---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - Young Men's Mutual Improvement Associations
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 17
number: 5
published: 1914-03
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: "Young Men's Mutual Improvement Associations, \"Passing Events,\" *Improvement Era* 17, no. 5 (March 1914): 495–500."
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1705unse
  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: improvementera1705unse
start_page: 495
end_page: 500
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1914-03)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1705unse
  publication_year: 1914
  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 1914, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# Passing Events

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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.

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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

<!-- page:497 -->

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

<!-- page:498 -->

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,

<!-- page:499 -->

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.

<!-- page:500 -->

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)