Current Mention

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 9, 1902

— Severe storms did great damage to houses and crops in southeastern Nebraska, and at Cochrane, Wis., August 31.

— About 13,500 tons daily of coal are being mined at the present time in the anthracite coal region, according to the New York Times.

— The strike in the West Virginia coal mines was broken September 4, the strikers agreeing to accept the terms offered by the mine operators.

— Vast stretches of forest land in Wyoming, including all of Lander Valley, were swept by fire during the last week of August.

— A serious rebellion is reported to be spreading in the Szechuan province of China, and the lives of foreigners there are in danger.

— It is considered probable that an extra session of the Pennsylvania Legislature may be called by Governor Stone to take measures to end the anthracite coal strike.

— A dispatch from Capetown, South Africa, reports the drowning of seventy persons in Algoa Bay during a storm which swept over that district, September 1. About twenty vessels were wrecked.

— The city of Agram, in Hungary, has been proclaimed to be in a state of siege, on account of race riots in which many buildings in the city have been wrecked and sacked by the mob. Quiet is now maintained by the presence of a strong body of troops.

— Edward Eggleston, the well-known writer of fiction and history, died at his home on the shore of Lake George, September 3.

— There is a great depression in the English shipbuilding industry, owing to the competition of other countries which are coming to the front in this respect.

— The Sunday law against the opening of places of trade is being enforced in Mt. Vernon, N. Y. Twenty-three arrests were made there under this crusade on Sunday, August 31.

— Fighting still continues in Hayti. There is considerable sentiment in the United States calling for the annexation of the island to this country, to secure a stable government.

— At Denver, Colo., on Labor day, two hundred persons occupying a temporary stand at a horse show were thrown to the ground by the collapse of the stand, several being seriously hurt.

— A passenger train on the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fé Railway was wrecked near Brownwood, Tex., by falling down an embankment, September 2. Twenty-seven of the passengers were hurt, two fatally.

— Six thousand soldiers were required to keep order and prevent incendiarism in Florence, Italy, recently, during the progress of a strike, in which employees in forty different occupations participated.

— Railway wrecks were reported August 31 from Stanwood, Iowa, and Fairchild, Wis., the former being due to the carelessness of a signal-tower operator, and the latter to a washout on the track. Two trainmen were killed, and several were seriously hurt.

— It has been discovered by geologists that the whole of the great plains region between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains has areas of water-bearing strata under it, which furnish the artesian wells of Dakota, and come to the surface of the earth on the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountain range.

— A very disastrous railway wreck occurred September 1 near Berry, Ala., caused by the derailing of several heavily loaded passenger cars of an excursion train while rounding a curve. The cars rolled down a high embankment, and were smashed to pieces, causing instant death to twenty-one persons, and injuring eighty others, thirty of whom are not expected to survive. The occupants of the train were almost exclusively negroes.

— Recently three men started from Denver, Colo., in a large balloon, on a voyage eastward, intending to break the long-distance balloon record, and if possible to reach New York City. When a short distance above the earth, they found that the eastward wind was only a surface current, and that a higher current was traveling in the opposite direction, taking them into the Rocky Mountains. After a fearful experience in being buffeted about in rocky canyons, throwing everything overboard to keep above the rocks upon which they seemed likely to be dashed, and being whirled about for hours in winds of cyclonic violence, they made a safe landing on terra firma, almost more dead than alive. It is believed by meteorologists that the cold air of the snow-capped Rockies causes a constant suction of warmer air toward the mountains, which would render a balloon voyage eastward from that section an impossibility.

— From Calcutta, India, a great disaster is reported in the state of Nepal. The rivers Baghmati and Vishnumati overflowed their banks, and caused serious landslides in the Khatmandu Valley. The cities of Bhatgaon and Patna were greatly damaged, and several hundred persons were killed.

— Archbishop Ryan, of Philadelphia, has been appointed by President Roosevelt to a place on the board of commissioners of Indian affairs. What gives significance to this is the fact that the Catholics are pulling hard to secure the reversal of the government’s policy adopted some years ago cutting off the appropriation of government funds to Catholic Indian schools.

— The duties collected on Philippine imports into this country the last five months amount to only $11,194. The value of all imports from that country during the seven months ending last July was $5,345,000, and of this sum $5,269,000 was for a single article—Manila hemp. It had been predicted in congress by advocates of the Philippine policy that duties amounting to $500,000 would be collected on Philippine imports yearly.

