News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 26, 1911

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

— According to the latest report, the population of the Chinese empire amounts to 426,000,000 people.

— The Panama Canal commissioners report that the canal will be in complete readiness for operation by July 1, 1913.

— The recent election in California resulted in the adoption of the referendum, initiative, and the recall, also woman suffrage.

— In a series of earthquake shocks on the island of Sicily, October 15, a number of villages were destroyed; twenty persons are known to have been killed, and a large number injured.

— The wireless telegraph operators in San Francisco and Japan have exchanged greetings across the Pacific Ocean, a distance of over six thousand miles.

— A dense fog that hung over Pittsburg until noon, October 16, was responsible for four deaths, and injury to four other persons, through-train and street-car traffic being tied up for more than one hour.

— High heels and hobble skirts, the Pennsylvania Railroad finds, are responsible for a large proportion of recent accidents to women while getting on and off trains and in mounting and descending stairways in stations.

— Old rail fences in America—if they are of red cedar—are to be held in high esteem. An Illinois farmer sold such a fence for about two thousand dollars, although he had supposed it good for nothing but fire-wood. The rails will be used for making lead-pencils.

— Chopped hair has been successfully substituted for skin in skin-grafting, by a French surgeon. The freshest or newest parts are cut into small pieces, so as to form a coarse powder. This is sprinkled over the wound, and a bandage applied. After a time a new skin develops.

— In a collision between a passenger- and a freight-train on the Missouri and Pacific Railway at Fort Crook, Neb., October 15, seven persons were killed and twenty-one injured. The accident is believed to have resulted from misunderstanding orders on the part of the freight crew.

— New York City's hotels are said to represent an investment of $275,000,000. In its “first-class” hotels alone there are 50,000 rooms for guests. One of these hotels has a refrigerating plant that cost $50,000, and a kitchen the outfitting of which involved an expenditure of $200,000.

— During the past twenty years more than eight thousand British vessels—an average of nearly eight for every week—have been lost at sea. With these vessels nearly twenty-three thousand persons perished, of whom about eighty per cent were members of the crews, and twenty per cent passengers.

— At the recent convention in New York City of the American Manufacturers' Export Association, a speaker who had just made a 38,000-mile trip said: “In all the countries I visited, the greatest trade growth is to come from those bordering on the Pacific Ocean. We are in the best position to go after this business, and it is there for the asking.”

— Serious rioting occurred October 16, at Segni, a few miles from Rome, Italy. The populace, believing that the officers were to poison cholera patients confined in the hospitals, formed into a mob, destroying the town hall, and then rushing to the hospitals, rescuing, as they supposed, the sick inmates by dragging them out into the street. It was necessary for troops to be sent from Rome to quell the disturbance.

— Bayonne, N. J., has the largest oil refinery in the world. Oil from a quarter of a million wells flows through this station. There are now 55,000 miles of steel and iron pipes, stretching throughout the country, with pumping stations at every sixty or seventy miles along the route. The total storage capacity of all the stations is 85,000,000 barrels. Seventy million barrels of crude petroleum are transported annually from the wells to the refineries.

— As a result of the long-continued agitation over the question of teachers' salaries in the schools of New York, the legislature has passed a bill granting to women the same salaries received by men for the same grade of work. The bill was passed under an emergency message from the governor. Under this new law, the boards of education have full power to fix all salaries for teachers, but the law specifies that no discrimination shall be made on account of sex.

— The supreme court of New York State has decided that the application of a New York restaurant keeper for a certificate of incorporation permitting him to use the word “Hell” as the name of his restaurant can not be granted. It is refused on the ground that it would be against public policy to permit the use of a title or name which, “if not blasphemous, would hold the State up to ridicule and shock the sense of decent people. . . . It was unnecessary to put into the statute that blasphemous, obscene, or immoral words could not be used as a corporation's name. It is a fundamental principle that they can not be used.”

— Buried in a deluge of water cast upon them by a terrible earthquake in the Gulf of California, the cities of San Jose de Guaymas, El Palmo, and Ortiz, on the eastern shore of the gulf, were destroyed early on the morning of October 4. Other towns were terribly damaged. The tidal wave was preceded by a hurricane lasting for five days, and cutting off every means of communication with the outside world. For that reason no news of the terrible disaster reached the government officials until October 12. The local government of that region appeals for aid. The appeals state that from 300 to 500 lost their lives in the hurricane and tidal wave. Seventeen ships in the harbor of Guaymas were destroyed, and the wrecks now repose far inland, carried there on the crest of the huge waves.

— The public health service at Washington is conducting an extended study of goiter to learn, if possible, the cause of the epidemics of the disease which recently existed in various parts of the country. A locality in Utah was found where every woman inhabitant was a sufferer. An eminent pathologist is conducting the investigation at the laboratory of hygiene. Little is known of the cause of the disease.

— The International Society of Archeologists has a department for exposing fraudulent relics. In this country there are several manufacturers of bogus Indian relics, which are shipped to Europe as “genuine pre-Columbian stone implements,” and are so perfect as to deceive even experts. One concern makes a business of buying up poor but genuine specimens, and converting them into fine ones—changing a five-cent arrow-head, for instance, by making barbs and resharpening it, into a fifty-cent article that might be shown with pride by a collector.

— A serious uprising has occurred in the Chinese empire during the last few days, the aim of which is no less than to overturn the present Manchu dynasty, and to establish a constitutional government. It is claimed that a provisional government has already been established, a constitution adopted, and officers elected. Advice received through the revolutionists states that the provinces of Hunan, Honan, Hupeh, Kiangsu, Anhwei, and Szechuen are now in the hands of the rebels. The movement claims to possess $2,000,000 in its treasury, with an equal amount subject to call, and 35,000 troops with 10,000 more in reserve. The imperial government is putting forth energetic measures to meet the situation. Troops are being sent to quell the uprising as rapidly as the poor facilities of China will permit. It has placed a censorship on all news from the disaffected section, thus keeping the general Chinese public in ignorance of the situation as far as possible, in order that sympathy may not be created for the rebels. Newspaper correspondents have been refused permission to accompany the imperial troops. Already several engagements have taken place, with advantage thus far on the side of the revolutionists. The lives and property of foreign residents have thus far been respected, as the spirit of the revolt does not seem to be antiforeign, but a desire to bring about improved governmental conditions. At the present time the situation appears one of the most serious with which China has had to cope for some time. The spirit of disaffection, it is claimed, affects the imperial army, some of whom have already deserted to the insurgents.