News and Notes by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 8, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 26.

News and Notes

By Editor

FOREIGN.

—The State Council of Switzerland has declared in favor of the State acquiring the railroads.

—Another European company has been massacred in the island of New Guinea. No details of the tragedy have been reported.

—The Chinese Government has closed a contract with a Belgian firm for the construction of the railway between Hankow and Peking.

—By the collision of two German steamers in the Dardanelles sixteen persons were drowned on June 30. One of the vessels sank immediately.

—The Turks are said to be carrying on a work of devastation in the province of Thessaly, which they continue to occupy while the powers parley with the Porte.

—The portfolios vacated by the retiring ministers of Venezuela have been filled by appointments of President Crespo, so that Venezuela now has a new ministry.

—It is reported that the officials of Paris lay the blame for the disastrous fire in the Charity Bazaar to a plot of the Anarchists, who desired to wreak vengeance upon the nobility.

—The Spanish Government announces that 20,000 additional troops will be sent to Cuba in October, if the army there now should suffer to any great extent during the rainy season.

—On June 26 an armed body of 1,200 Mussulmans made a sortie from Canea and attacked the Cretan insurgents at Kanlikastelli. A sanguinary battle was fought in which many were killed on both sides.

—The sultan will form twenty new cavalry regiments in the Ellasona and Salonica districts, and an imperial decree raises the army footing to 700,000, while 1,300,000 Mauser rifles have been purchased.

—On June 24 the Prince and Princess of Wales gave a dinner to about 300,000 of the poor people of London. The enterprise was made possible by the gift of $125,000 by T. J. Lipton, a London merchant.

—Professor Tanakadate, who occupies the chair of physics and seismology in the Imperial Japanese University, is said to have invented an earthquake alarm, which will be exhibited at the Paris Exposition in 1900.

—It is announced that Father Schiel, the Dominican oriental scholar, has discovered upon a tablet of the reign of Khammurabi, of Babylon, the name of Kudur-la-ukhgamur, the Chedorlaomer of Genesis 14.

—It is announced that Queen Victoria has made her last appearance in public, and that all official functions which bring royalty face to face with the people will now devolve upon the Prince and Princess of Wales.

—The Brazilian fanatics have been beaten again by the government troops, and forced to retire from a city which they had held for some time. The government has borrowed £4,000,000 of English capitalists with which to prosecute the war.

—The volcano Mayn, in the Philippine Islands, has lately been in a state of violent operation, and the flow of lava has done great damage in the province of Albay. There has been considerable loss of life attending this recent disturbance.

—Advices from Spain state that a new plan is being evolved for the subjugation of Cuba. General Weyler is to be recalled, two generals are to have command of the forces, instead of one, and General Martinos Campos is to be sent to Cuba on a separate mission.

—In view of the scanty population of western Turkestan the Russian Government has fitted up as schools a few railway carriages, which remain at each station for a few weeks. The children are required to learn a lesson or two until the itinerant school again reaches them.

—The steamer Aden, bound from Yokohama to London, was wrecked on the island of Socotra, at the eastern extremity of Africa, on the morning of June 9. Seventy-seven of her passengers and crew were drowned. Nine of the passengers and six of the crew were the only survivors.

—The town of Kolomea, Austria, was flooded on June 27 by the rising of the Pruth, and hundreds are homeless on account of their homes having been carried away by the swollen river. A passenger train carrying five coaches fell through a bridge at this place with terrible loss of life.

—Reports of renewed activity on the part of the insurgents come from various parts of Cuba, and the plan of General Gomez is reported to be to strike the heaviest possible blows during the present rainy season while heat and disease are thinning the ranks of the enemy and impeding their operations.

—Serious riots have broken out in Spain in consequence of the heavily increased taxation made necessary to supply the deficit in the Canovas budget. Heavy fighting is reported to have taken place at Mieres between 8,000 miners and the royal troops, because a tax had been placed upon the food of the laboring men.

