News and Notes by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 25, 1882

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 8, No. 20.

Read the full edition

News and Notes.

By Editor

—A tract of 4,000 acres of land has been purchased in Arkansas for an Italian colony.

—A dispatch from St. John, N. F., May 17, says that 100 vessels are fast in the ice off the coast.

—Thirty-seven houses, including every business house, in Stewartsville, Mo., were burned on the 16th.

—The Philadelphia Press Fund, amounting to $3,542, has been presented to Mrs. Sergeant Mason.

—The Order of the Knights of Labor, an organization opposed to strikes, has attained a membership of 140,000.

—A periodical has just been started in Vienna, the articles of which are to be in twelve different languages.

—The Captain, officers, and fifty-five of the crew of a Turkish transport, perished recently in the Bosphorus.

—May 16, the Indians made an attack on a train on the Conception Road, in Texas, and killed several persons.

—Two schooners, one in Fortune Bay, and the other in Placentia Bay, N. F., were lost, May 15, with all on board.

—Chicago has passed a law requiring wagon wheels to have broad tires. It is cheaper than to mend the streets.

—In 1871 the revenue of the Suez Canal amounted to about $1,700,000; in 1881 it had grown to more than $10,000,000.

—The men in all the principal tanneries in Chicago struck for higher wages, May 18. About 10,000 men are thus out of work.

—Des Moines, Iowa, claims the largest distillery in the world. It employs 125 men, and consumes 7,000 bushels of corn daily.

—An $800,000 fire is reported from Lyons, France, May 19. Many work-shops are destroyed, and 3,000 people are out of employment.

—During the year 1881 there were 26,000,000 pounds of oleomargarine, and 21,000,000 pounds of butter exported from the United States.

—Lieutenant Danenhower, who was in command of the only surviving party of the Jeannette crew, is now on his way from Liverpool to New York.

—One hundred dollars' fine, and thirty days' imprisonment is what a Cincinnati saloon-keeper received for violating the Sunday Law. This is the full penalty.

—The steamer Rio Grande, with a cargo of cotton from Galveston to New York, took fire and was sunk off Delaware Breakwater, May 17. Loss about $370,000,000.

—An experiment has been made between Melbourne and Albury, which shows that ordinary telegraph wires will, for a distance of 200 miles, serve to convey telephonic messages.

—The total of the killed and wounded by the recent cyclone at McAllister, Indian Territory, is 120. Of these fifteen are dead. Many are maimed for life, and others cannot recover.

—Articles of incorporation have been filed for a Cable Railroad on Market Street, San Francisco. Horse cars will be superseded. The road, with its branches will be over thirteen miles in length.

—A lady tenant in Chicago recently obtained a verdict of $3,500 against her landlord, for damages sustained through misrepresentation as to the sewerage and plumbing of the house she occupied.

—A prominent attorney of Portland, Oregon, died suddenly on a couch in a Chinese opium den last week. He had gone there intoxicated, and is supposed to have become asphyxiated while smoking opium.

—It is said that Russia is beginning to repent of the persecution against the Jews. The Jews who are leaving are taking so much money out of the country that business in some places is seriously crippled.

—Mr. Lynch, the colored Congressman from Mississippi, was born in Louisiana, where a Mississippian bought his mother and her children. His former owner is still living, and is a firm friend of the legislator who was once his slave.

—A Western genius has invented a contrivance whereby the escape steam and hot water may be thrown out at the point of the cowcatcher of a locomotive, and not at the sides, as now. Thus he expects to frighten cattle from the track.

—The New England Conservatory of Music has obtained control of the St. James Hotel property, Boston, and will turn it into a musical college. It will accommodate 600 boarding pupils. The cost of the building, with repairs, is $750,000.

—It is now claimed that hydraulic mining is not the sole cause of the sediment which obstructs the Sacramento river and tributaries, but that the earth disturbed by the early placer mining of 1849-50 has been coming down ever since in seasons of high water.

—There is said to be in circulation in Washington bogus silver certificates of the denomination of $1,000, which are equally as well executed as the genuine; and it is charged that they must have been printed from electrotypes of the original plates. About 500 of these certificates are in circulation.

—A mob took forcible possession of the railroad at Crittenden, N. M., May 16, on account of the presence of a number of Chinese laborers. They drove all the Chinamen from the camp, and then, seizing the Superintendent of construction, hung him to a telegraph pole, until he promised to hire no more Chinamen.

—Surveys have been made for an aqueduct 225 miles long, to supply New York, and towns along the Hudson, with water from Lake George. It is estimated by the chief engineer of the scheme, that a daily average of 1,500,000,000 gallons of exceptionally pure water would thus be made available for city purposes. The estimated cost is $50,000,000.

—It is thought that the murderers of Cavendish and Burke will come to America, and all steamers are being searched, and suspicious persons are arrested. The fear of being arrested is now so general in Ireland, that peasantry traveling outside their districts are applying to the police for pass-ports. Those who leave for America are doing the same.

—About 5,000 emigrants landed at Castle Garden, New York, the 18th. Among them were a number of silk-weavers, from France; a party of fifty grape-growers; many Scotch and English farmers; also carpenters, masons, etc. The German steamers brought nearly a thousand emigrants, mostly agriculturists. These are the kind of emigrants that this country wishes to receive.

—A sailing boat, containing a pleasure party of twelve, was capsized in Lake Calumet, near Chicago, May 11, and all on board were drowned. All the men worked in the Pullman Car Works, and nearly all leave families. On the 16th also, four young men were drowned, who were fishing in the lake. Three prominent citizens of St. Paul, Minn., were drowned the same day in White Bear Lake.

—The Texas Court of Appeals declares that if a man gets so drunk that he does not know what he is doing, and then commits an assault, he is entitled to an acquittal. This offers the ruffian a premium for drunkenness. In commenting on this decision, the Oakland Times sensibly remarks that "it would be more in accordance with sound public policy, if the man who fortifies himself with liquor for the commission of a crime, were to receive an extra punishment for his offense."

—A scientific feat never before attempted with success has just been accomplished in Cleveland, where Richard Jahr, a German student in photography, has photographed President Garfield's tomb by moonlight. Jahr has labored for some time, and expended considerable money in attempt to secure a negative with no other light than that of the moon, and it was not until one night recently that his efforts were crowned with success. The camera was left in position seven hours before the negative was perfected.