News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 30, 1913

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

— An investigation of the alleged $600,000,000 telephone trust will be undertaken at once by the Interstate Commerce Commission.

— The twenty-ninth annual report of the Civil Service Commission, submitted by the President to Congress, shows a total of 431,880 persons in executive employ.

— Statistics just issued show that the Catholic Church in the United States received during the year 1912 personal contributions aggregating $500,000,000. Among the donors were twenty-seven Protestants.

— The British steamer “Veronese” was wrecked on the morning of January 16, near Oporto, Portugal. Of the 139 persons on board, forty-four were lost. A ten-month-old baby, securely wrapped in blankets, was washed ashore, and is alive and well.

— Death as a punishment for opium smoking was meted out recently to a woman in Shanghai, China, who persisted in the use of the drug despite the stringent manifesto issued by the government on Christmas day prohibiting the people from indulging in the habit.

— In compliance with the wishes of President-elect Wilson the inaugural committee has decided to omit the time-honored inauguration ball. Mr. Wilson has asked the substitution of a public reception in the Capitol, and suggests that the festivities be “as simple as possible.”

— After a long, stern battle the bill granting home rule for Ireland passed the House of Commons on January 16, by a majority of 110. Later it was read for the first time in the House of Lords.

— The London Economist figures the cost of the Balkan war, for sixty-four days’ fighting, at $152,000,000, or about $2,500,000 a day. This is based on the expense of maintaining 1,000,000 men in the field, at $2.50 a day each.

— The number of licensed automobiles in the United States has now passed the million mark. Some of the chiefs in the automobile industry declare this figure is far below the mark. It is said that there are 266,670 of the 1912 models now in service in the country, and that the average monthly sales run over 22,000.

— Governor Sulzer, of New York, who “came up from the people” on East Side, made good his promise of democratic simplicity at his inauguration by going on foot from the Executive Mansion to the Capitol to take the oath of office. The retiring chief magistrate and the other officials had to follow suit—not altogether to their liking.

— A new method of securing pure drinking-water for schools, factories, and domestic use has been introduced in France. It consists of a device for sterilizing water by the electric current. A commercial college of Paris is reported to be purifying in this simple way the drinking-water for 200 students; and the North Railway Station has also installed the apparatus in its waiting-room.

— Berlin will soon put into force some new police regulations in addition to the many already in vogue, all designed to make the streets quieter and more orderly by day and night. Canes or umbrellas must not be swung; persons must not walk more than three abreast; shouting, singing, and whistling are forbidden, and the doors and windows of houses and restaurants where music is being played must be kept closed.

— Moving pictures will shortly be introduced into China. Dr. Yen Mi Yen-loy, a graduate of the University of Tokio, will take with him when he sails from New York, in the near future, several thousand feet of film and several moving-picture men, who will instruct the Chinese in the operation of the machines. Some months ago Dr. Yen was commissioned to seek in America that one invention which, not already known to the Chinese, in his judgment would bring the greatest good to that country. This is the result of his investigation.

— The two houses of Congress have at last agreed on the immigration bill, which has been under discussion for some time. Immigrants entering the United States will be required to be able to read their own language, except in the case of wives, widows, single daughters, or those who have left their native country because of religious persecution. Physicians, matrons, and inspectors, all appointive by this government, will be on immigrant-carrying ships; fines imposed upon steamship companies for bringing in inadmissible aliens will be raised from $100 to $200, and steamship companies bringing in insane persons will be penalized, instead of merely required to deport such persons.

— Postmaster-General Hitchcock has modified the parcel-post regulations so as to permit shippers of merchandise to enclose with their shipments descriptive printed matter, without thereby making the shipment third-class matter and unmailable under the parcel-post law. In the first week of the service 4,000,000 parcels were mailed.

— Efforts to settle the dispute between the Eastern railroads and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen over the demands of the road’s firemen for increased wages and better working conditions have failed, and a strike ballot has been ordered. Should the strike become a reality, fifty-two roads would probably be seriously affected.

— Riotous demonstrations by striking garment workers in New York City have resulted in the arrest of many of the participants, and the abrupt cessation of all negotiations for a peaceful settlement of the questions involved. Strike breakers, and in some instances policemen, have been seriously injured in conflicts with strikers. The Clothing Trade Association, after having declared open war, has now proposed to give the workers an immediate increase of wages, and submit the other demands to arbitration. The number of workers now on strike is 140,000.

— Articles of incorporation for the so-called “Rockefeller Foundation” to administer a philanthropic fund of $100,000,000, to be donated by John D. Rockefeller, have been passed by the House of Representatives. The object of the foundation is “to promote the well-being and to advance the civilization of the peoples of the United States and its Territories and of foreign lands in the dissemination of knowledge, in the prevention and relief of suffering, and in the promotion by eleemosynary and philanthropic means of any and all of the elements of human progress.”

— A gigantic plumbing job that has no parallel in history is made necessary by a leak in the bed of the Danube near Immendingen, in Baden. Through an underground channel at that point a part of the river has been diverted from its course. It reappears at the surface in a valley miles away, and finally reaches the North Sea, thousands of miles from the Black Sea, into which the main stream of the Danube flows. The leak has lately become so serious that it materially affects the water-power of towns below Immendingen. Engineers purpose to plug the leak with cement at a cost of a million dollars.

— The House of Representatives is to be reseated. The desks and reclining chairs on the floor of the House are to be removed and replaced with upholstered benches. The plans contemplate seven semicircular rows of seats intersected by aisles. The new seats will be installed more compactly than the present cumbersome revolving chairs are now placed. This makes it possible to provide more seats, and is an immediate necessity, for in the next House there will be 435 members and seven delegates and commissioners, all entitled to seats, and the old seating arrangement makes it impossible to find space for the accommodation of that number.

— Not long ago the Maxim “silencer” for guns was welcomed by military experts as an aid in warfare; now another silencer is announced, this one coming in the interests of peace—a device that is to silence the motor-boat engine. The inventor, not content with this public benefaction, is, it is stated, at work on a silencer for noisy street-cars; may his work be uninterrupted!

— Oliver Hudson Kelley, founder of the grange and known by farmers throughout the country as “Father Kelley,” died at his home in Washington, D. C., Jan. 20, 1913. Mr. Kelley was born in Boston on Jan. 7, 1826, receiving his education in the public schools of that city. He left Boston when he was twenty-one years old, and for a time was a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. For some time thereafter he was a telegrapher, later going to Minnesota, where he traded with the Indians. While living on his farm there, he operated the first reaping-machine ever used in that State.

— Each person in the United States the past year used 87 pounds of sugar, the per-capita consumption of this article having increased from 80 pounds in 1910, 59 pounds in 1900, and 39.5 pounds in 1880, say statistics gathered by the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce. The total sugar consumption last year exceeded 8,000,000,000 pounds, whereas in 1900 only 4,500,000,000 pounds were used. The cost of sugar to the consumer last year has approximated $400,000,000, which is more than $1,000,000 a day. One fourth of this sugar came from the United States proper, another fourth from Hawaii and Porto Rico, and the remainder from foreign countries, chiefly Cuba.