Passing Events

Passing Events Joseph Skelton Williams, of Virginia, has been appointed Controller of the Currency. He had been assistant Secretary of the Treasury. By virtue of his office he will be a member of the Federal Reserve Board, in the new banking and reserve system. Blair Lee, of Maryland, was recently admitted after a contest, to the Unites States Senate by a vote of fifty-three to thirteen, the thirteen being all Republicans. Senator Lee is the first United States Senator to take his seat by direct vote of the people. Hereafter all the senators will be elected by the people and not by the legislatures. The Utah Power and Light Company are building a double steel power electric transmission line from Grace, Idaho, to Salt Lake City, a distance of some 135 miles. It is intended that the wires shall carry a voltaee of 130,000 instead of 40,000 which is now provided over other lines. The district station is being built six miles west of Salt Lake City upon an eight-acre piece of ground. The Eighth ward meeting house, of the Ogden stake, was dedicated on Sunday, February 1, by President Joseph F. Smith who delivered the principal sermon and offered the dedicatory prayer. The new building cost $25,000. In his sermon President Smith spoke on the morality of the Latter-day Saints and their belief in an equal standard of purity for both sexes. The proposed new treaty with Columbia deals with the demand of that country for the United States to apologize for taking the state of Panama from Columbia, during the Roosevelt administration. Columbia also demands $25,000,000 damages, and an interest in the Canal. The new proposed treaty has not been made public and just what it contains in answer to these demands is not known. Colonel George W. Goethals was nominated by President Woodrow Wilson on January 29 to be governor of the Panama Canal Zone. The Panama Canal act fixes the salary of the governor at $10,000. but since Colonel Goethals is at present receiving $15,000 a year as chairman of the Isthmian Canal Commission his salary as governor undoubtedly will be raised by Congress to that amount. The canning industry in Utah has grown to enormous proportions. Twenty-nine canneries of the state, according to a report by H. L. Herrington, secretary and treasurer of the Utah Canners' Association, produced last year 951,128 cases of canned goods, making a total of 22,816,176 cans put up during the season. The products consisted of tomatoes, peas, string beans, catsup, pumpkin, and various Miits. The Ford Automobile works have announced that during the year 1914 $10,000,000 will be divided among the workmen of that manufacturing establishment. The plant is capitalized at $2,000,000 and last year over $37,000,000 of manufactured articles were produced. The dav following the announcement of the division of the ten million dollars to the workmen, more than ten thousand men applied for a job at the offices of the manager.

496 IMPROVEMENT ERA The Nobel Peace prize of $40,000 was awarded to United States Senator Elihu Root, at Christiania, Norway, on December 10. The prize for literature was given, on November 13, to the Hindoo poet Rabindranath Tagore. His remarkable verses are written in Bengali, although many of them have been translated by him into rythmic English prose. He comes of a family distinguished in India for leadership in public affairs and the furtherance of national art. It is the first of the Nobel prizes ever awarded to an Asiatic. The Brigham Young University has made a purchase of a tenacre plot 'of ground immediately north of their athletic field. The purchase of the tract of land was made necessary in the working out of the plans for the growth and development of the university. The cost of the land was $5,000. A mass meeting was called of the students, at which a plan for raising the money was submitted, and before the meeting was adjourned upwards of $1,400 had been contributed. His Majesty the King of Belgium has conferred upon J. M. Browning, of Ogden, the noted inventor, the Belgian decoration of Chevalier de l'Ordre de Leopold. Notice to that effect was received by Mr. Browning's friends in Ogden, on February 2, the order having been made in January of this year. The well-known Utah inventor of firearms was himself present at a celebration of an assembly of manufacturers, and was the honored guest of the Fabrique National Arms Corporation, at Liege, Belgium, when the celebration of the manufacture of the millionth Browning pistol was held. Nathaniel Montgomery, born in the province of Ontario, 72 years ago, died in Ogden, November 3, 1913. He was a pioneer of Weber County, and served in many civil positions, having been