Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 60, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 April 1898 — EASTERN. [ARTICLE]

EASTERN.

A® explosion occurred at Manown coal mine, near Monongahela City, Pa. Two are known to have been killed, five injured, and from fifteen to twenty-five are said to be still entombed in the mine. H. H. Craig, a Rochester, N. Y., merrffiqnt, hns mysteriously disappeared at San Francisco. There is doubt whether it is a case of foul play or whether he succumbed to paralysis, to which he has been subject. A dynamite magazine at Hillsvillo, Pa., exploded, wrecking the building and causing a panic in Lowellville. It is supposed the magazine was struck by lightning. It is that a man named Welsh, his wife and six children were killed. At Lancaster, Pa., Sarah Gosler Pague, wife of Lieut. Samuel S. Pague, late of the United States, army, was granted a divorce, the proceedings being the outcome of the attempt of Pague to kill Col. Crofton at Fort Sheridan, Chicago, in 1895. A gencraL strike of river coni miners will be inaugurated April 2 at Pittsburg, unless all of the conditions of the Chicago agreement are conformed with by that date or the operators agree to pay the men upon a run-of-mine basis. A strike will affect about 5,000 men. John B. Hopkins, cashier of the People's National Bank, died suddenly at Philadelphia of heart disease. Mr, Hopkins was a member of the old brokerage firm of C. T. Yerkes & Co., formerly of that city and now of Chicago. The directors of the People's National Bank inserted an advertisement in the local papers that on account of the sudden death of Cashier Hopkins it was deemed advisable to suspend business until a complete examination had been made of the affairs of the institution and its exact condition ascertained.. In the Kings County criminal court in Brooklyn, fourteen or fifteen indictments were handed down by the grand jury against former city officials' and contractors of Brooklyn. District Attorney Marea n refuses to make known the names of the persons indicted until after they shall have been arrested. It is alleged, however, that the indictments are the outcome of an investigation that has been proceeding fpr some time into the operations of the public works department of Brooklyn. It is also said that the indictments charge a conspiracy by which the city was defrauded of $8(1,000 by means of fraudulent contracts. The records charge the SBO,OOO in question to “emergency work.” The law required that all work the cost of which was to exceed $2,000 should be awarded by contracts, upon advertisement for the regular time. To evade this law, it is alleged, the officers of the Brooklyn city works department had been in the habit of ordering work and paying for it in sums of $2,000 or less. Most of these small jobs and the money for them fell into the hands of a firm that appeared upon the books as” Thomas Frazier & Co. A little detective work disclosed the fact that Contractor Daniel Doody was really Thomas Frazier & Co. All the bills for this “emergency work” had to receive the "O. K.” of Water Purveyor Knapp, be certified ns correct by Deputy City Works Commissioner Fielding, passed by Auditor Sutton, thence through the hands of Comptroller Palmer and were finally paid by City Treasurer Taylor.