Items of Interest

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 13, 1900

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 77, No. 11.

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Items of Interest

—It is estimated that Great Britain's war bill will be $500,000,000.

—Germany has established post-offices in Smyrna, Beyrout, and Jerusalem.

—The ice jam at Niagara Falls is said to be unusually beautiful, extending close to Horseshoe Falls.

—There are 276 post-offices on the Island of Cuba, nineteen of which are in charge of Americans.

—Princess Salm Salm, of Carlsbad, Germany, goes to Chicago to organize a hospital corps for the Boers.

—It appears that the Bank of France and French capitalists have loaned money to England for the Boer war.

—The Molineux trial cost the State of New York a quarter of a million dollars, and cost Molineux' father $100,000.

—Princess Stephanie, daughter of King Leopold, of Belgium, is disowned because of her marriage to Count Elemer Lonyay, of Hungary.

—The February gold output at the Cripple Creek, Colo., mines was double that of the same month in 1899, and it is believed that the output for the year will be $40,000,000.

—Jack Chinn, a noted politician of Frankfort, Ky., who was with the late Mr. Goebel when the latter was shot, has sued a woman for $25,000 for stating that she saw him shoot Goebel.

—Lord Roberts has 60,000 men near Kimberley, 40,000 in Natal, and 50,000 men in Cape Colony. The Boer force is estimated at 50,000.

—In the recent church census of Philadelphia, Pa., the fact was revealed that 25,000 persons had relinquished church attendance.

—March 7, by an explosion of gas in a coal mine at Longacre, W. Va., seventy men were entombed, forty of whom have been taken out dead.

—It is reported that Filipino conspirators paid General Lawton's slayer $25,000 in cash for having done the deed, and that the entire thing was premeditated.

—On account of Scotch disapproval of his war policy, Lord Rosebery has resigned the presidency of the Scottish Liberal Association, which he has held for twenty years.

—March 6, in deciding a divorce case, Judge Lawton, of Pittsfield, Mass., declared Hawaii to be a part of the United States, and held that the three-months' limit of publication in this country covered residence in Hawaii.

—The Uganda Railway telegraph line reached the Nile, at Ripon Falls, February 18, and was carried across the river, thus establishing telegraphic communication between London and the sources of the Nile.

—The British and Boer forces in South Africa are lining up for another battle, in the vicinity of Bloemfontein. It is thought that the level nature of the country will permit rapid flank movements by the British. The Boer forces are estimated to be from 40,000 to 60,000.

—Senator Spooner, of Wisconsin, recently introduced in the Senate a resolution for the establishment of schools of training for consular service, and appropriating $25,000 for the expenses of a committee of seven to be appointed by the President to visit European schools of that character. This government was not founded upon borrowed European principles.

—March 2 President McKinley sent a message to Congress, recommending that $2,095,455.58 collected as duties upon goods imported from Puerto Rico since the Spanish evacuation of the island, Oct. 18, 1898, be appropriated for the use and benefit of the island. The House accordingly passed a bill, by vote of 162 to 107, appropriating the money to be used as the President may designate.

—It is said that when Mrs. James A. Mount, wife of Indiana's governor, found that her husband, who is seriously ill, was to have addressed a farmers' institute at Greenwood, ten miles from Indianapolis, on the evening of March 2, she boarded an electric car, and arrived in time to make the address herself. Instead of reading the governor's paper, Mrs. Mount delivered an address of her own, on “The Mistakes and Possibilities of Rural Life.”

—The first important strike among Puerto Rican laborers began February 26, when 500 men, who had been constructing a military road, quit work, marching into the town of Adjuntas, with waving banners bearing the inscription, “We workmen demand five cents an hour.” The present rate of pay is three cents an hour, and the men complain that they have to work from sunrise to sunset for thirty cents. They were quiet and orderly.

—The Puerto Rican Tariff bill, amended so as to reduce the tariff from twenty-five per cent to fifteen per cent, and limiting its life to two years, passed the House of Representatives, February 28, by a vote of 172 to 161. Six Republicans voted with the opposition to the bill, and four Democrats voted with the Republicans for it. Each side made every effort possible to get out a full vote, six members being brought from beds of sickness, to vote.

—The Odessa correspondent of the London Times says that “the news of the relief of Kimberley and information that the Boers are retiring from all parts of the invaded British possessions in South Africa, have absolutely disconcerted the military party in Russia, and seem likely to deal a death-blow to the plans for taking advantage of British reverses in South Africa in order to carry out certain Russian designs concerning Persia and Afghanistan.”

—Ali Ferrouh Bey, the Turkish ambassador to the United States, has obtained permission to take his wife to Washington. The Turkish minister to Stockholm, Sheriff Pasha, took his wife to Sweden, but she was an Egyptian princess and daughter of Halim Pasha. The prohibition to Turkish diplomats to take their wives with them caused, some time ago, the suicide of Saadullah Pasha, the Ottoman ambassador to Vienna. For twenty years he was separated from his wife and children, who remained at Constantinople, and, being unable to obtain leave of absence to be present at his daughter's marriage, he committed suicide.

