p. 16 | News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 28, 1913

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

— The papers report the Panama Canal practically completed. The water in the Gatun Lake is now forty-eight feet deep, and it needs to be eighty-five before the canal can be opened. If the rains are as abundant as usual, the water will reach this level December 1.

— England, Germany, and France have declined to take part in the exposition at San Francisco in honor of the opening of the Panama Canal. There are too many expositions and the merchants of those countries say the advantages they receive do not at all compensate for the expense. It is thought the other European nations will make the same decision.

— Prof. John Milne recently died on the Isle of Wight, aged sixty-three years. He was the most eminent seismologist and was the designer of seismographs. For twenty years he was employed by the Japanese government and established a chain of nearly 1,000 earthquake-recording stations. He was the author of several valuable scientific books.

— Beginning in June and shifting its destructiveness over a great part of the territory of the Middle West, a drought, a cloudless sky, and a burning sun has wrought steadily during the last two months for the increase of the “high cost of living.” It probably has diminished the corn crop by about 600,000,000 bushels, seriously affected the other grain and the hay crop to a point making a feed famine a possibility, and caused a great money loss to the farmers in the territory where it has held its sway.

— On Wednesday, August 13, Governor William Sulzer of New York was impeached by the State assembly on the charge of using campaign funds in speculation. Lieut.-Gov. Martin H. Glynn has been declared the lawful chief executive, by the attorney-general, pending the outcome of impeachment proceedings against Governor Sulzer, who still holds control of the executive offices in the Capitol at Albany and transacts official business. This situation has been aptly styled a “double-barreled government.”

— Early on the morning of August 17, Harry K. Thaw, slayer of Stanford White, escaped from the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminal Insane in a high-power automobile. Within an hour after his dash for liberty he had crossed the line dividing the States of New York and Connecticut and headed for Canada, where he was arrested August 19, in a small village. The authorities are of the opinion that extradition is impossible, and that Thaw’s freedom is assured, unless he is held for insanity in another State, and committed to some asylum there.

— The Interstate Commerce Commission has made a sweeping and radical order covering the business of the express companies of the country. The order establishes classifications and rates which, it is alleged by the companies, will render their business unprofitable. In some directions the rates will be lower than those established for the parcel-post. The Interstate Commerce Commission has made a painstaking and thorough investigation of the business, and it is probably safe to assume that it would not adopt a policy which would be destructive or confiscatory. The rates are to go into effect this fall, and are to be tried for two years, unless it shall be shown to the satisfaction of the commission that they are unfair.