Labor Reports and Meetings in Brief
We have received, just too late for insertion in this number, reports of labor from A. D. Olsen and C. W. Olds, Wisconsin, G. K. Owen, Tennessee, J. Wilbur, New York, and G. W. Colcord, Illinois. Several of the College students, who have had some experience in holding meetings, went out last Sabbath and Sunday to churches in the vicinity of Battle Creek, to assist them in the exercises of this the first quarterly meeting of the year. If surrounding churches appreciate such help, they may perhaps secure more of it in the future. The next annual meeting of the National Reform Association, which is laboring to secure, among other things, a law for the enforcement of the first day of the week as the Sabbath, will be held in Pittsburgh, Pa., the 7th and 8th of February next. It is expected to be a meeting of no less interest and importance than other national conventions. It is not often that we find matter in our exchanges which we think will be of sufficient interest to our readers to warrant re-publication in our columns. But in the N. Y. Independent, of Dec. 27, 1877, we find two editorial articles, “Counting Noses” and “The Year in Europe,” which we are happy to present in the Review this week, in full. And here we take occasion to say that for variety of departments, range of subjects, able contributors, and skillful management in all respects, the Independent stands at the head of its class. A fearful catastrophe took place last week at Negammee, in the upper peninsula of Michigan. Over 4,000 pounds of nitro-glycerine were being loaded on the cars, when the compound exploded with most terrific force. The car was blown to powder, the engine, lifted up and reduced to a mass of splintered iron, was landed some fifty feet away, and everything within a radius of 800 feet was reduced to fragments. Of the seven men employed in the work nothing could be found but small pieces of flesh and bones. It was the most terrible explosion that ever occurred on the mineral range. The Independent of Jan. 3, 1878, in an article on “The New Year” says:— “But a new and even more serious duty for the year, the chief one in our politics and political economy, oppresses us. What means this weakening of public honor? Are we to have a filthy flood-tide of repudiation and scaling down of State and municipal indebtedness?” Alluding to the same subject in another article, it adds:— “Repudiation of debt obligations, none the less real because sought to be disguised, is at this moment one of the alarming signs of the times.” This is what we want to whisper into the ears of all who are out holding meetings, in reference to their reports. Don’t wait till you have to go back a month or two, and notice a list of places which you have visited, half a yard long; but let us have it in short items week by week. Whenever you visit a place or hold a meeting, in which anything is actually done, a few lines will record it, a few minutes only will be required to write it, a postal card or a three-cent stamp will bring it to us, it will be bright and fresh for the paper, and all will read it with interest. Will you do it?