p. 21 | Current Mention

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 28, 1908

Current Mention

— The Allegheny (Pa.) National Bank has suffered a loss of $594,000 through the defalcation of its cashier, who is now in jail awaiting trial.

— General Septimus Marius, formerly Haiti’s minister of war and general of police, has issued a manifesto denouncing the present president of Haiti, and calling on all Haitians to rebel.

— The British steamship “Lusitania” had eclipsed all records for crossing the Atlantic when she was reported by the marine observer at Fire Island on May 22. Her record for this trip from Liverpool and Queenstown is four days, nineteen hours, and forty-eight minutes.

— The Wright brothers, who have been conducting experiments with their aeroplane at Manteo, N. C., claim to have solved at last the problem of aerial flight. On three different days they have navigated the air a distance of eighteen, twenty-four, and thirty-two miles. They will construct another aeroplane without delay to replace the one damaged last week at the close of a successful flight.

— American Minister to Venezuela, W. W. Russell, who has recently returned to the United States on a vacation, reports that the bubonic plague has assumed an alarming aspect at La Guaira, where from fifty to seventy-five deaths a day are reported. Vigorous measures are being used in the effort to stamp out the disease, even to burning buildings in the infected districts. The plague has spread to other Venezuelan ports.

— One of the worst spring storms that have visited the Middle West and Northwest in twenty-five years occurred on May 21. In Wyoming and parts of Montana there was a heavy fall of snow; in Texas a severe hailstorm occurred, the hailstones being of sufficient size to kill calves, colts, and sheep, and crops were destroyed in its track. In Iowa and Kansas the storm assumed the nature of a cyclone, destroying many homes and killing seven persons.

— There were two serious airship accidents on May 23, one at Toledo, Ohio, and another at Berkeley (near Oakland), Cal. In the first, the aeronaut, A. Roy Knabenshue and two assistants fell with their disabled airship a distance of about one thousand feet. None of the voyagers were seriously injured. The mammoth balloon of the California airship exploded when about three hundred feet from the ground, and all of the sixteen passengers were injured more or less seriously.

— During a strike of street-car employees in Cleveland, Ohio, last week more than the usual amount of damage was done. For several days in succession explosives were placed on the tracks in different sections of the city. By this means many cars were damaged, and twenty or thirty people were sent to the hospitals because of injuries received. The cars have also been fired upon, and while no one has been killed outright, some deaths, indirectly due to the strike, have been reported.

— Announcement was made at the White House on May 20 that President Roosevelt had signed the bill ordering the restoration of the motto, “In God We Trust” to those coins from which it was omitted some time ago at his direction. This affects only the eagle and double eagle, as these were the only coins from which the motto had been omitted. The law will become effective June 18; but the dies with which to stamp the new coinage have been prepared for some time to be in readiness for the expected legislation.

— The National Association of Manufacturers, which held its annual convention in New York last week, adopted resolutions protesting against political agitation calculated to set capital and labor at odds, and took a decided stand against the raising of class issues by the great political parties of the nation, authorizing a committee to represent this association before the national executive committees of the two political parties, to the end that class declaration planks may be omitted from the platforms of both parties.

— One of the most disastrous railroad wrecks that has ever occurred in Europe took place at Contich, near Antwerp, Belgium, on May 21, in which sixty persons were killed and about one hundred injured. Through the failure of a switch to operate properly, the Antwerp-Brussels express dashed at a speed of fifty miles an hour into a local train standing on the track, completely demolishing the local, only a very few of its occupants escaping alive.

— In spite of the earnest endeavors of the temperance forces of the nation, and especially of the District of Columbia, the House Committee on the District of Columbia will recommend no legislation for prohibition or to change the existing liquor laws of the District at this session of Congress. At the final hearing before the District Committee on the liquor question, the attitude of the representatives of the union labor organizations was given careful attention, and seems to have been an influential factor in determining the final decision of the committee.

— The great new warship “North Dakota,” which is now under construction, before being ready to go into commission will require an outlay of $10,000,000; to fire one broadside from the main battery will cost $17,000; one shot from each twelve-inch gun will cost $1,600; and the cost of keeping the “North Dakota” in commission and in first-class fighting trim will be $1,000,000 per annum (this including the feeding and paying of her crew of 900 officers and men, ordinary repairs, coaling, etc.). Such is the cost of peace maintained by providing a great navy.

— According to the summary of the expenses of the bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church for the past quadrennium, submitted to their general conference now in session, there was spent during the last four years in salaries for the bishops $477,169.72. The bishops had to travel a great deal, some of them making two trips around the world in that time, and the expenses incurred in this traveling amounted to $61,572.58. Thus the total expense of the board of bishops for the past four years was $538,742.30. The subcommittee on bishops of common episcopacy decided to recommend to the committee that the number of bishops be decreased, but advised that no change be made in the number of foreign bishops.

— The conferees of the House and Senate on the currency bills now before Congress have found it impossible to agree, and report that there will be no emergency currency legislation at this session of Congress, in spite of the specter of another financial panic. It is reported that the only measure that will be passed at this session will be a bill appointing a currency commission of eighteen members of Congress. The blame for this failure on the part of Congress to provide a preventive against such experiences as that of last autumn is being laid by some upon the speaker of the House; by others upon the author of the bill. The senators are unwilling to accept anything authorizing asset currency, and the representatives are unwilling to accept anything authorizing a currency secured by bonds.