Current Mention

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 29, 1906

— The largest battle-ship in the world, the “Satsuma,” was launched in Japan November 15. It is said to embody all the lessons of the last war.

— The damage done by a storm in the vicinity of Paris, November 1, amounts to $5,000,000. The devastation extends along the coast for a distance of ninety miles.

— Diamond fields have been discovered in Elliott and Boyd Counties, Kentucky, which experts declare will rival or exceed in richness those of Kimberley, South Africa.

— Because of the constantly increasing disorders in Morocco, Great Britain and France have each sent a fleet to engage in a demonstration in Moorish waters. Spain has already two gunboats in that vicinity.

— The competing wireless telegraph companies, the Marconi and De Forrest, have been merged into one company, with a capital stock of $20,000,000. The best points of both systems are to be merged along with the stock.

— The friendly relations between Germany and the Vatican are threatened by the trouble in Poland. Germany insists that help be granted to suppress what it terms a rebellion; and the Poles are looking to the pope to help them.

— Fifteen leaders of the Russian Labor Council have been exiled to Siberia, and sentenced to the loss of all civil rights. M. Krustaleff, the leader of the council, was also regarded as the leader of the revolutionary movement.

— A split is threatened in the Catholic Church in France. A French journalist, Des Houx, a professed Catholic, but one who defies the pope, is planning the formation of a Galician Catholic Church. He has already secured some adherents to his cause among Catholic priests.

— The United States Census Bureau estimates the total wealth of the country in 1904 at $106,881,415,009. This shows an increase in wealth over the estimates for 1900 of nearly twenty-one per cent, and of sixty-four per cent over the estimate for 1890, when the total wealth was $65,037,091,197.

— The French government, assured of the success of the first Lebaudy air-ship, has built a second ship almost like the first. This new ship has just had its trial, and demonstrated that it, too, is a successful machine. It is an open secret in French army circles that the government is going ahead with the construction of eight or ten similar ships, to be used in time of war as an aerial squadron.

— That the labor unions will become a more potent factor in politics is evident. The twenty-sixth annual convention of the American Federation of Labor, recently held in Minneapolis, Minn., indorsed the political activity of President Gompers, who made speeches for or against candidates in the recent elections, according to whether he considered them favorable or unfavorable toward the interests of organized labor. It is also significant that at this convention the Rev. Charles Stelzle, superintendent of the department of church and labor of the Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church, was seated as a fraternal delegate.

— The second section of a through immigrant train on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was wrecked in a head-on collision with a freight-train, on November 12, while running at the rate of forty miles an hour, near Woodville, Ind. Fire broke out almost immediately, and forty-five of the forty-seven victims were burned. Thirty-eight others were injured.

— Anarchists are active in Rome. November 18, during an audience given by the pope in one of the halls of St. Peters, a bomb was thrown; owing to the largeness of the room but little damage was done. The next day the pope received letters threatening assassination. The purpose of the anarchists is to destroy all institutions supported by religion or by military forces. In a meeting held the twentieth they discussed the advisability of making a demonstration against the police during the approaching sojourn in Rome of King George, of Greece.

— Recently several great corporations have voluntarily increased the wages of many of their employees. The Pennsylvania Railroad system and other roads in the East granted a ten-per-cent raise; railroads entering Chicago have added four cents an hour to the switchmen’s pay. The Amalgamated Copper Company has substantially increased the pay of miners; and it is rumored that the great steel corporations, as well as other combines, contemplate similar advances in wages. Financial prosperity, and the increased cost of living, are given as reasons for this action. But in view of the pending national legislation, some consider it a shrewd move on the part of the great combines to mollify public animosity which is so stirred against the trusts.

— In addition to the fines recently imposed upon the Standard Oil Company by the Ohio courts, the grand jury of Hancock County has returned indictments against John D. Rockefeller and the three directors of the Standard Oil Company of Ohio, for violation of the Valentine anti-trust law. They have each given bond to appear in court on December 6. On the same day that this action was taken in Ohio, the United States government made the initial move to dissolve the Standard Oil Company’s alleged monopoly by filing in the United States Circuit Court at St. Louis a petition in equity against the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey and its seventy constituent corporations and partnerships, and seven defendants, including John D. Rockefeller and William Rockefeller, asking that the combination be declared unlawful, and in the future enjoined from entering into any contract or combination in restraint of trade. The suit is brought under the Sherman anti-trust act, which the Standard Oil Company and its constituent companies and the seven individual defendants are charged with violating. In a formal statement, Attorney-General Moody says that criminal prosecution is reserved for future consideration.