Current Mention

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 6, 1908

— An explosion in a small mine near Hawks Nest, W. Va., January 30, caused the death of nine miners.

— On January 27 the North Carolina House of Representatives passed the Senate bill for a State election on prohibition, to be held the last Thursday in April.

— Six persons were killed and four fatally injured in a cyclone which laid waste a strip of farming country about a mile wide and several miles long, near Wesson, Miss., January 31.

— The Transvaal government has been forced to modify its severity against Asiatics, and will attempt to devise a less objectionable registration plan. Meanwhile all prosecutions for violations of the present law will be dropped.

— The Supreme Court of the United States handed down a decision January 27 which declared unconstitutional one section of an act of Congress providing for the arbitration of disputes between common carriers and their operatives. This section prohibited interstate railroads from discharging an employee on the ground that he was a member of a labor organization. The court decreed that Congress has no more right to prohibit

interstate carriers from discharging men because they are members of labor organizations than it has to require them to employ only members of labor organizations or only those who are not members.

— Efforts are being made all over the country to band together those directly and indirectly interested in the brewery trade to fight prohibition, which is said to be making serious inroads on the business of the brewers as well as of the corporations and firms dealing in brewers' supplies.

— The Haytian government is making efforts to capture the leaders of the recent revolt. They are said to be seeking asylum in the American consulates so as to be safe from arrest prior to embarkation; but the State Department has given instructions that they are not to be allowed to remain in the consulates.

— Dom Carlos, king of Portugal, and Luis Filippe, the crown prince, were assassinated February 1, as the royal family was being driven in an open carriage through the streets of Lisbon. The other son of the king, Prince Manuel, was also slightly wounded, while the queen escaped unhurt. The strong police guard which, on account of the many recently discovered plots against the government, attended the royal carriage, immediately attacked the assassins, killing three, and capturing a fourth, who later committed suicide in his cell. Prince Manuel, now nineteen years of age, will rule with his mother, Queen Amelie, as regent, during his minority.

— Because the special session of the Argentine Congress refused to deal with the matters for which it was assembled, and omitted to sanction the annual budget, thus rendering the government powerless, President Alcorta issued a decree dissolving the congress. The opposition senators and deputies threatened to meet despite the presidential decree, but special police occupy the building to prevent such meeting, and it has not been attempted. All is tranquil now, and the opinion prevails that nothing more will be done until the time of the regular session of congress in May. If the March elections do not give the president a safe majority, he will probably resign.

— Viscount Hayashi, Japanese minister of foreign affairs, has made a statement of his policy with reference to emigration which is said to be entirely satisfactory to the United States if faithfully carried out. “The government of Japan is determined to investigate the personal standing of those who go to America as students, requiring two sureties before they leave. The government realizes that the emigration of laborers pretending to be students is liable to be embarrassing to America, and therefore we are determined to prevent the emigration of laborers. . . . The minister of foreign affairs will not hesitate to entirely prohibit Japanese emigration to Hawaii, if necessary. The foreign office intends to prohibit emigration to Mexico. Those who send emigrants to Mexico will be regarded as assisting emigrants to enter the United States through the frontier, and therefore they will be treated as lawbreakers.”