p. 383 | News and Notes by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 16, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 24.

News and Notes.

By Editor

FOR THE WEEK ENDING APRIL 9.

RELIGIOUS.

—The sixty-fourth annual conference of the Mormon Church was opened at Salt Lake City on the 5th inst.

—Religious influences are being brought to bear on Congress, in the form of petitions, to secure the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion laws.

—The Supreme Court of California has affirmed the constitutionality of the Sunday saloon-closing ordinance of San Bernardino County.

—The Kansas M. E. Conference has declared football to be a brutal game, and fortified its declaration by a unanimous vote to refuse to lend its aid to colleges that allow such games.

—The N. Y. Independent notes a church fair recently held in Savannah, Ga., at which a leading feature was to vote a punch bowl to the most popular saloon keeper in the city.

—On the recent occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the accession of the king of Siam to the throne, the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions sent him a memorial of acknowledgment for the many courtesies shown by him to the missionary work.

—A prominent society couple, Mr. and Mrs. George Stanton Floyd-Jones, residents of Massapequa, L. I., have left the Protestant Episcopal Church, and embraced the Roman Catholic faith. The Catholics seem to look upon the accession as a great catch.

—The second "industrial army" from Los Angeles, Cal., on the 2d inst., 140 strong, arrived at Whittier the same day, and their stop there was made the occasion of union religious services in the Methodist Church. Seventy of the men professed religion, and many others asked for prayers. Everyone took the pledge not to drink intoxicating liquors.

—A recent dispatch from Rome says that one of the clerks employed in the Peter's Pence administration at the Vatican has been found guilty of embezzling 100,000 lire of the fund. It is also asserted that Jesuit Padre Ferrari, astronomer at the Rome Observatory, has misapplied 400,000 lire, intrusted to him for the purchase of instruments. The Jesuits have expelled him from their society.

—Father Kneipp, a Catholic priest of water-cure fame, recently went to Rome and prescribed some cold-water compresses for some ailments of the pope, which are said to have been ineffectual. While there he wrote letters to his sister in Bavaria, and in one he stated that he found the pope "in a condition of extreme weakness." This was published in a Bavarian paper, and gave great offense to Leo, whose great ambition is to give the impression that he is in good health.

SECULAR.

—Union carpenters to the number of 600 are on a strike in Indianapolis.

—A fire in the city of Shanghai, on the night of the 2d inst., destroyed 1,000 native houses.

—Emperor William, of Germany, and King Humbert, of Italy, are having a conference at Venice.

—Eleven men were killed at Petersburg, Va., on the 7th inst., by the explosion of a fireworks factory.

—It is said that a man in San Luis Obispo County, Cal., is fatally afflicted with glanders, which he contracted from a horse.

—Peru is laboring under the burden of two presidents. The one recognized by Congress is hiding from the one sustained by the army.

—An explosion from some unknown cause occurred in Oil City, Pa., on the 4th inst. A portion of a house was blown to splinters and four persons killed.

—The European musical talent is enthusiastic over the resurrection and reproduction of a piece of Greek music, entitled "Apollo's Hymn," which is said to have been buried 2,000 years.

—Prominent English statesmen are discussing the urgent necessity of Great Britain's early annexation of the Samoan Islands, because of the unsatisfactory results of the present triple protectorate.

—Judge Wildes, of Chicago, has ruled that a lie told by an employe annuls a contract between the employe and his employer, and that the employe cannot recover damages because he was discharged.

—Italy reports an enormous wine product this year, the grape crop being so heavy in some districts that there are not enough barrels and demijohns to hold the juice, and all the cisterns are full of wine. France also has a great surplus.

—Governor Waite, of Colorado, has forbidden the entrance into that State of all sheep for which the owners cannot present a clean bill of health. This shuts out 100,000 Utah sheep now on the way, and it is said that a quarantine will about destroy the lot.

—The charge of murder against Sidney Bell, of San Francisco, has been dismissed, inasmuch as he has been convicted on three charges of robbery and burglary, and is under sentence of sixty years in the penitentiary, where he is said to be dying of consumption.

—Another bomb explosion occurred in Paris on the 4th inst. The bomb was placed on the window sill of a restaurant near the Senate chamber. All the windows in the near vicinity were broken by the concussion, and a gentleman and lady were seriously injured.

—Great preparations are being made in Los Angeles for the celebration of the Spanish festival of La Fiesta, which commences on the 10th inst., to continue one week. Hundreds of people are said to be flocking to the city from East and South to witness the festivities.

—What it is to be a sultan of Turkey may be to some extent imagined from the fact that his victuals are cooked under the supervision of a high official and sealed by him in the kitchen, and only unsealed in the presence of the sultan himself. Such is earthly honor.

—A Cleveland, Ohio, dispatch says that all the great steel-casting factories of the country, six in number, have combined under one management, known as the American Steel Casting Company, and organized under the laws of the State of New Jersey, with a capital of $4,200,000.

—The Portuguese Government has sent a naval vessel to Buenos Ayres to bring away the Brazilian insurgent, Admiral Da Gama, and other officers who took refuge on a Portuguese ship at Rio Janeiro. The vessel has since been lying at Buenos Ayres, and there is much sickness aboard. The refugees will not be permitted to land anywhere excepting on Portuguese territory.

—In Hupeh, China, a placard was recently issued containing a burlesque account in rhyme of the assault on missionaries at Sungpu. At the bottom of the rhyme are these words: "The above account of the evil doings of the foreigners is promulgated so that people may beguile their leisure hours in laughter and talk." The placards were also circulated in Luanchou, province of Anhui.

