News and Notes

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 30, 1900

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 77, No. 44.

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—The gas war in Chicago has ended, and the price has been advanced. Of course!

—The Tiffany strikers in New York City have returned to work, some losing their jobs.

—It is said that “the American share of the loot secured at Tientsin, China, aggregates over $300,000.”

—Andrew Carnegie has presented the town of Hawick, Scotland, with $50,000 for a public library.

—As the United States battleship “Oregon” is in need of extensive repairs, it will return to this country.

—Princeton University has conferred the degree of LL. D. upon Mr. Hay, United States secretary of state.

—The government of Holland has ordered 12,000 tons of steel rails from the Carnegie Steel Company.

—A massacre of Armenians is reported from Diarbekir, Turkey, Mussulmans, having destroyed eight villages.

—Germany has leased the Island Urcan, in the Red Sea, for a period of thirty years. It will be used as a German coaling station.

—Postmaster Albert Barnes, of Kearsarge, N. H., is believed to be the only man now living whose father fought at Bunker Hill. He is eighty-three years of age.

—Twenty patients at the New York State hospital for the criminal insane assailed their keepers, and escaped to the woods, October 23. All but seven were caught.

—It is the Réaumur thermometer scale which is and has been used in all German government offices, and which is to be supplanted by the Centigrade scale after Jan. 1, 1901.

—John Sherman, ex-secretary of state, and for forty years prominent in affairs of the administration of the United States, died in Washington, D. C., Monday, October 22.

—The Baldwin Locomotive Works, of Philadelphia, will build thirty freight locomotives for the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad, and thirty-two for the Union Pacific.

—An exchange says that “the natives of Hawaii, be they ever so poor, never steal nor beg. These offenses are confined almost exclusively to the Portuguese residents of the island.”

—Henry Youtsey, stenographer to Governor Taylor, of Kentucky, and the third man found guilty in connection with the Goebel shooting, has been sentenced to life imprisonment.

—The Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway will soon build a steel elevator in Buffalo, N. Y., with a capacity of 750,000 bushels. Niagara Falls will supply the power for running the machinery.

—Charles Dudley Warner, a literary man of note, died at his home in Hartford, Conn., Saturday, October 20. He is said to have been, in many ways, “the literary successor of Irving,” whose biography he wrote.

—Bourke Cockran has a sufficient income from his New York law practice to enable him to make his political tour of the country in a private car, the expense of which, over $100 a day, he meets personally.

—President Kruger is to be given an ovation in Paris, by the president of France, and is to be treated by the French people with all the honors due to the head of a state, England’s desire to the contrary notwithstanding.

—Baroness von Ketteler, widow of the German minister murdered in Peking, and daughter of President Ledyard of the Michigan Central Railroad, arrived at Victoria, British Columbia, October 16. She is to reside with her father in Detroit, Mich.

—Booker T. Washington announces that the German government has closed a contract with his school at Tuskegee, Ala., to furnish students to introduce cotton raising in Germany’s West African colony. A party of students will sail for that purpose, November 3.

—Cornelius Vanderbilt has rented the furnished residence of the late Collis B. Huntington, at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street, New York City, paying a rental of $50,000 a year therefor. It cost nearly $2,000,000 to build the dwelling, and Mr. Huntington had filled it with art treasures gathered from all over the world.

—In Nome City coal sells for $125 a ton.

—Mr. Paul Kruger will hereafter reside in Brussels, Belgium.

—An English inventor purposes to build a boat that will cross the Atlantic in two days.

—One company alone is shipping an average of five car-loads of apples out of Walla Walla, Wash., each day.

—The British War Office has issued orders that the bulk of the militia regiments called out for service during the South African War are to be disbanded. This will affect about 50,000 men.

—The recent trial trip of the United States battleship “Wisconsin,” off Lower California, proved it to be the finest and swiftest vessel of her class in the world. The speed register indicated 17.25 knots an hour.

—The International Peace Congress recently issued “an appeal to the nations, urging the conclusion of treaties making arbitration permanent and obligatory.” But the question is, Who will make it “obligatory” upon the nations, the majority of whom are opposed to arbitration?

—Trinity College, Washington, D. C., which was opened October 1, is “the first Catholic college in the world for the higher education of women,” and will be able to accommodate “fifty students besides the sisters and teachers.” November 6 the institution will be dedicated by Cardinal Gibbons.

