News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 4, 1912

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

— According to census figures the men of the United States outnumber the women by 2,691,879.

— Final census figures give 34,686,653 inhabitants for all Italy, an increase for the past decade of 2,211,400.

— On Dec. 20, 1911, a destructive storm swept the gulf coast. Three ocean-going vessels were driven ashore and many small boats wrecked.

— Twelve persons were killed, and a score more or less seriously injured, as a result of a collision on the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railroad near Odessa, Minn., on Dec. 18, 1911.

— Emilio Estrada, president of the republic of Ecuador, died suddenly at Guayaquil, Ecuador, on Dec. 21, 1911, of diseases affecting the kidneys and heart. He was sixty-five years old.

— The regular army of the United States had twenty-eight per cent less courts martial last year than the year before. This improvement is credited by the paper in which the fact is given, to growing temperance in the use of alcoholic and other beverages.

— Rear-Admiral Vreeland laid before President Taft the report of the special board of army and navy experts appointed by the President to determine what caused the wreck of the “Maine” in the Havana harbor in 1898. The finding of the board is that the “injuries to the ‘Maine’ were caused by the explosion of a charge of a low form of explosive, exterior to the ship.”

— Crowded with passengers to attend the theater at Pottsville, Pa., on the evening of Dec. 25, 1911, one of the big trolley cars of the Eastern Railways Company plunged over the trestle at Cape Horn, Mount Carbon, several miles south of Pottsville, and fell twenty feet, into a creek, which is a tributary of the Schuylkill River. There were sixty-one passengers on the car, and only three escaped injury. None were killed outright, but several of them are in a critical condition.

— The jewels and valuables found in the royal palace, including Prince Miguel’s gems, which alone are valued at $2,500,000, are to be sold by the Portuguese government.

— A brilliant illumination of the heavens, followed by a crashing explosion and a shaking of the buildings as if an earthquake had occurred, caused much excitement on the morning of Dec. 17, 1911, at Lucedale, Mass. It was discovered that a meteorite had fallen into an empty lot, drilling a hole three feet in diameter.

— President Taft has put the official ban on “fake” photographs. Tourists who wish to go home with photographs bearing a real Washington, D. C., label, showing them in the act of shaking hands with the President or in earnest conversation with him, will not be able to do so in the future, for Mr. Taft asks to be left out of such pictures.

— Defeated and stripped of former arrogance and pride, Gen. Bernardo Reyes, Mexico’s one-time greatest military leader, and more recently leader of a revolt that threatened to tear the country from border to border, surrendered to the authorities at Linares, Mexico, on Dec. 25, 1911. He frankly admitted that his dream of another successful revolution had come to an end. The government officials now believe that real peace is at hand for Mexico.

— The continued advance of the Italian troops toward the interior of Tripoli and away from the environs of the coast towns without meeting serious resistance seems to prove the correctness of recent reports that the Turkish troops and their Arab allies have withdrawn to the hills. They are practically, it is reported, without ammunition. Their only chance of renewing the supplies has been shattered by Viscount Kitchener’s action in sealing up all the possible points of leakage along the frontier between Egypt and Tripoli.

— The Franco-German agreement regarding Morocco and the French Kongo is bringing difficulties even before it has been ratified by the French parliament. The trouble arose over islands in the French Kongo opposite the point where the German strip reaches the river. The Berlin authorities claim these, although it was understood by the French that they should retain the islands, thus insuring continuity between the parts of the French Kongo. Already there is talk of submitting the question to The Hague arbitration court.

— From Paris comes word that France is arranging another imposing testimonial of her friendship for the United States. Dec. 22, 1911, a public subscription was opened to offer a bronze bust of La France by the illustrious French sculptor, Auguste Rodin, which will be placed at the base of the monument to be dedicated next June to Samuel de Champlain, the French navigator, explorer, and discoverer of the lake that bears his name. Like the gift from the people of France of Bartholdi’s statue of Liberty, the presentation of La France, which is the figure of a woman, marks historically another epoch in the relations of fraternity between France and the United States of America.

— Brockton, Mass., shoe manufacturers declare the situation in the shoe industry is acute, and they will soon advance the price fifty cents a pair. Material costs so much, the manufacturers say, that at the present prices they are not making any profit.

— On the complaint of more than two hundred business firms, the Interstate Commerce Commission is investigating charges against all the express companies to the effect that they are charging excessive rates to both shippers and the general public.

— At the annual meeting of the trustees of the Carnegie Foundation, an institution for pensioning aged college professors, it was announced that Mr. Carnegie had just added to the endowment the sum of $1,000,000. This makes the entire endowment $12,000,000, giving an annual income of $590,000.

— The labor situation throughout Great Britain is again causing anxiety, and “Strike Leader” George R. Askwith, of the government board of trade, admitted Dec. 24, 1911, that a grave crisis may be reached soon unless the employers, with the cooperation of the government, are successful in establishing satisfactory agreements. Mr. Askwith’s demeanor showed that he is none too hopeful.

— The long-standing practise of Mexican citizens living in Texas near the Rio Grande, has been to convey their dead across the river for burial. The Mexican authorities recently halted one of those sad processions, and rudely ordered the coffin to be opened. It was nicely filled with rifles. The frequency of the funerals and the sameness of the mourners had aroused not wholly unfounded suspicion, as the sequel showed.

— On Dec. 25, 1911, the Persian cabinet notified W. Morgan Shuster, the American treasurer-general of Persia, of his dismissal from that office. This follows the decision of the national council and the ministry to submit to the demands contained in the Russian ultimatum. An indignation meeting was held in Teheran after the announcement of Mr. Shuster’s dismissal was made public, and further demonstrations are expected. Martial law has been proclaimed.

— The recent report of the Commissioner of Pensions brings out the startling fact that within thirteen years of the close of the war with Spain, and eleven after the subsidence of the Philippine insurrection, there are no less than 23,383 invalid soldiers of these wars on the pension rolls, in addition to 3,032 dependent mothers, 522 fathers, 9 brothers and sisters, 1,217 widows, and 327 children. In all, there are 28,490 pensioners as a result of these wars—actually a larger number than there were soldiers in the regular army at the outbreak of the war with Spain, and probably 10,000 more than there were troops before Santiago. Already we have paid out $34,142,976.37 in pensions for services against the Spanish and Filipinos, as against a total of $45,850,024.19 paid for pensions to the warriors of 1812, and $45,279,686.83 expended in the support of veterans of the Mexican war during a period of sixty-five years.

— Mrs. E. H. Harriman has provided funds for a school which shall teach its students to be intelligent public servants. This training-school will seek to fit men for duty in municipal and other public offices, giving them a thorough training in all the departments of administration, such as the analysis of public expenditures, the preparation of budgets, the study of charters, the testing of foods, the safeguarding of the public health through the supervision of schools, factories, stores, and congested dwellings, tax assessment and collection, and a thousand other subjects which relate to the work of the modern city and state. The work of the new school begins in New York, but it will be extended, as funds increase and needs arise, to include other cities.