News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 25, 1915

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

— For the second time in two years, Ohio voters rejected a State-wide prohibition amendment to the Constitution. Estimates show that the proposal was defeated by a majority of at least 40,000. Last year's majority against prohibition was 84,000.

— On October 21 the voice of an experimenter in Washington was thrown into the ether from the naval radio towers at Arlington, Va., and was heard simultaneously by listeners in Paris and Honolulu—5,000 miles apart. Surely the wireless telephone has come to stay.

— Statistics given out by the United States Public Health Service show that Americans spent $50,000,000 last year for face powder, rouge, freckle lotions, and other “beautifiers.” The figures issued show that within the last ten years the use of cosmetics has more than doubled, with a population increase of less than twenty-five per cent.

— The general public is warned to “keep well,” for America is said to be facing a drug famine. The United States, according to a New York manufacturer, depends upon Europe for seventy-five per cent of its supply. Europe is otherwise occupied this year, and on the shipment of many of the needful medicines there is a strict embargo.

— When Congress meets in regular session on Monday, December 6, it will not be the same body that adjourned on the fourth of March. In that first Congress of Mr. Wilson's administration the Democrats had a majority of 147 in the House. The Sixty-fourth Congress has a House Democratic majority of only twenty-five, but in the Senate it has increased from ten to sixteen.

— A series of charred oaken ribs projecting out of a mud flat on San Francisco Bay is all that remains of the frigate “Independence,” the oldest ship in the United States Navy, which was burned recently for the copper in her hull. The ship was sold by the Navy Department for $3,515. Her career began in 1812. Once the old frigate was America's first flagship and carried seventy-four guns on its three decks. Later it was retired from actual service, and was stationed at Mare Island as a receiving ship. Three years ago it was put out of commission.

— Norbert Wiener, nineteen years of age, has been appointed an assistant professor in philosophy at Harvard University. In this capacity he will be called upon to instruct men who are his elders. As a boy of thirteen he earned a degree of bachelor of arts from Tufts College. Too young to enter Harvard, the prodigy became a graduate at Cornell University, and in 1912 went to Harvard, where he gained a degree of master of arts that year, and was declared a doctor of philosophy the following year, when he was seventeen years of age. For the past two years young Wiener has been a traveling fellow of Harvard at Cambridge University, England.

— The United States is suffering from a dollar-bill famine, according to United States Treasurer John Burke, who recently declared that notwithstanding the fact that $14,664,000 in one-dollar bills had been furnished to the subtreasuries, there is a demand for this variety of currency which the Treasury has not been able to meet. Approximately $9,456,000 in two-dollar bills has been issued to help meet the demand.

— The village of Osborn, in Greene County, Ohio, has voted to go out of existence for the good of the Great Miami valley, and in the year to come it will be cleared of all its houses and shops, churches and schools, for a retaining reservoir to be built within three years, in order to prevent any future floods like those of March, 1913, which did $200,000,000 damage and caused the death of between twenty-five and thirty persons in Dayton. Nine counties are included in the Great Miami conservancy district.

— The general education board, one of John D. Rockefeller's philanthropic enterprises, has announced gifts totaling $375,000 to four colleges, and the provision of funds for a number of novel experiments in the field of education. The latter, which inaugurate a new departure in the activity of the board, include a scientific study of the Gary, Ind., scheme of public school education and of the Hampton Institute system, the results of which the board intends to make available for general use throughout the country.

— The controversy over the possession and ownership of the manuscript copy of the will of Martha Custis Washington, the wife of George Washington, has been happily settled. It will be recollected that the precious historical heirloom was taken from the courthouse at Fairfax, Va., during the war. The story is that a colonel of the Union Army, whose headquarters was in the courthouse, found his men shoveling a pile of papers into the stove to build a fire. He stopped them, and on examination discovered the will. It was among his papers when he died in 1892, and thirteen years later his daughter sold it to the late J. Pierpont Morgan, in whose collection it has been ever since. This historic document will soon be placed in a fire-proof vault at Mount Vernon, Va.

— Anthony Comstock, secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, who died September 21 in Summit, N. J., had gained a world-wide reputation by his crusades against obscene pictures, books, and plays. He possessed the sturdy qualities of a reformer, had the courage of his convictions, and knew no fear when he was in the midst of a campaign against vice of any kind. He fought not only the publication of obscene pictures and literature, but lotteries, policy games, and the operations of all types of swindlers. He was bitterly hated and was denounced as a crank, but he kept to his policy unswervingly to the end. The act of Congress which makes it a felony to send obscene matter through the mails was drafted by Mr. Comstock. He made more than 3,600 arrests while serving the government as post-office inspector, and, it is said, seized over 155 tons of printed matter. His career has been a positive influence in the purification of American life.

— The United States Supreme Court began its fall term with 662 cases on the docket. The decisions in several big antitrust cases, which have been carried to this tribunal for a review of the findings of the lower courts in various States, will determine to a large extent what the future policy of this administration will be with reference to the filing of suits for dissolution of big corporations.

— The Pope is reported as planning to send a special representative, with an autograph letter and a gift, to attend the wedding of President Wilson and Mrs. Norman Galt. His Holiness is believed to be under the impression, however, that there is to be a state ceremony, and the possibility is suggested that he will abandon the idea of the special representative when advised that the wedding will be private.

— The five-year program for new construction in the navy and for increased personnel which the President will submit to Congress this winter, has been made public in detail by Secretary of the Navy Daniels. It calls upon Congress to appropriate this year $217,652,173, an increase of about $68,000,000 over the current naval appropriation. It asks Congressional approval for a five-year scheme of new construction, munitions, and aviation, with a total cost of $502,482,000. Mr. Daniels will ask Congress to provide this year for an increase of 11,500 men for the navy, 7,500 sailors, 2,500 apprentice seamen, and 1,500 marines.

— An aerial army, according to the news dispatches from Paris, is no longer romance, for France now has such an army in divisions and squadrons, with battle aeroplanes, cruiser aeroplanes, scout and torpedo planes, all armored heavily and carrying cannon and rapid-fire guns. The great battle planes, which are new inventions, are 130 feet wide from the tips of the planes, are built to protect their crews from rifle fire, are armed with three-inch guns, and carry a crew of twelve. The dispatches state that a number of these great air machines are now completed, and the French expect them to take an important part in the fighting in the future.

— There have been numerous temporary obstructions of the Panama Canal since the opening in the earlier part of the year. It has been possible to clear the passages with dredging for a day or two, and traffic would be resumed. There has now occurred a slide, in the Gaillard Cut, which closes up the canal for an indefinite time. Vessels, about 100, which had arrived at the mouths have been compelled to transship cargoes by the Panama railway, or have turned their prows to round Cape Horn. The area of the slide is equal to about 175 acres, the greatest in the history of the canal, and amounts to about 10,000,000 cubic yards. It will require several months to remove the slide so as to make possible resumption of traffic. Colonel Goethals has withdrawn his resignation as governor of the Canal Zone, and will devote his time to improving conditions as related to the causes of the slides. The endeavor will be to cut back the tops of the hills so as to lessen the pressure on the sides, and thus reduce the sources of the slides. When the canal is reopened, Colonel Goethals declares that it will be with an assured permanent channel.