SECULAR | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 11, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 35.

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SECULAR.

—U. S. Senator Anthony, of Rhode Island, died last week.

—The telegraph reports a cholera panic throughout Italy.

—There are ninety threshing-machines at work on the grain crop of Colusa County, Cal.

—Three Chinese laundries were wrecked by a colored mob in Philadelphia on the 2d inst.

—A New York contractor has been arrested for building hollow walls and filling them with sand.

—It is said that there are in Europe twenty societies organized to oppose the eating of animal food.

—It is said that the Mormon question will be made a prominent issue in Southern politics this fall.

—Judge Folger, Secretary of the U. S. Treasury, died at Geneva, N. Y., on the 4th inst., aged 62 years.

—San Francisco has one saloon to every sixty-seven of its population, and one to every eleven voters.

—The branch post-offices at West Oakland and Brooklyn (East Oakland), Cal., have been re-established.

—A valuable collection of Mexican rarities, zoological and botanical, destined for the New Orleans Exposition, has been burned.

—It is charged that the Broadway Railroad Cable Company of New York City obtained its franchise by a wholesale bribery of aldermen.

—The town of Creighton, Pa., near Pittsburg, with its large plate glass works, is supplied with an abundance of heat and light from a natural gas well.

—A movement has been inaugurated in Spain in favor of the restoration of the temporal power of the pope. It is chiefly championed by the bishops and clergy.

—Riots occurred at the wire-drawing mills in Joliet, Ill., last week on account of a reduction of wages said to be caused by competition in the State penitentiary.

—Governor Stoneman has pardoned the Chinese leprous convict at San Quentin. He will be returned to China—that is, if any ship captain will take him as a passenger.

—Dr. Schloezer, the Prussian Minister at the Vatican, has been instructed to offer final terms for the settlement of the differences between the pope and the Prussian Government.

—The extensive flouring-mill and wheat elevator at Waterloo, Ill., was burned last week, together with 20,000 to 40,000 bushels of wheat and 600 barrels of flour. The loss is about $200,000.

—Reports are that General Wolesley, commander of the Soudan expedition, offered Henry M. Stanley, the African explorer, a position on his staff, and that Stanley has asked permission of the king of Belgium to accept.

—A company of New York capitalists has been formed to establish a telephone line across the Atlantic Ocean. It is to be supplemented, if the patent right permits, by a telephone line from New York to San Francisco.

—The Russian census has called attention to the extraordinary restrictions on literature in that country. There are only five or six firms in the whole empire which have a patent from the crown to sell books. All the rest exist on sufferance or on permits arbitrarily given and arbitrarily withdrawn by the local police. There are only two public libraries in the whole country.

—A New York dispatch of the 1st inst. gives a gloomy account of the morals of that city. It says: "Sunday was made hideous hereabouts by several riots. There was one murder and scores were sent to the hospital injured. The picnic party on board a steamboat fought from the beginning to the end. Upon returning, there were no less than sixteen fights at one time at the landing-place. Women were brutally kicked and thrown overboard, and children were knocked down and hurt. Not until a section of the police had arrived was order restored. Only a few arrests were made. A riot occurred in Twenty-eighth Street among the negroes. The policemen who attempted to quell the disturbance were slashed with razors and beaten with clubs, and were forced to retire."

—"The Parliament of Victoria, N. S. W., is said to be considering means for checking the sale of opium in that colony. This has been caused by the rapid spread of opium smoking among the white population. There seems to be no way of rooting out this demoralizing habit. High duties will not do it, for the poor smokers will simply have recourse to the leavings of opium which has once been used and which is far more injurious in its effects than good opium. No legislation can check it, for our experience has shown that private joints are beyond the reach of the law, just as private gaming tables are."

—S. F. Chronicle. If the leading secular journals could only see the evil effects of alcohol and tobacco as they do the terrible consequences of the opium curse, there would be some hope for deliverance from all these destructive influences. It is probable, however, that the final resort will be a high license on opium "joints." This seems to be the great modern cure-all for crime.