Current Mention

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Oct 12, 1905

— Four hundred people were left homeless at Rhinelander, Wis., by a fire which visited that place October 4.

— It is rumored at Peking that China is preparing for a forcible expulsion of the Germans from Shantung Province.

— A St. Petersburg dispatch states that bubonic plague threatens the Trans-Baikal district of Russia. The disease has appeared also in Portuguese East Africa.

— It is stated that during Secretary Taft's recent visit to Japan the Japanese government made an explicit disavowal of any designs on the Philippine Islands.

— The St. Petersburg correspondent of the London Telegraph says the police privately state they have received alarming information from Finland warranting the fear of grave events.

— The four beef packers who recently entered a plea of guilty to the indictment presented by the federal grand jury at Chicago, have been sentenced to pay fines of $5,000 each, excepting one who is fined $10,000.

— A Chicago telegram states that John Alexander Dowie, head of the “Zion” church in Illinois, has suffered a stroke of paralysis while on a journey to Mexico, and has chosen his successor, whose name, however, is not to be revealed until after Dowie's death.

— There appears to be almost an epidemic of terrible murders in this country, and in the worst cases the police have been unable to apprehend the criminals.

— An epidemic of typhoid fever prevails in Nanticoke, Pa., 400 cases, with twenty-eight deaths, having been reported in the past six weeks. Protestant church ministers of the place recently united in a prayer service for relief.

— A Constantinople dispatch states that the Porte declines to yield to the note of the European powers regarding control of Macedonian finances. It remains to be seen what pressure will be brought to bear on Turkey by the powers.

— The loss of life and property from the recent typhoon in the Philippines is found to be much greater than at first reported. In the hemp-growing district the property loss is over $5,000,000. The beach at Tycao Island was found to be strewn with dead bodies.

— President Mitchell, of the coal miners' union, says that as the result of his organizing tour through the mining regions, 50,000 men have been added to the union in the last three months. He is quoted as saying that he does not anticipate a coal strike next April.

— There are indications that President Castro of Venezuela is getting ready for war. According to a Caracas dispatch, the Venezuelan government has ordered from the Creusot Works, France, thirty batteries of field artillery and twelve batteries of mountain guns of seventy millimeters caliber.

— The scandals which have come to light in the investigation of the life insurance companies of New York City by the legislative insurance committee are to be brought by District Attorney Jerome before a special grand jury, and it seems probable that some prosecutions will be the result.

— President Roosevelt is going on a trip to the South, and will visit New Orleans, where he will be shown through the yellow fever hospital, which, though it is filled with patients, is pronounced by the physicians to be the only place in New Orleans where it is absolutely impossible to take the disease.

— A dark picture of life in Hankow, China, is drawn by the American consul at that place, Mr. G. L. Dobson. He says: “This is the filthiest city on earth. Hundreds of Chinese dropped dead on the streets this summer from sunstroke. Hundreds more died of cholera. One night at midnight the thermometer stood at ninety-five.” Mr. Dobson has resigned his position.

— A petition to permit anarchy is the latest development of the spirit of lawlessness that has become so marked in this country. A Houston, Tex., dispatch says: “A petition from a number of citizens, headed by G. W. Knight, of San Marcos, has been presented to Governor Lanham, asking that the State permit mobs to punish negroes guilty of criminal assault.”

— A great step in the interest of temperance has been taken by an order from the commissioner of internal revenue at Washington imposing a license tax upon all manufacturers of patent medicines containing alcohol. It is stated that hundreds of samples of such medicines are being analyzed by the government, and that the information thus gathered will be given to the public in a circular.

— W. J. Ghent, in Watson's Magazine, makes the following statements: There were killed and wounded at Gettysburg, 32,400 persons; at Chickamauga, 27,100; at Chancellorsville, 22,765; in the three battles 12,857 were killed and 69,408 wounded. By the interstate railroads last year in this country 12,299 were killed, and 137,916 were wounded. To this must be added the numberless butcheries of trolley-cars that are mowing down the people constantly.

— The so-called Cuban republic is in a state of very unstable equilibrium at the present time according to recent reports, and the indications are that the fiction of its political independence may soon be terminated by action of the United States, which, although its troops were withdrawn from the island, has exercised a virtual protectorate over it. Gen. Jose Miguel Gomez, candidate of the Liberal party for the presidency, says it is time for the United States to intervene in Cuba to secure honest elections.

— The United States has expended $200,000,000 in the Philippine Islands since the battle of Manila Bay, and still the demand continues for a vast expenditure of money in the new colonial possessions. The Army and Navy Journal declares: “Things must be done in the Philippines to convince capitalists that the American occupation of the islands is a permanency, that we mean business, and that money invested there will be fully protected. No modern nation ever acquired a territory approaching the Philippines in value, and so persistently neglected to provide it with needful defenses as we have neglected these islands.”