News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 29, 1913

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

—The commercial fleet of Hamburg consists of 750 steamships and 640 sailing vessels, a total tonnage of 1,700,000. The crews number 131,000 men, 30,000 more than ten years ago.

—Prof. Willis I. Moore, who has for many years been chief of the government Weather Bureau, was summarily dismissed from office recently by President Wilson on charges of gross irregularities and misuse of power.

—A monumental gateway and doors in artistic wrought iron for the Carnegie Palace of Peace at The Hague have been contributed by Germany, and are now on exhibition at Berlin. The two large portals contain designs symbolic of peace.

—Only about one per cent of the total wealth of the United States is invested in church property, but, according to Dr. Booker Washington, over eight per cent of the wealth of the Negroes of the country is invested in this way. They have 35,000 churches, with 3,700,000 members.

—According to the officers of the Public Health Service at Washington, the ordinary stable-fly has been conclusively identified as the carrier of the dread infantile paralysis. A report just issued gives the results of experiments carried on with animals inoculated with the virus of the disease.

—Serious efforts are being made to establish a Jewish university in Jerusalem. As the vast majority of Russian Jewish students are not admitted to the Russian universities, and there is a feeling against them in other countries also, this move is strongly urged by leading Jews of the Continent.

—Mississippi has passed a law intended to do away with the tipping nuisance. The law imposes a fine of $100 on owners of hotels or restaurants who permit their employees to take tips. It also provides for a fine of $50 for the waiter who takes the tip, and $50 for the person who gives it.

—One fish in New Zealand has had the honor of having a law passed by the legislature for his especial protection. It is the big dolphin called Pelorus Jack. He is fifteen feet long, and is of a light-bluish color, whereas most dolphins are black. For thirty years he has accompanied every steamship through the narrow and dangerous French Pass in Pelorus Sound.

—Excavations carried on in the peninsula south of San Francisco by Prof. Harold Heath, of the zoological department of Stanford University, indicate that this part of the continent was once inhabited by a race of giants. Skeletons of men of unusual height have been unearthed. A prehistoric village covering nearly two acres has been the scene of these investigations, yielding stone hammers, bone awls, and ornaments which reveal a considerable advance in artisanship and civilization.

—Clayton Cooper, in a recently published work, gives the college statistics he has gathered in this country. Sixty per cent of the students are church-members; one in every seven attends the Bible classes of the Y. M. C. A. The others, it is supposed, go to the Bible classes of their respective churches. The students gave to foreign missions last year $146,000. Six hundred graduates went as foreign missionaries in 1910.

—A new station which is ready for the reception of immigrants has been dedicated at New Orleans, La. In its dimensions and also in the completeness of its equipment it is second only to the immigrants’ station at Ellis Island. The government has spared no expense in the erection of this group of magnificent buildings. The dedication was attended by prominent officials from Washington, by Governor Hall of Louisiana, and by the immigration and agricultural commissioners of several Southern States.

—New York has just enacted a law providing for State aid to students. Five State scholarships in each legislative district in the State will be established, and each holder of a scholarship will receive from the State $100 a year for four years, to be applied toward the payment of the tuition fee of the college attended, which must be within the State. The scholarships are to be awarded according to the school standing of the students. As there are 150 assembly districts, this will give 750 scholarships each year, so that there will be eventually 3,000 students constantly in receipt of aid from the State.

—Chinese scholars, after making a study of all the alphabets of the world with reference to their adaptability to the language-sounds of their people, have formulated a new alphabet of forty-two characters. The new alphabet is unusually strong in vowels, apparently having one letter for each vowel sound, and so simplifying pronunciation. Five vowels have been taken from the Latin, four from the Greek, four from the Russian, one from the Chinese, and two are elongated signs, and seven are reversed ideographs. Fourteen consonants are Latin, three Russian, and two Greek. With these it is declared to be possible to write all the words used in any part of China. An effort is to be made at once to introduce the new alphabet into official circles.

—Working under the Mann act, the federal authorities are expending every energy to prevent interstate traffic in women for immoral purposes. Already a large number of persons have been convicted under this statute. A new move has been made by the authorities in order to stamp out this form of vice, in ordering a card-index classification of immoral women. Officials are at work on this index in the large centers of the country. When completed, it will give full information concerning each inmate in the levee districts. The records will be kept in local offices, and also at Washington. With this in hand, the authorities will have evidence upon which to base prosecutions against any of these women who are shipped from one State to another.

—“Swan Girl,” a squaw, planted an orchard of a dozen apple-trees in the Yakima Valley fifty-one years ago. For forty-nine years under her cultivation the trees have borne fruit, and a new, unknown variety of apple has been produced. Her orchard is said to be the oldest with a continuous bearing record.

—According to the Philadelphia mayor’s vice commission, which has been investigating social conditions in that city, there is spent annually in Philadelphia alone over six million dollars for vice. And that city is no exception to the rule. Similar conditions may be found in every large city in the land. It is but one more indication of the times in which we are living, and of the fulfilment of our Saviour’s prophecy that the last days should be like unto the days of Noah and the days of Lot.

—The fire tax in the United States, according to recent statistics, is about three dollars per capita of the population. Every year $250,000,000 in property is destroyed by fire in this country. This sum is sufficient to build a Panama Canal every two years, to give 250,000 young men a business start of $1,000 each, to pay the national debt in four years, to support the United States Army and Navy for a year, and to pay the entire pension list. If all the buildings burned in one year in the United States were placed close together on both sides of a street, they would reach from Chicago to New York City. It is estimated that at least seventy-five per cent of these fires are preventable.

—“The British post-office has finally decided not to admit claims to compensation on account of registered mail lost on the ‘Titanic.’ Under an international convention an indemnity of fifty francs (ten dollars) is payable to the owner of any registered letter or package lost in transit to any foreign country through negligence on the part of the mail service or transportation line; and if negligence had been admitted in case of the ‘Titanic,’ the amount payable as compensation would have been something like $3,960,000, which would have fallen eventually on the steamship company. But the post-office has somewhat tardily taken the ground that the loss was ‘due to causes beyond control,’ and is now sending out notices to claimants to that effect.”

—Following the example of the United States, the commonwealth of Australia, made up of seven states, is to have a capital city in a federal district laid out by order of the nation. Canberra is to be the name of the new city, which is to take the place of Melbourne, the temporary capital. The Yass-Canberra district, as that part of the country has been known, was taken over by the general government in 1911. It is on the Molonglo River, some distance from the coast. For the laying out of Washington, Pierre Charles L’Enfant, a French officer who had come to this country with Lafayette, was selected. And now, after one hundred years, it is to the United States that Australia turns for the plans for Canberra, the design of Walter Hurley Griffin, of Chicago, being selected after an elaborate competition. His scheme is, generally speaking, like that of Washington, with important modifications.