selectman, assessor, and member of the Territorial legislature: He filled many ecclesiastical positions in North Ogden, having been president of the Y. M. M. I. A., counselor to Bishops Amos Maycock and Thomas Wallace, Sunday School superintendent, and an incumbent of other local positions. The crop report for November, furnished by the local United States Department of Agriculture, contains comparisons for Utah and for the United States. In the corn crop the yield per acre in Utah, for 1912, was, in percentages of a normal, 30; for 1913, 34 The corn crop is nearly a million bushels smaller in the United States for 1913, than it was for 1912. The potato crop in Utah is somewhat shorter than it was last year, and in the United States it is very much shorter than last year. The condition of the sugar beets in Utah 1912, 99; 1913, 96; In the United States 1912, 92.9; 1913. 89. The Elephant Butte Dam is one of the largest structures of the reclamation service. It has a height of three hundred feet and a length on top of sixteen hundred feet. The reservoir created by this dam, located in New Mexico, will cover sixty-seven and a half square miles and have an average depth of sixty-six feet. It will contain eight hundred sixty billion gallons of water when full. It is said to be the largest storage reservoir in the world, with a storage capacity nearly one-third greater than the great Assouan Dam, in Egypt. The structure will cost five million dollars, and will provide water for one hundred eighty thousand acres of land in the Rio Grande Valley, New Mexico. It is said that some of the land in this district has been

PASSING EVENTS 497 under irrigation for several hundred years, some of the old ditches of the Pueblo Indians being still in use. William H. Bancroft, for nine years vice-president and general manager of the Oregon Short Line, resigned from that position his resignation taking effect February 1. E. E. Calvin, vice-president and general manager of the Southern Pacific, was named as Mr. Bancroft's successor. Mr. Bancroft will retain his position as president of the Salt Lake Route, Utah Light and Railway Company, and vice-president of the Oregon Short Line, the last being a new office with Mr. Bancroft as first incumbent. Mr. Bancroft was born October 20, 1840, at Newburg, Ohio, and entered the railroad service when he was sixteen years of age. He has continued in various positions for a number of different roads throughout the country, all his life. Mr. Calvin, the new general manager, was born October 16, 1858, at Indianapolis, Indiana, and entered the railway service in 1873, having spent all his life since then in the service. John Riggs Murdock, a Utah pioneer in the second company of 1847, died November 12, 1913, at Milford, Utah. He was born in Orangeville, Ohio, September 13, 1826, and was the captain of many companies of pioneers passing over the plains to the Salt Lake Valley. He was known throughout Utah and in the inter-mountain west for the manner in which he advanced the cause of education and encouraged agriculture. He was a member of the Mormon Battalion, and a colonizer and developer of Utah during all his life. In 1880 Fort Cameron was abandoned, and in 1897 its lands and buildings were purchased by Philo T. Farnsworth and presented to the Brigham Young University. The site soon became the site of the Murdock Academy, named for Mr. Murdock. He was a representative from Beaver to the State Constitutional Convention, and was a member of the first general assembly in Utah after the state was admitted to the Union. China has adopted a state religion, a bill to that effect having been passed by the Administrative Council, appointed by President Yuan Shi-Kai to take the place of the recentlv dissolved Chinese parliament. The bill was submitted to the Council by the president himself. The bill prescribes the worship of Heaven and of Confucius. The question of the adoption of a state religion caused considerable controversy in China, the Christian missionaries of all the sects opposing such a step. The Chinese Provisional Constitution, however, provides that citizens shall have freedom of religion, and religious freedom is also guaranteed by at least a dozen treaties with world powers. While the news that Confucianism has received state recognition is keenly regreted, the Christians retain confidence in the repeated assurances which the president has given of his friendliness toward the Christian religion. H. L. A. Culmer, one of Utah's prominent artists and literary men, died in Salt Lake Citv. February 10, 1914. He was born in Kent, England, March 25. 1854. and came to America at the age of fourteen. He was naturallv gifted with the love of art and made this a study through life. For a number of years he was the head of the firm of G. F. Culmer & Brothers and other business concerns, including the Kyune Graystone Company. Some four years ago he sold out all his business interests, and devoted himself entirely to art. He did considerable writing, and was a member of the press club from its organization. He was also interested in dramatics, and

