News Notes

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 27, 1900

— High water in various parts of Illinois is doing great damage.

— During the last 150 years the land level of Finland has risen nearly five feet.

— Planters, merchants, and manufacturers of Puerto Rico have petitioned the United States government for free trade.

— Floods are causing serious losses in Peru, South America, and the government is petitioned to annul tax payments in consequence.

— The North German Lloyd Steamship Company will adopt wireless telegraphy, to communicate with the land, on each side of the Atlantic.

— Captain Abercrombie and forty-three government engineers have sailed for Alaska, to build bridges and prepare for the government telegraph line.

— Lieutenant Anderson, of the British army, reports ninety-eight Boers killed with the fumes of lyddite, the bodies found in the trench having no wounds.

— General Sir George Stewart White, defender of Ladysmith, is in Cape Town, but is “too ill to permit of a public reception being given in his honor.”

— March 14 the city council of Dublin, Ireland, after a stormy debate, decided, by a vote of thirty to twenty-two, officially to welcome Queen Victoria upon her forthcoming visit.

— The text of the German official circular instructing local officers to refuse information to American consuls regarding the impurity of German meats, has just been published by the Berlin paper Vorwaerts.

— The Balkan country is again in a state of unrest. The Albanians, who are Mussulmans, have attacked the “Christians,” and the Turkish troops sent to preserve order have been unable to check the rioting.

— The czar of Russia gave orders, on the 12th inst., “for the immediate mobilization of the army and navy reserves, and for the Black Sea squadron to hold itself in readiness for service. It is surmised that India or Asia Minor is the objective point.”

— Rev. Thomas K. Beecher, aged eighty-four, and Mary Foote Beecher Perkins, aged ninety-four, brother and sister respectively of Henry Ward Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, died March 14. Mrs. Perkins was a grandmother of Charlotte Perkins Stetson, the socialist and poet.

— Paper is made principally from spruce wood pulp, and it is said that “it takes the entire product obtained from twenty-two acres of the best virgin spruce land to make enough pulp to supply two issues of one of the large New York daily papers.” This pulp comes largely from Canada, and “it will be readily seen that the supply must very speedily become exhausted, in spite of the immense resources of that vast reserve.” The next thing in order now is for some one to discover a new substance out of which to manufacture paper. An inferior grade of paper is at present being manufactured, on a small scale, from sugar cane.

— Cecil Rhodes sailed from Cape Town, for England, the 8th inst.

— German industries are in a critical condition on account of the coal famine.

— Dr. John P. Wood, of Coffeyville, Kan., claims to be the oldest practicing physician in the world. He is ninety-nine years old, and still makes daily visits to his patients.

— The famine expenditures of the Indian government, for 1899–1900, were over $10,000,000. It is estimated that the famine expenditure for 1900–1901 will be nearly $17,000,000.

— A dispatch from Calcutta, dated March 21, says that “the bubonic plague is fast increasing. In Bengal 4,725 deaths occurred last week. These included 744 in Calcutta and 2,044 in Patna.”

— The Constantinople correspondent of the London Times announces that “the sultan has yielded in all essential particulars to the Russian demands respecting railway concessions in Asia Minor.”

— Copies of William T. Stead’s pamphlet, “Shall I Slay My Brother Boer?” have reached the British soldiers in South Africa. Mr. Stead is the proprietor of the Review of Reviews, an English magazine.

— March 19 Lord Kitchener occupied Prieska, Cape Colony, unopposed, some arms and prisoners being captured. Lord Roberts also reports that the Boers are beginning to surrender on the Basuto border.

— According to the London Academy, the income from the sale of John Ruskin’s books has averaged $20,000 a year. Over 247,000 copies of his works have been sold since they were republished in cheap form.

— Secretary of War Root has authorized General Davis, at San Juan, Puerto Rico, “to give employment upon public works to surplus labor in Puerto Rico.” The authorization was telegraphed from Havana, Cuba.

— Cardinal Rampolla, the pope’s secretary of state, has written to the Duke of Norfolk that “the Vatican does not hold itself responsible for the attitude of the Italian Catholic press, which is hostile to Great Britain.”

— It is dispatched that in China “the ascendancy of the anti-foreign party is becoming more pronounced daily. The empress appears unable sufficiently to reward the officials who exhibit marked hostility to everything not Chinese.”

— Congress is still at sea in its efforts “to straighten out the tangle over Puerto Rico. It is admitted that the Republicans [in the Senate] do not expect to reach a conclusion till the return of the three senators who are now in Cuba, and that will be some time next week.”

