A Twister Takes La Plata's Schoolhouse

A schoolhouse is gone, and La Plata counts its dead

LA PLATA, Md. A freak tornado strikes the schoolhouse here a little before three o'clock yesterday afternoon, with classes in session and some sixty children inside. The building is torn from its foundations and dashed to earth. Children are swept through the air or over the ground for hundreds of feet.

This morning the toll is still moving, and the wires do not agree. The Evening Star puts the probable dead at fifteen, thirteen of them children. Dr. John Collinson, Jr., of the State department of health, counts fourteen identified dead and one girl still missing, believed lost. Some thirty children lie in serious condition, and doctors warn that several may not live. Associated Press accounts in the Bismarck Tribune and the Brownsville Herald give a different school count: fifteen killed and two score injured, eleven of the dead children, and four more people badly hurt at Cedarville, fourteen miles to the northeast. The Alaska Daily Empire, under a banner that reads "15 Children Killed," says fifteen dead and twenty injured, mostly children. The papers also differ on the path: five hundred yards wide in the Associated Press, scarcely more than fifty feet where the storm crossed the schoolhouse site, in the Star.

The school bell that yesterday called the children to class lies silent under the wreckage. The Star writes that it had summoned more than one-fifth of them to their death.

The two teachers do not walk away untouched. Mrs. Helen C. Hughes, the principal, tells the Star she was pinned face down under timbers for what she took to be half an hour, listening as the children's moans grew weaker, until men pulled the wood off her. She is in a room at the La Plata Hotel, injured and still nervously excited. A child who reached town first is named Mildred Hardesty, fourteen, in the Star.

On the Star's casualty list, twelve children are named among the identified dead. So are Rufus Watts, 28, and Lula Patterson, 45, killed when the house Watts occupied went down. The missing child is Marie Langley, 10, believed dead. The family of Jack Clark, Jr., eight, has already set his funeral for ten o'clock tomorrow morning — Armistice Day.

State health officials take charge. Coffins are on their way from Washington, and Collinson has brought fifty doses of tetanus serum from Baltimore, with orders that every injured person be inoculated against lockjaw. Frantic parents besiege the state police for word of their own, and Governor Ritchie has sent a mounted detail to help check the school roster. A public funeral is under discussion. At Cedarville, a train on the Washington, Brandywine and Point Lookout railway is stopped by a fallen tree.

The Star opens a La Plata Relief Fund on its front page with a contribution of $200, to be turned over to the Red Cross. The Washington Times starts a fund of its own. Its first check is $50 from Edward E. Adamson, earmarked for the family of William I. Bean, whose son Edward B. Bean, 9, was killed and whose daughter Theresa, 9, may die. The Times reports that another Bean child, Alice, 6, was not in the school because the family could not buy her shoes.

In Bismarck, the same Associated Press story that counts the Maryland dead carries this deck: "Loss of Life Small in Comparison to Strength and Power of Disturbance," because the path ran through sparsely settled country.

Two Washington papers open relief funds right beside the wreckage. The count will not hold still.

From: Evening Star, p. 1 · Evening Star, p. 2 · Evening Star, p. 4 · The Washington Times, p. 1 · The Bismarck Tribune, p. 1 · Brownsville Herald, p. 1 · The Alaska Daily Empire, p. 1

Hall-Mills: the doctors take the stand

SOMERVILLE, N.J. The State tells the jury the rector, the Rev. Edward W. Hall, and the choir singer, Mrs. Eleanor R. Mills, killed in 1922, were put in the ground "with almost precipitate haste." The physicians who performed the autopsies are on the stand today. One doctor testifies that the first examination came two weeks after Mrs. Mills was buried, and that the bodies were buried without a full autopsy.

Charlotte Mills, the slain choir singer's daughter, sits among the spectators. The defendants — Mrs. Frances Stevens Hall and her brothers, Willie and Henry Stevens — remain, the dispatches say, calm as always.

Defense counsel Clarence E. Case accuses special prosecutor Alexander Simpson of a "tabloid" summary. Simpson tosses the word back. Exhibit S-17, the calling card found near the rector's body, is in court again. The State calls it an ace connecting Willie Stevens to the crime by a fingerprint. The defense calls it a deuce, and puts a former county detective on the stand to show how many hands have already held it.

Justice Charles W. Parker announces there will be no session tomorrow. The American Legion has protested holding court on Armistice Day, "with the eye of the nation on the trial." The jury may be allowed to visit the scene.

On the same Times page that shows La Plata's injured children in hospital, the paper begins "Tragic Romance of Dr. Hall and Mrs. Mills in Pictures: Chapter I — The Meeting."

From: Evening Star, p. 1 · Evening Star, p. 5 · The Washington Times, p. 1 · The Washington Times, p. 2 · The Indianapolis Times, p. 1 · Brownsville Herald, p. 1

Fall and Doheny: "Not guilty"

It is over in under five minutes. In District Supreme Court, former Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall and California oil man Edward L. Doheny stand before Justice Adolph A. Hoehling and plead not guilty to conspiring to defraud the Government in the 1921 lease of the Elk Hills naval oil reserve. It is the first of four indictments born of the Senate's Teapot Dome inquiry. Trial is set for November 22. Both men are already on $5,000 bail, posted in the summer of 1925.

