News and Miscellany by Editor

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park, Washington, D. C. · Jan 2, 1913

News and Miscellany

By Editor

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

— Sixty thousand tons of California canned and dried fruits are being shipped to Europe this year, a large part going to Germany.

— The bubonic plague has broken out near Popovka, in Russia. A company of troops has been stationed there to enforce an effective quarantine.

— On December 22, two violent earthquake shocks occurred in Sicily. The disturbance caused a great panic, although there were no casualties.

— Within the last two weeks twelve deaths have occurred in Midville, Ga., from spinal meningitis. The fatality of the epidemic has caused a general exodus of the residents.

— President Taft has decided to accept the proffer of the Kent professorship of law at Yale University. He will probably take up his duties at New Haven early in the spring.

— Twenty-two of the twenty-seven members of the crew of the Furness line steamer "Florence," bound from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to St. John's, lost their lives when the vessel was wrecked December 20 on the ledges west of St. Shotts. The boat carried no passengers.

— Luther Conant, Jr., Commissioner of Corporations, in his report to President Taft last week stated that railroad and steamship combinations control the regular steamship lines of the country. Twenty roads manage vessels of 810,000 gross tonnage, capitalized at $84,603,262.

— Fire in a theater at Baruques, near Brussels, Belgium, on the night of December 22, resulted in the death of twelve persons and the injury of twenty. Many of the victims were women and children, who were trampled to death or hurt in the wild stampede to escape from the building.

— The first report of the commission appointed under the terms of the Rockefeller fund, to devise means for the eradication of the hookworm in the mountain districts of Kentucky, was made at Lexington, December 21. The report is for Breathitt County, and shows that, out of 1,785 persons examined, 1,263 were affected. In some of the country schools every pupil was found to be suffering from this malady.

— Stirred by the dilatory and evasive attitude of President Madero toward demands by the United States that Mexican murderers of Americans be punished, and that indemnity be given for the loss of American life and property, President Taft, on December 19, sent an ultimatum to Madero, under which he must act. The crisis with Mexico came at the end of a series of diplomatic changes between this government and Mexico, which has taxed the patience of the President and Secretary Knox. According to the present plan, if by the time President Taft returns from Panama, Madero has not given a satisfactory response to the American ultimatum, the case will be placed before Congress, with the request that the President be authorized to enforce the demands of the United States.

— The crossing of the Delaware River by Washington just before the battle of Trenton, which was one of the turning points of the Revolution, is to be commemorated by the purchase of the property on which the landing was made, and its use as a public park.

— Recently the mail in the postal pillar-boxes in the city of London was destroyed by the pouring into the boxes of acid, black ink, and paint. The destruction of the mail in this wholesale manner had been carefully organized and the plans skilfully carried out. Suspicion has fastened upon the belligerent suffragettes.

— The immediate construction of a railroad from Tangier to Fez, the capital of Morocco, is provided for in the supplementary articles of the Franco-Spanish treaty in reference to Morocco. The new railroad, with its branches extending to other parts of Morocco, will mean the opening up of the heart of the Moroccan empire to communication with the outside world, as well as giving great opportunities for the extension of commerce and industry.

— A systematic effort to obtain clean and sanitary groceries is to be made by the Chicago Clean Food Club, organized in that city recently. Its object is to enforce cleanliness in stores. Some of the tenets of the club, which plans to hold an exhibition of a model store, are: No cats to be allowed in grocery stores; no chickens to be kept in crates on sidewalks; stores having flies to be black-listed; no horse blankets in delivery wagons; everything to be kept off the floor and covered.

— The president of the Chinese republic, Yuan Shi Kai, recently suppressed the newspaper King-Bao, which undoubtedly was the oldest paper in the world. For 1,500 years it had reported the most important news, not only of China, but also of foreign countries. At a time when the art of printing and journalism was yet unknown in Europe, the Chinese Gong-Chung invented a means for making types from lead and silver, and in the year 400 A. D. the newspaper King-Bao was printed, and has since been issued regularly until recently. The first edition was printed on ten sheets of yellow silk, neatly tied together, and was thus sent to all the high officials of the Chinese Empire.

— That Dr. Israel, one of the world's celebrated specialists on kidney diseases, recently went to St. Petersburg and removed a tubercular kidney from the eight-year-old czaravitch, first became known in medical circles at Berlin, December 20. This is regarded as the true explanation of the heir apparent's illness, for which so many sensational causes have been assigned. The czar issued a royal edict setting aside the law forbidding Jews to enter Russia, so that Dr. Israel might experience no difficulty, and sent a personal representative to the border to meet him. It is reported that Dr. Israel received $25,000 for performing the operation, and also that before he undertook the task he imposed the condition on the czar that if the operation was successful the czar was to rescind the laws prohibiting the settlement of Jews in Kiev and Odessa. This report has not been confirmed. The operation is understood to have been a complete success.

— The largest statue ever hewn out of a single block of granite has just been hoisted into place above the new Union Station in Washington. It is a statue of Truth, one of five which represent the last work of Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Special devices capable of lifting an almost inconceivable weight were required to swing the huge granite mass clear from the ground and hoist it into the air, for it weighs almost 50,000 pounds.

— Rules which have guided in equity cases for fifty years in the federal courts throughout the United States have at last been revised. For seventeen months the chief justice and Justices Lurton and Van Devanter, as a subcommittee of the Supreme Court, have been busy at the task of revision. The bar associations have offered suggestions in response to the request of the committee. The present rules came to us from England, and have been revised only in one or two particulars since the founding of the republic. The changes effected aim at a reduction in loss of time and money in equity cases. The revised code will go into effect Feb. 1, 1913.

— Ranking in importance almost with the selection of the Cabinet itself, is the task which will confront Pres.-elect Woodrow Wilson on March 4, next, of naming a new corps of diplomatic representatives for the United States in foreign capitals. The vacancies that will occur, probably by resignation, include 10 ambassadorships, and the posts of 32 ministers. Owing to the fact that many of these positions, especially those of ambassadors, offer but little, comparatively, in the way of compensation, and the expense of keeping up the establishment is sometimes greater than the pay, while the duties are exacting and arduous, it is difficult in many cases to obtain an available candidate.

— At the instance of the legislative commission investigating methods to provide a remedy for the increasing cost of food, scientific experts of the French Institute are testing artificial meat produced by a Belgian chemist, from the residue of malt after breweries have used it for making beer. The albumin thus extracted is washed and pressed into solid bricks, treated first by sulphuric acid, and then by lime-water, and afterward submitted to a number of operations of filtration and vacuum evaporation. The pasty substance thus resulting, it is said, strongly resembles meat both in taste and appearance, and possesses alimentary properties three times greater than ordinary meat.

— Testimony concerning child-labor conditions in the New York City tenement district was recently given before the State Factory Investigating Committee. Epitomized, the reports were that mothers beat their children to keep them awake when they fell asleep over their needles after working ten hours a day; that it was no uncommon sight to find children of four or five years making artificial flowers; that one of three years was found working on corset covers; that nineteen workers were found living in a two-room apartment; that children afflicted with diphtheria and tuberculosis and other diseases were found making cigarettes sold to fashionable clubs, and doing other work at a mere pittance for wages.