about sugar.

THE MARQUESS OF DUFFERIN AND AVA

Well, in that case we can come to our muttons and consider the actual Motion which is before the House, but I would first like to make two general observations on that Motion. The first is that the Motion links up the question of wages with the question of whether an industry is or is not being subsidised from the public purse, and I would like to make it perfectly clear that in His Majesty's Government's opinion no such linking up is justifiable. Our Colonial policy is directed to obtaining proper and good wages for those who live in the Colonies, and it is quite irrelevant to bring in the matter as to whether the industry in which they are employed is subsidised by preference or by tariffs or by anything else. The point surely is whether the wage is proper and whether it is right. To that extent therefore it seems to me that, although my noble friend linked it up rather ingeniously by bringing in this particular matter of sugar preference, actually that part of the Motion has nothing to do with the merits of the question.

Secondly, I think we have to consider in dealing with this matter of wages in the Colonies what the real wage is, as opposed to the monetary wage. It is really quite useless to quote figures of people getting 5s. a week, 10s. a week, 15s. a week or the like, unless you know first of all what extras are included in those figures—what free housing, what free rides to cinemas if you like, what the perquisites are which go with the work; and, further—and this is a matter which has to be faced, although I sometimes think that some sections in this country are inclined to disregard it—what is the actual value that the labour gives. You have to consider how many hours the labourer works who is only getting 15s. a week. You have to take into consideration whether he refuses to work on a Monday because it is too near Sunday, or whether he refuses to work on Friday because it is approaching the week-end. These are matters which, as my noble friend is well aware, come very closely into relevance when you consider the question, say, of Jamaican wages, and the same remark applies not only all over the West Indies, but all over our Colonial Empire. I therefore do issue that caveat to be careful, when one considers Colonial wages, as to what exactly these wages connote in real wages and what exactly is the value given for them.

Of course that links the whole matter up with the question of education in its broadest and widest sense. In my view it is not until you have educated your native labour to desire what my noble friend calls a cinema civilisation, but which I would prefer to call real civilisation—until he really desires the good and the goods that Western civilisation can give him, you will not be able to persuade him in many cases and in many Colonies to give that value of labour which would properly reap a higher reward. At the same time it has been the policy of the Colonial Office for many years to promote a higher standard of wages and, in particular, to prevent the exploitation of labors in any industry in any Colony. With that in view, we have, by means of a number of circular Despatches and in other ways, promoted legislation in forty of our Dependencies establishing minimum wage regulations. For the most part it is very simple legislation. It simply empowers the Governor, in the case of any district or industry in which he is convinced the wage is too small, to raise it or fix it.

In forty out of our Colonies that legislation is already in force, and in the few in which it is not in force it is, in the majority of cases, in contemplation. It is perfectly true that that legislation has not been used very often, and the reason for that is not that the Governor is unaware of the necessity of using it should it be necessary, but simply that in the majority of the Colonies it is unnecessary. We have got to keep a proper perspective of the importance of wages in our Colonial Empire. Of course they are important, but the rate of wages, as such, is really of minor importance in our Colonial Empire because so very few of the people who live in the Colonial Empire are wage-earners. I would not attempt to give an accurate figure, but I should say that certainly less than 5 per cent. of the inhabitants of our Colonial Empire earn wages. It is therefore not unnatural that minimum wage laws or regulations have been comparatively unnecessary since they have been introduced practically throughout our Empire.

So far as wages are concerned, I would finally only say this. A minimum wage is a very good and necessary thing no doubt, but it has two dangers. The first danger is that it destroys the easy relationship between employer and employed. In the West Indies, of which my noble friend has special knowledge, the actual effect of certain minimum wage legislation which we introduced into St. Vincent, for example, was to put out of work a great number of old people who had been kept on by employers on a sort of half-time and very rough and ready basis. When the employers were forced to pay a minimum wage to these people who were not giving anything like the value required for this minimum wage, they had no alternative but to turn them off. That sort of relationship between employer and employed is very common throughout the West Indies, and is quite common throughout Africa. Therefore one has to be careful, before putting into force minimum wage rates, to make quite sure you are not destroying more than you are gaining. The second and obvious danger is that the minimum wage is regarded as the be-all and end-all of social legislation, and that once you have got your minimum wage fixed it becomes a maximum wage and everything in the garden is supposed to be lovely. The minimum wage should remain in theory the minimum wage and not the maximum, and that again is a consideration we have had very closely in mind in putting into force these minimum wage regulations.

I hope I have shown, as far as the wages part of the Question is concerned, that we have really tried hard to give the Governors powers to prevent any wrongful exploitation of labour in any district or in any industry. But, for reasons I have given, I confess I find the second part of the Question a great deal more important to the Colonial Empire as a whole than the first. As I say, 5 per cent. only of the inhabitants of the Colonial Empire earn wages, whereas 70 or 80 per cent. of them are dependent on the price of primary products. I entirely agree with my noble friend that it is essential that these small producers should be safeguarded, and proper prices paid to them for what they produce. I am going to take the Colonial Empire as a whole, although my noble friend mostly attached himself to the West Indies.

