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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 21, 1902

— An earthquake shock was felt in the vicinity of Austin, Tex., October 9.

— Forty-eight thousand and five hundred dollars in cash, and papers valued at $1,399,926, have been found in mail received at the Dead Letter office during the fiscal year recently ended.

— A strike on a railway running from Laredo, Mexico, to Mexico City, was settled by the Mexican government, which took control of the line, ordering out troops to preserve order and facilitate the movement of trains.

— In a recent address at Pittsburg, Attorney-General Knox said that it is in the power of Congress to pass laws to control the trusts without a Constitutional amendment; and that supervision of trusts and accurate reports of their operation should be made compulsory.

— News from Macedonia states that a final struggle for independence has begun in that country, twenty-two Macedonian villages being now in revolt against Turkish rule. A Turkish force sent against the revolutionists is reported to have been slaughtered.

— Accounts of another peasant uprising in Russia, in the province of Poltava, come by way of Berlin. A Socialist paper in that city receives news across the border that fierce conflicts have taken place between the peasants and the local military forces, many persons having been killed or wounded.

— A Washington telegram says, as regards the relations between Cuba and the United States, that “the best efforts of the State Department thus far have failed to secure the adhesion of the Cuban government to the treaty, which, by the terms of the Platt amendment, must be entered into between the two governments.”

— Attempted navigation of the air cost two more lives at Paris, France, October 13. The aeronauts were quite successful in propelling their air ship in various directions above the ground, but failed to maintain connection between the balloon and its car, the latter becoming detached and falling, with the aeronauts in it, to the ground.

— The “pious fund” controversy between Mexico and the United States, which is the first and only international dispute to come before The Hague tribunal, has been decided by that court in favor of the United States. By the terms of the decision Mexico must pay to this government $1,420,682 for California Jesuit missions, and in addition the yearly sum of $43,050 forever.

— Turkey having recently permitted two Russian war ships to pass through the Dardanelles, which passage is kept closed to the ships of other powers, apprehension is felt throughout the rest of Europe, and in England especially, that a secret understanding exists between Russia and Turkey, permitting the free passage of Russian war ships from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean. This would completely upset the naval equilibrium in the Mediterranean, and would constitute a grave menace to British interests.

— A loan of £35,000,000 is to be made by England to the Transvaal.

— Political contests in Porto Rico have led to riots at several places, in which a number of people have been shot.

— The journey from St. Petersburg, Russia, to Vladivostok, on the Pacific coast of Siberia, can now be made by rail in twelve and one-half days.

— The business section of Klamathon, a town in the lumber region of northern California, was destroyed by fire, October 14, the loss being $500,000.

— The Mexican mining town of Marfil has been destroyed by a flood, says a dispatch from Mexico City, the buildings being washed away and twenty people drowned.

— A dispatch from Cape Town states that 3,437 Cape Colony rebels who surrendered under the peace proclamation have been punished by disfranchisement for life.

— It is reported that the war in Colombia has resulted in the capture of President Marroquín by General Fernandez, who has seized the reins of government and proclaimed himself dictator.

— Stormy scenes marked the opening of the British Parliament, the Irish question being the theme about which the disturbance centered. It was declared that Ireland was on the brink of open revolt.

— Santos-Dumont, the aëronaut, proposes to make a trip from Paris to San Francisco in an air ship which he is now building, the consideration being that in case he is successful, he is to be paid the sum of $200,000.

— The two Presbyterian synods of Kentucky, which originated from the split in the Presbyterian ranks caused by the Civil War, came together in communion at Lexington for the first time since the war, October 16.

— Seven sailors were drowned in Lake Erie, October 14, by the sinking of the steamship “C. B. Lockwood” in a storm off Ashtabula, Ohio. The men attempted to reach land in a boat, which was swamped by the waves.

— A number of prominent buildings in Venice, including St. Mark’s church and the doge’s palace, are declared to be in urgent need of repairs to avert further catastrophes similar to that which befell the Campanile tower.

— The verdict of a coroner’s jury touching the cause of the fatality in connection with the accident to President Roosevelt’s carriage at Pittsfield, Mass., a short time ago, lays the blame upon the motorman of the car which struck the president’s carriage.

