---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - Thomas Hull
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 5
number: 9
published: 1902-07
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: 'Thomas Hull, "Events of the Month," *Improvement Era* 5, no. 9 (July 1902): 732–736.'
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0509unse
  transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers.
  identifier: improvementera0509unse
start_page: 732
end_page: 736
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1902-07)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0509unse
  publication_year: 1902
  note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1902, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# Events of the Month

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—




                EVENTS OF THE MONTH.
        BY THOMAS HULL, GENERAL SECRETARY OF Y. M. M. I. A.


     Local —May 13—By vote of twelve to one Salt Lake City Council
granted the franchise on 4th West for the Oregon Short Line, which
provides for    the building of a $100,000 depot                             14   —Reed
Smoot announces that he is a candidate for the United States Senate
The City Council approves a contract between the city and the canal
companies for a pumping plant at Utah Lake                   15 Many           —
peace meetings were held throughout the state, with programs, consist-
ing of speeches, songs, and recitations            The University of
Utah won the championship in a debate between its students and those
of the Nevada University                          —
                                     16 Mrs. Zina Pratt Bishop, wife
of the well-known assayer, Captain F. M. Bishop, died, age 51 years
The citizens of Sanpete County have entered the grasshopper                    fight in
full force                    Glenwood, Sevier County, is overrun by cater-
pillars                17   —The Norwegians celebrated the 88th anniversary
of the independence of Norway                   Northern Utah            by
                                                                        is   visited
a heavy rain storm                   18 — Mrs. Judge Thomas Marshall, 66
years old, died in Salt Lake City              Mrs. Rebecca Douglas
Lowe, for the past four years President of the General Federation of
Women's Clubs, was given a reception at the Bee-Hive House
Judson Bliss Tomlinson,  missionary, died in Samoa                                  19
A severe      frost visited    Sanpete      Valley,    which,   together     with      the
threatened     grasshopper      invasion,    insures   a poor    prospect     for      the
crops                 20   —The annual Oratorical contests of the Y. M. M.
I.   A. of Salt Lake Stake were held in the oratorical districts of the city
this evening                    —
                       22 James J. Ruban, an aged shoemaker of Salt
Lake City, who early joined the Church in France, and came to Utah in
1867, was accidentally burned to death               23 The banking —
house of T. R. Jones and Co., one of the oldest in Salt Lake City, sold out
to McCornick & Company                          The fifth convention of the Utah

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——

                       EVENTS OF THE MONTH.                                      733

Congress of Mothers opened in the Assembly Hall, Mrs. E. E. Shephard
giving the annual address              Councilman Alexander Wilkins
of Provo, born Canada, 1834, died suddenly, stricken with apoplexy
24   —E. H. Harriman   visited Salt   Lake                   The Mother's Con-
gress closed; Mrs. Emily S. Richards was chosen president
Joseph Mills died at West Jordan, 83 years of age                               26
Governor B. B. Odell, of New York, and party arrived              in    Salt    Lake
City             The Salt Lake City Board of Education opened sixty-
seven bids for school books                           —
                                         27 George M. Hanson was
recommended by Congressman Sutherland as Postmaster at Ogden, to
succeed Charles Meighan               John W. Hoover, Provo, born
Pennsylvania, November 18, 1834, came to Utah in 1852, died
     —
28 After eighteen days, and issuing 1,105 subpoenas, and examining
589 persons, a jury was obtained in the Mortensen-Hay murder case
     —
30 Memorial Day was observed with appropriate ceremonies through-
out the state, and in Salt Lake City there was a magnificent street
parade of the G. A. R., Utah Volunteers, National Guard, and regular
soldiers               Nearly 30,000 people visited the pleasure resorts
which opened today                    The grasshopper plague in Sanpete
County continues unabated                  The annual conference of the
Mutual Improvement Associations opened, officers' meetings being held
at 10 and 2                      —
                          31 The State School Book Convention
opened, presided over by the State Superintendent C. A. Nelson
More than a hundred new buildings are being erected in Salt Lake City,
at a cost of a million dollars          Mary Ann Mason, pioneer of
Springville, died, aged seventy         The Middle States mission has
been established with headquarters at Cincinnati.
             —
    June 1 The Mutual Improvement Associations held three sessions in
the Tabernacle, at 10, a. m. 2 and 7 p.m., President Joseph F. Smith presid-
ing               Bishop Orson F. Whitney delivered the baccalaureate
address to the   members   of the graduating class of the University of
Utah, ninety-nine in number, at the Assembly Hall               2
Brigham Young's birthday anniversary celebration is held at Saltair,
attended by three hundred and fifty descendants ranging from seventy-
six to three and a half years                    J.   A. Wright resigns from the
faculty of the Agricultural College to become editor of the Inter-Moun-
tain     Farmer and Rancher                  3   —Reed Smoot, Jesse Knight,
and others of Provo, ask for a franchise for an            Electric railway and
telephone system through Utah County                         4—Dr.     J. F.   Merrill
was chosen president of the University Alumni Association
The University held its 33rd annual graduating exercises at the theatre,

