p. 495 | News Miscellany

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 14, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 31.

News Miscellany

—The latest computation of births and deaths for the whole world, gives seventy births and sixty-seven deaths per minute.

—It is reported that the cholera is making rapid progress through southern France and northern Italy. The panic is so great that fathers and mothers have fled, leaving little children uncared for.

—The glass-works at Bradford, Pa., which were recently closed on account of a strike, have been re-opened with non-union hands. On July 30 the strikers captured the new foreman, named Fortune Degneaux, and gouged his eyes out to prevent his working any more.

—The unusual occurrence of August rain in California is reported from various points. Around San Francisco Bay it was quite general. At Santa Rosa, Merced, and Salinas, slight showers fell, and at Hollister there was a heavy fall, accompanied by thunder and lightning.

—The Sultan of Morocco has caused the massacre of a whole tribe in Augara Kabila because they asked for French protection. The men were killed and the women and children made slaves. Five thousand men from different tribes have gathered to attack the Sherif of Ouadzan, and war with France is probable.

—James Murphy, the famous temperance lecturer, has declared against the policy of inaugurating a third political party in the interest of prohibition. He argues that success so far has been accomplished through the influence of temperance workers in the old parties, many of whom will be antagonized by a third party movement.

—Germany having asked the African International Association to dispose of land in the Congo country on favorable terms to German traders and colonists, the directors of the association reply that their territory is open to the world, and they are willing to negotiate with Germans seriously intending to found a settlement there.

—At the general election for county officers in Utah, on the 4th inst., the Mormons were everywhere victorious. Apostle Brigham Young declared that although he was disfranchised, he had sons and daughters who many times over made good his vote. Although 12,000 are disfranchised, the aggregate voting list has not been depleted.

—The business of making wooden houses in the United States for custom sale is stimulated by a brisk demand for these products in Brazil. Several large shipments have been made to Rio Janeiro, and they were all sold soon after their arrival. Fifteen hundred of them have already been erected in the new city of La Plata, the new capital of the province of Buenos Ayres.

—All the squatters on lands in the Indian Territory were ejected last week by the U. S. military authorities. The famous Payne camp, at Rock Falls, numbering about 250 persons, was entirely broken up, and the buildings burned. Six of the leaders were sent to Fort Smith, Ark., for trial, and the remainder were escorted over the Territorial line into Kansas. The military then proceeded to eject all other settlers in like manner. Thus ends a determined effort to grasp the lands set apart for the use of the Indians.

—It is claimed that in New York City there are thousands of chloral victims confirmed in the habit. An exchange says: “It is now about ten years since chloral was introduced to the public as a patent medicine, with seductive promises of what it would do to calm disordered nerves, soothe the irritable, and drive insomnia from restless pillows. The nostrum succeeded for a time and made an army of slaves to the chloral habit, but they soon gave up taking the drug in its expensive form and returned to the simple chloral in grains. The medical fraternity have come to look on ‘chloralism’ as a habit second only to opium-eating and smoking in its demoralizing effect on the system and in its difficulty of cure.”