Two Cities

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jan 3, 1911

THE population of Greater New York increased during the last ten years by 1,329,000. Metropolitan New York, which would include a part of New Jersey, increased by 2,000,000, and would number 7,000,000. Commuting New York would have a population of 7,500,000, a population three times as great as that of the States of California and Nevada combined. This is as large as London.

But there is coming a kingdom—the earth made new; and a greater city—the New Jerusalem, capital of that kingdom, into which all the inhabitants of all the cities of earth could enter; a city 375 miles square; containing 140,625 square miles, or an area greater than the States of New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia combined; a city which will know no graft, no crime, no oppression, no want, no wo, no sickness, no death. Its water-system is the River of Life. Its light is the Lord God eternal. Its one standard of personal, everlasting citizenship is righteousness, freely furnished by its King. To that citizenship, with all its blessings, all are invited.

It is an interesting story by John Moody and George Kibbe Turner in November McClure's of how one man—John Pierpont Morgan—got control of most of the railway property of the United States east of the Mississippi. In 1858 the greatest corporation in America had about $35,000,000 debt; in 1898 the capital and debt of the New York Central was about $750,000,000; of the Pennsylvania, nearly a billion; and under the influence of one man—Morgan—came capitalization and debt to the amount of two and three quarters billions. The story of James J. Hill and associates in the December number is not less interesting.

A report says that the Chinese Senate, sitting at Pekin, have voted to make effective the imperial order that all Chinese subjects shall cut off their queues. About 50,000 Chinese in the United States will come under the edict. The custom of wearing the queue was forced upon the Chinese nearly two centuries ago, and during all this time the queue has been a sign of their subjection and a pledge of their obedience and allegiance to the Manchu Dynasty.

Great Britain is planning to lay a cable between the home land and Canada which will run from North Scotland by the Faroe Islands to Iceland, then to Greenland, terminating at Labrador. Messages would be sent from Great Britain to Montreal at nine cents a word, and government, press, and deferred messages at five cents a word. It is estimated that this low rate will pay a five per cent interest on the investment.

Winter is intensifying the famine in the Yang-tse-Kiang districts in China. The authorities are endeavoring to suppress the sale of children, which has been so extensive as to be estimated at over a million, the majority of whom are girls. The roadways are dotted with the starving and dead, and the relief committee is now making appeals abroad for aid.

The pope will notify Catholic dignitaries and heads of State not to visit Rome during the jubilee celebration of Italian unity, held under the auspices of the civil government, early in March, at which time the pope will deliver an allocution of protest at the loss of the temporal power of the Papacy.

As the result of an explosion in a coal-mine of the Western Canada Collieries at Bellevue, fifty men were entombed, ten of whom died before rescuers could reach them.

$6,000,000 is too small a sum for the great New York Dreadnought; an eight-hour day will not build her; $1,500,000 more is asked, and the work is at a standstill.