NEWS AND NOTES

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 22, 1900

—The Orange Free State capital has been removed from Kroonstad to Heilbron.

—The price of lead was reduced by about twelve per cent last week, by the American Smelting and Refining Company.

—It is reported that “new discoveries of rich quicksilver deposits have been made in Brewster County, Texas, during the last few days, and another big rush of prospectors to the district has begun.”

—It is said that influential Cubans are about to petition the pope for a Cuban mission. They consider this a crucial period for the church in the island, and predict that unless native clergymen are granted, there will be many defections to Protestantism.

—“The Baldwin Locomotive Works, of Philadelphia, received, a few days ago, from the Egyptian government, an order for twenty locomotives, to be used on the Egyptian railways. The government explains to inquiring persons in England that it can obtain locomotives in this country at lower prices and in less time than elsewhere.”

—In a few days Adjutant General Corbin will order reopened a “large number of recruiting stations, to secure men for duty in the Philippines. It is found that nearly 3,500 vacancies in the ranks will occur from ordinary causes, between now and the end of the year, and, as there is no idea of reducing the force in the islands, the vacancies must be filled.”

—“The contract for building the great bridge over the St. Lawrence River, at Quebec, has been awarded to the Phoenix Bridge Company, for about $4,500,000. This bridge will be made in three spans, and the central one, a cantilever, will be the longest in the world, surpassing that of the Tay bridge in Scotland by several hundred feet. There will be 900 carloads of structural material to be hauled from Phoenixville, Pa., to Quebec, and cars of special strength and unusual size must be made for the purpose.”

—Thirty-four Chinese have filed a petition to become California guardsmen.

—Senor de Lome, former Spanish minister to the United States, is now ambassador to Italy.

—An official report shows that Captain Carter defrauded the United States government of $2,000,000.

—The Western Association of Stove Manufacturers, in session at Columbus, Ohio, decided to advance the price of stoves five per cent.

—The National Wall Paper Company is to be amicably dissolved, and the seventeen factories composing it will resume individual business.

—The United States Senate, by a vote of twenty-nine to twenty, refused to consider the Pettigrew resolution, expressing sympathy with the Boers.

—The South Atlantic Squadron has been ordered to participate in the festivities in honor of the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of Brazil.

—After wrecking the office of a lumber firm at Wyandotte, Mich., by blowing the safe open with dynamite, burglars secured about six dollars and a few postage stamps.

—Bishop Hurst, chancellor of the American University at Washington, announces two gifts by President McKinley to that institution, one present and the other prospective. At present he gives $1,000.

—President McKinley issued a proclamation extending for six months from April 11, the time allowed Spanish subjects in the Philippines to designate their allegiance to the United States, or to leave.

—American soldiers in the Philippines are to be furnished with canned roast beef, “because of the necessity of their having fresh meat, and the impossibility of providing refrigerated beef, or cattle on hoof under the existing conditions.”

—Ninety members of the Bachelor’s Club, of Atchison, Kan., signed an agreement refusing to recognize socially any young woman who wears birds on her hat, stating that if moral suasion will not protect the birds, harsher methods must be adopted.

—A French steamer is at Lorenzo Marques with 10,000 bags each of coffee and sugar, for the Boers. Four similar consignments will be delivered this month. British ships patrol outside the harbor nightly to prevent a repetition of the “Maine” disaster.

—The Peninsular Portland Cement Company has platted a village thirteen miles from Jackson, Mich., to be known as Cement City. The company say that there are marl beds of sufficient thickness on their holdings to keep the factory running for the next century.

—The American garrison at Catubig, Island of Samoa, consisting of thirty men of the Forty-third Infantry, were recently attacked by rebels, and twenty of them were killed. The ten survivors were rescued, after holding out heroically against overwhelming odds for three days.

—It is said that “the newly appointed civil governor of Porto Rico, Charles Herbert Allen, surprised the natives by wearing a straw hat, blue coat, and duck trousers, the comfortable suit of a yachting man. They expected to see a man gorgeously appareled, with plenty of gold lace in evidence.”

—In a recent interview with a correspondent of the New York Sun, the wife of President Kruger said that “up to the present time thirty-three of her grandsons, four of her sons, and six of her sons-in-law had gone to the front, in addition to numerous other relatives. Up to that time two of her grandsons had been killed.”

—A dispatch from Portici, Italy, at the north foot of Mt. Vesuvius, says that “loud explosions within Vesuvius continue, accompanied by frequent but slight shocks, that are felt at San Vito and in the direction of Pugliano. Notwithstanding the statement of the observatory authorities that there is no immediate danger, the inhabitants in the neighborhood of the volcano are panic-stricken.”

—As an example of lavish money expenditures by Americans at the Paris Exposition, it is stated that “Mrs. Potter Palmer has rented a fine mansion near the Trocadero, the residence of the Marquis de Montgomery, paying $4,000 monthly. Mrs. Spencer Eddy, of Chicago, pays $60 a day for a small suite near the Arc de Triomphe, and Mr. Busch, the St. Louis brewer, has engaged a more pretentious suite in a hotel, for $300 a day.”

—The United States House of Representatives has approved the proposed Constitutional amendment altering the method of electing United States senators. This amendment proposes that, in lieu of the present Constitutional provision that “the Senate shall be composed of two senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof,” the Senate shall be composed of two senators from each State, who shall be elected by a direct vote of the people thereof for a term of six years, and each senator shall have one vote. A plurality of votes cast for candidates for senator shall be sufficient to elect. The method proposed is one that is growing in favor, as it is said to be the only effectual remedy against the election of men of great wealth who lack qualifications for the position, but are able to buy up the political majority in a Legislature.” It is considered as a matter of course that the present Senate will not pass the bill; but it is thought that “ultimately, unless signs fail, public opinion will compel the Senate to pass the bill.”