News and Notes by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 22, 1883

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 9, No. 8.

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News and Notes.

By Editor

-Ex-Governor E. D. Morgan, of New York, died on the 14th inst.

-The Governor of New Jersey has signed the bill legalizing labor strikes.

-San Francisco is to have a daily journal printed in both Chinese and English.

-The business portion of Knight’s Landing, Cal., was destroyed by fire, on the 16th inst.

-Richard Wagner, the eminent musical composer, died at Venice, Feb. 13, aged 70 years.

-Another ministerial crisis exists in France, all the members of the new cabinet having resigned.

-The population of the highlands of Scotland has decreased nearly one-half within the last fifty years.

-The New York Board of Education have voted to discontinue the separate schools for colored children, after May 1.

-A steel wire rope 20,440 feet long, and weighing 51,000 pounds has just been made in Trenton, N. J., for a San Francisco street railroad.

-It is stated that Count Corti, Italian Ambassador to Turkey, has been instructed to ask satisfaction for renewed insults to Italian vessels in Tripoli.

-The first Jewish marriage which has taken place in Madrid since the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, two centuries ago, was celebrated a few days ago.

-The Mexican Government has authorized a French merchant to organize a company with the object of bringing to the republic twenty French colonies, of 5,000 families each.

-The Chicago Board of Trade recently unanimously adopted a resolution favoring $500 as the minimum sum at which licenses should be fixed for the sale of spirituous and malt liquors.

-A rain-storm accompanied by a severe gale, prevailed over the whole of England and Scotland last week. Much damage was done by floods, and the loss of life and property along the coast was very great.

-A model cotton gin is to be established at Hogansville, Ga., with machinery so arranged that when the cotton starts at one point it will not stop until it comes out a packed bale. It will run thirty-five bales per day.

-The furniture of the High School building and Court House at Red Bluff, Cal., were covered with coal oil and fired on the night of the 18th. The fires were extinguished with but little loss. All suspicious characters have been ordered to leave town.

-Feb. 16, a coal mine at Braidwood, Ill., about twenty miles from Joliet, caved in, burying seventy-four men, none of whom have yet been recovered. As nearly all the men had families depending on them, the distress occasioned by the calamity will be very great.

-The London Times says in regard to farming prospects in England, "A crisis in field work exists. It is water everywhere, and good sowing time is being wasted." It is thought that most of the autumn sowing is rotten, and that a similar condition exists throughout Europe.

-Dr. Nagle, Registrar of Vital Statistics, publishes the results of eleven years record and observation of suicide in New York. The number of persons committing suicide during that period is 1,521. In 1864 the proportion of suicides was one to every 23,827 inhabitants; in 1874 it was one to 5,515.

-The greatest destitution exists in Europe on account of the almost universal floods, and this suffering will increase rather than diminish, but little sowing has been done. Foreign merchants who have extensive correspondence estimate that the acreage of grain has decreased at least 90 per cent.

-As showing the breaking up of old prejudices in India, the Independent states that a Mahratli lady of good position, not a Christian, is coming to this country with the full approval of her husband, to pursue a thorough medical course, with the intention of returning to practice medicine among her country women.

-Dr. Hugh J. Glenn, of Jacinto, Cal., was shot and killed on the 17th inst., by a man whom he had discharged from his employ on account of drunkenness. Dr. Glenn was quite generally known as the owner of the largest ranch in California, having 60,000 acres in one ranch. He also owned land in Oregon and Nevada.

-The Faculty of Amherst College have taken a strong stand against intercollegiate sports. At a recent meeting resolutions were passed expressing the conviction that their cost in time, money, and energy expended brings no compensating advantage, and decreeing that the college shall take no part in them after the close of the present collegiate year.

-The Monitor claims that it is not a political paper; but a sentence in its last issue, in an article complaining of Governor Stoneman’s appointments, shows what kind of politics it would advocate if it were a political paper. It says: "We are pained, therefore, to see worthy representatives of the Irish race in this State thrust aside in order to give places of profit to men who cannot command a corporal’s guard of voting influence."

-In the case of the suits brought against the railroad companies of New York, for their failure to carry the freight offered to them during the strike for higher wages last summer, the court has decided that the railroad is a public highway, not a piece of private property; that it is only on this ground that the peculiar privileges granted to railroad corporations could be sustained; and that the railway company can be compelled by mandamus to perform its public duties when it fails or neglects so to do; and that inability to get work done at the wages it would choose to pay is no excuse for non-performance. In the words of the decision, "the duties must be performed at whatever cost; the companies cannot abandon their public duties without the express consent of the State."

-The illness of Prince Bismarck, although he is said to be better now, naturally has excited apprehension. His death is a possibility which diplomats and European statesmen are beginning to take into serious consideration. It would be likely to kill the old emperor. But aside from this, it is impossible to predict the consequences of it. The forces in Germany hostile to him are lying in wait for his death, ready to do their utmost when it comes to weaken the union he has brought about between the German States; while his foes from without stand ready at the first favorable movement to push forward their schemes of national aggrandizement which the great German has held in check. A serious feature of the situation is that Bismarck has trained no successor in his principles, or, what is more important, in his methods. No man has been allowed to blossom into greatness by his side, and much as Prussia may admire the prince, the Empire may some day bitterly regret that he educated no one to take his place.—N. Y. Tribune.