SECULAR | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 23, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 49.

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SECULAR.

—A man in Paris has recently completed a fifty days' fast.

—Eleven hundred coopers went out on a strike at Cincinnati on the 14th inst.

—It is reported that a volcano has been discovered in the Bad Lands in Dakota.

—The State House at Springfield, Ill., suffered a loss of $10,000 by fire a few days since.

—An organization has been effected in Chicago to counteract Socialism and kindred ideas.

—The English Government has decided to supply the army with the Austrian Fischer repeating rifles.

—In order to reduce the revenues of the Government it is now seriously proposed to abolish the tax on sugar and tobacco.

—A man has just been imprisoned for debt in New Hampshire. He owes $6,000 and can be kept in jail for fifteen years.

—The English Government has decided to reduce the Egyptian standing army to 10,000 men and the army of occupation to 5,000.

—A suit was lately decided in the District Court of Wurzburg that had been in litigation ever since 1755. An appeal was taken.

—In the municipal elections at Brussels, a Socialist workman is among the successful candidates, the first instance of the kind on record.

—A man at Newark, Cal., died a few days since from the effects of strychnine which got into his system through wounds in his hands.

—An interesting discovery has been made at Altbunzlau, Bohemia, of a fifteenth-century codex containing four autograph letters of John Huss.

—Negotiations are pending looking to the appointment of a joint commission to settle the boundary between Alaska and British America.

—English and French authorities are quarreling over a slice of African territory. In a case of that kind, however, it is not difficult to tell who will take the spoil.

—The cave-in of a coal mine at Shenandoah, Pa., a few days since badly wrecked about four acres of the town, causing damage to the amount of $50,000 or $75,000.

—McQuade, another of New York's "boodle" aldermen, has been found guilty of bribery and will no doubt be sent to Sing Sing. The jury was out only half an hour.

—It is said that recently in one province of China 700 able-bodied men crippled their hands to escape military service, and 300 of them were taken out and beheaded.

—The Anarchists of Chicago have made a demand for the red flags, etc., captured by the police during excitement in that city last May. The authorities refuse to give them up.

—Advices from Mandalay, Burmah, say that an engagement between British troops and natives has taken place near Pakoka, recently, and that 200 of the insurgents were killed.

—The condition of Irish affairs seems to be constantly growing worse and worse. A crisis has been reached and the English Government must adopt the most stringent measures or else acknowledge itself unable to cope with existing difficulties. It will certainly choose the former alternative.

—December 17 a steam whaling vessel was destroyed by fire in San Francisco Bay. The loss was about $75,000. The vessel would have sailed in a few days for the South Pacific.

—John Dillon the noted Irish agitator has been arraigned before an English court for seditious language and ordered to give bonds in the sum of £2,000 or go to jail for six months.

—It is stated that not 100 chimneys out of 14,000 in Charleston, S. C., escaped damage during the late earthquake, and 95 per cent. of these 14,000 were broken off at the roof and went to the ground.

—The Union Pacific Railroad Company has recently announced its intention of establishing a series of weather observations and reports. The head-quarters for the system will be at Omaha.

—Advices from Calcutta say the cholera is decreasing there. Heavy rains are destroying the crops in the northwest provinces of India, and floods are causing much loss of life and damage to property.

—At Kokomo, Ind., the other day gas was struck while a well was in process of drilling. The gas immediately ignited and the explosion which followed injured thirty-five persons, some of them seriously.

—On the night of the 13th inst., the steamer J. M. White, running between Vicksburg and New Orleans, was burned to the water's edge while lying at the bank at Blue Stone. Over thirty lives were lost.

—The tithe war in Wales still continues and it is feared that the rebellion may lead to serious results. In one section the farmers expelled the collecting bailiffs from the farms and escorted them out of the district.

—It is said that one of the curious results of the Charleston earthquake is the loss of animals from terror. Many of the milch cows have gone dry since the earthquake in the country about Charleston, and one man is said to have lost seven horses from the effects of terror.

—Some idea of the magnitude of the dry goods business in this country may be obtained from the fact that there are now about 80,000 traveling dry-goods salesmen on the road in this country, and that their expense accounts alone will average $1,500 a year, or an outlay of $120,000,000.

—It is openly charged that the city government of Philadelphia is in the hands of gamblers and thieves. Every form of vice is carried on with open doors. The police are demoralized and are paid to protect every sort of vice which is flourishing as it never flourished there before.

—It is stated that the French deficit during the present year will be about $150,000,000. The French national debt has increased since the Germans left the country at the rate of $120,000,000 a year, and it is claimed that the French Republic régime has cost the country more than it did to buy peace from Germany.

—An insane man who was the husband of twenty-six wives, died a few days since in the Michigan State Asylum. When examined by the physicians it was discovered that when with one wife he was oblivious to the existence of the others. On all other subjects he was sane. The superintendent of the asylum says it was the most remarkable case of mania ever known. The man was a commercial traveler. Is it not possible that this case suggests a solution of the Mormon problem?

—At 3 o'clock on the morning of the 17th inst. the whaling bark Atlantic was wrecked within a mile and a half of the Cliff House, San Francisco, and out of a crew of forty-two men only twelve escaped. There was a very heavy sea with no wind, and the consequence was that the vessel lost her headway and was drifted upon the sand, where she was soon pounded nearly to pieces. The Atlantic was bound for the South Pacific in quest of whales and had left San Francisco harbor only the evening before the wreck.

—December 12 and 13 there was considerable rioting in San Francisco owing to a parade by the striking employés of one of the street-car lines. On Sunday the mob indulged in throwing stones, sticks and mud, and the windows of every street-car that passed or met them were speedily demolished but no serious damage was done. On Monday, however, there was a disastrous collision between a mob of strikers and one of "toughs" hired by one of the street-car companies to "protect its property." Quite a number of shots were fired and one man was fatally wounded. The police were conspicuous by their absence, though they had every reason to suppose that there would be trouble. Half a dozen officers could easily have preserved order.