Frisco Mail Items.

Feilding Star, Volume XIII, Issue 93, 4 February 1892, Page 3

Frisco Mail Items.

(Per s.s. Monowai at Auckland.) Mr Joseph Chamberlain assured th< Labour r delegation that waited on him recently of the Government's willingness to. adopt legislation looking to the amelioration of the labouring classes, particularly agricultural, throughout the country, and the improvement of theij dwellings, and that they would introduce measures to allow labourers to acquire small holdings, and to assist them in procuring land. Much alarm is felt in shipping and commercial circles because of the resignation of the Underwriters at Lloyds. A London despatch of December 11th ■ays that three more gentlemen engaged in the Marine Assurance business had concluded to withdraw, as their losses are very heavy. This will make a total of 17. Underwriters who have withdrawn from the Society of Lloyds within a few weeks, and the effect upon the shipowners and the shipping is not good. It is reported by the London Standard's St. Petersburg correspondent that the Grand Duke Sergius, disguised as a peasant, in order to discover the truth about the alleged difficulties in purchasing bread, had a quarrel with a baker, and was thrown into the street by a policeman, who severely hurt him, and was aboul Jo arrest him when he revealed bis identity, whereupon three of the police committed, suicide. Nearly all flour men of the North Western States of the American Union have contributed to the relief of starving Russians andabout 1,000,000 pounds have already been sent. • . Three thousand bales of high grade wool from Sydney, N.8.W., of an average of 350 ponnds each, were brought to San Franoisco on the Steamship Monowai, which arrived from the port named on Christmas morning. On the last trip of .-die sta&malnp Mariposa. 1928 bales of the same average weight arrived, and the next steamship from the colonies (the . Alameda, due on January 21st) is ex- . peeted to bring to San. Franoisco a consignment of. Australian fleece fully tip to the Monowai's shipment. These shipments are considered unusually heavy, and the feet that the MoKinley tariff has dapped 11 and 12 cents a pound on the long fleece from the Antipodes does nob seem- to have any other effect on the Boston merchants, who are the importers 6i the wool for use in Massachusetts fectorie», than to make them demand more or the article. Mr Gladstone wa3 blackballed on De•ember 22nd at the English Club at Bairritz. Sir Andrew Fairbairn, the President of the Otab who had proposed Mr Gladstone, resigned his Presidency in •onseqnence. There is very bitter feeling in many quarter against the granting of the six years' contract for English Parliamentary Printing to a German firm, though the bitterest grumbeers hardly express a doubt that the contract if satisfied, will be carried. An accident on the New York Central Railway on Christmas Eve, at a plaoe oalled Hastings, resulted in eleven people being killed and five badly injured. The collision wasdae to gross neglect of dnty by a brakesman named Herrick, who afterwards changed his uniform for civilian's clothes and fled. '""' Mr Gladstone, replying to a correspondent inquiring the position of the Labour question in Parliament if the Irish members are withdrawn, says:— "The fear " that British labour will be unable to fight its own battle without the Irish members, is entirely visionary." It is announced that the American Bell Telephone Company has so far forwarded experiments in the telephone field that it has now in its possession a perfected telephone by which whispers can be transmitted 500 miles distinctly. . ' A war has been commenced against Sunday newspapers in Philadelphia, by the Law and Order Society. Thirty-five employes were arrested on 6th January on a charge of being engaged- in worldly employment on the Sabbath. The information was laid under a law enacted 100 years ago. Jost as the marriage of William Wright and Miss Phillips: had been solemnised at Mer'i'dan, Mass.727th December, a msa'p"*" Sointed rival for the lady's hand, named ohnson, killed the bridegroom, shooting him through the window with a doublebarrelled shot gun. He told the woman he would do this, and he kept his word. Two homicidal cranks were sent to a madhouse on 27th December—one from New York, who wanted to kill the millionaire Com. Vanderbilt, in order to examine bis brain, and learn the seoret of acquiring wealth ; the other from Philadelphia, named J. Bonaparte, who endeavoured to force his way to the sanctum of George W. Ohilds, publisher and proprietor of the Ledger, to kill him, as he candidly admitted. An examination recently made into the practioes of the seoret societies of Harvard College, which, with Yale, is the leading College in the United States, has led to some strange revelations among others that one society, the D.K.E., brands its initiates like cattle or like the firing of the flesh by savage tribes in order to test their quality of endurance.