p. 452 | News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 8, 1913

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

— After long negotiations, Dr. Friedrich Franz Friedmann, of Germany, has arranged for the sale of the American rights of his turtle-vaccine consumption cure for $125,000 in cash and $1,800,000 in stock in thirty-six institutes to be organized in thirty-six selected States, with a capitalization of $5,400,000. The Eisner-Mendelson Company of New York City will undertake the marketing of the cure and the establishment of the institutes.

— Many persons have been surprised by the appointment of Mr. Walter H. Page, of Doubleday, Page & Co., one of the largest publishing companies in the country, as ambassador to England. Mr. Page is a prolific writer on current subjects, is editor of the World’s Work, and has been editor of the Forum and of the Atlantic Monthly. No one questions Mr. Page’s fitness for the post. The press on both sides of the Atlantic is unanimous in his praise.

— Sir Cecil Arthur Spring-Rice, who succeeds James Bryce as ambassador from Great Britain to the United States, arrived in this country April 27. He is well and favorably known in diplomatic circles, having been in the service since 1886.

— Berlin is making ready for the greatest demonstration of modern times, at the celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the reign of William II, who, it is expected, will receive the Nobel prize on that occasion, and a magnificent present from the German nation.

— The Lake St. John levee, on the west bank of the Mississippi River, twelve miles north of Ferriday, La., broke April 27, despite all efforts to hold back the waters. An area of about 900 square miles was flooded, and more than 20,000 persons driven from their homes.

— The tariff bill introduced into the present extra session of Congress is by far the most radical in the way of reducing duties since the tariff law passed in 1857. The articles put on the free list include all the necessaries of life, such as meats, flour, bread, lumber and its products, coal, wool, steel rails, and agricultural products. A great many articles are reduced by fifty per cent more or less, such as knives, soap, cotton clothing, books, brooms, cattle, bicycles, and borax.

— The Canadian Pacific Railway is preparing to begin shortly the construction of what will be the longest tunnel in America. The tunnel will be built through Pack Horse Pass in the Rocky Mountains, and will be sixteen miles long, costing $14,000,000. It will take seven years, it is estimated, to build it. The great hole through the mountain will be four miles longer than the famous Simplon tunnel through the Alps. Railroad officials assert that the construction of this tunnel will eliminate many miles of dangerous snow-sheds.

— The typewriter, like its ally, stenography, is much older than most people think. The first machine constructed was the work of an Englishman, Henry Mill, who patented it in 1714. The next-recorded patent for a typewriter was granted in France in 1841, to a blind man, Pierre Foucault, whose machine was used in many public institutions throughout Europe. The first patent for a machine on the type-bar principle dates from 1856, but to C. Z. Sholes, an American, belongs the credit of the machine which in 1873 was put on the market.

— The State Department expects to have incorporated in the tariff bill an interstate opium law, modeled after the interstate liquor bill, to prevent interstate shipments of opium for illegal uses, so that any State with a good opium law may be protected against its nullification by outsiders. The amount of opium consumed in this country, by latest report, is four hundred thousand pounds, when, by the standard of Japan, it ought to be only four thousand pounds, as that country uses only two thousand pounds for a population half as large as ours. Much of the opium used in our country is hidden in soothing sirups, cigarettes, and headache powders.

— A new American submarine boat, the “F-1,” has made a world’s record for depth of submersion—283 feet. The vessel maintained this depth for ten minutes while traveling at a speed of six miles an hour.

— New York City has 750 hotels,—not counting the so-called Raines Law hotels,—and they are said to be able to accommodate 350,000 persons. An exchange, in recording this fact, remarks that these hotels could quarter the entire standing army of Great Britain.

— The Pennsylvania Railroad has issued a statement that 527 trespassers lost their lives last year on its tracks while violating the law. The Pennsylvania declares that many trespassers are mischief-makers, and smash signals and switch-lamps, place obstructions on the tracks, and commit many other acts that endanger the lives of railway employees and travelers.

— For the support of the postal service, the people will pay during 1913 $283,805,760, far more than for any other branch of the government service. It is estimated that $7,240,000 will be needed for the parcel-post system; $1,350,000 to meet conditions under the new eight-hour law; $750,000 to provide for reclassification of railway mail clerks; and $150,000 to establish the new village free delivery service.

— Unless something occurs to prevent, the next few years will see in China the development of one of the greatest railroad-building programs of modern times. No less than 70,000 miles of national railways will be laid. This is one of the main parts of Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s scheme for the modernization of China. Through these railroads the interior of the country will be tapped, and the wealth that is there locked up will be made available for foreign trade.

— The will of J. Pierpont Morgan, made public a few days after his burial at Hartford, Conn., opens with the following striking expression of his religious belief: “I commit my soul into the hands of my Saviour in full confidence that, having redeemed it and washed it in his most precious blood, he will present it faultless before the throne of my Heavenly Father; and I entreat my children to maintain and defend at all hazard and at any cost of personal sacrifice the blessed doctrine of the complete atonement for sin through the blood of Jesus Christ, once offered, and through that alone.”

— An American missionary in Albania declares that the whole Mohammedan population, about sixty-five per cent, are ready for the gospel. “They themselves say that the Moslem faith was forced upon them by the Turkish government, and they have never received it as their own. They do not forget that their forefathers were Christians, and in their hearts they do not regard the evangelical faith as a strange one; rather that in accepting it they will simply be coming back to that which is their own. Further, they always associate with Islam the persecution and injustice they have endured under the Turkish rule. Now, when throwing off the Ottoman yoke, the people seem to be more than willing to throw off with it the Moslem faith.”