SECULAR by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 14, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 2.

Read the full edition

SECULAR.

By Editor

—The new electrical process for refining sugar proves now to have been a fraud.

—The members of the Servian Ministry have tendered their resignations to King Milan.

—There is said to be great destitution among Norwegian settlers in Dakota Territory.

—January 4, seven skaters were drowned in the Ludwig Canal, at Hamburg, Germany.

—The decrease in the public debt during the month of December, 1888, was over $14,000,000.

—On the night of the 3d inst. 43 horses, 70 cattle, and 20 hogs were burned in a large barn at Schuyler, Neb.

—Floods are doing a great deal of damage in Italy. Twelve persons were killed in one house which collapsed.

—The feeling in Hayti against Americans is said to be very bitter. It is thought that their lives and property are unsafe.

—Col. John C. Dent, brother-in-law of Gen. Grant, died at his home in Carthage, Mo., on the 1st inst., at the age of seventy-three.

—Seven persons were drowned at Ripley, Ohio, on the 31st ult. by the capsizing of a boat in which they attempted to cross the river.

—The great engineers' strike on the Burlington road has been settled. The loss both to the road and to the strikers has been heavy.

—A Buffalo, N. Y., man has invented a new life-saving car which will, it is said, be of great service in rescuing persons from wrecked vessels.

—A passenger train was blown from the rails near Fiumi, Hungary, on the 5th inst. Three persons were killed and a large number were injured.

—Severe earthquake shocks were felt on the 3d inst. in Kohjend and Kastakos, Russia. Buildings were thrown down, and a number of people were killed.

—January 4th the striking coal heavers at Duluth, Minn., attacked a gang of Italian laborers who were guarded by the police. There was a sharp fight, but the attacking party was driven off by the free use of clubs.

—A dispatch from Bulgaria says that the Government has signed a contract with Krupp for 1,000,000 francs' worth of shells, and is negotiating with the same manufacturer for the purchase of eighty new batteries.

—Mrs. Lucy Parsons, the colored wife of one of the men executed a year ago last November, made a speech in Chicago on the 30th ult. The police did not interfere.

—Famine and drought are causing much suffering in the interior of China. In the province of Shan Tung the crops have been destroyed by the overflow of the Yellow River.

—The estimated output of the Colorado gold and silver mines for 1888 was $26,061,546, of which $3,105,519 is gold, $17,025,628 is silver, $5,776,552 is lead, and $153,847 copper.

—At his inauguration on the 3d inst. Governor Luce, of Michigan, devoted a considerable portion of his address to the temperance question. He advocated the passage of a local option law.

—Norristown, Pa., was the scene of a disastrous dynamite explosion on the 2d inst. Two young men who were engaged in mixing the ingredients for the explosive were literally blown to pieces.

—Two kegs of blasting powder were ignited at Everson, Pa., on the night of December 30th, by a spark from the pipe of a careless smoker. Seven men were frightfully injured by the explosion.

—On the night of January 3d a number of dock strikers at West Superior, Wis., attacked and unmercifully beat with clubs ten Scandinavians who had accepted the reduction of wages made by several coal companies.

—The Italian Government has launched a new war ship. The vessel is called the Roumberto, and her displacement is 13,298 tons, or 1,358 tons more than the Trafalgar and the Nile, England's two largest war vessels.

—Twenty-seven persons were killed and as many more badly injured by an explosion in a Spanish coal mine on the 4th inst. The disaster will cause much suffering among the poor people, and they will have to have assistance.

—A London dispatch of the 3d inst. says that the ship Loch Eck, from San Francisco via Queenstown, for Hull, stranded at Donna Hook, mouth of the Humber, where she threw overboard 100 tons of her cargo, after which she floated.

—Kronek, the Chicago Anarchist, convicted of conspiring to assassinate with dynamite Inspector Bonfield and Judges Gary and Grinnell, was, on the 2d inst., refused a new trial and was sentenced to twelve years in the penitentiary.

—The joint committees of the Northern and Southern Presbyterian Churches concluded their conference at New York on the 1st inst., without a definite result as to the union of the two bodies. Another meeting will be held at Atlanta in April.

—On the night of the 4th inst. a party of White Caps attacked a house near West Jefferson, Ohio, but met a determined man, and a double-barreled shot-gun charged with buck-shot, and were repulsed with several of their number seriously wounded.

—Late advices from Samoa by way of New Zealand state that a German man-of-war lost twenty men killed and thirty wounded out of a party of 120 men, who went to assist Tamasese against Mataafa. The Germans were compelled to retreat to their boats.

—The steamer Robilant, one of the largest cargo carriers afloat, recently sailed from New Orleans for Liverpool with the biggest cargo that ever left that port. It was valued at $600,000, and consisted of 5,682,283 pounds of cotton and 32,028 bushels of corn.

—In his annual message on the 3d inst. Governor Ames, of Massachusetts, advises an early submission to the people of a prohibition amendment, and advocates increased penalties for violating the liquor laws. He thinks it wise to substitute imprisonment for fine in such cases.

—Again United States troops are removing would-be settlers from Oklahoma Territory. Springer City, a town of 3,000 inhabitants, is under martial law. Advices from Kansas City under date of January 5 were to the effect that bloodshed was probable, as many of the settlers were reckless characters.

—Fourteen passengers on a snow-bound railroad train in Russia were recently frozen to death before relief could reach them, and a party attempting to rescue them almost perished. December 27, 175 persons were frozen to death in a single district. The Black, Azov, and Caspian Seas are frozen.

—A bill has been introduced into Congress which provides that in all national elections the payment of money for the vote of any person shall be unlawful, and the person violating the law shall, upon conviction, be disfranchised for not less than six years nor more than ten, and during the said period be disqualified to hold any office of trust or profit under the United States. It ought to become a law.

—It is asserted by a San Domingo paper that a citizen of this country has, through United States Consul Astwood, made a proposition to the Dominican Government for the exhibition in this country of the bones of Christopher Columbus. To the credit of the officials of our sister republic the proposition was indignantly rejected, Minister Figuero saying that the Dominican republic had too much self-respect to give to the world a spectacle of such an unworthy nature, and that the Government considered the interference of a United States officer in this matter a public scandal.