p. 525 | News of the Week

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 14, 1900

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 77, No. 33.

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News of the Week

—August 4 Russell Sage celebrated his eighty-fourth birthday.

—The census bureau gives the population of Cincinnati as 325,902.

—Work in South Dakota harvest fields is stopped by the excessive heat.

—The United States gunboat “Princeton” has sailed from Amoy to Shanghai.

—The allied forces now marching on Peking number 20,000 men, with 170 guns.

—John Clark Ridpath, the historian, died in a hospital in New York City, July 31.

—The militia had to be ordered out in various parts of North Carolina, “to quell election riots.”

—King Humbert, recently assassinated, was insured for $7,000,000. His annual income was $6,650,000.

—Germany has refused the Chinese minister in Berlin the right to use the telegraph for secret messages.

—Six hundred and fifty men are out on a strike, on the Canadian Pacific Railroad, at Winnipeg, Manitoba.

—Prince Eni Wha, son of the emperor of Korea, will enter college at Roanoke, Va., having just arrived in this country.

—Forest fires are sweeping the magnificent timber belt between the upper geyser basin and the lake, in Yellowstone Park.

—The fourth officer of the Atlantic liner “Deutschland,” being reprimanded for being asleep on duty, committed suicide, August 7.

—The British government is negotiating a $50,000,000 loan in the United States, to help defray the expenses of the Boer and Chinese wars.

—The Nicaraguan government has seized the property of the Maritime Canal Company, because it failed to fulfill the conditions of its contract.

—The Boer general, Christian De Wet, is reported surrounded near Reitz, whence escape through the strong British lines is considered impossible.

—Chicago packers have been asked to furnish 2,000,000 pounds of canned meat within thirty days, for the use of the United States army in the Orient.

—A train bearing United States Consul Stowe, and flying an American flag, was derailed and burned, at Honigspruit, by a flying patrol of Boers, August 4.

—The trial, in Missouri, of Alexander Jester, for the murder of a brother of John W. Gates, the steel-trust magnate, in the year 1871, ended August 1, with Jester’s acquittal.

—King Alexander, of Servia, was recently married to Mme. Draga Maschin, in Belgrade. In honor of the occasion the king granted an amnesty, and pardoned numerous political offenders.

—The wife of the Italian consul at Chicago has asked the protection of the police for her husband. He is related to the royal family of Italy, and an object of the hatred of Chicago anarchists.

—Owing to the great demand created by the Boer and Chinese wars, the meat packers of Chicago and Omaha have advanced the prices of their canned beef from $1.25 to $1.50 a dozen, for one-pound cans.

—Yang Thsun, a place between Tien-Tsin and Peking, was occupied by the allied army, Monday, August 6. “After a forced march from Pei Tsang, which was taken the day before, against great odds.”

—The Atlantic liners “Oceanic,” “Kaiser Wilhelm Der Grosse,” “Deutschland,” and the “City of New York,” are engaged in a race across the Atlantic, with American mail. The winner will carry the entire United States mail thereafter.

—The United States statute which provides that all railroad companies shall equip their cars with automatic couplers, went into effect August 1. The bill, which was passed by Congress in April, 1896, and has been extended several times, provides a penalty of $100 for each offense.

—Lord Roberts is in no position to help the British forces in China; in fact, he needs more troops himself, as “the ravages caused by sickness are more serious now than at any previous period of the campaign, and the weekly percentage of casualties has grown steadily since the occupation of Pretoria.”

—Napoleon Bonaparte, when asked by some of his officers to conquer and hold certain provinces of China, as Great Britain did in India, replied: “Better let China alone. The Chinese are harmless. They trouble no other nation, but they are a great people. We might conquer some of their provinces, but we should teach them the art of war. In time they might raise great armies, buy or build great navies, and conquer France.”

—The striking coal miners of Cumberland, Md., have resumed work.

—Since March 14, 257 national banks have organized and begun business.

—Russians near Tsi Chow, are reported to have killed 3,000 Chinese, August 8.

—An armed anarchist from America has been arrested at Caserta, Italy.

—The total number of Boer prisoners held by the British is estimated at 4,000.

—The weather in London, the third week in July, was the hottest of any in forty-three years.

—Italy prohibits the exportation of arms, ammunition, or other munitions of war to China.

—Two hundred and fifty persons were killed by a recent eruption of Mount Azuma, in Japan.

—Rain is falling in several of India’s famine districts, and prospects there are much brighter.

—Japan has, for the present, prohibited all emigration of laborers to the United States and Canada.

—The Secretary of the United States Navy has called for bids for the construction of six armored cruisers.

—Lord Roberts has telegraphed to the British War Office that 3,348 Boers have surrendered to General Hunter.

