AMERICAN LETTER. NEWS AND NOTES.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 86, 12 April 1911, Page 3

AMERICAN LETTER. NEWS AND NOTES.

CHEAPER ELECTRIC LIGHT? TWO SUNDAYS IN THE WEEK. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SAN FRANCISCO, 20th March. From Vancouver comes the report that several officers in ihe Australian land forces have written to friends there, asking to be placed in communication with the Mexican revolutionary party. The writers wish to raise an Australian contingent to assist in the revolution. One of them, who asks that his identity be concealed for the present, declares that he can arm and equip 500 riflemen, mostly veterans of the Boer War. These he could put in the field within two months at the most. Love of adventure and a desire for active service is given as the sole reason for the officer's offer. TWO TRUSTS. Two more trusts are being prepared for slaughter— the coffee trust and the electric light bulb trust. The killing of the former, if accomplished, will bring great delight to Americans, who love coffee as Australians love tea. But it does not affect the outside world. The %ht bulb trust, on the other hand, has an enormous foreign trade, and there is room to conjecture -how foreign prices will be affected by the suit just instituted by the Government for the dissolution of the trust. i One of the charges brought against the combine is that it sold to foreigners for 5d bulbp the same as those for which it charged American buyers B£d. Now it is reported that the home price is to be reduced by about 30 per cent., in the hope of stalling off But a similar reduction in the export price is hardly probable. Indeed, it is possible that the trust ma-y try to raise the export price, to compensate for the loss on the home trade. Foreign producers, however, would have to be reckoned with in any move of that kind. , The light bulb trust, according to the legal allegations, has resorted to the wily ways that distinguished others more famous. The practice of charging more in the controlled domestic market than goods would bring in the foreign market, even after the payment of freight and other charges, .is well known to those who have followed the doings of , Standard Oil and the Harvester combine. Another little trick used by the trust to extend its influence was worked thus, it is charged : The trust organised small companies, which it advertised as "independents," and permitted them to sell inferior lamps. By this means the real independents were discredited, and the trust's prestige was raised/. Ninety-seven per. cent, of the American trade, according to the prosecutors, is in the hands of the 35 companies j composing the trust. i BATTLE WITH INDIANS. Yelling the old war-whoop, dancing wildly, fighting with bows and arrows, twelve outlawed Shoshone Indians made their last stand against the whites in the Nevada desert. They fought as gamely as ever Indians fought. - The squaws and children stood beside the bucks. It was hopeless striving, but the twelve stood their ground stoically till eight of them — four men, two j women and two children — had been ! picked off by the rifles of the pursuers. The remaining four were helpless to resist capture. The whites had lost onlyone man. Perhaps in the 'days of Deerfoot these Indians would have been heroes, and war and massacres would have followed. But not in the year 1911. There was an inquest a few days later, but nothing came of that. Tie little battle was the outcome of tie murder of four wealthy ranchers. These men disappeared on 19th January, and weeks later their bodies were found shot, mutilated, and stripped. The sheriff gathered a force, and started on the trail that led from the scene of the murder. For nearly three weeks they dogged the footsteps, soon learning that their quarry was a band of Indians. The trails grew fresher, and" the men knew they were gaining on the murderers. They sighted them, surrounded them, destroyed them. RECREATION AND CHRISTIAN WORSHIP. The proposition is made in all seriousness by The Watchman, a Baptist paper of Boston, that we should have two bundays m the week— one for rest, recreation, and social joys, the other for Christian worship. As a matter of history the paper says that this was the practice of the early Christians. To quote :—: — "The earliest converts to Christianity were Jews, and they continued after their acceptance of Jesus as the Messiah' to observe the Jewish Sabbath on the seventh day of the week. After the resurrection of J esus , on the first day °, he V^ k > ' the .Christians began to observe this day as a day of Christian assembly to worship their risen Lord, feo these early Jewish Christians had a day of rest and a day of worship every week. We have stated before, and we repeat, that it is our conviction that this is the proper order for Christians. th t ™l St Z k ?i. Dlade in trvin S to unite the Jewish Sabbath with the Christian * I s ?* y has been the cause of much ' ?!*^/"regard of the proper observance ol Sunday or the Lord's Day. In the laws given to Moses it was ordered that men should cease from labour on ' one day in seven. The injunctions the fourth Commandment contains nothing to show that it was intended that the day should be devoted wholly to religious observances, such as have alself, made it, as we have said, a day mJt C Th° m ? Dd Of sociai enjoyment. The need of such a day once in seven is founded in the physical and hv tifff ™° f T*' and is sanctioned ,by bod The attempt to induce people generally to devote this divinel/-sanc uoned rest day to the observances proper to the Christian Lord's Day ha SPS P always been a failure, and we frankly say Sure/? * alwa - VS "' m h& * A SCANDAL THAT FIZZLED. After all the fues over the bribery of members of the New York Legislature by turfmen who wanted the anti-a-acing Bill defeated, the first effort to brinanyone to justice has failed. The jury that teed Frank J Gardner, a former State Senator, on the charge of offering a brrbe of £2000 to a colleague, Otto G J o6^ , to if UC6 h'm to vote against the Bill, found a verdict of "not guilty." A pretty fizzle after the excitement that prevailed a few months back over the story of a party of millionaires meeting in a fashionable New York cafe and subscribing £60,000 to save the "sport of kings" by the corruption of the legislators ! ° SEATTLE'S HOUSE-CLEANIXG. Seattlo is the latest of American communities to make an effort to sweep its house clean of graft. The reformers have begun vigorously— not co vigorously as in San Francisco, but perhaps with a more solid bask of working. .Women

who were very activ© and influential on j the 6ide of reform in San Francisco, are more co in Seattle, and there they have the franchise to aid them. With the support of the women, the forces opposed to graft threw out of office Mayor Hiram Gill, who was accused of protecting the city'e purveyors of vice. They elected a reform Mayor and a reform City Council. ' Xow they have succeeded in gaining two indictments against th© late Mayor's Chief of l'olice, t).,W. Wapper-stein, on charges of receiving bribes for the protection of evil resorts. THE SUFFRAGISTS. The cleansing influence that the female vote is admitted to havt> exercis-ed in Seattle hae naturally, given an impetus to ihe woman suffrage movement in other parts of the country. The party in control in California is pledged to submit this reform to a vote of th« people, and the necessary legislation is well on its way. A plebiscite is probable ateo in Kansas. And the agitation has been renewed with vigour m Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin. Pennsylvania, and Michigan. The time is not far distant, in the opinion of the St. Louis Poet-Despatch, when women will "vote on all questions in every state in the Union." Dr. David Starr Jordan, President of Stanford University, is of like mind. "Universal suffrage is inevitable," he said in a recent interview. "We are going to have it^in California as well as in every other State in the Union. Generally, I believe it ie a good thing and will work" well, especially in 'regard to the liquor question." Women have th© suffrage at present in only five States — all in th© sparselysettled West.