SECULAR | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 9, 1890

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 16, No. 22.

SECULAR.

—The bey of Tunis has decreed that every negro domestic in his dominion shall be given a certificate of freedom.

—Madame Devere, a clairvoyant, found guilty of forgery, has been sentenced to ten years' hard labor in the Ohio penitentiary.

—A pickle factory covering five acres of ground at Bowmanville, near Chicago, was destroyed by fire on the 28th ult. Loss, $200,000.

—A farm hand near Cordoba, Spain, recently killed his employer and four other persons because he was not permitted to attend a bull-fight.

—A revenue agent and posse of nine men captured and destroyed five illicit distilleries in Burke County, N. C., about three weeks ago.

—Sixty-eight election officers have been indicted for election frauds by the Hudson County, N. J., grand jury. The charge is conspiracy.

—The labor agitations at Pilsen, Austria, have been renewed. The strikers have pillaged stores, inns, and vicarages. Many rioters have been arrested at Trophan.

—Vicksburg, Miss., was crowded, May 26, with visitors to the Blue and Gray reunion, which opened at noon with a national salute. A large number of delegates were present.

—Sixteen flouring-mills in southern Illinois and eastern Missouri have formed a combination, and are said to practically control the flour market of the South and Southwest.

—The new non-partisan W. C. T. U. organization has attained a membership of over forty-seven thousand. It bids fair to become a large and influential body of temperance workers.

—Fifteen persons, charged with being engaged in a plot to assassinate the Russian czar, were arrested in Paris May 20. A lot of incriminating documents and a quantity of explosives were found in their possession.

—Seattle, Wash., had another big fire early in the morning of May 29, which destroyed a whole block of buildings, mostly lodging-houses. Five persons perished, and many others barely escaped in their night-clothes.

—A Lincoln, Ill., dispatch of May 28 says: "Twelve men indicted for selling their votes at the last April election were remanded to jail this morning in default of bail. Warrants are out for twelve more. The wildest excitement prevails."

—The village of Repahie, Armenia, was destroyed by an earthquake May 27. Mineral springs spouted from the crevices made in the earth, and the adjacent fields were flooded. The earthquake was preceded by rumblings, which caused the inhabitants to flee. No lives were lost.

—During the last week in May there was held in Indianapolis a meeting of representatives of all the different brotherhoods of railroad employes. The object is the federation of all these orders, by which they hope to secure an association over which the railroad companies will be powerless.

—The vineyards in the valley of the Rhine are being devastated by worms, which infest the vines in such numbers that their extermination is impossible. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of vines have already been destroyed, and the destruction of the entire crop is threatened.

—A fire occurred on the night of May 30, in the Texas Spring Palace, and in a short time it was a mass of ruins. The Spring Palace was erected at Fort Worth, and was intended to exhibit the products of the State. It is supposed that sixteen persons who are missing perished in the flames.

—During a circus performance at Ann Arbor, Mich., May 27, about three hundred State University students had a fight with the showmen. It is said that ten students and about as many showmen were considerably injured. College morals have become proverbially bad, and are growing worse and worse.

—Renegade Apaches have committed another murder in Arizona. The last victim was Robert Hardie, a lawyer, who was killed in Buckland Canyon. President Harrison has sent a sharp note to the War Department in regard to the matter. A companion of Hardie had his horse killed, but himself escaped.

—Mr. Blaine has devised, and the President indorses, a plan for the establishment of an American international bank. The object is that American merchants may not be dependent upon European banks in their financial transactions with their American neighbors. The scheme had also the indorsement of the Pan-American Congress.

—The dangers to which unsophisticated immigrants are subjected on landing in New York, was recently illustrated in the case of a young Irish girl. She was to have been met at the landing by her uncle, but when he arrived, someone had been ahead of him, and, personating him, had carried off the girl. When subsequently found, she was insane, having been brutally treated and deserted.

—It is said by a Brussels correspondent that the slave trade is openly carried on in the Congo Free State, Africa. "Slaves," he says, are put to work under the lash, with armed guards to prevent their escape. Nor is this the worst feature of the situation. It is credibly affirmed that an extensive traffic in women and girls is openly conducted. The victims are shipped to the cities in all parts of the world, a considerable number of them coming to Belgium and Holland.

—The telegraph announces that the base-ball craze is fast dying out in the East. This might be considered an omen of returning reason on the part of the giddy masses, were it not for the fact that the appetite which has become satiated on this particular article of foolish diet, will needs be fed on something of a like stimulating nature. The gambling spirit manifested in these last days is on the increase, and we may expect that eselong some new sensation will be recognized as the "national game" for a time.

—News has been received in San Francisco that by the wrecking of the steamer Oneida on a reef on the Alaskan coast, April 26, sixty-seven Chinamen were drowned. The number rescued was thirty-three, who finally reached an island fifteen miles distant. The captain said that the Chinamen might have been saved had they not become panic-stricken and jumped overboard without trying to get hold of either boat or timber.