Current Mention

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 10, 1903

—A “war college” is to be built at the national capital, at a cost of 1,260,000 for buildings and grounds.

—A case of bubonic plague has been reported from a town in Lower California, near the United States border.

—Immense loss of stock on the plains of Kansas and Colorado has been caused by a recent blizzard which swept over that region.

—Slaves in the Fiji Islands have appealed to King Edward of England, asking to be freed from bondage, and submitting a list of their grievances.

—A force of enumerators numbering 8,000 has begun on a census of the Philippine Islands, which it is hoped will be completed by the end of June.

—Canadian trade is said to be at present on the top wave of prosperity; railroads are unequal to demands made upon them, and customs revenues show a notable increase.

—The New Zealand arbitration law is declared to be a failure by labor unions in that country, which say they can not recommend it for other lands. It prevents “militant unionism.”

—European dispatches of March 2 state that there is a general belief at the Hungarian capital that the break-up of Turkey is at hand, and that the end can not be delayed beyond three or four years.

—The Mexican volcano of Popocatapetl, which was owned by a Mexican general named Ochoa, has been sold to an American syndicate under Standard Oil control, for the sum of $5,000,000. The value of the mountain lies in its immense sulphur deposits.

—The long senatorial deadlock in Delaware was ended March 3 by the election of two United States senators, one of whom is a man selected by Addicks, whose determination to be senator caused the deadlock. The result is regarded as a triumph for Addicks.

—There is prospect of an unprecedented height of water in the lower Mississippi this month, according to opinions expressed in New Orleans. From Cairo to the Gulf, however, the country bordering the river is now protected by levees. The St. Francis basin in Arkansas, which heretofore has received a vast flood from the Mississippi overflows, is now closed from the river by levees, and an unusual rise of water in the river below that district has resulted.

—A wealthy African explorer named Cavendish has brought suit in London, England, to recover possession of his estate, which had passed almost wholly into the control of two spiritualists, a man and his wife, named Strutt. Mrs. Strutt, by the aid of a “planchette,” obtained messages purporting to be from the dead mother of Cavendish, advising him as to what he should do with his property; also other messages alleged to be from angels in heaven. The outcome was a deed of most of his property to the Strutts.

—The typhoid epidemic at Ithaca, N. Y., still continues in the town, though it is believed to be under control at the university. One hundred of the twelve hundred students who left have returned to their studies. More than twenty students have died.

—By a vote of forty-six to ninety-four the Maine State Legislature on March 5 rejected a proposition which had been brought before it to resubmit the question of prohibition to the decision of a popular vote in that State.

—The extra session of the Senate called by President Roosevelt convened March 5, and among the new members sworn in was Senator-elect Smoot, of Utah, to the seating of whom no senator made any objection.

—The appropriations made by the fifty-seventh Congress of the United States, just ended, aggregate $1,550,000,000. The cost of governing the country has increased fifty per cent in the last twelve years.

—Ominous rumors of a new Boxer movement continue to come from China. The latest report says it is believed that Prince Tuan designs to sweep down from the north with a vast host of fanatics, take possession of Peking, and then begin a war of extermination against all foreigners. It is said there is no power at Peking sufficient to cope with the insurrection.

—A threatened strike on the Wabash railway system, which had been planned for March 4, was prevented by an injunction obtained from a United States court by President Ramsay of the railway, enjoining all the officials of the union firemen and union trainmen in the Wabash service from ordering a strike, or in any way, directly or indirectly, inducing the men to quit their work. If the principle on which this injunction order stands is maintained, it will do much to curtail the power of labor unions.

—The present outlook in this country is darkened by the shadow of two great prospective strikes, one in the Illinois coal fields, where 40,000 miners threaten to lay down their tools unless an advance in wages is given, the other in the structural iron industry, in which, should it occur, between 300,000 and 400,000 workmen will participate. In New York it is predicted that this great building strike, a “war of national scope between labor and capital,” is certain to begin on May 1. The structural iron unions demand higher wages, which the manufacturers are unwilling to grant.

—“The worship of wealth is supplanting the worship of God,” said the Rev. Newell Dwight Hillis before a Brooklyn congregation, as reported in New York press dispatches of March 5. “Now and then,” he added, by way of comment on this assertion, “we hear of a man stealing a railroad and the public applauds him for his cleverness. There seems to be a spirit of revision in this age. There is even a new version of the ten commandments, of which the chief seems to be, ‘Honor the almighty dollar that you may have yachts and lands and a life of ease, and steal everything in sight.’” Dr. Hillis’ remarks caused a decided sensation.