Current Mention

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Mar 2, 1905

— The wholesale district of Indianapolis, Ind., was damaged to the extent of $1,500,000 by fire, February 19.

— Railway wrecks have been reported the past week at Fairlawn, N. J.; Wiota, Iowa; Columbia, Ala.; and Tyrone, Pa., at all of which, except the latter, there was some loss of life.

— One of the greatest disasters in the history of coal mining in this country took place at Virginia City, Ala., February 20, due to an explosion in the mine, the cause of which has not yet been definitely ascertained. About one hundred and twenty men were in the mine when the disaster occurred, and not one of the entire number survived.

— President William R. Harper, of Chicago University, is a victim of cancer, and is not expected to survive to the end of the present year. Dr. Harper recently underwent an operation, which was successful in removing a part of the cancer, which is an internal one, but no hope is held out that a cure of the disease will be effected.

— The great “beef trust,” the existence of which is denied by the beef packers, is feeling the heavy hand of the United States government. A press telegram from Chicago gives this statement of the situation: “United States officials began one of the most exhaustive inquiries ever started under the Sherman anti-trust act to-day [February 21] by issuing subpœnas for 185 witnesses, calling for a federal grand jury to sit March 20, and making full arrangements for producing complete evidence regarding the operations of the packers in Chicago and other packing centers in minute detail. One hundred and thirty witnesses are to be from the Chicago packing-houses and offices, and fifty-five are heads of departments and agents in fifteen other large cities of the country. . . . Both the President and Attorney-General Moody believe that the proof of the packers’ guilt is absolutely conclusive, and amply sufficient to insure convictions in the most important cases, if not in all. The penalty for each violation of the Sherman law is two years in the penitentiary, or $5,000 fine, or both.”

— Very strong governmental forces are being arrayed against the Standard Oil trust, and that organization is said to have become seriously alarmed for the preservation of its inordinate powers. President Roosevelt has instituted an investigation of the trust through the commissioner of corporations, and promises to exercise all his power in bringing to light the facts pertinent to the inquiry; while the States of Kansas, Missouri, Wisconsin, Texas, and Colorado, and the Territory of Oklahoma are either providing for an investigation of the Standard Oil monopoly or for the establishment of State oil refineries. A projected renewal by Congress of a “blanket lease” of 680,000 acres of oil and gas lands belonging to the Osage Indian tribe in Indian Territory, to Mr. H. V. Foster, has been a subject of controversy between parties who favored the lease and others who opposed it on the ground that the lease was really in the interests of the Standard Oil trust, among the protests received in Congress being one from the Kansas Legislature. Independent oil producers in West Virginia have pledged aid to President Roosevelt in conducting the investigation which he has set on foot. The Standard Oil Company announces that it will resist the proposed investigation of its affairs to the utmost.

— A state of affairs bordering on anarchy still continues in many parts of Russia, the most serious recent disturbances being at Baku, Riga, and Batoum. Labor agitations, political revolution, and racial antipathies figure as causes of the disorders, which have now assumed the gravest character. According to a St. Petersburg dispatch, the actual revolution, accompanied by the setting up of a new provisional government, was accomplished in some districts on the eastern border of the Black Sea. The situation in northern Russia and Poland is reported to be hardly less serious. At Baku hundreds of Armenians were slaughtered in the streets by Tartars who were turned loose upon them, while the authorities refused to interfere. Many people were killed also at Batoum, Riga, and Poti. The strike at Warsaw still continues, and the strikers are resorting to violence. Alarming reports are in circulation regarding the intentions of the revolutionary party. Railway traffic has been stopped in many places. It is stated that the whole educational system of Russia is involved in the revolutionary movement.

— The movement for church federation in this country is assuming very definite shape. A New York City telegram says: “Definite plans are taking shape for the great Inter-Church Conference on Federation to be held here next fall, and to which official delegates have already been named by religious bodies, with an aggregate membership of nearly twenty million. The Federation Conference will have its sessions in Carnegie Hall, where the Ecumenical Mission Conference met five years ago, extending over five days, from November 15 to 20. The conference is looked forward to in all bodies as the most important religious gathering this country has ever seen, since it will represent a co-operation of religious bodies which would have been impossible a few years ago. Details of the plan are in charge of a general committee on arrangements, of which the Rev. Dr. William H. Roberts, secretary of the Alliance of Reformed Churches holding the Presbyterian system, is chairman, and the Rev. Dr. E. B. Sanford, secretary of the National Federation of Churches, is secretary. At a meeting of this committee, just held, it was reported that official delegates are already assured from nearly all the larger bodies of the United States, and from most of the smaller ones. The purpose of the federation conference, as stated in the letter sent to the religious bodies asking the appointment of delegates, is as follows: ‘We believe that the great Christian bodies in our country should stand together, and lead in the discussion of, and give an impulse to, all great movements that make for righteousness. We believe that questions like that of the saloon, marriage, and divorce, Sabbath desecration, the social evil, child labor, relation of labor to capital, the bettering of the condition of the laboring classes, the moral and religious training of the young, the problem created by foreign immigration and international arbitration—indeed, all great questions in which the voice of the churches should be heard—concern Christians of every name, and demand their united and concerted action if the church is to lead effectively in the conquest of the world for Christ.’”