— According to some authorities, “the highest mountain on the globe is not, as is generally supposed, Mt. Everest, but Mt. Hercules, on the Island of Papua, New Guinea, discovered by Captain Lawson, in 1881. According to Lawson, this mountain is 32,763 feet in height, or 3,781 feet higher than Mt. Everest.”

— The Wellesley (Mass.) College debt is about $96,000. By efforts of the alumnae during the last two years, more than $60,000 has been raised or pledged toward the incumbrance. John D. Rockefeller recently promised to give the college $100,000 as soon as its debt should be raised. An increase in the price of kerosene is now soon to be expected, to enable Mr. Rockefeller to clear just a little more than the amount of his gift.

— The springtide of immigration is now at its height. During the week ending March 10 more than 10,000 immigrants landed at the Barge Office in New York City. Three steamships—the “Bremen,” the “Rhein,” and the “Werra”—brought in on Thursday, March 8, 3,017 home-seekers. On the three preceding days 7,820 immigrants were admitted. More than half of these are Italians, and a large part are Croats and Polanders.

— March 19 John Arende Bingham, famous in the nation’s history,—former minister to Japan, former distinguished Ohio Congressman, one of the prosecutors of the assassins of President Lincoln, one of the leaders of the impeachment proceedings against President Johnson, and author of the XIVth amendment to the Constitution of the United States,—breathed his last at Cadiz, Ohio. He was eighty-five years old, having been born in Mercer, Pa., Jan. 21, 1815.

— It is said, upon good authority, that “Tolstoi, in his old age, is modifying his social views. In his last message to the world, ‘Self-sacrifice,’ he despairingly admits the error of his doctrines, and the futility of the denial that he has practiced. He says that the task of reforming mankind through the medium of self-abnegation is too vast, too stupendous. He also speaks of the ingratitude of the poor, of their whimsical demands, of their utter lack of appreciation, and the absolute impossibility of noticeably lessening want and wretchedness.” He should have tried Christianity instead of socialism.

— A Chicago weekly, the Public, says that “the American war in the Philippines ended just before Congress met last December—so General Otis reported. At the time, we ventured to doubt, and intimated that, notwithstanding Otis’s report, the American people would continue to hear of military casualties. The intimation has been sadly verified, as the following comparative statement of casualties shows: killed to March 8, 1900, 447; killed to Nov. 30, 1899, 348. Killed since close of the war, 99. Wounded to March 8, 1900, 2,029; wounded to Nov. 30, 1899, 1,814. Wounded since close of the war, 215. From this comparison it appears that of the total number of Americans killed in the whole Philippine war, more than twenty per cent have been killed since the war ended!”

— The United States government has ordered 1,000 tons of rice and codfish sent to Puerto Rico, to relieve the famine there.

— The recent discovery of vast deposits of good coal in Alaska, where the price has been $125 a ton, is regarded as better than the discovery of gold deposits.

— Le Theatre Francais, the historical playhouse of Paris, was burned March 9. A rehearsal was in progress when the fire broke out, and one actress, being unable to escape, perished in the flames.

— The stepdaughter of Mayor Ashbridge, Philadelphia, Pa., was recently married at Grace Temple. About 2,000 invitations were sent out, and presents were given aggregating $35,000. Among the gifts were four grand and three upright pianos, and nineteen solid silver table services.

— The Ohio Secretary of State has “refused to issue articles of incorporation to the American Clay Manufacturing Company, better known as the sewer-pipe trust, on the ground that the charter of the company conflicts with the provisions of the Ohio anti-trust law.”

— August Belmont, head of the syndicate that is backing John D. McDonald, contractor for the New York Rapid Transit tunnel, has placed an insurance policy for $2,000,000 on Mr. McDonald’s life,—“to secure Mr. McDonald’s backers in case he should die within five years.” The annual premium on this immense policy is $90,000. McDonald is the most heavily insured man in the United States. It is said that “holders of tremendous life policies are few, the list of the heaviest known so far being as follows: John Wanamaker, Philadelphia, $1,500,000; George Vanderbilt, New York, $1,500,000; J. Reed Whipple, Boston, $800,000; Chauncey M. Depew, New York, $500,000; four members of the Havemeyer family, New York, $500,000; Dr. W. Seward Webb, New York, $250,000; George B. Forman, Buffalo, $500,000; George Eastman, Rochester, $500,000; John B. Stetson, Philadelphia, $700,000; Henry W. Hartman, Pittsburg, $500,000; James L. Gates, Milwaukee, $500,000; Henry C. Lytton, Chicago, $500,000.” It is truly astonishing how ready men are to accept and enjoy the life God has given them, and still how fearful they are that he will not be able to take care of that life as he sees fit.