Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 October 1897 — THE INDIAN FAMINE. [ARTICLE]

THE INDIAN FAMINE.

LARGE RELIEF FUND RAISED IN ENGLAND. There Are Still 1,500,000 Persons Receiving Relief-Millions of Pounds for the World’s Philanthropy Thanks to an American Lady—Good Business Lord Mayor’s Report. At the final meeting of the committee of the Indian famine fund at the Mansion House in London the lord mayor, Sir George Faudel-Phillips, announced that the total subscriptions amounted to £549,300. For every pound collected 19s lll£d had been remitted to India, demonstrating that the expense of administering the fund had been most minute. There are still 1,500,000 persons receiving relief. The total of subscriptions from Great Britain, the United States, the British colonies and India, the lord mayor concluded, amounted to nearly £1,500,000, and the total cost of the famine was over .1-10,,000.000. The lord mayor, in replying to the address of thanks of the secretary of state for India, referred gratefully to the efforts of Mrs. Hauser of Chicago as having been the initiator of the plan for sending large quantities of clothing to the sufferers in India from the famine and plague, adding that the clothing so collected was distributed with remarkable success. Dun Is Optimistic. R. G. Dun & Co/s Weekly Review of Trade says: “While failures were the smallest ever known in any quarter since 1892, and business payments through banks the largest by $208,000,000 ever known in September, the speculators who profess anxiety about Cuba, or fever at the South, or a municipal election, still have some influence. Yet business is still increasing. The productive force steadily enlarges, the distribution of wages affords an increasing fund for purchases, and the foundations are laid for a larger business hereafter. Crop reporters who have widely differed now agree in putting the yield of wheat from 580,000,000 to 590.000,000 bushels, which is nearly 200,000,000 bushels more than will be required for home use, keeping stocks as they were July 1, # the lowest for seven years. With less favorable reports of yield, corn exports fall short slightly, with small difference in price. Cotton is unchanged in price, with larger consuming demand, though l>ig crop estimates do not appear to be disputed. Building of more vessels on the lakes and seacoast, heavy orders for sheets, bars, rods and pipe have caused advances averaging half of 1 per cent on all classes of iron. Wool lias now reached an average of 20.37 cents per pound, a rise of 8 cents since a year ago, with a much heavier rise on some qualities. Speculative sales still account for most of the aggregate. Failures for the week were 213 in the United States, against 290 last year, and 29 in Canada, against 40 last year.” Japs Going to Hawaii. Twelve hundred Japanese laborers are on their way to Honolulu from Japanese ports to fill contracts for plantation laborers, and it is asserted by jirominent Japanese in that city that about 9,000 Will be shipped there by the Ist of December. It is claimed that if the islands are annexed in December, under tile laws of the United States, Japanese laborers who are there under contract cannot be forced to return to their own country upon the expiration of their contract, and that they will have the same citizenship rights as will be accorded to the present-citizens -of the republic.