News and Miscellany

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 21, 1914

News and Miscellany

Notes and clippings from the daily and weekly press

— The pecan crop in central Texas is estimated at $200,000, growers receiving all the way from six to twenty-five cents a pound for nuts. Two and a half million pounds were gathered—ninety carloads. The prize tree for the season netted its owner $300.

— American intervention in the Dominican republic for the purpose of establishing a provisional government is admitted as a possibility by officials in Washington. Sharp fighting is going on between the Dominican government forces and insurgents. American interests are in danger.

— Miss Eleanor Wilson, daughter of President and Mrs. Wilson, was quietly married to the Secretary of the Treasury, Hon. William G. McAdoo, on May 7. The wedding was strictly a home affair, the ceremony taking place in the Blue Room of the White House. The bridal couple received many choice and valuable presents.

— A striking illustration of the terrible human waste in war is furnished by the census just taken of the new Bulgarian territories acquired by conquest. The male population of that portion of Macedonia allotted to Bulgaria was reduced during hostilities from 175,000 to 42,500. In Bulgarian Thrace only 225,000 males remain out of a total before the war of 494,000, while in the district of Mustapha Pasha, where fighting raged long and fiercely, only 4,000 males are left out of 33,000.

— To test the honor of the convicts confined in the State penitentiary at Rusk, Tex., the practice of leaving all the cell doors unlocked and the prison gates wide open was adopted recently. All the inmates are free to go and come day and night, as they please. All but two guards have been discharged, and they will be dispensed with if the new system works well. The convicts are employed during the day on the State farm, a mile from the prison. They work without being guarded, and no one has attempted to escape so far.

— The American Red Cross Society has notified its 4,000 members to be ready for a call in case hostilities should reopen between this country and Mexico.

— It is announced that the Incorporado Company of Sao Paulo, Brazil, failed recently, and with it not less than forty-six banks in the principal towns of the state of that name. The company had been organized to finance smaller country banks.

— The moving picture show has a rapacious appetite for nickels. It took 6,380,000,000 nickels to satisfy the motion picture fad for 1913; that is, $319,000,000 was spent on this form of amusement during 1913. Such amount is twenty-one times as great as $14,942,523, our total contribution for foreign missions.

— The Hub retains the bean-eating championship. During the last winter it is estimated that the 1,283,458 people in Greater Boston spent more than $10,000,000 on baked beans alone. Thirty-three million quarts were disposed of in the city and suburbs in the last year, an average of nearly thirty quarts a year for each person.

— It is estimated that more than 30,000 barrels of flour were required in New York City to supply the demand for unleavened bread during the Passover festival. Arrangements were made for the Jewish soldiers and sailors stationed in and around New York to attend services at the Fifth Avenue Temple and in Tuxedo Hall. There are about 500 Jews connected with the army and navy in that city.

— An appeal is being made to the United States District Attorney and to the Department of Agriculture to put a stop to the practice of "sanding" and "overcropping" poultry by Western shippers. After starving the chickens for twenty-four hours or more, they are given a paste, just before reaching New York, composed of grain, pebbles, and finely crushed stone. This, it is said, often adds four ounces to a four-pound chicken, and brings a large profit to commission merchants.

— Mindful of the numerous embarrassments occurring during the Spanish war, the War Department has prepared regulations concerning newspaper correspondents with the army in the field. The newspaper man who desires to be a correspondent with the army must deposit a certified check for $1,000, against which he may draw for subsistence supplies at the commissary or for any part of his equipment. He must also provide a bond in the sum of $2,000 for his good conduct, which in the case of forfeiture may be transferred to any charity the Secretary of War may designate. The correspondent will also take a military oath of loyalty in the usual form. He must agree to abide by all the regulations laid down for his guidance. Only one correspondent will be permitted to accompany the same field army. Men who have adventure rather than actual service as journalists in mind will not be received. No photographers for the press will be allowed with the army. There will be an official army photographer whose films will be sent to Washington promptly and prints will be furnished to the press at a slight cost.

— It is a pleasure to turn from recent accounts of unsatisfactory political conditions in the Philippines to the report of the surgeon-general of the United States Public Health Service, telling of further success last year in the campaign against disease. During the whole year not a single case of cholera occurred in the islands; there were only a few cases of plague and of smallpox, the latter among persons inaccessible to vaccination. All three of these diseases have in times past ravaged the islands, as many as 40,000 annually having died from smallpox alone. It is also to be noted that yellow fever no longer has a foothold, either in the Philippines or in any other portion of American territory.