Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 September 1893 — THE NEWSOF THE WEEK [ARTICLE]

THE NEWSOF THE WEEK

The wheat acreage in Kansas for next season will be 200.000 acres short. Texas is in financial difficulties. There will be a deficiency of $2,030,000 at the end of the fiscal year. 2 World’s Fair officials will endeavor to have Congress extend the time for closing the Exposition from October 30 to January 1,1894. A great many good people in attendance at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago have been robbed by pickpockets of all their valuables. The Sovereign Grand Lodge I. O. O. F. was in session at Milwaukee during the last week. The next annual meeting will be held at Chattanooga, Tenn. ' No bad play goes at a Choctaw Indian game of base ball. At San Bais, in a fight growing out of a game, a sheriff and his deputy were killed and a white man was wounded. Yellow fever, prevalent at Brunswick, Ga., for some time, is increasing. Four cases developed Tuesday. No deaths have been reported. Nineteen cases-are. now •under treatment. W. S, Streeter, Vice President of the insolvent Guaranty Loan Company, was arrested at Minneapolis, charged with having declared a dividend when the company was insolvent. Every department of the plant of the Otis Steel Company, of Cleveland, is in operation again, except the plate mill. The Bessemer department, which has been idle for more than a month, has also been started. ‘ . • In the Senate, Wednesday, Mr. Tnrpie submitted resolutions from the Knights of Labor at Washington, Ind., against the repeal of the Sherman silver act. The resolution contends that repeal would “demonetize silver.” The Kanawha, W. Va., Coal Exchange has appointed a committee of twentythree of the coal operators in the State to go to Washington to protest before the ways and means committee, against the repeal of the duty on foreign coal. The whole of the $70,000 taken by the Mineral Range train robbers last week has been irecovered. Several arrests have been made. The train men were implicated and one of the men arrested has confessed and revealed the whole plot, Senator Irby, the Populist successor to Wade Hampton in the United States Senate, supplied the people Of Columbia. S. C., with a short lived sensation, leaving however, an enduring entry on the police court records of that city in the shape of a “drunk and disorderly conduct, count No. 1;” “carrying concealed weapons, count No. 2.”

The President, Tuesday, appointed Jos. W. Nichol, formerly of Indianapolis, now of Washington, D. C., who served as law clerk of the Postoffice Department under his first administration, to be Deputy Second Controller of the Treasury. He also sent to the Senate the name of William Bracken, of Brookville, to be collector of internal revenue for the sixth district of Indiana. The Chicago Tribune reporter drew a vivid picture of the scene of the big train robbery when he said: “The place selected for the dastardly crime was a most propitious one. Far from any human habitation and surrounded by great forests, etc.” Quite an imaginative cuss, Indeed, when it is taken into consideration that there is not a forest in that locality that would hardly hide a red squirrel, that the farms are all improved and peo- ■ pie llvihg on all sides. The above is a good sample of reportorial veracity.—Ligonier Banner. The silver men in the Senate ar-3 feeling decidedly more encouraged as the prospect that the federal election bill may reach that body increases. Said one of their leaders: “We can hold off for three weeks certainly, if there is a prospect of getting the election bill here in that time, and I am assured that we will get it in less time.” If the election bill reaches the Senate before the Sherman bill is repealed It will be the policy to substitute Senator Hill’s bill, which has already been reported, for it, as that bill is on the calendar, and there might be doubts of getting the House bill out of committee. The weather crop bulletin for the last week says: The temperature was excessively warm until Saturday, when it became cool both day and night. Abundant rains fell at the beginning of theweek nearly everywhere They came too late to do good to corn, but pasturage,meadows and other vegetation were benefited and are improving. The soil, being wetted several inches deep, was in good condition, and plowing and sowing wheat were vigorously prosecuted. Much corn Is cut and In shock and that which is ■till standing can only be hurt by a very levere frost within a few days, most being beyond all danger. Grasshoppers and crickets are very numerous. The disappointed boomers who failed to secure claims in the Cherokee Strip are returning in large numbers. There is nearly as great a rush to get out as there was to get in. There were at least ton men for every possible claim. Death by prairie fires and the excessive heat have been numerous and the actual number may never be,known. Nearly every town lite on the Strip has a rival. Many crimes and murders are reported. The Strip was a hot wind Monday that reached ■.velocity of thirty-six miles an hour. The heat was stifling ahd the air was filled with sand that made life a burden.

Further investigation of the shortage of gold bullion at the Philadelphia mint has led te the startling disclosure that the value of the stolen metal will reach 1134,000, and the further discovery that Jhe thief was an old and trusted employe named Cochran, who had been in the service of the government for forty years. He was charged with the crime and confessed, and has made restitution through a return of a portion of the metal and by means Of property and a recourse on his bondsmen. The stealings have been carried on at intervals during the past eight years. Many casualltles are reported from exposure and prairie fires in the Cherokee Strip. Elizabeth Osborn, 76 years old, of Saginaw, Mo., was burned to death at Buck creek. She and her husband made the race for a claim in a buggy. In the valleys of Duck creek, where they intended to settle, the prairie fire came sweeping after them. Some one collided with Osborne's wagon and broke It. Osborne jumped out, turned his team loose and ran for the creek. Mrs. Osborne started to foHow, bnt became entangled in the

tin grassland before she couML get out was burned. Between the Chickasaw river and the town of Kiyk, a distance of but a few miles, there are six bodies. Two of them bad bußet holes in the head and four of the bodies are burned; The prairie fires are still raging. Government employes, as a rule, are very much encouraged by the many indications given by various Congressmen of their intentions to enact legislation for the relief of those who are injured in the performance of their public duties. The disaster which occurred in Washington last summer, when the building known as Ford’s Old Theater, occupied by the clerks of the record and pension division of the War Department, collapsed and killed twenty-one men and injured many more, has revived interest in the subject of compensatory damages to Government employes injured in the service. A resolution has been Introduced in the House calling for an investigation of the facts of the Ford’s Theater accident, and bills will soon b>e introduced in both Rouses providing for a disability pension list. Senator Voorhees has already begun the fight in the interest of one of his constituents by introducing a bill providing for an appropriation of SIO,OOO to be paid to Capt, John B. Dowd, of Indiana, for injuries received when tly) old theater building collapsed on June 9. During a theatrical performance at the opera house at Canton, 111., Tuesday night, fire started in the scenery from fireworks being used in the third act of “Michael Strogoff.” In less than two minutes the company had to leave the stage. The flames spread rapidly. The audience had a narrow escape. Those in the galleries became panic stricken and a struggling mass of humanity jammed up the stairway. Many were injured and five were badly burned. The building was destroyed together with two adjoining structures. Loss, $60030.