News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · Sep 5, 1912

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

— Appropriations aggregating $1,019,000,000 were made during the second session of the Sixty-second Congress, which adjourned August 26.

— Under a provision of the post-office appropriation bill recently passed, after September 1 no mail will be delivered on Sunday at any first- or second-class post-offices in the United States.

— A permanent organization to fight against the supply of impure milk is being effected in Chicago. The board of health and many prominent physicians and citizens are interesting themselves in the effort to secure pure milk for the city.

— New Jersey has voted $500,000 for a survey for a ship-canal across the State, from South Amboy to Bordentown on the Delaware. The survey is made with the hope that the national government will construct a ship-canal over the line for the passage of war-ships from New York Bay to the Delaware, by an inland route.

— It has been discovered that about half the immigrants arriving at San Francisco from the Orient are afflicted with hookworm. The Journal of the American Medical Association notes the fact that a number of laborers engaged in market gardening on a tract of land within the corporate limits of San Francisco, have been quarantined because of the discovery of hookworm among them. The sale of their vegetables has been forbidden until such time as the disease has been eliminated.

— Liberals in the northwest of Nicaragua are joining the revolt against the government, and the insurrectionary movement is daily becoming stronger. Bands of liberals are attacking towns in the department of Chinandega, and others are wandering about the country like bandits, subsisting on cattle and provisions taken from the plantations. Foreigners in that section are very apprehensive, and have appealed to the government and the American minister and American consuls for protection, which can not be given. They have been advised to flee to Managua, but in many cases that is impossible. The liberals are antagonistic to Americans and other foreigners.

— Although $2,000,000 has been raised in various funds for relief of the sufferers from the wreck of the “Titanic,” this sum will not be sufficient. It will all be required to meet the demands already allowed, and many claims are as yet unadjusted. Applications have been made from wives and children of the crew as follows: 239 widows, 533 children under sixteen years of age, and 213 other dependents. Applications have also been made for the relief of the dependents of 461 of the passengers lost in the wreck. These represent thirteen different nationalities. Half wages are now being paid to the dependents of the drowned crew, with additional help where the families are large. This will be done until proper actuarial estimates are made as to the amount required for relief of all sufferers.

— Last year American travelers left $350,000,000 in Europe, spent for their own pleasure and gratification.

— The town of Ronan, Mont., on what formerly was a part of the Flathead Indian reservation, was practically destroyed by fire on August 24. The loss is estimated at $500,000. Only two stores and a few residences were saved.

— Statistics of the first six months’ fire losses in this country and Canada, have been gathered by the New York Journal of Commerce, and they reveal a total of $134,417,750 for the half-year. In 1911 it was $129,691,750; year before last it was $99,228,850.

— Moscow’s richest merchant, a German named Hinkel, who died recently, left his $2,500,000 fortune to his employees under the terms of his will recently filed. Every man who had been with Hinkel for as long as five years received a comfortable fortune. They decided to continue the business as a stock company, to found an asylum in honor of their benefactor, and to continue to contribute to his favorite charities.

— Josef Baier, a Bavarian glass-cutter, after many years of patient toil, has succeeded in putting together a watch whose every wheel and screw, with the frame and each of the three covers, is made of glass. No other material has been used in its construction, except for the springs, which are of the ordinary make. As a timekeeper Baier’s masterpiece is absolutely accurate. Its dimensions are twenty inches by eight and a half.

— A serious flood situation exists in England. The city of Norwich, on the Wensum, 98 miles northeast of London, is almost isolated. All train service between London and Norwich and Cromer has been suspended, and many local services are affected. The entire county of Norfolk is a swamp, and Lincolnshire, Suffolk, and the other eastern counties are in an alarming condition. Everywhere crops are being destroyed.

— Munich has the finest public market in Europe, but Leipzig is to have the grandest railway station. Only a fortnight ago the greater part of the new “Bahnhof” was opened to traffic. It is the work of ten years, and neither thought nor cost has been spared to make it a model of elegance and convenience. It has a frontage of 350 yards, and 400 trains daily will run over its twenty-six tracks. It will be finished in 1915, having cost £7,000,000.

