p. 78 | SECULAR by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 29, 1885

SECULAR.

By Editor

—Seven deaths from the recent storms are reported from the mountains of Oregon.

—In New York City the deaths averaged, last year, one for every fifteen minutes. The births were 5,000 less than the deaths.

—The Supreme Court of California has decided that Chinese children born in this country are entitled to admission to the public schools.

—The toll on the Brooklyn Bridge has been reduced to three cents for passage on the cars, while twenty-five tickets for foot-passengers are sold for five cents.

—A charter has been granted to build an elevated railway, with a single track, between Boston and Cambridge. Work will be begun on the enterprise immediately.

—Two banks in Norwich, Conn., have lost $200,000 lately through defaulting cashiers. The money was lost in Wall Street speculations. The defaulters have been arrested.

—The Charleston News say that not a single divorce has been granted in South Carolina since the Revolution. We believe there is no law in that State giving such power, for any cause.

—Eleven persons at East Liverpool, Ohio, were poisoned Jan. 8, by "Rough on Rats" that some person had placed in the coffee. One is dead and the others are in a precarious condition.

—The packet steamer Admiral Moorsom was sunk on the night of the 15th, off Holyhead, Wales, by colliding with the American ship Santa Clara. The captain and fifteen of the steamer's crew were lost.

—Reports from points in Louisiana say that the whole country is covered with ice, a scene seldom witnessed in that latitude. Bridges have been swept away, and the roads are impassable.

—The Christmas edition of the London Graphic included 580,000 copies. Work on it was begun in January last and was kept up until November, the colored plates undergoing nineteen distinct printings.

—Southern resources are developing rapidly. Last year an aggregate capital of $105,269,500 was invested in 188 new enterprises in fourteen States. These enterprises represent nearly all kinds of general manufacture.

—The Baltimore Manufacturers' Record reports the business interests in the East improving. It says that more than 100,000 men have gone to work in manufacturing establishments that have resumed operations since January 1.

—Lieutenant Shufeldt, of the United States Navy, who has recently traversed Madagascar, says it is the third largest island on the globe. It has an area of 230,000 square miles, being 1,000 miles long, and averaging 230 miles in breadth.

—The will of the late Lieutenant Hampton S. Gardner, a member of the Greely Relief Expedition, written on strips of paper, with a lead pencil, at Camp Clay, in the Arctic regions, was recently admitted to probate in Philadelphia.

—On the morning of Jan. 18, a detached ward of the Kankakee, Ill., insane asylum was burned. It was used as an infirmary, and was occupied by fifty-five patients at the time of the fire. Seventeen of the number perished in the building.

—Mrs. Myra Clarke Gaines is dead, after fifty years of contest with the city of New Orleans about the title of property in the city, worth $35,000,000. Although the decisions were always in her favor, she was never benefited to any extent by them.

—The Governor of Ohio, in his annual message to the Legislature, repeats the recommendation of his inaugural address, "that the divorce laws of Ohio be revised, with the view of restricting the legal causes for divorce, and of limiting the right to marry again."

—A new adulteration has been discovered in New York and Brooklyn. Dr. Bartley, a chemist, has detected butchers using Venetian red, and other reds containing arsenic, to brighten the color of sausage, head-cheese, and other meats that had lost their color by decomposition.

—A wonderful shoemaking machine has been invented by a New Hampshire man eighty-three years of age. The machine will drive 250 wedge-shaped nails per minute, on from 700 to 1,000 pairs of boots or shoes in a working day of ten hours. It does the work of fifteen persons.

—A new temperance movement has just been organized in Massachusetts to be known as the National League for the Suppression of the Liquor Traffic. Many influential men of the nation are enrolled as its members. It does not propose to affiliate with partisan politics. Good!.

—Five members of the tribe of Kiowa Indians were found frozen to death the 16th, about forty miles north of Wichita Falls, Texas. The cold in that section has been so intense that ten per cent. of the cattle, and twenty per cent. of the sheep on the ranges are reported to have perished.

—The British bark Prince of Wales, belonging to the Hudson Bay Company, and formerly in the trade between England and Victoria, was recently frozen in in Hudson's Bay while homeward bound, and with her cargo of skins, valued at $500,000, was totally lost. Part of her crew was lost with the vessel.

—A number of unprovoked murders have recently been committed near Sarasota, Florida. It now turns out that these were perpetrated by an organized band of assassins, known as the Sarasota Vigilance Committee. Eight members of the society have been arrested, who have some of the best family connection in the State. Some of the members of the gang are mere boys, others are gray-haired men.

—The laws of Tennessee compel colored people, riding on railways in that State, even when traveling on first-class tickets, to occupy a car apart from the white people. A colored girl recently refused to ride in the car assigned her race, on account of having drunken and disorderly people in it of both races. Refusing to leave the car assigned white people, the conductor ejected her from the train. She brought suit for damages and the Court awarded her $500.

—Heavy snow-slides are reported in Piedmont, Savoy, and other departments in the vicinity of the Alps. Frassino, in Piedmont, was buried by one avalanche, causing great loss of life. Thirty bodies have been recovered, and forty persons are still missing. The town of Chaumont, in France, was partly overwhelmed with snow, and many persons killed. Fifteen persons were also buried under an avalanche at Sparone, on the Dora Baltea River. Many homeless ones are in distress.

—Chicago papers affirm that well organized companies of socialists to the number of 1,500 exist in that city, and are provided with Springfield and Remington rifles. These socialists say that they propose to be ready to resist any attack that may be made upon the discontented people in case of an outbreak, which they are expecting, by the police and detectives. In such an event they will assume control of the city and make everything they can lay their hands upon, the property of the community. Of the 250,000 wage-workers in Chicago, they claim fully 25,000 as in sympathy with the socialistic labor party. They meet regularly for drill.

—The Adjutant-General has called attention to what may be made an abuse. The law authorizes the President to detail an officer of the army to act as instructor in military science in "any established college or university within the United States, having capacity to educate at the same time not less than one hundred and fifty male students." Only a "capacity to educate" is stipulated. Under this law a school of only fifty students, if it only has the required capacity, may have an officer detailed to serve them, and have the Government pay his salary. Forty officers are now detailed in such service, and others might wish to be, if ordered to the frontier.