SECULAR | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 7, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 39.

SECULAR.

—Vice President Stevenson visited Victoria, B. C., last week, and received a hearty welcome.

—A great Miners' Federation strike was inaugurated in England July 28. About 350,000 men are directly affected.

—A Paris dispatch announces that a panic prevails at Senegal, West Africa, where deaths from cholera average fifty per day.

—On the 15th inst. a meeting in the interest of silver coinage, which was being held in the Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York, was broken up by a mob.

—A sudden flooding of the Arkansas River at Pueblo, Colo., last week, caused a loss of property aggregating $250,000, and seven persons were drowned.

—The statement is given out that the great Standard Oil Company monopoly has bought out the Rocky Mountain Oil Company for a consideration of $1,000,000.

—There was an exciting run on the banks of Helena, Mont., last week. Two failed, one after paying out $1,000,000 and the other after paying nearly $500,000.

—At Canton, China, June 24, a government powder magazine exploded with terrible results. Several persons were killed, over 300 injured, and about 400 houses were destroyed.

—In consequence of the increased employment of Turkish women as schoolmistresses in the girls' schools, the Porte has decreed the formation of a normal school for girls in Constantinople.

—Advices from Dutch Guiana bring information of the existence of widespread insubordination among coolie contract laborers. On several estates overseers have already been killed in cold blood.

—The World's Fair was again opened last Sunday, in obedience to an injunction of the State preventing the closing of the gates on that day. Thus the Fair has become a kind of shuttle-cock between the courts.

—The distillers in the vicinity of Cincinnati are appealing to the government to extend for three months the revenue due on whisky in bond. The amount due on whisky in bond in that city is said to be $8,000,000.

—The shipment of unemployed men from Denver, Colo., to Kansas City, Mo., is resented by the authorities of the latter city, who declare that they will not be allowed to disembark. The men are shipped free, in box cars.

—The French Academy, after a long discussion, has assented to the scheme for a reform in spelling. The principal new rules are for the suppression of the hyphen in compound words and making the uniform plurals with the letter s.

—The last China steamer brings news of the wrecking of the Russian war ship Vitiaz on the Corean coast by a cyclone. The crew of 390 men were all saved, and there was hope of recovering the guns. The vessel was one of the best in the Russian service.

—Thousands of able-bodied men are being fed by charity at Denver, Colo.; many of them, well dressed and with tears, asserted that it was the first time in their lives that they had been obliged to accept charitable aid. The crowds of idle men in the city was Satan's opportunity to find something to do; so they broke into the jail, took out an Italian prisoner accused of murder, hung and shot him, and then dragged the dead body through the streets.

—The telegraph says that on the 30th inst. two new revolutions broke out in Argentine Republic. However, they are provincial in character, and not directed against the Federal Government.

—It is said there are now twenty-one law firms in the United States composed of husbands and wives, and there are about two hundred American women who practice law in the courts or manage legal publications.

—A disastrous forest fire is said to be carrying destruction through the cranberry bogs and farms of New Jersey, in the vicinity of Egg Harbor. The villages of Washington and Martha's Vineyard are reported to have been destroyed, and others seriously threatened.

—A dispatch of the 27th inst. from Rich Hill, Mo., says: "A general strike of all the miners in this district was inaugurated to-day. The men want the privilege of organizing themselves into unions, an increase of wages, and to aid their Kansas brethren. From 1,800 to 2,000 men are out."

—A late dispatch from Chattanooga, Tenn., says: "A plague of grasshoppers is sweeping down on the farms in the Tennessee valley, on the north side of the river. The grasshoppers, which are small and green, have covered the corn and clover fields by the millions, and crops have been stripped."

—Mail advices from Venezuela announce that a revolution has been started among the semi-civilized Indians in the territory of Alta Orinoco, where the Italian Governor, Señor Anesele, appointed by General Chispa, has enslaved the Indians and forced them to work in the rubber forests for his private gain.

—The Marine Hospital at Washington has advices from its representative at Genoa, Italy, that cholera prevails in the provinces of Coni and Alessandria. And it is reported by way of London that although the newspapers of Rome and Naples are silent on the subject, it is well known that cholera exists in several places. Pilgrimages are prohibited and troops enforce the prohibition.

—Poor little Siam has been obliged to yield to France, and give up the desired territory. She depended for assistance upon England, but the latter failed at the critical moment to render the expected help. So the prospect for war, which seemed so imminent for a few days last week, is over and another weak government has been humiliated by a strong one—which is the way of the world.

—The emperor of Germany, who by the way is Queen Victoria's grandson, is reported to have recently expressed the opinion that England is not strong enough to assert herself against any European power or against the United States, and that if ever she is brought into conflict with any of these nations the belief in her formidable strength and her reputation as queen of the seas will burst like a soap bubble.

—Crime is on the increase, and the insane attempts to lessen its effects by the administration of mob law, in various parts of the country, only add intensity to its fearful ravages. In many instances the demoniacal spirit is, if possible, more manifest in the punishment than in the original crime,—to say nothing of the terrible fact that innocent parties are sometimes the victims of a mad rush for imaginary justice.

—In the House of Commons, the real representative body of "Christian England," there was a general hand-to-hand fight between factions on the night of the 27th inst., caused by a ruling of a committee chairman closing the debate on certain sections of the Irish Home Rule Bill. When order had been restored the remaining clauses of the bill were reported to the House and passed. It will now go to the House of Lords, where its defeat is confidently predicted.

—Terrible accounts of the distress prevailing in Shansi, China, because of the famine have been brought to Ningpo by a man who arrived there July 10. He had two girls, aged respectively 16 and 17 years, whom he said he had bought at Chang Ka-Kao, Shansi, for ten strings of copper cash each. The people of the distressed province are dying in thousands. The flesh of the arms and thighs of the poor wretches who sink down with exhaustion are frequently cut off by those who have still the strength to do so, and eaten.

—A recent attempt of Hawaiian officers to remove a settlement of lepers from Kalalau Valley, on Kauai Island, to the regular leper colony resulted disastrously. First a deputy sheriff with some assistants attempted to effect the removal. The lepers resisted and the deputy sheriff was killed. Then a company of soldiers went to the scene of the trouble, and while most of the lepers surrendered, Koolau, who had killed the officer, took refuge in the mountains with his wife and child, and refused to surrender. An attempt to dislodge him resulted in the death of three soldiers. At last accounts the desperado was still at large, and the affair has caused great excitement throughout the country, and is said to be adding fuel to the political animosities and race prejudices already prevalent.