—The two Montreal universities—the Laval and McGill—are attended by French-Canadian and by English students, respectively. Upon hearing the news of the British relief of Ladysmith, the McGill students made great demonstrations, which, in turn, were countered by anti-British demonstrations on the part of the Laval students. The French mob tore down a British flag, and sang “La Marseillaise,” and “Les Montagnards.” The McGill students came to defend the British flag, and general rioting followed. The Laval university was then visited by an English student mob, which succeeded in temporarily raising the English flag. It was quickly torn down by the Laval students, and substituted by the French tricolor. The Laval students finally repulsed the invading McGill students by turning the city water upon them. Many arrests have been made, and the militia has been called out.

—New York bankers are about to loan the Russian government $25,000,000.

—Several coast towns of Mexico were recently destroyed by a tidal wave following an earthquake.

—Russia is about to lease a Persian harbor on terms similar to those of the lease of Port Arthur, China.

—Sixty natives were killed and 2,000 houses burned in Burma, to avenge the murder of two British commissioners.

—Inquiries are being made by the British government as to the possibility of securing 1,000,000 tons of bituminous coal in the United States.

—The British forces now occupy Stormberg. Thus General Gatacre has control of the railway westward to Middelburg, and can advance northward toward the Orange River.

—The British government has decided that Lord Pauncefote shall remain as ambassador at Washington, indefinitely, owing to his “acute knowledge of the matters pending between the two nations.”

—General Corbin, U. S. A., has just turned over to Mrs. Lawton, widow of the late Major General Lawton, killed in the Philippines, the fund subscribed by the people of this country. It amounted to $98,432.07.

—Diphtheria has broken out at Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass., and “while the contagion has not yet reached alarming proportions, there is, nevertheless, cause for fear of a general epidemic among the students.”

—A dispatch from Ann Arbor, Mich., says that President Angell, of the University of Michigan, “was suddenly called to New York City by a telegram announcing that his wife had suffered a stroke of apoplexy, and was seriously ill.”

—The Puerto Rican tariff bill is still occupying the attention of the American people. Its discussion compels a rehearsing of the arguments in favor, and against, taking the island possessions within the jurisdiction of the Constitution of the United States.

—The new commission for the Philippine Islands is now completed, and consists of the following persons: Judge Taft, of Ohio, president; Dean C. Worcester, of Michigan; Luke Wright, of Tennessee; Henry C. Ide, of Vermont; Bernard Moses, of California.

—Desultory fighting continues in the Philippine Islands. General Bates, with a total force of 2,200 men, “has landed troops on the southeast, northwest, and southern coasts of San Miguel Bay, Camarines province, to move on Nueva Caceres, in three columns.” A number of Filipinos were captured, and also ammunition and thirty rifles.

—The British war budget, providing for the raising of $300,000,000 war funds, was passed by the House of Commons, March 5. The amount is to be raised partly by borrowing and partly by increased taxation. Among the articles that will be extra-taxed are tea, spirits, beer, and tobacco. The British public will be “spared any approach to taxation on food.”

—According to latest dispatches from South Africa, Lord Roberts has succeeded in clearing a path for his march on Bloemfontein. He has flanked the Boer position at Modder River, and forced the burghers into full retreat. His object is to first overrun the Free State, in order to oblige it to sever its relations with the Transvaal; he will then attack the Transvaal.

—On account of “a general report of threatening conditions in Central America,” the United States Navy Department has ordered two war-ships, the “Detroit” and the “Marblehead,” to proceed to Nicaragua and Costa Rica. It is feared that a “revolutionary expedition” in Nicaraguan territory is being organized, the purpose of which is to overthrow President Iglesias, of Costa Rica.

—As a counter to Mr. Sheldon’s demonstration as managing editor of the Topeka (Kan.) Capital for one week this month, the Topeka State Journal will publish lay sermons during the same week, discussing “the duties of the clergy.” Mr. Howe, the writer, will maintain that “the church is not keeping step with the progress of the press, and is losing its hold upon the people.” This announcement has resulted in a boom for the Journal.

—A dispatch from Berlin, Germany, says that the German naval bill is creating quite a stir, and that its fate is seriously endangered. It appears that “the agrarians make their consent to the naval bill dependent upon conditions which, if accepted, would ruin German commerce and industry, and seriously injure trade relations with the United States.” The emperor is thus placed between two fires—wanting the navy, and the attendant evils of the navy bill.

—Firms furnishing materials for building, for the Chicago market, have voted to close their plants until “conditions in the building industry of the city shall have changed for the better sufficiently to warrant them in reopening.” The recent labor troubles have compelled them to conduct their business at a great loss since last October, and they can not afford to keep their plants open when there is no demand for their product. Thus 10,000 men employed in the “stone quarries, brickyards, and the plants furnishing lime, cement, rubble stone, coping, crushed stone,” etc., are thrown out of employment. These, added to the 30,000 idle in the building industry, the 7,000 striking machinists, and the 3,000 on strike in other trades, make the total number of unemployed men in Chicago alone fully 50,000. These big firms will also close their branch offices in other cities.