News from Russia and Washington
By Editor
The czar has issued another manifesto to his people, which reads as tho great concessions were being granted, but out of which the people are being puzzled to extract much that is satisfactory to them. It amounts to about this: That the people will be allowed to elect representatives who are to be allowed by the government to express their opinions concerning any law that may be passed; but they have no voice in the legislation. This act is regarded as the giving of a blind riddle for his people to solve. There is apparently more exasperation than satisfaction over the matter. It is reported that other officials of Russia are marked for assassination, and that a general peasant uprising is planned to take place as soon as the roads are passable. The inauguration ceremonies of President Roosevelt, on March 4, are said to have been the most imposing and brilliant ever witnessed in Washington. Men of all branches of the army and navy were in the great procession, as well as clubs and civic orders. State officials and soldiers from the South were also in line. The day's program closed with the usual grand ball. The President has chosen his cabinet. It consists of the same men that served in the cabinet up to the close of the last term, with the exception of the Postmaster-General. Geo. B. Courtelyou now holds that position. The cost of armed peace in Europe is shown in the enormous amounts the three principal maritime nations are levying for the support of their navies. Germany wants $200,000,000; France, $230,000,000; and England, $300,000,000. And still we are no nearer a universal peace than when the nations were spending one-fifth of that sum; but yet the same old argument is used that we must have great armies and navies to insure peace. The peaceful community is not the one where every man and boy carries a pistol, and the peaceful world is not the military one. A correspondent of the London Times gives an account of a discovery in Egypt by Theodore M. Davis, which, he says, is the most important made by any explorer since Egypt was opened to European research. It was the discovery of a tomb which had never been plundered or entered since it was sealed up in the eighteenth dynasty. The treasures with which the tomb was packed from end to end constitute the richest spoil of ancient Egypt that it has fallen to the lot of any explorer to unearth. Examination of the officials of the Santa Fe Railroad in court at Topeka, Kansas, discloses the fact that this company has paid in rebates to shippers during the year the sum of $1,198,352. It is believed that the greater portion of this amount has gone to the Standard Oil Company, and is a violation of the state law against freight discrimination. A strike of some five thousand employees of the New York Subway was inaugurated on March 7. The company has refused to yield to the demands of the men, and is operating the road with new help. The national officers of the laborers have declared the strike unwarranted, and have ordered the men back to work. The coronor's jury, in the case of Mrs. Jane L. Stanford, who died last week in Honolulu, has rendered its verdict to the effect that Mrs. Stanford died as the result of taking poison administered to her by some person or persons unknown to them. The search has now begun in earnest for the guilty person. Russia has paid to England $325,000 as settlement in full for the damages caused by the firing of her war-vessels upon the British fishing fleet in the North Sea. The bubonic plague has again broken out in India. The deaths from the plague during last week are reported to have been 34,000. The treasurer's report of the tobacco trust shows a profit for the past year of $22,304,646.