News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 1, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 13.

Read the full edition

News and Notes.

By Editor

—Chili has excluded Chinamen.

—March 23 the striking weavers at Fall River, Mass., were still out.

—Over thirty inches of rain recently fell at Delta, Cal., in eight days.

—Great Britain is in full accord with the United States on the Samoan question.

—An official inspection of Russian prisons has revealed a sad state of overcrowding.

—The town of Pinsk, Russia, has been destroyed by fire. Six persons were burned to death.

—A bill "to regulate the sale of horse-flesh for human food" is before the English Parliament.

—Cholera has broken out in Zeamanba, in the Philippine Islands. There have been 500 deaths so far.

—A further restriction on the anthracite coal supply has been ordered, throwing 5,000 men out of employment.

—England proposes to add seventy new vessels to her navy, at an expense of $100,000,000, during the next five years.

—Secretary Tracy has ordered Commodore A. E. K. Benham to take command of the navy yard at Mare Island, Cal.

—It is said that the mail matter of Postmaster-General Wanamaker at his great Philadelphia store costs him $150 a day.

—Forgerer Piggot's diary is in the hands of Parnell's attorneys, and it is asserted that it contains some things damaging to the Tories.

—England has demanded of Morocco £50,000 indemnity for the massacre and pillage at the Mackenzie factory at Cape Nuby in 1888.

—Oklahoma, that portion of the Indian Territory lying near its center, which is not occupied by any Indians, is about to be opened to settlement.

—O'Mahony, editor of the Tipperary Nationalist, has been sentenced to two months' imprisonment, under the Crimes Act, for intimidating citizens.

—Chili is about to expend $2,000,000 in the erection of light-houses along the coast, and the sum of $500,000 is to be used in promoting immigration.

—Twelve of Legitime's soldiers, who had been taken prisoners, were shot in the public square at Cape Haytien, Hayti, recently by order of Hippolyte.

—Herbert Bismarck and Councillor Cranel will, it is stated, represent Germany in the Samoan Conference, which will probably not meet before the first of May.

—Fourteen of the largest paper makers in England have formed a syndicate for the purpose of raising prices. The capital of the combination is put at £2,000,000.

—Robert Sigel, son of General Franz Sigel, who pleaded guilty to forging pension checks, was sentenced on the 21st ult. to six years' imprisonment at hard labor.

—Justice Stanley Matthews, of the United States Supreme Court, died at Washington, D. C., on the 22d ult. Justice Matthews was appointed by President Garfield in 1881.

—A New York State law provides that homeless and destitute persons who are willing to labor (sawing wood) shall be provided with food and shelter by the Charity Commissioners.

—An explosion of dynamite occurred at the works of the Cumberland Hydraulic Cement Company at noon of March 19, fatally injuring two men and seriously wounding two others.

—The severest hail-storm on record swept over New Hanover County, North Carolina, on the 20th ult. A colored man who was out in the storm was pelted to death by the huge hail-stones.

—Farmers in the Northwest propose to resist the power of the Twine trust by changing their twine-binders into hand-binders and headers, and by curtailing the output of small grains where experience shows that this is doubtful profit.

—George Washington's inauguration sword is now in possession of Miss Virginia T. Lewis, of Baltimore, the granddaughter of Samuel Lewis, who was an intimate friend of Washington, and to whom it was willed by the Father of his Country.

—Another American schooner has been seized by the Canadian Custom officers. The offense for which the seizure was made was the selling of a boat to some fishermen. The captain declares that he was not aware that he was violating the law.

—Postmaster-General Wanamaker has ordered the clerks in the Post-office Department to work from 8:30 A. M. until 6 P. M. The hours heretofore have been from 9 to 4. This order may be distasteful to the clerks but the country at large will approve.

—The Leaning Tower of Pisa has actually been proposed as the great prize of a lottery. The town has become bankrupt and the creditors want to seize the Hotel de Ville. To avert this calamity a municipal councillor started the idea of a lottery.

—The English have launched a light gunboat, the Spanker, which they propose shall rival our Vesuvius in speed. She carries two 36-pounder and four 3-pounder rapid-firing guns, and has torpedo appliances. She is expected to make twenty-one knots.

—A man died a few days since in San Francisco from poisoning by a quantity of mushrooms which he had eaten. The fungi were the genuine edible mushrooms so much sought after, but were probably decayed, as in that condition they contain deadly poison.