—Rev. Charles Merle d’Aubigné, son of J. H. Merle d’Aubigné the distinguished historian of the Reformation, and himself a man of high rank among the Huguenots of France, is expected to arrive in this country early in next month. He will spend about three months advocating the evangelizing of France.

—On October 9 the steamer “S. J. Murphy” sailed from South Chicago with 270,000 bushels of corn, the largest cargo ever shipped from Chicago. It was equal to 7,500 net tons. Last season the steamer “Superior City,” of the American Steel and Wire fleet, sailed with a cargo of 7,400 tons, from the same port.

—The Canadian government is to offer for sale all its claims in the Klondike, including “all the alternate claims which were reserved by the government during the big rush, and all the claims that have reverted to the crown from various causes. It is estimated that there are between 8,000 and 10,000 such claims.”

—The cured fruit business of the Pacific Northwest is growing to enormous proportions, says the Pacific Homestead. The evaporated fruit that will go out of the three States,—Oregon, Washington, and Idaho,—of this year’s crop, will amount approximately to a thousand car-loads. It will be mostly prunes. There is acreage sufficient to make the cured fruit product of the three States 1,500 car-loads annually, and the orchard acreage is increasing rapidly.

—October 17 the Bible was barred from the public schools of Chicago by the board of education, by a vote of thirteen to six. It was voted to “keep out of the public schools the work of Scriptural selections published by Mrs. Elizabeth Blanchard Cook, president of the Chicago Woman’s Educational Institute. The quotations were chosen by a committee composed of Cardinal Gibbons, Professor Swing, and a number of other distinguished prelates. The book has been adopted by the school boards of a number of leading cities.”

—“A recent caution from the United States consul at Mainz, Germany,” says the Evening Post, “relates to the danger in using certain silver-mounted glasses and porcelain wares. In manufacturing, the silver on each article is applied by means of a process which requires the use of potassium cyanide, and the hair-like cracks existing in the porcelain glaze receive and retain a dangerous amount of this deadly poison. To use or even to handle these cups, glasses, jars, vases, or whatever the vessel may be, is attended with great risk. The consul reports a severe case of poisoning resulting from the use of the ware, which is chiefly exported to this country from Frankfort, Berlin, and Stuttgart.”

—Statistics show that “at the opening of the century French was spoken by about 31,000,000 persons; German by 30,000,000; Russian by 30,000,000; Spanish by 27,000,000; Italian by 16,000,000; English by 21,000,000.” To-day, however, English is “the language of about 130,000,000 persons; French of 45,000,000; German of 70,000,000; Russian of 75,000,000; Spanish of 45,000,000; Italian of 35,000,000. In other words, during the present century English has risen not only from the fifth place to the first among the languages named, but has gained enormously in relative magnitude, expanding from thirteen per cent of the total to over thirty-two per cent, from one eighth to nearly one third.”

—It is stated that “the closing competition in the exhibition balloon matches at Paris, October 12, will live long in the history of aeronautics. One, at least, of the competitors has far outdistanced any previous officially recorded aerial voyage. The balloon “Centaure” reached Kief, Russia, making the voyage of 1,304 miles in thirty-six hours.” Steven and Joseph Montgolfier, sons of Peter Montgolfier, a large and celebrated paper maker at Annonay, a town about forty miles from Lyons, France, were the original discoverers of the balloon, their first public experiment being made June 5, 1783. The French people still call hot-air balloons Montgolfières. In the month of August of the same year, another Frenchman, M. Charles, discovered the hydrogen-gas balloon, which is styled by French writers Charlières.

—The following letter will explain itself, correct an error, and give other information:—

“To the Editor of the Review and Herald.

“DEAR SIR: On page 668 of your issue of October 16, you have quoted, under the heading of News and Notes, that ‘in India 30,000 students receive the degree of B. A. each year, and that there are in that country about 3,000,000 college graduates occupying various positions of responsibility.’ For the benefit of your numerous readers I wish to say that the statement is erroneous. The Indian universities and colleges are of recent growth, the universities of Bombay and Calcutta having been founded in 1859. About 2,500 students receive the degree of B. A. each year, and about 50,000 college graduates in arts, medicine, and engineering occupy various positions of responsibility. Education is still in a backward state in my poor country, but, thanks to British rule in India, we are making fair progress of late. India now is not so mentally and morally dark as it was half a century ago, under native rulers.

“Yours truly, “NASARVANJI M. COOPER.”