Current Mention

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 3, 1903

— A recent decision by the United States Supreme Court affirms the power of Congress to prohibit the sending of lottery tickets from one State to another by express as well as through the mails.

— An Ithaca, N. Y., dispatch of February 25 reported that thirty-one victims had succumbed to the typhoid epidemic in Ithaca up to that date. Eleven fresh cases of the disease were reported that day. The water supply of Ithaca is obtained from streams which it is said have been contaminated.

— “A decisive period for Eastern Europe,” are the words by which the Italian minister of marine, in a recent speech before the chamber of deputies, described his view of the present phase of the Eastern question. His opinion is shared by many other European statesmen.

— Eleven hundred car-loads of supplies have been sent from this country to the relief of the famine sufferers in northern Sweden, but it is said this will suffice only temporarily, and that 2,400,000 pounds of flour is needed by seventeen small towns in the famine district before June 1.

— A great eruption of lava, accompanied with alarming and destructive earth tremors, is reported from the volcano of Colima, Mexico. Residents in the vicinity are fleeing from the place, and the thriving villages around the base of Mount Colima are deserted. At Tuxpam and in the city of Colima buildings have been thrown down by the shocks. A tidal wave is feared at Manzanillo, should the seismic disturbances continue.

— The sale of cocaine is to be restricted in Illinois by law, the widespread use of this drug among all classes of the people being recognized as a serious menace to the public welfare. Treasurer Bodemann, of the State board of pharmacy, recently testified before a grand jury in Chicago that in his opinion the many wrecks on the railways could be traced to indulgence in the use of cocaine by employees of the railway companies. Cocaine has a very harmful effect on the brain cells.

— Church people in Holly Springs, Miss., have been startled by a court decision given recently in that place. A press dispatch under date of February 24 says: “Judge Lowry to-day made a sensational departure from the usual formula when he charged the grand jury to indict progressive euchre players. If these instructions are carried out, many people who are prominent as officers or members of the Presbyterian, Methodist, and Episcopal churches are liable to indictment.”

— The attitude of labor unions toward the State militia or National Guard points to the prospect of serious trouble between the unions and the government. An illustration is furnished by the following press telegram dated at Norfolk, Va., February 23: “At a meeting of the State militia officers here to-day it was found that all the labor organizations have boycotted the National Guard, because it is available in time of labor strikes. All the labor union soldiers are refusing to re-enlist at the expiration of their enlistments.”

— A $2,000,000 fire occurred in the heart of Cincinnati, February 26, originating in a grocery basement under Pike’s opera house. One of the most solidly built business blocks in the city was destroyed.

— A Honolulu dispatch states that Naval Governor Seaton Schroeder, of the island of Guam, reports the occurrence of a severe and prolonged series of earthquakes which have raised the level of the island about six inches. The shocks were accompanied by loud subterranean rumblings.

— Chief Musham, of the Chicago fire department, is quoted by the Chicago Tribune as saying that Chicago is in no better condition now than in 1871 to resist a big fire. “If,” he said, “we had a 4-11 alarm in the stock-yards, another on the north side, and another on the west side, and the conditions were favorable, there is no reason why a fire should not sweep the city.”

— Exceptional activity is reported as being visible at the Russian general staff headquarters at Kieff and Odessa. A special oath of secrecy is being administered to officers employed in the topographical department at Odessa. New appointments are being made in every department of the army in the south, and unfit officers are being removed. Arrangements have been completed for 100,000 first-class and 180,000 second-class reserves to join the colors within fourteen days on an emergency call.

— Transatlantic newspaper service by means of Marconi wireless telegraphy has now become a reality, the first instance having been afforded on the Cunard steamship “Etruria,” February 7. That morning, as the ship was nearing the end of its voyage eastward, the passengers found on the dining tables sheets of paper giving a summary of the principal items of news since the day of sailing from New York. A daily paper of this kind will no doubt be a feature of transatlantic travel in the near future.

— The city of Chicago can not buy non-union coal. Such is the notice served on Mayor Harrison by the teamsters’ union, which it will enforce by refusing to haul the coal. Similar moves, says the Chicago Tribune, are to be made in every large city in the country. By this means the United Mine Workers will, if possible, force the West Virginia coal mines to come under union control. This step was planned by President Mitchell, of the miners’ union, and President Young, of the teamsters’ national union. Further action will be taken if necessary as soon as the coal strike commission presents its report.

— Because striking union miners in Raleigh County, W. Va., refused to heed an injunction obtained from a United States court last August by the Chesapeake and Ohio Coal Agency Company, a federal force, accompanied by a sheriff’s posse, attempted to arrest a number of them, but were resisted by armed miners, the result being a battle in which five miners were killed and others were injured. Seventy-three arrests were made, ten of these being by the federal officer, who is trying to have all the prisoners delivered to the federal authorities, to be tried by the federal government instead of by the State government. The State of West Virginia will, however, probably refuse to surrender the prisoners.

— In a speech made at the third annual conference of the National Federation of Churches and Christian Workers, in New York City recently, Rev. F. W. Tomkins, of Philadelphia, said he was glad indeed to see that the various churches represented in the movement “at last are coming together, and can shake hands without feelings of suspicion toward each other.” “You will find,” he said, “that if all the ministers in a community stand together, when they utter a protest they will get a hearing far out of proportion to their relative importance in that community.” The truth of this statement has been many times demonstrated, and it is one good reason why clergymen should keep out of politics. We shall have much better government when no class of the people have a voice in public affairs which is “far out of proportion to their relative importance in the community.”