One can divide the matter into three general cases. The first is when you have free competition among buyers for a certain commodity. A typical example is groundnuts in East Africa or rubber in Malaya. Where there is a free market, you can be perfectly certain that the small grower is going to get a fair market price. I do not think that affects us this evening at all. The second case is where the Government has had to step in owing to undue competition and establish what amounts to semi-monopolies, where the grower is not in a position to market his products to anyone he likes. A typical example is cotton in Uganda. In that sort of case the method has been to restrict very rigorously the conditions of sale, and there is most elaborate machinery in operation to ensure that the cotton grower in Uganda is not handicapped because he has fewer buyers to whom he can sell, or rather because he can sell only to one particular buyer. Similarly there is most elaborate machinery involving the use of the telegraph for sending the prices at Liverpool out to Uganda in order to make quite sure that the price of seed cotton should bear a proper relationship to the price of cotton as sold in this country. That is the second case, and that particularly applies to the West Indies, where admittedly the buyer is not entirely free to sell to whom he likes. On the other hand, to take the example of Trinidad, where the price of cane is fixed rigidly by the Government itself, there a Cane Farming Arbitration Board, under the Chairmanship of the Director of Agriculture, is set up to settle disputes which might arise as to the proper price to be paid for cane. Similar machinery exists in Jamaica of which my noble friend is no doubt well aware. Under those conditions, where the buyer is not entirely free, the Government and the Colonial Office have been most careful to ensure that proper machinery is set up to see that a buyer gets a proper price for his product.

Thirdly, there is the case—and this is a difficult case—where you get what should normally be a free market but which actually is not a free market because a buying ring of some sort has been set up. That is always a theoretical danger, and I quite agree with my noble friend that it is a danger. I can only say that our experience has been that these rings never last very long; that if there is enough money in it some other buyer sooner or later springs up and smashes the ring. I do not deny that it does happen, that rings are formed. It happens very much more than one would think, but the ring lasts for a very much shorter period than one would expect. Those, it seems to me, are the three conditions under which the grower has to sell his produce to-day—a free market; a semi-monopoly under very strict Government control; and the theoretical cases of a buying ring which may exist for a short time, but which very soon is defeated and the proper practice of a free market reverted to.

I have tried to explain as best I could what we have done as far as wages are concerned, and what we are doing as far as insuring that the primary producer gets a proper price for what he has to sell. My noble friend has asked for Papers. There is no authoritative statement on what we have been doing on these lines, and I doubt very much whether any good purpose would be served by producing one. It could only repeat what I have said this afternoon, but, if my noble friend would like the Colonial Office to prepare a memorandum on the lines on which I have been speaking this afternoon, I can assure him we should be only too pleased to do so, because we are very anxious to interest this House and a wider public in all aspects of our Colonial administration.

5.46 p.m.

LORD OLIVIER

My Lords, the statement to which we have just listened has produced in me a feeling of very great concern for the reputation of the Colonial Office. First of all, my noble friend challenged my suggestion that the question of financial aid has anything whatever to do with the policy concerning wages and profits. I do not know whether my noble friends on the Liberal Benches would regard that statement with complacency if it were made in regard to the sugar beet industry in this country, if there were not some safeguards at any rate for the profits of the farmer and the wages of the labourer such as we have rationally established in this country. Secondly, the noble Marquess has delivered an oration—I will not qualify that word—which I have heard delivered anytime during the last fifty-seven years during which time I have had occasion to criticise some aspects of our Colonial administration. He has said that the West Indian worker does not want any more wages, and does not work hard enough to get them. I am not going into that, but I think the West Indian people will be glad to hear it, because it will be another argument for them for insisting on some control of their own Governments. They know better than the noble Marquess. They know their own economy ten times better than the noble Marquess or the Colonial Office does.

I had some controversy last year with a member of the firm of Tate and Lyle—I forget which member of the firm it was—with regard to the industrial habits of the West Indian negro. The member of that firm was just as ignorant as the noble Marquess is on this matter. He persisted that you could not regard the West Indian negro as on the same footing as an agricultural labourer in this country. I pointed out then that when the agricultural labourer in this country was in the same position as the West Indian labourer is to-day, he did exactly the same things as the West Indian labourer is trying to do now. I would commend to the noble Marquess a very sensible observation which the present Governor of Jamaica made the other day. He said that there was no greater nonsense than for people to come and interfere with labour there, because the West Indian labourer was quite different from the labourer in England and the conditions under which he worked were quite different from those in. England. That is a very sensible thing to bear in mind. As is the case with other people, if you prick the labourers there they begin to bleed, and they are now beginning to bleed. The Governor went on to say that what they wanted was a decent living wage, decent housing, decent treatment, and so on. It is in order to get those things that they are now trying to organise themselves.

