Current Events and Disasters
Bubonic plague still continues in Venezuela, La Guaira, the seaport of Caracas, being closed to traffic with the interior. New cases are reported daily. Anarchy has received a blow in Spain. The Senate has passed stringent laws for the suppression of newspapers which publish news of anarchism, suspected clubs are to be closed, and citizens who propagate anarchism are to be expelled. Four hundred men were thrown out of employment of the Southern Pacific Company by the closing of machine shops in West Oakland, Cal., June 5. The indications are that the company will concentrate a large part of its shop work in large centers. Despatches from London dated June 1 report the rumor of a collision of the Red Star steamship "Vaderland," carrying 1,600 persons, with an unknown steamer in a storm on the North Sea. Other wrecks are reported, but the fate of the crews and passengers has not been learned. Tornado in Charles City, Iowa, June 7; 200 buildings destroyed; one man killed; four children missing. Tornado, same date, in Wisconsin, near Mauston, killing farmer and son, and destroying farm buildings. The storm in Montana caused drowning of eleven persons, and $1,000,000 loss of property. June 7, street-car jumps track in St. Louis, four fatally injured. French census reports for 1907 show that last year the mortality in France exceeded the birth rate by 19,000. The mortality among young children is causing alarm. Ignorance and poverty of the parents are the causes given for many deaths, and it is estimated that 60,000 to 80,000 babies could be saved annually in France if the state took the necessary preventive measures. It is simply enormous the amount of wood that is used every year in the manufacture of paper. Almost four million cords, the exact number 3,962,660 cords, were used in the United States last year in the manufacture of paper pulp; twice as much as was used in 1899. Of this, 3,700,000 cords were spruce. Paper manufacturers are now looking toward hemlocks, and other woods, but how this slaughter must affect the forests! The Associated Press of June 7 reported six men dead, eight in a dangerous condition, and twenty-five or thirty others confined to their homes from breathing foul air in the Gold King mine at Gladstone, six miles from Silverton, Colo. The burning of the engine house cut off the power supplying fresh air to the mine. All but three escaped at the first warning. The other victims were from the rescuers who endeavored to save their companions. The Presbyterians have voted to hold their next general assembly in Denver in 1909. At its recent session it voted $1,200,000 for home missions, and $1,600,000 for foreign missions. There was also planned an immense evangelistic campaign to reach every part of the world under the general direction of Rev. J. Wilbur Chapman. Mr. John H. Converse, President of the Baldwin Locomotive Works, is the financial head of the movement, having given more than a quarter of a million of dollars to that kind of work during the last seven years. He has been supporting Dr. Chapman especially. The Famine Situation in India.—The Oriental Watchman, published at Karmatar, India, has this to say concerning the famine in that country: "According to the last reports, there are now in various parts of India upward of 2,000,000 on the famine relief. This is notwithstanding the harvest of the early spring crops. Conditions in the main are rapidly growing worse." The same paper states that "the American board of commissioners at Boston for foreign missions has received advices from the interior of Turkey showing unusually severe famine conditions. Bread is double its usual price; wheat and other cereals are considerably higher than last year, and prices for other necessities are four or five times higher than fifteen years ago."