p. 191 | SECULAR | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 23, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 12.

SECULAR.

—An effort is being made to combine all the salmon canneries of Alaska. The combination will include $5,000,000 capital.

—Five of the late cases of cholera at Hamburg were on the Spanish steamer Murziano, just arrived from New Orleans.

—A sudden rush of water into a coal mine at Penzance, Cornwall, England, on the 10th inst., caused the death of nineteen miners.

—An explosion occurred in the Union Pacific coal mines at King, Colorado, on the 10th inst., causing the death of twenty-seven miners.

—Col. Creed Haymond, a leading lawyer of California, and one of the compilers of the State Codes, died at San Francisco on the 13th inst.

—Gen. B. F. Butler, of Massachusetts, died in Washington, D. C., on the 11th inst., in the 73d year of his age. His death was quite sudden, and was caused by pneumonia.

—The St. Louis Hotel, at Duluth, Minnesota, was entirely destroyed by fire on the 13th inst., and two men and one woman were burned to death. The financial loss was $75,000.

—Workmen in the forge department of the American Ax and Tool Company at Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, have received notice of a reduction of nearly 50 per cent. in their wages.

—A Hamburg dispatch of the 11th inst. says that ten steamships had been sighted off Cuxhaven, drifting in the midst of enormous ice floes. All had steam up, but were apparently helpless.

—A fire in Boston, Mass., on the 10th inst., destroyed houses and merchandise to the value of $1,650,000. The fire was principally on Federal and Sumner Streets. Five firemen were seriously injured.

—A fire in the village of Chateaugua, Franklin County, N. Y., on the 11th inst., destroyed fifteen business houses. The loss is estimated at $150,000. The thermometer marked 26° below zero when the fire broke out.

—Charles de Lesseps has turned against the prominent men of France who received bribes from the Panama Canal Company for their influence in obtaining credit and stock subscriptions. The pressure became so great that the ministry deemed it expedient to resign in a body. The whole country is shocked at the extent of the exposures. The enemies of the republic are disposed to make the most of the embarrassment of the government.

—California's World's Fair exhibit is now on preliminary exhibition at the Mechanics' Pavilion, San Francisco. A miniature representation of the State Building at Chicago, constructed of oranges, is a striking feature.

—Attorney-General Standish, of North Dakota, has issued a proclamation announcing his purpose to enforce the Prohibition Law, and calling upon all violators thereof to go out of their unlawful business at once or suffer the consequences.

—The officers and crew of the steamer Olsen are under arrest in San Francisco, charged with smuggling into the United States thirty-five Chinamen and a quantity of opium. The Chinamen were landed at Monterey, and are safe from identification.

—The town of Hyattsville, a suburb of Washington, D. C., is said to have made a success of running the municipal government on the single tax theory—that is, a tax on land only. The Supreme Court has decided that the plan is constitutional.

—The new Populist governor of Wyoming is opposed to capital punishment. His first official act was to respite for ninety days a murderer under sentence of death. The respite was granted in order to give the Legislature time to repeal the death penalty.

—The strike of the 60,000 English cotton manufacturing operatives, which began last October, is still unsettled. The strike was against a 5 per cent. reduction in wages, and neither side will yield, although there is much destitution in the ranks of the strikers.

—Some burglars in Los Angeles, in attempting to blow open a safe last week, used so much powder that the building, a three-story brick, was ruined, and windows for some distance around were broken. The safe door was blown into the street. The burglars escaped, but did not wait to get any plunder.

—Reports are rife of some severe storms and extreme cold weather in the Western States, and as far south as Tennessee. At Nashville the Tennessee River was frozen over on the 13th inst., the first time in fifteen years. In Iowa and Kansas the thermometer marked from 16 to 22 degrees below zero.

—The Board of Supervisors of Merced County, Cal., has passed an ordinance fixing a license fee of $3,000 a quarter, payable in advance, on saloons and places where liquors are sold or given away in connection with any other article. A strong effort is being made to secure the passage of a Sunday-closing law.

—At the instance of the United States Government, the president of Colombia has refused to renew the control of the franchise to the Panama Railroad to the Frenchmen who have been controlling it for some time, and who recently attempted to cut off the privileges of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company.

—A Parkersburg, W. Va., dispatch says that, owing to snow blockades of country roads, there is actual famine in Elizabeth, Wirt County. At Morgantown, same State, it is reported that the ice gorge in the river is from fourteen to twenty feet thick, and it was believed that the Monongahela River was frozen to the bottom.

—A late telegram reports a daring attempt to kidnap the Prince of Montenegro by 200 men. The plot was discovered in time for troops to be summoned, who met the conspirators outside the city (Cettinje), where a battle ensued. Thirty-six conspirators were killed, ninety wounded, and thirty arrested. The others escaped.

—The last steamer from China brought to San Francisco 115 tons of raw silk, valued at $1,500,000. It also brought the China Mail, containing news of a great fire at Kam Li, fifty miles from Canton, in which nearly 2,000 people were burned or smothered to death, and 200 houses destroyed. The fire was set by robbers in a temple, and from thence caught in a great theater, which was packed full of people.

—"Coldest weather experienced in years all through the Atlantic States" is what the press dispatches said of the weather on the 10th inst. Steamers in New York Bay were fast in the ice. Delaware River and Chesapeake Bay were frozen over. There is said to have been much suffering in the mountains of Pennsylvania. A Louisville dispatch reports the Ohio River frozen over. It is said that there is more ice at Niagara Falls than has been known for many years.

—A bill has been introduced in the California Legislature providing that no employe shall be compelled to labor more than six consecutive days without a day of rest. The bill makes no reference to any particular day of rest. But the advocates of a Sunday law, who have been pleading for such a law on the ground of solicitude for the workingman's needed rest, will not be satisfied with any law that does not specify Sunday as the particular day on which rest is needed. They will introduce a Sunday bill, and thus prove, what we have all the time asserted, that the sanitary plea was a mere subterfuge. The recognition of Sunday as a religious day is the end in view.