—Italy is said to contain more bigamists than any other European country. This is due to the fact that the church refuses to recognize civil marriages, and the State does not regard church marriages as binding. Thus a large number of unscrupulous men take two wives, one in the eyes of the church and the other in the eyes of the State.

—Reports from Constantinople state that 25,000 sturdy ruffians have recently entered the city from outlying provinces, under secret orders from the sultan. During a panic caused by a salute fired in honor of the queen's jubilee these Mussulmans trooped into the street armed with bludgeons, and inquired of the police whether the Armenians or Greeks were to be attacked.

—It is reported that the Anglo-Belgian expedition from the Kongo Free State to the headwaters of the Nile has been completely overwhelmed by the Mahdists of the Soudan. Baron Dhanis last year enlisted 6,000 men to take part in the expedition, and it is believed that the whole party has been massacred. This expedition was to have joined the Anglo-Egyptian expedition proceeding up the Nile from Khartoum.

—The queen of Madagascar has, under the orders of the French General Galliene, served upon the joint committee of the London Missionary Society and the Society of Friends an order to vacate the Antananarivo Hospital, which was built by these societies on her command in 1869, at an expense of $50,000. Communications on the subject have been made by the societies to Lord Salisbury and the French Government.

—The relations between France and Siam are becoming very much strained, and it is expected that the conditions that now exist will lead to open hostilities in the near future. Many high-handed actions are laid at the door of the Asiatics, such as the imprisonment without trial of persons known to be under the protection of France, the invasion of territory under the protection of France, and the refusal of the international courts to hear French complaints.

—A despatch from London states that the sultan has instructed his representatives to accept the indemnity agreed to by the representatives of the powers and also the frontier rectification recommended by him. This change of attitude it is claimed is due to a recent communication to the sultan from the czar. The Russian minister to Norway and Sweden has been appointed to succeed the Russian minister now at Constantinople, and it is believed that this indicates a new departure in Russia's policy with reference to Turkey.

—The United States Monetary Commission has been very cordially received in France, and will start for London in a few days. The position of England in regard to the work of the Commission is stated in the National Review as follows: "We are able to announce that England's reply will be that the government is willing to reopen the India mints, to make a further substantial contribution to the rehabilitation of silver by extending its use in England and by increasing the legal tender of silver, making silver the basis of notes, empowering the Bank of England to use its silver reserve, and that material assistance and strong moral support will be given to the object that the United States and France have in view."

DOMESTIC.

—Sixteen cars left Boston on June 28 filled with Christian Endeavorers on their way to the convention in San Francisco.

—Four Mormon elders from Utah were recently run out of the town of Meridan, Mississippi, by the people of that place.

—It is reported that 400 clothing contractors of New York have closed their doors, thereby throwing 1,500 tailors out of employment.

—Lightning struck a camp of farmed-out convicts of Dakota, Georgia, on June 28, killing four and fatally injuring ten. It is stated that twenty of them escaped during the panic which ensued.

—Reports from central Kansas state that the heat was so intense there from June 21 to 24 that in some localities the work of harvesting had to be abandoned. A number of sunstrokes were reported.

—A strike of Illinois miners has been ordered, which will affect 22,000 men. The secretary of the Miners' Association of that State declares that a national strike of miners is now a certainty.

—The heat records of Georgia were all broken on June 27 by a hot wave which caused scores of prostrations throughout the State, some of which resulted in death. The thermometers stood at 104 in the shade.

—Rev. John E. De Merritt, of Newport, Nebraska, is the youngest ordained minister in the world. He is but twelve years old, but has been preaching for some time, and is said to have extraordinary ability as a pulpit orator.

—Two excursion trains bearing Christian Endeavorers to the convention in San Francisco, were wrecked on June 30, one at West Chicago, Illinois, and the other near Terre Haute, Indiana. Fifteen persons in the former were injured, and one trainman was killed and three fatally injured in the latter.

