Jasper County Democrat, Volume 1, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 February 1899 — IN GENERAL. [ARTICLE]

IN GENERAL.

Grand Chief Powell, of the Order of Railway Telegraphers, who has been attending the arbitration at Toronto of disputes between the Grand Trunk Railway and its operators, says that all the questions have been practically settled in a way decidedly in favor of the men. Five of the crew of the halibut fishing schooner St. Lawrence, which was wrecked off Piper Bay, Alaska, were brought to Victoria, B. C., on the Rosalie. The seven men aboard the St. Lawrence got ashore and managed to live for ten days, when they were rescued by the sloop Nora. According to a dispatch from Port Arthur, the Russian post in the Liau-Tong peninsula of China, bad water is causing terrible mortality among the Russian troops. Two hundred and fifteen men died during the mouths of November and December, and the nverage mortality is now four deaths daily. The accounts of the contributions from various countries to the Pope’s Peter’s pence during 1898 have been made public. They show that the United States led in the subscriptions, with $142,200; Great Britain and her colonies, $125,000; France, $39,000; Italy, $74,000; Austria, SOO,OOO, and Germany, $30,000. On oue of the Bass islands, in Lake Erie, has lived a family named Robson. A young child died. Preparations were made to convey the remains to the Canadian mainland. The entire family, with the hired man, set out iu a small boat. The boat has been found badly battered and this leads islanders to believe •that the little craft was jammed to pieces by an ice floe and that the funeral party went down to death in the lake. The fact that the United States armored cruiser Brooklyn did not enter port at St. Thomas, D. W. 1., after appearing off Charlotte Amalie, was a great disappointment to the people there. The pilot who informed the Brooklyn that the health regulations provided that she would be quarantined for fourteen days, which is said to have made the warship return to Cuba, is blamed for his unauthorized action. It is added that there is no doubt the Brooklyn would have been passed by the doctor if she had entered the harbor.

R. G. Dun & Co.’s weekly review of trade says: “The country is in a stronger position than a week ago. Remarkable strength in its industries is an important but not the chief element. Public confidence in the business of the' country and in its securities has been tested to an unusual extent by the sudden fall in stocks and the subsequent rise. Confidence in the value of wheat, corn and cotton has been shown by the markets, and at rising prices the world buys because it has to buy. The vast supply of unemployed capital has been shown impressively and the new and startling independence of foreign money markets fixes attention. The lumber movement is unusually large for the season, with prices of low grade sharply advancing. Railroad earnings and tonnage have shown surprising gains. Wool grow* weaker because forced by speculation a year ago to prices which the market for goods could not sustain and has been much embarrassed in trying to sustain ever since. The sales of wool are still small. Cotton is higher %c and goods have been strong. Pig iron has risen at Chicago because higher freights from the South and at Pittsburg a shade for Bessemer and gray forge because of growing demand, but for tbe moment the rise of 2 per cent in pig is exceeded by the rise of 2 per cent iu products. The demand is heavy in nil lines. Wheat has risen 8 cents, with much buying based on extraordinary exports. Failures for the week have been 224 in the United States, against 342 last year, and 33 in Canada, against 34 last year.”