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GENERAL NEWS NOTES OF THE DAY. Tho Ions awaited federal investigation of the causes of abnormal pries increases in every branch of lifes necessities, including milk, meat, flour and coal, will be begun officially Wednesday, llinton G. Clabaugh, chief of the Chicago bureau of investigation, yosterdav received telegraphic orders from his superior, A. Bruce I.ielaski, head of the bureau of investigation at Washington, to assign virtually his entire staff of investigators to the battle against the high cost of living. The order is nationwide, Clabaugh said. Clabaugh held a conference with 1nited States District Attorney Clyne for the purpose of outlining a systematic probe. It was the first local action taken following the receipt of an announcement authorised by Attorney-General Gregory. The announcement states: The department of justice is investigating the recent abnormal and suspicious increases in the prices of various necessaries of life, especially coal. Wherever any such increase is found to be due to consipiracy or other unlawful action the department will invoke against the offenders the severest penalties which the law prescribes. It was intimated by Clabaugh that the operations of Chicago coal firms will be the subject of scrutiny and that well-known business men interested in the product will be interrogated. When the m-oblems of election day, with its many possibilities of vote fraud evidence are off our hands, we will undertake a genuine and searching investigation of the nriees of many commodities, said Clabaugh. The coal situation requires urgent attention, with the winter season close at hand. One of the first artual stops to avert the treatening coal famine was taken yesterday when a hearing on a bill to compel 110 railroad companies to return coal cars to the tracks of the Chicago and Eastern Illinois rail-ro:id and the Chicago, Terre Haute and Southern railway was begun before Judge Landis. The bill, which was brought against the different railroad companies by twenty-six coal companies, the owners of more" than a half hundred bituminous coal mines in southern Indiana and Illinois, charges that the defendants, in violation of the rules of the American Railway association, are using coal cars for other purposes and not returning them to the tracks of the owners. That dangerous adulteration of bread witli alum is being committed by bakers is the subject of complaints received from housewives by Aid. Willis O. Nance, chairman of the council health committee. A boycott on eggs, if the price keeps on advancing, is planned by leaders of the Housewives league of Chicago, of which Mrs. H. II. Harrison is organizer. From Berlin yesterday the war office report said: Army group of Crown Prince Kupprecht In the continuous battle on the Sommo, November J. was another fighting day of the first class. The British and French, with the strongest forces and employing the whole firing capacity of their artillery, made a powerful advance against the front of Gen. von Buelows army. Troops from different parts of Germany under the command of Gen. Baron Marschal von Detailing and Gen. von Garnier withstood the attack unshaken, and inflicted a severe defeat upon the enemy. Portions of the Ktarssburg corps and troops from Saxony, Baden and Berlin and Hanseatic and Meiningen infantry regiments won special distinction. The allied enemy on the entire front from Le Sars to Boueh-avesnes. a distance of twenty kilometers twelve and one-half miles along which they attacked, suffered the heaviest, sanguinary losses, and accomplished nothing except a small local gain in the north part of St. Pierre-Vaast wood. Wherever the enemy at other places pushed . his way into, our line he was immediately ejected and left ten officers, 310 men and booty in our bauds. Northeast of Le Sars more than seventy prisoners and eleven machine guns were brought in. Near Soissons an attack by a weak French detachment was repulsed. Army group of the German Crown Prince On the right bank of the Mouse Verdun front in the Hardaumont sector, there was violent artillery and hand grenade fighting. An important announcement from Berlin yesterday said: Polish provinces occupied by troops of the central powers, says tho Overseas News Agency, were the scene today of a great and momentous historic event. Germany and Austria-Jlungarv by joint action proclaimed Warsaw and Lublin "the Kindom of Poland and re-established the right of the Polish nation to control its own destinies, to live an independent national life and to govern itself by chosen representatives of the nation. A few days ago a Polish delegation had called upon the imperial chancellor, Dr. von Beth-maiin-IIollweg. Its members were representative Poles of all classes, all parties, all ranks of society and all creeds. They transmitted to the German government the wishes of the Polish nation which now have been granted. The manifesto issued at Warsaw and Lublin reads as follows: His Majesty the German Emperor and His Majesty the Emperor of Austria and apostolic King of Hungary, inspired by firm confidence in a final victory of their arms and prompted by a desire to lead the districts conquered by their armies under heavy sacrifices from Russian domination toward a happy future, have agreed to form of these districts a national state with a hereditary monarch and a constitutional government. The exact frontiers of the Kingdom of Poland shall be outlined later. The new kingdom shall receive the guaranties needed for the free development of its own forces by its intimate relations with both powers. The glorious traditions of the ancient Polish armies and the memory of the brave comradeship in the great war of our days shall revive in a national army. The organization, instruction and command of this army shall be arranged by common agreement. The allied mon-archs express the confident hope that Polish wishes for the evolution of a Polish state and for the national development of a Polish kingdom shall now be fulfilled, taking due consideration of the political conditions prevailing in Europe and of the welfare and safety of their own countries and nations. The great realm which the western neighbors of the Kingdom of Poland shall have on their eastern frontier shall be a free and happy state, enjoying its own national life, and they shall welcome with joy the birth and prosperous development of this state. A dispatch of yesterday from Seattle says: Seven men are dead and fifty are suffering today from bullet wounds as the result of the battle yesterday at Everett, Wash., thirty miles north of Seattle, when about 250 members of the Industrial Workers of the World sought to land in that city from the steamer Verona, which had carried them from Seattle. The boat was met by Sheriff Donald Mc-Itae of Snohomish county, who witli a posse forbade the men to land. A shot fired from the Verona, according to the boats officers, was followed immediately by firing from both sides. The steamer hastened back to Seattle with the dead and wounded. The Seattle police took the dead to the morgue, eleven