Current Mention

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 11, 1902

—The smoking of green tea in the form of cigarettes is said to be a growing form of dissipation in Russia.

—Santos-Dumont, of air-ship fame, has left France, and will conduct future experiments in England or in America.

—A number of the strikers who participated in the rioting in Barcelona, Spain, recently, were executed by the military authorities.

—The Iowa Senate has agreed to submit to the people of that State a proposition for a constitutional amendment allowing woman suffrage.

—The present session of Congress has broken all previous records as regards the number of bills introduced, which, up to March 6, was 12,198.

—A Detroit, Mich., city ordinance reducing street-car fares in that city to three cents, has been declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court.

—Colonel Francis W. Parker, widely known in his country as an educator, died in Pass Christian, Miss., March 2. The body was brought North, and buried in New Hampshire.

—An unprecedented amount of money was given for philanthropic purposes last year, the total sum, according to the Chicago Tribune, being $123,888,032. Of this vast amount, education received $68,450,961; charities, $22,217,470; museums and art galleries, $11,133,112; libraries, $15,388,700. The churches received $6,298,489.

—A tariff will be imposed upon imports from the Philippines, equal to seventy-five per cent of the Dingley tariff rates.

—The establishment of an order of Paulist fathers among the Episcopalian clergy is urged by many prominent men in that denomination.

—The United States has notified Turkey that the captors of Miss Stone must be punished. The Sultan has replied, repudiating all responsibility, and denying all liability in the matter.

—A bartender of Duluth, Minn., was instantly killed by an electric shock received over a telephone through which he was talking, March 5. The telephone wire had become crossed with an electric light wire.

—Members of the W. C. T. U. in Newark, N. J., held an all-day prayer-meeting, March 5, praying for the conversion of Bishop Potter and Dr. Rainsford, of New York City, who do not believe in the efficacy of prohibition.

—From Musgrove, Australia, a theatrical manager has sent word to Mrs. Patrick Campbell, an actress now in New York City, that the bubonic plague is raging there to such an extent that the theaters have been closed.

—The Russian governor of Finland is apparently determined to deprive that unhappy country of its native press. Many Finnish papers are being suspended, and some have been permanently suppressed. Thus the rapid absorption of Finland by the Russian empire continues.

—A serious street railway strike, attended with considerable rioting, prevailed for several days last week in Norfolk, Va. For some weeks a street railway strike has been in force in Terre Haute, Ind., the purpose being to compel the railway company to recognize union labor.

—A lawyer of New York City has received a letter from a relative in Russia, affirming that Count Tolstoi died February 15, and that the Russian press is suppressing the news. “Great tumults,” says the letter, “are expected in Russia, and there are rumors of a revolution.”

—A passenger train on the Southern Pacific Railway was thrown from the track while running at high speed, near Maxon Station, Tex., at three o’clock, Friday morning, and was totally wrecked, with the exception of two cars. Fifteen persons were killed and twenty-eight were injured.

—More trouble is brewing in China. A rebellion has broken out near the city of Nan Ning, seventy miles north of the Gulf of Tonquin, and the situation there is admitted to be grave. An edict has been issued commanding the authorities to give protection to missionaries and other foreigners.

—The Washington government has at last given an audience to some Boer envoys, Messrs. Wolmarans and Wessels, who held a conference with Secretary Hay, and later with President Roosevelt. While nothing was promised the envoys, the latter feel much encouraged in their hope for American intervention in South Africa.

—Some feeling of jealousy seems to have been aroused in British minds by the enthusiastic reception accorded Prince Henry in this country, and it is feared in England that the United States may be led to view with too much complacency German aggressions in the far East, where it is declared Germany is acting in harmony with Russia.

—An American general in the Philippines has established reconcentrado camps in the island of Samar, as the most effective way of bringing the natives into subjection to American authority. General Weyler’s example in Cuba, so much talked against a few years ago, has now been followed by England in South Africa, and by the United States in the Philippines.

—The leading transatlantic steamship lines, with the exception of the White Star and Cunard lines, which are expected to join with the others soon, have come to an agreement respecting passenger rates for the coming season. On the fast boats the minimum summer rate will be, for first-class passage, $110, and for second-class, $57.50. The lowest rate announced is $75 for first-class passage, and $47.50 for second-class passage, on the ships of the Holland-American line.