—It is reported that sugar manufacturers are at odds again, and that the public will get some benefit from the strife.

—Four troops of United States cavalry have left for the Far East, with orders to stop at Nagasaki, Japan, for further orders.

—The Michigan Stove Company, of Detroit, manufacturers of the “Garland” stove, have just received first prize at the Paris Exposition.

—Young Sipido, who attempted the assassination of the Prince of Wales in Brussels, April 4, has escaped from the reformatory where he was confined.

—The Krupp firm has secured an order from the Turkish government for 208 quick-firing guns, and also for armor-plate for two torpedo-boat destroyers.

—The Duke of Saxe-Coburg, second son of Queen Victoria, died July 31, of cancer of the tongue. His successor is his son, the young Duke of Albany.

—Field Marshal Count von Waldersee has been appointed commander-in-chief of the allied corps in China, which causes Germany to rejoice. Count Waldersee will have under his command an army of 80,000 men. He will embark for China in two weeks.

—A Chicago weekly says that “the conviction this week at Chicago of a little combination of photo-engravers for violating the anti-trust law of Illinois, has its comic side, when one notes the fact that the conviction was secured within sight of the smoke from steel-trust chimneys.”

—The Standard Oil Company, the gigantic oil trust, have declared a dividend of eight per cent, $8,000,000, payable to stockholders of record on September 15 next. Thus far during 1900 this company has declared three dividends: one in March, 20 per cent; one in June, 10 per cent; one in September, 8 per cent; or a total of 38 per cent dividends thus far during the present year. It is estimated that the company is making $131,506 a day, or $5,479 an hour. Mr. Rockefeller’s share of the profits thus far this year, from his interests in oil, has been $48,290,000; and this year’s fourth quarterly dividend is yet to come.

—Election returns from North Carolina, August 2, indicated a large majority for the Democrats and the disfranchisement of the negro. This means that the 75,000 negroes in that State will not be allowed to vote. Speaking of the matter, the New York Sun says: “The movement in favor of such changes in the suffrage as will, in effect, repeal the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the Federal Constitution, has spread so rapidly through the Southern States that there now seems every reason to believe that within the next three or four years more than three fourths of the negro voters in the United States will be disfranchised. Already four States have acted,—Mississippi, Louisiana, and North and South Carolina,—disfranchising 460,000 negroes; while two,—Virginia and Alabama,—have taken the initial steps to disfranchisement.” The question is being discussed in the States of Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia, though in the latter State the movement has received a setback.

—Thursday evening, August 2, over one thousand Italian anarchists of Paterson, N. J., assembled in mass meeting, ostensibly “to show that the Italians in Paterson had no connection with the plot to kill King Humbert.” The first speaker said: “If they ask us whether we planned the assassination, we answer, We did not. Still, it was inevitable. The people in Italy are starved and downtrodden. We can not answer for Bresci. Humbert himself, and the false social conditions, were to blame for this crime. I am not sorry for Humbert, but I am for Bresci and the tortures he is undergoing. We should stand our ground and fight for anarchy; we should resist the police when they attempt to deprive us of our rights. In the present condition of affairs the man must be a robber to exist.” The most moderate speaker of all said: “This is no time either to condemn or to praise Bresci’s deed; we must wait and see what the future will bring forth.” Yet some will still assert that the world is getting better every day, and that the United States has a world mission to teach people self-government.

—Despite the protests of firearm manufacturers, the Belgian government has decided to prohibit the exportation of arms to China.

—It is expected that the exports of wheat this year from Argentina will amount to 75,000,000 bushels. In one week recently 4,300,000 bushels were shipped.

—All the military and naval forces in Italy have taken the oath of allegiance to King Emmanuel III, the successor of the late King Humbert. He was thirty years old last November.

—News has reached New Orleans that “a desperate battle between the Mexican troops and the Yucatan Indians” has been fought, “in which the government troops were badly routed and lost heavily.” The Mexicans numbered 3,000, and the Maya Indians 6,000 warriors.

—It is said that “although the new steel mill to be erected at Duquesne by the Carnegie Steel Company will cost more than $1,000,000, it will give employment to only 500 men, owing to the extensive use of labor-saving devices and automatic machinery for handling the product.”

—The latest combination in the iron and steel industry is the Crucible Steel Company, which embraces thirteen companies heretofore manufacturing crucible steel, and about ninety-five per cent of the output of such steel. The capital is $50,000,000, half common and half preferred stock.

—Governor Roosevelt said that “one of the things he regretted about leaving the governorship of the State of New York was the fact that he would not be able to carry out his plans concerning the cutting up of the Indian reservations in the State into homesteads, and the enfranchisement of the Indians.”