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Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 11, 1880

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 6, No. 42.

Read the full edition

ITEMS OF NEWS.

By Editor

-The President is in Washington.
-Forty thousand men are under arms in Greece.
-Cyrus W. Field anticipates a visit to this coast shortly.
-There are 96 deaf-mute schools in the German Empire.
-A pan-Lutheran Council at Wittenberg, is now suggested.
-The population of Texas has more than doubled since 1870.
-A company has been organized to build a railroad from Chicago to the City of Mexico direct.
-The New York Elevated Railroads carried, in the year ending September 18, 60,386,073 passengers.
-This country annually pays to foreign ship-owners the sum of $70,000,000 for doing its carrying trade.
-The well-remembered Pittsburg riots cost the country, in compromising and settling them, $2,489,737.97.
-An observatory for the study of volcanology has been erected at the base of the central cone of Mount Etna.
-Potato brandy, used greatly in some parts of Switzerland, is said to be nearly as poisonous as absinthe.
-The number of lives lost by steamboat accidents during the fiscal year of 1880 was 185. Last year it was 177.
-According to the best authorities, the population of the globe increases at the rate of nearly 1,000,000 per month.
-The number of women attending medical lectures in Russia was 130 in 1876, since which time it has steadily decreased.
-During the ten years from June 30, 1870, to June 30, 1880, the number of immigrants landing in this country was 2,811,677.
-The Queen of Italy has presented the Italian Roman Catholic Church of Boston with a bronze statuette of Augustus Cæsar.
-One hundred and eighty-six British and foreign wrecks were reported last week. Of these, 161 vessels were lost on the British coast.
-A verbatim report of all the essays and debates upon the occasion of the recent pan-Presbyterian Council, is shortly to be published.
-The steamer Rhode Island went ashore on a point of the Narragansett bay, Nov. 6. The vessel was a total wreck, but no lives were lost.
-Sixteen young women have just graduated from the Training School for Nurses established by the Department of Public Charities and Correction.
-President Grevy, of the French Republic, has $120,000 salary, and $60,000 allowances in addition. He spends it all in receptions and subscriptions.
-The growth of Catholicism in the United States is said to be creating a current feeling in favor of State and church union as a safe-guard against Catholicism.
-A dispatch from Berlin says that 10,000 troops have concentrated at Khaborovka, on the Russian shore of the Pacific, in view of a possible war with China.
-The Senate of France, by a vote of 254 majority, has passed a bill making the study of agriculture obligatory upon the children in their elementary schools.
-The Spanish government has resolved to proceed against all priests who introduce politics into their sermons, and to dismiss all mayors who are notorious Carlists.
-Another terrific hurricane, accompanied by a blinding snowstorm, passed over Denmark, Nov. 1. The railways were blocked, and a score of wrecks are reported.
-The course of the British Government in relation to the Land League is opposed by all parties. The Daily Express, discussing the subject, says: "If the Government plays with this matter for another six months, there will be an armed rising."
-The Sioux have granted the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railroad Company the right of way through their Territory. One hundred dollars per mile is paid, and four dollars per acre for station ground, not exceeding 160 acres per station.
-The Mormons send more missionaries out of Utah than Christian churches send into that Territory. Seventeen Mormon elders recently left Utah for Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, and other Southern States, to make converts and secure Mormon immigrants to Colorado.
-The agitation against the religious decrees is increasing. Several magistrates have resigned in consequence of the decrees. In Marseilles, 1500 leading merchants have signed a protest against the expulsion of the religious congregations from Spain.
-The Jewish Messenger says that a hundred well-to-do heads of Jewish families in Roumania, have petitioned the Alliance Israelite to purchase land for them in Palestine, where they may found an agricultural colony; they offer to contribute 400 francs each, and to pay the balance in annual instalments.
-The latest mail from China brings reports of the most serious outbreak at Canton that has been recorded for years. For some time, a bitter jealousy has been growing between the native Cantonese and the Hakka stone-dressers, and other classes of workmen from other parts. The immediate cause of the present trouble was a fire in the stone-cutting works, supposed to have been set by the Cantonese. A large number of men were seriously wounded.