The Star watches the voices: Doheny's "thin and shrill," Fall's "full and emphatic." Fall, it says, shows the effect of a long siege; Doheny looks unchanged. They enter with a large array of counsel, sit apart, and after the pleas slip out a rear exit and are driven away.

A second indictment charges Fall, Doheny, and Doheny's son, Edward L. Doheny, Jr., with bribery over the delivery of $100,000, carried in a little black satchel. Doheny told a Senate committee it was a loan from one friend to another, secured by a note of Fall's. Harry F. Sinclair, who obtained the Teapot Dome lease in Wyoming, is named in the other two indictments. Civil suits to cancel both leases are before the United States Supreme Court.

From: Evening Star, p. 1 · Evening Star, p. 7 · The Bismarck Tribune, p. 1 · Brownsville Herald, p. 1

The new Congress, by the count

The returns from last week's election are in, and they leave the next Congress balanced on a knife. The Alaska Daily Empire reports that the next House seats 236 Republicans, 196 Democrats, two Farmer-Labor men and one Socialist, a Republican majority of 37, on paper. In the Senate, if Maine's race on November 29, to fill the late Senator Bert M. Fernald's seat, goes Republican, the line-up is 48 Republicans, 47 Democrats and one Farmer-Labor man. Fifteen to twenty House members and eight Senators are classed as insurgent or Progressive Republicans.

A Star politics column is plainer about the present arithmetic: the Senate of the coming Seventieth Congress now stands 47 Republicans, 47 Democrats, one Farmer-Labor, and one vacancy, the Maine seat. If Republicans hold it, they have exactly half. If Democrats take Maine, they would have 48. With the chamber even, the Vice President, a Republican, would cast the deciding vote. The old saying is rewritten: "As Maine goes, so goes the Senate."

The majority "on paper" is already being measured against the men who may not vote with the party that claims them.

From: The Alaska Daily Empire, p. 1 · Evening Star, p. 8

The President rides west into snow

PITTSBURGH. The Coolidges' special train pulls in at 8:45 this morning, through raw wind and snow flurries, bound for Kansas City, where tomorrow, on the eighth anniversary of the Armistice, the President dedicates the Liberty Memorial to the men of the World War. He steps onto the rear platform without an overcoat to greet the crowd. The party includes Secretary of War Dwight Davis.

He will leave Kansas City several hours before Queen Marie of Rumania arrives to stand on the same platform and lay a copper wreath. From Washington to Bismarck to Indianapolis, towns ready their Armistice Day programs.

From: Evening Star, p. 1 · Evening Star, p. 2 · The Indianapolis Times, p. 1 · The Bismarck Tribune, p. 1

A cold wave on the march

Out of the Northwest it comes, rolling toward the Atlantic. Snowdrifts stop the buses in Minnesota. Thief River Falls reads one below zero; Minnedosa, in Canada, six below, the lowest reading reported. Snow at La Porte, Ind. Rail, water and air travel across the Midwest are running late. The Bismarck Tribune and the Brownsville Herald both say the Midwest was unprepared, and that cities have seen suffering and many calls on charities for fuel.

Washington, after a high of 73 yesterday, expects fair and colder tonight, near 30 degrees. Indianapolis says the cold breaks Thursday. Out West, a quake rattles Orange County, Calif., "light but distinct," at 9:29 this morning.

From: The Bismarck Tribune, p. 1 · Evening Star, p. 1 · The Indianapolis Times, p. 1 · Brownsville Herald, p. 1

Astrid weds her prince

BRUSSELS. At 11:15 this morning in St. Gudule Cathedral, Crown Prince Leopold of Belgium marries Princess Astrid of Sweden, after a civil ceremony last week in Stockholm. Fifteen thousand soldiers line the route, and the crowd is the greatest the capital has seen since Armistice Day, eight years ago tomorrow. Scores of women and children are hurt in the crush; none killed. "Astrid was a picture of happiness."

From: Evening Star, p. 1 · The Bismarck Tribune, p. 1

A Queen who won't be muzzled

DENVER. Professor Petresco, speaking for Rumania's Premier Averescu, announces he must sit in on every one of Queen Marie's press meetings, fearing a remark injurious to the Averescu regime. The United Press reports that Her Majesty laughs, and that the arrangement was unknown to her. Tomorrow she and the President will share a memorial platform, hours apart.

From: The Indianapolis Times, p. 1 · Evening Star, p. 7

Winds ground the Schneider Cup

NORFOLK, Va. High winds wash out the maneuverability trials, and the Schneider Cup seaplane race between American and Italian flyers moves from Thursday to Saturday, 2:30 p.m. Porter Adams of the American Aeronautic Association makes the announcement. Admiral W. A. Moffett flies in for the conference.

Out of Chicago, National Air Transport sends off its first trial passenger flight to Dallas in a trimotor at about 9:35 this morning. At Hoover Field in Washington, a Philadelphia Rapid Transit Co. plane, taxiing after a landing, is flipped over by a 34-mile gust. All nine passengers walk away with bruises and a bad scare.

