Jasper County Democrat, Volume 14, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 June 1911 — GENERAL NEWS, [ARTICLE]

GENERAL NEWS,

For the first time since the Hepburn act went into effect in June, 1906, the interstate c«nmerce commission has allowed a general increase in freight rates on an important commodity. The commission handed down a decision sustaining the right of carriers ' ■ North and South Dakota to increase freight rates on grain and grain products from producing points in those states to Minneapolis. Duluth, Milwaukee and Chicago and points taking the same rates. The commissioner, however, declines to sustain proposed advances in rates of coarse grain from points in those states to Omaha, Neb. At Indianapolis, Ind., suit for receiver for the Brown-Ketcham Iron Works, one of the largest structural iron works of the west, has teen filed by Edward Pierson, preferred stockholder. Pierson alleges that tbe liabilities.of the company amount to sl,100,000, and the assets are but 0. Willi-im 11. Brown is president of the company and John L. Ketcham secretary-treasurer. Pierson declares that the company lost nearly $75,000 during the first four months of this year. He asks that a receiver be appointed to wind up the affairs of the company.

The state of Michigan has eighty secondary schools on the list of schools accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. This means that any student graduated by one of these schools will be admitted to any university or college belonging to the association without examination, upon presenting a certificate from his school showing that he has done the work required for entrance to the college or university at which he applies for admission. The association covers eighteen states. Attornew General Wickersbam, apI>earing in Washington >City before the house committee <m expenditures in the department of justice, testified that he had advised the United States Steel corporation on several occasions from 1901 to 1909 during his connection with the firm of Strong & Cadwallader and that he had received his share of the fee turned into the firm for services to the American Sugar Refining company, personally attend ed to by Henry W. Taft, brother of the president Portuguese monarchists have devised a plot to overthrow the Portuguese republic and restore his lost throne to Manuel. The plotters are trying to prevail on Manuel to return to Portugal and lead the revolution So far the fugitive king has refused to to so. He is willing, however, to go back to his country if asked to do sc by a “representative assembly."

W. R. Pinkerton, head of the detective Agency, has been summoned tc London by Winston Churchill, home secretary of the British government to become adviser-in-chief of the army of secret service men who will guard the capital from the hordes of “good’ crooks now flocking to that city in ex pectation of rich plunder during the coronation of George V. At Shelbyville, Ind., the attorneys in the case of Sophia D. Hughes and others against William N. Thompson and others, all of Indianapolis, filed a motion for a new trial in the case tc break the will of Lovina Straight, whe left all of her property, valued at SIOO, 000, with the exception of $4,500, foi the establishment of a home for aged and dependent people. In New York city officers of ths United States Steel corporation and oi the larger Independents, meeting at the Metropolitan club, resolved that the present prices of steel products with respect to seven items are toe high and ought to be reduced. Whal was taken to be a fair reduction was proposed, and the steel manufacturers acquiesced. After years of excluson from Rus sia, Jews who desire to enter that country on business will be admitted hereafter under restrictions to be pre scribed by the Russian government This is a concession to the continued protests of the United States against the discrimination by Russia against Jews who are American citizens.

Bishop McDowell of the Methodis Episcopal church, former chancellor ol Denver university, who returned from China on the steamer Mongolia, de dares that the worst stage of the famine in China is passed. Bishop McDowell has been on a tour of inspec tion in India and ChinaRevelations of the alleged plot tc start another revolution in Mexico aft er overthrowing the leadership ol Francisco I. Madero, Jr„ and prevent ing his journey to Mexico City, caused intense excitement throughout the in surgent army. Three hundred' men prominent in the business community of New York city met at the call of the Postal Progress league to discuss the betterment of postal conditions and urge the passage by congress of a parcels post bill. At South Haven, Mich., the lake* steamer City of Kalamazoo of the Chicago and South Haven line, caught fire from the smokestack while being fitted for her first trip of the season, and her upper main cabin was destroyed with considerable furniture. The yards of the -Standard Lumber company in Dubuque, la., were destroyed what is believed to have been an incendiary fire. The loss wiA aggregate $500,000. Six persons were saved from death by fire in a four story uptown tenement in New York by a long slide down a clothesline.