-Specials from London state that the Queen has requested Gladstone to apply to Parliament at its next session, for a grant of £40,000 to help the Prince of Wales pay pressing debts. Gladstone objects to this, and says that if any such grant is to be requested, it should be done by the Queen herself.
-Last Thursday evening, at about quarter of eight, the residents of Oakland were startled by quite a severe earthquake shock, which lasted about five seconds. The motion was of an undulating nature, taking a direction of from east to west. About five minutes a second and lighter shock was felt.
-For the past three months there has been an average of about two cases of small-pox per week reported in San Francisco. One week ago last Monday, sixteen cases were reported. Since then, it has assumed the form of an epidemic, and is creating great excitement. During the week, over fifty cases have been reported. It is also spreading somewhat in Alameda.
-News is received from the west coast of Africa of the death of Chaca, Governor of the Whydahs. His funeral was to be celebrated by a massacre of natives, after which the king had announced his intention of holding an annual celebration in memory of his father. The celebration will last four months, during which 200 captured chiefs will be beheaded. The English have refused to go to the celebration.
-The Scientific American urges the adoption of the telephone on the battle-field as a means of conveying information, and transmitting orders rapidly and accurately, without exposing the General in command to the fire of the enemy, and thus imperiling not only his own life, but possibly the ultimate result of the campaign. Of course, special modifications are necessary to render the telephone available for such use, but these are quite within the power of the inventor and mechanician.
-Parnell, the leader of the Irish Land League, has been indicted. In a recent speech in Limmerick, he is reported to have said that "Parliament would not reduce rents, but when farmers had reduced them, Parliament would interfere and render the continuation of the agitation useless. They had got rid of the great proprietors in France, Prussia, and Belgium; why not in Ireland? He advised the people to offer a just rent to the proprietors, as then the question might be settled this winter."
-It is stated that the German Government has just decided that the treaty of 1868 with the United States, shall not be recognized as affecting Alsace and Lorraine, and that naturalized citizens of the United States residing in the new German provinces, shall be subject not only to military duty, but shall be fined and imprisoned for non-service. One naturalized American citizen has been already arrested, and is now in prison. The German Government proposes not to give him up. A strong feeling is being manifested about the matter, but our Legation at Berlin is powerless.
-The Oakland Times, Nov. 8, contains the following: "Our nation is singularly blessed at this time, in contrast with other countries. All is peaceful and prosperous here, while in Europe revolt and war and revolution are harrassing all the nations with actual evils, or with the anxious anticipation of evils impending. In Ireland they seem to be on the verge of a social war; in France attempted religious repression fills the mind of men on either side with fury; social revolt smoulders in Germany; around the difficult knot of the Eastern question all the Powers are at swords' points with a common foe or with one another, while England's troubles in Africa and Asia are once more thorns in her side. There all is turmoil and stormy uncertainty; here all is tranquility and prosperity; and while the ruler of one of the greatest nations is almost besieged in his palace and trembling for fear of assassination, the American President has just passed from land's end to land's end without the attendance of a single gendarme or bayonet."
-The certificate of incorporation of "the New York Under-ground Railroad Co." has been filed in the County Clerk's office, and it is announced that within two or three years, rapid transit trips will be made from South Ferry to Central Park, through a tunnel under Broadway. Excavation will commence sometime during the present month. It is said that Gen. McClellan is to be the president of the company. The road will be built with two single-track tunnels, at an average of 25 ft. 6 in. underground, each 15 ft. 6 in. high, and separated by a brick wall. Large 60-ton locomotives will be used. They will burn coke, and consume their own smoke. The exhaust steam will be condensed, and nothing will escape to vitiate the atmosphere of the tunnel but a little gas. It is proposed to light them, as well as the tunnel itself, with electricity. An electric machine will be placed on each engine to run the headlight and the candles in the cars. At the principal stations air-shafts will rise up 75 ft., and other openings will be made at frequent intervals. Through these, air will be introduced by artificial means. The underground stations will, as a rule, be under street corners, and will be entered through the business blocks or other buildings there.