498 IMPROVEMENT ERA in his younger days was a member of the noted Wasatch Literary Society, and the Zeta Gamma Debating Club, organized by the late Dr. John R. Park. He was one of the original founders of the Home Dramatic Club, in 1880. He wrote considerable for various magazines, being a critic of keen taste and close discernment. Some of his best paintings are of the Wasatch mountains and the southern Utah deserts. Granite for the state capitol is being obtained in the Little Cottonwood Canyon quarries, owned by the Utah Consolidated Stone Company. On the third of February, the company set off a blast in the canyon which brought down the mountain side 277,000 cubic feet of rock in one piece which slid down the mountain side and measured 42 by 76 by 87 feet in size. There were other large blocks that came down at the same time, one containing 10,000 cubic feet, and two others, each containing 75,000 cubic feet, while there were many smaller sections. The shot was fired with one and one-half cans of powder placed 150 feet up the side of the ledge. The amount of granite required for the state capitol is 165,000 cubic feet, so that the immense rock, to say nothing of the smaller ones which came down with that one blast, exceeds greatly the capitol requirements. It will take until fall to cut the big rock and get it out of the way. The new viaduct constructed by the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad Company, at the behest of Salt Lake City, over the tracks on Fourth South from a point half-way between Fourth West and Fifth West to a point half way between Sixth West and Seventh West, has recently been finished at a cost of $150,000. The structure is 1,800 feet in length, and is constructed of steel and concrete. There is a cement walk on each side of the roadway, and the bridge is electriclighted, the lights being mounted on handsome poles erected at close intervals on both sides of the bridge. The construction began nearly two years ago. Another viaduct of a similar character is to be built in the course of the next two years on Seventh South. The Mexican border embargo upon firearms was lifted on the third of February. The embargo has been in force since March, 1912, and prohibited the exportation of arms and munitions of war from the United States to Mexico. The original prohibition was intended to discourage incipient revolts against regularly constituted authority, but since there is now no constitutional government in Mexico, the president considered that the people should be left free to settle their affairs and put them on a constitutional basis. The foreign press generally recognizes the act as one of great gravity, and a virtual recognition by this country of the belligerency o! the rebels. Some of the Argentine and London papers called it "indirect intervention," but the raising of the embargo is generally considered in this country as the logical step to take, since Huerta could get arras from foreign countries, because he controlled the seaports, while Carranza could not get them, because he had no seaports. Carranza's forces recently captured Mazatlan, their first port, which is the home of many rich Mexicans and Spaniards from whom, doubtless, forced contributions will be sought. At this writing Villa is completing preparations for his movement against Torreon where 14,000 federals await his arrival. Villa's men attacked a bandit named Castillo who had been harassing "Mormon" settlers in Chihuahua. Twenty of Castillo's men were captured and put to death, whereupon the latter, in revenge, set fire to the woodwork of the Drake tunnel, at Cumbre, nearly a mile long, on the Mexican Central. The passenger train from Juarez entered the burning tunnel, and several railroad men,