— Not much has been heard about Persian affairs since the sensational career of the young American minister of finance ended. It was conceded that under his direction and control the fiscal affairs of the nation were rapidly emerging from a chaotic state, and that the administration was honest and economical. It appears that since Russia forced the retirement of Mr. Shuster, things have been going from bad to worse. A well-informed correspondent of a London journal states that the government can only be saved from swiftly going to ruin, if it can be saved at all, by the extinction of sovereignty and partition between Russia and Great Britain. In finance, native resources are exhausted and a large foreign loan is necessary, but it can not be had because of the disorderly condition of the country.

— One hundred sixty cases of infantile paralysis were reported to exist in Buffalo, N. Y., up to August 27.

— A disastrous fire occurred at Petersburg, Va., on August 27. The property loss is estimated at $150,000.

— About one tenth of the electric lamps made in the United States every year are used for advertising signs.

— During the coming winter the White Star Line steamship “Olympic” will undergo a renovation costing close to $1,000,000.

— Strange as the statement may at first seem, it is conservative to place the damage done yearly by rodents in the United States at $150,000,000.

— Items of interest to our prohibition friends are that at the recent election Texas went “dry,” and that the Lackawanna road will hereafter insist that its employees shall keep out of saloons when off duty as well as when at work, its officials being convinced that the only safety for a railway man is to avoid the use of intoxicants altogether.

— The Hindus may become nearer neighbors to us than they are at present. At the estimated cost of $600,000,000, France is considering the gigantic task of extending a railway from Tangier to Juba, across the continent of Africa, to the shore of the Indian Ocean. The motive power will be electricity, and this will be generated by waterfalls near Lake Tchad. This route would enable Londoners to go to the Indian Ocean in five days. The trip from New York to India could then be made in about two weeks.

— The British Board of Trade has closed its inquiry into the cause of the sinking of the “Titanic” last April, a disaster resulting in the loss of 1,517 lives. The findings of the court are that excessive speed, an inadequate watch, and insufficient provision for the manning of the life-boats were among the main reasons for such a serious loss of life; that the Leyland liner “California” might have reached the “Titanic” if it had really attempted to do so. The track followed by the great ship was considered reasonably safe if proper vigilance had been exercised. More life-boats, more water-tight compartments, more efficient drilling of the crew, and a better lookout constitute the recommendations of the court.

— Although one of the most inaccessible cities on earth, Mecca each year has visitors in such numbers that it must be ranked in this particular with London and New York. Even the world’s metropolis on the Thames can boast no such cosmopolitan character as is imparted to this mysterious city in the wilderness of Arabia by the myriads of pilgrims who, at the cost of incredible pains, annually crowd into its confines. This city is the oldest place of resort in existence; yet of all the millions who have visited it, not a score of Christians are known to have come out alive. No flag of citizenship would save a man’s life were he known to be a Christian within the sacred precincts of the city where the prophet himself decreed that no unbeliever should set foot. “Mecca,” says Dr. Samuel M. Zwemer, of Arabia, “has become the religious capital and the center of universal pilgrimage for one seventh of the human race.”

— The executive committee of the Presbyterian General Assembly recently took steps toward raising an endowment fund of $10,000,000 for the support of aged and infirm ministers of that denomination.

— A school for teaching women to be carpenters, builders, and bricklayers is to be started in Winfield, Long Island, in the fall. It is reported that nearly forty women have already been enrolled in the two years’ course of the school. There are at present three women master builders in business in New York City.

— In a number of skin-grafting operations he has recently carried out, a Philadelphia physician has used the lining of egg-shells instead of human skin. One of the patients he is reported to have successfully treated in this way was a woman who had the skin burned off her back. The physician declares that the suffering which has been imposed on human donors of skin for such operations is unnecessary.

— Serious outbreaks of infantile paralysis, most feared of all infant diseases, have occurred in two sections of the United States public health and marine-hospital service. At Los Angeles 128 cases, most of them fatal, were reported to the service up to August 12; while at Buffalo 86 cases were reported up to the same time. It is only within the past four years that the disease, which is peculiar to the Scandinavian countries, has become epidemic in this country. It has not been general, but has appeared in first one section and then another.

— For the first time in the history of the United States the Secretary of State has been designated as a special ambassador to a foreign power. President Taft assigned Mr. Knox as a special United States representative to Japan to attend the funeral of the late Emperor Mutashito on September 12, with the statement that the mission was given to the premier of the cabinet as an evidence of the American friendship for Japan. When Viscount Chinda, Japanese ambassador to Washington, heard of the mission, he asserted that it would be taken by the Japanese people and government as an act of the greatest courtesy, and one calculated to make even warmer and more cordial the existing relations between the two governments.