— The trial of C. F. W. Neely for postal fraud is now on at Havana, Cuba.
— The Mexican Central and the International railways will be consolidated.
— Helen Gould plans to build a sanitarium for children, at Idaho Springs, Colo.
— Some Americans offer $15,000,000 for copper mines in Rhodesia, South Africa.
— London has 878 cases of smallpox, thirty-four having been discovered the 10th inst.
— King Edward, of England, is in good health, and “anxious to have everybody know it.”
— The Hawaiians do not take kindly to the idea of establishing a leper colony in their islands.
— The war in South Africa still continues. No decided victories are reported for either party.
— The price of May wheat advances to 84¾ cents, or one cent above the high price for December.
— A bill is introduced in Congress which proposes to create the office of Fifth Assistant Postmaster General.
— At the request of Mr. Shaw, Mr. Gage will act as secretary of the United States Treasury until February 1.
— Herr Krupp, the German manufacturer of cannons, armor plate, etc., pays a tax on an income of $5,000,000 a year.
— General Funston arrived at San Francisco the 9th inst., from the Philippines. He is the man who captured Aguinaldo.
— Eleven Princeton (N. J.) University students are quarantined on account of smallpox. All the students are to be vaccinated.
— Louisiana sugar-cane growers held a meeting at New Orleans the 9th inst. “to protest against tariff concessions in favor of Cuba.”
— A Filipino powder factory, workshops, and war munitions at Ormoc, Leyte Island, are captured by a detachment of the Eleventh Infantry, U. S. A.
— Admiral Schley visited some friends in Savannah, Ga., the 10th inst., and was most enthusiastically received by the officials and people of that city.
— In a speech at Johannesburg, South Africa, Lord Milner, the British High Commissioner, declares that the Boer war “must be fought to a finish.”
— The name of the French vessel that sank the “Walla Walla” is the “Max,” which was also badly damaged by the collision. The number of victims may reach forty-seven.
— Cuban merchants appeal to Secretary Root “to have Congress enact a law giving the island tariff concessions,” declaring that otherwise the industries of the island will be ruined.
— The Lexington, Ky., chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy ask the local theater manager to bar “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” play, because it is “offensive to former slave owners.”
— The relations between American, Russian, and British authorities at New-Chwang, China, are strained because of a clash between American and Russian sailors there the 7th inst.
— In a Reichstag debate on the German budget Chancellor von Bülow scores Joseph Chamberlain’s recent criticism of German troops in the Franco-Prussian War. This closes an incident which might have proved serious.
— The United States House of Representatives passed the Nicaragua Canal bill the 9th inst. by a vote of 308 to 2. There will be ample time to discuss the Panama Canal route before the Senate passes the Nicaragua Canal bill.
— A Peking, China, dispatch, dated the 7th inst., states that “the imperial court is once more in the forbidden city, having made one of the most imposing entries known in this generation.” Foreign spectators were allowed extraordinary privileges.29
— The British now have 41,000 Boer prisoners.
— During 1901 there were 142,514 cars of all kinds built in the United States.
— The receipts of the New York City post-office during 1901 were over $11,000,000.
— Arizona capitalists will erect a large sanitarium for consumptives at Sunbath, Colo.
— The United States will send 200 more teachers and other employees to Manila the 15th inst.
— The shops of Buda-Pesth were recently raided by an army of 2,000 of the unemployed, 130 shops being looted.
— Argentina suspends diplomatic relations with Chile, and orders her army and navy to be placed upon a war footing.
— About 54,000,000 tons of hard coal and nearly 220,000,000 tons of soft coal were mined in the United States last year.
— William J. Bryan and Mayor Johnson addressed a pro-Boer meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, the 5th inst., which was attended by 4,000 persons.
— The citizens of Denver, Colo., organize a Safety Committee, “as a protection against criminals, with which the city has been infested for the past year.”
— The Pacific Coast members of Congress will present a bill “to prevent Chinamen, other than officers or those already here, from coming to this country.”
— The Public Instruction Department of Mexico City recently “suppressed the study of Latin in the great preparatory school, and replaced it with English.”
— Professor Loeb, of the University of Chicago, claims to have discovered, as the result of ten years’ experiments, that “electricity, and not heat, is the life energy.”
— The “Alfonso,” a British steamer, and the “Vilelva,” a Spanish vessel, collided off the coast of Portugal the 8th inst. The boats sank, and nineteen men were drowned.
— Fifteen were killed and sixteen injured (two fatally) in a collision between two passenger trains in the Park Avenue tunnel of the New York Central road at New York.
— The residence of the Venezuelan Minister of Finance was wrecked by a bomb the 7th inst. No one was injured. General Juan Pietri, who has been working against President Castro, has been arrested.
— It is reported that “dissatisfaction among the working classes in Spain is spreading, and a general strike of all trades has been ordered. Martial law has been proclaimed in several places, and riots are frequent.”
— British dispatches show that, according to corrected lists, the British casualties at Zefontein the 25th ult. were 61 killed, 54 wounded, and 245 captured, or practically the annihilation of the four British companies engaged.
— The London Saturday Review in a recent editorial, “advises Great Britain to form a working alliance with Germany,” in order to check “the continued and apparently inevitable advance of the United States into South America.”
— King Edward will use the $1,000,000 placed at his disposal by Sir Ernest Cassel, in the construction of a home for consumptives. Sir Cassel is a naturalized Englishman, born in France, and “one of England’s wealthiest Jewish financiers.”
