ITEMS OF NEWS | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 2, 1881

ITEMS OF NEWS.

— Nebraska has a school population of 142,348. — Corporal punishment is forbidden in the French public schools. — The reduction of the public debt for May will be over $11,000,000. — A ransom of $45,000 was paid to the brigands, for the release of Sutter. — Harrison, Arkansas, was totally destroyed by an incendiary fire, May 26. — There are now 4,700,000 children taught in the French communal schools. — An Italian Methodist Conference has been organized with fifteen preachers. — The number of dissenters from the Greek church in Russia is estimated at 14,000,000. — A temperance mission has been organized among the Welsh-speaking population of Liverpool. — The total customs revenues for May are $14,300,000; the internal revenue receipts are $12,300,000. — The arbitration of the United States between Venezuela and her French creditors has been accepted. — The Mormon missionaries who have been trying to make proselytes in Germany are to be expelled from the country. — It is estimated by competent authorities that 100,000 buffalo hides will be shipped out of the Yellowstone country this season. — Patchoque, Long Island, has again voted in favor of no license. The experiment has worked well during the past three years. — The Southern Pacific railroad has reached El Paso. It is the intention of the company to push it through to the Gulf of Mexico. — Berea College, Ky., an institution for the education of whites and blacks, has lately secured from contributions in six States an endowment of $50,000. — Jorgensen, the editor of the Socialist paper, the Herald, has been arrested on a charge of inciting to murder the king, and establish a Commune. — It is reported that 30,000 colored people from Louisiana and other southern States are preparing to emigrate to New Mexico during the coming summer. — The Livingstone Mission of the Free Church of Scotland, has stopped the slave trade about Lake Nyassa, whence 10,000 slaves were annually carried off. — May 23, the mammoth steamer Furnissia brought 1,439 emigrants from Glasgow; the Vandalia, 1,343 from Hamburg, and the England, 1,347 from Liverpool. — During the first nine months of the current year, the foreign trade of the United States showed exports, exclusive of specie, exceeding the imports by $234,745,000, while the imports of gold exceeded the imports of silver by $78,624,000. — An edict has just been published in Unterhallen, a town in one of the Swiss cantons, forbidding any person under 15 years of age to smoke either in public or private. — The aggregate circulation of daily newspapers in the United States is said to be nearly 3,600,000 copies. The people pay more than $25,000,000 annually for the daily papers. — A popular vote on the question whether the purchase of spirituous liquors, with the exception of wine and cider, shall be prohibited, will be taken in North Carolina next August. — Belgium has 59 technical schools, 32 industrial schools and a higher commercial school, all receiving funds annually from the State. Many foreigners are now attending her schools. — The Danish Supreme Court has confirmed the sentence of death passed by the West Indian Commission on thirty-nine negroes convicted of participating in the Santa Cruz revolt. — The Board of Trustees of the town of Alameda, have passed an ordinance prohibiting persons from riding on the platforms of the local trains. Several violators of the ordinance have been arrested. — May 28, the corner-stone of a sugar refinery was laid in San Francisco, by Claus Spreckles. When completed, it will be the largest sugar refinery in the world. It will cost about a million and a quarter of dollars. — A dispatch from Copenhagen says the Swedish Government is becoming alarmed, and contemplates legislation in view of the immigration which is assuming the proportions of an exodus. Several counties are practically denuded of able-bodied inhabitants. — The revised New Testament is having a very extensive sale. Hundreds of thousands of copies have been sold. The weight of opinion in regard to it in this country is favorable. In England it is not regarded with much favor, and will come into use very slowly if at all. — The Russian revolutionists have answered the Czar's manifesto by a second utterance dwelling on the wretchedness of the peasants, the deportations to Siberia, the gagging of free speech and public journals, and declaring that false counsellors are in possession of the Czar's ear. The document concludes as follows: "Let your Majesty assemble your people around you and listen to their wishes in an unprejudiced spirit, and then neither your Majesty nor the State will have any reason to apprehend further catastrophe." — A dispatch from Indianapolis, May 26, says: "Kalloch was foiled in his effort to secure recognition by the Baptist Home Mission Society. To-day Kalloch called upon Rev. Henry I. Morehouse, one of the Secretaries, and, upon stating his errand, was told that there was no disposition to attack him, but there was an unmistakable desire to ignore him entirely, and common prudence should teach him to keep away. Kalloch remarked that he had no intention of making a disturbing element, and thereupon withdrew." — At Michelstown, County Cork, Ireland, May 27, the sheriff, assisted by twenty-five policemen, and the military, attempted to evict five tenants, but met with such a determined resistance, that the work was only partially accomplished. The chapel bells for ten miles round commenced ringing at 9 in the morning, and within an hour fully ten thousand persons assembled. The streets were obstructed, and showers of stones, clubs, etc., were hurled at the Sheriff and his assistants. Many of both parties were severely injured. — A terrible disaster occurred on the Thames river, near London, Ontario, May 24. The steamer Victoria, having on board over 600 excursionists, suddenly collapsed and became a wreck level with the water's edge. All the passengers were precipitated into the stream. Over two hundred persons were drowned. There seems to have been criminal carelessness on the part of the managers, for the steamer was unseaworthy, and was loaded to nearly double her capacity. If the responsible persons in this case, and others of a similar nature, were convicted of manslaughter, there might be fewer reckless risks of human life.