Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 October 1885 — GENERAL. [ARTICLE]

GENERAL.

W. W. Wood, aged twenty-one, a reporter, killed himself at Quincy, III.; Mrs. Eliza; Steel, a widow of seventy years, living near Fort Recovery, Ohio, climbed a ladder to a height of thirty feet, and then dashed herself to the earth, causing instant death; an actress who registered in a New York hotel as “Annie Bennett” turned on the gas in her room, stuffed the chinks in windows and doors with paper, and was dead in a few hours. There were 172 failures in the United States reported to Bradstreet’s during the week, against 140 in the preceding week, and 188, 160, and 122 in the corresponding weeks of 1884, 1883, and.lßß2 respectively. Bradstreet’s, in its weekly commercial summary, says: “The check to the activity in business circles at the East noted last week has become more pronounced. In New England the distribution of boots and shoes is as heavy as ever, but the demand for woolen and cotton goods has fallen off. Both staples are quieter. Raw wool is fairly active and the advance in prices previously noted is sustained, but the tendency to an advance in quotations is less marked, Late sales are less than during weeks in the latter part of August and in the earlier portion of September. There is a diminished activity in dry goods. The request for iron East and West is of fair proportions, with no indications of an advance in prices. Less is heard of Southern iron, at -least than formerly. Anthracite coal is firmer and in moderately better demand.” In an interview, Mr. F. A. Dockray, who had just concluded a thorough investigation of the general trade with Mexico, says that the West has every advantage for commanding Seventy-five per cent, of the total business of this republic with its Southern sister. There is great danger, however, of American houses losing the trade they have already gained with Mexico, as English firms are making rapid strides toward commercial supremacy in that country. It is now not so much a question to the United States of increasing as of holding the Mexican trade According to Sir John MacDonald the fate of Riel depends on the Privy Council of England. If that body approves the sentence, Riel will hang. A rebellion of the French Canadians would be promptly suppressed, Sir John’thinks, by the Englishspeaking people of the Dominion... .It now transpires that Count Zacharoff, w'ho figured very conspicuously as an agent for the Mann Boudoir-car, and was married to Miss Florence Billings, of New York, in August, has another, his first, wife living in Bristol, Eng.... A cow threw the engine of a train on the Canadian Pacific Road off the track near Kamloops, killing one American, five Chinamen, and wounding several others.