Ohio, H 4). It has a large steel plant, and extensive manufactures of heavy machinery, including gun carriages, traveling cranes, structural iron work, boilers, etc. Alliance owns and operates its water works. Mount Union College (Methodist Episcopal), organized 1846, is located here. Alliance was settled in 1838, and was called Freedom, until in 1850 its present name was adopted. In 1854 it was incorporated under its present charter, which provides for a mayor elected biennially, and a city council of twelve members. Pop., 1890, 7607; 1900, 8974.
ALLIANCE ISRAELITE UNIVERSELLE, ȧl'yäns' ḗs'rā'ắ'lēt' ụ'nḗ'vắr'sĕl'. An association founded at Paris in 1860 for the amelioration of the condition of the Jews throughout the world. The original members of the society were Jews, and by far the largest number of its members at present belong to that faith; but the association has enjoyed at all times the sympathy and coöperation of many prominent Christians. As outlined in its prospectus, the programme of the society included the emancipation of the Jews from oppressive and discriminating laws, political disabilities, and defense of them in those countries where they were subjected to persecution. For the attainment of this object the society purposed to carry on a campaign of education through the press and by the publication of works on the history and life of the Jews. In the beginning, however, the course of action adopted by the society for bringing relief to their oppressed brethren in other countries was to secure the intercession of friendly governments in their behalf. Thus, as early as 1867 the governments of France, Italy, Belgium, and Holland made the renewal of existing treaties with Switzerland conditional upon that country's granting full civil and political rights to the Jews. In 1878, representatives of the Alliance laid the condition of the Jews in the Balkan Peninsula before the Congress of Berlin, as a result of which the Treaty of Berlin stipulated that in Rumania, Servia, and Bulgaria no discrimination should be made against any religion in the distribution of civil rights. Of late years the activity of the Alliance has tended to become more educational than political, and the chief problem with which it was occupied at the beginning of the twentieth century was the improvement of the condition of the Jews in the Orient. Schools have been established in Bulgaria, European and Asiatic Turkey, Persia, Tunis, and Morocco. In 1899 the number of such schools was 95, with a teaching staff of 400 and an attendance of 24,000. Instruction is carried on in the language of the country or in the dialect employed by the majority of pupils. In addition to the cultural schools, 32 manual training workshops have been established for boys, and 18 schools of domestic science for girls, the encouragement of handicrafts among the Jews being one of the chief aims of the Alliance. Two farm-schools have been established, one near Jaffa in Palestine, the other at Djedeida. near Tunis; the former of these has supplied the Jewish colonies in Palestine with skilled agriculturists and supervisors. At Paris there is a normal school for the education of teachers who are exclusively drawn from the schools of the Alliance, and are sent back after a thorough training to carry on in their turn the work of instruction in their native countries. In 1899 the Alliance numbered 32,400 members. The central body of the Alliance is a committee of sixty-two members, with its seat at Paris. Only twenty-nine, however, are resident, the rest being scattered all over the world, six of them residing in the United States. The central committee stands in constant communication with the regional and local committees, of which there are a number in the United States, the principal ones being at New York and Philadelphia. The Alliance publishes monthly bulletins and a semi-annual report in French and German, and at intervals issues reports in English, Hebrew, Hungarian, and Judeo-Spanish. These bulletins are the chief authorities for the history of the Alliance. See Chémieux, Isaac Adolphe.
ALLIANCE of the Reformed Churches holding the Presbyterian System. An alliance formed in London in 1875. It holds councils, which have no legislative authority but great moral weight. In them the various Augustinian non-prelatical and in general presbyterial bodies find representation. They are upward of ninety in number, scattered all over the world, with 25,000,000 adherents. The published reports of the proceedings of these councils contain much valuable matter of all kinds, as papers are read, statistics presented, and many speeches made. The councils have been held at London, 1875; Edinburgh, 1877; Philadelphia, 1880; Belfast, 1884; London, 1888; Toronto, 1892; Glasgow, 1896; Washington, 1899.
AL'LIA'RIA. A genus of plants of the natural order Cruciferæ, closely allied to Sisymbrium and Erysimum, and ranked by some botanists in the genus Sisymbrium. It is known by the popular names of sauce-alone and jack-by-the-hedge. The best known species, Alliaria officinalis, or, as often commonly called, Sisymbrium alliaria, is a native of Great Britain, not unfrequently found on hedge-banks and in waste places in dry, rich soils, and is common in most parts of Europe. It has also become introduced in a number of places in the United States. It is a biennial, with a stem two to three feet high; large, stalked, heart-shaped leaves, white flowers, and pods much longer than their stalks, which are somewhat spreading. It seems more deserving of cultivation than many other plants which have long received the constant care of the gardener, being wholesome, nutritious, and to most persons pleasant. The powdered seeds were formerly employed as a sternutatory.
AL'LIBONE, Samuel Austin (1816-89). An American author. He was born at Philadelphia, and although engaged in commercial pursuits, devoted considerable time to literature. It was therefore as an amateur that he began the literary work to which the best part of his life was devoted. This work, the Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors, contains notices of 46,599 writers. The first volume appeared in 1854. Allibone was book editor and corresponding secretary of the American Sunday-school Union, from 1867 to 1873. In 1879 he was appointed librarian of the Lenox Library in New York, and held this position until 1888. He died at Lucerne, Switzerland, Sept. 2, 1889. Besides the Critical Dictionary, he compiled the following works: Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson, containing 13,600 passages, taken from 550 authors; Prose Quotations,
