SECULAR | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 13, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 15.

SECULAR.

—The California Senate has defeated the eight-hour labor bill.

—Advices from Sweden are to the effect that influenza is spreading rapidly.

—Reports from Minnesota, Montana, and the Dakotas announce very severe weather during the greater part of last week.

—An explosion of fire damp in a coal pit at Recklinghausen, Westphalia, on the 1st inst., caused the death of 18 men, and 47 were severely injured.

—Hon. Wm. F. Fitzgerald, San Francisco, has been appointed by Governor Markham to the Supreme Court bench in place of Judge Sharpstein, deceased.

—Three negroes were lynched near Richmond, Virginia, on the 2d inst., because of the murder of two white men who were camped in the vicinity of the city.

—A colony is being formed in Cincinnati to go to Nicaragua and establish an American agricultural community. It is designed to have thirty or forty persons leave for Greytown in May.

—The regular line steamer City of Peking, which runs between San Francisco and China and Japan, is ten days overdue at San Francisco, and nothing has been heard from her.

—Robert J. Beatty, charged with being an accomplice in the poisoning of non-union employes at the Carnegie Steel Works at Homestead, Pennsylvania, has been convicted on six indictments.

—The Fourth National Bank of New York says in a circular letter that its total volume of business transacted during 1892 amounted to the vast sum of nearly five billion dollars ($4,996,672,000), a sum so vast as to be incomprehensible.

—In consequence of a strike of journeymen bakers in Marseilles, France, last week, the military bakeries had to supply the people with bread. The strikers attempted to plunder the bread carts, and the military was called out to protect them. But the strike was of short duration.

—President Harrison has appointed Hon. Howell E. Jackson, judge of the U. S. Circuit Court for the District of Tennessee, to the vacancy on the U. S. Supreme Court Bench caused by the death of Judge Lamar. The appointment has caused much surprise to all parties, because Judge Jackson is a lifelong States' Rights Democrat.

—Governor Hogg, of Texas, seems to think that when the summary punishment of negro criminals without trial goes to the extent of burning them alive, it is about time to interfere. So he declares that the perpetrators of the latest recorded depredation, which occurred at Paris, must be prosecuted. He says, "Mob law in Texas must be stamped out."

—The Harrison International Telephone Company, which has been incorporated in Chicago, proposes to do away with the ordinary telegraph and telephone system. In its stead it is proposed to introduce a system worked like an ordinary typewriter, producing a fac simile in letters at the desired destination. It is promised that the cost of messages will be greatly reduced by this simplified method.

—The island of Zante, in the Mediterranean Sea, was terribly shaken by a succession of earthquakes January 31 and February 1. In the town of Zante over 100 houses were wrecked, and several villages were entirely destroyed. Many people were killed, and thousands left their homes and camped in the fields. The town of Zante, which is the capital of the island, was almost entirely destroyed by an earthquake in 1841.

—Rev. Gilbert Reid, a missionary for ten years in the interior of North China, passed through San Francisco last week on his way to Washington, to make an appeal for a modification of the Chinese Exclusion Act. He is confident that if the Chinese should be summarily excluded next May, as contemplated in the Geary Act, the Chinese Government will retaliate upon the Americans in China, and it will go hard with the missionaries.

—The petitions calling for the World's Fair to be open on Sunday are pouring into Congress daily at such a rate as must demonstrate to that body that they were wofully deceived by the advocates of Sunday closing, who represented that they spoke the sentiments of a large majority of the people. The honesty of these petitions is shown in the fact that they contain bona-fide signatures of persons who do not claim to speak for anybody but themselves.

—A dispatch received in London from a high church authority in Rome states that England, Austria, and Germany are pressing the Vatican on the subject of reconciliation between the pope and King Humbert. It is evident that such pressure, if the report be true, indicates an urgent necessity on the part of the Italian Government, and the Vatican is said to treat the suggestion "with reserve." Italy is weak financially, and the pope's favor would greatly strengthen the weak places. The house of Savoy is shaky on account of financial scandals.

—The general expression of the press, the politicians, the merchants, and the naval authorities, on the question of the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands is that the United States are to control them, either by annexation or by a protectorate. And such control is probably only a question of time.