— The Swiss government will try by court-martial a number of men in the militia who refused to bear arms against rioters who were recently on a strike in Geneva. The men have the sympathy of their comrades in the militia, hundreds of whom are reported as declaring that if there is any court-martial, they will return their rifles and equipment to headquarters, and leave the militia service. The government, on the other hand, has issued an order directing that any member of the militia who willfully fails to report for duty when ordered shall be punished by being deprived of civil rights.

— It is estimated that Russian prisons contain no less than 12,000 aristocrats, while several thousand Italian noblemen are known to be confined in Italian penal establishments. In other European states the proportion of aristocratic criminals is also large.

— Reports of massacres of Christian missionaries and converts in the province of Hunan, China, are received by letter from one of the missionaries in that country, Rev. C. H. Dubs. The letter expressed the belief that the writer would soon share the fate of his dead co-laborers.

— Contrary to reports received last week, President Castro, of Venezuela, is still holding out against the revolutionary troops, but the latest advices state that his forces are cut off from the capital and surrounded on all sides, and the termination of the war seems only a question of a few days.

— The special commissioner appointed by the British government to inquire into the financial prospects of the Transvaal and Orange River colonies reports that the yearly output of gold from the Transvaal will largely exceed $100,000,000 when the mining industry has recovered from the effects of the late war.

— According to statements made by Mr. Edwin B. Mc Cowan, a mining expert who has spent several years in Alaska, worthless Klondike mining stock having a face value of $100,000,000, was foisted upon people in the United States last winter. “The people,” he says, “who have claims worth working in the Alaskan gold districts work them as individuals. When there is little or no more gold in sight, the claims are sold, and corporations organized, and the stock is floated and sold to gullible people. In all my experience I never heard of one of these companies paying dividends.”

— The British educational bill which has arrayed in opposition to each other the Church of England and the nonconformists, was denounced at a mass meeting convened by the London Progressive Council, and also by meetings at the Metropolitan Tabernacle and at St. James Hall, London, October 14. The same day Mr. Balfour, the premier, said in a speech at Manchester that the bill was a necessity, declaring that the existing educational system of England is chaotic, ineffectual, and utterly behind the age; and that it has made England the laughingstock of every advanced nation in Europe and America. Premier Balfour and Secretary Chamberlain say that the reason religion is to be taught in the public schools is because the majority of the people want religious teaching in those schools; and that while the people are not agreed on the question of what religion should be taught, the only alternative is a system permitting denominational teaching in schools wholly supported by taxation, as well as encouraging it in schools supported partly by taxes. People in the United States might do well to take warning from the position of the English nonconformists and not favor religious teaching in the public schools before they have settled the question as to what religion shall be taught.

— The sultan, says a Vienna dispatch, has been writing his autobiography, which is to be published after his death. The announcement says that the book “will fall like a bombshell on the civilized world,” because in it “he records without reserve the deceptions practiced by Christian statesmen in trying to gain the support of Mohammedan Turkey.”

— One of the darkest features of the outlook for temperance reform in this country is the hold which intemperance has secured in the ranks of “high society.” Drunkenness prevails to an alarming extent among even the women in this class. “No one who has any regard for truth can deny,” said the president of the Catholic Total Abstinence Union in a recent address, “that there is to-day gross intemperance in high society, and even among women of the highest grades of society. Intemperance among men,” he continued, “is bad, among women it is worse, and among women of high social position it is one of the worst evils that afflict humanity. Its influence reaches into all grades of society, blighting the good that domestic life should bring to the community and the nation, and sowing the seeds of moral deformity and manifold immorality. The woman, as queen of the domestic kingdom, should give character and virtue to the family at the home. If she is a slave to intoxicants, her realm is a hotbed of disorder, vice, and misery, and the state infallibly reaps disastrous results.” It is unquestionably the demands made upon the nervous system by “high society” life that lead to the first use of stimulants and the first step in a course that ends in confirmed habits of intemperance. “Temperance in all things” is the only safe rule.