p. 156 | News and Notes

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 5, 1901

News and Notes

— Wilhelmina, queen of Holland, will receive a $100,000 crown from her subjects.

— The Baldwin-Zeigler polar expedition will probably leave New York about the middle of June.

— The Filipinos bought $25,000 worth of American flags for the celebration of Washington’s birthday.

— The Methodist church at Manila, Philippine Islands, reports the baptism of 258 converts in one week.

— Governor Stanley, of Kansas, has signed a bill “making saloons a common nuisance, and allowing county officers to confiscate the illegal stock.”

— John Knox, white, of Scranton, Miss., was lynched the 26th ult., for having shot his ten-year-old stepson. The sheriff was overpowered by a crowd of 100 men who did the lynching.

— Jules Verne has again declined an appointment to the French Academy of “immortals.”

— The “joint smashing” crusades of Kansas are fast disappearing. Mrs. Nation is still in jail.

— Manitoba has killed her prohibition law, finding it “unconstitutional in almost every point.”

— The earnings of the American Steel and Wire Company are said to be $1,000,000 net per month.

— United States Minister Conger will leave Peking, China, soon, for a six-months’ vacation in this country.

— The British are gradually wearing out the Boers in South Africa. Dispatches state that General Botha has been captured.

— It is now a settled fact that the United States will “retain its grip on Cuba,” notwithstanding her fair promises to allow that island complete freedom.

— Reports indicate that “charges have been brought against the Italian and Uruguayan consuls at Manila, accusing them of aiding the insurgents.”

— The crusade now being made by the police of Boston against Sunday labor, is causing “much hardship to the orthodox Jews and other seventh-day Sabbatarians of that city.”

— Owing to the fact that Germany has to import $32,000,000 worth of corn each year, mostly from this country, an effort is to be made by her to raise corn in the German colonies of South Africa.

— The subject of government ownership of railroads is being agitated in Canada just at present. Some Canadians fear that Canada’s railroads may be absorbed by the United States railroad combinations.

— Dispatches state that “to protect himself from aspirants to army chaplaincies, at $1,800 a year, President McKinley states he has a list of eligibles, prepared by dignitaries of the prominent denominations” of the country.

— The gigantic steel trust in this country, of which J. Pierpont Morgan is the head, will have a total capital stock of “over a thousand million dollars—some say double that sum.” It is composed of several large companies.

— Another offshoot from the Salvation Army is seeking recognition, under the name of “Christian Comrades.” The headquarters of the new society are in New York City. Its members desire to be in closer touch with the Churches.

— It is announced that “in one province of the Philippines, 5,000 Romanists have come, in a body, into the Methodist Church. They bring their meeting-house with them, and claim a right to do so on the ground that it was built from their offerings.”

— A Terre Haute (Ind.) mob of 2,000 persons lynched George Ward, a negro, the 26th ult., for his outraging and murdering Ida Finkelstein, a schoolteacher, the day before. After hanging him the crowd burned his body. He had cut the schoolteacher’s throat.

— The Charleston (S. C.) Exposition will open December, 1901, and will close June, 1902. Its object is “to advertise to the world the progress of South Carolina and the neighboring Southern cities, and the advantage Charleston enjoys as a natural seaport for the trade between the West Indies and the United States.”

— Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., though a $15,000,000 institution, is spending more than its income, the deficit thus far this year amounting to $40,000. The veterinary and Slavonic departments have both been dropped. The 23d ult. the university received, at the Harvard Club dinner in New York, $1,000,000 in gifts.

— Mr. Jordan, pilot of the “Rio de Janeiro,” the vessel that foundered near San Francisco, the 22d ult., states that Captain Ward was wholly to blame, as it is a rule of the port of San Francisco that “all captains have power supreme to that of the pilot, and that Captain Ward had ordered him to proceed,” in spite of the fog.

— President McKinley has recommended to the Senate that Rear-Admiral Sampson be advanced five numbers, and that Rear-Admiral Schley be advanced three numbers, the latter to take rank next after Rear-Admiral Sampson. Both advancements are “in reward for services in the Santiago fight and other engagements in the Cuban blockade.”

