News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 13, 1916

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

— The Panama-Pacific International Exposition closed December 4. The total attendance from the time of opening is reported as 18,750,000. A complete financial statement made public by Comptroller Robert S. Durkee on December 1, indicates that when its affairs are wound up there will remain a cash balance of $1,042,550. The income up to November 1 was given as $6,759,061.

— In Greater New York City, between Dec. 1, 1914, and Nov. 1, 1915, 301 persons were killed by motor cars. Of this number 145 were children. Only twenty-six drivers of these motor cars were held on any charge. George P. LeBrun, secretary of the Legislation League for the Conservation of Human Life, declares that seventy-five per cent of these deaths were due to careless driving.

— A piece of Eastern railroad building which is termed “more daring” and original than any of the great railroad construction of the West, and which contains the largest concrete bridge in the world, has been completed. The bridge is half a mile long,—2,375 feet, to be exact,—and is as high as a twenty-story building. The whole cut-off from Hallstead, Pa., is 39.6 miles long, and cost $12,000,000. It reduces the distance between New York and Buffalo just 3.6 miles. Yet the railroad officials insist that it will pay for itself many times over.

— Caruso is to have as his first pupil in the art of singing, Edward J. McNamara, once a member of the Paterson Police Department. Caruso heard McNamara sing, and being pleased with his voice, offered to become adviser, counselor, and teacher to the ex-policeman, who is to have the honor of being Caruso’s first pupil.

— Three of the world’s foremost electrical companies—the General Electric, the Westinghouse Electric, and the Western Electric—have a total investment of $265,000,000. The United States does about sixty-five per cent of the world’s electric business, and since the war abroad this amount has been increased probably ten per cent.

— The nation’s principal farm crops this year are worth about $5,500,000,000, exceeding by more than $500,000,000 their value in 1914, the previous banner value year in the country’s crop history. There has been an unprecedented harvest, many of the crops exceeding their best records, and high prices due to the influence of the European war have contributed to swell the total value.

— The war is making serious inroads into the life of English universities. Cambridge has less than one third of its usual number of scholars. Undergraduates and members of the teaching force have responded to their country’s need and have gone to the trenches, training camps, munitions factories, or wherever their services were required. Many university men have already fallen on the battle fields. The same is true, of course, of Oxford and other educational institutions throughout Europe.

— Yuan Shi-kai, president of the Chinese Republic, has accepted the throne of China, tendered to him by the council of state. Acting as a parliament, the council of state, on December 11, canvassed the vote on the question of a change in the form of China’s government to a monarchy, and found that the votes of 1,993 representatives out of 2,043 qualified to vote on the proposition, were favorable to the change. The council of state immediately sent to Yuan Shi-kai a petition urging him to accept the throne. He declined at first, but when the petition was forwarded to him a second time, he accepted, with the proviso that he would continue to act as president until a convenient time for the coronation.

— The construction of the “Sather campanile,” so called in honor of the donor of one of the funds of the university, was undertaken some time ago on the campus of the University of California. This structure, of concrete and steel, will be remarkable for the reason that no other memorial tower in America, except the Washington Monument at the national capital, exceeds it in height. It is thirty feet square at the base, which contains a room intended to be used as a banquet hall. An enormous clock is to be placed outside the belfry, with chimes so arranged as to be played by a keyboard resembling that of an organ. A block of white marble is to form the top of the structure, and this will be surmounted by a light of sufficient power to be visible to ships entering the Golden Gate.