News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 29, 1914

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

—For the first time in the history of the government of New York City, a woman is to be appointed to the mayor's cabinet. Dr. Katherine B. Davis is slated for the office of commissioner of corrections. This will virtually give her control of all reform work for boys and girls within her jurisdiction.

—The mammoth plants of the International Distilling Company and the United States Industrial Alcohol Company at New Orleans, La., were destroyed by fire recently, with a loss of $1,000,000. Firemen fighting the blaze faced an impossible task on account of the scores of explosions of alcohol tanks.

—A serious railway strike has been on in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, South Africa. Early in January every man in the Bloemfontein workshops laid down his tools and walked out. The railroad yards and stations were under a guard of armed police and contingents of the Citizen Defense Force. Martial law was proclaimed in several cities, and the government declared its intention to fight to the finish the Trades Federation, which ordered the strike. The strikers set off dynamite under three crowded passenger trains manned by nonunion men, but providentially no lives were lost.

—No one knows how many have lost their lives as a result of the terrible seismic disturbances in Japan. There has been great loss of life and enormous property damage. The city of Kagoshima is destroyed as a result of the eruption of Aukara-Jima, and the tidal wave which followed. This was a city of 70,000, a large portion of whom lost their lives. Mt. Kirishima Yama, thirty miles north of Kagoshima, is in a state of violent eruption. Mt. Asama, in central Japan, has begun to erupt. The state of the public mind cannot be described. Notwithstanding the fact that 10,000,000 Japanese in the northern islands are near starvation as a result of famine, this has been forgotten in the new calamity that has overwhelmed the kingdom. To add to the terror of the night, great forest fires are reported to have been set by the molten lava from the volcanoes, and it is thought that many of those who succeeded in getting away from actual harm from the flying rocks and lava, have been trapped by the blazing forests.

—Negotiations between the United States and Colombia for a settlement of the controversy growing out of the independence of Panama, and the loss of Colombian territory through what is claimed to have been the connivance of this country, have been brought to a conclusion satisfactory to both governments. The draft of a treaty has been concluded whereby the United States agrees as a matter of courtesy to pay to the Colombian government the sum of $25,000,000. During the Taft administration Secretary Knox negotiated a treaty in which the monetary consideration was fixed at $23,000,000, but the Colombian authorities

refused to accept it, and insisted that the whole subject be submitted to arbitration. This government declined absolutely to consider the question of arbitration at any stage of the proceedings.