Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 February 1888 — THE WORLD AT LARGE. [ARTICLE]

THE WORLD AT LARGE.

A communication transmitted to the Senate of the United States from the Commissioner of Internal Revenue shows that since the present system of internal-revenue taxation, went into effect, September 1, 1862, down to June 3, 1887, there was collected from special taxes on distillers, $25,128,819; brewers, $5,932,383; rectifiers, $7,275,079; capacity tax on distillers under a law laying a tax of $2 per barrel on distilleries having a distilling capacity exceeding a certain fixed amount, $7,832,487. The production of distilled spirits during this time was 1,6 6,865,194 gallons, and of fermented liquors 269,719,782 barrels. The amount of tax collected on the spirit was $1,099,397,980, andon fermented liquors $249,246,119. The British Columbia mining disaster proves to have been of greater magnitude than the first reports indicated. A telegram from Victoria says: The total loss by the colliery explosion was thirty-one white men and forty-one Chinamen, being all the miners who were in the east slope when the accident occurred. The work of bringing the bodies to the surface was begun yesterday afternoon. All of them were blackened beyond recognition and the only means of identifying them is by the location of the bodies when found. The resistless force of the explosion is proved by the manner in which eigbt-inch pines were snapped in two and heavy timbers reduced to splinters, while one iron cuge was blown completely out of the shaft. One Belgian miner was completely stripped of his clothes, and the bodies of the others were terribly mutilated. A committee of the Knights of Labor, consisting of Edward Moore, Henry Bennett, and Joseph Cahill, appeared before thy Attorney General of Pennsylvania at Harrisburg, on Thursday, and asked that a quo warranto be issued against tho Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company with a view to a forfeiture of its charter. They said they came as private citizens to lay before the department facts to prove that the railroad company has violated the State Constitution by engaging in the business of mining coal. A Washington telegram says the Secretary Of the Treasury has informed customs officers that he has officially determined that the importation of neat cattle from Great Britain and Ireland undir certain prescribed c nditions ■will not tend to the introduction or spread of infectious or contagious diseases among the cattle of the United States. The law prohibiting their importation is therefore suspended as to those countries.