News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 24, 1916

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

— Emperor William of Germany was fifty-seven years of age January 27. The only formal observance of the event consisted of religious services. Congratulations were sent him from the heads of those nations allied with him during this war, and also by President Wilson.

— One third of the city of Bergen, Norway, a seaport of 90,000 population, was destroyed by fire on the night of January 15. The property damage is estimated at $15,000,000. The conflagration is said to have been the worst ever recorded in Norway. Twenty thousand persons were made homeless, and their condition rendered more serious because of the burning of the largest storage houses filled with provisions for supplying the surrounding country.

— Counterfeit metal money totaling over $25,000, and counterfeit bank notes amounting to over $45,000, were seized by the federal secret service in the last year. In all, 536 arrests were made. New York and Pennsylvania led in the number of counterfeiters arrested.

— The nation's harvests this year have surpassed any ever before recorded. The value of the principal farm crops, based on prices paid to farmers December 1, was announced recently by the Department of Agriculture in its final estimate, as $5,568,773,000, making 1915 a banner year both in value and in production of crops.

— The stringent new law affecting the sale of alcoholic drinks in London has been well received by the people of the largest city in the world. While the board of control has not decided upon absolute prohibition, the stringent regulations abolishing credit at the bars and restaurants, and forbidding treating, have promoted temperance among the workingmen.

— A striking feature of 1915 in the religious world was the record-breaking sale of American-printed Bibles in England, Australia, and South Africa, where heretofore Bibles made in England have been sold almost exclusively. This is due entirely to the war, and to the same cause is ascribed the fact that the United States now leads the world in the production and circulation of religious literature.

— To what an extent business is improving generally was indicated by dispatches recently published, announcing substantial wage increases in the cotton industries of northern New England, and in many lines of activity in New York. Literally millions of dollars are involved. The northern New England wage increase will average five per cent for all employees receiving $10 a week or under. The number of operatives affected by the increase is about 75,000, living in manufacturing centers of New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

— A cable dispatch of January 24 stated that the floods in Holland were still serious. At Nieuwendam and Purmerend the waters were extending, and also at Landsmeer, where they are at a greater height than during the great floods in 1825. The strong current had torn off a great section of the pasture land, which was said to be floating like small islands on the flooded Landsmeer and the Oostzaan polders. Great numbers of cattle and domestic animals have been drowned. Many houses in the flooded districts will have to be rebuilt.

— President Wilson's appointment of Louis D. Brandeis, of Boston, to be associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, to succeed the late Justice Lamar, has been sent to the Senate for confirmation. Brandeis is a Jew, and a native of Kentucky. He has been prominent in public life for more than a decade, chiefly in great reform laws and operations affecting public utility and railroad corporations. He also has been a leader in the fight to wipe out child labor, to obtain better hours and better living conditions for industrial workers, and to improve the sanitation of large factories. He has acted as attorney without fee in great popular movements.