News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 30, 1911

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

— Cornell University, of New York, is spending more than $1,000,000 in the construction of new buildings.

— Sweden's match industry has grown until that country makes 3,000,000 matches a day, exporting about 2,000,000,000 boxes a year.

— The movement to secure the release of Abe Ruef from San Quentin prison, where he is serving a fourteen-year term for participation in graft in San Francisco, has gained such proportions that it seems likely he may go free.

— A mile-a-minute gale that prevailed November 19, 20, along the Rhode Island coast, caused the loss of two barges of the Scully Transportation Company, of New York, and it is feared, carried to watery graves from six to eight persons.

— New York City surface car lines still carry more passengers than either the subways or the elevated roads. For the year ending June 30 the figures are for Manhattan: Surface roads, 386,952,020; elevated roads, 301,449,292; subways, 276,704,796.

— On November 18, General Bernardo Reyes, a prominent Mexican, was arrested at his home in San Antonio, Tex. He is charged by the federal grand jury with making preparations “for a military expedition to be carried on from the United States against the republic of Mexico,” thus violating the neutrality laws.

— To the professional air-man and the general staffs of the European armies, the war in Tripoli has probably come as a welcome opportunity for trying out the military usefulness of the aeroplane. The two aeroplanes employed for scouting forces in Tripoli are said to have given such satisfaction that a larger number of machines is to be despatched to the front.

— Reports of the colporteurs of the Société Biblique de la France show that there is a very general demand for the Scriptures among the French people, both on the part of the working classes and the business men. Since the overthrow of the Roman Catholic Church in France, thousands have drifted into atheism. This does not satisfy them, and they are eagerly searching for the true faith.

— Dr. Frederick A. Cook emerged from his oblivion, in a lecture tour which he made recently through some of the principal cities of Europe. The first lecture was given in Copenhagen, where, when he first claimed the discovery of the north pole, he had been crowned with vines and blossoms as the chief explorer of the world. Most of the audience hissed and mocked him as he proceeded with his lecture and stereopticon views, and when he threw on the canvas a picture of the north pole, the crowd rushed on him, and he left the hall abruptly by a back door, and was escorted to his hotel under a guard of policemen, who were not able to protect him from a shower of stale eggs.

— The year 1911 has been remarkable in that no less than seven comets were discovered in the nine months before the end of September. Three are now simultaneously visible.

— The operators and strikers of the Canadian coal mines are now arranging the final details of settlement. The seven months' strike has cost the men and companies $10,000,000.

— Recent legislation for the protection of game-birds and birds of passage is having its effect, according to all reports. The white egrets of Florida are once more multiplying with rapidity, and are seen by the dozen around the little lakes.

— Walter Wyman, surgeon-general of the United States Public Health and Marine-Hospital Service, died November 21, at the age of sixty-three years, in the Providence Hospital, Washington, D. C., where for four weeks he had been under treatment for a carbuncle. He was one of the leading medical men of the country.

— Paris, according to a correspondent of the London Lancet, is uneasy over the diminution of its milk supply. The drought of last summer and disease among cattle have combined to cause an unusual shortage. The population is to be put on a short milk ration; families with young children will have the preference in the order of serving.

— Eighteen men were killed in an explosion which occurred, November 18, in the Bottom Creek mine of the Bottom Creek Coal and Coke Company, at Vivian, W. Va. Over 150 men were in the mine at the time of the explosion, but all escaped excepting 18 of the 22 who were in the explosion zone. Four of these were rescued alive.

— A recent court decision upholds a corporation's right to the exclusive use of a family name which has become associated with an article of manufacture, even when the members of the family have withdrawn from the corporation. Mr. Jones, for instance, can not sell out his interests in the famous “Jones Piano,” and then form another company to manufacture “Jones Pianos.” He can, says the decision, still make pianos, but he must call them by some other name than his own.

— According to the returns of the thirteenth census, the population of continental United States (that is, excluding Alaska, Porto Rico, and other outlying possessions), which was 91,972,266 in 1910, is subdivided as to color as follows: White, 81,732,687, or 88.9 per cent; Negro, 9,828,294, or 10.7 per cent; all other persons (Indians, Chinese, Japanese, etc.), 411,285, or .4 per cent. Since 1900 there has been an increase in white population of 14,023,921, or 22.3 per cent, as compared with an increase in Negro population of 994,300, or 11.3 per cent. The director of the census also shows by figures that the Negro population of the South is diminishing, while that of the North is increasing. There are two reasons for this last fact: First, there has been considerable movement of colored population toward the North; second, the unsanitary conditions of the densely settled Negro sections of the South prevent any rapid increase in population, because of the high death-rate.

— Russia is again in the throes of famine. Many of the peasants have gone to the cities in search of work, leaving their children with no means of support. It is estimated that about nineteen million persons are in need of immediate help. Various epidemics have already broken out among the starving people.

— The wheat acreage in the United States for the harvest of 1911 was 52,125,000 acres, producing a crop of 656,762,400 bushels. The acreage harvested in 1910 was only 49,205,000 acres, but the yield was 695,443,000 bushels. The largest wheat crop the world ever harvested was that of 1909, amounting to 3,624,000,000 bushels, gathered from 235,000,000 acres of land.

— The prop of legality has been knocked from beneath 5,000 marriages in Illinois, through a decision of the appellate court of southern Illinois. The remarriage of divorced persons within a year, even though the ceremony is performed in another State, is declared illegal. The principals in such marriages are declared liable to criminal prosecution should they return to Illinois to live following their second venture in matrimony.

— A granite temple enshrining the rude log cabin in which Abraham Lincoln was born one hundred two years ago, was dedicated at the Lincoln farm, near Hodgenville, Ky., on November 9. The ceremony marked the consummation of a nation-wide movement to convert the Lincoln birthplace into a national park, and to erect therein a suitable monument to the great war President. On the hundredth anniversary of Lincoln's birth, Theodore Roosevelt, then President, laid the corner-stone of the memorial. Throngs from all parts of the United States witnessed the acceptance of the memorial and farm for the nation by President Taft. The cost of the completed monument is $112,000, with a surplus fund of $50,000 which has been invested in safe securities, and presented to the commonwealth of Kentucky to provide the necessary maintenance.

— The total cost of fires to the people of the United States, excluding forest fires and marine losses, amounts to almost $500,000,000. The actual fire loss per capita for the United States, due to destruction of buildings and their contents, in 1907, was $2.51. The per capita losses in the cities of the six leading European countries in the same year amounted to but thirty-three cents. In addition, 1,500 persons annually lose their lives and nearly six thousand are injured in fires in this country. Last year seventy-six men employed by the national government lost their lives in fighting forest fires, and nearly five million acres of forest lands were burned over, causing a loss of more than $26,000,000. For the first five months of this year our fire waste exceeds that of 1910, which was the high-water mark, by $30,000,000. The city of Buffalo last year had a greater fire waste than London, the largest city in the world, and the city of Chicago had a fire waste nine times that of Paris. Last year Berlin, which is about equal in size to Chicago, had a fire waste of less than $200,000; while Chicago burned more than $6,000,000 worth of property. The difference is due to the regulations designed to protect life and property from fire.

— The California board of pharmacy is reported to be alarmed over the spread of the use of the loco-weed as a narcotic. This weed, known botanically as Astragalus Hornii, is a native of Mexico, and is said to be even worse than morphin in its effects as a drug. Horses and cattle that eat the leaves get locoed, or crazy; and on human beings the effects are similar to those of the East Indian hashish.