News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Apr 10, 1913

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

— The city of New York has purchased the little cottage in the Bronx where Edgar Allan Poe once lived, paying $3,000 for it. It will be moved from its present location to a site in Poe Park.

— New York City claims to be the largest toy market in the United States. The annual volume of trade at wholesale prices is $75,000,000, and of this a large part is shipped out of the country, mainly to the great fairs of Europe and Asia.

— Western railroads have filed with the Interstate Commerce Commission a proposition providing that the size of trunks or baggage carried by passengers shall not exceed forty inches in dimension. Eastern lines provide for baggage with a maximum dimension of forty-five inches.

— The most powerful searchlight ever carried on any merchant ship was a conspicuous feature of the big transatlantic liner “Kaiserin Auguste Victoria,” as she came into the port of New York a few weeks ago. It throws a beam of light of 80,000-candlepower, and is effective for seven miles across the open sea.

— Mr. Herbert Ward is the sole survivor of the Stanley expedition which went to Africa to find Livingstone so many years ago. He has decided to give his collection of African trophies to the Smithsonian Institution. The collection contains more than 7,000 African weapons, drums, etc., and many rare objects of ancient domestic use.

— In a summary of the work of the Illinois Senatorial Vice Commission made public at Chicago, Lieutenant-Governor O’Hara uses these words: “We have found that there is a combination engaged in wholesale traffic in women and extending over the entire country. In a large proportion of cases we have investigated we have found that girls have been procured from large department stores and similar institutions where women are employed. Low wages are to blame for most of the immorality among young girls.” He declared his belief that the solution of the problem lay in the establishment of a minimum wage for women. More than a dozen States, through their governors or other officers, have notified him that they desire to join the Illinois crusade and aid in a nation-wide war on white slavery and vice.

— The government of Egypt, through the minister of education, recently ordered 460 Bibles, 400 New Testaments, 20 reference Bibles, and 20 copies of the concordance for its schools. This is the first time the Bible has been introduced into the government schools of Egypt.

— An idea of the immensity of the tobacco trade and its attendant economic waste is shown by a report issued recently by a committee of the Chicago Association of Commerce estimating that the men of Chicago alone smoke 1,000,000 cigars a day, and that the cost per man averages twenty-two dollars a year.

— In a report of the secretary of the Christian Women’s Board of Foreign Missions it is claimed that there is spent in this country $16,000,000 a year for chewing-gum, $100,000,000 for ice-cream soda, $120,000,000 for millinery, $174,000,000 for candy, and only $4,000,000 for the conversion of the heathen.

— The British naval estimates for 1913-14, which have been announced, total $231,546,500, as compared with $225,377,000 last year. The new building program provides for five battle-ships, eight light cruisers, sixteen torpedo-boat destroyers, and a number of submarines. The personnel of the navy is to be increased to 146,000 officers and men.

— “Father” John Russell, founder of the Prohibition party, died recently at the home of his daughter in Detroit, ninety years of age. He wrote the call for the first National Convention, at which the party was organized, in Chicago, and was the party’s first candidate for the Vice-Presidency in 1872, and for years was the recognized leader of the Prohibition forces of the country.

— Five hundred rounds of ball cartridges having been successfully fired from a machine gun mounted on the upper deck of a Zeppelin air-ship recently, the possibility of aerial warfare has been definitely established. The balloon was flying at the rate of twenty-two yards a second when the experiment was made. The German naval authorities have now decided to build ten air-ship stations, four on the Baltic and six on the North Sea.

— John Pierpont Morgan, America’s foremost financier, died in Rome, Italy, on March 31. Collapse, following nervous prostration, caused his death. The body will rest in the mausoleum which he built in Cedar Hill Cemetery, Hartford, Conn., and the funeral service will probably be held in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York City. His fortune, which will be largely inherited by J. Pierpont Morgan, Jr., is estimated to be $300,000,000.

— The committee on wild life protection of the National Conservation Congress is preparing to seek national legislation for the protection of birds. Farmers and especially fruit growers are favoring the appeal. It said that about $420,000,000 worth of foodstuffs is destroyed by insect pests every year, and that these pests would themselves be destroyed if the birds were protected. The birds which are said to be the best for keeping down the insect plague are all song-birds, swallows, quails, woodpeckers, blackbirds, doves, and nighthawks.