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—


734                              IMPROVEMENT ERA.

addressed         by Hon.   Moses Thatcher,        and Governor Heber M. Wells.
There were eight college graduates                              —
                                                             5 Salt Lake Canal
Companies posted notices in Utah County of the appropriation of the
unappropriated waters of Utah Lake and waters flowing therein and
therefrom                        The School Book Convention adopted Werner's
Arithmetic and Reed and Kellogg's             Grammar                    —
                                                                  8 Senator
Joseph L. Rawlins returned from Washington                              Rewards of
$1 per bushel for grasshoppers are offered in Sanpete County.                 Three
boys bagged seven bushels in one day                             At the Salt Lake
Stake quarterly conference George A. Smith was sustained as superin-
tendent of the Y. M. M. I. A., vice Richard R. Lyman, resigned to attend
school in the East                          —
                                 9 The thermometer registered ninty-five
degrees      in   Lake City
                   Salt                               —
                                         10 The State rested in the
Mortensen trial, and Mortensen's defense occupied fifty-five minutes
The flowing wells at Lehi are failing              Archie M. Sheppard,
age 21, fell in front of a street car and was killed                 11
The State School Book Convention closed its labors                   Mrs-
Barlow Ferguson, who has fasted for thirty-six days as a cure for con-
vulsions, began eating                           —
                                    12 The graduating exercises of the
High School were held, there being eighty-six graduates in the class
Albert E. Walker, son of the late J. R. Walker, born April 8, 1877, died
in Salt   Lake City            The Electric Line to Ogden, it is now
said, will  commence building August 1st, and be completed by May of
next year                         14   —Peter Mortensen was by the jury found
guilty of murder in the       degree
                                   first           The nomination of
Reverend John T. Axton, as army chaplain is announced....,
Flag day was generally observed.
                    —         —
    Domestic May 13 The Senate adopts a resolution appropriating
half a million dollars to the West Indian sufferers                         Eugene
F. Ware takes the oath of office as commissioner of Pensions            —14—The
U. S. Cruiser Dixie sails with 1220 tons of merchandise for the Martin-
ique sufferers                         16— Herbert G. Squires is nominated Minister
to Cuba                     18   —A tornado swept southern Texas and over one
hundred persons are reported killed—Wm. Taylor, the great Methodist
missionary, died in Palo Alto, California                           —
                                                        19 Two hundred
miners are killed in a mine explosion at Coal Creek, Tennessee
  —
20 Secretary Hay announces the Independence of Cuba to all the
nations of the world              22— Lewis Nixon having resigned the
leadership of Tammany because he could not run it and retain his self-
respect, Charles F. Murphy, Daniel P. McMahon, and Louis P. Haffen are
appointed to run the organization                    24— The statue of Rochambeau

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—

                          EVENTS OF THE MONTH.                                              735

(who came to America with 5,500 men in July, 1780, and later made possi-
ble the victory of Yorktown,) erected in Washington, is dedicated with im-
posing ceremonies, in the presence of the French commission
Lord Pauncefote, Ambassador of Great Britain, dies in Washington
The coal strike continues, and the soft coal miners of Virginia and West
Virginia threaten to strike June 7                                —
                                                  23 The report of the
creed revision committee of the Presbyterian Church was presented to
the 114th General Assembly New York, and adopted in less than two
hours                   .-27   —Robert   S. McCormick,     U. S. minister at Vienna,
is named as Ambassador to Austria Hungary                                  27   —The Ohio
Republican state convention express a sentiment for Senator Hanna for
the presidency                           —
                            28 General Wood arrives in Washington
from Cuba                          —
                         30 President Roosevelt makes a Memorial day
speech in Washington, in answer to the charges of cruelty against the
army                       —
                  31 The President orders a reduction of the strength
of the army to 66,497 men; a decrease of 10,790                 Senor
Buencamino, a Filipino leader, makes a statement before the House
Committee on Insular affairs, favoring American sovereignty in the
Philippines.
       June 1   —The French Battleship Gaulois            sails   from Boston, having
some of the members of the French Rochambeau mission                                        2
Eighty per cent of the engineers and firemen of the anthracite coal
region obey orders to strike                       3   —The Philippine      Civil govern-

