News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 18, 1913

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

— Another serious earthquake is reported from the vicinity of Chalhuanca, southern Peru.

— The government parties in the German Reichstag have agreed to appropriate $125,000 this year and a similar sum in 1914 for the German participation in the Pan-American exposition at San Francisco in 1915.

— Excessive rains in Texas last week resulted in a disastrous flood along the Brazos and Colorado Rivers. Thousands of persons are homeless, and the damage to date is estimated at $40,000,000. Reliable authorities state that the death list will probably reach 150.

— The number of unemployed working men and women in Germany is increasing almost unceasingly. Sixteen great trade-unions report that 46,893 members had no work on November 1. This is one per cent more than the number idle at the same date last year.

— A severe snow-storm blockaded traffic in central Colorado and New Mexico December 4 and 5. The total snowfall during the storm was given officially at 45.5 inches. Shortage of fuel made it necessary for a number of hotels and office-buildings in Denver and Colorado City to close down.

— The egg boycott in Chicago has been very effective. On December 2 the price of eggs had dropped from sixty-five cents a dozen to thirty-one and thirty-two cents. Other cities are joining in the fight against the “egg trust.” About 12,000 women in Washington, D. C., also agreed to refrain from purchasing eggs until the price at the national capital is lowered.

— When Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst, the English militant suffragist leader, landed in Great Britain on December 4, returning from the United States, she was at once taken prisoner by the authorities and lodged in Exeter jail. Immediately she started a hunger-and-thirst strike, and her militant adherents instituted a campaign of revenge for her imprisonment. Several disastrous fires in the vicinity of London and Liverpool have been the result of their efforts. December 7, Mrs. Pankhurst was released on seven days’ license, because of ill health, and the suffragists declare that they will never permit the government to confine her again.

— Rather than endure starvation, the Mexican federal troops evacuated the city of Chihuahua on December 1, and it has fallen into the hands of Gen. Francisco Villa, the rebel leader. It is authoritatively stated that a number of the federal army leaders are ready to make terms with the revolutionists. A recent plot in the federal prison at Mexico City to release the deputies imprisoned some weeks by Huerta, was discovered just in time to prevent the jail delivery. Orders to proceed immediately to Mexican waters were cabled last week from Washington to Rear-Admiral Badger, commanding the American squadron in the Mediterranean. — Dottoressa Maria Montessori, one of Europe’s foremost authorities on child education, has just arrived in America. While making a passing study of some of our systems of education, she will lecture on the famous Montessori system, in which all aggressive educators are deeply interested.

— Two dreadnaughts, eight destroyers, and three submarines is the yearly naval building program that Secretary of Navy Daniels recommends in his first annual report to President Wilson. Mr. Daniels believes that this is as heavy an expenditure as the revenues of the government will permit.

— A new arrangement of stars in the American flag has been accepted by the War Department. The design is on the order of the Union Jack and affords more room for additional States. In the center is a huge five-pointed star composed of thirteen stars. About this is a circle of stars representing the remaining twenty-five States. The new design has been submitted to President Wilson for approval.

— It is a remarkable fact that a part of the territory of the United States has just found it necessary to pass a law to suppress slavery. On November 15 the Philippine national assembly, after a heated debate, enacted a measure reaffirming the old Spanish statutes and incorporating the American laws. The New York Tribune, for one, interprets the action as a confession that slavery has been in existence in the islands in spite of the denials of Delegate Quezon and other ardent advocates of “immediate independence.”

— Heads of the various governmental departments of the United States have estimated that it will cost $1,108,681,777.02 to carry on the business of this country during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1915. This amount is $22,864,067 in excess of the sum which the last Congress appropriated for the current year’s expenses, and is about $2,000,000 more than was called for last year, the closing year of the last Republican administration. However, it is predicted that the present Democratic Congress will use its “economy knife” freely.

— George Washington has been proved in many ways to have been a workman of absolute integrity, with a genius for doing what was right and best. In 1751, when a youth of nineteen years, as a surveyor he ran lines through the Virginia wilderness for Lord Fairfax. His work has recently been checked up by government surveyors, who have found it perfect. Washington, running his lines with primitive instruments and bonfires on hilltops, left monuments and boundaries to which technically educated surveyors, using high-power transits and all the methods modern instruments allow, have been able to find no variation. From the top of Middle Mountain in the Massanutten range, the old Fairfax line may be distinguished without the use of instruments, and can be followed by boundary fences dating from the earliest days, and by blocks of timber. Washington’s survey blazes, cut into the trunks of trees and long grown over, have been rediscovered, and all are several feet higher from the ground than those the woodsmen of today make. The government has been retracing the old

lines, because it is buying lands in that territory for the new Appalachian forest reserve.

— The color-line is causing serious trouble in Natal and the Transvaal, South Africa. Over 100,000 laborers of East Indian blood stopped work as a protest against their treatment by the whites, and some rioting and burning of sugar plantations occurred. For the most part, the general strike took the form of passive resistance, against which Western methods could make no headway. British accounts tell how the East Indian laborer, without the suggestion of a labor-union, when he has done what he considers enough, ceases work. If urged to continue, he declines. If told he will lose his job, he makes no objection. The threat of starvation, suffering, or death seems to have no terrors for him. He has no greed of possession nor material ambition. As these Asiatics do practically all the menial labor in Natal on farms, plantations, railroads, and mines, and are also mechanics and domestics, the situation proved embarrassing to the “higher” races. Natal needs their labor, but refuses them full citizenship. Groups of these Orientals journeyed from one outlying estate to another, spreading terror among the scattered white residents, and necessitating the calling out of the troops. Some 2,000 coolies who attempted to cross the border from the Transvaal to Natal were arrested for violating a white man’s law prohibiting the emigration of Asiatic laborers from one state to another of the South African Union. The Asiatics also refused to pay a $15 poll-tax. Nearly every British colony has laws against this class of immigrants from India, yet their cheap labor has proved an attractive bait to large employers, and until the coolies developed “class consciousness” all went well. An official commission composed of members of the British Indian government and an East Indian of industrial experience, is now investigating the crown colonies where indentured immigration is permitted.