seriously wounded men to the city hospital and the unwounded and twenty who are slightly hurt to the city jail. One member of the Everett citizens posse. C. O. Curtis, formerly second lieutenant in the Washington national guard, was killed and nineteen were wounded. Witnesses asserted that several men jumped into the water from the boat and that some were drowned, but searchers were unable to find any bodies and it was believed that this report was incorrect. Four of the wounded members of the citizens posse were in a critical condition today. From Everett another dispatch says: Jefferson M. Beard, former sheriff of Snohomish county and a deputy sheriff in the posse which battled with Industrial Workers of the World at the Everett city wharf yesterday afternoon, died today. He is the seventh man to lose his life because of the Industrial Workers effort to enforce in Everett what they term "the right of free speech." Beard was shot in the chest. E. P. Buehrer, engineer at the Everett high school, who was shot in the chest, may die, physicians say. He was a member of the citizens posse into which members of the Industrial Workers fired from the steamer Verona, which had brought them from Seattle. Athol Gorrill of Spokane, a student at the University of Washington, who was visiting in Everett and was on the wharf, was shot through the leg and chest and is in a critical condition, as is Harry Blackburn, who was shot in the chest. Twenty-five experienced American ambulance drivers with the French army arrived on a transport at Saloniki, Sunday and are waiting to care for the only American Red Cross unit in the east. The men come from various sections of the American ambulance organization in France. They have been formed into a new section, in charge of Lover-tag Hill of New York. :ind -will operate thirty cars. The drivers arc chiefly college men and not a few of them wear decorations for bravery shown on the western front. They were recently separated from the American ambulance in Paris and are now under the direct command of the French. The unit is supported principally by American subscribers, notably Mrs. W. IC. Vanderbilt, Jr. Several of the waiting ambulances will go immediately to the front, probably in the region of Monastir, to bring French wounded back to Saloniki. The service is extremely severe because of the slippery and tortuous roads in the mountains between Saloniki and the front. Without authorization from their local unions from 300 to 400 cigarmakers went on strike yesterday, tying up the plants of Wengler and Mandell, the largest factory in Chicago; Niemann Bros., 121 South Leavitt street, and Spector Bros., 107 South Clark street. Why the men went on strike was not made clear. A new scale of wages is now before the international union for ratification by a referendum vote and the result is to be announced and the new demands made officially on November 13. The new demands will call for an increase of to per thousand, according to the grade of cigar made, together with certain shop regulations. "Chicago today pays the highest scale of any city in the country," declared Mr. Wengler of Wengler and Mandell. "We realize the need of the men for more money in these times of increased cost of living, but the prices of our tobacco has been raised and we do not get any more money for our cigars." Supplemental campaign contribution statements wore filed with the clerk of the house of representatives at Washington Friday by the national committees of the two big parties. Contributors to the Republican fund included Charles W. Fairbanks, of Indianapolis, candidate for vice-president, 0,000. According to the statements, the Republican committee has received 14,778 since October 2S. bringing the total campaign fund up to ,012,535. The Democrats have thus far received ,310,7-!. The accounts show that the Republicans have spent .-SS6,u69, while the Democrats have spent ,120,702. A later report will be made showing the total funds received and spent between October 30 and election day. At New London, Conn., yesterday Capt. Taul Koeuig of the German submarine merchantman Deutschland, indicated that he would make his homeward dash next Friday probably late in the afternoon. The gang of negro stevedores worked steadily all Sunday loading a cargo of crude rubber and nickel; the Deutschlands crew was engaged in overhauling the engines and five mechanics tightening rivets on the crafts bow which had become loosened by tossing in the high seas on the way over. German forces on Sunday several times assumed the offensive on the Russian western front in the region east of the village of Linitiza Dolnaia and west of the village of Silaventin. with the object of capturing the commanding heights occupied by the Russians. All the German attacks, according to an official statement issued by the Russian war department, were frustrated by a violent Russian artillery and rifle fire. The battle is still going on. Negotiations were completed at New York Friday by a syndicate headed by the National City com-panv, which is controlled by the National City bank interests, for a loan of 0,000,000 to the Russian government, the proceeds of which will be used principally for paying for war munitions. The loan will be a direct obligation to the imperial Russian government and will bear interest at 54 per cent. The entente powers have loaned 5,000,000 francs ,000,000 to the provisional government at Saloniki, according to an Athens dispatch to the Exchange Telegraph company of London. The dispatch says that the Athens and Ionian bank has received an order to advance a preliminary sum of this amount to the Venizelist officials and charge it to the account of the entente powers. A Danish expedition to Iceland has returned with specimens of oil, which on examination has proved to be of excellent quality. A thorough exploration of the oil-bearing regions in Iceland will be made in the near future. According to a dispatch from Christiania the director of an oil company there says the oil deposits in Iceland are rich and they are found comparatively near the surface. Emperor Francis Joseph has addressed an autograph letter to Premier Ernest von Koerbcr. stating that it is his will when the new state; of Poland comes into existence to grant Galicia the right independently to manage its own internal affairs. Tho emperor charges Premier von Koerber to prepare measures for the legal realization of this command. A late London dispatch of yesterday says: A British submarine operating in the North sea reports that it fired torpedoes at a German battle ship of the dreadnought type yesterday, making a hit. The amount of damage inflicted is not known, the admiralty says. Major I. D. Foulois, senior military avitator of the United States army, reported yesterday to Major General Funston as department aviator officer, a new position. He will begin the work of organizing two new aero squadrons for the southern department. The destruction of the German submarine lT-20 by its own crew after the submersible had gone aground on the west coast of Jutland, was reported by the German admiralty yesterday.