ment bill   passed the Senate by a vote of forty-eight to thirty, three
Republicans,     Hoar, Mason and Wellington voting against                      it,    and one
Democrat, McLaurin, for it                         The Isthmian canal bill is takeD
up                  The House begins consideration of the bill to protect
presidents,     known  as the Anti- Anarchy bill              4 There is—
serious   rioting in    Chicago                     5   —President Roosevelt holds
that there has been no violation of the neutrality laws at Chalmette,
La. by the British                       6   —The President       in reply to     an appeal
to end the coal strike, holds that there is no legal authority by which he
could intervene                     7   — Germany and Russia ask Secretary Hay
to join in concerted action by the powers against anarchists
9   —The celebration of the centennial anniversary of West Point, U.                            S.

Military Academy began                           The Utah Press association,              fifty-

four in number, arrived in Boise, Ida                             11   —Central       Illinois is

visited by the     most distructive storm         in sixty    years                         The
West Point graduates are addressed by President Roosevelt and the
celebration closes                           —
                             13 The House passed the irrigation bill
by a vote of one hundred and forty-six to fifty-five. The Utah Press

<!-- page:736 -->

—A


736                                       IMPROVEMENT ERA.

association is entertained in Portland, Ore                                          Volcano Kilauea,
Hawaii,         is   in    eruption                            President Roosevelt, in       a special
message to Congress, pleads for Cuban concessions.
                      —                 —
     Foreign May 12 The Brazilian aeronaut Severo, is killed by the
explosion of his air-ship in Paris               13 President Loubet             —
starts on a visit to Russia                                      16— Preliminary ceremonies for
the week of the coronation of the King of Spain take place at Madrid.
17— King Alphonso XIII is crowned in Madrid                                                  18   —Many
arrests follow the discovery of a plot in Madrid to kill King Alphonso.
20    —Senor Estrada Palma                  is    inaugurated President of the Cuban repub-
lic                        President             Loubet      reaches    Russia                     21   —
fresh outbreak of Mt. Pelee causes a panic at Fort de France, Martinique,
and many             people       leave     for       other islands                      —
                                                                                     22 Loubet is
warmly received             in St.        Petersburg                          The king of Spain ex-
presses a desire to substitute horse-racing for bull-fighting
24—Senor Quesada nominated Cuban minister to theU. S
                                  is

25—Returning from Russia, Loubet lands Copenhagen, Denmark, and    in

is         welcomed by King Christian IX
      cordially                                     26 —A provis-
ional government with M. Boisrond Canal, president,    formed                          is                 in

Haiti            27—The coronation procession has a rehearsal at
London                                 King Christian accepts the U. S. proposal to extend
the time limit for one year for the                            ratification of    the Danish        West
Indian treaty                                President Loubet returns to France
29—The seventh International Red Cross convention opens at Peters-                          St.

burg              31 — Governor Taft has an attack of             which              tonsilitis,

prevents him from opening the Philippine negotiations at the Vatican.
    June —The Boer war
                1            ended.  A dispatch from Lord Kitchener
                                                 is

to the British            war office announces that the terms of surrender have
been signed in Pretoria by all the Boer representatives         2
The peace terms are made public in London               3 Lord Kit-                      —
chener is made viscount by King Edward who asks Parliament for a
£50,000 money grant to the warrior                      Michael Henry
Herbert will succeed the late Lord Pauncefote as Ambassador to the U. S.
from England. The Pope receives Governor Taft who states the objects
of his mission, and the Pontiff approves of the                              American Government's
plans                         7   —Whitelaw            Reid, special envoy of the U. S. to the
coronation,          arrives in England                                 8   —England holds thanks-
giving services throughout the land, the king and queen attending St.
Paul's     in    London                               12   —Up to date 11,225 Boers have                sur-
rendered, many of whom are boys from eleven years and upwards.
