SECULAR NEWS | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jan 24, 1878

SECULAR NEWS.

—The debt of Boston is $43,354,444.

—The number of deaths in Chicago during 1877 was 8,026, or 546 less than in 1876.

—Henry M. Stanley, the African explorer, has been presented with a gold medal, the gift of the late King Victor Emmanuel.

—The funded debt of the State of New York has been reduced $12,000,000 during the past year, and is now a little more than $10,000,000.

—There are now 854 manufacturing establishments in San Francisco, whose aggregate products amount to $62,338,000. They employ over 26,000 persons.

—Egypt has 765 non-navigable canals used solely for irrigation and traffic. Of these canals over one hundred have been opened during the reign of the Khedive.

—The State Department has received letters from China, showing that university education there, under American and other foreign professors, is making good progress.

—Jamaica began quinine planting in 1860, and now has eighty thousand trees, of which experienced chemists report most favorably. The experiment made by the government, is regarded as a complete success.

—The boring of the Channel tunnel between France and England is to be done by the French railway company, the Chemin de Fer du Nord, and the Southeastern and Chatham railway companies of England.

—Great loss of property, and damage to shipping is reported from the heavy gales of January 10, in Maine. Trees and fences were prostrated, barns blown down, and houses unroofed. Total loss estimated to be $20,000.

—Postmaster-General Key says business has so increased in the South that over 200 postoffices have been made presidential offices, namely: such as receive appointment from the president, and confirmation by the senate. This indicates prosperity.

—While a Chicago north-western box car was being loaded with nitro-glycerine at the Jackson mine, near Negaunee, on the 2d inst., the mass exploded, instantly killing seven men, and demolishing the car. The locomotive was lifted into the air and thrown fifty feet and landed a confused heap of wood and iron.

—Heavy rains in Richmond, Va., caused another rise in the rivers. The bridge over the Staunton river, on the Richmond and Danville road, just completed, was again swept away—the third time inside of two months. The iron bridge over the same river on the Midland road, between Lynchburg and Danville, was also washed away. This bridge was destroyed during the great flood in November, and but recently replaced.

—Annually, for the last decade, there has been paid to the British Government by the Bank of England a sum slightly in excess of $17,500,000, representing the unclaimed dividends on consols. In other words, $580,000,000 of the English National Debt will never have to be redeemed. These hard times a little trifle of five or six hundred millions do not come amiss to any of us. It is a period in the financial history of the world when the smallest favors are thankfully received.

—In consequence of extraordinary depression in trade and manufacture in England, in iron establishments and the mines, especially, many thousands of working people—men, women and children—are out of employment, and suffering fearfully for want of clothing, food and shelter. A large number are begging in the streets and highways, and some driven to desperation, rob and plunder where they can. Memorials have been addressed to the Government to appropriate a sum of money to cover expense of work that shall be done on public roads by which to furnish employment to these destitute people. They must have help, or they will perish.