—President Zelaya, of Nicaragua, is said to have made this statement to a N. Y. Herald correspondent on the 1st inst.: "American Consul Braida acted in conjunction with British Consul Bingham and the commander of the British man-of-war Cleopatra in a way which imperiled the rights of Nicaragua in the Mosquito territory, and both consuls must go. Their exequaturs were therefore withdrawn to-day."

—Great distress among the unemployed classes is reported in the provinces of Andalusia and Seville, Spain. At San Lucan mobs pillaged the bakeries, and at El Rico the crowds were appeased by the authorities issuing bread tickets. At Tarifa a mob of 2,000 men went to the town hall and demanded work in a threatening manner, and the latest reports state that the authorities were doing all in their power to relieve the distress.

—An important decision has been rendered by Judge Caldwell, of the U. S. Circuit Court at Omaha, in the contest of the employes of the Union Pacific Railroad against the receivers of the road, who attempted to cut down an agreed wage schedule without notice as per agreement. The decision is considered a great victory for organized labor. Following is an extract: "A corporation is organized capital. It is capital consisting of money and property. Organized labor is organized capital, its capital consisting of brains and muscle. What it is lawful for one to do, it is lawful for the other to do. It is lawful for the stockholders and officers of a corporation to associate and confer together for the purpose of reducing the wages of its employes, or of devising other means of making its investments profitable. It is equally lawful for organized labor to associate, consult, and confer with a view to maintain or increase wages. Both act from the promptings of enlightened selfishness, and the action of both is lawful when no illegal or criminal means are used or threatened."

—A Denison, Texas, dispatch says the miners at Lehigh, Krebs, and Colgate struck on the 4th inst., and unless a settlement is made soon there will be much suffering in consequence.

—A negro forger has been convicted in the U. S. Court at Chattanooga, Tenn., of filing a large number of fraudulent pension claims. He has been operating for twenty years, posing sometimes as pension examiner, and again as a Baptist minister. He is said to have filed 500 claims, but only fourteen cases could be made out against him, owing to the statute of limitation. He has been sentenced to twenty-eight years' imprisonment.

—A Guthrie, Ok. T., dispatch tells us of a high-handed act on the part of overzealous temperance advocates, near Tecumseh, in that Territory. A young man named John Short, while intoxicated, was taken into the woods and suspended to a tree by a rope passed under his arms. He was allowed to hang there all night, when his disciplinarians went to take him down and give him a lecture. To their dismay, however, they found him dead.

—The prohibitory liquor law of Iowa is virtually repealed. Under the bill which has just passed both houses of the Legislature, provision is made whereby saloon keepers may, by the payment of a tax, obtain immunity from prosecution under the law. The Legislature has also voted to resubmit the prohibitory law to a vote of the people, but the bill will have to pass the next Legislature also before taking effect, and the real test will come at the election for members of that body.

—The latest from South Carolina is that the Dispensary law has been declared unconstitutional by the State Supreme Court, and that the troubles incident to its attempt to search out private supplies of liquor are at an end. Congressman Grosvenor, of Ohio, has introduced a resolution proposing an inquiry into the acts of Governor Tillman concerning his seizure of railroad property and telegraph lines, and establishing a censorship of the press, and prohibiting the dissemination of news throughout the country.

—One freight car load of unemployed men arrived in Washington from Cincinnati on the 7th inst. They were arrested under the vagrant law, thus indicating the fate that awaits the "armies" now en route from other places. The penalty is ninety days in the workhouse at hard labor. Thus is illustrated the weakness of our great republic, the model government, our "Christian nation." Men seek employment from East to West and cannot go it, yet it is made a criminal offense to be without work. Such are the works of man.

—There was recently a battle between cowboys and Cheyenne Indians about the occupation of pasture lands on the reservation in Oklahoma, when four persons were killed. There was a prospect for extended hostilities, but the arrest of about a dozen of each party, who will be held for trial, has probably ended the dispute for a time at least. A number of Indians in war paint, who had gathered near Wichita, were given a feast at the expense of the government, on the 8th inst., with the understanding that they would return home. Some roving bands are to be brought to the reservation by the soldiers.

—In no State of the Union is there so much disorder, year in and year out, as in Pennsylvania. Yet in no State is there more, or hardly as much, legislation of the "Blue Laws" order. It is the home nest of the National Reformers. Between the mines and the manufactories wage wars of some character are almost perennial. The past week has been prolific of conflicts between union and non-union workers, and between officers and strikers bent on the destruction of property and the murder of men who would take their places. The latest trouble is an extensive strike in the coke regions, and the murder of an engineer named Paddock. In the various conflicts with officers, a score or more men have been killed, and a large number wounded. The president of the United States Mine Workers says that a general strike of miners all over the country was contemplated some time this spring, but the Pennsylvania strike was premature.

—The San Francisco contingent of the great "industrial army" now making a pilgrimage toward Washington seems to be making fair progress. The people of San Francisco paid their ferriage to Oakland, where they were kept two days and then compelled to move on to Sacramento to box cars. There were 500 of them, and the railroad company carried them for $200, paid by contribution. At Sacramento they were well fed, several hundred were added to their ranks, and $600 to their expense fund. They were sent right on across the plains, and a dispatch from Reno, Nevada, stated that as they passed that town there were twenty-three box cars, carrying 1,240 men. At Sacramento a number of men quit work to join the army. The mayor of Ogden, Utah, ordered 1,400 loaves of bread. The mayor of Salt Lake pledged $500 to aid in sending the army East. He also sent 2,000 loaves of bread to Ogden. It was also expected that 200 recruits would be added at Salt Lake. The governor of Utah ordered that the army must not stop longer than one night in any town of the Territory, and finally that the men must return to California.