— President Roosevelt narrowly escaped serious injury and possible death while riding in a carriage near Pittsfield, Mass., September 3. With him in the carriage were Governor Crane, of Massachusetts, Secretary Cortelyou, and a secret service official named Craig. While crossing a street railway track the carriage was struck by a trolley car going at a high rate of speed, the blow demolishing the carriage, and hurling its occupants into the roadway, injuring all to some extent, and killing Secret-Service-Agent Craig. The president’s injuries were slight, as also were those of Governor Crane.

— A patient in the Presbyterian hospital in Chicago, Mrs. Laura Moore, died suddenly on August 25 with symptoms of strychnine poisoning. A week later the nurse who had attended her confessed that she had by mistake given the patient sixty times as much strychnine as the doctor’s prescription called for. “The directions on the box read,” she said, “‘Dissolve tablet in one-half ounce of water. Minims four to one-sixtieth grain.’ I had been told to give the patient one-thirtieth of a grain. I thought that two of the tablets would make the required dose, believing that each tablet contained one-sixtieth of a grain. The directions were ambiguous.” She gave the patient two tablets, each of which, instead of containing only one-sixtieth of a grain, contained an entire grain of this deadly poison. Such accidents could not happen if these deadly drugs were discarded, and a rational system of treatment by the use of water and natural remedies adopted in their place.

— A meat famine is reported to be prevailing in Germany. A “good steak” now costs forty cents a pound in Berlin.

— A new consumption cure of great efficacy is reported to have been discovered by Dr. Hoff, a specialist of Vienna.

— A serious strike of dock laborers prevails at Barcelona, Spain, and ships which enter that port find it impossible to discharge their cargoes.

— A fire, thought to be incendiary, is raging in the Pocahontas coal mines in West Virginia, where the miners are on a strike. The damage will probably be enormous.

— A Rockford, Ill., press telegram of September 1 states that two girls of that place took arsenic to improve their complexion, the result being that they very narrowly escaped having the complexion of corpses.

— A great increase of crime in the form of hold-ups, burglaries, and murders in the territory around Pasco, Wash., is traceable to the two months’ successful career of the bandit Tracy, who escaped from the Oregon penitentiary last June.

— Conditions in Cape Colony are still very unsatisfactory to the government party in Great Britain, and Colonial Secretary Chamberlain is being urged to suspend the Cape Colony constitution. The Boers, it appears, have the upper hand in the management of Cape affairs.

— In a speech made at Proctor, Vt., September 1, President Roosevelt declared that a great navy, large enough to enforce any declaration the government may make, is a prime necessity to the national prosperity. It is probable that this view will find strong support in the next Congress.

— The admission of forty-one cases of delirium tremens at the Bridewell prison in Chicago in a single day, led to an investigation of the liquor sold in the district frequented by the victims, the result being that a sample of it, which was obtained and tested by pouring it on a piece of raw beef, turned the beef black in a moment’s time.

— The day of the sailing ship is not yet ended, if we may judge from the reports that come from the new seven-masted schooner “Thomas W. Lawson,” which sails between Atlantic ports of the United States. The vessel requires only fifteen men for its management, and in a run from Baltimore to Boston, carrying 8,000 tons of coal, earns $5,600 in one week’s time.

— The Methodist Ministers’ Association, of Milwaukee, at a meeting September 1, adopted resolutions advocating the seizure of the anthracite coal mines by the government, after an ultimatum demanding the settlement of the strike in one week’s time. The logic of the resolution was expressed thus: “If the government has the right to quarantine cities and suspend travel to arrest epidemics; to seize railroads and supplies to repel invasion and suppress insurrection, it must certainly have the right to seize railroads and mines to prevent people from freezing.”

— A Philadelphia cooper, Carlisle D. Graham, successfully swam through the whirlpool rapids below Niagara Falls, August 31. Previously to this Mr. Graham had made several trips through the rapids in a barrel.

— The London Saturday Review predicts that war between England and the United States will result from the latter’s enforcement of the “Monroe doctrine,” which forbids any European power’s planting a new colony in the Western hemisphere. The Review is moved to this statement by President Roosevelt’s declaration of the Monroe doctrine in a recent speech.

— Mont Pelée has again sent fire and ashes over a large section of Martinique, this time destroying the village of Morne Rouge, situated on the slope of the mountain, which escaped the eruption of May 8, when St. Pierre was blotted out. The volcano was in almost constant eruption during the last ten days of August, the activity culminating suddenly in the evening of the 30th, when loud detonations suddenly shook the ground, and a dense column of inky-black “smoke” burst from the crater, accompanied with an awe-inspiring display of lightning and bursting balls of fire. A tidal wave accompanied the outbreak, and added to the general terror, causing the inhabitants of the village of Le Carbet to flee to the interior of the island for safety. It is estimated that 2,000 lives were lost in this new disaster.