News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 30, 1913

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

— A severe storm swept the Atlantic coast October 20. The raging gale and high seas resulted in much damage to shipping, and a government barge, loaded with ammunition valued at $50,000, went ashore near Bush Bluff Lightship, a total wreck.

— Seventeen soldiers of the One Hundred Seventieth Company of United States Coast Artillery were killed, and ninety injured, when a special troop train on the Mobile and Ohio Railroad crashed through a trestle near State Line, Miss., on October 19.

— A business man's club at Portland, Oregon, has launched a plan to abolish the State senate and the house of representatives and place the State's business in the hands of a commission. Preliminary steps have been taken to have a commission form of government for the people, through the initiative. The project received its impetus at a recent meeting of merchants, and the initial commission is to be appointed to determine the details.

— President Huerta of Mexico, on the night of October 10, arrested 110 members of the chamber of deputies and rushed them to the penitentiary. The action was the outgrowth of criticism of the president by certain members, and a threat on the part of the chamber to dissolve and meet elsewhere because of the lack of protection accorded its members. The arrest followed a demand by President Huerta that the chamber withdraw the resolution. Only non-Catholic deputies were imprisoned. Catholic members were allowed to go free.

— This is pronounced the heaviest year in crop loss since 1901. The government report estimates the loss in corn during the drought and hot weather of August as 292,000,000 bushels, and the total crop loss in all products is placed at 1,418,000,000 bushels, with an additional loss of 10,000,000 tons in hay. One of the most serious phases of this loss is the fact that the heaviest losses are in the so-called surplus States. The hopes of reduced cost of living have been blighted by the loss in the potato crop. The loss in potatoes, as given in the September report, shows that last year the yield was 421,000,000 bushels; this year it is only about 325,000,000 bushels.

— Lack of return addresses on the envelopes and letter-heads costs the Chicago post-office about $200,000 a year. Forty per cent of the mail handled in Chicago is said to be insufficiently or incorrectly addressed, and then it is claimed that another eighteen per cent of the mail handled at the outlying stations is in the same condition. The force of clerks required in the read-dressing department costs about $75,000 a year, and then the several redistributions of the same pieces of mail made necessary by incorrect addresses cost another $73,000. It is said that firms and corporations which give no other addresses than Chicago—no street number—cost the department an enormous sum.

— Twenty million dollars is said to have changed hands during the recent world's series baseball games between the New York and Philadelphia teams.

— Lorenzo Cozza, of Rome, has been carrying on the work in which his father was engaged, of finding the port of Pompeii. He has at last unearthed the quay, which he found twenty-three feet below the surface. It is 700 meters from Pompeii, and 1,250 from the sea-coast as it is now. It is thought that this discovery will throw much new light on the shipping customs of the Romans.

— The constantly increasing traffic between the Scandinavian Peninsula and the Continent has led the German railways to arrange for the construction of what will probably be the longest railway bridge in the world. It will be 12,000 feet long, 100 feet high, and exceed the famous bridge over the Firth of Forth and the recently built Hoangho bridge in China. The purpose is to establish through railroad service from Stockholm to Madrid by way of Hamburg and Paris.

— By a vote of forty-three to fourteen, Gov. William Sulzer of New York was found guilty, by the high court of impeachment, on three of the articles preferred against him. He was convicted of filing with the secretary of state a false statement of campaign contributions, of perjury in swearing to his campaign statement, and of misdemeanor in suppressing evidence against himself. The final vote was taken October 16, and the following day he was removed from office, but not disqualified for holding office of public trust in the State. Lieut.-Gov. Martin H. Glynn became chief executive, and the former governor will at once become a candidate for the State legislature.

— When Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst, leader of the English militant suffragettes, reached America on the liner “Provence,” from France, on October 18, she was detained at Ellis Island by the immigration officers. A special board of inquiry considered her case, and ordered her deported on the ground that she was an undesirable alien. Her representatives appealed to the Washington government for a reversal of this decision, and President Wilson and Secretary of Labor Wilson interceded in her behalf. She was finally allowed to land in New York on October 20, on probation. She comes to America for the purpose of making a lecture tour, and expects to return to Europe on November 28.

— At the convention of the Medical Association of the Southwest, Dr. C. S. Venables, one of the speakers, affirmed that pigskin is the best for grafting purposes. Dr. Venables has made many experiments, and he says that skin taken from pigs when they are from two to six months old can be grafted on humans more successfully than can skin from other human beings. The grafting of pigskin is successful in seventy-five to one hundred per cent, while the grafting from humans is successful in thirty-two to fifty per cent. By a deep-shaving process the probability of the transplanted pigskin growing bristles is avoided.