—A “railway telephone” has been invented by a man named Tillman, and successfully tried near Fulton, Ky. A railway train was stopped, the telephone wire connected with the regular telegraph wire, and conversation was held with the chief operator of the Illinois Central Railway, who was in the railway station in Chicago, four hundred miles distant. Apparently telephonic and telegraphic messages traveling over the same wire simultaneously do not at all interfere with each other.

—The degree of LL. D. has been conferred on Prince Henry by Harvard University.

—Five men were killed and others injured by an explosion in the Cushburg mine at Monongahela, Pa.

—The steamship “Majestic” encountered an enormous wave on her last voyage, which damaged deck fixtures, and injured a number of passengers.

—Congress is expected to authorize the construction of three new battle-ships, two armored cruisers, six gunboats, and eleven other naval vessels.

—Henry Tillson, of Syracuse, N. Y., has gone insane from trying to read all that the papers have been saying about Prince Henry. He was sent to an asylum at Ogdensburg.

—Colombia, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica are reported to have formed a combine to put up the price of isthmian land which will be wanted for the building of the contemplated interoceanic canal.

—The Belgian steamship “Waesland” was sunk by collision with a British steamer off the English coast, March 6. The “Waesland” was bound from Liverpool to New York. The accident occurred in a dense fog. Two passengers were drowned.

—Several avalanches swept down Smuggler Mountain, near Telluride, Colo., February 28, wrecking the Liberty Bell mine, and killing a number of men—about twenty, report says—and injuring others. It will be four months before work at the mine can be resumed.

—The effort made in Congress to help Cuba by reducing the tariff on Cuban sugar, is at present defeated by the beet-sugar manufacturers. The President, however, favors reciprocity with Cuba, and some move to secure Congressional action is expected on his part.

—The Cunard Steamship Company has chartered the steamship “Elbe” to sail from Southampton to Fayal, in the Azores Islands, and secure the passengers and mail on board the steamship “Etruria,” which broke her propeller shaft at sea, February 26, and was reported as being in tow of another steamship, bound for that port.

—The people of Ontario, who have once voted on the expediency of adopting prohibition in that country, are soon to vote again on the same question. The previous vote was taken in 1898, but the campaign failed to develop great interest, and only twenty-three voters out of each one hundred went to the polls. The great majority of these were for prohibition, but it was decided to be practically no vote.

—A case of poisoning by taking “headache powders,” which recalls the Barnet case about which so much was said in connection with the Molineux murder trial in New York City, is reported from the village of Lowell, Mich. A woman named Klump took a sample powder, and died a few hours later, after much suffering. An investigation showed that strychnine or some similar poison had been mixed with the powder. The powder was mailed to Mrs. Klump in an envelope which appeared to have been addressed by a woman. The public ought to learn that there are better ways of curing headache than by taking powders.

—Dr. Herbert F. Fisk, principal of the academy of Northwestern University, at Chicago, recently addressed the boys of the academy on the subject of tobacco using, condemning the practice in severe terms, and requesting them to abstain entirely from this indulgence. He gives this statement of his reasons for such action: “Whatever may be thought of the use of tobacco by grown men, there can be no division of opinion among educators as to the injurious effects, both physical and mental, when tobacco is used by boys or by young men who have not yet reached maturity. In many cases it produces serious weakness of the heart. On this account it is prohibited to athletes while in training for competition games. Not less distinctly marked are the effects of tobacco using upon the scholarship than upon the physical endurance of students. It is rarely the case that a student who makes any use of tobacco attains to superior scholarship. A complete tabulation of the scholarship and tobacco-using habits of young men in the academy at one time discovered that out of 300 young men twenty-two per cent of the whole number made more or less use of tobacco. Among the seventy-five having the highest standing only two, or three per cent, were tobacco-users. Among the second quarter in scholarship there were eleven, or fourteen per cent. Among the third quarter fifteen, or twenty-one per cent, while among the lowest quarter there were forty-two, or fifty-seven per cent. Of all forms of tobacco using, cigarettes are without question the most harmful.”