Union, and several remarkable Afrikaner women, tried to maintain work-
ers' solidarity across the color line, but by 1948 the Garment Workers
Union had split into two racially defined branches, and segregation notices
had gone up in entrances, elevators, and offices.83
The Smuts administration maintained the segregation system set out in
the Representation of Natives Act (1936), the Native Trust and Land Act
(1936), and the Native Laws Amendment Act (1937). Nevertheless, there
was much uncertainty about the future. A small but articulate white intel-
ligentsia concentrated at the University of the Witwatersrand and the In-
stitute of Race Relations pressed for increased wages for black workers, the
recognition of African trade unions, and the abolition of the pass laws.
Commercial and industrial businesspeople saw a need for a stabilized
work force rather than the migrant laborers used in the gold mines. A few
senior officials who were aware of the miserable conditions of Africans'
livesbelieved that the laborers posed dangers for the white population. In
Parliament, the Africans' white representatives who were elected under the
legislation of 1936 continuously pressed for reforms. Prime Minister
Smuts's ablest cabinet colleague,J.H. Hofmeyr, who became deputy prime