SABBATH UNION, AMERICAN. 



SALT, NEW FIELDS OP. 707 



S 



SABBATH UNION, AMERICAN. The 



American Sabbath Union was organized Dec; 

 12, 1888, at Washington, D. C., on the basis, as 

 declared in its constitution, of " the Divine au- 

 thority and universal and perpetual obligation 

 of the Sabbath, as manifested in the order and 

 constitution of nature, declared in the revealed 

 will of God, formulated in the fourth command- 

 ment of the moral law, interpreted and applied 

 by our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, trans- 

 ferred to the Christian Sabbath, or Lord's Day, 

 by Christ and his apostles, and approved by its 

 beneficent influence upon personal and national 

 life." Its object is to preserve the Christian 

 Sabbath as a day of rest and worship. Its or- 

 ganization includes a president, Col. Elliott F. 

 Shepard, three vice-presidents at large, a vice- 

 president representing each religious denomina- 

 tion which has officially appointed representative 

 members, and one vice-president from each State 

 and Territory of the Union, and three secreta- 

 ries the General Secretary, a Secretary of Pub- 

 lications, and a Corresponding Secretary. Eight 

 districts are established and defined in the United 

 States, each of which has its own district com- 

 mittee and secretary, having charge of the work 

 of the union within its borders ; and the control 

 of the general work of the union during the in- 

 terim of its annual sessions is intrusted to an 

 executive -committee. Provision is made in the 

 constitution for the organization of Sabbath con- 

 ventions, and State, county, city, and village as- 

 sociations, to be auxiliary to the union. At its 

 first anniversary meeting, held in Washington 

 in December, 1889, the union recommended an 

 amendment of the Constitution of the United 

 States, so that the President's term of office 

 should begin on the first Wednesday, instead of 

 the fourth day of March ; suggested the enact- 

 ment in all the States of such statutes " as shall 

 best preserve the rights of all classes to the 

 weekly rest day, and promote the moral welfare 

 of the people " ; advised the application of pro- 

 hibitory Sunday laws to the sale of newspapers, 

 candy, cigars, and tobacco ; and urged individual 

 Sabbath observance, in the terms of the fourth 

 commandment, upon all the people. It pledged 

 itself to co-operate with law and order societies 

 in efforts to close liquor saloons, as constituting 

 one of the first and most important works to be 

 encouraged by it. 



The second anniversary meeting was held in 

 Philadelphia, Dec. 8 and 9, 1890. Reports were 

 presented on the general Sabbath work ; on the 

 organization of allied Sabbath societies in vari- 

 ous parts of the United States ; and on the con- 

 ditions of the Sabbath movement in New Eng- 

 land, Ohio, and California. The representatives 

 of the society had been active in forwarding 

 petitions to the World's Columbian Fair Com- 

 mission, requesting that the World's Fair in Chi- 

 cago in 1893 should be closed on every Sunday 

 during its continuance. Nearly five hundred 

 such petitions had been received from all the 

 States of the Union but five, from repesentative 



bodies of many kinds, and from individuals. 

 A certificate of incorporation had been taken 

 out under the laws of the State of New York 

 and was accepted by the meeting. It was re- 

 Solved to request Congress to pass a law requiring 

 the Columbian Exhibition to be closed on the 

 Lord's Day, and the Legislature of Illinois to 

 close the saloons and other places of traffic in 

 Chicago on Sundays during the exhibition. A 

 recommendation was addressed to workingmen 

 that they endeavor to obtain the Lord's Day as 

 a day of rest for themselves and their families. 

 The treasurer reported that his receipts for the 

 year had been $10,219, all of which, except $34, 

 had been disbursed. 



SALT, NEW FIELDS OF. Recent reports to 

 the Legislature of New York show that the salt 

 brine from the State reservation at Syracuse is 

 decreasing both in quantity and in strength. 

 Several test wells have been sunk in the reserva- 

 tion for the purpose of securing more and 

 stronger brine, but thus far without success. 

 Outside of the reservation, within a few miles of 

 Syracuse, a bore has been made through 735 feet 

 of shale, then 500 feet of limestone, when under- 

 neath, at a depth of 1,210 feet from the surface, 

 the salt was found "in place." It is proposed 

 that the rock salt be converted into saturated 

 brine and, by a system of piping, the brine be 

 brought to the city. Saturated brine can be con- 

 verted into, salt for market at 33 per cent, less 

 cost than brine pumped from the State wells. 

 There is also an advantage in the cost of fuel, 

 besides a saving of the State duty. On the Syra- 

 cuse reservation the great cause of the decline of 

 the salt production is acknowledged to be the 

 fact that the salt of Michigan is produced with 

 much less expense for fuel ; but, more than all, 

 because the mining of salt in Livingston and 

 other counties of New York has become prac- 

 ticable. The shaft at Piffard, Livingston Coun- 

 ty, has reached a depth of 1,140 feet, but in the 

 last 130 feet there was a total of 83 feet of rock 

 salt, two veins of which were 22 and 53 feet, re- 

 spectively, with small strips of shale between. 

 The salt beds of western New York extend about 

 120 miles from east to west, and about 50 miles 

 from north to south. The area of the salt-bed 

 territory is therefore nearly 5,000 square miles, 

 and the average thickness is 40 feet. This means 

 that the supply is practically inexhaustible. 

 Some of this salt is now sent to Syracuse to im- 

 prove the quality of the brine on the State reser- 

 vation. The brine from western New York 

 holds an exceptionally small proportion of the 

 chlorides of calcium and magnesium. This has 

 made it possible for a ton of coal to produce 

 more salt in the Warsaw region than can be pro- 

 duced by one in Syracuse. Under the former 

 tariff the duty on foreign salts was 8 cents per 

 hundred, or 22 cents for a barrel of 230 pounds. 

 The new McKinley tariff places the same duty 

 on salt in bulk, and 12 cents per hundred in bags. 

 Salt having dropped from $1.30 a barrel in 1860 

 to less than one third of that amount in 1890, the 