—The ship canal which is to connect Manchester, England, with Liverpool, is being rapidly constructed, ten thousand men and a great number of steam excavators being engaged upon it. The canal will be 35 miles long, 26 feet deep, and 120 feet wide at the bottom.

—The Legislature of Michigan has been asked to grant a charter for a ship canal across the upper peninsula connecting Lakes Michigan and Superior. The proposed route is thirty-six miles long and will save two hundred and seventy-one miles between Chicago and Duluth.

—Guards who were on duty at the time of the recent fire in the Imperial palace, China, are, in accord, ance with the precedent in the case of the burning of the K'ien-ts'ing Palace in the first year of Kia-k'ing (1796), to be put to death by strangulation in autumn after a period of imprisonment.

—The present administration shows no disposition to recede from the position taken by Mr. Cleveland and his advisers relative to Behring Sea, and all persons convicted of taking seals and other fur animals unlawfully will be punished by the confiscation of their vessels and cargoes.

—Legitime is reported to have gained, about the 1st of last month, a victory over Hippolyte in Hayti. The battle lasted several hours and was followed by indiscriminate slaughter. Men who had surrendered were massacred in cold blood and defenseless women were subjected to the most fiendish outrages.

—In Washington's administration the Postmaster-General had but one clerk. There were only 75 post-offices, and 1,875 miles of post-roads, in the United States. The cost of the mail transportation was $22,081; the total revenue, $37,935; the total expenditure, $32,140, leaving a surplus of $5,795.

—It is stated that the dervishers, partisans of the Mahdi's successor, have ravaged the entire western frontier of Abyssinia, massacring many thousands of the natives, carrying the women and children into slavery, burning the capital, Gondar, where King John had his palace, and destroying Dembea, another of his chief towns.

—The postal telegraph lines in England do not pay expenses. The outlay last year exceeded the receipts by more than £6,000, and there was still interest to pay upon a loan of £10,880,571. The total deficiency amounts, therefore, to no less a sum than £332,501. Since 1872 the country has paid in taxation toward the working of the telegraphs the enormous sum of £3,357,400.

—A Japanese paper states that some of the employes of the Naval Department are to be fed with a new and delectable delicacy—blubber. The heads of the department have decided that whale flesh is tolerably nutritious, and therefore it is to be supplied for food from time to time at Yokosuka and Uraga barracks. The War Department also propose to adopt whale flesh as an article of diet for the soldiers.

—At a recent banquet in Tours, General Boulanger repudiated, on behalf of the National party, the idea of either a monarchical conspiracy or demagogic wiles, declaring that the goal toward which they were marching was a non-parliamentary republic, which would be protectress of the weak and lowly, and be preoccupied with the interests of the people, respecting the liberty of individuals, and, above all, the liberty of conscience.

—A Newchang correspondent of the North China Daily News of January 25 says: "It is hardly any use giving news of this place, for what we can say is simply a repetition of the old story—starvation everywhere for poor people. It becomes monotonous, but for actual witnesses the scenes are simply harrowing. Villages of from fifty to three hundred families, all dying for want of the commonest necessaries of life. Every winter there is more or less distress in this, perhaps the poorest province of China, but this has been the worst in the experience of the oldest resident."

—Excitement has been intense in Canada on account of the action of the Dominion Government in allowing the act of the Quebec Legislature endowing the Jesuit order. A resolution of censure was introduced into the Parliament and that body was flooded with petitions demanding the passage of the resolution, but finally enough members were whipped in to secure its defeat, thus sustaining the Government.

—A dispatch from Atlantic City under date of March 21 says: "The waves for two days past have been steadily undermining the buildings on the inner side of the board walk, particularly at the lower end, from Michigan Avenue down, and when the terrible flood tide and furious waves last night struck them they collapsed. Near Georgia Avenue Professor Jones was in bed when the waves struck his house and demolished it. He was thrown with stunning force among the debris, and had a miraculous escape. Three families at the same time hardly succeeded in making their exit through the rear doors when their houses succumbed to the waves."

—Under date of March 17 very severe storms were reported from the Atlantic coast. At Highland Head, Mass., the wind attained a velocity of 150 miles per hour. Considerable damage was done by high water but no wrecks are reported. At Highland beach the sea was over the tracks of the New Jersey Southern Railway and of the Central Railroad of New Jersey, running into Shrewsbury River. The railroad track was torn and twisted by the angry waves into all sorts of shapes. Heavy stones placed two years ago in stone jetties, designed as a protection, were tossed about by the waves like corks, and a number of them were piled upon the tracks and platform of the depot.