From: Evening Star, p. 1 · Brownsville Herald, p. 1

Gold letters name a queen

CAIRO. Harvard's Dr. George A. Reisner reports that the tomb near the Great Pyramid belongs to Queen Netepheres, mother of Cheops and wife of Snefru. Two inscriptions in gold hieroglyphs on a carrying chair give her name. The shaft drops a hundred feet through limestone. Her first burial at Dashur was robbed, and she was moved.

From: Evening Star, p. 1

Steel disappoints, and three Kansas banks close

U.S. Steel's unfilled orders at the end of October come to 3,683,661 tons, up 90,152 from September, but short of what the Street wanted, and Steel shares are sold. General Motors swings on talk of an extra dividend, three dollars, four or five, ahead of tomorrow's board meeting. The Star's market column calls the day's trend irregular. Cotton is quiet, slightly lower.

In Kansas, three banks from the estate of the late C. G. Cochran close their doors, at Hays, Ellsworth and Walker. Deposits in all three exceeded half a million dollars at the last quarterly statement, about three-fourths of that in the Hays bank. "Depleted reserves," says W. S. Kennedy, an assistant bank commissioner. "They could not raise the money, so they had to stop."

The Interstate Commerce Commission hears the money side of the Loree southwestern rail merger. A Kansas City Southern director testifies that the banking firms interested "had taken no profit."

From: Evening Star, p. 13 · Evening Star, p. 14 · Brownsville Herald, p. 1

A shot in the Mexican Senate, and Wood takes Manila

Berlin. On the revolution's eighth anniversary, Socialist deputy Alwin Saenger tells the Reichstag the former Kaiser's return "would be a challenge to a free people." The Socialists have introduced a bill for his permanent exile.

Crete. Deposed dictator Pangalos is said to believe himself emperor of Byzantium. Some suspect an act, put on to ease his sentence.

Rhineland. France pulls out more troops, and full evacuation is under consideration.

Mexico City. The Alaska Daily Empire's wire reports a pistol duel in the Mexican Senate lobby. Senator Charles Henshaw criticizes Senate Secretary Rocha on the floor, and Rocha challenges him to fight outside the chamber. In the lobby Henshaw opens fire on Rocha. Senator Expinoza, going to the secretary's defense, is shot dead, and Henshaw is critically wounded.

Manila. Gov. Gen. Leonard Wood abolishes the public utility board of control and takes sole charge. The Indianapolis Times headlines it "WOOD ASSUMES DICTATOR ROLE." The Star, inside, is milder: "GEN. WOOD WIDENS POWER IN MANILA." Wood rests the order on a Washington legal opinion that the legislature could not place the Senate president and the speaker on the board.

El Salvador. Fifty-seven are reported dead in a flow of molten lava four hundred yards wide in Matuzano Canyon. The Empire puts it on page 1, under the Maryland school.

From: Evening Star, p. 1 · Evening Star, p. 28 · Brownsville Herald, p. 1 · The Alaska Daily Empire, p. 1 · The Indianapolis Times, p. 1

Stephenson is back at the chair factory

Indiana. Ex-Klan leader D. C. Stephenson is back at his job in the state prison chair factory. He promises to testify "without reserve" at his arson-conspiracy trial on November 22. Subpoenas have gone to a list that "reads somewhat like a Statehouse directory," including the Governor. The same date set for the arson-conspiracy trial, November 22, is the date set for Fall and Doheny.

Illinois. "Uncle Joe" Cannon, the former Speaker, lies seriously ill at his home in Danville. "He is very low, but there is still hope for his recovery."

From: The Indianapolis Times, p. 1

Armour meets Towns, and the Cardinals want more

Golf. Tommy Armour of Congressional meets Eddie Towns of Indian Spring in the 36-hole District pro final at Chevy Chase. Boxing. Elky Clark, Britain's new "Mighty Atom," won't climb in with flyweight champion Fidel La Barba unless the bill calls him world champion. Football. Coach Lou Little gives Georgetown "an even chance" against Navy at Annapolis Saturday. Navy has not lost a game. Baseball. The world champion Cardinals are sure to want big raises for 1927, and owner Sam Breadon faces a "disgruntled attitude" credited to Rogers Hornsby.

From: Evening Star, p. 34 · Evening Star, p. 35 · Evening Star, p. 36

An eagle loose in New York, and a dog that saves a family

An American eagle, four feet wing to wing, slips off the liner it rode out the hurricane on and is loose somewhere in New York. In Louisville, a tramp dog the Tucker family used to feed wakes them in a fire and they get out just in time. At Oxford, undergraduates are "highly indignant" over a proctor's pamphlet restating the mid-Victorian code of conduct. North Dakota's Corn Show opens with more than six hundred exhibits, poor season or no. Richard Dix and Esther Ralston star in The Quarterback at Loew's Columbia next week, and the Army Band plays tonight on WRC.

From: Brownsville Herald, p. 1 · The Bismarck Tribune, p. 1 · Evening Star, p. 10 · Evening Star, p. 30 · Evening Star, p. 31