p. 302 | SECULAR | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 14, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 19.

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—Geo. M. Lathrop, of Michigan, has been appointed U. S. minister to Russia.

—The native population of the Hawaiian Islands is 4,000 less than it was six years ago.

—In Moscow there are over 100,000 children of school age, and school accommodation for only 7,000.

—People in the vicinity of Vesuvius are greatly alarmed at the threatening aspect of a new eruption.

—A large portion of Laredo, Texas, was flooded, May 8, the water in many places being four feet deep.

—The population of Los Angeles, Cal., in 1880 was 11,000; now it is estimated at 35,000, an increase of 200 per cent in five years.

—A caravan in the mountains of Armenia was recently overwhelmed by an avalanche in which sixty-eight persons perished.

—Both of the stages running between Rathdrum and Coeur d’Alene, I. T., were robbed by highwaymen on the afternoon of the 4th.

—Reports from Eastern Siberia are to the effect that armed bands of Chinese have crossed the frontier and surprised several Cossack villages.

—Doyle, the sculptor, who is making the statue of the late Senator Ben Hill of Georgia, says that a marble monument in that climate will not last over fifty years.

—Brigadier-General Irwin McDowell, of the U. S. Army, died in San Francisco on the night of the 4th, aged sixty-seven. Since Oct. 15, 1882, he has been on the retired list.

—Twenty-four business houses and fourteen residences were burned on the morning of the 3d inst., at Cabery, a village in Kankakee County, Ill. Total loss, about $100,000.

—A school lot in Los Angeles, Cal., which the city bought in 1872 for $200, was recently sold for $12,000, an increase of 6,000 per cent. in real estate value in thirteen years.

—One of the boilers of the Tremont Hotel, at Galveston, Texas, exploded on Sunday, May 3, killing a number of persons, wounding several others, and doing great damage to property.

—A spark from a locomotive started a fire in a large lumber yard in Chicago, May 8, which destroyed 45,000,000 feet of lumber, valued at $700,000. The area burned over is about fifteen acres.

—In Great Britain 10,000 landlords, for doing nothing, receive from the soil more than twice as much as the total wages paid to 860,000 laborers for working twelve hours through the seven days in every week.

—The building just erected for the use of the Chicago Board of Trade was formally dedicated April 29. Its main hall, or trading room, is the largest one employed for that purpose in the world. The building cost $2,000,000.

—The Government of Mexico announces that Mormons immigrating to that country will have no concessions made to them; but that they must be, like all other immigrants, subject to the laws of the country, which forbid polygamy.

—This item is clipped from a daily: “A Chinaman was fined $100 at Portland last week, for stealing thirty cents worth of scrap iron.” Whatever may become of white people, the authorities seem determined that the Chinese shall be moral.

—A steam-tug, with a crew of nine men, was nearly crushed by ice off Erie, Pa., May 4. The tug went out to reconnoiter for the fishing fleet, and was caught in the drifting ice which piled up around her, holding her firmly locked all night. In the morning a passage was blasted out, and the men, nearly frozen, were rescued.

—The immense stone bridge constructed by Chinese engineers over the arm of the China Sea, at Lagang, is finished. The bridge is five miles long. It is built entirely of stone and has 300 arches, each seventy feet high. The roadway is seventy feet wide.

—The Prince of Wales states that he is strongly of the opinion that the office of Viceroy of Ireland should be abolished and its duties transferred to the Secretary of State for Ireland. This would be an immense concession to the Irish, one of whose leading complaints has been against Castle rule.

—April 13, eight five-story tenement houses, that were being built on Sixty-second Street, New York City, all fell at once, seriously injuring thirteen of the workmen, but none fatally. Reckless building was the cause, whole armfuls of scrap lumber being used in filling in the walls. The master-bricklayer was arrested, but the builder escaped.

—It is reported that a New York man has invented a clock to be attached to street gas lamps. The clock has four faces of ground glass, and the hands will be worked through hollow tubes that meet in the center of the lamp, the whole system to be regulated at one central station. New York City will, it is said, put 20,000 of these clocks on trial.

—In view of the possible visit of cholera the coming summer, the ministers of Philadelphia have been requested to preach a sermon or two on the duty of cleanliness, and the general observance of sanitary regulations. But why confine themselves to a sermon or two? However, the fact that they had to be requested to do it is suggestive of the idea that otherwise they would not give even that many.

—The Oregonian says: “England will soon have a bigger gun than Russia can exhibit, or, for that matter, bigger than any other specimen of ordnance in the world. It is in process of construction at Woolwich Arsenal, and will weigh, when mounted, 200 tons, with a length of 43 feet and 8 inches, a diameter of 5½ feet at the breech, and of 28 inches at the muzzle.” And so comes the millennium.

—An eleven-year-old boy, armed with a large carving knife and two revolvers, was taken up the other day just as he was boarding a train at Jersey City. He was going west to hunt Indians. Another, fifteen years of age, wrote to a merchant that unless he immediately received $100 he would burn the merchant’s store. He confessed that he got his scheme from a novel. Parents, what are your children reading?

—A large four-story brick brewery in Pittsburg Pa., fell in with a crash on the morning of the third. In the building were 10,000 barrels of beer, and a lot of new machinery. The falling in of the walls crushed the barrels, and the beer ran into the street. The loss is estimated at $100,000, but as the beer is reckoned in this estimate, a large discount may be made from that sum. To use a Hibernianism, the loss of the beer was a great gain.

—The Daily Commercial Bulletin of May 5 estimates the aggregate loss by fire in the United States and Canada in April at $7,750,000 and for the four months so far this year at $35,250,000. This is at the rate of over $105,000,000 for the year. The Bulletin says that the scourge of fire has fastened itself upon the country to a degree which is out of proportion to the increased value of property, and is becoming alarming enough to demand attention from all property owners.

—On Friday, May 1, a hail-storm passed over the southeastern part of Virginia, and extended into North Carolina. The dispatch says: “All growing cotton, corn, and vegetables were destroyed and the farmers will be compelled to plant again. Hail fell to a depth of twelve inches, and a whirlwind prevailed along the center of the storm, blowing down barns, fences, and sheds. In some places in Surrey County, Va., hail fell to a depth of eighteen inches, and in some spots drifted to a depth of four feet.”

—From advance pages of the 1885 edition of the “American Newspaper Directory,” issued May 1st, by Geo. P. Rowell & Co., of New York, it appears that there are 14,147 newspapers and periodicals published in the United States and Canada; of these the United States has 12,973, an average of one paper for every 3,867 persons. In 1884 the total number of newspapers was less by 823 than at present, and while the gain this year is not so marked as in some previous years, it is still considerable. Kansas shows the greatest increase, the number being seventy-eight, while Illinois follows with a gain of seventy-seven.