— Stephen Paine, the colored fireman of Chicago who “conceived the idea of the ‘sliding pole,’ which is a part of the equipment of the fire stations in nearly every city,” has been retired on a pension of $47.50 a month. He is seventy years old.
— Princess Louise, daughter of King Leopold of Belgium, is “pronounced hopelessly insane. She was divorced from her husband, Prince Philip of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and has been practically a prisoner in a retreat near Dresden for two years.”
— General Botha has sent a note to all Boer commandos “requesting them to keep on fighting, for the British Parliament is to be asked for another war vote, which will induce the British nation to demand that the war in South Africa be stopped.” He orders the Boers to “retard the work of extending the British blockhouses at any cost.”
— Industrial depression prevails in Holland, thousands being out of work. According to an exchange, the Salvation Army “is providing food for an average of a thousand persons in each of the four leading cities of the country—Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam, and Utrecht.” The Salvation Army is certainly to be commended for the vast amount of good it does throughout the world.
— The Standard Oil people are seeking a franchise for a gas plant in Paris.
— Prince Ferdinand, of Bulgaria, asks M. Daneff, of the outgoing Cabinet, to form a new one.
— The William McKinley National Memorial Arch Association petitions Congress for $25,000.
— The City Council of Cleveland, Ohio, passes an ordinance calling for three-cent street railway fares.
— Seventeen miners were entombed alive by the caving in of a mine at Negaunee, Mich., the 7th inst.
— Congress may adopt some plan to relieve the President from “the importunities of office-seekers.”
— The desirability of having a permanent Census Bureau is being strongly advocated in Washington.
— Prof. Nicholas M. Butler is elected president of Columbia University, New York, to succeed Seth Low.
— Canadian forces going to South Africa adopt American medical and hospital equipments for troops in the field.
— Turkey pays $7,500 to the mother of Lenz, the American bicyclist who was murdered in Armenia several years ago.
— Jean de Bloch, “father of the Peace Conference,” and one of the Czar’s advisers, died in Russia the 7th inst.
— Chicago’s mayor and chief of police are opposing the secret society recently formed by the policemen of that city.
— A New York syndicate organizes the Trust Company of the Republic, to loan money to farmers, taking their crops as security.
— According to a census bulletin issued the 7th inst., the population of the United States and its colonies in 1900 was 84,233,069.
— Chile threatens to sever diplomatic relations with Mexico “if the Pan-American Congress tries to adopt compulsory arbitration.”
— Admiral Schley appeals to the President from the decision of the majority of the Court of Inquiry. The President will consider the matter.
— The St. Mary’s River Lumber Company secures 100,000 acres of crown lands at Clyde River, Nova Scotia. It now owns 265,000 acres in all.
— In an address at Wooster, Ohio, the 6th inst., William J. Bryan advocated “a continuation of the fight against imperialism and the money power.”
— The Washington authorities have received “copies of a proclamation from the Filipinos, signed by nine American deserters, asking comrades to come over and join them.” The war still continues.
— A German Mormon Conference assembled in Berlin the 5th inst. “under the leadership of Hugh J. Cannon, son of the late George Q. Cannon.” The Mormons claim to have 2,000 followers in Germany.
— The District of Columbia started the new year with a new code of laws. Divorce will hereafter be granted for infidelity only. Desertion, drunkenness, and cruelty will not be considered sufficient ground for separation.
— An exchange states that “the total loss in the British army in South Africa, from the beginning of the war to December, including deaths from disease, etc., aggregates 24,290.” Most of the 64,330 men sent home as invalids, have recovered, and gone back to the front.
— The German cruiser “Gazelle,” bound for China, is ordered to South America. “The strength of the German naval force in Venezuelan waters will now be five ships with 107 guns and 1,740 men.” Germany, however, has the moral support of the United States in all her movements in that district.
— In a recent sermon in the City Temple, of London, Dr. Joseph Parker “devoted considerable time to New Year greetings to President Roosevelt, as follows: ‘Great Britain and Ireland salute their young sister America, and rejoice that this message needs no translation: “Hail to the King-President, made king on the confidence and love of a united nation, a king whose crown glitters with diamonds of personal love, loyalty, and devotion.” God save the President of the United States.’”
— A Vienna dispatch of the 9th inst. states that the Allgemeine Zeitung’s Sofia correspondent “asserts, despite denials, that it is a fact that Miss Stone was liberated ten days ago, and that the full ransom demanded for her release was paid; that she embarked at Salonica for Genoa, en route to America. The Porte has requested that the matter be kept secret so that the payment of the ransom may not encourage the kidnapping of foreigners.” But other dispatches, dated the 10th inst., state that negotiations for her release are still in progress.
— Mr. Wm. E. Curtis, correspondent of the Chicago Record-Herald, has spent several months in Europe. Writing from Rome, he outlines the policy of the papacy with reference to the Philippines. Conciliation is “the keynote of the policy described—conciliation of American officials; conciliation of the islanders whose hatred of the friars has brought them to the verge of revolt against the Church.” The mission of Archbishop Chapelle is “conceded to have been a failure.” Archbishop Sbaretti, of Havana, is to take his place, “with an American priest, Father Broderick, of Hartford, Conn., as coadjutor. They are to try again to achieve what Chapelle failed to effect—to win the confidence of the American authorities, and to hold the people to their ecclesiastical allegiance. The lands held by the friars are to be surrendered, except such as are actually in use for church and charitable objects, with the expectation that they will be fairly paid for.” Now is the time for Protestants to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ in those far-off possessions. A. J. B.
