Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 December 1897 — EASTERN. [ARTICLE]

EASTERN.

James W. Loveridge, who was injured In a foot-ball game at Hammondsport, N. Y., Thanksgiving afternoon, is dead. At Lowell, Mass., Frank A. Keith and Maggie Godfrey committed suittde together by inhaling gas. They were penniless. Josiah Quincy was nominated for Mayor of Boston on the Democratic ticket in one of the stormiest conventions ever held there. Every speaker, no matter what he had to say, was hissed and cheered, till the convention appeared more like a riot than a deliberative meeting. .. Martin Thorn, accused of the murder of William Guldensuppe, the Turkish bath rubber, was pronounced guilty by the jury at New York. Thorn received the verdict with a laugh, but he seemed to have lost his nerve as he was led back to jail. The court denied a motion for a new trial and set the day for the passing of the sentence. Hereafter immigrants who are steerage passengers will be forwarded by a “routing committee” of the western passenger pool over such route as it pleases. The immigrant may have a preference, and he may express it, but he will go according to the pool’s decision or stay in New York. This is the result of a contract entered into between the railroads and the steamship companies. The patent office at Washington expects to do a rushing business during the month, owing to the fact that the patent law passed during the Cleveland administration takes effect New Year's day. Heretofore it has been customary for American manufacturers wishing to engage in the manufacture of some new article to have an examination of all American patents until they find some attractive device. After the present month, however, they will be able to select for manufacture any foreign patent that has not been patented in this country. These ideas and inventions they can use without payment of any kind to the inventor, inasmuch as the foreign patent does not cover American rights. After Jan.-l no patent can be obtained in America for any invention already patented in a foreign country, save where the foreign application is of very recent date. Hence the present holders of foreign patents who desire to realize from their inventions will have to file their claims within the next few days: otherwise they will become public property on this side of the water.

The New York World’s first figures of Cuba’s starvation were timidly moderate. They showed the death rate of only 200,000. But every painful fact unearthed tends to prove them nearly double that number. When the grim returns are all in it is now almost certain that this Cuban massacre of the innocents will reach 400,000. And this awful number does not include those killed in battle or the thousands and thousands of women and children who have died of exposure, disense and massacre in the “managuas” and swamps. It now seems certain that more than half a million people, for the most part loyal subjects of Spain, have been killed by Spanish war in Cuba. The figures of Spanish official reports show but a part of the mortality. They only give the number buried in consecrated ground •—they do not give that fully. And yet these official ultra-Spanish reports of burial permits issued admit that in the Province of Santa Clara there have died and been buried since Weyler’s fiat 71,847 persons. The number of people for whose existence Weyler was directly responsible is 155,132 in Santa Clara Province. And of these he killed 56.21 G, or over one-half of them.