SECULAR NEWS | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Mar 28, 1878

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 4, No. 13.

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SECULAR NEWS.

—A new volcano has been discovered in Patagonia.

—Mexico's only railway earned $2,000,000 last year.

—Chicago will have to pay $39,000 for last July's labor riots.

—Forty locomotives are about to be shipped from Philadelphia to Russia.

—Bayard Taylor is cordially received as United States minister to Germany.

—Cattle in Ventura county are dying from over-feeding on the rank growth of grass.

—According to the Los Angeles Herald, California is now producing 200 barrels of petroleum, worth $800, daily.

—This is the first winter in seventeen years when there has been so little snow on the Blue mountains of eastern Oregon.

—Last month the four ports of New York, Boston, Baltimore and Portland sent $11,170,650 worth of provisions to Europe.

—The Chinese have petitioned the Legislature to have their children, numbering, they say, 3,000, admitted to the public schools.

—A correspondent of the Napa Register writes: "There is something wrong with old Mount St. Helena. Sunday and Monday night, March, 17, 18, she sent forth ominous sounds resembling the noise that might be occasioned by the fall of a twenty ton rock down some deep cavity in the mountain."

—March 24, the Admiral commander at Portsmouth telegraphed the following particulars received from the Coast Guard at Ventnor: "The Eurydice capsized off Dunnose Head at half-past four this afternoon in a sudden squall. One boy and a seaman were saved." Other advices indicate that over three hundred lives were lost.

—An exchange says: "The people of Pennsylvania are, in part, paying the penalty of the summer labor riots. The Legislature has appropriated $710,000 for the payment of the military, and millions are to follow to pay for the property destroyed. Productive industry is saddled with the entire burden."

—The sugar refiners and importers are having a contest before the Committee on Ways and Means. The importers charge that the refiners, by various processes of adulteration and coloring, manage to exclude pure raw sugars from the market. They ask that a uniform duty of two and a half cents per pound be imposed on all sugars.—Buffalo Express.

—It is reported that the city of Washington is full of half-starved idlers. The men are driven into crime, and the courts are crowded with criminal business; the women are driven to begging, so that the city this winter is a vast colony of indigent people, and in a population of about 100,000, nearly ten per cent are without employment and without means.

—The great hotel for women who live by labor, which was begun by A. T. Stewart, and has been completed by Mrs. Stewart and Judge Hilton, is almost ready for guests. All the arrangements for the opening reception are on the most liberal scale, and the occupants of the house will have all the comforts and many of the luxuries of the best hotels of the city.

—A Navy Department circular announces the working hours in Navy Yards and shore stations to be: From March 21 to September 21 from 7 A. M. to 6 P. M.; from September 22 to March 20 from 7:45 A. M. to 4:30 P. M., with the usual hour for dinner. The Department will contract for labor, mechanics, foremen, leadingmen and laborers on the basis of eight hours a day, and workmen laboring ten hours receive a proportionate increase of wages.

—An Eastern paper says: "The ice is moving at Albany; the Hudson open at Poughkeepsie. The signs of the spring time are fairly upon us, and this after a winter remarkable for the tardiness of its beginning and the moderation of its continuance. Unless all signs fail, we shall have an early spring. There has not been much snow on the ground; but, on the other hand, neither have we had the usual extremes of cold weather."

—March 23, a meeting of cotton operatives was held at Blackburn, England. Two thousand were present, besides delegates from the manufacturing towns and villages of North and West Lancashire. Resolutions were carried unanimously regretting the action of employers in proposing 10 per cent reduction, pledging the workingmen not to accept a rate of wages equal to that in towns where reductions had been recently accepted, and declaring that if the employers persist the workmen will resist to the utmost any reduction in working hours.

—March 23, the steamer Magenta blew up opposite Scarborough on the Hudson river. She left Haverstraw at twenty minutes of 7, landed at Sing Sing, took aboard a large number of passengers and started on her way to New York at ten minutes past 7. She had steamed out into the stream a distance of about two miles, when the passengers were startled by a terrible explosion. A scene of wildest terror followed, and when the steam cleared away there were seen lying in the forward cabin, near the stove, directly in front of the engine-room, the bodies of a dozen men. The steam on the floor still created a light vapor, and the surrounding woodwork was dripping from its nearness to the exploded pipe. Two persons were dead, eight badly and two fatally scalded. The Alexis was lying at Rockland Lake, and, seeing the Magenta enveloped in flames, started off at once, and in a short time had come up to her. The wounded were at once transferred to her and the dead to the Thomas P. Way, which had just come up, and by the latter conveyed to Sing Sing.