Current Events and News Notes
and Asia, a large number of idols being made every year in the city of Philadelphia. England and Germany are the other countries concerned in this traffic. The Tribune remarks that, “after all, it is a mere exchange of idols,” the heathen worshiping what they get from civilized people, and the latter worshiping what they get in exchange from the heathen. And both kinds of idolatry are but different forms of self-worship. — Typhoid fever has temporarily suspended educational work at Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y., eight hundred of the students having gone to their homes. Nearly five hundred cases of the disease have been reported, and deaths have been of almost daily occurrence. The university will install a filtration plant at a cost of $150,000. — The United States and Cuba have signed a treaty which gives to the former nation permanent possession of two naval stations, one at Bahia Honda on the north coast, fifty-five miles west of Havana, and the other at Guantanamo Bay, on the south coast, forty miles east of Santiago. This is a good comment on the character of Cuba’s “independence.” — In the United States Circuit Court at Chicago, February 18, Judge Grosscup gave a decision recognizing the existence of an unlawful beef trust in Chicago, and granting a preliminary injunction against the further continuance of the combine. Proceedings against the beef trust were begun some time ago by the United States government, and it is under these that the present decision has been obtained. — A new department of the government, to deal with the internal commerce of the United States, has been created at Washington, at the head of which has been placed Mr. George B. Cortelyou, former secretary to presidents McKinley and Roosevelt. The business interests concerned in the new department approximate in value twenty billion dollars. — Under a recent order to the New York police to enforce the provisions of the Sunday law in that city, a number of Jewish workshops were closed, and a considerable stir was occasioned among the Jews, who appealed to Mayor Lowe for relief. The authorities decided that Jews who observed the seventh day should be exempt from interference under the law, save that they should not be allowed to engage in Sunday selling of goods. — A Salt Lake City dispatch published in the New York Sun states that a “deal” has been made between Senator-elect Smoot of Utah and non-Mormon politicians in that State, by which they will seat “Apostle” Smoot in the United States Senate, in return for which he promises to advocate an amendment to the United States Constitution forbidding polygamy under penalty of disfranchisement, in addition to fine and imprisonment. Further, he pledges himself to see that the church influence is exerted to secure the return of Senator Kearns, or some man the latter may name, to the United States Senate two years later. It is affirmed that Senator Kearns has it in his power to seat Mr. Smoot in the Senate, or debar him from it at this time.