Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 February 1908 — THE WORLD’S HAPPENINGS [ARTICLE]

THE WORLD’S HAPPENINGS

Paragraphs of Up-to-Date News Culled From the Press Dispatches of Metropolitan Papers. The Ohio democratic state central ccrnfflittee has endorsed Bryan. Gen. Tung Fu Fiang, the leader of •h— '• ■ r uprising in China in 1900, is dead. All Indiana is snow bound, and the Traction In es are practically out of business. Logansport is in the lime-light now, with a mayor charged with drunkenness and members of the city council facing impeachment proceedings for being connected with corporations. Secretary of War Taft defends the American navy, and says it earns its cost. He believes the present trip of the fleet to the Pacific is worth all that it will cost. Joseph G. Cannon has been endorsed for the presidential nomination by the Illinois Republican state central committee. And Uncle Joe will get some votes outside of Illinois, too. Ex-Congressman Cromer, of Muncie, is looked upon as the man that can reunite the republicans of the Bth district and it is not Improbable that he will be given the nomination to congress. The Little Giants, Wabash college’s fast basket ball team, succeeded in defeating Notre Dame by the decisive score of 32 to 15 Tuesday night. This struggle give the Little Giants their fourth consecutive state basket ball championship. Rev. Father Sammon, of Notre Dame university, met death Monday night in a street car accident at South Bend. In company with Father Murphy he was riding in a sleigh and the street car is said to have struck them from the rear without warning.

The new independent telephone company at Bloomington has been granted a franchise, unapposed. The franchise is for 20 years. The company pays the city S2OO a year for the first 10 years and after that $250 a year for the life of the franchise. The plant must be in operation within one year. The heavy snow, which is many feet deep in Michigan, has halted the investigations of the war department in selecting a place for the joint army and militia inaneuvers, and it may be some time before -it is decided ' whether they will be held at Fort Benjamin Harrison or at Luddington, Mich, . ■Art International winter race of automobiles is creating some interest among motorists. The cars started in New York city, and are expected to reach Indiana today. Some cars started from Chicago yesterday expecting to come down into Indiana and meet the racing cars, Kut they were stranded in Michigan City.

The department of justice in Washington has Just succeeded in gathering valuable information to support the charge of peonage that was made some months ago against some southern states. It seems that some states have protected concerns that hired foreigners to come to these states and work, largely on cotton plantations, and that it was the custom of the companies to .advance the money for the transportation of the foreigners and then that they would be compelled to work out the advanced money and wore practically held in slavery by the. laws until the debt was discharged and . the employer arranged such conditions as he pleased to prolong the settlement. The information that seems most convincing was largely gathered by a woman lawyer named Mrs. Quackenbos, who has been employed for some months as an assistant in the attorney general’s office. The revelations of virtual white slavery are horrifying and will call for immediate correction.