p. 18 | News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · May 13, 1915

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

— A nine-foot tunnel is about to be constructed in London for the conveyance of mail. It will contain two tracks with island platforms at the eight stations from Paddington to Whitechapel, inclusive. The trains will be run without operators from distant control stations at an average speed of twenty-five miles an hour. At the island platforms there will be electric elevators to transfer the mails to the sorting offices.

— A vapor-bath train has been constructed by the Russian government for its soldiers at the front. By this device 2,000 men can bathe in twenty-four hours. While they are engaged in this healthful exercise, their clothes are taken from them and disinfected in drying vats. When the czar inspected this bath train, he was interested to learn that 250 pounds of soap would be consumed whenever it was used for twenty-four hours continuously.

— What is said to have been the largest single real estate transaction in the history of Chicago was made known the other day. This was the purchase of the Fine Arts Building by the trustees of the estate of Charles A. Chapin for $3,000,000. There have been other real estate transactions in which more money was involved, but where more than one piece of property changed ownership. This is said to be the largest price for a single piece of property.

— Russia has given an earnest of its pledge of the promised freedom of Poland at the close of the war. A law has just been promulgated granting local municipal self-government to all towns in Poland. This gives Polish committees a measure of self-government equal to that enjoyed by any Russian incorporated town and district. Another feature of the law is the great care with which provision has been made to give a fair measure of representation to the Jewish population.

— The legislature of Texas is considering a plan to divide the State. If a majority of the people of the whole State so vote, the western half may be set off as the “State of Jefferson.” People generally may not know that Texas has peculiar privileges in the matter of subdivision. The act of Congress that admitted it to the Union gave it the right to divide itself into as many as five States, without any action on the part of Congress. It would make five States, each larger than New York.

— The great $6,000,000 corporation of the Dennison Manufacturing Company, with offices on Franklin Street, Boston, and factories at South Framingham, has been turned over to its 2,400 employees, who will have full control of the concern. Only the eight-per-cent preferred stock, with a more or less fixed income, is retained by the original owners, who will have no voice in the affairs of the company. Every employee of the company is to share in the profits. Each employee receiving more than $1,200 a year will be given common stock, with voting privileges.

— More than 60,000 cases of cold-storage eggs recently reached Europe from China, by way of the Panama Canal and New York City. Printing is not the only “art preservative” that the Chinese have mastered.