p. 317 | News Notes

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 15, 1900

News Notes

—During the week ending April 28, 90,290,700 two-cent postage stamps were sold in this country.

—The New York City ice trust has advanced the price 100 per cent, and Chicago may ship ice there, to compete.

—Strikers are suspected of having caused a $500,000 fire in the Standard Oil Co.’s docks, at Constable Hook, N. J., May 8.

—A dispatch from Borkum Island, North Sea, says that the laying of the German-American cable was begun there May 4.

—C. F. W. Neely, late postal clerk at Havana, Cuba, was arrested May 9, on the charge of embezzling $36,000 of United States funds.

—A surgeon in the Philippines says that there is “danger of communication of smallpox through josi and pina cloth sent home by soldiers.”

—Richard Yates was nominated the Republican candidate for governor of Illinois, at Peoria, Ill., May 9. It was a great surprise to his competitors, Messrs. Reeves, Hancey, Carter.

—Queen Victoria will have returned to her the chocolate box which she sent to an English private, Humphrey. The box has a Boer bullet imbedded in it, and was the means of saving his life.

—In view of what has happened, and what is likely to happen, one is led to exclaim, “Why didn’t Dewey sink the island as well as the Spanish fleet, while he was at it?” —Detroit Christian Herald.

—May 3, General de Gallifet, French minister of war, prohibited the sale of spirits, absinthe, and vermuth in the barracks and camps of the French army. Wine, beer, and cider are allowed, as innocuous beverages.

—One of the leading papers of Tokio, Japan, has just published the names of 130 school-teachers, all of whom, it declares, are suffering from consumption. It calls on the authorities to dismiss them at once, lest they infect the children under their care.

—As a result of the American operations in the Philippines during April, according to General Otis’s report, 1,721 Filipinos were killed, wounded, and captured, and thirty pieces of artillery, 1,209 rifles, and large stores of ammunition, etc., were taken. The American losses were 13-killed, and 27 wounded.

—The British forces in South Africa are advancing slowly, but steadily, northward, toward Pretoria, the Boers harassing them as much as they are able. General Pole-Carew, in the center, has forced a passage of the Vet River, below Smaldool station. On the right, General Hamilton has occupied Winburg, inflicting serious loss on a Boer force on the Little Vet River.

—A dispatch from London, England, dated May 9, says that “Lord Salisbury made to-day a most uncompromising speech at Albert Hall, before the Primrose League, condemning Mr. Gladstone’s home rule policy both in South Africa and in Ireland. . . . He warned Irishmen that recent events in South Africa proved that there could not be practical independence anywhere in the empire, with opportunities for arranging hostile forces against the imperial government. It was a trenchant but acrid speech.”

—The plague has disappeared from Honolulu, H. I.

—A Russian Chamber of Commerce has been established at Paris, France.

—In the Hawaiian Islands, according to latest reports, there are 21,616 Chinese.

—The monopoly enjoyed by the Berlin Street Railway (Germany) has been extended to the year 1950.

—The Ecumenical Missions Conference now being held in New York City, began its business April 23.

—The king of Sweden and Norway offers to reward persons who find relics of the André polar expedition.

—Five Pullman cars, in sections, were recently shipped to Japan, to be used on the government railroad there.

—It is stated that “the United States may be compelled to intervene to preserve neutrality at the Isthmus of Panama.”

—A shipment of seventeen carloads of cotton cloth, for points in the Chinese empire, was recently made from Birmingham, Ala.

—An English firm, by outbidding American and other foreign firms, has secured the Formosa camphor monopoly for ten years.

—Within ten days $50,000 worth of automobiles have been shipped from Chicago to the Hawaiian Islands, and more than 10,000 bicycles.

—The price of white pine and spruce lumber will be advanced, on account of the great fire at Ottawa, Ontario, a large quantity having been destroyed there.

—It is reported that “the negotiations between Denmark and the United States, relative to the purchase of the Danish West Indies, have been definitely broken off.”

—The Board of Agriculture, London, England, has ordered cattle from America to be slaughtered within five days, and those from South Africa within thirty-six hours, of landing.

—By a canvass of a western city, made on a certain Sunday, it was found that 18,000 people were in church and 38,000 were attending ball games and were in dives and places of sin.

—Australian news “chronicles the discovery of rich placer ground at Wedderburn, Victoria. The first man to stake ground unearthed a sixty-one-ounce nugget at twenty-two-feet depth.”

—John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil Company associates are reported to have secured an exclusive copper-mining concession from the Dominion government, on mines in Alaska.

—Twelve sacks of mail for Francis Truth, the alleged Boston divine healer now under arrest, have been seized by the authorities, who will return all money to the senders whose names and addresses are given.

—Congress is to be petitioned by Polish societies to appropriate $120,000 for a monument for General Pulaski, a measure that was approved by the Continental Congress, Nov. 29, 1779, but has never been carried out.

—The Chinese viceroy, Li Hung Chang, has legalized big lotteries at Canton, by licensing them. They will furnish a revenue of nearly 1,000,000 taels yearly, which amount he proposes to use in suppressing piracy.

—A dispatch from Washington says that “the three new battle ships to be constructed for the United States will excel anything in the world’s navies, in speed, armament and power combined. The ships will be enlarged ‘Iowas’ in type.”

—The recent Cuban census shows a population of 1,572,797, of whom 443,426 can read and write. Fifty-eight per cent are native whites, and thirty-two per cent, negroes. Havana’s population is 235,981. The elections will be held June 16.

—The verdict of the Prussian minister of railways upon the American locomotives that were tried in Bavaria is that, “notwithstanding their faultless construction, they cost considerably less than locomotives of similar style of Prussian make.”

—A. A. Putnam, an electrical engineer of Rochester, N. Y., talked his last will and testament into a phonograph, a few days ago. Then, with a hot copper wire he signed his name on the wax roll of the phonograph, the witnesses doing likewise, and the “document” was thereupon completed.

—A part of the 30,000 Finnish immigrants promised America this season, recently reached Houghton, Mich., which has now upwards of 15,000 residents of Finnish birth and parentage. Of the 10,000 population of Ironwood, Mich., 6,000 are Finnish. Two more carloads were added to the town recently, and a like number to Calumet, Mich.

—The Daily Express, the new London paper, prints the following message from Emperor William, sent through the German ambassador in London: “Tell the British people that my first hope, now and always, is the preservation of international peace, and my second, the consolidation and maintenance of good relations between Germany and Great Britain. Between these two nations no essential cause of difference exists. Nor should one arise between them. There should be no rivalry other than friendly competition in furthering the economic and social progress of their peoples.”

—It is stated upon good authority that “probably no young woman in the world receives so many letters as Miss Helen Gould, which, if she were to read and answer personally, would require at least ten hours’ work every day in the week, including Sunday. Yet every epistle is carefully gone over by two secretaries employed for that purpose, and, if the case is worthy, some response is made. During a recent week 1,303 letters were received, including requests for everything, from false teeth to cows for a farm, and $1,000,000 to form a colony in Cuba.”