SECULAR | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 12, 1890

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 16, No. 18.

Read the full edition

SECULAR.

—The territory of Arizona has been made a customs district.

—The high-license law of Michigan has been declared unconstitutional.

—It is reported that several Chicago aldermen have been indicted for complicity in election frauds.

—Experiments with sugar-beet seed from Central Germany and Bohemia have been very successful in Ontario.

—The papers say that a couple of sixteen-year-old children were recently married by contract at San Jose, Cal.

—A national temperance congress has been called to meet in the Broadway Tabernacle Church, New York City, on the 14th inst.

—It is quite significant, as Governor Miller says, that since the Lottery bill was killed, no more $15,000 prizes have been drawn in Dakota.

—Various political plots are coming to the surface, whereby politicians hoped to benefit their respective parties by manipulating the census reports.

—The portion of the long-talked-of treasury surplus falling to San Jose, Cal., is $200,000, which Congress has appropriated for a government building.

—The owners of planing mills in Oakland, Cal., are contemplating giving their men a half holiday on Saturday of each week in lieu of the eight-hour demand.

—There is prospect of an unusually large fruit crop in California the present season. The grain crop, though the acreage is comparatively small on account of the exceedingly wet winter, promises a very large yield.

—Blooming Grove, Texas, was struck by a hurricane May 1, which did great damage to property. The new Baptist Church and several residences were totally demolished, and many other buildings were greatly damaged.

—The Chicago police recently raided an opium den and found a number of lemon-rinds filled with opium. The ends had been cut off, the insides scraped out, opium put in each, and the ends cemented on again.

—Destructive prairie fires have been raging in the Sioux Reservation, South Dakota. A man named Shoun lost fifty head of cattle and narrowly escaped with his life. The fires were set by Indians, who have been arrested.

—Strikes are reported from various parts of Austria, in the linen and other textile factories. At Frankstadt, the troops were called out, April 29, to arrest a mob which had pillaged a linen factory, and many of the rioters were bayoneted.

—The proprietors of the New York World have been indicted by the grand jury for criminal libel of the late A. T. Stewart. The World has been exposing alleged crooked means by which Hilton has come to own the larger part of the vast property.

—Prince Henry, of Battenburg, son-in-law of Queen Victoria, is in disgrace. It seems that the Prince of Wales had the husband of Beatrice shadowed by detectives until he was caught in some of the loose practices for which Wales himself used to be noted.

—The president of the Reading Railroad, Pennsylvania, has been compelled to explain away the main force of an order regarding the frequenting of saloons by its employes, on account of the business boycott placed on the road by the various liquor interests.

—There was a great labor festival in various parts of Europe on May-day. The result in Germany is a plan to cover the empire with a net-work of employers' associations of all trades and industries, to offset the demands of employes. In Spain, riots occurred in several places, which had to be quelled by the troops. A great many strikes are reported.

—The Germans are not all beer guzzlers, although they generally have that reputation. The National German American Prohibition League is an active society of Germans. During the Dakota campaign, they supplied three thousand German voters with temperance literature; and now they are supplying the German voters of Nebraska, besides sending large quantities to Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Illinois.

—A young lady of twenty years recently defended her brother in the Police Court of this city, who was arraigned on a charge of striking his father. She said her brother had been brought up in a drunkard's home, and had been so beaten and trampled upon that there was little wonder that he should go astray. His treatment had not been discipline, it had been brutality; if he had had a chance, he would have been a different man.

—The New York World says: "On a recent Sunday, in the face of a special police order directing that care be taken to prevent the sale of liquor, the World's reporters found more than five hundred places where drink was sold. Superintendent Murray said, in relation to this showing, that 5,000 arrests are made every year for violations of the excise law, and that 10,000 of these cases are now on file in the district attorney's office, but that convictions are well-nigh impossible."

—It is said that the Committee of One Hundred, with headquarters in New York, have not yet abandoned Senator Blair's Educational bill, although it was defeated and then hung up on reconsideration. The committee is sending out millions of pages of pamphlets, one of which is entitled, "The Pope's Last Veto in American Politics." It is a fact, however, that the pope's hand is not nearly so conspicuous (if at all apparent) in the defeat of the Educational bill as it is in the support of Mr. Blair's National Sunday-Rest bill and Educational Amendment resolution.

—Col. John P. Irish has publicly stated his belief that neither the city superintendent nor the principals of Oakland schools could solve many of the problems given to applicants for teachers' certificates, if brought to the task under like circumstances. Some of these, he asserts, are mere mathematical puzzles, the solution of which is no evidence of qualification to teach. He concludes his criticism with the following pertinent observation: "I have noticed that as the schools recede farther from sound culture in the common branches, the more difficult has become the securing of a certificate to teach by those who have excellent knack at teaching all that should be taught in common schools."