—At the commencement exercises of the St. Clara Academy, at Sinsinawa Mound, Iowa, Archbishop Hennessy took occasion to berate the public school system of this country for not allowing religion to be taught in the public schools.

—Charles T. Yerkes, the Chicago street-car magnate, has perfected a plan for consolidating the manufacture of all street-car machinery for the cities of Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and Pittsburg. The combined capital of this trust amounts to $3,250,000.

—Seven persons were killed and between thirty and forty seriously injured by a train wreck at Missouri City, Mo., on the evening of June 26. During a heavy storm the St. Louis express crushed through a trestle to the river below, making one of the most frightful wrecks on record.

—The closing event of the Confederate reunion at Nashville, Tenn., took place on June 24, and consisted of a parade of 10,000 Confederate veterans and sons of veterans, cheering the names of the battles in which the veterans fought, and marching to the old tunes to which they went into battle.

—The new Folsom Street wharf in San Francisco was destroyed by fire on June 29. It was just being finished, and had cost $50,000. So rapidly did the fire spread that a large sailing vessel at the wharf was damaged to the extent of $30,000. Marines from the Japanese man-of-war assisted in subduing the flames.

—Oscar M. Welburn, collector of U. S. Internal Revenue for the district of California, has been ordered under arrest on the charge of embezzling federal moneys. The extensive frauds which have been practised in his office were first brought to light by the suicide of one of his subordinates who had misappropriated several thousand dollars belonging to the government.

—The most severe hail-storm of modern times struck the city of Topeka, Kansas, on June 24. A report from there states that the city looks as tho it had experienced a siege of war guns, and that there is hardly a house in the city that is not almost windowless. Many of the hailstones weighed from twelve to sixteen ounces, and a number of persons struck by them were seriously injured.

—Three hundred Bannock Indians have left their reservation in southern Idaho, and are said to be "ghost dancing" and committing depredations upon the property of the Camas prairie farmers. The governor of Idaho has asked the federal government to assist in returning the Bannocks to their reservation, as the settlers have threatened to take matters into their own hands if the government does not act at once.

—All the green glass and window glass and the greater portion of the flint glass factories in the United States are reported to have closed down on the night of June 30 for a period of at least two months. The number of workmen who will be thrown out of employment by this action is placed at 100,000. The cause of the shut-down was a demand of the workmen for an increase of 15 per cent. in their wage scale.

—The provision of the Dingley Tariff Bill allowing the importation of Hawaiian sugar free of duty, which has been so strenuously opposed by the sugar trust for months, the Senate has decided to maintain. It is stated that never was more vigorous opposition given by any trust or corporation to any matter of legislation than this measure has received, and the final action is regarded as a well-merited blow to the two great sugar trusts in this country.

—Alvin G. Clarke, who made the great forty-inch lens for the Yerkes telescope in the University of Chicago, and whose father made the thirty-six-inch lens in use at the Lick Observatory, died, at his home in Cambridge, Mass., on June 9. He was widely known as a maker of large telescopes, and was decorated by the czar of Russia for the construction of a thirty-inch refractor for the Imperial Observatory at St. Petersburg.

—On June 27 sixty Mormon converts arrived in New York, bound for Utah. This has been taken by many leading papers as an indication that the Mormons are putting forth special exertions to recruit their ranks and increase the proportion of Mormons in Utah in order that they may get control of the affairs of the State. It is claimed that statehood gave them the opportunity they desired, and that the "saints" are fast taking the places of the Gentiles in offices of public trust.

—The committee appointed to draft an anti-trust amendment to the pending tariff bill has completed its labors. The amendment defines as trusts any person, firm, or corporation refusing to sell goods except through its own agents. This amendment declares it to be a misdemeanor for any person or corporation to monopolize or attempt to monopolize trade or commerce to any article among the several States or with foreign nations for the purpose of unduly enhancing the price of such articles, and fixes the penalty at a fine of from $500 to $10,000 and imprisonment from six months to two years.