Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 April 1893 — The Tariff and the South. [ARTICLE]

The Tariff and the South.

The subject of a ship canal to connect Lake Michigan with the Wabash river, and through that, with the Ohio and Mississippi, has received some attention in the state legislature, and is now being agitated to some extent in theTiU dianapolis papers. Prof. 3. L. Campbell, of Crawfordsville, the well known civil engineer, who has made a thorough survey of the Kankakee river region, is an earnest advocate of the project. His plan is to have the canal leave Lake Michigan at a point about on the boundary line between Lake

and Porter counties, to strike south by a little east, till it reaches the Kankakee river at Baum’s bridge. Then to follow up the Kankakee to Dunn’s bridge and from there south by east to the Big Monon, and down that' to the Tippecanoe and down the Tippecanoe to the Wabash. This route would cut across the northeast corner of J asper county. The Kankakee river would supply the water for the canal, both north and south from it. Prof. Campbell says there are no very formidable engineering difficulties in the way of such a canal, and thinks that its benefits would be very great.

Recently the governors of the states south of Mason & Dixons line held a conference at Richmond, \«rginia, to promote southern material interests. The announcement of this convention called from the Irish World the following truthful comment: How different the condition of the South, whose welfare these gentlemen will try to promote, from the south of the day when '‘cotton was king.” With leaps and bounds the New South has gone forward in the path that the Protective policy has opened up to it. Take only the last decade of this magnificent progress. Ten years ago the South’s agricultural, manufacturing and mining product aggregated in value about $1,200,000,000; now they are about $2,100,000,000. During the same period the South has doubled* its railroad mileage,; it, has more than quadrupled its iron and coal production; it has trebled its cotton mills; it has doubled its banking capital, and more than doubled its manufacturing interests. Such is the splendid record made by a section of the country where Protection has its bitterest foes. The Governors who will meet at Richmond are Free Traders to, a.man. If they could have had their way the policy whose practical workings have produced such magnificent results in the South would never have been adopted. The cotton mills and other manufacturing establishments that have transformed the South would have no existence.