p. 21 | News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 11, 1912

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

— Washington recently entertained the governors of twelve States and the personal representatives of two others.

— Mrs. Tom Thumb, the smallest woman in the world, called at the White House recently, and was introduced to President Taft. She is about 70 years old, and only two feet high.

— A Great Northern Railway train, known as the “Oregonian,” was wrecked four miles west of Finley, N. Dak., with a loss of at least six lives and the injury of thirteen persons. The wreck was due to a broken rail.

— On New-year’s day, according to the ancient custom, President and Mrs. Taft threw open the White House doors for the annual reception. An official count placed the number of citizens who shook hands with the President at 8,092.

— At the auction sale of packages from the dead-letter office recently, 813 of the 10,000 packages were sold at an average price of $1.25 each. Almost every known article was listed, from wearing apparel to musical instruments.

— A decline in the death-rate in seven of the eight cities of the United States having a population above 500,000, and a generally low death-rate throughout the United States, are shown in the preliminary mortality figures for 1911, given out Jan. 1, 1912, by the Census Bureau.

— Robert S. Smith, a clock dealer, who came to this country 31 years ago with $6 and no friends, will soon get a check for $1,000,000 in payment for the plot of ground at the northwest corner of Thirty-fourth Street and Broadway, New York City. The purchase price is at the rate of $866.55 a square foot.

— On Christmas day, 1911, Loring M. Hewen and John F. King discovered an iron chest of buried gold and silver coins, valued at between $100,000 and $150,000, on Fanning Island near the mouth of the St. John River. The coins are apparently of Spanish origin, and the iron chest in which they are hidden is thought to be some two hundred years old.

— The present administration of the Post-office Department will probably go down in history as the most constructive of the generation. Not only has the immense deficit, which amounted to $17,479,770.47 in 1909, been wiped out and replaced by a surplus of $219,118.12, but while this economy work has been going on, there has been great development in the postal service, and higher compensation for the employees has been brought about.

— With the new year there went into effect throughout Connecticut a law putting a ban on public drinking-cups, and as a result no one could get a drink in any public institution January 1, unless he had his individual cup. The common towel also comes under the ban of the new law. At the last session of the Connecticut legislature, a law was passed ordering all boards of health to do away with the common cups and towels, hence the changed conditions.

— The expense of running the United States government in the fiscal year 1913 will be $21,283,921.43 less than it was in the preceding fiscal year if Congress adopts without change the recommendations for appropriations which were submitted to it by Secretary of the Treasury MacVeagh. The Secretary estimates that all the ordinary government expenses can be covered by an appropriation of $745,834,563. This amount does not include appropriations for the Post-office Department, which is expected to be self-sustaining. The total amount appropriated last year was $767,218,485.

— Money to the amount of over $14,500,000 was spent in antituberculosis work during the year 1911, according to the third annual statement of expenditures in the war against consumption, issued by the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis.

— The peace conference being held at Shanghai between the representatives of the Peking government and the revolutionary party, agreed on Dec. 29, 1911, that the form of government to be ultimately adopted for China should be decided by a national convention, whose determination should be binding on both parties. It also was agreed that, pending the decision of the national convention, the Manchu government was neither to accept nor to attempt to obtain foreign loans.

— From England comes this word: The decision of the Cotton Spinners’ Federation to place their operatives on half-time went into effect in most of the spinning-mills in the county of Lancashire Dec. 30, 1911. The number of unemployed in the cotton trade has increased to 250,000, comprising both spinners and weavers. The operatives are determined to maintain their fight with the employers, which began owing to their demand for the dismissal of non-union workers from the Helene mills at Accrington. The conflict will continue as long as the funds of the operatives’ trade-unions last, and it is estimated that this will be about three or four weeks.