p. 702 | SECULAR | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 18, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 44.

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SECULAR.

—A $60,000 addition is to be built to the Salt Lake penitentiary.

—Herr Most’s paper has again made its appearance in New York, and defies the authorities.

—During the recent cholera epidemic in Japan, there were 10,000 deaths in Tokio.

—Severe storms have recently swept over Spain and numerous wrecks are reported.

—Harvard College celebrated its two hundred and fiftieth anniversary on the 8th inst.

—Of the 78,405,000 acres of land in Germany devoted to agriculture, 1,986,597 are planted to tobacco.

—It is stated that the condition of affairs in Burmah is such that the civil law is inadequate to restore order.

—The strike of the 25,000 employes of the Chicago packing houses and stock yards was likely to be protracted indefinitely, owing to the determination of the packers to employ none but non-union men, but has been ordered off by Grand Master Powderly.

—Southern society is very much agitated over the fact that Mrs. Cleveland has twice refused to meet the daughter of Jefferson Davis.

—The public debt decreased $13,201,619 during the month of October. The total debt less the available cash items, is $1,354,347,947.

—Recent advices from China state that General Fong has been defeated by the insurgents in Hainan, which is in a very disturbed state.

—The local Government Board of London states that the number of paupers in that city is twenty-two to every thousand of the population.

—November 10, Prince Waldemar, son of the king of Denmark, was unanimously elected to the Bulgarian throne. He has declined the honor.

—Hon. James A. Whitney, of New York, has been employed by the San Francisco Socialists to assist in the defense of the condemned Anarchists of Chicago.

—A state of siege has been declared in Guatemala, and a number of prominent citizens of that Republic have been exiled, despite the protests of the papers.

—The only oleomargarine factory in Connecticut—that of Easterbrook & Co., of New Haven—suspended operations November 1, because of the Federal tax.

—The loss of the British bark, Sarah Anderson, en route from Coquimbo to England, has been confirmed. All hands, including the captain and his wife, were lost.

—Two trains were wrecked on the 7th inst. by a collision on the Canadian Pacific Railroad. Two men were killed and several others more or less seriously injured.

—The Afghanistan General sent out to subdue the Thilzai rebels has sent ten car loads of human heads to Cabul as a token of the victory which his forces had won.

—A conflict between Mexicans and Americans recently occurred on the Mexican border. Several men were killed. The Americans are greatly incensed and declare that they will have vengeance.

—On the 12th inst. enormous tidal waves on the Mediterranean Sea did considerable damage in the vicinity of Nice. Quays and promenades were swept away, and several persons were carried out to sea by the waves.

—The New York Observer, of November 4, says: “Twelve out of the twenty-four men elected aldermen of New York City last Tuesday, are liquor dealers, some of them keepers of the most notorious dens in the city.”

—There is a great drought in the Kwantung provinces, China, and the second crop of rice has been almost completely ruined in consequence. There is sure to be appalling distress during the coming winter.

—Three wholesale liquor houses have failed in Baltimore within a few weeks, while all the distilleries in Washington County, Maryland, have ceased operations. The proprietors attribute their failure to the temperance agitation.

—The fire in the Standard coal mines at Mt. Pleasant, Pa., is still burning. Acres of coal are on fire and the flames are making their way toward some abandoned cells which are full of fire-damp. A terrible explosion is feared.

—The population of Japan is about 37,000,000, and the number of criminals punished in Japan during the past year was 117,520, being an increase of 10,743 by comparison with the previous year. Of the number 149 suffered capital punishment.

—Sunday, November 7, a sensation was caused in La Crosse, Wis., by the enforcement of the Sunday laws. Not only were saloons closed, but telegraph and telephone companies were required to suspend operations; and even milk and baker wagons were stopped.

—The New York Post, of November 10, says that fully 20,000 men, women, and children were employed in knit goods mills throughout New York State, which the owners have closed against all Knights of Labor. The contest, it says, has “become an open war” upon the Knights.

—A dispatch from Rome, Italy, under date of November 11, states that the rivers Po and Adige have overflowed and submerged the country along their courses. At Albenga the high waters of the Po dislodged a railway bridge while a train was crossing, precipitating the cars and passengers into the river. Five persons were drowned.

—It is said that in the immediate vicinity of Healdsburg, Cal., from 600 to 1,000 tons of grapes went to waste the past season for want of a market.

—The Dantzic Zeitung (Berlin) predicts terrible distress during the coming winter. It says that trade is paralyzed and that work is failing everywhere; that the authorities of the State dock-yards discharge men weekly, and that in the arms factories there are also many hundreds idle.

—Sergy Dark Smolianoff, a Russian resident of San Francisco, claims to be the inventor of a new death-dealing shell in which nitro-glycerine may be used with absolute safety. If the shell is as perfect as its inventor claims it to be, it will make a great change in methods of modern warfare.

—An unsuccessful attempt was made on the 11th inst. to blow up a passenger coach on the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburg Railroad. On the arrival of the train at Du Bois, Pa., the car inspector discovered three dynamite bombs and caps fastened under the springs of the rear coach. The bombs were carefully removed.

—A prominent Russian Nihilist refugee, in Berne, recently said to the New York Sun’s correspondent: “Nihilism is at present depressed, and unity in the direction of effective work is lost.” It is said, however, that “the precautions taken to protect the Czar have been redoubled, and have now reached a stage that is simply astonishing.”

—A resident of Sydney, Australia, has brought under the notice of the Governor and Sir Alfred Stephen, an electrical machine-gun invented by him, which he claims is capable of firing 120 rounds every few seconds, from any position and to any direction. The gun is stated to be easily portable, and is attested by experienced officers to be an invention of the greatest value.

—There is said to be great distress among even skilled workmen in London owing to the discharge of employes by many firms. The socialists are advocating that one free meal a day in the boarding schools be given to children who desire it. It appears from a report published by the Daily Telegraph that over 30 per cent. of the children who compulsorily attended school last winter were there without having had food.

—Immediately after the great earthquake at Charleston, S. C., certain scientists announced that the disturbance was caused by “the settling of that part of the earth’s surface;” indeed, we were gravely told that a large part of the Atlantic Coast had “slipped toward the ocean.” But now the whole theory is completely upset by the statements made by residents of the Georgia coast that “since the earthquake the islands have grown and the land is perceptibly higher above the sea level.” It would, indeed, be a phenomenon worth observing, were half the Atlantic Coast to “slip” uphill.