Current Mention

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Dec 7, 1905

— Korea is protesting to the world powers against Japanese domination of that country.

— Bubonic plague is raging at Yokohama, Japan, and it is expected the city will be quarantined.

— Mayor Tom Johnson, of Cleveland, Ohio, is apparently winning his contest for three-cent-street-railway fares in that city.

— President Palma has been re-elected president of the Cuban republic with scarcely any opposition, and the political agitation which has disturbed the island for some months past appears to have entirely subsided.

— The shipping season just closed on the Great Lakes has been the most disastrous on record. According to a Detroit paper, over seventy ships have been wrecked with a loss of 149 lives and nearly $7,000,000.

— The battle between the government and the beef trust is still on at Chicago, all efforts of the trust to side-track the proceedings having thus far proved abortive. December 12 is the date set for the trial of the first issues in the indictments found against the packers.

— A new transcontinental railway from Chicago to the Pacific coast is to be built. It will be an extension of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway westward from Evarts, S. D., to Seattle and Tacoma, Wash. The new route will run through Montana, connecting with Butte.

— The fleet of the allied powers operating against Turkey landed at Mytilene November 26, and occupied the customs and postal buildings. The sultan has been making great efforts to secure a modification of the demands of the powers, but the latter remain firm, and are confident that the porte will yield. The islands of Lemnos and Imbros are to be seized next if the sultan continues obstinate.

— According to a press report from Indianapolis, the United States Steel Corporation is to build on the Indiana shore of Lake Michigan, between Hammond and Tolleston, the largest steel plant in the world, the cost of which is to be $30,000,000, and which will employ 20,000 workmen. Where now there was is nothing but a barren waste of sand, a new city is suddenly to spring up, it is prophesied, to be in a few years second only to Indianapolis among Indiana cities, and with shipping facilities compared with which the immense docks and tonnage at South Chicago will be small.

— A new epoch is reported to have dawned in Austria, that of equal suffrage. There has long been a strong popular demand for this privilege, which culminated November 28 in a great popular demonstration in the shape of monster processions in several of the large cities and towns. At only one town — Austerlitz — was there any disorder. Impressed by this strong popular sentiment, Emperor Francis Joseph has announced in the Austrian Parliament that by the end of February a bill will be brought before that body providing for a full and free, universal, equal and direct suffrage. Heretofore in that country the elective system has given the rich special privileges at the expense of the poor; for while every male over twenty-four years of age was entitled to vote, a few votes from men of wealth, notably the landed proprietors, would offset hundreds of thousands of votes cast by the common people. Under the new system this class privilege will be abolished.

— Conflicting reports are received from Russia regarding the mutiny which broke out November 25 at Sevastopol, but according to statements from the admiralty office at St. Petersburg the revolt has been suppressed, though at the cost of 5,000 lives and the loss of a number of war-ships. At the same time it is admitted that the spirit of revolt is spreading among the Russian military forces, the strongest indication of which is the recent arrest of a number of soldiers of the imperial guard, the regiments kept closest to the emperor, and which it was believed could be trusted to the last. There is a general strike of telegraph and postal employees, which has completely paralyzed communication in the interior, and this is an even more serious matter than the mutiny. A panic prevails at Moscow, and great numbers of the higher class people are leaving the country. A new feature of the situation is a peasants’ union which has been of swift organization, and has already a vast membership. A report says: “The great districts in the provinces of southwest Russia are joining the union en masse. In thousands of instances they prove that they are much less simple and poor than they are usually said to be. They are largely able to buy rifles without extraneous subscriptions, and they agree in electing district committees. The attitude toward the government is similar to that of the urban artisans, but while the latter seek to destroy the regime by strikes, and mass the agitation in the great towns, the peasants are deciding to boycott all state-owned businesses, and refuse both to pay taxes or to supply the annual rolls of military conscripts.” Dispatches received December 2 reported that telegraphic communication between Russia and the outside world had been cut off, the only news coming by way of Warsaw, where it was given out that a great incendiary conflagration was raging at Moscow.