News From Across the Nation, Feb. 13, 1920

From the Polk County News and Tryon Bee, Feb. 13, 1920

News of the Nation

The campaign against food profiteers and hoarders has netted a total of 896 arrests, the department of justice announces. While only a small number of these cases have been brought to trial, these prosecutions so far resulted in 28 convictions, officials say.

Definite plans for the first nationwide aggressive political campaign by organized labor to control congress and elect friendly national and state officials have been made by a committee of the American Federation of Labor and, it is stated, will be announced soon.

Pending a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States on the constitutionality of the farm loans act, all future applications for loans from federal farm loan banks will be held in abeyance, Farm Loan Commissioner Norris announces.

District Attorney Charles F. Clyne brought suit in the circuit court of appeals at Chicago to have Victor Berger, convicted Socialist congressman, sent to Leavenworth penitentiary to serve out his 10-year sentence. The suit is based on new evidence alleged to have been procured.

Virtually the entire detective force of New York is searching for some clue which may lead to the arrest of the murderer of Miss R. Constance Hoxie, the talented 17-year-old music student who was brutally slain with a hammer in her home in West 88^th street. The police are in doubt as to whether the girl was killed by an acquaintance or by a man who called to rent a room.

Two trainmen are known to have been killed and 15 to 25 negroes are believed dead in the wreck of the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern passenger train, which plunged through an open drawbridge over the Tensas River in Louisiana.

Six children—two sets of triplets—within 15 months is the birth record in the family of Mr. and Mrs. Posey Livingstone of Albany, Alabama. The second trio of children were born February 2, and all are well.

Damages running into the hundreds of thousands of dollars at St. Augustine, Florida, have resulted from a tremendous downpour of rainfall, which amounted to 14.55 inches in 40 hours.

The potato section around St. Augustine, Fla., is under water, and the loss to that crop is estimated at several hundred thousand dollars.

Announcement by the prosecution at Tombstone, Arizona, that dismissal of the charges against three defendants because of absence of witnesses was being considered, was followed by abrupt adjournment of court in the trial of 210 men charged with kidnapping in connection with the deporting of 1,186 striking copper miners and they sympathizers at Bisbee, Arizona, in 1917.

Robert P. Hamilton Jr., University of Virginia graduate, Charlottesville, Va.; Paul Robinson Norton, Princeton University graduate, Princeton, N.J.; and Theodore S. Wilder, Oberlin College graduate, 1875 East 24^th Street, Cleveland, Ohio, have been selected as the three Rhodes scholars at large allotted to the United States by the Rhodes trustees because of the unprecedented completion for the 64 scholarships filled last November.

An outline of what the government expects to prove against Truman H. Newberry, U.S. Senator, and his 123 associates, charged with conspiracy in connection with the 1918 senatorial campaign, was started in the federal district court at Grand Rapids, Michigan, by Frank D. Dailey, special assistant attorney general.

Drastic reduction in the number of national bank depositories is being made by the treasury department, with the result that less than 400 of the 1,331 such institutions holding federal funds on June 30, 1919, are expected to survive the pruning knife.