Current Mention

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 18, 1907

— James McGranahan, the well-known hymn writer, at one time associated with Evangelists Moody and Sankey, died July 8 at his home in Kinsman, Ohio. He was sixty-seven years old.

— Mayor Schmitz, of San Francisco, convicted of extortion, has been sentenced to five years in the penitentiary. He has been denied bail while his attorneys are preparing an appeal to a higher court.

— On July 4 President Nelidoff of the Peace Conference received Miss Anna Eckstein, of Boston, Mass., who presented a petition signed by more than 2,000,000 Americans in favor of a general arbitration treaty.

— The Atlantic fleet of sixteen warships is to make a cruise around Cape Horn, arriving in the vicinity of San Francisco some time during the winter. This proposed change is exciting much comment as to whether it will make for peace or war with Japan.

— It is reported from Peking, China, that important edicts have been issued ordering reforms in the provincial judicial system. The changes will first be introduced in Manchuria and in the provinces of Pechili and Kiang-Su. The officials and people are also called upon to prepare for the adoption of a constitutional form of government.

— Three years ago it was accidentally discovered that the business part of Minneapolis, Minn., was built over caves about 100 feet below the surface. By the wash of running water the caverns were enlarging, and for three years the work of propping up the roofs of these caves has been prosecuted with funds appropriated by the city council under oaths of secrecy imposed on the members. Now that the threatened calamity is averted, the facts have been made known by the city engineer.

— Seven Italian miners were killed by deadly white damp in an attempt to measure the water in an abandoned slope at Honeybrook, Pa., July 11.

— The chief chemist of the District of Columbia is of the opinion that many of the sudden deaths of late years attributed to heart failure are largely due to the effect of small doses of poisonous food preservatives. Saltpeter, much used as a preservative of meats, in small doses affects the liver, and in larger ones injures the lining of the stomach, causing an irritation and a slow, weak pulse.

— The North German Lloyd steamship “Kronprinz Wilhelm” narrowly averted serious disaster when it collided with a huge iceberg off the Newfoundland banks, July 8. Reversal of the engines, when at full speed, and a sharp turn to port, avoided striking the berg in its thickest part, but cut off one end instead. More than a ton of ice fell on deck, which was utilized in the cold storage.

— In order to determine the amount of fine which in justice should be imposed on the Standard Oil Company of Indiana, found guilty of accepting unlawful rebates, Judge Landis, of Chicago, succeeded in causing to appear before him John D. Rockefeller and other Standard Oil officials to testify in reference to capital and earnings of said company. It developed that the net earnings during the years 1903, ’04, and ’05 amounted to $199,800,000, on a capital of $98,300,000. The maximum fine which may be imposed is $29,240,000, but judgment has not yet been rendered.

— On July 10 the government filed a petition in the United States Circuit Court of New York against sixty-four corporations and twenty-nine individuals, commonly known as the “tobacco trust.” The government proposes to dissolve this trust by breaking up the agreements under which these consolidated concerns are working. Much comment is aroused because the special assistant attorney-general appointed to prosecute this case has said that if it becomes necessary in order to restrain the operations of the combine, he will ask the court to appoint a receiver, who as the agent of the federal court shall carry on the business of the corporation.

— Speaking of the situation in Russia since the dissolution of the Douma, the Independent says: “There have been many arrests, and the prisons are overflowing. The Radical papers have all been suppressed, and many fines have been inflicted. Three thousand people are reported as having been arrested in Odessa alone, and at Kieff forty-eight mutineers have been condemned and shot. By imperial ukase the governors of eight large provinces have been empowered to suspend newspapers, disperse meetings, banish undesirable persons, and take other measures for the maintenance of public security by administrative process without having resort to the courts, and to inflict punishment up to three months’ imprisonment and $500 fine.” The government is actively pushing the distribution of 25,000,000 acres of land in average lots of twenty-five acres to individual peasant settlers on easy-payment terms, to make a showing before the convocation of the new Parliament.