Current Mention

Review and Herald Publishing Assn. · Washington, D.C. · Dec 31, 1903

— John D. Rockefeller has made another donation to Chicago University, the amount of the gift being $1,850,000.

— An insurrection has broken out in Korea, says a Tokyo (Japan) dispatch, and 1,500 Koreans have invaded China.

— Ten persons were killed and thirty injured in a wreck on the St. Louis and San Francisco Railway near Godfrey, Kan., December 21.

— Hard times prevail in the Transvaal, owing chiefly to the stagnation of the mining industry. There is a great scarcity of laborers to work the mines.

— A “Personal Liberty League,” the purpose of which is to secure the repeal of the “blue laws,” and secure the passage of “liberal laws consistent with the spirit of this progressive age,” has been incorporated at Albany, N. Y.

— It is reported that Japan has informed Russia that an answer to Japan’s demands must be forthcoming by January 7. There is a general feeling among diplomats that war between these powers may break out before the end of January.

— The Canadian government at Ottawa is reported to be considering a proposition put forward there to annex Newfoundland and Greenland to Canada. Newfoundland desired annexation in 1895, but the Ottawa government did not treat the matter seriously at that time. Greenland, it is stated, can be annexed only by paying a purchase price to Denmark.

— The Russian government is now adopting the policy of deporting objectionable Finns to Russia instead of banishing them to foreign countries, as formerly. This is considered another step in the process of coercing Finland to Russian rule.

— The far-famed granite mountain of Texas has been sold to a resident of New York City. The property includes an entire mountain of solid granite covering 179 acres of ground, together with foothills adjacent to the property. The sale price approximated $1,000,000.

— One of the worst railway wrecks ever known occurred near Connellsville, Pa., the evening of December 23. A passenger train on the B. & O. Railway was derailed by obstacles on the track while running at high speed, wrecking several cars, the smoker being thrown forward over the baggage car onto the engine. A steam pipe burst, and those in the smoker who were not killed by the collision were scalded to death by the escaping steam. A total of sixty-five deaths was the result.

— It was discovered not long ago that the supposed useless “rabbit brush,” which covers the mountains of Colorado at an altitude of 7,000 to 9,000 feet, contained twenty-five per cent of commercial rubber. A prospector lost in the hills first discovered the rubbery substance by chewing the root to sustain life. His discovery was brought to the knowledge of Chicago chemists, and the Western Rubber Company was the result. A dozen men are now engaged on the hills about Salida, Colo., collecting the brush, of which millions of tons are in sight.

— All news from Colombia indicates that that country is determined to go to war for the recovery of Panama in case the Colombian representative at Washington, General Reyes, fails in his attempted negotiations with the United States government, notwithstanding European diplomats have warned Colombia that Europe approves the attitude of the United States. Meanwhile the administration at Washington is considerably embarrassed by the opposition of prominent Democratic senators, and the Republican Senator Hoar, to the treaty negotiated with Panama. The government has dispatched a strong naval force to the Panama coast.

— An examination into the alleged frauds in the United States Post Office Department, which was made by General Bristow at the direction of President Roosevelt, discloses the fact that the government has been defrauded of millions of dollars by a great conspiracy extending back over a number of years, and involving prominent ex-officials of that branch of the government service, the chief offenders being Assistant Attorney-General Tyner, A. W. Machen, general superintendent of the free delivery system, and G. W. Beavers, general superintendent of salaries and allowances. A list of other delinquents which is given includes the superintendent of the money order system, an assistant attorney, superintendent of the registry system, superintendent of city free delivery system, and seven other officials, all of whom served in this department the present year. Besides these, indictments have been brought against twenty other persons who were former employees.

— The American Protective League, a negro organization in Philadelphia, has undertaken to solve the race problem in this country by the transfer of 3,500,000 negroes from the South to tracts of country in the North and West which are to be purchased for the purpose. The organization hopes to accomplish this during the next six years. It will establish negro department stores, factories, model tenement houses, schools and various other business and educational institutions for Northern and Western towns.

— The Cuban House of Representatives at Havana recently by a large majority vote passed a bill suspending payments to the Catholic Church which have been made under several agreements between General Wood as United States military governor and Archbishop Sbaretti, the last agreement dating from May 15, 1902. The agreements provided for the payment to the church of $89,000 annually for the rental of certain buildings occupied by the state, the state having the option of buying these buildings in 1906 for $1,500,000. It is argued in the Cuban Congress that the United States had no rightful power to exercise acts of sovereignty in Cuba, and that Archbishop Sbaretti could not represent the religious orders to which the property belonged, because at the time of the agreements the orders had been suppressed.