News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 5, 1911

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

— A carpet company of Yonkers, N. Y., recently distributed to its employees of ten years’ standing a sum amounting to more than $40,000, as a share in its profits.

— A letter sent in 1660 by Francis Howgill, an English Quaker, to an address in Durham was recently delivered by the English post-office. The letter had been lost in London for two hundred fifty years. It was found in the Public Record Office and forwarded to Durham.

— Five-and-ten-cent stores, which are proving so popular in America, are to be introduced in England, ten of them in London alone. One of the companies operating these stores is putting up a fifty-seven-story building in New York City. Truly “many a little makes a mickle.”

— Now comes the aero gun, devised for the purpose of bringing hostile airships to earth. In a test recently made by the Navy Department, a shell from one of these guns reached a height of 18,000 feet—several thousand feet higher than has as yet been attained by the aeroplane.

— Phileas Fogg, Jules Verne’s celebrated English traveler in “Around the World in Eighty Days,” has had his record cut in two by a Frenchman of German extraction, M. Jager-Schmidt, who has girdled the earth in 39 days, 19 hours. The Siberian Railway was the principal factor in lessening the time required for the trip.

— “All the devices for protecting railway crossings, aside from the removal of them from grade,” says the Brooklyn Eagle, “are futile.” Automobilists dash under gates and through those that are down, run past flagmen, and ignore warning bells. “Not until grade crossings are abolished will the public cease to be shocked by fatalities.”

— The use of coffee seems to be declining in the United States. In 1902, 1,057,220,000 pounds were used; in 1910, 860,414,000 pounds, notwithstanding the increase in population. The reason for the decline is obscure. Chocolate, cocoa, and cereal substitutes may have displaced coffee to a slight extent, but scarcely to the amount of hundreds of millions of pounds.

— The difficulties of maintaining such quarantine regulations as will effectively stamp out the cholera now so prevalent in Italy and about the shores of the Mediterranean, were brought to light a few days since in despatches from Switzerland which state that the inhabitants of some of the interior towns of Italy, enraged by the sanitary measures of the authorities, and being convinced that it was their intention to kill the patients whom they had isolated, gathered to the number of several thousand, and having stormed the hospital, carried the cholera patients in ghastly procession through the town. The Italian government has been reduced to the necessity of ordering out the troops for the purpose of protecting these people against themselves.

— Freight carriers by land seem to be emulating, in the building of enormous railway locomotives, the huge vessels that now transport merchandise by sea. The Santa Fé Railway is constructing for its freight service ten locomotives that will weigh 208 tons each. With their tenders, which will carry both coal and oil, they will weigh 850,000 pounds, or 425 tons, each.

— A hurricane of great violence and accompanied by a deluge of rain raged over the Vesuvian region, September 26, causing a heavy loss of life and enormous damage to property. It is estimated that fifty persons were killed. Houses were razed by the wind, while others were inundated. Numerous boats in the Bay of Naples are missing, and are believed to have been sunk.

— North-bound Northwestern Railroad passenger-train, No. 121, crashed into a hay-rack party at the Commercial Street intersection, at Neenah, Wis., September 24, killing twelve persons outright, and injuring one, who died a few hours later. Nine others were hurt, four of them perhaps fatally. Eight occupants of the wagon, including the driver, escaped with slight injuries. Most of the victims were residents of Menasha.

— The Laurier government and reciprocity suffered an overwhelming defeat in the Canadian elections held September 21. By a veritable political landslide, the liberal majority of forty-three in parliament was swept away, and the conservative party secured a majority of forty or more. Seven cabinet ministers who had served with Premier Laurier were among the defeated candidates. The liberals lost ground in practically every province of the Dominion. Where they won, their majorities were small. Where the conservatives won, their majorities were tremendous.

— A census report just published has to do with prisons, almshouses, and insane asylums of the United States. The population in all these institutions shows considerable increase. In the jails and penitentiaries, Jan. 1, 1910, there were 110,000 persons; in the almshouses, 83,944 inmates; in insane asylums, 184,123, an increase of 26 per cent in six years; in institutions for the feeble-minded, 20,190. If all who might properly be put in one or other of these classes, but are at large in society, were reckoned up, the total would be more depressing than it is.

— The Russian ministry of marine has awarded contracts for building three new battle-ships, six submarines, and nine torpedo-boat destroyers. Two of the battle-ships are to be added to the Black Sea fleet, which means that under the special regulation applied by all Europe to the Dardanelles and the Bosporus these vessels can never pass through these waters to the Mediterranean, and will be available only in the Black Sea. The remaining battle-ship, with the destroyers and the submarines, is to be built on the Baltic, and will be available for use wherever Russia wishes to send them. The battle-ships will each cost about $9,500,000, with $4,350,000 additional for armor and guns. They will be of 22,000 tons, and will carry thirteen-inch guns. The submarines will cost $800,000 each, and the destroyers about $1,000,000. This expenditure of more than $50,000,000 for new construction indicates that Russia has no intention of remaining in the position in which the Russian war placed her.

— Sending dolls from America to France and Germany would seem to be even more inadvisable than the traditional taking of coals to Newcastle, but it is said that American dolls of the unbreakable sort are now being exported in considerable numbers to those countries. Children everywhere are attracted by the unconventional, human-like faces that distinguish these dolls.

— One hundred seventy towns will be started in western Canada this year, an average of one for nearly every two days. The Canadian Pacific Railway Company will start fifty new communities; the Grand Trunk Pacific, twenty-four; and the Canadian Northern, ninety-six. Surveys have been made for most of the new towns, and many of them already have been named.

— On September 15 President Taft made public a letter in which Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, chief of the Bureau of Chemistry in the Department of Agriculture, was vindicated and cleared of all charges made against him by the personnel board of the department. Mr. Taft was most hearty in his commendation of Dr. Wiley’s administration of his office, and expressed his sympathy for the doctor, who has been so maligned by some of the food interests of the country. Dr. Wiley made public his reply containing his thanks to the President, and to the press, which has supported him throughout this ordeal.

— The battle-ship “Liberte” was torn apart and destroyed by an explosion of her magazines at Toulon, France, September 25. Latest figures give the death list as 235 officers and men, with 160 wounded. The battle-ship “Republique” was badly damaged, and the battle-ships “Democratie” and “Verite” also suffered severely from the masses of twisted iron and armor-plate that were hurled upon their decks. This is the greatest disaster that has ever fallen upon the French navy, and, in magnitude, is almost without precedent in the annals of the world’s fighting ships. The unfortunate battle-ship was of recent construction, costing $8,000,000.

— A large consignment of rifles, automatic pistols, and ammunition of the most modern type recently reached the Vatican after some trouble at the frontier. The Italian custom-house officials were rather surprised at the warlike nature of the merchandise addressed to Cardinal Merry del Val, and telegraphed to Rome for instructions. The prime minister at once wired back authorizing the delivery of the goods free of charge, as provided by a clause in the law of guaranties, which is scrupulously respected by the Italian government, although not recognized by the Holy See. It is now learned that these modern weapons have been ordered by the cardinal secretary of state to replace the obsolete guns with which the papal Swiss guards and gendarmes have hitherto been armed. As the Vatican maintains a small army of several hundred men, it is the cardinal’s opinion that they should be furnished with the most up-to-date weapons instead of flint-lock guns and the halberds of the time of Michelangelo.