Current Mention

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Michigan · Apr 15, 1902

— Cholera continues to spread in the Philippine Islands.

— Two barges with their crews are reported lost in a gale off the New Jersey coast, April 9.

— A strike of union bricklayers has begun at Chicago, the men demanding fifty-five cents an hour pay.

— President Roosevelt was a visitor at the Charlestown exposition, April 8, where he was warmly welcomed by the managers and the populace.

— Miss Ellen Stone, the kidnapped missionary, was among the passengers that arrived at New York City on the “Deutschland,” April 10.

— Italy has sentenced an anarchist named Malatesta to five months’ imprisonment for writing articles applauding the murder of President McKinley.

— The Rev. T. De Witt Talmage is critically ill at his home in Washington, D. C., and a fatal termination of the case is expected by those at his bedside.

— It is reported from Pretoria that peace has been arranged in South Africa, the Boer leaders who have been in conference having accepted the British terms. The nature of these terms is not yet disclosed.

— Five members of a sheriff’s posse in Hancock County, Tenn., were killed while the posse was making an arrest of a desperate character who was wanted on a charge of murder. The criminal was assisted by his friends in resisting arrest.

— The State of Washington has joined in the fight to prevent the combine of the Great Northern and Northern Pacific Railways, the attorney-general of the State having asked leave of the supreme court of the United States to begin suit against the railways to this end.

— At Lawton, O. T., white residents expelled forty negroes after a fierce fight, April 6, one negro being fatally hurt. The negroes armed themselves, and a race war seemed imminent, to avert which a call was sent to the governor for troops. The trouble grew out of an attempt of the negroes to vote at an election, April 1.

— The Belgian government is reported to be seriously alarmed at the attitude of the people, who are bent on securing universal suffrage. Serious rioting has occurred in Brussels, and the government fears a repetition of the disturbances of 1893 and 1899, when a revolution was narrowly averted. The militia reserves are suspected of sympathizing with the rioters.

— The longest and most powerful chain ever constructed, so it is claimed, was recently finished at Lebanon, Pa., the headquarters of the Standard Chain Company. It was made for the Eastern Shipbuilding Company of New London, Conn., and a duplicate will be made for the same company, the two great chains to be used on two large steamships which are to run between San Francisco and ports of Japan. The chain is 330 fathoms in length, and was tested by being subjected to a strain of 600,000 pounds.

— The Sunday-closing law was strictly enforced in New York City, Sunday, April 6.

— A New York millionaire and bank president, Mr. Warner Van Norden, recently made a rather sensational address to a company of clergymen in New York City, in which he declared that large churches did not save souls, and advised that ministers devote more time to the work of rescuing millionaires from selfish greed.

— The State of Virginia has followed the lead of Alabama in making a constitutional provision shutting illiterate negroes away from the polls, while allowing suffrage to illiterate whites. There is a plain provision of the national Constitution which forbids such discrimination, declaring that “the right of the citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

— The lower house of Congress, on April 7, re-enacted the Chinese exclusion law, with amendments to the original measure which considerably increased its drastic character. Not only pure-blooded Chinese, but all Chinese of mixed blood, are now barred under this law, and the law is extended to the Philippines and other island possessions of the United States, excluding the Chinese from these likewise. Nor can Chinese laborers in the American colonies come into the United States.

— While Cuba is to become nominally an independent country on the twentieth day of the coming May, the general opinion prevails, if newspapers speak the truth, that even this nominal independence will be short-lived, and that in a few years’ time at the most, Cuba will be annexed to the United States. The fact that the United States is virtually the guardian of the island, and that American interests in Cuba must be greatly extended under the opportunities now open, makes this forecast of its political status a practical certainty.

— Among the ideas which the late Cecil Rhodes entertained and had in view as the primary end of his ambition, if we may believe the statements made by his nearest associates, was that of a combination of English and American millionaires in a secret society modeled after the Jesuit order, for controlling the world under an Anglo-American alliance. Rich men were to leave their money to this society instead of to “undeserving relatives.” Most of us can see little reason why the world should be brought any more under the dominance of wealth than it is already.

— A statute has been recently passed by the Alabama Legislature which it is thought may in some degree provide a legal substitute for lynching in that State. It authorizes the circuit courts to hold special sessions for the trial of prisoners charged with criminal assault. The first case under this new law was tried March 31, the prisoner being a negro. A special grand jury was impaneled, which in half an hour presented an indictment; the court was convened in special session, and the conviction of the prisoner, with sentence of hanging, speedily followed.

— A dispatch dated at London, April 5, gives the following particulars touching the will of the late Cecil Rhodes: “The will of the Right-Hon. Cecil J. Rhodes provides for the establishment of colonial scholarships; for two scholarships to each of the present States and Territories of the United States, and for five scholarships for students of German birth. All the scholarships are for education at Oxford. The German students are to be nominated by Emperor William. Commenting on his bequest, Mr. Rhodes, in a codicil telegraphed from South Africa, said: ‘For a good understanding between England, Germany, and the United States will secure the peace of the world, and educational relations form the strongest tie.’”