— The Pension Bureau in Washington is to be used for the inaugural ball. To clear the building for this purpose, and to give the employees a vacation, with pay, during the eight or more days of suspension of the pension business, will cost the government fully $35,000. Besides this, the use of the building will delay 1,800 pensions for twelve days.

— As stated in the 1901 Catholic directory, the number of Catholics in the United States is 10,774,980.

— In Paris, France, 4,000 tailors have stopped work, in sympathy with the strike of the Paris dress-makers.

— In the presidential election of 1900, there were 277,000 less votes cast than there were in the election of 1896.

— President McKinley has ordered a reduction of the export duties on Cuban tobacco, of 50 per cent after April 1.

— By order of Russia the Finnish reserve troops have been disarmed. Step by step, Russia is absorbing that little country.

— A bill has been introduced into the Illinois Legislature “to establish the whipping post for men who beat their wives or desert their families.” The bill is meeting with favor.

— As a result of General Waldersee’s threatened expedition, the Chinese officials have yielded somewhat to the ministers of the Powers, decapitating and degrading some high Chinese officials.

— It seems that the permanent Court of Arbitration provided for by the convention signed at The Hague, July 29, 1899, “is now ready to consider any international dispute that may be presented. Fifteen nations, including all the maritime Powers, have appointed their members, and only a few countries, comparatively insignificant as international factors, are unrepresented. These are Bulgaria, Montenegro, Persia, Siam, and Switzerland.”

— Strenuous efforts are being made to secure the closing of the gates of the Buffalo Exposition on Sunday, and also to secure the Sunday-closing of the gates of the Charleston (S. C.) Exposition; and of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, to be held at St. Louis, Mo., in 1903. Some of the large metropolitan dailies are encouraging the Sunday-closing of these fairs, on the ground that the opening of the gates of the World’s Fair in Chicago, in 1893, “resulted in financial loss.” A clever way, indeed, to excuse poor management!

— Walter Wellman, the Washington correspondent of the Chicago Times-Herald, is authority for the statement that “an ugly scandal lies half concealed in the war tax reduction bill” now before Congress, and that “the great tobacco trust has been made a present of about $9,000,000 through the favoritism of its friends in the Senate Committee on Finance.” It is discovered that “the Senate bill makes a total reduction of about $18,000,000 on cigars and tobacco of all sorts. Where the House bill reduced these taxes $3,000,000, all on cigars, the Senate goes them $15,000,000 better. The power of the tobacco trust in the Senate Committee, is shown in the fact that of the $15,000,000 of taxes taken off by the Senate, $11,000,000 is on goods in which the two tobacco companies, the American and the Continental (which are really the same concern, and virtually under the same management) have almost a monopoly. The Senate gives the tobacco and cigar people $18,000,000, and it gives the brewers $14,000,000. Here is a total of $32,000,000 to two industries. The other reductions carried by the Senate bill are estimated at $18,000,000.”

— The new Cuban Constitution was signed, in Havana, the 21st ult. There were two copies, one being handed to General Wood, the other being deposited in the archives. It seems that “Senor Cisneros (formerly president of the revolutionary government) refused to affix his signature, saying that the United States had no right to pass upon the constitution, and should receive no copy of it. When Senor Tamayo remarked: ‘We are all Cubans and friends,’ he replied: ‘Yes; and when the time comes to fight the Americans, we will fight them together. The Americans [shaking his fist at the American correspondents] are like the monkey. When he closes his paw on a thing, he never wants to let go.’ Cisneros afterward consented to sign the copy that is to remain in the archives.” The Cuban Constitutional Convention failed to “provide for relations with the United States in accordance with the suggestions of the President.” Upon receiving one of the copies of the Cuban Constitution, General Wood asked the “Committee of Five” from the Cuban Constitutional Convention to “accompany his messenger bearing the copy of the constitution to Washington.” However, “there is a difference of opinion in the convention as to the propriety of such action,” and “it is reported that the invitation will be declined.” As it now stands, “a majority of the delegates believe that steadfast opposition to all the President’s [McKinley’s] suggestions will cause them ultimately to be withdrawn;” and “it is reported in Washington that they have been encouraged in this attitude by the agents of European Powers.”