Current Events and News
By Editor
We make a break in our home articles for a week to admit the paper on We regret that we could not begin the articles on The financial condition is growing better not very fast. We trust that many of our readers are learning that the best place in this world to deposit money is in God's work. This also keeps it in circulation, and not a penny is ever lost. The latest news from Portugal is that King Carlos has become thoroly alarmed over the feeling of the people against his dictatorship. He has ordered to Lisbon, the capital, all regiments which he thinks will remain loyal to him; all the others have been sent to the provinces. Several newspapers have been suspended for incendiary utterances. There is to be a strong fight between the American Newspaper Publishing Association and the paper trusts in the next Congress. Efforts will be put forth to abolish import duties on white paper and wood-pulp used in the making of paper. The papers especially in favor of this are the one-cent papers. Those against are the papers which sell at a higher price. The paper-mill men claim that paper is altogether too low now and their profits fell off over $350,000 last year. Professor Ambau, of the Radcliffe Observatory, in Oxford, England, states that on November 15 an immense flame shot up from the surface of the sun at the rate of over ten thousand miles a minute, until it reached the height of 325,000 miles, burning for over half an hour, when it broke into fragments and disappeared. Professor Service tells us that this height is extraordinary, but not unprecedented, for solar flames have been observed to reach 500,000 miles, but the most wonderful thing about this recent occurrence is the enormous speed attained. Ten thousand miles a minute is about 166 miles a second. He tells us that the earth in the midst of this solar outburst would not have been more than a floating speck. Senator Fred T. Dubois, of Idaho, has entered the arena against the Mormons. He has stepped forth in the lists in right ancient fashion, brandishing a shining The Mauretania, the latest Cunarder to make the passage across the Atlantic, has endeavored to lower the record of the Lusitania, but on account of meeting fearful storms it failed. It did, however, lower the one-day record, beating its sister ship by six knots, making a run of 624 nautical miles in twenty-four hours, about 770 statute miles. It brought with it the largest shipment of gold said ever to have crossed the ocean in one vessel, $12,500,000. Her average speed was 22.21 nautical, or 23.89 statute, miles an hour. Her cost was approximately $7,500,000. She has accommodation for 800 officers and crew, 550 passengers in the first-class cabins, 500 in the second class, and 1,300 in the steerage, a little world in itself, with a population of 3,150. The profits to the company on a voyage are usually from $50,000 upward. It costs about $150,000 to bring the ship over. The expenses are nearly $80,000. For instance, one of the last voyages of the Lusitania netted her owners $66,000. The National Reform Bureau, located at Washington, D. C., of which the Rev. Wilbur F. Crafts is secretary, is working for some excellent things. Earnest efforts are put forth against gambling, the liquor evil, and the divorce evil. The first two ought not to exist, and the latter needs strenuous reform. These things are of human regulation and have to do with civil affairs. But Mr. Crafts connects with these things for which he is seeking legislation another question with which human or civil law of right can have naught to do. To legislate on the Sabbath or any other duties which man owes to God is to put the state in the place of God and to invite persecution. All the bitter persecutions of the Dark Ages did not come because Roman Catholics were or are worse by nature than Protestants, but because persecution was the logical outcome of their views of the relationship between Church and state. They accepted the principle of coercion in religious and moral questions, and followed it to its logical fruitage—persecution. So all Sunday laws end. Mr. Crafts is now sending one of his lieutenants, the Rev. Mr. Tufts, who recently came from a victory in a small Western State, to California. There is great sorrow that California has no Sunday law. She is no worse, nor has she any more wicked cities than Sunday-law Illinois or New York. We earnestly hope that California will simply say to Mr. Tufts, We are out of the Dark Ages, and have no desire to turn back to the days of unity by force, of religion by law. A prominent daily in San Francisco criticizing a circular issued by a daily contemporary says: Will I Have to Give This Up?—There are many who desire to be Christians, simply because they fear the consequences of not being one. Some of these put the question in this way: Mr. Carnegie has pensioned one of the noted women of America, Ida Lewis Wilson, better known as Ida Lewis of Limerock Light at the entrance of Newport Harbor. She has had part in more gallant life-saving episodes than any other woman in the world. She is sometimes known as the Grace Darling of America. November 16, Oklahoma and Indian Territory entered the Union as the forty-sixth state, under the name of Oklahoma. It starts with far greater wealth and population than most of the states had when they entered the Union.