Current Mention

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 1, 1902

— Four negroes were killed in a race war at Madrid Bend, Ky., March 20.

— Massachusetts has the first law in the world prohibiting vivisection in the schools.

— Dr. Talmage, the well-known pulpit orator, is reported dangerously ill at his home in Washington, D. C.

— There is a scourge of cholera at Manila. Forty cases of the disease, with thirty deaths, were reported up to March 25.

— A passenger train on the Southern Railway was wrecked by a landslide at Covesville, Va., March 25. The train was destroyed, and two persons were killed.

— A Kentucky inventor has devised a machine for sending wireless telephone messages, and has demonstrated by experiment that such messages can be sent for short distances.

— Thirty rioters connected with the petroleum works at Batum, Russia, were killed by Russian troops, March 22, while attempting to release other rioters who had been imprisoned.

— Nine men who were at work excavating for the foundation of a gas plant in Cleveland, Ohio, were buried by the caving in of the earth above them, March 25, and seven were taken out dead.

— Assurances are given that a wireless telegraph station is soon to be established at Cape Breton, and that by early summer transatlantic telegraph service will be in regular operation between that point and Great Britain.

— It is reported that the pope is preparing a constitution for the governing of the religious orders in the Philippines, which constitution will answer all questions relating to the church property, taxes, schools, etc., in the archipelago. Evidently the pope does not anticipate that any serious disturbance of existing religious conditions is to be made by the United States.

— The Burlington Railroad Company, which has heretofore prohibited the use of liquor by employees who had anything to do with the operating of trains, has now extended the prohibition to every department of the service. The new rule reads: “The use of intoxicants by employees while on duty is prohibited. Their habitual use or the frequenting of places where they are sold is sufficient cause for dismissal.”

— A new one-cent postal card is now being printed at the bureau of engraving and printing, and when the first issue of 4,000,000 has been counted and bundled, the new card will be placed on sale. Its distinctive feature is that the new card contains a vignette of President McKinley in lieu of President Jefferson’s portrait. The issue of the Jefferson card will be discontinued when the present stock on hand is exhausted.

— France and Russia have interrogated the powers of Europe and the United States, on the point of the attitude they will assume, individually, in the event of war over China with England and Japan. It is believed that if Germany and the United States would promise to remain neutral in such an event, war would break out in the near future. But neither Germany nor the United States will bind itself by any promise.

— An insurrection which has assumed serious proportions is in progress in southern China. Report says that the Chinese troops are wholly incapable of suppressing the uprising, and are defeated by the insurgents in almost every engagement.

— The lower house of Congress adopted recently, for the fourth time, a resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution providing for the election of United States senators by popular vote. No demand was made for time to debate the resolution.

— The Japanese government has been conducting experiments bearing on the question of the relation between the mosquito and the spread of malaria. A battalion of soldiers, it is stated, was completely protected from mosquitoes for 161 days during the malarial season. It entirely escaped the disease. An unprotected battalion at the same place had 259 cases of malaria.

— Neeley, Rathbone, and Reeves, who were respectively treasurer, director, and auditor in the Cuban post office at Havana, were convicted in the United States court in that city of having embezzled post-office funds, and on March 24 were sentenced to ten years each in the penitentiary, and in addition were heavily fined. Thus ends one of the most noted cases before the United States courts within recent years.

— Cecil J. Rhodes, who has for several years been foremost in the public eye in connection with affairs in South Africa, died at Cape Town, March 26. Mr. Rhodes’s ambition, to which he devoted his untiring energy during his later years, was the extension of the British empire from Cape Town to Cairo. He was a leading figure in South African politics, and was the official from whom was secured the grant of land upon which is established the Matabele Mission.

— James G. Fair, who before his death owned an estate in California valued at $20,000,000, made a will which provided that his children should have only the income from this estate, so that the latter should remain intact, and be passed down to his posterity. His children attacked the will in the California courts, and now the supreme court of the State has set aside the trust clause in the will, thus practically deciding that a man cannot entail his property in California.

— A rigid enforcement of the Sunday law is being tried in the Pointe Coupee parish of southern Louisiana, says a New Orleans dispatch. The merchants of the parish, to the number of one hundred and fifty, were all arrested Saturday, March 22, charged with being Sunday-law violators, and after sixty-eight of them had been tried, a conviction following in every case, the rest pleaded guilty. A fine of twenty-five dollars besides costs was imposed in each case; and the total sum thus collected, $3,750, was turned over to the public-school fund. It would not be strange if public-school officials in that parish should hereafter be zealous for a vigorous enforcement of the law.

— No end of trouble is attending the work of blasting the rapid transit tunnel through the underlying rock of New York City, according to reports which appear in New York papers. Residents who live in the vicinity of the intersection of Broadway and One Hundred and Fourth Street are in a state of terror from the violent blasting going on underneath their residences, which breaks windows, cracks walls, and jars down sections of ceilings, throws down pictures from the walls and dishes from the tables, breaks locks in the doors, and wrenches the woodwork out of place, and, in general, renders their homes miserable and unsafe places of abode. Formal complaints have been made by them to the mayor and to the board of health, but without any satisfaction thus far.

— A Washington telegram announces that at a meeting held at the White House, March 24, the birthday of the forthcoming Cuban republic was decided upon, the date fixed being May 20. The administration of Cuban affairs will then be turned over to the newly elected Cuban officials, and the American army of occupation will be withdrawn, but a small force of soldiers will be left, apparently as a sort of police force, to maintain order. “President Roosevelt informed President Palma,” says the dispatch, “that this country had no intention of keeping any considerable body of troops in the island,” and that the wishes of the Cuban government “would be largely, if not entirely, deferred to.” An American minister-plenipotentiary at Havana will be appointed, and this act will be a formal notice to the world that the United States acknowledges the independence of Cuba. The Old World powers will then follow suit, and appoint representatives at the Cuban capital.