Current Mention

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Mar 24, 1904

— Three persons were killed and eight injured by an explosion of toy-pistol caps in a Chicago factory, March 15.

— The Chinese government is said to be purchasing immense quantities of modern arms and ammunition from Austrian and German manufacturers.

— Hamburg-American line steamships are crowded with Russian refugees who are fleeing to America to escape enforced military service in their native land.

— A recent Paris dispatch announces that Russia and Austria will coerce Turkey into a fulfilment of the promises made by the latter power to institute the reforms desired in Macedonia.

— Letters received at Berlin report terrible atrocities committed by the Hottentots upon German families in German Southwest Africa. In a single district, it is stated, one hundred and thirteen persons were killed, many being subjected to torture. Summary vengeance is being visited on the natives by German troops.

— The threatened great strike of soft coal miners in the Middle West appears to have been averted, a majority of the miners having voted to accept the scale of wages proposed by the operators, which involves a five per cent reduction from the scale for 1903. President Mitchell, of the United Mine Workers, strongly advised against a strike.

— No important battle has been reported thus far between the Russian and Japanese forces in eastern Asia, the condition of the roads at this season of the year making any rapid concentration of troops in the interior almost an impossibility. There have been skirmishes between small scouting parties of the opposing armies. It is reported that the Russian squadron at Vladivostok has made its way out of the frozen harbor there by using dynamite, and it is presumed an effort will be made to effect a junction with the fleet at Port Arthur.

— One of the most important of recent decisions by the United States Supreme Court, was rendered March 14 in the case of the United States versus the Northern Securities Company. The decision declares the railway merger effected by this company, uniting the Great Northern and Northern Pacific Railways, to be illegal and in violation of the act of Congress prohibiting combinations in restraint of commerce among the several States and with foreign nations. Justice Harlan wrote the decision, which in behalf of the position taken by the government says: “The government charges that if the combination was held not to be in violation of the act of Congress,

then all efforts of the national government to preserve to the people the benefit of free competition among carriers engaged in interstate commerce will be wholly unavailing, and all transcontinental lines, indeed the entire railway systems of the country, may be absorbed, merged, and consolidated, thus placing the public at the absolute mercy of the holding corporation.” The decision was a close one, four of the nine justices of the court dissenting from the view expressed by Justice Harlan.