PASSING EVENTS 499 some of them Americans, and forty passengers, died of suffocation, and remain buried in the tunnel. George Redd, an American "Mormon, with a Mexican policeman, were killed by local red-flaggers, at Colonia Juarez on Monday, February 9. The murderers escaped! but the next day the Constitutionalist soldiers caught and executed five of them, including the bandit, Camillo Acosta, and son. Rafael Martinez was called upon to execute them, and among those put to death were his brother and stepfather, but he did not falter in his duty. The Catskill Aqueduct was opened on January 12 in New York. The subterranean passage, 110 miles long, from Ashokan reservoir at Kingston, in the Catskills, to the terminal station in Brooklyn, was completed on that date. The first contract for the Catskill water works was signed April 10, 1907. At the end of 1915 these water works will furnish to New York City 250,000,000 gallons of water a day from a source one hundred twenty miles away, and by the year 1920, when the water system is expected to be entirely completed, the city will receive 500,000,000 gallons of drinking water every day. The engineering feats of this aqueduct are the most remarkable in the history of the nation. They embrace the crossing of mountains, deep valleys, water-ways, and, indeed, the Hudson River itself. In the city of New York, there are eighteen miles of rock tunnel from 200 to 750 feet below the surface of the streets. The building of this immense system presented more engineering difficulties than did the Panama Canal, and its cost will be upwards of $200,000,000. It is said that 283 men lost their lives in its construction, and 8,883 were injured. The work will give 25,000 men employment for nine years. Mr. Charles N. Chadwick, Commissioner of the Board of Water supply of New York City, in an explanation of the system, in the New York Independent, says: "It was in getting the aqueduct under Moodna Creek and the Hudson River that the most tedious of all the shaft and tunnel building was encountered. Shaft 1 of the section drops the aqueduct 586 feet, which at this point brings it 160 feet below the sea level. A pressure tunnel then carries it more than four and a half miles through the solid rock to the deep rift in the rock created by preglacial erosion in the valley of the Hudson River. To get under the Hudson gorge the last or more southerly of the Moodna shafts, which had been sunk to a depth of 373 feet, was stepped down an additional 1152 feet, making a total depth for the Hudson tunnel of 1525 feet, below the normal aqueduct level. A pressure tunnel three thousand feet long there carries the aqueduct to the east side of the Hudson River." Shelby M. Cullom, former United States Senator from Illinois, died January 28. His last words were a wish that he might have lived to see the completion of the national memorial to Abraham Lincoln who was his personal friend. For fifty years he had been in continuous public service, in American national life, which brought him into relation with every president of the United States from Abraham Lincoln to Woodrow Wilson. Senator Cullom was born in 1829, in Kentucky. He served six years, in the House, and entered the United States Senate in 1883, serving as a senator until March, 1913. When he entered the Senate he was a spry, active man of fifty-four, but left it a fading, tottering man of eighty-four but with a brain still bright and active. He was the chairman of the Lincoln Memorial Commission which has for its purpose the erection of a two-million-dollar memorial, in the city of Washington, to Abraham Lincoln.

500 IMPROVEMENT ERA The old Dominion liner "Monroe" was sunk off Winterquarter Lightship, Norfolk, Virginia, on January 30, at two o'clock a. m., the "Nantucket" having collided with the "Monroe" which latter turned turtle, and in ten or twelve minutes sank to the bottom of the sea, forty-nine passengers going down to death with her. Eighty-five passengers and crew survived. The collision occurred in a very heavy fog. Out of the forty-nine lost at sea, twenty-three were passengers and twenty-six members of the crew. Thirty-one passengers and fifty-five of the crew were saved. One of the most touching exhibitions of self-sacrifice and courage was exhibited by Ferdinand J. Kuehn, the wireless operator. He had just snapped the S. O. S. call, adjusted his life belt, and was standing by the door of the wireless ready to jump from the sinking vessel, when a woman stumbled along the slanting deck. "Where is your life preserver?" asked Kuehn. "I haven't one," the woman cried. "Here, take mine," demanded Kuehn, "I'll get another." Suiting the action to the word, he took off his own belt and buckled on her. The next minute the boat plunged, the woman was saved, but Kuehn went down with the ship. President Woodrow Wilson delivered his special address to Congress on the regulation of "big business" on January 20. Among the chief points which the president singled out as a basis for legislation were: (1) Effectual prohibition of the inter-locking of directorates of great corporations, banks, railroads, industrial, commercial and public service bodies. He advocated that the inter-locking of directors