NEWS AND NOTES

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · May 21, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 21.

FOREIGN.

—A Shanghai despatch says that the English mission at Kiang Yin has been looted and burned, tho the missionary escaped.

—The Abyssinian affair seems to be quieting down. The latest news from that part is that Menelik has liberated the Italians captured at Agama, and that all other prisoners will go free within a week.

—After July, Mexico will abolish all inter-state and intermunicipal taxes, as well as many others that have tended heretofore to retard trade. The new system will place Mexico in the forefront of progress in this direction, and a great advance in the growth of industries is looked for.

—The fifty-nine members of the uitlander reform committee, besides Hammond and his three companions, whose sentences were fixed by the court at two years’ imprisonment and £2,000 fine each, have had their sentences commuted to one year’s imprisonment. All these commutations will tend to President Krueger’s advantage in the eyes of the world.

—The Spanish Government, in compliance with the protests of the United States, has ordered the death sentence passed on American citizens captured on the Competitor suspended for a time, and the records forwarded for review. Great Britain also took a hand in the protest, as one of the condemned men was a British subject. General Weyler, it is reported, feels hurt at this apparent reversal of his judgments.

—Spain is now complaining because the Cubans are using explosive bullets. This, Spain says, is contrary to international usage in civilized warfare. This is the second time the frightful charge has been made against the insurgents of shocking Spain’s sense of propriety. The first was that the half-armed rebels ran away after a sudden swoop, in preference to remaining to be shot at. If it were not war, such pleas would be amusing.

—An exchange gathers the information that since the accession of the present British Government, public-house property has enormously increased in value, because of the favors to liquor dealers. In Liverpool, British ships are being largely manned by foreign seamen, who are preferred to Englishmen because they are less drunken. The proposed bill for regulating shop hours does not, it seems, touch the 400,000 barmaids and barmen in the kingdom, who work long hours, seven days a week.

—The only country that has openly sided with Spain against the United States—that is, through the press—is France, and this sympathy has already had its effect in the financial circles of those adjacent powers, aside from the fact that France holds the bulk of Spain’s securities for loans in prosecuting the war in Cuba. This friendship naturally suggests a second triple alliance,—Russia, France, and Spain, which, if it should be accomplished, might in the end place England on the side of the United States, as all three powers are unfriendly to her interests.

—A despatch says Captain-General Weyler has issued a proclamation giving country people twenty days in which to deposit in the government centers all the corn procurable in the provinces of Pinar del Rio, Havana, and Matanzas. The corn will be paid for when delivered. The move is an attempt to starve out the insurgents, and failure to comply is threatened with usual severe penalties. On the other hand, the insurgents will doubtless decree punishment upon those who obey the Spanish command, and thus far they have been most dreaded in a clash of authorities.

—It has been announced through U. S. Minister Denby, at Peking, that the French minister to China, M. Gerard, has procured from the Tsung Li Yamen, by virtue of the French treaty of 1858, an order directing local authorities in all the provinces of the empire to expunge from the various editions and compilations of the Chinese code all restrictions upon the propagation of the Christian religion. This should be a joyful note for missionaries. To all appearances the Gospel has made slow progress in the great Chinese Empire, yet under the heathen Roman Empire of the first century, restricted by laws carrying the death penalty, the Gospel spread to all the world. Perhaps the former power is needed in these latter days.

DOMESTIC.

—An analysis of jellies on the market by the chemist of the San Francisco Board of Health shows that the principal ingredient of some cheap brands imported from eastern cities is ox-blood. Such adulteration and fraud should be made criminal offenses.

—The statue of Père Marquette, presented by the state of Wisconsin, has been accepted by the U. S. Senate, and set on its plinth in the capitol at Washington.

—Owing to the plague raging in Hongkong and vicinity, all Chinese passengers from the Orient must receive a bath and their effects be fumigated before landing at San Francisco docks. This process is done at Angel Island.

—The new battle ship Oregon, built at the Union Iron Works, San Francisco, has proved herself the fastest vessel of her class in the American navy. The trial trip on the 14th inst., developed an average speed of 16.79 knots. As fifteen knots was the requirement, the builders will receive a bonus of $175,000 from the government.

—At the Methodist General Conference now convened in Cleveland, Ohio, the stalls, or boxes, on each side of the auditorium rent for $100 during the session, while reserved seats back of the stand occupied by the bishops and conference secretaries rent for $10 a sitting. The managers have an eye to the financial as well as spiritual interests, it seems.

—Instructions have been issued by the Secretary of the Treasury to the agent for the seal islands to permit the North American Commercial Company to kill 30,000 seals this season. Last year only 15,000 were supposed to be taken, but inasmuch as poachers and hunters outside the limits slaughtered great numbers of the seals as they left the rookeries, the government has decided to reap the profit itself.

—That riches take unto them wings and fly away, is being realized by Archbishop Ireland, whose fortune of $1,500,000, acquired through property speculations, has been swept away on account of unfortunate investments. The fortune was private, but it is said the Catholic Church will fail to get a magnificent cathedral, and possibly an endowed school, which were promised by the archbishop.

—On May 16 a telegraphic message was sent from the Grand Central Palace, New York, to the Journal office in the same city, via San Francisco, Vancouver, Montreal, Canso, N. S., London, Lisbon, Bombay, and Tokio, and a reply received in eighteen and one-half minutes, or 30,000 miles in half the time a messenger would need to reach one building from the other. The electricity was supplied from Niagara.

—Northeastern Texas was visited by a terrific cyclone on May 15, perhaps the most destructive to life of any recorded in late years. Eighty-six persons were killed in the city of Sherman, and it is known many were killed in other places. The list of wounded is still greater. The storm, which swept over Denton and Grayson Counties, was preceded by intense heat for several days. Rain came with it, followed by a cold wave.

—Bankers and police officials of the country are rejoicing over the capture of two men, Becker and Creegan by name, at Newark, N. J., whose forgeries have robbed banks of millions of dollars in the past twenty years. Becker’s raised drafts and counterfeit bills have defied the closest scrutiny, and he is pronounced the most dangerous forger known to police records, his operations extending to all parts of the Old World, as well as this.

—Rev. B. Fay Mills, the evangelist, has changed the character of his preaching somewhat. He now believes that society must be saved as well as the individual. That is, we suppose he means the nation, as Christian, as many nowadays insist on calling it. In this he will only be stepping in line with the large class who are laboring to make the nation Christian in name, by law. But there can be only one true Christian nation, and that the nation of the redeemed in an earth freed from the curse of sin.

—A deliberate plan of liquor dealers to cause the downfall of reformed drunkards has been unearthed in New York. A rescue mission in that city having provided rooms for those reclaimed from the liquor habit, the saloon men, enraged because their revenue was being cut into, caused their agents to engage rooms in this home, assuming the rôle of reformed drunkards. These agents then introduced liquor to their rooms, offering it freely to their reformed companions, many of whom were overcome and returned to their former habits. This is the devil’s own work.