SECULAR | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 28, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 42.

SECULAR.

—Two of Denver's suspended banks have resumed business, and three more are expected to resume on the 1st of September.

—The Northern Pacific Railroad has passed into the hands of receivers, and wages have been reduced 20 per cent.

—There are twenty ex-Confederate soldiers in the U. S. Senate, while there are but sixteen who served in the Union Army.

—A cyclone in the vicinity of Table Rock and Pawnee City, Neb., on the 15th inst., did serious damage to farm property.

—Congress is discussing the silver question, but when anything definite will be accomplished is yet a matter of mere conjecture.

—Southern Pacific officials are contemplating a round-trip passenger rate of $80 between California common points and Chicago.

—Dr. John W. Bransham, one of the physicians of the U. S. Marine Hospital at Brunswick, Ga., died of yellow fever on the 20th inst.

—Russian official reports indicate an increase in cholera cases. At Moscow 166 new cases and 67 deaths were reported in four days last week.

—Near Kilkee, County Clare, Ireland, on the 16th inst., seventeen excursionists were drowned in the Shannon River by the capsizing of their boat.

—An explosion of fire damp in a coal pit at Dortland, Westphalia, on the 19th inst., caused the death of fifty persons and the injury of many others.

—On the 20th inst., near Leroy, N. Y., a carriage containing five persons, on their way to church, was struck by lightning and the entire party killed.

—An effort is being made by a sensational paper in Washington to induce a pilgrimage of the unemployed to the capital city to importune Congress for help.

—The miners' strike in the coal fields of the southern part of Kansas is said to be at an end, the miners having yielded to the propositions of their employers.

—A storm on the Baltic Sea on the 15th inst. foundered several fishing boats. Seventeen men are known to have been drowned, and several others are missing.

—In Vienna, on the 20th inst., there was a great Socialist demonstration in favor of universal suffrage. Over 30,000 people were assembled, but there was no disorder.

—Tubbs Hotel, one of the landmarks of this city, was entirely destroyed by fire on the night of the 14th inst. It was built in 1870, and cost $110,000. The furnishing cost $100,000.

—The clerks and Trades Unionists, it seems, have to keep a watch on some of the merchants of this city who recently signed the Sunday-closing agreement, lest they violate the compact.

—The Standard Wagon Company, of Cincinnati, the largest establishment of its kind in the United States, has been compelled to assign. Assets are placed at $1,200,000; liabilities, $700,000.

—All the premature jumpers of land in the Cherokee Strip have been compelled by government troops to move off until the land has been formally opened to settlement. Decrease in freight is said to be the cause of trouble.

—A destructive cyclone, accompanied by hail, visited the vicinity of Somerville, N. J., on the 19th inst. It is reported that not a house in that town of 5,000 inhabitants escaped damage, and trees and crops in the path of the storm were utterly destroyed.

—It has been discovered that on the Niutah Indian Reservation, Utah Territory, there are extensive deposits of asphaltum, which the Indians have not sufficient enterprise to utilize, and white speculators are chaffing to get their hands on the treasure.

—At Milton, Va., on the 16th inst., two passenger cars and a sleeper broke through a bridge and fell sixty feet into a creek. There were sixteen persons on the cars, seven of whom were killed; the others were more or less injured, but none of them seriously.

—A London dispatch of the 17th inst. says: "In Wales the coal strike is assuming a grave aspect. Thousands of colliers to-day marched to several collieries in the Rhonda Valley and forcibly prevented miners from working. Soldiers have been summoned."

—Political excitement is said to be running high in the State of Coahuila, Mexico. Thousands of men are reported to be under arms in different localities, on a pretext of being determined to secure an honest vote at the elections. A collision with Federal troops at Piedras Negras is reported, with some fatalities and a number of prisoners.

—The results of the arbitration between the United States and Great Britain upon the Bering Sea and sealing questions seem to give satisfaction in a general way to all concerned excepting the seal poachers, whose business, if not destroyed entirely, is certainly rendered more hazardous and less profitable. While it is denied that the United States owns all of the sea, as claimed, we gain more than was expected in the way of seal protection, which was about all the advantage there was in claiming all of the sea. Seal poaching is forbidden within sixty miles of the Pribylov Islands, and that is twenty miles outside of the main feeding grounds where most of the poaching was done. The United States asked for a close season—May, June, and July—for Bering Sea, and it has been applied to the whole Pacific Ocean. The killing of seals by firearms is prohibited, which goes far toward the prohibition of poaching. That which the United States authorities will not be pleased with is the burden of guarding the seals, which will be a heavy expense, and the probability of a large bill of damages for Canadian vessels captured on the theory that Bering Sea was the property of the government. On the whole, however, the verdict of the arbitrators is much better for all concerned than a war.

—It is reported that the crews of two schooners raided the islands of St. Paul and St. George, in Bering Sea, on the night of July 4, overpowered the guards, and carried away a large number of salted sealskins belonging to the North American Commercial Company. The vessels escaped before the government cutters could be informed of the occurrence.

—Minister Blount has returned from the Hawaiian Islands, and his report on the annexation question has been forwarded to Washington. It will probably not be published until formally presented to Congress by the President. Mr. Blount is quite reticent as to its contents. He has confidence that all parties in Hawaii will remain quiet and peaceful until the United States Government decides the annexation question.

—Advices from Aigues-Mortes, Department of Gard, France, report that on the 17th inst. a quarrel between French and Italian workingmen determined the former to drive the latter from the place. The result was a dozen Italians killed and over forty, mostly Italians, wounded. The Italian people are thoroughly aroused, and reparation will be demanded. Of course Germany will stand behind Italy in such demand.

—The expected riots of unemployed men were inaugurated in New York City on the 17th inst. A large crowd wanted to hold a meeting in Walhalla Hall, on Orchard Street, and, being refused, the door and windows were broken. The police arrested three of the leaders as designated by the proprietor of the place, but when they were arraigned in the police court, he was afraid to enter a complaint, and the prisoners were discharged.

—Edison, the famous electrician, has become a manufacturer of precious stones. On this subject he says: "I have always used a great many sapphires in the manufacture of phonographs. They are very expensive and sometimes very hard to procure at all. I analyzed the chemical composition of the sapphire, and, finding out what it was, started to make sapphires. I now make all I use. I can make rubies for $5 a pound that in beauty far exceed the genuine."

—A Vienna dispatch of the 17th inst. says: "Several men have been arrested in Biskupitz, Croatia, for mutilating young children. The men for years have made a trade of crippling children and then sending them to beg or selling them to others for the same purpose. The children were stolen or misled with promises to visit a house kept by the gang on the outskirts of town. When the police forced a way into the house yesterday, they found two girls of twelve or fourteen years with their legs broken. Another girl about the same age was bound on a bed with her right arm broken and both eyes gouged out. Two children, horribly mutilated, were found on cots in the cellar."