Current Mention

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 9, 1902

— Thirty-six persons committed suicide in Chicago during the month of November.

— The American baseball league has decided not to allow Sunday games the coming season.

— Fourteen men lost their lives in a fire which destroyed the interior of the Lincoln hotel, Chicago, in the early morning of December 4.

— Thomas B. Reed, the well-known ex-politician, is dangerously ill at his home in Washington, D. C., with but slight prospect of recovery.

— Great Britain and Germany have begun coercive measures against Venezuela to secure payment of long-standing claims against that country.

— According to the London Mail, it is now possible to manufacture artificial rubies which in appearance are fully equal to the natural stones. A demonstration of the process was made recently at the Académie des Sciences in Paris.

— According to the report just made by Secretary Wilson, of the agricultural bureau, it has been demonstrated that tea can be successfully grown in the United States.

— The strike arbitration commission appointed by President Roosevelt is still conducting its investigation of the conditions of the coal-mining industry, and its report is not expected before 1903.

— Two of the largest guns on the battle ship “Texas” exploded during practice recently off the Virginia coast, and only heroic work by the gunners saved the ship and the lives of those on board. The “Texas” had recently been overhauled, and had put to sea on a trial trip.

— Turkey has ordered from the Krupp gun works sixteen batteries of quick-firing field guns, this being the first step in the rearmament of the Turkish artillery. Two hundred and twenty thousand Mauser rifles have also been purchased. The impression prevails at Constantinople that a serious situation in Macedonia and the Balkans will have to be faced in the spring.

— A Catholic journal in Berlin claims to have definite information that the present Reichstag will pass a resolution asking the German government to repeal the anti-Jesuit law, and that the Bundesrath will consent to the repeal. The “center,” or Catholic, party in the Reichstag has tried for years to secure the repeal of this law, which banished the Jesuits from the country.

— By a recent decision of the appellate court at Rochester, N. Y., Catholic orphan asylums in that State are to be supported by public taxation. The case was brought into court by a member of the American Protective Association, who sought to prevent payment from the city funds of Rochester of four nuns employed as teachers in the St. Mary’s Boys’ Orphan Asylum.

— Secretary-of-War Root, in his report on military affairs, recommends the re-establishment of the army canteen, which Congress had been moved to abolish at the instance of the W. C. T. U. and other temperance reformers. Secretary Root says that from numerous reports, he has arrived at the conclusion that the effect of the abolition of the canteen system is to drive the soldiers to vile resorts outside of camp, where they obtain intoxicants and are brought in contact with all kinds of vicious characters.

— The president’s annual message to Congress, which was read before the two branches of that body on December 2, considers the following questions: The regulation of the trusts; tariff revision; reciprocity treaties; the labor question; arbitration; the isthmian canal; Pacific cable legislation; Porto Rico and the Philippines; the army and navy; postal affairs; national aid to irrigation; scientific aid to farmers; lands for home builders; and better laws for Alaska. The chief interest in the message centers about the president’s proposition to regulate the trusts, which he believes Congress has the power and authority to do. It is stated that the leading trust representatives scoff at the idea of being brought under the control of Congress, and will have a powerful lobby at Washington to prevent such legislation as the president’s message suggests.