SECULAR | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 7, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 26.

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SECULAR.

—Redding, Cal., had an $80,000 fire on the 27th ult.

—Fighting still continues at intervals in Burmah.

—The national debt of Great Britain is $3,750,000,000, or over $100 per capita.

—Twenty-five members of the German Reichstag are more than seventy years of age.

—June 30, the Italian Chamber of Deputies granted a military credit of 20,000,000 lire ($4,000,000).

—A fire in Marshfield, Wis., one day last week, destroyed property to the amount of over $3,000,000.

—The experiment of mobilizing the French army will, if carried out, cost 8,000,000 francs ($1,600,000).

—A riot occurred at Oak Ridge, La., June 27, and resulted in the killing of seven men, one white and six colored.

—The United States Supreme Court is about three years behind with its docket, and loses at a rate of 300 cases a year.

—The recent report of the Philadelphia Grand Jury recommends the establishment of the whipping-post for wife-beaters.

—Forest fires have recently done considerable damage in the Santa Cruz Mountains, on the line of the South Pacific Coast Railroad.

—The reduction of the public debt for June was $16,450,000. The total national debt is now but little more than $1,700,771,000.

—There are still several cases of yellow fever at Key West, Fla. So far there have been nearly fifty cases and about a score of deaths.

—Almost the entire business portion of the town of Pullman, W. T., was destroyed by fire June 26. Pullman is a village of about 500 inhabitants.

—On the 24th ult. a fire broke out at some point below the 1,300-foot level in the Gould & Curry mine, Virginia, Nevada, and fifteen men lost their lives.

—Hon. James G. Blaine is receiving more marked attentions in England than have ever been paid to any American in that country, with the exception of General Grant.

—Only eight lives are positively known to have been lost in the recent forest fires in Michigan, but the destruction of property was very great, amounting to $7,000,000.

—A strike in Rochester, New York, the other day culminated in a riot in which several men, two of them being police officers, were seriously injured. One of them fatally.

—English engineers are fortifying Herat. The aim of the English authorities is said to be to enable a garrison of ten thousand men to withstand a siege of the place for ninety days.

—The explosion of some fireworks in the basement of a New York business house on the 2d inst., started a fire which caused the destruction of $140,000 worth of property and the loss of two lives.

—The steamer Umbria recently crossed the Atlantic from Liverpool to New York at an average speed of nearly twenty miles per hour. The voyage was made in six days, four hours, and twelve minutes, the fastest time on record.

—There are in San Francisco 78,246 children of school age, between the ages of five and seventeen; of these 20,923 are the children of native parents, 16,757 of parents one of whom is foreign; 56,218 of foreign parentage, and 1,197 foreign born.

—The Poore homestead at Indian Hill, Mass., where the late Maj. Ben. Perley Poore was born in 1820, has been owned by his ancestors since 1650. The original deed signed by the Indians is said to be still in possession of the Poore family.

—Only a few days since a workman in Cuba, as a precaution against the small-pox, built a coal fire before retiring for the night, and placed thereon several leaves of tobacco, the fumes of which he had been told furnished a safeguard against the disease. The next morning the man, his wife, and eight children were dead.

—Jake Sharp, the man who furnished the funds used in corrupting the New York aldermen, has been found guilty of bribery, and will be sentenced on the 13th inst. The maximum penalty for the crime of which Sharp has been found guilty is ten years' imprisonment and $5,000 fine. Sharp is an old man and is in very delicate health.

—The bill of the Chicago Detective Agency for services in securing evidence against some of the corrupt officials of that city amounts to $23,000, charges being made at the rate of $25, $40, and $50 per day each for the men employed in the work. The remark is frequently made that "it takes a thief to catch a thief," and it would seem that this is literally true.

—Twenty-one persons were tried at St. Petersburg between the 7th and 16th of June on a charge of complicity in several murders and dynamite outrages. Three of the prisoners were acquitted. All the others were sentenced to death. The death sentences were, however, commuted in the cases of two prisoners to exile in Siberia, and in those of the others to imprisonment and hard labor.

—The recent Indian "war" in Arizona has been brought to a close by the capture of the few renigades that left the reservation. Only two citizens were killed, but little stock stolen, and no property destroyed. Speaking of this trouble, a Los Angeles paper says that there seems very little doubt that every murder committed by Apaches has been caused by rum sold by white scoundrels.

—It is stated that the financial condition of the Sandwich Islands is such that there is not the slightest hope of the Government ever again being independent of money-holders. The consequence will be trouble, which must come sooner or later, involving the interest of Americans, Englishmen, and Germans. A revolution seems not improbable. King Kalakaua never goes out without a body-guard. Everything is unsettled, and trade at a stand-still in consequence. It is understood that should a protectorate become necessary our Government will insist that only American authority shall be recognized in the Hawaiian Kingdom.

—Governor Bodwell, of Maine, has sent communications to the attorney-general of the State and to every county attorney in the State, calling attention to the fact that a conspiracy exists to evade the Prohibitory Liquor Law by an unjustifiable interpretation of the United States revenue regulations regarding the sale of liquor in imported packages, and calling upon them to enforce the State law to the fullest extent.