shall not be allowed. This means that the same men will not be permitted to act as directors of different corporations that are supposed to be independent and competing. (2) A law to confer upon the inter-state commerce commission the power to superintend and to regulate the financial operations by which railroads are henceforth to be supplied with the money they need for their proper development and improved transportation facilities. The president made it clear that the prosperity of the railroads and the prosperity of the country are inseparably connected in this regard. (3) That the Sherman Anti-trust law shall be so changed as to make its meaning clear. (4) That an Inter-state Trade Commission be established to furnish information to business men to enable them to conform to the law understandingly and to report violations. (5) A law to provide punishment for the individuals responsible for corporations breaking the law. (6) To forbid "holding companies" by which one corporation may now hide behind another; and to restrict the voting power of stockholders who may hold stocks in several corporations. (7) To allow private persons to bring suits against unlawful combinations and trusts upon facts or judgments established in government suits, and that claims against trusts shall not outlaw until two years after the conclusion of a government suit against a trust. Congress will doubtless make the president's proposals into law as quickly as possible, as it is clear that there will be little opposition to the sentiments set forth in the president's address. Nearly all the press comments at home and abroad are favorable. The only opposition that has been manifested in Washington comes from the Progressive Party. Representative Murdock, leader of the Progressive Party, having called the president's proposals inadequate. Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress seem to agree with the president as to the necessity for legislation on the points he suggests.

PASSING EVENTS "The Aspect of the Liquor Question" is a pamphlet written by Adolph Nielsen, of American Fork, Utah. The pamphlet sets forth in plain, effective language, the importance of this great subject which it terms "The burning issue of the day." In his thirty pages of print the author pointedly answers the questions: Is the liquor business necessary? Is it scriptural? Does it pay? Is it legal? Is it moral? To everyone of these ciuestions, after reading the work, the thoughtful person will answer no. The pamphlet deserves wide circulation and careful reading by all who are interested in the right training of the young people, and by all who desire to avoid the evils that follow in the wake of liquor and the saloon. From the New York Music House, Breitkopf & Haertel, we have received a copy of "The Rose, a Cycle of Nine Songs," verses from a book of poems by Alfred Lambourne, set to music by Charles Frederick Carlson. This book of poems and music has just been published. The reputation of Mr. Lambourne as a poet has been ably sustained in these songs. The titles composing the "Cycle" are these: "The Rose," "O Now the Roses Turn," "All Crimson Flushed," "O Now the Rose of Love," "Within the Rose," "O Love's Own Flower," "The Roses' Gift of June," "See the Roses' Splendor," and "The Wonder of the Rose." The music has aided in illuminating and displaying in most admirable style the inherent poetic worth of the verses, and the efforts of Professor Carlson in setting the "Cycle" into this frame of musical illumination has been characterized by the publishers as, "one of the best pieces of musical endeavor he has engaged in." "Sunrise at Chimnety Rock" is the subject of the calendar of Z. C. M. I. for 1914. Every pioneer of Utah remembers Chimney Rock as the half-way post on the journey over the plains to Utah. It was one of the most noted landmarks on the way between Omaha and great Salt Lake. The picture is from one of Alfred Lambourne's characeristic paintings, and shows an emigrant train fording a shallow stream as the rising sun breaks from behind the clouds overhanging the bluffs of which Chimney Rock is a part. So popular has the impressive and inspiring subject of the calendar been, that copies have been sent out from the great mercantile institution, to all parts of the earth, to England, Scotland, Wales, Norway Sweden, Denmark, France, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, Cuba, New Zealand, Africa, the Hawaiian Islands, Samoa, Mexico and all parts of continental United States. The edition of nine thousand was exhausted in a few days. OLSEN & GRIFFITH CO. Inc. OPPOSITE HOTEL UTAH "The Photographers in Salt Lake City" (A SPECIAL RATE FOR MISSIONARIES)