I may mention in passing that there was a representative labour conference in Barbados in November of last year. It was attended by representatives of labour from all the Colonies. This is one of the resolutions that they passed: This conference further suggests to the Royal Commission to recommend that any increased preference on sugar granted to the sugar industry in the West Indies shall be granted by the Imperial Government on the condition that such preference be given"— I do not associate myself with this— as to 10 per cent. to the employers and 90 per cent. to the cane farmers and field and factory workers by way of increased wages and pay. With regard to my own Motion, I quite agree that a proper price should be paid to the suppliers of raw material. That is more easy to deal with than the question of a proper wage for the labourer. But I did not speak of a minimum wage. I said "reasonable wages." I did not employ the phrase minimum wage for a moment. The noble Marquess himself admitted that, although there have been a great many minimum wage scales drawn up, very few of them have been applied. I agree that very few have been applied. Then the noble Marquess told us the old story of the poor old labourers turned off because of the minimum wage. This Government have adopted the principle of the minimum wage in agriculture. I ask the noble Marquess, is he going to lead a campaign against the minimum wage because a few poor old people have been turned off?

However, he was quite right, in my opinion, in drawing a distinction between the question of wages and the prices paid to primary producers, although in this country when we were establishing the beet sugar industry we did it on the basis of a minimum wage to agricultural labour and then turned to consider the primary producer. We said if we wanted beet sugar we must guarantee a reasonable price for beet, and we did so. We said in our Report, ten years ago: … we think it must be manifest that, in so far as the West Indian sugar industry, especially in the smaller communities entirely dependent upon sugar, may assume the form we have indicated, namely, the economy of central factories, largely owned in this country, and a multitude of contributory plantations, large and small, a situation arises which seems likely to engender considerations of public policy and of factory regulation and audit. The noble Marquess spoke very frivolously about possible competition. In St. Kitts there is one central factory. There is no competition, and can be no competition, between the few central factories in the West Indies to pay higher wages. It does not, never has and never can act. It is a perfectly frivolous argument. If he knew the conditions of monopoly, not only of factories but of land—the necessary conditions of monopoly—he would not have advanced frivolity of that sort.

THE MARQUESS OF DUFFERIN AND AVA

I think the noble Lord misunderstood my argument. What I said was that where there was semi-monopoly of that kind the Government took great care to fix prices of cane out of pity for the farmers. That was their object. Because there was monopoly therefore prices had to be fixed.

LORD OLIVIER

I can only say that the impression of the noble Marquess is contrary to my observation. There does exist a certain amount of machinery for fixing prices and there was in Trinidad in 1929 a Cane Farmers' Association, but in the year following, when the factories began to pay moderate dividends of about 5 per cent. what happened was that the price of cane was reduced from 14s. to 11s. a ton. There was a Planters' Association and one of the biggest planters threatened his colleagues that if they did not consent to cut down wages he would break up the Planters' Association. The Duke of Montrose said in this House in November, 1937, that when there was a question of oil companies increasing wages they held their hand because they wanted to consult the employers of agricultural labour so as to see that their wages would not be interfered with. There is the strongest combination among the few big factories to cut down wages, but they never combine to raise wages.

I did not ask for a minimum wage but I asked for reasonable wages to be paid. If only 5 per cent. of the people work on wages only 5 per cent. will have to be dealt with, and if they do not work at all wages will not be affected. At present there is a chaotic labour struggle going on in Jamaica on the basis of the labour struggle in this country 120 years ago, and you have a sort of labour movement founded on the idea that you must organise the mass of the workers against the whole of the capitalists and that they must be controlled by one or two leaders. We in this country have developed a system of trade union organisation which is recognised, and proper arrangements do exist for establishing and strengthening proper wage conditions. I want to know that proper arrangements have been made for the payment of reasonable wages—not minimum wages. I did not say anything about minimum wages. I think the noble Marquess and myself agree that, unless the labourer gets a reasonable wage, he cannot afford even the elements of civilisation which we should both agree are desirable. But I can assure him that even what Socialists call the reactionary classes are much more liberal-minded and intelligent than the sentiments he has expressed on behalf of the Colonial Office.

THE MARQUESS OF DUFFERIN AND AVA

I can assure the noble Lord that it was my own argument. I take full responsibility.

LORD OLIVIER

On the last occasion the noble Marquess made a statement on behalf of the Colonial Office after I had left for which I could only give credit to the Colonial Office. He said I had made an inaccurate statement, but when I went out to Jamaica my statement was absolutely verified in evidence before Lord Moyne's Commission. I know that the Colonial Office briefs the noble Marquess most imperfectly and I gave him credit for not having evolved the argument himself. Where you have centralisation of factories and monopoly of factory production there is no satisfactory machinery for fixing cane prices. Many things have been attempted, but these monopolies do exist and must continue to exist. A director of one of the biggest companies in Jamaica told us that unless preferences are increased present conditions must continue. Nevertheless, wherever you have the principle of State assistance, as in Jamaica and Trinidad—and I think in Mauritius—in favour of one industry, it is the bounden duty of the State to see that the primary producers and the labourers get a proper look in. As the noble Marquess gives me no encouragement to think that the Colonial Office can add anything to our information on this subject, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

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